The best administration moves of 2007 to undermine the Constitution
I have been thinking about this for a little while. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Sam Alito, John Roberts and others have worked very hard to make Congress subservient to the Executive Branch. They have almost completely made the Courts part of the Executive Branch.
So, what do you think was the Bush Administration’s best move (you may include anyone in the Executive, Judicial or Legislative branches of our government) to undermine our Constitution? There are several to chose from. I will chose the “best” answer and post it plus I will give the winner $100 gift certificate from Amazon.com. The winner will be posted at 5 pm on Friday, January 4th. Please make sure that you fill in your e-mail address in the comment section so that I can inform you personally that you have won.
There really aren’t any rules. If you are a personal friend of mine you probably shouldn’t enter the contest. You can enter as many times as you would like. I’m the judge. This is completely subjective.
Yellow cake uranium
“Weapons of mass destruction”
Haliburton, er HaliCheney
Waterboarding and other tortures in the name of national security
Top down erosion of constitutional rights by Bush, et al (secrecy, wiretapping, etc)
Orwellian slogans and propaganda put out by this administration
Dumbing down and use of emotional appeals vs. logic and good debate with well informed parties (all branches of power, press, public) “You are with us are you re against us.” “Don’t cut and run”. Invokation of patriotism to justify acts and make people feel better instead of questioning what’s going on
Several appointments, including the god-awful EPA Chief who killed some important federal endangered status critters but later reversed these decisions. Channeling James Watt.
Executive branch general: Katrina rebuilding-still not well managed; Ambramoff; Petraeus the sock puppet; created a climate where religious fervor, (lack of) intelligent discourse (nucular) and squandering our reputation overseas badly.
There are so many more….. I did not name every person or affiliation since I can’t recall many. Suffice it to say GWB is the worst president we have ever had; he and his cabal will cost us for many years to come, and haunt our collective consciences.
If I had to choose one defining moment, it would be WMD
Thanks (and not your friend
Aw hell…realized you meant JUST 2007, not the entire reign of Bush.
Guess if I had to pick ONE event, the moment would be the admin trotting out Petraeus, who gave us the expected info regarding Bush’s take on the war.
This moment and its reactions by voters and the media drove an even deeper wedge between the parties and people. Polarization over a rightful ad by moveon.org to voice objection. Better millions of us had taken to the streets in peaceful protest, but in this day and age, we use paid ads and internet to “protest”. Betcha if most Americans HAD taken to the streets, one of their signs would have had “General Betrayus”.
Instead the administration had a seizure over the matter, and used it to their benefit. Antiwar = antiAmerican = liberal hippies
How does this apply to the Constitution? I think it gave the exec branch some excuses to go deeper into secrecy, with greater impugnity, and broader ripple effects on media (bad bad media! Unless it’s Faux news, Rush Limbaugh (guess narcs does give one a rush!) et al.
Still not your friend
I guess my answer won’t count since his actions are, according to David Addington, not a part of any of the three branches of government. But my money is on Richard Cheney’s single-minded intention to concentrate power in the executive, stonewall all oversight, and torpedo the careers of anyone who disagreed with his neocon agenda.
His support for the Amnesty.
If that had passed, we could have kissed the entire constituion goodbye.
IMNSHO, the Constituion died in 1954 with Brown v Board of Education. The Constitution now means whatever the justices say it is, we are living under Judicial Decree.
After being allowed to steal the 2000 “election”, the process clearly began by executing PNAC’s “New Pearl Harbor vision” of staged events on September 11th 2001, and was all but completed on October 17th 2006, when with little fanfare, BOTH the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 (H.R.5122) were signed into law.
The United States Military Commissions Act of 2006 enacting Chapter 47A of title 10 of the United States Code, is an Act of Congress (Senate Bill 3930). The Act’s stated purpose is “To authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes.” The bill limits captives’ access to habeas corpus and has been suggested to be unconstitutional.
The enacting of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007, among other things, allows for the expansion of the President’s power to declare martial law under revisions to the Insurrection Act, and the Posse Comitatus Act, and take charge of United States National Guard troops without state governor authorization when public order has been lost and the state and its constituted authorities cannot enforce the law.
