Tag: Worst President Ever
Bush and Hastert
President Bush was in Illinois yesterday to campaign for scandal-tainted Speaker Hastert.
So the speaker let a predator of teenage boys run loose in the House and then very clumsily tried to cover it up, the president still believes Denny is a good man.
RIP Habeas Corpus – 1215-2006
If you are imprisoned for no reason, First Amendment rights to free speech and Second Amendment rights to bear arms are of no use to you, for example.
On the day the Foley scandal broke, the Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which includes a provision that eliminates habeas corpus from the canon of United States law. Habeas corpus is an ancient right of citizens to be informed why they have been arrested and what charges are being brought against them.
The Constitution allows habeas corpus to be suspended under two conditions: “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
But the new law does not suspend habeas corpus. It eliminates it.
On Countdown last night, Keith Olbermann examined the potential damage that could be done to American democracy if the law is allowed to stand. He went through each provision in the Bill of Rights suggesting how elmininating habeas corpus makes nine of the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution moot. If you are imprisoned for no reason, First Amendment rights to free speech and Second Amendment rights to bear arms are of no use to you.
Crooks & Liars has the video and a rough transcript.
UPDATE: Here is a link to the text of the section that suspends habeas corpus indefinitely:
SEC. 7. HABEAS CORPUS MATTERS….
`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
President Cranky Pants
I read an account recently of the scene around George W. Bush when John Kerry conceded in the 2004 presidential election. Our macho el presidente broke down in tears and blubbered. He hugged everyone in the room except for Vice President Dick Cheney, according to the account I read.
Now, two years later, with a month to go before midterm elections, things are not looking good for his party’s continued control over the House and maybe even the Senate. How is the tough-guy-in-chief handling the bad news? Not so well:
The L Word: Olbermann Calls the President Out for Lying
Keith Olbermann on Countdown last night:
While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool …
While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the revelations of a book with a glowing red cover …
The president of the United States — unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.
Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.'”
The hell they did.
One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.
Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.
President Bush hears what he wants.
Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.”
Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.
And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader.
“If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,” the president said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, “it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we’re attacked again.”
The president doesn’t just hear what he wants.
He hears things that only he can hear.
It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.
Yet they do.
It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any president of this nation.
Rhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders, Democrats, the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies of treason.
Tammy Duckworth Did Not Cut and Run, Mr. President
Last week, in one of the lowest moments of his miserable presidency, George W. Bush accused the Democratic Party of becoming “the party of cut and run.” Tammy Duckworth, the Democrat running for the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) who lost both her legs in when her helicopter took fire in Iraq, has an answer for the president:
“Well, I didn’t cut and run, Mr. President. Like so many others, I proudly fought and sacrificed, Duckworth said. “My helicopter was shot down long after you proclaimed ‘mission accomplished.”
And neither did the 60 or so other Democratic veterans running for Congress this year.
Woodward: Bush’s Public Persona Has Become Defined by ‘Incompetence and Arrogance’
Card was enough of a realist to see that two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance. Card did not believe that Bush was incompetent, and so he had to face the possibility that as Bush’s chief of staff, he might have been the incompetent one.
Bob Woodward’s front page story for Sunday’s Washington Post is online now. Lots of bombshells about the Bush Administration’s campaign to deceive the American public about conditions on the ground in Iraq — and why they are doing it (hint: Henry Kissinger is advising them).
Here’s an excerpt from the end of the article about Bush’s former chief of staff, Andrew Card, and his private doubts about the prospects of success in the war after he had tried unsuccessfully to have Sec. of Defens Donald Rumsfeld fired. No bombshells here but apparently some confirmation of what we all suspect — that Bush is stubbornly following the wrong course of action, despite the better judgment of smarter people:
[In March of this year], White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. prepared to leave the administration after submitting his resignation to Bush. He felt a sense of relief mixed with the knowledge that he was leaving unfinished business.
“It’s Iraq, Iraq, Iraq,” Card had told his replacement, Joshua B. Bolten. “Then comes the economy.”
One of Card’s great worries was that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam. In March, there were 58,249 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. One of Kissinger’s private criticisms of Bush was that he had no mechanism in place, or even an inclination, to consider the downsides of impending decisions. Alternative courses of action were rarely considered.
As best Card could remember, there had been some informal, blue-sky discussions at times along the lines of “What could we do differently?” But there had been no formal sessions to consider alternatives to staying in Iraq. To his knowledge there were no anguished memos bearing the names of Cheney, Rice, Hadley, Rumsfeld, the CIA, Card himself or anyone else saying “Let’s examine alternatives,” as had surfaced after the Vietnam era.
Card put it on the generals in the Pentagon and Iraq. If they had come forward and said to the president “It’s not worth it” or “The mission can’t be accomplished,” Card was certain, the president would have said “I’m not going to ask another kid to sacrifice for it.”
Card was enough of a realist to see that two negative aspects to Bush’s public persona had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance. Card did not believe that Bush was incompetent, and so he had to face the possibility that as Bush’s chief of staff, he might have been the incompetent one. In addition, he did not think the president was arrogant.
But the marketing of Bush had come across as arrogant. Maybe it was unfair in Card’s opinion, but there it was.
He was leaving. And the man most responsible for the postwar troubles, the one who should have gone, Rumsfeld, was staying.
