The Great Debate Begins

Finally, we may have a national debate on our nation's drift toward an imperial presidency.

Neo-fascist Bill Kristol argues in today's Washington Post that the constitution grants the President the right to do whatever he wants in the name of national security, without restraint of any kind. Tap phones without warrants or judicial oversight? Perfectly constitutional according to Kristol. Kidnap people and detain them without trial? Perfectly constitutional. Kill American citizens in the dead of night without limit? Kristol is silent on this one, but it's hard to believe the President doesn't have such a right under Kristol's theory of executive power.

Meanwhile, George Will weakly argues that Bush may have done something wrong.

Over at the Washington Times, Frank Gaffney argues that we have to trample on civil liberties to protect civil liberties. What the fuck kind of Orwellian speak is this????

Bruce Fein on the other hand kicks ass. So much so that it's worth re-printing parts of his latest op-ed here:

Mr. Bush's defense generally echoed previous outlandish assertions that the commander in chief enjoys inherent constitutional power to ignore customary congressional, judicial or public checks on executive tyranny under the banner of defeating international terrorism, for example, defying treaty or statutory prohibitions on torture or indefinitely detaining United States citizens as illegal combatants on the president's say-so.

President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. He cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses. Congress should swiftly enact a code that would require Mr. Bush to obtain legislative consent for every counterterrorism measure that would materially impair individual freedoms.