Posted on 07/08/2002 6:02:41 AM PDT by nicmarlo
WASHINGTON -- The imperial presidency has arrived. On the domestic front President Bush has found that in many ways he can govern by executive order. In foreign affairs he has the nerve to tell other people that they should get rid of their current leaders.
Amazingly, with Americans turning into a new silent majority and Congress into a bunch of obeisant lawmakers, he is getting away with such acts.
The lawmakers are worried that Bush will play the "patriot card" in the November elections to attack dissenters and opponents. The Democratic leaders have already rolled over. They have given him a blank check by passing the USA Patriot Act, which permits outrageous invasions of privacy, and by seconding Bush's foreign policy with a weak "me too."
Whatever happened to congressional oversight? I remember all too well the senators who gave President Lyndon B. Johnson a free hand to do whatever he believed was necessary in Southeast Asia. They lived to regret it. The result was the Vietnam War that ripped our country apart.
The list of the president's self-empowerment moves grows almost daily and will continue unless the Supreme Court calls his hand.
Did I say Supreme Court? Forget it. Not with this court. It handed him the 2000 election, and it would probably cite some World War II decisions that allowed the government to violate citizens' civil rights, especially those of Japanese Americans, in the name of national security.
Civil rights are now clearly being ignored by government agents in the war on terrorism who want to make the vulnerable detainees talk. The agents' methods of extracting information are not disclosed. And the imprisoned suspects and material witnesses cannot get in touch with lawyers or their families.
I'm not talking about Russia's infamous gulags. I am talking about us. The president made the arbitrary decision to designate as a foreign "enemy combatant" the Brooklyn-born Jose Padilla, who is suspected of being an al-Qaida scout seeking to locate targets for a "dirty bomb" attack. He is being held incommunicado in a military brig without due process of law and without being charged.
Where are the great constitutional law experts who might protest such treatment? It appears they have bowed to the exigencies of our time and are accepting Bush's end-runs around the law involving some 2,400 detainees, who are reportedly being held indefinitely by U.S. authorities. Can Americans really tolerate the denial of rights to these people?
Overseeing much of the chipping away at our privacy and other civil liberties is Attorney General John Ashcroft.
He is enthusiastically using the patriot law to let federal agents wiretap and access the e-mail of untold numbers of citizens and to listen in on conversations between lawyers and clients. Now FBI agents are checking lists of readers at libraries and book stores. Is book burning in our future?
Ashcroft also sent a memo to federal agencies promising that the Justice Department will back them up anytime they want to deny freedom of information requests from scholars and journalists.
Here, he is protecting Bush from criticism over the administration's clamp-down on government information. Rest assured he could not do this without the imprimatur of the White House.
We should not forget that Bush, early in his tenure, blocked the implementation of the release of President Reagan's White House papers. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, his official documents were to be available to the public 12 years after he left office. So they were due for release last year, but Bush simply overrode that law.
Was he trying to protect Reagan from the probing of historians and the media? Or was he really trying to protect his father, George H. W. Bush, who was Reagan's vice president and who succeeded him as president? White House aides issued a flimsy excuse-- that the order was designed to institute an orderly release of the papers. But my guess is that No. 43, as W calls himself, was trying to protect No. 41.
Equally blatant examples of Bush's arrogance of power are in his foreign policy. What right does he have to tell Yasser Arafat that he has to go or to tell the Palestinians they cannot vote for Arafat in coming elections? Bush's speech could have been written by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Although he speaks of his compassion for the suffering Palestinians under Israel's military occupation, Bush is tightening the screws by making it clear he will deny them any aid unless Arafat is deposed.
Plans to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein have also been on the president's radar screen since he took office.
When did the United States get the right to tell other countries and people who should lead them?
The president has been flexing America's military muscles and threatening pre-emptive first strikes against nations suspected -- suspected! -- of wanting to harm the United States. That also is a break with our past traditions.
Bush is due for a reality check. We need allies whenever we contemplate such drastic actions, and our allies are worried about his constant saber rattling. Some day he is going to try to give a war and nobody is going to come.
