2 posts tagged “bush”
Two news stories recently caught my eye, not only for what each one told us about the state of the Republic, but even more so, what comparing them tells us about the sorry state of journalism today. In the first story, Chris Wallace of Fox News managed to be so obsequious that it made even George W. Bush uncomfortable to accept the gesture.
WALLACE: I want to follow up on that. Whether it is interrogation of terror prisoners or the intercepting of surveillance among al Qaeda members, are you ever puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting of rights of people who want to kill us?
BUSH: That is an interesting way to put it. I wouldn't necessarily define some of the critics of my policy that way. I would say that they want to be very careful that we don't overstep our bounds from protecting the civil liberties of Americans.
In the same interview, Bush grossly misrepresented Senator Obama's foreign policy:
WALLACE: Do you think there's a rush to judgment about Barack Obama? Do you think voters know enough about him?
BUSH: I certainly don't know what he believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad, which -- I think I commented that in a press conference when I was asked about it.
WALLACE: I hope not. But so you don't -- you don't think that we know enough about him or what he stands for?
Bush's summary of what Obama supposedly said is patently false. The Senator actually said of Pakistan exactly what the President himself said, that if there were actionable intelligence that Osama bin Ladin were in a known location in Pakistan he would go after him, preferably with Pakistan's support, but even over their objection. As to "embracing" the Iranian president, what he actually said that started all the brouhaha was that he would be willing to meet with the leader of Iran (and 4 other countries hostile to the US) "And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous." (Transcript available at CNN.)
Wallace did not challenge the President on this misrepresentation, but rather encouraged him. The interview was a segment on the Feb 10, 2008, edition of "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" is available in pieces on YouTube, and a partial transcript is available on FoxNews.com.
The second story involves Karl Rove's recent appearance at Choate, the exclusive prep school. Rove had originally been scheduled as a commencement speaker, but was rescheduled to make a longer public appearance, dining with a group of students and giving a public speech followed by a question and answer period.
The article describing the event in the February 12, 2008 Hartford Courant contained the following account, which was picked up by a number of other journals, including Rolling Stone, who hailed the student as a hero.
Whereas Wallace was a disgrace to journalism, young Marla did her school proud. Having Rove on campus was somewhat controversial, but this exchange shows why it was a good idea. Marla and her classmates as well as the readers of the Courant, Rolling Stone and the others who covered it all learned a valuable lesson. Ignorance, bigotry, hypocrisy and their like will always be with us, but the light of truth, reason and justice can be shone upon them by youngsters who haven't even finished school. It is about time that journalists and Congressmen learned to have the backbone and persistence that Marla showed. Where is the threat? Where is the danger in same-sex marriage? Where is the justice in denying it? These are questions worth asking, be they asked by school girls, journalists, comedians or Supreme Court justices.Then there was Marla Spivak.
Spivak, a senior from Hamden, was one of the students invited to have lunch earlier with Rove. That left her somewhat emboldened as she stood before the crowd and asked Rove to explain how giving gay people the right to marry would endanger other people.
Rove took issue with the way the first gay marriages came about, through the Massachusetts Supreme Court. An issue as important as the definition of marriage should be resolved by a legislature or a referendum, not a court, he said.
Gay couples could gain the legal rights of married couples through legislation without actually getting married, he said.
But wouldn't creating a separate body of legislation for gay people be creating a separate but equal system, a step back?, Spivak asked.
Rove replied with an answer about Mormons changing their views on marriage to conform with the nation's laws.
Spivak kept pressing. "You never actually answered, how does it threaten anyone?" she asked.
Rove asked, what's the compelling reason to throw out 5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman?
What, Spivak countered, was the compelling reason for society to allow interracial relationships when they had once been outlawed.
Then Rove invoked the Declaration of Independence before Spivak interjected that its reference to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" seemed to support her claims.
Their verbal pingpong match tapered off after Rove brought up polygamy and Spivak acknowledged that she did not know enough about polygamy to answer. Rove later asked when she planned to run for political office.
Chris Wallace, a second generation journalist should know better than to suck up to the President with such drivel. He should know enough to press when the President lies during an interview. He should not be shown up by a high school student. Shame on him! Shame on Fox for letting him! And shame on us for putting up with all of them. Marla Spivak should put them and us all to shame.
Feel free not to agree with the disdain I feel for the man who lies from the Oval Office. Feel free to not share my pride in my Commonwealth that its Supreme Judicial Court recognized the conflict between our Constitution and our laws and forced us to reconcile them. This is a free country and each of us should be a free voice. Each of us should raise that voice and ask the questions that we have, and make power answer those questions. Hard questions, honest questions, voiced freely and persistently is what keeps this country free, and keeps our voices free.
Thank you, Marla Spivak. You are a free voice, one that should make us proud.
Vox Libertas
The Democrats are failing us, as the recent FISA Court vote clearly demonstrates. They are not protecting our Civil Liberties, they are cowering before the political threats of a "politically weak" president and worst of all they are allowing him to arrogate more and more power into the Presidency. We need to make them understand that we want political leaders who will stand up for the People, our Liberties and the Republic.
