The Slide To Unitary Rule

At stake in this election is the viability of the Congress itself. The President and his cadre in the White House have the goal of literally changing the shape of democracy as it is practiced in this country, by centralizing power in a unitary executive who simply does not need to follow the dictates of the legislative branch or the judiciary, and can pursue his or her agenda unilaterally, without interference or oversight. This is where we find ourselves today, and even when Congress or the court system acts as something other than a rubber stamp, the Administration simply decides to break the rules and suffer no consequences.

A helpful Court of Appeals has put a stay on suspending the warrantless domestic spying program which Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled unconstitutional (they did not "temporarily OK domestic spying," as the AP headline blares). This is well within the rights of the 6th Circuit Court, to reserve judgment until they hear an appeal and keep things as they are. Except the President has been found to have violated federal statute, and he's simply forfeited his right to get the benefit of the doubt after willfully breaking the law in this way. All the more telling is how the Justice Department's motion to stay the program reflected the same bully tactics they use in the political arena:

The Justice Department had urged the appeals court to allow it to keep the program in place while it argues its appeal, claiming that the nation faced "potential irreparable harm." The appeal is likely to take months.

"The country will be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack," the government motion said.

The hell the country will. You can go get a warrant like every other law enforcement organization. The FISA court almost never disallows one. This incoherent response basically reads like "people will die if you tell us to follow the law."

Even more disconcerting is the continued subversion of settled law through the use of signing statements. The latest came just yesterday, attached to the Homeland Security bill which would overhaul agencies like FEMA.

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department's reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency's 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch."

How many stories in the last 6 years have started with the line "President Bush says he has the power..." You'd think he was He-Man.



So basically, the President wants to be able to change reports about his performance given by nonpartisan, outside agents. He wants to INVADE THE PRIVACY OF THE PRIVACY OFFICER.

But there's more:

Bush, for example, said he'd disregard a requirement that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and "demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security."

His rationale was that it "rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office."

Exactly! How is he going to find people who worked as head of Arabian Horse Associations under stringent "qualification" rules like that?



We have a President that doesn't want to be held accountable by the rules that the Congress is duty-bound to make. If they pass a law he doesn't like, he'll use a signing statement. If they don't want to send a bully as ambassador to the UN, he'll make a recess appointment, not once but apparently twice. Bolton wouldn't even get paid if he's installed without the consent of Congress a second time, so they have a scheme to demote him to a lesser post, and then never replace him as Ambassador, making him the "acting" Ambassador. They change the laws, and when they can't change them they break the laws.

The Congressional Research Service just released a devastating report that lays out the White House strategy to basically change the very structure of the government, to remove any checks on their power and to rule essentially by fiat.

In a 27-page report written for lawmakers, the research service said the Bush administration is using signing statements as a means to slowly condition Congress into accepting the White House's broad conception of presidential power, which includes a presidential right to ignore laws he believes are unconstitutional.

The "broad and persistent nature of the claims of executive authority forwarded by President Bush appear designed to inure Congress, as well as others, to the belief that the president in fact possesses expansive and exclusive powers upon which the other branches may not intrude," the report said.

It's the "Big Lie" theory of politics: if you say something long enough and insistently enough, people will start to believe that it's true. It has worked during the elections, so they're trying it out with the Representatives of those elections.

This is the dark vision of government this President wants.

Under most interpretations of the Constitution, the report said, some of the legal assertions in Bush's signing statements are dubious. For example, it said, the administration has suggested repeatedly that the president has exclusive authority over foreign affairs and has an absolute right to withhold information from Congress. Such assertions are "generally unsupported by established legal principles," the report said.

Despite such criticism, the administration has continued to issue signing statements for new laws. Last week, for example, Bush signed the 2007 military budget bill, but then issued a statement challenging 16 of its provisions.
The bill bars the Pentagon from using any intelligence that was collected illegally, including information about Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable government surveillance.

In Bush's signing statement, he suggested that he alone could decide whether the Pentagon could use such information. His signing statement instructed the military to view the law in light of "the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief, including for the conduct of intelligence operations, and to supervise the unitary executive branch."

Bush also challenged three sections that require the Pentagon to notify Congress before diverting funds to new purposes, including top-secret activities or programs. Congress had already decided against funding. Bush said he was not bound to obey such statutes if he decided, as commander in chief, that withholding such information from Congress was necessary to protect security secrets.

So that's what's at stake in this election. If you believe in checks and balances, if you believe in the system of government that has served this nation for 230 years, you need to vote out the willing enablers to this extreme and horrifying vision of unitary executive - dictatorial, in essence - power, and put in ordinary Americans who will challenge this attempt to trash the Constitution and recast it in some other twisted image.