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Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com Copyright 2002 Hearst Newspapers.
My dear friend send me this article via e-mail....she is trying to convert me to the Rat side.....and knows I regularly partake of FR and she laughlingly said that some call us FReepers (as if this was an insult). She is a Christian, with many similar values. She just can't quite understand, however, why I don't hate Ashcroft, despise Bush, love the Clintons, ad nauseum. I think the day she sent this to me was the day after my continued expressed devotion to the conservative political cause made her to want to "pull out her last three hairs." I will probably never win her over to the "right" side, but this article embodies many of our disagreements.....Helen Thomas aside. Now, how to refute Thomas' absurd and moronic statements and keep my friend.....(I know, sometimes you just can't make someone "see the light," but I'd like to try). Any help here from my FReeper friends?
Note to Helen: Preventing a theft is not the same as stealing, honey.
As do I......on that my friend and I also agree...
Roosevelt and Churchill wanted to kill the German leader during WWII but I guess that's lost on the craggy Ms Thomas.
I find utter amazement in your ridicule of President Bush. You are the same writer that swooned at the previous President that set a new standard of law breaking and deviance while in office.
You forgot to mention that President Clinton is one of the people that is being protected by Presidential Records Act.
In terms of taking out Saddam Hussien, this is a goal Republicans and Democrats and many World leaders seem to agree with. Your heroric President Clinton bombed innocent people to protect him against the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and in many ways used the same tactic to go after Slovadin Milosevic (sp).
Janet Reno abused the Justice Dept. at record levels to cover for President Clinton. Her job was to support the Independent Council not hinder it. Reno also ignored her own commissions recommendations for Campaign Finance Reform hearings!
Finally, it has been proven by every normal standard of law that Bush won Florida without the Supreme Court. Despite the Network and Media calling Florida and other states early to hinder Bush turnout (even Democrat pollsters internal polling data said that Bush lost over a net 8-10 thousand votes in Western Florida by the media's false call for the state), Bush still would have won.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, however the hypocricy of your beliefs is somewhat breathtaking.
Yeah, I know....I think lots of things are lost on her....perhaps the difference there was war was declared by Congress.....and she always seems to come to the defense of the Middle Eastern leaders.....and it's no secret that Clinton courted Arafat, so, obviously, it's "wrong" for Bush not to.
Isn't it though? That is what I thought, too, when I read this article. She quickly throws stones at President Bush, who's done nothing close to the abuses of the Clintons.
I'm having trouble reconciling these two sentences. They seem mutually exclusive.
Oh.......if only Clinton had limited himself to this.........
I have a fear of that occurring. One thing leads to another. I have the disconcerting feeling that, in the wrong hands, government could intrude into my personal affairs, in the name of the patriot act. On the flip side, I understand the need to allow the government to look into people's personal affairs for security reasons (i.e., those who are suspects). It just kind of is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984..... frightening to me, but becoming more realistic.
My thought, verbatim.
Don't be too hard on them ... after all, it's not easy finding something that will give you victim's status.
"If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all."
It confuses me, as well. However, there are many Christians who are not Republicans.....that confuses me, too, as it seems to me that the Rats do not embody any kind of Christian morals in their foundations.
Helen, you're clearly well into your dotage. Read Ann Coulter's Slander, notably pages 76-90, for enlightenment. Ignorance needn't be invincible, dearie.
Don't mistake my concerns for wanting victim's status. I have a Christian understanding of government intrusion into our lives....i.e., the "mark of the beast," where no one can purchase anything unless he has conformed to the government's requirement that each person has some kind of mark on them that allows them to participate in society (to buy food, for example). Some have speculated that the "mark" is a chip, placed underneath the skin as a scanning device. The chip will allow cash to disappear from usage......and also allow monitoring of every person. Some have speculated that the number is the Social Security number...which is now required for infants. This requirement has only occurred during our lifetimes. It's a progressive thing. That is what concerns me.
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