Posted on 02/16/2006 5:14:57 PM PST by neverdem
Undertaxed? What the hell?
George Will is completely irrelevent. His heyday was when the libs controlled the entire media, he was their token RINO.
Some good points here, and some bad points. I'll just add that the framers considered the President as commander-in-chief to possess inferor powers of state governors during peace.
Regarding the Executive Branch, the Constitution says "He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur"
FYI, the Senate is part of our Congress.
Will's article is the work of a legal illiterate. It is a card-castle of factual and legal misrepresentations. It is Will's argument that we can kill al Qaeda, we just can't listen to their phone calls, because that would be monarchical and dictatorial, and be a constitutional crisis, yada, yada.
Well, we got a two-fer with that guy we smoked in Yemen with the Predator. We were listening to his phone call when we sent a Hellfire up his butt. Which was worse, George?
I think that George Will, Peggy Noonan and Dick Morris all make the same mistake. The pressure seems to be on for them to register an opinion, but rather than immediately turning off the TV and hitting the reference books- they appear to listen instead to which way the wind seems to be blowing, ((or at least the howling would indicate), and then stake out a "me-too".
It is disappointing to witness, given that they are presented as our spokespersons.
What say some of those hellfires cut loose in Newark, Lackawana and Hamtramack? "It's war" donchaknow, and therefore within executive prerogative.
Agreed though, that Will is a legal illiterate.
I don't understand why anyone would think they have a absolute right to privacy on an international phone call. Particularly to a known terrorist country.
Good morning, counselor.
The guy we smoked in Yemen was a member of the Lackawana gang. He had previously been in the US.
I don't know enough about the law governing the use of the military against a foreign invader in the domestic context to really respond to that hypothetical. The argument can certainly be made that we can kill al Qaeda where ever we find them. Nevertheless, I think for prudential and political reasons the government would try to make an arrest if circumstances permitted.
Thanks for posting.
Interesting, informative, educational. Great article.
Another great Andy Mc Carthy piece
Merryman and Quirin cases shed a bit of light, not on surveillance, but on habeas. There are a few others I think.
The argument can certainly be made that we can kill al Qaeda where ever we find them. Nevertheless, I think for prudential and political reasons the government would try to make an arrest if circumstances permitted.
That urge to arrest is what creates entry into the court system and all the supervision and second guessing that entails. Again, in the area of detention, we have a few cases working their way. Padilla comes right to mind.
It's really fascinating to see the friction and maneuvering between the foreign intelligence and criminal sides of our battle against those who would harm our citizens and subvert our form of government. I don't pretend to have any quick solutions either, particularly not since this whole area of academic investigation is very new to me, and I only do it as a hobby.
Thanks for the dialog - it's the first time I've interacted with a celebrity. ;-)
That line about the ratification jumped out at me too. The Congress has no role in negotiating treaties, but as representatives of the States, the Senate must approve the result...or not.
Part of the problem is that very few people have experience with this type of thing. Few lawyers study Constitutional law to begin with, and fewer still the Constitution itself. And even fewer have studied either the specific interfaces between the military and the civil authorities, and non-Congressional warmaking powers. To that extent, people often have difficulty understanding that POWs are not held for punishment sake, but to detain them from pursuing war - and thus are both not tried, and not prosecuted for being a foreign soldier. Further, is the general misunderstanding of the Geneva Conventions, and that the privileges enumerated are applied only to those who abide by its rules.
It is an entirely different vantagepoint from what is presented in government classes and in law school.
The last time this wasn't esoteric minutiae was WWII, and those who would remember it directly would be in their 80s.
Receieved this via e-mail this morning:
According to reports in today’s Washington Post, Congress appears ready to abandon its oversight responsibility with regard to the Executive Branch’s NSA spying program. Don’t let them fold! We wrote you yesterday about our four-point plan to secure our nation’s checks and balances, and one pillar of that plan is oversight. While a special prosecutor (demanded by the petition we launched yesterday) would support two other pillars – transparency and accountability – oversight from Congress is an absolutely essential check on presidential power. We are asking you to call some unusual targets: Republican Leadership and Committee Chairs. The bottom line is that these men, listed below, will decide whether or not Congress fulfills its constitutional duties. If they choose to duck their responsibility, they must do so with the full knowledge that they are acting against the wishes of the American people. That’s why you must call. The final pillar of our campaign, after all, is public vigilance. Whether you call members of Congress regularly or even if you’ve never called a member of Congress before, pick up the phone and dial through this short list of four members – tell them you expect the United States Congress to live up to its oversight responsibilities and conduct a thorough investigation, including in-depth hearings, about the possible illegal activity taking place in the Executive Branch. If you want other talking points, visit http://www.pfaw.org/go/NSATalkingPoints. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Pat Roberts: 202-224-4774 House Intelligence Committee Chair Peter Hoekstra: 202-225-4401 Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: 202-224-3344 Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert: 202-225-2976 Please tell us how your calls went by visiting http://pfaw.kintera.org/CallReport; we are curious to hear what these offices are telling the calling public. -- Your Allies at People For the American Way
And of course this fool says this right after he accuses Will of engaging in "hyperbole". Will's column never condemned the idea launching warrantless searches. Here's what he actually wrote:
Immediately after Sept. 11, the president rightly did what he thought the emergency required, and rightly thought that the 1978 law was inadequate to new threats posed by a new kind of enemy using new technologies of communication. Arguably he should have begun surveillance of domestic-to-domestic calls -- the kind the Sept. 11 terrorists made.Now either Andrew McCarthy is a liar or he just plain can't read.
The administration's position, and the program, is pertinent to governance in the field of foreign relations. In that field, whether Will likes it or not, the president has primacy — primacy of the same sort the Supreme Court enjoys in interpreting the Constitution and Congress in funding governmental operations.
And the obvious implication from that statement is that the President gets to decide just how far the field of "foreign policy" extends. That of course was Will's central point, and predictably enough, McCarthy completely neglected to address it.
The only reason any of us ever gave Will any notice at all is because on these liberal-laced talking heads show he often seemed somewhat more coherent and reasonable than Cokie and the other liberal bozo's. I never considered Will much of a conservative.
Read Alan Nathan's piece in The Examiner, "No branch may usurp another's power." He's a centrist but hits this one home better than any of them. It should be compulsory reading for Mr. Will.
http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2006/02/17/opinion/op-ed/19oped15nathan.txt
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