Constitutional Scholar: Bush Memos Amounted to “Fuhrer’s Law”; Treason
March 25th, 2009Naomi Wolf gets a bit silly with the “biggest stories of our lifetime” jazz.
Come on.
The same lineage of operators blew a president’s head off in broad daylight and orchestrated 9/11. Where’s the hysterics over that stuff?
Seriously, if Bush and the Gang were akin to “Milton’s Satan” with a law degree, who did 9/11?
Hmm?
It’s unthinkable, though, to go to that 9/11 place, because good girls like Naomi Wolf don’t go near the Sphere of Deviance:
In the sphere of deviance we find “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.” As in the sphere of consensus, neutrality isn’t the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. The press “plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda” the deviant view, says Hallin. It “marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conduct.”
The point must be to frame the Bush regime as a lone nut regime. *phew* They’re gone now. Sleep well. Nighty night. Pleasant dreams of Change, etc.
Via: Alternet:
In early March, more shocking details emerged about George W. Bush legal counsel John Yoo’s memos outlining the destruction of the republic.
The memos lay the legal groundwork for the president to send the military to wage war against U.S. citizens; take them from their homes to Navy brigs without trial and keep them forever; close down the First Amendment; and invade whatever country he chooses without regard to any treaty or objection by Congress.
It was as if Milton’s Satan had a law degree and was establishing within the borders of the United States the architecture of hell.
I thought this was — and is — certainly one of the biggest stories of our lifetime, making the petty burglary of Watergate — which scandalized the nation — seem like playground antics. It is newsworthy too with the groundswell of support for prosecutions of Bush/Cheney crimes and recent actions such as Canadian attorneys mobilizing to arrest Bush if he visits their country.
The memos are a confession. The memos could not be clearer: This was the legal groundwork of an attempted coup. I expected massive front page headlines from the revelation that these memos exited. Almost nothing. I was shocked.
As a non-lawyer, was I completely off base in my reading of what this meant, I wondered? Was I hallucinating?
Astonished, I sought a reality check — and a formal legal read — from one of the nation’s top constitutional scholars (and most steadfast patriots), Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been at the forefront of defending the detainees and our own liberties.
Here is our conversation:
Naomi Wolf: Michael, can you explain to a layperson what the Yoo memos actually mean?’
Michael Ratner: What they mean is that your book looks moderate in respect to those issues now. This — what is in the memos — is law by fiat.
I call it “Fuhrer’s law.” What those memos lay out means the end of the system of checks and balances in this country. It means the end of the system in which the courts, legislature and executive each had a function and they could check each other.
What the memos set out is a system in which the president’s word is law, and Yoo is very clear about that: the president’s word is not only law according to these memos, but no law or constitutional right or treaty can restrict the president’s authority.
What Yoo says is that the president’s authority as commander in chief in the so-called war on terror is not bound by any law passed by Congress, any treaty, or the protections of free speech, due process and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The First, Fourth and Fifth amendments — gone.
What this actually means is that the president can order the military to operate in the U.S. and to operate without constitutional restrictions. They — the military — can pick you or me up in the U.S. for any reason and without any legal process. They would not have any restrictions on entering your house to search it, or to seize you. They can put you into a brig without any due process or going to court. (That’s the Fourth and Fifth amendments.)
The military can disregard the Posse Comitatus law, which restricts the military from acting as police in the the United States. And the president can, in the name of wartime restrictions, limit free speech. There it is in black and white: we are looking at one-person rule without any checks and balances — a lawless state. Law by fiat.
According to Naomi Wolf, Bush should have declared himself President-for-Life, and we should all have been put in FEMA detainment camps.
Whoops!
Excellent points re: 9/11. The rationale supporting “The People vs Richard Bruce Cheney et al. for the Crimes of 9/11” is rock solid — historically, politically, and psychologically. But it’s just not fashionable, and fashion rules, as it always has. And current fashion still validates the “two-party system” farce — so one of them MUST be “the good guys”.
But W said we are in Iraq and Afghanistan to promote the “rule of law.”
thanks for writing your comments at the beginning of thisa post. it needs to be said every once in a while.
re Wolf, “making the petty burglary of Watergate ? which scandalized the nation ? seem like playground antics”. yeah, killing a few million people in Indochina only upset a few commie hippies. but breaking into the other Oligarch’s office and covering up the breakin, well, that was a real scandle, no?
if the US had a constitution and judicial system that was even vaguely non-arbitrary, Guantanamo Bay could not happen…etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Ms. Wolf has just worked this out now? so yes, sphere of deviance indeed.
Naomi Wolf is a fake dissident anway. Come on, she’s a feminist, is she not? That alone should show that she is part of the Hegelian mindgame.
‘sphere of deviance’ was interesting. i’ve called it herdchuting. bruising herdchuting.
minutes ago, i used the word ‘bushobamaco’ on the agonist, referring not just to continued policies or how obama slickered us, but also to the unifying effect of the outrage. afterwards, checking email, i received a solicitation for donations email from indictbushnow.org. bush isn’t gone, his legacy lives on. he lives on, indictable as ever. perhaps even more so now, with outrage at obama adding to the impetus via the ‘bushobamaco’ appearance.
patently, impeachment never ever should have been ‘off the table’. pelosi and reid et al far overreached right then and there with that damning phrase, supporting -participating -in the coup.
this is a global crime, yes. israel, the UK, all the various supporters of the american empire are culpable. it’s not an american empire. it’s purely military gangsterism on such a scale that nothing supersedes it. not the people, or wall street, or the UN or the ICC, nothing. we need prosecutors, but much much more. we need the people of the earth as a whole to indict the systems of the earth as a whole, even if only for history’s sake, posterity’s sake. civilization as we knew it is over, there should at least be a monument. call it earthgate.
i believe obama hints at his impotence clear enough. i believe he suggests overriding circumstances he “can’t” confront. i believe he’s full of it. he keeps using the ‘persistence’ word in ways tantamount to saying ‘stay the course’, as if what in alternative? objection? protest?
reality persists.
no matter what the future may hold, civilization, such as it was, as we knew it, is over.
50 plus years of plump living drew this upon us. a fattened calf. here, in the UK, in israel, europe, russia too, everywhere. all to transfer to power. pakistan, india, hard places, it’s all about power. a power intoxication binge that began before and grew with the industrial revolution.
we have far more than bushobamaco to get over. this may take more than a few generations. to say the least. for now, the best we can do is the least we can do.
the youth brigades/ civilian corps is the single biggest worst thing on the horizon; wholecloth indoctrination. MSM Inc. greases it’s rails in.
damning bushobamaco, a unification of outrage, is the only thing that can bust through that sphere. we *all* are ‘deviant’. or rather it’s the powers that be that deviated -from civilization.
if chuck norris is outraged at obama, under ol alex jones’ tutelege, that outrage encompassed what obama inherited. outrage may unify, but it isn’t a vision or path back. a world culture is. something not based on sports, materialism, consumerism, hedonism, intellectualism, spiritualism, finacialism, internetism, powerism, but individualism. no more herdchuting. no more earthicide.
we need a monument. to CAWKI. to the future we were robbed of. this one sucks.