As I listened today, fretfully and anxiously, I kept thinking what Ohio State University law professor Peter Shane said on C-Span on December 28, and I am praying that the Senators and activists are intensely focused on this. It seems we are:
It is easy to get grassroots activism for an issue like privacy. There are groups set up for that, and people will rally on the issue of privacy.
My concern about Samuel Alito’s nomination has to do with how he, with the newly appointed Judge Roberts, wiill rule on matters of presidential executive authority.Presidential powers is my specialty, so perhaps I am focusing on it in particular because of that. But, I feel that it is critically important.
But [Shane lamented] while grassroots groups will organize around privacy, they don’t organize around presidential powers — they won’t organize around “checks and balances” issues — and that is perhaps more important. — (From my Dec. 28, 2005 story, “We’re Cats Stuck in Bush’s Poisonous Tree,” and notes I took as Shane spoke on C-Span.)
“At a press conference this morning [Jan. 5, 2006] at the National Press Club, Peter Shane, professor of law at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and an expert on executive power, raised serious concerns about Alito’s record on presidential power,” reports the Dark Vilious Vapors blog:
“[Alito] is resolutely deferential to assertions of executive authority, while going out of his way to invent imaginary limitations on Congress’s legislative powers,” Professor Shane said. “In the hands of the current administration, it is this same line of thinking that has spawned unprecedented claims of executive privilege, preposterous claims of authority to engage in torture, unprecedented claims to hold U.S. citizens indefinitely as enemy combatants, and now an apparent pattern of flagrant and unapologetic violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
(Note: This is from a longer piece, “Speaking Up and Signing Up…,” that begins, “A group of prominent law professors released a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Ranking Member Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) signed by over 500 law professors in opposition to the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito to the Supreme Court. …”)
Then there are Armando’s words today in “The President’s Judicial Power?“:
In his answers to the questions of Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) on Presidential power, it appeared to me that Samuel Alito tried to give the impression that he viewed the President as required to “faithfully execute the laws” and thus, Alito wishes us to think he believes, the President can not disregard duly enacted federal law. However, Alito was very careful to say that the President most importantly, must “follow the Constitution.” Sounds good right? Well John Yoo said the same thing:
Any effort by the Congress to regulate the interrogation of battlefield combatants would violate the Constitution’s sole vesting of the Commander in Chief authority in the President.
See how that works? The President must “faithfully execute the law,” but most importantly the Constitution. And no doubt most importantly, the Bush/Yoo/Alito view of a prohibition in Article II of the Constitution prohibiting Congressional regulation of the President as Commander in Chief.
Significantly, Alito said that the President must “faithfully execute the laws” except those he believes are unconstitutional! The President’s judicial power? Who knew?
But you get it now. What Alito told Feingold could have been repeated, indeed no doubt was, verbatim by John Yoo. Cold comfort from Alito on the issue of the President as King.
You’ll recall Larry Johnson’s blistering attack on John Yoo — “What Next? Pedophilia?“: (And never mind that these extra-legal beagles like Yoo, Gonzales and Alito, “by choosing not to invest the time and effort to find a solution with Congress,” are doing “far-reaching damage to the intelligence community,” writes Roger Cressey, NBC News’s Terrorism Analyst.)
Checks and balances. Bush et al. have usurped this key basic principle. They must be stopped.
You were very well-behaved today — through 11 long hours — and you each deserve TWO (isn’t that the magic number?) milk bones.
At this particular point in time, the condensation of power with the executive is the most disturbing aspect of the entire administration agenda, imo.
Aside: having sampled Milk Bones as a young child, I believe I’ll pass. Thanks all the same.
If we have anything to say about it.
Go right to the top, and tell ’em “No” to Alito’s confirmation:
Phone, fax, and email addresses for the Judiciary Committee.
Here’s another “Veto Alito” tool:
Write a letter to the editor of your local paper and contact your congress critters — all with one click.
Also: Moveon.org gathered 300,000 signatures in their Anti-Alito petition — in a day!
