Wednesday, March 04, 2009

The Dictatorship

You are THIS CLOSE to being disappeared.

As more and more secret memos come to light some folks are drawing a conclusion that I suspect is essentially right. Which should cause us all to soil our pants.

Scott Horton:
We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.
Jack Balkin:
This theory of presidential power argues, in essence, that when the President acts in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, he may make his own rules and cannot be bound by Congressional laws to the contrary. This is a theory of presidential dictatorship.

h/t to mcjoan's post "The OLC Memos and State Secrets"

We have no idea how close we have come to losing our constitutional democracy. Remember: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

--the BB

3 comments:

Jane R said...

Yup, just posted a link to the truthout.com piece on this.

And people thought some of us were just paranoid.

Interesting that your and my final words on our posts about this are exactly the same.

susan s. said...

I guess this means Bush was the Dick-tater. See, two perfectly good words gathered together into the nastiest possible name for the nastiest possible person!

it's margaret said...

It is so hard not to be angry and outraged.... today it sounds like Obama's administration is really going to clean the closet out. that would be a nice beginning....