Glenn Greenwald has written (here, here, here, here, here, and here) and spoken (here and here) extensively recently about how the Democrat-led Congress meekly deferred to the President and hastily revised the FISA laws, greatly expanding the government's power to secretly and without judicial or Congressional review tap any telephone or email communications that can be "reasonably believed" to be outside the US. Many others have taken up the cry and all of the Democratic Presidential hopefuls have distanced themselves from the action.
Most of the writing on this topic has spoken about the great harm done to our Civil Liberties, but as John Dean pointed out, in many ways, that is not the most important and dangerous aspect of the incident. Dean wrote in FindLaw's on-line journal, The Writ, an article entitled "The So-Called Protect America Act: Why Its Sweeping Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Pose Not Only a Civil Liberties Threat, But a Greater Danger As Well". In it he wrote,
The most stunning aspect of the Democrats' capitulation is their abandoning of their institutional responsibility to hold the president accountable. The Protect America Act utterly fails to maintain any real check on the president's power to undertake electronic surveillance of literally millions of Americans. This is an invitation to abuse, especially for a president like the current incumbent.
Greenwald and numerous others have written of the FISA fiasco, that congress capitulated to the "weakest President" in recent history. Witness:
It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history -- that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply.
-- Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com
Once again, the weakest president in the history of this country walks away a WINNER!!! Winning BIG TIME!-- PinkytheBrain in a comment in Crooks and Liars
I do not understand how "Total Capitulation", jumping at the demand of the politcally weakest President in history, and craven betrayal of principle makes the Democrats "appear stronger".-- LJean a comment in Balkinization
But if 41 Democrats lack the courage to stand up to the weakest president in decades at a time when every indicator they trust—polls, focus groups, pundits—is saying no to this man, when will they find the strength to stand?
By "weakest", of course, they mean that the President has extremely little support among the People, and after all the People are the source of power in our country and under our constitution. And so, lacking popular support the President should be weak, but in two very great senses, he is not. And therein lies the rub.
First of all, as they point out, the Democrats routinely, repeatably and predictably capitulate and give him pretty much anything he asks for. And secondly, what he has asked for is Power, and they have given it to him. They heap it on him and when they don't he just takes it and they stand by.
This President, this "weak" President has the authority to federalize the National Guard and deploy the US military within the borders of the US when, and I quote the new text of the insurrection act "as a result of ..., or other condition ... the President determines that ... domestic violence has occurred .. and such violence ... obstructs the execution of the laws ... or impedes the course of justice". It used to be that he could do so only to put down violent rebellion and insurgency, or to repel invasion. Now, natural disaster, terrorism or the unspecified "other condition" is sufficient. He used to be able to order insurgents to disperse, now he can issue a proclamation ordering "insurgents or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws to disperse". If he thinks peaceful protesters "obstruct enforcement", he can use the military to disperse them, once he has invoked this act. No other President has had this power.
With the FISA rewrite, it is not the Court but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who oversees warrantless wiretaps. The same Alberto Gonzales who could not answer an opinion question asked of him in Congressional hearings without taking it back to "his principal"; who believes that the President as the sole supervisor of the "unitary executive" makes all decisions.
No, in terms of legal power, granted him and abdicated to him by the Congress, and his reconstituted Supreme Court, the current President has more pure executive and governmental power than any previous President. God help us if he were politically powerful as well.
So what are we to do about it? Well, we can turn out any Congressman who doesn't stand up to him. We can replace them with people who understand that their mandate is to protect our liberties, our constitutional government and the Republic. But what if there aren't enough. California has no Senator who voted against FISA. Only one did in Massachusetts. These are the supposed extreme liberal states. What if there aren't any Democrats with backbone in a senatorial or congressional primary? Well, I suppose you could vote for the John Bircher, or the Libertarian. But still, what if there aren't enough?
Well, at least, wrote people last weekend, none of the Democratic Presidential candidates voted for the FISA amendment. Perhaps the answer is to vote for a strong Democratic President who will whip Congress into shape and... wait a minute... Isn't that proposing that we turn to a Strong Presidential candidate to protect the Republic by weakening the Presidency? Is there, perhaps, just perhaps, a teeny little issue hiding in there?
This, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, is not going to be easy. The reason that power corrupts is that good people are tempted to use it--just for now--when it falls into their hands, for good purposes, and there are always good purposes that need power. And so power is seldom surrendered. The time to stop this isn't in the next election, it is now!
The FISA bill was only a temporary stopgap, with a 6-month sunset clause. Speaker Pelosi has sent a letter saying that when Congress returns next month, they'll need to reexamine it. But President Bush has also said that it needs to be revisited. It is, he feels only a first step, and the whole change needs to be made. Congress has to grant him and the executive branch, which as the sole supervisor of the unitary executive, means him, more power, more immunity from oversight, more protection from prosecution for him and those who go along with him, inside or outside the law.
The time to act is now. Make sure your voice, your free voice for so long as it remains so, is heard. Demand that your congressmen stand up for the Republic and against the concentration of ever more power into the President's hands.
Vox Libertas
A Free Voice, that cries Freedom!
