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The initial question is who will check
the President and his or her people?
During a time of national fear, who
will hold the Executive accountable
for its national security abuses or,
perhaps more important, prevent
them from occurring? More
particularly, who will hold the
President accountable for lies aimed
at legitimating or covering up
abuses of power?
There are two quick answers, found in most civics books. The first is the electorate -- it can vote out the President at the next election. But that often is years later, and only if it is the President's first term and if executive dissembling is publicly revealed and constantly criticized. The second quick answer is the Judiciary. It is the role of the courts to hold the Executive to constitutional dictates.
But what is the reality? The simplistic answer, that the judiciary checks the executive, is rooted in a widely-held fallacy -- that as a separate co-equal branch of government it is politically independent and that its judgments are necessarily neutral and objective. Bush v. Gore and Korematsu v. U.S. are just two of many cases that starkly reveal that fallacy by exposing the political underpinnings of judicial decisionmaking in controversial cases. It is not that nine black-robed men and women simply vote their personal and political preferences. The legal method imposes decisional constraints. To maintain public legitimacy judges have to speak in the language of statutes, rules, and case precedents. As many commentators have observed about Bush v. Gore, however, the moorings of the legal method are a weak tether in hot political cases. The intricacies of stare decisis and the complexities of the three-tier standard of equal protection review, for instance, are manipulable by sophisticated, politically attuned judges.
As illuminated by the Hamdi and Padilla "enemy combatant" cases and the prosecution of Dr. Wen Ho Lee, public advocacy emerges in two realms. The first realm is critical legal argument by lawyers and civil and human rights organizations aimed at shaping judges' threshold selections of the level of judicial scrutiny, and ultimately the judges' responses to the specific legal challenges to executive actions. As a complement to usually narrow traditional legal arguments, this kind of critical legal advocacy aims to reveal what is really at stake, who benefits and who is harmed (in the short and long term), who wields the behind-the-scenes power, which social values are supported and which are subverted, how political concerns frame the legal questions, and how societal institutions and differing segments of the populace will be affected by the court's decision.
The second realm of advocacy is a species of public education: journalist essays, pundit commentaries, public letters to the editor, clergy sermons, scholars' op-ed pieces, community workshops and school forums, all critically analyzing and advocating the need for the courts to carefully scrutinize the Executive's national security actions. The goal is to create in the public culture a compelling sense that it must be the courts that exercise "watchful care" over our constitutional liberties -- that the Executive is charged with protecting our people and institutions from threats from without, and in turn that our courts are charged with protecting our liberties from threats from our own institutions.
The timing of both kinds of public advocacy is crucial. Advocacy of accountability is imperative at the "front end" and at the "back end" of apparent national security abuses: (For more of this article go to: www.votestrike.com )
Every single one of the members of congress and the cabinet and all the national "leaders" should have gone on general strike themselves the day they heard about waterboarding.
We can allow them to get away with it or we can send a clear message to the next president that ENOUGH is ENOUGH!
So I'm asking my fellow citizens to join me in a GENERAL STRIKE in a series of protest to bring down the two-party hypocrisy.
OpEdNews
Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_sandy_sh_080309_the_perfect_storm.htm
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March 10, 2008
The perfect storm
By Sandy Shanks
If congress doesn't have the power to define the contours of the President's Article II powers through legislation, if the President's legal theory is correct, under this theory, we no longer have a Constitutional system consisting of three co-equal branches of government. We have a monarchy -- Russ Feingold, Senator, D - Wis.
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few -- James Madison
Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power. The truth is that men are tired of liberty. Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace -- Benito Mussolini
One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have the chance to invade, if I have that much capital, I'm not going to waste it; I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed. And I'm going to have a successful presidency -- President George W. Bush to his biographer, Mickey Herskowitz, in 1999.
In September of 2001, the stage was set, all the characters were in place. The leading actor was the clueless puppet, President George W. Bush, who likes the idea of a unitary executive. He probably couldn't spell the term or pronounce it correctly, but, to him, the idea has merit because nobody, not his father, nor his mother, nor Congress, nor the Judiciary can tell him what to do any more. The cast included the demonic Karl Rove, who will handle political matters (opponents of the regime), the Machiavellian Dick Cheney who loves to act behind the "scenes," and his lawyer cohort, David Addington, who is currently Cheney's chief of staff as a result of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's resignation, the latter being a convicted criminal pardoned by Bush. The GOP controlled the Executive Branch, the House, and the Senate, and Cheney and Addington were devoted adherents to the principle of the unitary executive. The Constitution provided an obstacle to their theory, however. In their minds, all they needed was a catalyst.
That catalyst arrived with thunderous, monstrous, and murderous explosions on September 11, 2001. To this day, I wonder if Osama bin Laden, the forgotten terrorist responsible for that rueful day, was more intuitive that Americans and America's leaders give him credit for. Bush declared the euphemistic War on Terror. Terror is a tactic, not an enemy, and terror has existed for centuries. Logic dictates, in true fascist fashion, a war on terror has no end. With control of both the Executive Branch and Congress, later the Judicial Branch, heinous and fascist legislation and executive orders from the central government followed that defied American imagination, denied freedoms, created a powerful Executive Branch, and now it is Americans who are clueless. They have no idea what has happened because of the compliant media owned by a very few huge corporations beholden to the central government. With the actors in place September Eleventh created the perfect storm, loss of freedom, loss of American prestige, exploding oil prices, two never-ending wars, and economic chaos that could easily expand to world recession involving the entire western world and elsewhere.
