Hold the phone, stop the presses, and hang on just one Cotton-Picking Second because this right here is a full-on load of Bull-Crap from Fox News Sunday.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
"I think it’s fair to say you worked at a White House that took a pretty expansive view of executive powers, whether it was signing statements by President Bush when he was signing bills into law or the way that he waged the war on terror," Wallace said. "Can you honestly say that you believe this president is going further than President Bush did in exercising his executive powers?"
"Absolutely," Rove responded.
Rove insisted that the Bush administration always looks for a "statutory basis" in legislation when exercising executive powers, unlike Obama. Rove said that Obama unlawfully "exempted a class of people from enforcement of immigration laws."
He did what? He exempted "a class of people" from the enforcement of the law?
And Rove thinks those people - who happen to be Children who shouldn't be legally held responsible for something they didn't do - is somehow worse that what George W. Bush did?
I got a two word response for that:
War Crimes.
The fact is that in February of 2002 President Bush decided that the Law didn't apply to "a class of people" purely based on his own opinion and judgement. And it wasn't an issue of who should and shouldn't be prosecuted or deported - it was a matter of who shouldn't be and should be Protected by the War Crimes Act.
http://www.historycommons.org/...
Siding with the Pentagon and Justice Department against the State Department, President Bush declares the Geneva Conventions invalid with regard to conflicts with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Secretary of State Colin Powell urges Bush to reconsider, saying that while Geneva does not apply to al-Qaeda terrorists, making such a decision for the Taliban—the putative government of Afghanistan—is a different matter. Such a decision could put US troops at risk. Both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs chairman General Richard B. Myers support Powell’s position. Yet another voice carries more weight with Bush: John Yoo, a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC—see October 23, 2001). Yoo says that Afghanistan is a “failed state” without a functional government, and Taliban fighters are not members of an army as such, but members of a “militant, terrorist-like group” (see January 9, 2002). White House counsel Alberto Gonzales agrees with Yoo in a January 25 memo, calling Yoo’s opinion “definitive.” The Gonzales memo concludes that the “new kind of war” Bush wants to fight should not be equated with Geneva’s “quaint” privileges granted to prisoners of war, or the “strict limitations” they impose on interrogations (see January 25, 2002). Military lawyers dispute the idea that Geneva limits interrogations to recitals of name, rank, and serial number, but their objections are ignored. For an OLC lawyer to override the judgment of senior Cabinet officials is unprecedented.
And it wasn't like Bush made this decision on it's merits, he did it specifically to avoid being prosecuted for War Crimes as was outlined by Alberto Gonzales.
Gonzales also says that by declaring the war in Afghanistan exempt from the Geneva Conventions, the president would “[s]ubstantially [reduce] the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act [of 1996]” (see August 21, 1996). The president and other officials in the administration would then be protected from any future “prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges.”
It's because of Gonazales language here, and also the fact that torturous interrogations may have
already been in progress prior to this declaration that I've long suspected these memos were actually part of a
Criminal Coverup to paper-over War Crimes that were already ongoing.
It wasn't until the Hamdan V Rumseld decision in 2006 that this Presidential Directive was reversed as the Justices decided that yes, indeed, Geneva Did Apply to both al Qeada and the Taliban.
The District Court granted habeas relief and stayed the commission’s proceedings, concluding that the President’s authority to establish military commissions extends only to offenders or offenses triable by such a commission under the law of war; that such law includes the Third Geneva Convention; that Hamdan is entitled to that Convention’s full protections until adjudged, under it, not to be a prisoner of war; and that, whether or not Hamdan is properly classified a prisoner of war, the commission convened to try him was established in violation of both the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), 10 U. S. C. §801 et seq., and Common Article 3 of the Third Geneva Convention because it had the power to convict based on evidence the accused would never see or hear.
Before this decision was reached however there were multiple cases of kidnapping, torture and
even murder which were implemented overseas, at black site prisons, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram AFB that were the direct result of procedures including the use of
force, beatings, slapping, restraints, stress positions, sleep deprivation, hypothermia and water-boarding (repeated drowning) that were authorized by President Bush and SecDef Donald Rumseld in the "Non Geneva Zone'" they had artificially created for "a certain class of people".
http://www2.gwu.edu/...
Following Hamdan Bush quickly had the Military Commission Act passed which also happened to re-write the War Crimes Act in a manner which IMO was strategically designed to exempt and protect Bush and his Administration from further risk of prosecution by imbedding the "Bybee Standard" into the law.
In contrast, the fact is that it's not "unlawful" for Prosecutors to show Discretion when it comes to the implementation of the law, particularly immigration law. And many members of Congress know this because they've specifically ASKED for this use of this kind of discretion
Frustrated by the lack of comprehensive immigration reform, many advocates, from grassroots community organizers to Members of Congress, have begun calling on President Obama to take action. They want the President and his administration to use the power of the executive branch to defer removals, revisit current policies and priorities, and interpret the law as compassionately as possible. The specific requests vary greatly. Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), for instance, last year asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to defer the removal of young people who qualified for legal permanent residence until such time as their legislation, the DREAM Act, became law. In April 2011, nineteen Democratic and Independent U.S. Senators, including Senators Harry Reid (D-NV), Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY), reiterated the call to stop the removal of all students who meet the strict requirements of the DREAM Act. While the DREAM Act is frequently invoked, many community groups have also called for exercising prosecutorial discretion in individual cases by declining to put people in removal proceedings, terminating proceedings, or delaying removals in cases where people have longstanding ties to the community, U.S.-citizen family members, or other characteristics that merit a favorable exercise of discretion.
Over the course of the summer, the Obama Administration began to address these requests, relying on its ability to exercise prosecutorial discretion in deportation decisions. On June 17, 2011, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton issued a memorandum directing ICE staff to consider many of these same factors when deciding whether or not to exercise prosecutorial discretion. On August 18, 2011, in a response to the letter from Senator Durbin and others, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano declined to grant deferral of removal to DREAM Act students across the board, but indicated a willingness to re-examine individual cases. She announced a two-pronged initiative to implement the June 2011 Morton memo across all DHS divisions to ensure that DHS priorities remained focused on removing persons who are most dangerous to the country.
It is not "Unlawful" for a prosecutor to set priorities to decide which cases should be expedited and escalated and which
shouldn't be. On the other hand pretending that "a certain class of people"
Don't Get the Protection of the Law and the Geneva Conventions specifically so that those who - under direction of the Administration - commit crimes against them
Won't Be Prosecuted Under the War Crimes Act is clearly far worse, far more "unlawful" than anything President Obama has done to have ICE handle immigration in a slightly more humane manner in regards to children who've spent nearly their entire lives inside the United States.
Vyan