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Unlimited Presidential powers
by JR Mooneyham
| May 19, 2008 |
Whoever the next President is (if a change from Bush-Cheney-McCain and their ilk actually occurs) they will be sorely tempted NOT to roll back the expansion of powers Bush has claimed, and the lapdog Republicans in the House and Senate helped push as far as they possibly could.
Even the best-intentioned of new Presidents might be tempted to at least postpone such a rollback, simply to expedite fixes to all that Bush has broken (fixes that could in truth require four solid years or longer to make). And in an ideal world, that might actually be for the best.
HOWEVER...this is not an ideal world...and so any delay would be risky. And the longer the delay, the greater the danger to us all. Of course, an immediate rollback post-election could exasperate people like us, hoping for a FDR-like renaissance in government after a successful Democratic sweep. For the Republican opposition would be greatly empowered by such a rollback, even in the face of a tremendous defeat at the polls. DOH!
Plus, there's the fact that all those Republicans on the Supreme Court could arbitrarily stymie even an empowered Democratic President, no matter what ... unless the Congress turned sufficiently blue to expand the number of sitting Supremes so it could immediately be packed with liberal judges to change the math, as I saw floated as a plausible idea somewhere online ... but that too could cause problems ...
Things truly look dicey for America over the next few years...
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Scary quote from OSS Psychological
Profile of Hitler (part three)| |
"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him |
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Refitting the Presidency
to the Constitution
Excerpt: Drawing on recent precedents, the next president could launch preemptive wars with only minor interference from Congress, ignore the ancient right of habeas corpus and imprison political enemies, spy on American citizens without serious legal restraint, use practically any federal agency for political purposes, manipulate the press in ways inconceivable prior to 2000, corrupt the federal justice system for political gain, destroy evidence in criminal cases, use the Justice Department to prosecute members of the opposing party, offer lucrative no-bid government contracts to friends, expand the creation of private security armies, use torture, create secret prisons, assassinate inconvenient foreign leaders, circumvent laws with signing statements, and a great deal more.
Such things are now possible because the system of checks and balances carefully written into the Constitution and explained in great detail in the Federalist Papers were weakened as a result of historical circumstances of the 20th century, but systematically and with great forethought by the administration of George W. Bush.
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| | for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it." |
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Bush to Arab world: Give citizens more freedoms
This looks like a perfect example of Republicans saying one thing and doing the exact opposite (see link below for details).
They own you and all your property too
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Re Tainting the jury
I'm all for free speech too, but the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" likely should trump that, for LOTS or reasons. And any interference with people getting a fair trial is awful dangerous. For basically that opens the door to just about any mischief you can imagine (or how trials used to be conducted in the dark ages). It's already bad enough that rich people automatically get better legal protections than poor people. And stuff like DNA tests today is proving that maybe as many as a THIRD of the people in prison today are innocent of what they were jailed for (and that's not including the lives wasted by draconian drug laws). So we sure don't need more piling on of the 'guilty until proven innocent' concept (which has been a Bush Administration trademark, by the way: Hussein was guilty until proven innocent, in order to start the Iraq war).
There's also mounting scientific evidence that people across the board are relatively easily manipulated or influenced or misled by practically everything they experience -- often to the detriment of themselves and others (I have quite a few references on this topic; but you have only to examine the fact Americans RE-elected George Bush, for some pretty damning proof of that). I believe the modern principle of defense lawyers getting to filter the jury pool is due to this mounting evidence. And yes, sometimes that filtering process seems awful arbitrary to someone who hasn't examined the influence data themselves. But often when they do, they'll say "Oh! Now I see why they used that criteria!"
I must admit I've often been puzzled myself by various matters and decisions -- until I got to pore over the reasons for them in detail. That's what scientific (and legal) investigations are for: to show us important things which may not be obvious at first glance.
I think the courts already declared once that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater isn't protected as free speech -- as basically it's hard to see that as anything but wholly malevolent behavior.
To me, it's tough to see yelling "Guilty!" through the bullhorn of public media (in regards to an imminent or ongoing trial) as any better. And it may be far, far worse, in many ways.
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Can't argue with any of the logic behind what you say (except that I don't think GW Bush was either elected or re-elected) but it's always complicated drawing the lines on who's allowed to say what. That's why I try to avoid supporting such lines (though, rarely, they're necessary).
Maybe it's pretty straight-forward with morons like John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou -- they're openly urging people to commit a crime (perjury) and that ought to be pretty cut-and-dried illegal. But is that enough to solve the problem? If these radiocasters were doing the same stupid schtick without telling people to lie under oath, would their shenanigans be OK?
People can be awfully easily manipulated, as you say. Witness the ghastly success of Fox News. But trying to prevent the media from manipulating public opinion, that's dangerous territory. Some people would argue that commentators just shouldn't be allowed to comment on pending court cases, but it's tricky stuff telling people what they can and can't say. I sure do want the media absolutely free to speak out without hesitation when someone's unjustly prosecuted and/or imprisoned à la Don Siegelman.
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