Kagro X on signing statements; thereisnospoon on impeachment...

read this... better yet, read the whole post...

[Signing statements are] taking on a symbolic meaning, although it might actually be true that they were meant to have this meaning all along. And that symbolic meaning is that they demonstrate that Bush is reserving for himself the right to do anything. He just keeps planting stakes further and further out, noting well that nobody's really willing to set boundaries. Don't challenge me, he says, because I'll make you prove you can make it stick. That's how I measure power. If you can't physically restrain me from doing these things, you can't stop me.

It violates the law? Who cares? Have a signing statement. The government's being sued? Who cares? We'll appeal forever. Lose the appeals? Who cares? We'll just change the terminology or continue in secret. Investigated by Congress for it? Who cares? We'll just flood them with irrelevant documents. Subpoenaed to testify? Who cares? We just won't show. Cited for Contempt? Who cares? We'll appeal forever (if we even permit the U.S. Attorney to prosecute in the first place).

It's not just the sheer number of these signing statements anymore, but now, as this latest example [going through your mail without a warrant] illustrates so well, it's also the sheer audacity of them that gives them their potency. A declaration like this one, on top of similar declarations (that received similarly poor receptions) on warrantless surveillance of telephonic communications, is clearly a declaration that this president is frontally challenging basic privacy assumptions held by nearly everyone in America. It is a declaration of his belief, however poorly founded, that he is "Commander in Chief" of everyone and everything, so long as he can claim that in the end, it was all for our own good.

here's what i don't get... the incessant drive for unlimited power in the executive has been going on for a number of years now... why aren't we hounding this son-of-a-bitch and his criminal compadres out of office by the most expeditious (and legal) means at our disposal...? why isn't a front-page poster on daily kos like kagro x positively frothing at the mouth and calling for a storming of the bastille...? even the most steadfastly moderate and well-known kos posters like thereisnospoon are having a change of heart...

Bush, you see, is playing a momentous and deeply consequential game of Constitutional poker with the Democrats. With every round and on every issue he continues to bluff the Democrats and up the ante--and he figures that the Dems care too much about keeping their newly won chips to ever dare call his bluff. He knows that when all is said and done, there's not a soul who can or will truly call his bluff without taking the issue all the way to an impeachment proceeding--and he believes wholeheartedly that Democrats would never truly carry it that far.

get a clue, people... get a clue, congress critters... he's gotta go... it isn't constitutional poker, it's constitutional russian roulette, only the gun is being held at the head of the body we call the united states - and he's been at his little game for nearly six years... the cumulative weight of the absolute powers he's seized for his presidency is, at this point, enough to toss every one of us into a detention camp should he so choose... are we ready to accept that fact...? are we ready to allow it to continue...?

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