They’re shooting for 500,000, please sign if you haven’t already:
Move On.org’s stop Alito petition
People for the American Way have sent over 60,000 letters to the Senate:
Save the Court Petition
American Rights at Work also
Oppose Alito Petition
Defending the Constitution’s Stop Alito Petition
http://ga3.org/…
Democratic anti-Alito petition:
Democratic Party’s Reject Alito Petition
Stop the NRA is also getting in on the party:
Stop the NRA’s Oppose Alito Petiton
And while you’re at it: sign Planned Parenthood’s anti-Alito petition, too:
Planned Parenthood Petition
NARAL is shooting for 500,000 signatures, please add yours:
Naral Anti-Alito Petition
And don’t forget: urge Congress to support Plan B:
Plan B Petition
Well, if that is the case, then someone here should be President!
Seriously, does it seem that the following are unconstitutional?
and on, and on, and on…
Hell, then we could use executive orders to make things better for all in this country!
A very good point that should be hammered home. The President executes the law; he does not determine its constitutionality. Its constitutionality is determined by the Supreme Court. That’s why the Constitution created courts. The President is an executive, not a judicial official.
This is an easy point to understand, and demolishes Yoo’s argument.
There is simply no meaning to any of the terms Alito uses, especially “law” and “Constitution.” His words are perfectly consistent to the totality of possible human behavior by government officials.
about the future of our country. I didn’t watch the hearings today because I was busy refinishing an oak floor. Hubby is still sanding away even as I type. But, I read all the live threads here and at dKos and I’m feeling very sad. I fear Alito is going to be confirmed and then the complete takeover of our government will be complete.
Frankly, sjct, regarding the confirmation I feel you’re correct; however, until then I plan on staying in touch & doing whatever I find within my power to alter this result. After our intuitions prove correct, we’ll then see what recourse still remains to shift the balance — and we’ll go on from there, adjusting our sensibilities & our actions to whatever new manifestations of governmental power arise. What other choice is there?
I was waiting for service in a home improvement center along with a nearly toothless redneck bubba. After some preliminaries, I mentioned that the washer and dryer I wanted to buy was probably made in Korea. He launched into a rant against globalization that didn’t seem to belong in his mouth. He told me that the “Powers That Be” wanted to subjugate Americans and turn us into peasants “They” could manipulate.
I figured he listened to Alex Jones on his short-wave radio to pick up fancy words like “globalization” and that “They” were synonomous with Jews in his fevered brain. But, it was a darn good rant and I grinned and nodded in agreement with his basic precepts.
He ended on a conspiratorial note, leaning in to whisper, “But, we ain’t like Chinese. They forgot sumthin’ in all their plotting… We got guns and we’ll shoot from behind trees.” I thought this was a pretty good summation of how we won the Revolutionary War.
It reminded me of a joke that went thru Libertarian circles some decades ago. A group of local militia pounds on your door in the middle of the night. They demand, “Are you for America or against it?” You’ve got a 50/50 chance of giving the right answer or being shot down in your doorway because it depends on their definition of America.
I can’t remember the rest of it. Maybe someone else can. It had a conservative answer which got them shot and a liberal answer that got them shot. Of course, the Libertarian answer saved your life and I’d like to remember what it was. I think I’m going to need it.
Well, I’m just hoping Will Rogers was right. Now to try to figure out how to get more people thinking . . . .
All this time and energy seems so futile sometimes. I want my GD country back…NOW!
I have been gone since late this afternoon; therefore, I have missed some of the hearings. I want you to go and read the diaries that Suskind wrote. It is very informative in this regard.
This one man, John Yoo, is the most dangerous man in the world, IMHO. Besides this, he wrote all the feces that Alito and his henchmen are trying too push upon us, using the ex. office to get it done. I want you all to pay close attention to how the republicans are setting Alito up for this. Even Sessions, repremended Feingold on this line of questioning. This is simply framed to break the democrats in their questioning. They are threatening to all of us. Just like what the one who lives in OUR WH has said reacently…not a quote, but he told the democrats not to use the Iraq war, torture etc in 06 to campaign on. What is this???is he scare of the way he will be presented..I bet you a dime to a doughnut, he uses the war and such to push the republican talking points in06..wanna bet me on this..?????????
Alito and Yoo are disturbed people. They have no emotional life. There is something really creepy about Alito. I see a young school boy turning in his classmates for talking in class. A person who revels in judging other people who cannot compare to his good behavior. A person who has no sympathy or compassion. Someone who enjoys watching others suffer for what he judges as bad behavior.
Where do they get these people. They are not human. He has no developed emotional life or understanding. He is a prisoner, like Bush to his own emotional imbalance and lack of development.
He is extremely effeminate but in a witch like way.
Awful.