Gonzo Gonzales
Sep 29th, 2006 at 3:37 pm by Susie
Judges, consider yourself warned:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush’s anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president’s judgments in wartime.
He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president’s pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. “The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime,” the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.
“Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review,” Gonzales said.
And he said the independence of federal judges, who are appointed for life, “has never meant, and should never mean, that judges or their decisions should be immune” from public criticism.
Of course the judges’ decisions should’t be immune from public criticism. On the other hand, it is *clearly* traitorous to criticize the President in “this time of war.” Got it?
If you don’t, I have this beautifully carved maple or is it oak board, kind of on a slant with a nice comfortable place for you to lie while we help you take your shower.
Gug
Just like in the movie, what if 10,000 people in Guy Fawkes masks showed up at the White House on Election Day?
I get the feeling that Karl Rove’s promised ‘October Surprise’ is going to be the start of the Glorious Christian Dictatorship formally known as the United States of America.
Cut and Run Democrats will be labeled enemy combatants and tortured into making public confessions praising ‘Our Leader’ and admitting to being agents of Al Qeada. Voting rights will be suspended for registered Democrats or altogether. Leaders of the teachers unions, actors, journalists and prominent social activists will also disappear.
ABC,NBC,CBS and various cable networks will lose their broadcasting licenses and Fox will become the defacto State Television. Newspapers will be shut down and access to the internet will be banned.
Then come the Christian Soldiers from Jesus Camp. I can see them now, black shirts with gold crosses on the lapel. They’ll be called the guardians of morality. There will be one in every neighborhood, heading every police department and school. There will be one writing every newscast, censoring movies and television. There will be one behind every court bench.
They’ll still hold up the constitution. They’ll still talk about freedom and liberty. They will be quaint ideas from a bygone era that can not stand against the great threat of Terrorism and Muslim Fascists Fanatics. They must have the power to keep us safe. Those that dissent will be dealt with.
Following the trend of Republicans projecting their own issues onto those they consider their enemies, isn’t just possible that the Judges are correct, and Gonzales is the one who’s pushing his own personal views as law?
Sinclair Lewis:
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”
I think it has arrived. If the courts (including the supremes) don’t toss out this latest garbage, then it’s a done deal.
Expect more “either for us or against us” rhetoric in the next six weeks. To criticize is to “aid” the enemy.
See ya’ll in the camps…
Just like in the movie, what if 10,000 people in Guy Fawkes masks showed up at the White House on Election Day?
The ending of that movie, though a shame architecturally speaking, looks better all the time.
Fascism cannot be reasoned with, it can only be confronted.
Our economic bones are breaking; the flesh sags on our staggering Empire like the wrinkled breasts on an aging whore.
The political and financial elites are cashing out the middle class and even the infrastructure of our nation as fast as the new extreme secrecy will permit.
If it ain’t nailed down, it’s already gone. If it is nailed down, it is only one ‘emergency’ away from being carted off as well.
‘Emergency measures’ is now the sole organizing principle of the Bush regime, just as it was for Hitler’s. The Unitary Executive principle is just different wording for der Fuhrerprinzip, the idea that all rules are suspended during a political emergency, and the supreme executive leader may not be challenged in any way.
The happiest survivors of our staggering Republic will be those thieves who keep at least one step ahead of the public outrage and blowback that will thunder and blow from sea to sea once their crimes are plain even to the rubes of America.
The unhappy survivors will be the rubes of America, the believers and the moderates who keep thinking there is some floor under this down elevator, some level from which it all bounces back. There isn’t. The coming choice for the renting and working classes is to sign up down at the Company Store, or die in the street.
Keep in mind that behind all these political shenanigans, all these overseas oil crusades, all this repression at home — is common theft on a massive scale.
You been sold down the river, child. Massa Boosh just ain’t been by to say so to your face. You wanna wait for that?”
You have no pension, not really. You have no insurance, no Medicare, no Social Security, no safety net. It’s all gone the moment an ‘emergency’ decrees that those resources are needed to preserve the State, the American way of life, or some such balderdash.
You get on down the river, now. There’s a new life waiting for you in a much hotter place.
Doen’t war have to be declared by congress first? Why doesn’t the press ask him that one? And when is the “war on terrorism” finished? (Hint when is the “war on drugs”, or the “war on crime” or the “war on poverty” over?)