To compound matters, not only is the mass media ignoring these threats to our Constitution, so, also, are the two remaining Democratic candidates for the Presidency, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who have said little on the topic. It suggests that they have no wish to diminish the new powers of the Executive Branch, but to capture them. How serious are these threats? Cheryl Abraham, writing for OpEd news, states, "Just as sinister is the possibility that there will be no election at all. A terrorist attack, natural disaster, or perceived civil unrest could launch the U.S. into a state of martial law."
Just what are these laws and executive decisions that could change America forever. Stand by to be shocked, evoking the sentiment, "It can't happen here." Well, it can. At the top of the list is the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive wars, adopted in Sept. 2002. Concerning this doctrine, Rodrigue Tremblay writes, "According to this hubristic foreign policy doctrine, the United States could invade any country, especially in the Middle East, in order to impose a local democratic government friendly to the United States and its allies. The occupied country would then become a model to other countries which would adopt the same type of political regime and the same policies." To conclude that the war in Iraq created unintended consequences is the height of massive understatement. The Bush Doctrine laid the groundwork for the decisions that followed.
On October 17, 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law S.3930, the Military Commissions Act, a law that cancels the right of habeas corpus for foreigners accused of terrorism and for both Americans and foreigners who have been designated as "enemy combatants" by the Executive branch. Under this law, any individual, citizen or non-citizen, can be deprived of the protection of due process at the whim of the Executive branch, and be imprisoned indefinitely without legal recourse. -The United States is probably the only country in the world where the right of habeas corpus has been suspended and yet is still being called a "democratic" country.
The Defense Authorization Act of 2006 (H.R. 1815), passed by Congress on September 30 2006, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006, empowers the president to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist "incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of "public order." The resort to martial law could come, for example, as a response to a terrorist attack, but it is not excluded that it could be imposed by antiwar protests or any major political disturbance in any part of the world. One can easily surmise that since the current Bush-Cheney administration got away with declaring a war abroad on a pretext, what would prevent them from imposing martial law at home on a pretext?
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was amended to make it easier for the President to deploy the military within the United States.
The adoption of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122) changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from "Insurrection Act" to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act." -While the U.S. Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy", the new law allows the president not only to declare martial law and rule by decree, but it also gives the president the power to take charge of United States National Guard troops without the states' governors' authorization. The law also expands the list of such permissible cases for martial law to include "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition"-and such "condition" is not defined or limited in scope. All the safeguards against the use of the military at home have been removed in favor of new powers being given to the President to do so nearly at his whim.
The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed by President George W. Bush on May 4, 2007, an event that was generally not covered by U.S. mainstream media or discussed by the U.S. Congress, goes even further and declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the president can become what is best described as a de facto dictator: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."
On March 15, 2004, the National Security Agency's wire-tapping and domestic spying program, without proper judicial supervision, was authorized by the Bush-Cheney White House, without Justice Department approval and over the objections of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. This was an illegal program of domestic spying, because it violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a panel of judges to hear wiretap requests in secret. When a government begins to violate the law, there is no way of knowing in advance where this will lead and how far it will go.
Finally, the United States is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions. That means, according to our Constitution, Article VI, Section (2), that this treaty is the law of the land. The Geneva Conventions forbid torture, examples would include water-boarding, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, starvation, extremes of cold or heat, etc. Once again, the Bush/Cheney regime has broken the law.
It is unconscionable that both Obama and Clinton have not addressed these issues. According to one source, Obama has pledged to restore habeas corpus. Awful nice of him, but apparently that is not a major issue with him or the mass media. The position is probably on his Web page somewhere. Even if true, that begs a question. What about the other issues raised here?
In the meantime, Ms Abraham writes, "Many supporters of the democratic candidates will argue that their candidate has promised to close Guantanamo, to end the war, to repeal the Military Commissions Act and so forth, but why have these candidates not done so already? Neither candidate has put forth legislation to do this now, in fact they have voted to fund the war, and neither have filibustered or fought long, hard, and loudly to pass legislation to restore habeas corpus rights, or to stop the illegal spying on Americans, in fact they have not filibustered or fought long, hard, and loudly to stop any of the policies that power the Bush agenda. What does this say about the abilities and passion of these candidates to promote and create change in the future?"
I have a suggestion for Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. Rather than sniping at one another, resulting in divisions within the Democratic Party, deal with the issues that confront Americans and see who comes out on top in terms of clarity and taking a stand.
Issues such as those mention above that threaten our very survival as a nation, because, rest assured, I will do all in my power to ensure that Americans will not forget these perilous and fascist laws and executive decisions.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety -- Benjamin Franklin
Rodrigue Tremblay contributed to this article.
Sandy Shanks, retired author and columnist and a Concerned Citizen.
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Strike To Impeach
