Another Door
*
Here is Jon Stewart on the new energy vision of the POTUS.
And here is Letterman on our dear leader's strategic thinking.
And here is Letterman on closing the door on the VICE
and his little incident.
And just in case you think that the Veep doesn't have the right
to declassify government information when and however he wants,
Read this Sidney Blumenthal piece in the Guardian.
Cheney's vice-like grip
Bush has granted his deputy
the greatest expansion of powers
in American history
Sidney Blumenthal
Friday February 24, 2006
The Guardian
After shooting Harry Whittington, Dick Cheney's immediate impulse was to control the intelligence. Rather than call the president directly, he ordered an aide to inform the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, that there had been an accident - but not that Cheney was its cause. Then surrogates attacked the victim for not steering clear of Cheney when he was firing without looking. The vice-president tried to defuse the furore by giving an interview to friendly Fox News.
His most revealing answer came in response to a question about something other than the hunting accident. Cheney was asked about court papers filed by his former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice in the inquiry into the leaking of the identity of the undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.
In the papers, Libby laid out a line of defence that he leaked classified material at the behest of "his superiors" (to wit, Cheney). Libby said he was authorised to disclose to members of the press classified sections of the prewar National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, Cheney explained, he has the power to declassify intelligence. "There is an executive order to that effect," he said.
On March 25 2003 President Bush signed executive order 13292, a hitherto little-known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice-president in US history. It gives the vice-president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president.
By controlling classification, the vice-president can control intelligence and, through that, foreign policy. Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive", that the presidency has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances.
Never before has any president diminished and divided his power.
(snip)
Since the coup d'etat of executive order 13292, the vice-presidency has been transformed. Perhaps, for a blinding moment, Cheney imagined he might classify his shooting party as top secret."
Meanwhile the true Father of the Conservative Movement
is not deserting the ship,
He has just put a torpedo into it.
William F. Buckley says this of the Veep's plans to invade Iraq,
It didn't work.
So let's close that door.
And open another.
"Even the Hero gets a bullet in the chest,
Once upon a time in the West." Dire Straits
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*"Plough and Door "courtesy of José Luis Alvarez Vélez
posted by oZ @ 9:29 AM
4 Comments:
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Received word on the "Order" through friends at Cannon 203.
Since the Civil War, the executive order(s) is by far the most insidious binding federal "statute."
From Wikipedia (for convenience):
"Presidents of the United States have issued executive orders since 1789. There is no United States Constitution provision or statute that explicitly permits this, aside from the vague grant of "executive power" given in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution and the statement "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" in Article II, Section 3.
Most executive orders are orders issued by the President to United States executive officers to help direct their operation, the result of failing to comply being removal from office. Some orders do have the force of law when made in pursuance of certain Acts of Congress due to those acts giving the President discretionary powers."
That said, most executive orders do not correspond with Acts of Congress; the best precedent being Lincoln's Lieber Code declaring Martial Law after the secession of the South, so that quorum was not needed to call Congress to the floor, so the Fed could secure loans, loans secured on the future labor of the American populace, as chattel property.
To the best of my knowledge, every President since the second has abused the privilege. Incidentally, Washington, the first American President, closed his tenure vis a vis his Fairwell Address by urging his "countrymen" to "forswear" excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances. (I wonder if he ever dreamed of a Jewish Nation-State and the possible long-term, entangling alliances involved, therein?)
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Just curious Oz, do you really believe "Will-Buck Junior" is the "Father of the Conservative Movement"? Was this designation quoted to simply give credence to partisan politics by sourcing the "opposition?"
I should have said of "the modern day generation of conservatives" or something like that.
I do believe that Buckley gave conservatism the intellectual credentials it needed in the 50 and 60s in order to compete with liberal thought. Those intellectual credentials have now either been discarded or sullied.
There is an important distinction that needs to be made: Conservatives are not neoconservatives.
Modern conservatism is to Barry Goldwater and Buckley Jr. as neoconservatism is to Strauss and Irving Kristol.
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