Seizing the Reigns of the Government

Glenn Greenwald has an analysis of the responses the DoJ gave to both Republicans and Democrats regarding their questions on domestic spying.

Glenn is spot on, the executive branch of the federal government, under George Bush has decided that it, and it alone has the power to create laws, execute laws, and interpret laws, and the other branches of government can pretend all they want that they have power to stop the administration:

Can that be any clearer for you - Congressmen, Senators, journalists? The President is bestowed by the Constitution with the unlimited and un-limitable power to do anything that he believes is necessary to "protect the nation." Thus, even if Congress passes laws which seek to limit that power in any way, and even if the President agrees to those restrictions and signs that bill into law, he still retains the power to violate it whenever he wants.

The only questions left outstanding at this time, is what will congress do?
What will the media report?

As Glenn points out, James Madison warned that something like this would happen:

From these facts, by which Montesquieu was guided, it may clearly be inferred that, in saying "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates," or, "if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers," he did not mean that these departments ought to have no partial agency in, or no control over, the acts of each other.

His meaning, as his own words import, and still more conclusively as illustrated by the example in his eye, can amount to no more than this, that where the whole power of one department is exercised by the same hands which possess the whole power of another department, the fundamental principles of a free constitution are subverted. This would have been the case in the constitution examined by him, if the king, who is the sole executive magistrate, had possessed also the complete legislative power, or the supreme administration of justice; or if the entire legislative body had possessed the supreme judiciary, or the supreme executive authority.

Today, the Bush administration is doing its damnedest to remove the legislative and judicial branches of the government. In its responses to congress on the issue of domestic spying, the Bush administration says it believes it already has while claiming to "protect" the Constitution.

As usual, the most amazing aspect of all of this is not that the Administration is claiming these powers. It is that even as it claims them as expressly and clearly as can be, the Congress continues to ignore it and pretend that it still retains power to restrict the Administration by the laws it passes. And the media continues to fail in its duty to inform the country about the powers the Administration has seized, likely because they are so extreme that people still do not really believe that the Administration means what they are saying. What else do they need to do in order to demonstrate their sincerity?

I will go one further and say that both Congress and the media are in a state of willful denial. Not only do they not want to believe it, whenever something like this comes along that proves what the administration believes, they shut their eyes to it and pretend this proof does not exist.

The real issue is to try and get the congress and the judiciary to step in, and take back what is rightfully theirs, namely co-equal power within the government. The media needs to come out of its stupor and stop pretending the President isn't trying to do exactly what the DoJ says the President is doing, and tell the hard truth.

Why am I not confident they will do that though?




Technorati Tags: Bush Administration, Glenn Greenwald, Unitary Executive