http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/01/gwot_cha/
Bush preps historic Third Term - memo
By Thomas C Greene in Washington Published Saturday 1st April 2006
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the office of the White House Counsel are preparing a draft document laying out the President's wartime authority to remain in office past 2008, The Register has learned.
The scheme is described as an emergency "continuity presidency," made necessary by the extraordinary circumstances and unique challenges of protecting the United States from the threat of international terrorism.
"The world changed on 9/11," a confidential DoJ memo obtained by The Register explains, "and no Administration is US history is better suited to adapt productively to those changes than this one.
"The Attorney General supports the basic framework in the White House Counsel's draft proposal for a future Executive Order establishing a Continuity Presidency, with two provisos: 1. There must be at least the appearance of a time limit, which the AG believes might be satisfied by tying the duration of the Continuity Presidency to the duration of the GWOT [global war on terrorism]; and 2. The House and Senate Majority Leaders and the Chairpersons of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees must issue a written certification that they have approved the plan.
"AG does not believe that the plan will succeed unless those conditions can be met. Suggest you liase with [the White House office of] Legislative Affairs and get their sense of the liklihood that the key Members will work with us."
The memo is signed Christine McIntyre, Special Assistant to the United States Attorney General, and is addressed to Philip Van Zandt, Special Assistant to White House Counsel Harriet Miers.
A second memo leaked to The Register, this time from DoJ Assistant McIntyre to Jock Mahoney, Special Assistant to US Solicitor General Paul Clement, and to Philip Van Zandt at the White House, anticipates an immediate Supreme Court challenge to the scheme, and offers a few suggestions for defending the Administration's action.
"We will be attacked on the basis of Article II Section 1, and on Amendment XXII," McIntyre writes. "Thus it is absolutely crucial that the anticipated Executive Order for a Continuity Presidency make no mention whatsoever of a 'Third Term.' This will eliminate appeals to Amendment XXII, and leave us free to focus our attack on Article II Section 1 alone. Thus, the Executive Order has got to be framed as a necessary - and Congressionally authorized - extension of the President's Second Term, so that we can base our arguments on the Joint Resolution and Article II Section 2.
"Above all," McIntyre warns, "we must emphasize that the 2001 Joint Resolution, in which Congress empowered the President to 'use all necessary and appropriate force ... to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States,' and Article II Section 2 of the United States Constitution, give the President ample authority to issue an Executive Order for a Continuity Presidency for the duration of the GWOT, to exercise fully his mandate to protect the American people from harm.
"We must also press the national security angle hard and emphasize that the United States would be endangered severely by a change of government at this time. America cannot afford to give the terrorists such an opportunity."
Umm - shouldn't this have been posted YESTERDAY?
This is a joke but it is no joke that Clinton is indeed planning for a third term as Co-President in charge of the WH internship program.
Any news, true or not (they don't care about truth anyhow), that drives the liberals off the deep end, is okee-dokee with me! LOL