The trial balloon for this outrageous assault on the Constitution was floated during the Katrina fiasco, which with the help of Bush’s private mercenary army Blackwater, allowed for the illegal confiscation of citizens firearms.
The final nail in the Constitution’s coffin was the NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51 and the HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20, signed on May 9, 2007, which declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event”, the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.
Just like in Germany during the 1930’s, the establishment of a dictatorship will all be perfectly legal, and if you think Cheney/Bush et al are just waiting to turn over all the work they’ve done to Clinton, Obama or Ron Paul, you’ve got another thing coming. It is my sad and depressing theory that they will stage another “catastrophic event” sometime before the election. Then they will open the 200 or so internment camps authorized by the Readiness Exercise 1984, which is still funded to this day to the tune of a $400 million dollar contract awarded to KBR/Haleburton to keeps the camps in a constant state of readiness, for those of us who refuse their vaccines, are uncooperative, or just rebellious. Not a pretty picture, eh? Do you have a plan? Happy New Year everyone! May peace be with you.
It all begins in Florida (then four years later in Ohio).
Very good comments from other posters in this thread. For specificity and thoroughness, I’d have to vote for HG Lite. But he could be a friend of yours and be thoroughly DQ’d. Joking. Happy New Year, all. It’s gonna get interesting!
Great ideas and great comments. Keep ‘em coming.
I would have to say that the (mal)Administration’s statement that Harriet Myers and Monica Goodling could not testify in Congress because of “executive privilege” would be the most egregious of 2007.
And, as a cumulative thing, the hundreds of “signing statements” that he has issued throughout his occupation, thereby placing the Executive Branch above the other to (supposedly) co-equal Branches.
Two words… Signing Statements. Since taking office in 2001, Bush has issued almost 1,200 signing statements on more than 750 new laws, declaring that he has the power to set aside the laws that Congress passes, when they conflict with his legal interpretation of the Constitution. The federal government is instructed to follow the statements when it enforces these laws. All the previous presidents combined issued 600 such statements.
It’s Cheney (and all his underlings like Addington and Libby, etc)–everything he does overall. He operates completely outside the Constitution and without any checks and balances or legal or media scrutiny. He’s behind every illegal act, i think.
The best administration moves to undermine the Constitution in 2007?
Has to be Cheney’s claim that the VP’s office is a fourth branch of government, apparently not subject to laws & regulations regarding either the executive or legislative branch. Although curiously, claims of ‘Executive Privilege’ do apply. Go figure.
The US Constitution was long trashed before 2007 even started - LONG before!
Some outstanding answers. I might have to give more than one prize. Keep up the good work. Tell your friends.
Susan -
BTW, I agree with you. but for the contest I’ll need something more specific!
Thanks for your comments!
President Bush’s announcement that will now run the government by Administrative Order, not by Congressionally passed laws.
Making everything covered under executive privledge, and ignoring subpoenas.
The announcement that anyone who has ever talked to the president on any subject is prevented by executive privilege from speaking on the record on every subject.
Short answer: Commuting the jail sentence of a felon convicted of obstructing justice in a national security case about who blew the cover of a covert CIA agent investigating the Iranian nuclear program because, in fact, the Vice President himself was responsible for the leak - which was used to discredit a political opponent telling the truth about a WAR - and needed to protect the Administration from retaliation by their chosen patsy.
Longer answer: Having spent the first six years grinding away our constitution and basic rights and liberties, what else was there to destroy? We now know that they went after our privacy right from the begining with their wire tapping, reading emails and snail mail, and using National Security Letters to see what books we were checking out from the library (among other things). They worked hard to undermine and intimidate the press and to cordone and marginalize protesters - attacking our rights to a free press and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. Then they went to work underming democracy - picking up where they started in stealing the 2000 election - by concentrating all power in the unitary presidency using lies, politizing the intelligence community, the justice department, all the regulatory agencies, and even NASA. By the time we noticed we had lost habeas corpus and the prohibition on torture, you had to think it counldn’t get any worse. But it has. The most basic Constitutional principle is almost invisible, almost just an assumption of the possibility of a constitution. It’s the rule of law and equal protection there under: “no state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”.
