[Dialogue] The Constitution Does Not Apply

Sat Dec 24 12:48:53 EST 2005

Colleagues, and now Molly weighs in! Peace, Harry 
  _____  

AlterNet

The Constitution Does Not Apply

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
Posted on December 22, 2005, Printed on December 24, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/29983/

Uh-oh. Excuse me. I'm so sorry, but we are having a constitutional crisis. I
know the timing couldn't be worse. Right in the middle of the wrapping
paper, the gingerbread and the whole shebang, a tiny honest-to-goodness
constitutional crisis.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country: Damn
the inconvenience, full speed ahead. On his own, without consulting the
Congress, the courts or the people, the president decided to use secret
branches of government to spy on the American people. He is, of course,
using 9-11 to justify his actions in this, as he does for everything else --
9-11 happened so the Constitution does not apply, 9-11 happened so there is
no separation of powers, 9-11 happened so 200 years of experience curbing
the executive power of government is something we can now overlook.

That the president of the United States unconstitutionally usurped power is
not in dispute. He and his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, both claim he
has the right to do so on account of he is the president.

Let's try this again. The president is not above the law. I wish I thought I
were being too pompous about this, but the greatest danger to our freedom
always comes when we are scared or distracted -- and right now, we are both.

As an ACLU liberal, I would like to say how proud and honored I am to stand
with so many American conservatives on this issue. You do credit to all your
heroes. Barry Goldwater would be so proud.

One of the more annoying things about this usurpation of power is that it is
both stupid and unnecessary. As large numbers of people have pointed out, it
takes almost nothing to get a warrant to do what Bush has been doing
illegally -- it's almost pro forma.

Here is a curious fact about the government of this country spying on its
citizens: It always goes wrong immediately. For some reason, it's not as
though we start with people anyone would regard as suspicious and then
somehow slip gradually into spying on the Girl Scouts. We get it wrong from
the beginning every time. Never seem to be able to distinguish between a
terrorist and a vegetarian.

The Department of Defense has just proved this yet again with its latest
folly of mistaking a flock of Florida Quakers for a threat to overthrow the
government. A few months ago, a student at the University of Massachusetts
at Dartmouth tried to check out a copy of Mao's "Little Red Book" and wound
up being interviewed by two feds. Cointelpro and all those misbegotten
Nixon-era spy programs were always making ludicrous mistakes.

The usual suspects, like that silly congressman Dan Burton, solemnly try to
scare us with the dread specter of war, as though they alone are the
hard-headed pragmatists, while only woolly minded liberals care about the
Constitution. "Don't these people realize we're at war?" Well, yes. Why that
justifies treating Unitarians like Islamofascists is beyond me.

This is the same pattern we have seen with Bush when it came to the Geneva
Conventions for handling prisoners and to using torture. Not only does he
consider himself above the law, he has surrounded himself with people who
keep inventing perverse readings of the Constitution to justify him. Makes
it especially nice to hear him go on about the importance of bringing
democracy to Iraq.

Bush defended his actions Monday by saying it was part of "connecting the
dots." A painful moment, since the 9-11 Commission just finished giving this
administration grades of D and F in terms of preventing another terrorist
attack -- and it has jack-all to do with wiretapping. This administration
has cried wolf so many times using the national security excuse it has lost
all credibility.

Bush just could not resist that especially nasty little fillip at the end:
blaming the people who reported the problem. As though the sin were telling
the people of this country what is happening, what is being done in our name
with our money, as though we have no right to know.

>From my point of view, Bush has made one terrible decision after another
concerning national security, from how Homeland Security money was spent to
attacking Iraq. The New York Times is not responsible. 

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings. 

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