I applaud Meteor Blades diary this morning:
Turn the page on Mister Bush? Never
http://www.dailykos.com/...
His impassioned diary on the illegal and immoral war is excellent but there is one aspect that isn't highlighted enough as to why the page must never be allowed to be turned until full accountability to the American people is prosecuted.
That is... Its not just what Bush and Cheney did, but how they did it!
Abraham Lincoln famously explained the principle of Presidential War Powers this way:
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.... Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you "be silent; I see it, if you don’t."
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.
We WERE a nation of laws with a system of constitutional checks and balances to prevent this from happening.
Bush and Cheney destroyed that system of checks and balances with their "Unitary Executive" theory and elevated the Presidency to the level of a king... free to do what ever he wants... above the laws of congress... above the courts.
This warped our constitution beyond all recognition from the founders intent and violated the fundamental notion of the Separation of Powers.
As Madison said:
Separation of powers, then, is not simply a talisman: It is the foundation of our system. James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, No. 47, that:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
Bush and Cheney used signing statements to exempt themselves from laws they didn't like in an unprecedented manner and over 47% of them raised constitutional challenges.
This violated Section 3 of Article II of the constitution:
The President's Constitutional Duty to "...take care that the laws be faithfully executed"
Section 3 of Article II of the Constitution states that the President "...shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." (This is often referred to as the "take care" clause.) There is concern that signing statements may operate, in a very practical sense, as direction from the White House to federal officials and agencies to disregard, or fail to execute, laws passed by Congress.
For instance, Congress enacted numerous laws requiring federal officials to report information to Congress, and President Bush issued signing statements for many such laws. The obvious question is whether signing statements served as instructions from the White House to lower-level members of the Executive branch to disregard reporting requirements enacted by Congress, or to otherwise fail to enforce the laws as written.
http://www.coherentbabble.com/...
The Unitary Executive THEORY... and it remains just that... a theory, has never been tested before SCOTUS and as long as it remains an unchallenged precedent set by Bush and Cheney... there is always the possibility that it can be used again by a future administration to justify illegal wars, war crimes like torture, violation of our civil liberties... anything!
This is why the page can never be allowed to be turned.
The door is open to absolute tyranny if that page is allowed to be turned!
Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense:
In America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.