This is an excerpt from a longer post at Pruning Shears
The Friday news dump by the White House was a doozy (via):
Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision...affirm[ing] that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda....The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism...it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say. Some lawmakers are concerned that the administration’s effort to declare anew a war footing is an 11th-hour maneuver to re-establish its broad interpretation of the president’s wartime powers, even in the face of challenges from the Supreme Court and Congress....“This seems like a final push by the administration before they go out the door,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a former lawyer for the Central Intelligence Agency and an expert on national security law....Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, introducing a measure almost identical to the administration’s proposal. “Since 9/11,” Mr. Smith said, “we have been at war with an unconventional enemy whose primary goal is to kill innocent Americans.”
(See here for a previous effort by Rep. Smith in Presidential boot licking.) The administration is determined to bury as much information as possible about its tactics, and will look to legitimize its previous criminality - think retroactive immunity - until the day it leaves office. This notably pernicious move came on a particularly distracting Friday, what with reaction to the Obama speech, McCain's VP announcement and the gathering force of Gustav. Don't let this one sink, folks.
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It wasn't tucked in there, already?
I'd always been under the assumption that using the war excuse for everything was already written into law. I guess this simply makes it formal and binding, then?
I said this some months ago, but I was waiting throughout the primaries to hear the candidates get asked about rolling back the powers of the Imperial Presidency that Dick Cheney forged, and only heard it mentioned by a reporter once, and to Hillary Clinton, who said that she'd definitely roll back some powers. I don't remember ever hearing the question asked of anyone else, or hearing any of the major candidates bringing up the issue unprovoked. I can't find or remember where this was, and I really wish I'd have bookmarked it.
More importantly, I wish this would have been a central issue for the Democrats this season, in particular. What good would it be for the Dems to regain the White House if they occupant could still spy on, and detain, us illegally?
Pushback won't come from either party
Both would prefer to accumulate as much power as the populace will tolerate; don't look for either to voluntarily give it back. It's why lots of folks need to click on that Strange Bedfellows picture on the right.
Pushing for Pushback
Perhaps, the imperial presidency won't change, but someone needed to ask them to put them on record as having been opposed to rolling back the powers of the imperial presidency.
Where is the discussion of the Patriot Act, of the need for the Department of Homeland Security, of the need to continue to strengthen FISA which by its very creation was too generous to the executive branch?
Parties may want to accumulate power, but where is the question? That's not even to talk about Congress, who should want to reassert their role.