Bush is always talking about how Truman was unpopular. I'm waiting for someone to pop up and say, "Sir, I knew Harry S. Truman. You're no Truman. And also, I didn't even know Truman."
In a diary way long ago, before human spongiform candidate encephelopathy set in around here, smithneus pointed out that the New York Times article about a 1950 act to initiate mass jailings of suspected dissidents was incorrect on an important detail. The act in question, which thankfully never did lead to mass detentions, passed without President Truman's approval, but the article said the president signed it. Truman! You know, Truman, the guy who's always President in the parallel World War II video game universe from which George Bush draws analogies? Thanks smithneus! The McCarran Act was egregious, and Truman was no saint, but the act passed on the bloodlust of Congress alone-- that, and J. Edgar Hoover's megalomania. I was so mad at those damned dirty apesliberals at the New York Times for suggesting that there was a precedent for the kind of executive power-grabs that we're seeing a resurgence, that i wrote to them to point out that they were wrong in their article. And they printed a correction!
Of course, i looked up the matter in the congressional record. Because unlike the Very Serious People at the NY Times, i can use a computer, or, failing that, a library. Or, failing that, i can contact my Washington bureau. Because unlike the NY Times, i have spent the last several years with my face in the pants of important sources in our government.
Anyway-- here's the letter i wrote:
Dear Sir or Madam:
The article "Hoover Planned Mass Jailings in 1950" of December 23, 2007 contains an error with misleading implications. In the final paragraph, the article states, "In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of "dangerous radicals" if the president declared a national emergency." Congress did indeed pass the Internal Security Act of 1950 in September that year, but President Truman vetoed the law on September 22. Congress then overrode his veto, making the bill a law despite the President's opposition. The erroneous statement that "the president signed" the law might easily lead a reader to believe that the passage of the Internal Security Act constitutes a precedent for a Chief Executive to assume powers like those Hoover and the Congress intended to use against suspected communists and other potential subversives. In fact, the passage of the law over Truman's veto presents an example of a president utilizing his authority to deny the Executive such powers.
The circumstances of Truman's veto of HR 9490 are documented in the Congressional Quarterly Almanac online, in the second session of the 81st Congress.
and here's the correction, from January 5:
Correction: January 5, 2008
An article on Dec. 23 about a newly declassified plan by J. Edgar Hoover, when he was director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and imprison Americans suspected of disloyalty misstated the process by which the Internal Security Act of 1950, also known as the McCarran Act, became law. President Truman vetoed the measure as unconstitutional, but Congress voted overwhelmingly to override his veto and the measure then became law; Truman did not sign the bill.
The implications? Well, it's sort of a "We have always been at war with Eurasia" thing. If the paper of record says we've always had a President who signs laws granting him unchecked power to detain dissidents, people tend to believe it. I mean, why isn't the NY Times printing articles about how Lincoln tried to suspend habeas corpus and got smacked down by the Supreme Court, in these oh-so-historically-trying times? Instead, we get articles about how Truman tried to suspend habeas corpus. Except that he wasn't so much trying to.
Also-- all veto overrides are "overwhelming." I'm writing another letter to the Times's Department of Redundancy Department.
I didn't pick up on the correction until today, but i hope history takes note.