District Court Smackdown
“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” –George W. Bush, December 18, 2000
He’s tried to become a dictator or at least a “Decider,” especially when it comes to his ill-conceived “War on Terror.” His administration has said that torture is okay, that suspension of prisoners’ rights to due process is okay, and that spying on Americans without warrants is okay.
Our impotent Congress has done nothing to stop him because it is controlled by Republicans that dutifully follow their leader, no matter how wrong he is.
The courts, however, have some balls. They’ve stood up to the president and told him that even he must obey the laws outlined in The Constitution.
Not long ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bush Administration had to respect prisoners’ rights to defend themselves against their accusers, and last week District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that:
President Bush exceeded his proper authority and that the eavesdropping without warrants violated the First and Fourth Amendment protections of free speech and privacy.
“It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights.”
And on page forty of the opinion:
We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all “inherent powers” must derive from that Constitution.
Bush of course will fight to protect is self-anointed status as a supreme dictator, exempt from the laws of the little people.
He’s defending himself as usual by saying that anyone who disagrees with him is stupid:
“Those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.”
We of course know better, and it looks as though the federal courts do too.