John Ashcroft, of all people, no great friend to separation of church and state or liberty in general, was the person who appointed an independent prosecutor to the case. A Republican independent prosecutor who argued his case before a conservative, Republican judge and won a conviction from a jury. And then the man who never saw a death penalty verdict not worth enforcing and who (on at least one occasion that we know of) openly mocked someone he helped execute, told us the sentence was too harsh. Plenty of people have said that losing habeas corpus set us back not to just to preRevolutionary times, but to around 1305 - the reign of King Edward I. Where does the crumbling rule of law take us, preRoman times?
When Slick Willie failed to investigate Ollie North and Poppy upon coming to the Oval Office in 1992, the GOP got a free pass to be the utter asses they’ve been during this 7-year dark age of BFEE global terrorism. Had Slick Willie investigated and REPORTED all the Poppy Bush Dirty Tricks from as far back as his tenure in the CIA during Kennedy-Johnson, the Reagan-Bush legacy would never have given way to the DUMYA-Cheney Vader horrors we’re stuck in now. Now Slick wants us to grant Shillary the opportunity to grant Dumya and Cheney the same pass he gave Poppy and that idiot dickweed Dan Quayle.
Art. 2, §1 - reads:
As he violates the Constitution almost daily, and in the myriad of ways described herein (and throughout this comment thread), this is the primary breach.
Art. 2, §3 -
See above.
Art. 3, §2 -
See, e.g., the kangaroo courts of Guantanamo.
1st Amendment -
He’s breached this one so many ways, it’s hard to choose. The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives have funded no non-Christian projects; protesters are regularly arrested for nothing more than showing up in an offending t-shirt or holding an offending sign; etc. etc.
3rd Amendment -
Wiretapping, sneak & peak searches…
5th Amendment -
Bush’s executive order allowing the seizure of property of political activists working to end the occupation of Iraq.
6th Amendment -
See, e.g., Jose Padilla, Guantanamo, etc. etc.
8th Amendment -
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Torture, and Bush’s signing statement excusing him from torture. The signing statement was in Jan. 2006, but it continues to do unconstitutional harm.
9th Amendment -
Just because the President is Commander-in-Chief doesn’t mean he gets to order people seized and rendered to black sites, for instance.
10th Amendment -
Just because the government can enter your property with a warrant, you can still say “No” if the try to enter your property without one. See 4th Amendment, above.
24th Amendment -
Bush’s Justice Department continues to back voter ID requirements aimed at lowering minority turnout. The cost of such IDs has been determined to be an unconstitutional poll tax.
I’m sure there’s more…
Sorry for the formatting errors above.
Slim -
no worries. great comment.
Thanks!
Thank you slim. I but have been very educated through your comments and everyone elses….. I think I am going to move to Canada.
It would have to be Bush’s White House explaining that the right to interpret the law rested with them, and the DoJ’s job was to listen to them.
If you look at the use of signing statements, that’s lumping a large part of all three branches into one, and completely removes any oversight of the Executive from the picture (because enforcing Congressional subpoenas is; barring the use of the Sergeant at Arms) something which rests with the DoJ.
Bush’s “best” (ugh) move to undermine the Constitution has been his placement throughout the government of men and women who, like Nixon, believe that “when the President does it that means that it is not illegal.”
These people then flout the law, with the real or imagined connivance of their boss. They see all opposition as purely political, and they are not respectful of political process.
The highest-ranking and best-known such person is Dick Cheney, but they have been liberally seeded throughout the bureaucracy. Our next President, if a Democrat, is going to have one hell of a time carving out the rot.
Margaret, you know, we have seriously discussed moving/emigrating to another country. These past 7 years have been surreal.
I used to swear off news for a while, try to slam the door shut on scandal after scandal, but then the bad news comes in thru the window ;-). Everything is at stake, and there is no hiding.
We were spoiled in the 90s. I miss them. Politics is hard work. But if another neocon is elected, I’m so outta here.
Okay, so I’m late. I was working out. I need to work out, believe me. Great comments!!!
The Winner will be posted and notified in the next couple of minutes. Thanks to everyone for posting.
[...] Question: So, what do you think was the Bush Administration’s best move (you may include anyone in the Executive, Judicial or Legislative branches of our government) to undermine our Constitution? [...]