Three constitutional crises

(sidney blumenthal in the guardian...)

the essence of the "constitutional crises" we are facing as a nation is the simple fact that the president has taken the position that the u.s. constitution does not apply in any meaningful way that would limit a president's actions in a "time of war..." since we are in a "war" that has no foreseeable conclusion, as a general principle, the constitution can be said to no longer apply as the guiding document of the united states government...

In the short run, Bush's defence of his war paradigm may precipitate three constitutional crises.

In the first, freedom of the press is at issue. On May 21 Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, announced the possibility that the New York Times would be prosecuted for publishing its Pulitzer prize-winning article on the administration's domestic surveillance. "It can't be the case," he said, that the first amendment trumps the right of the government "to go after criminal activity".

In the second case, a wartime executive above the law may be asserted. Last week the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who charged the vice-president's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice, made plain his intention to summon Cheney to the witness stand to impeach Libby's credibility or else commit perjury himself. But will the administration fight the subpoena as an infringement on a unitary executive that should be immune from such distractions in wartime?

In the third case, if either house of Congress should fall to the Democrats in the November midterm elections, the oversight suppressed during one-party rule would be restored. Would the administration refuse congressional requests for documents as it did when the Democratic Senate in Bush's first year asked for those pertaining to Cheney's energy taskforce, which reportedly included Enron's CEO Ken Lay, last week convicted on numerous counts of fraud?

blumenthal accurately frames the issue...

[T]he constitution is an intricate mechanism of checks and balances that creates constant accountability. The question at the heart of Bush's politics is whether that can be indefinitely suspended and the constitution radically revised.

i think the choice of the word "revised" is a misstatement... "scrapped," imho, would be more accurate...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet