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Turning Back the Assault on American Democracy
As conversant as I am with the abuses and extralegal activities of the Bush administration, it was astonishing to read a sampling of them in one place -– a New York Times editorial that offers a list of things that need to be done to begin to reverse the damage that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have wrought.
The list begins with restoring habeas corpus, stopping illegal spying and banning torture and goes on from there. It is, as Joe might say, a must read.
9 Responses to “Turning Back the Assault on American Democracy”
[...] Original post by Shaun Mullen and software by Elliott Back [...]
It is another screed from the NYT. For example, “stop illegal spying”.
Who has determined it is illegal? The New York Times, obviously.
There have been what…17 legal challenges…to the surveillance program? The program was approved by judges in all but one case: Judge Diggs Taylor’s ruling.
The New York Times editiorial page covered itself in glory when it trumpeted Taylors’ “brilliant carefully argued indictment” of the Bush administration…and then was forced to backtrack the very next day with a page 1 article in which almost every legal commentator of the left or right in the US found it a botched, embarrassing and highly partisan ruling.
The New York Times has, of course, not cited the numerous cases in which the “illegal spying” program has passed judicial review. That is irrevelant.
Whether it has assisted in catching enemies of the United States is also irrelevant.
The New York Times has declared it illegal. That is enough.
As the NYT embarrassingly revealed in their first take on Taylor’s ruling, if you attack Bush they will regard you as brilliant.
This will be dismissed (perhaps unfortunately, because some of their other points are good) as another in a long line of partisan attacks on Bush by the most partisan newspaper in the United States.
Komrad Marlow – You are accepting bribes from the Lincoln Group again. Are you familar wuth the conservative Cunning Realist:
http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/
I recommend to all for an interesting read on foreign policy and such. He takes down our friend Amir Taheri, patches, we don’t need no stinkin…..
Rudi the Red Researcher said: “Komrad Marlow – You are accepting bribes from the Lincoln Group again. Are you familar wuth the conservative Cunning Realist: http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/”
Damn you, Rudi…another link…yet more knowledge to be assimilated.
(…And how did you know about the bribes?)
…Ack, I just went there. More Ann Coulter!! I cannot go anywhere on the Net this weekend without encountering her!! Ack…ack….
The NYT is plagiarizing my list.
The ‘illegal spying’ item is the most complicated issue for me, but I don’t share Marlow’s outrage in the least. I certainly didn’t like the administration defining what is legal without goint go Congress.
The news about judges being fired is also troublesome. The whole story has not been told, so I’m trying to hold my fire. But we should all worry if this was the administration’s way of dealing with the legality of its actions; remove judges with differing policy views.
Politicizing every Department, especially the Judiciary, is one of the very worst legacies of this presidency.
The CR is in the same group as Andrew Sullivan, John Cole and Greg D at Belgravia, all conservative moderate Republicans who soured on W. They all make for good reads, not radical BDS like DU others. One can find many Republicants who see the forest despite those damned trees.
A little off topic? O.K… but I for one am glad CR chose ‘Realist’ instead of ‘Linguist’ for their blogs name.
Best to nip confusion in the bud… before things got out of hand.
The news about judges being fired is also troublesome. The whole story has not been told, so I’m trying to hold my fire. But we should all worry if this was the administration’s way of dealing with the legality of its actions; remove judges with differing policy views.
This is pretty much what you’d expect of this administration, since this has been their pattern since day one. They drove out Gen Shinseki because he wanted more troops for the war, fired Larry Lindsay because they didn’t like the price tag he put on it, recently fired 8 US attorneys, ostensibly because they weren’t pursuing the administration’s agenda aggressively enough (coincidentally 3 or 4 were involved in active corruption probes on GOP in Congress), and fired Paul O’ Neill because he thought the tax cuts were excessive. They’ve politicized DOJ, DOD, the intelligence agencies. They’re not the first to do this, but they seem to take loyalty to the administration to an extreme.
StevK – The TMV is a family friendly site, be carefull.