History Justifies War Powers

The Washington Times ^ | January 13, 2004 | Bruce Fein

[quidnunc]

Contrary to the fearful voice of Associate Justice Robert Jackson dissenting in Korematsu vs. United States (1944), emergency powers asserted by presidents in times of war have not turned into loaded guns lying around for misuse by any zealous official who claims an urgent need.

History speaks otherwise. During the Civil War, for instance, President Abraham Lincoln extraconstitutionally summoned an army, expended unappropriated funds, unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and suppressed speech friendly to the Confederacy. Congress belatedly ratified Lincoln's legislative usurpations. They were not repeated during the war. Neither did they establish presidential war principles that crept into nonemergency circumstances.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ugly relocation of Japanese American citizens and residents into concentration camps has been discredited. Indeed, Congress voted reparations for the victims in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988; and, convictions for defying curfew and relocations orders have been voided. Learning from FDR's example, President George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks lectured against stereotyping of Arabs or Muslims and established a special FBI unit to investigate crimes against either minority group.

-snip-

[Sir Gawain]

extraconstitutionally

Is that the word for it now? Orwell would be proud. CFR is extraconstitutional. The education budget is extraconstitutional. The DEA is extraconstitutional.

[quidnunc]

And Ronald Reagan fighting the Cold War and bringing the Soviet Union to it's knees was extraconstitutional.

[John Beresford Tipton]

"have not turned into loaded guns lying around for misuse.."


So because they *have not* yet means:
they will not?
they might not?

By the same "logic" if someone is playing russian roulette and he hears a "click" he should relax and try it some more because it "has not" yet blown his brains out?

[AmericanVictory]

If this is a war, why does our government continue to stand by while we and our "allies" line the pockets of those funding the other side by buying their one crop from their one crop economy? Wouldn't the most effective weapon be to take away the need for what the other side is selling, more effective than any thing we've done so far?