This review of How Would a Patriot Act by Glenn Greenwald was difficult to write. As anyone who frequents Greenwald’s blog, Unclaimed Territory knows, he has a clean and matter-of-fact writing style. He writes like the constitutional lawyer he is.
It’s not the writing that’s the problem. It’s the subject.
The subtitle of the book says it all, "Defending American Values from a President Run Amok". It only takes one-hundred and twenty-eight pages to, as John W. Dean said on the back cover, "(assemble) a devastating bill of particulars against the Bush and Cheney’s administration’s insistence on operating outside the rule of law."
Actually, it takes less than forty pages to scare me more thoroughly than any Stephen King novel I’ve ever read. Because on page thirty-nine, the subject of John Yoo, memo writer extraordinaire and blight on the Constitution, is introduced. (To be fair, "blight on the Constitution" is my phrase, not Greenwalds. I tend less to lawyerly phraseology. But even if Greenwald sticks to facts and law, that’s plenty terrifying.)
The closing of Yoo’s infamous memo:
In both the War Powers Resolution and the Joint Resolution, Congress has recognized the President’s authority to use force in circumstances such as those created by the September 11 incidents. Neither statute, however, can place any limits on the President’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make. (Emphasis added.)
Black is white. Up is down. Get your ass in that cage so I can protect your freedoms.
"No Limits" is just what this post-frat-boy President and his Nixonian Throwback Posse want to hear. The thing is, they don’t actually believe it. The chapter about the NSA spying scandal, "What Can’t He Do?" puts the lie to that once and for all.
It defies credibility to think that the President, in October 2001, ordered eavesdropping in violation of FISA because he perceived that the law imposed too many barriers to necessary eavesdropping. After all, he ordered this illegal eavesdropping at exactly the time, in October 2001, when Congress was amending FISA in accordance with the President’s requests and the President was telling the nation that, as a result of those amendments, he had all the tools he needed to monitor the communications of terrorists.
The President plainly broke the law, which is why the only defense available to him and his supporters is to claim that he has the right to do so.
What has proceeded from that is an elaborate dance between Bush/Cheney and the Congress. A dance in which both partners posture for the cameras. Alberto Gonzales appears before the Senate Judiciary and performs with an arrogant flourish. He reaches back to CIVIL WAR precedents- a time in our nation’s history that we were literally torn in two- in an attempt to justify the limitless grab for power in this administration.
Senator Arlen Specter in turn fluffs up his feathers to demonstrate he’s still cock o’ the walk and he’ll convene hearings, by thunder-until his minder brings him back to earth and he backtracks to where the Bush/Cheney administration-wants him to be.
This bill of particulars would indeed be damning, if the Senate were populated with Ervins, Bakers, and Weickers. (Hat tip to Ned Lamont in honor of Weicker’s endorsement.)
But we have only pale imitations of those great men who were dedicated political partisans until the Constitution was at stake. Then they were patriots.
If Congress cannot rouse itself in defense of American liberty, it is up to us ordinary American patriots to do so. Because Bush has appropriated powers greater than even Richard Nixon claimed for himself. He’s cowed the Congress and packed the courts. The only thing standing between this dry drunk and the collapse of the separation of powers and the Bill of Rights itself is us.
This president and his syncophants think they are above the law. They manifestly are not if we rise to defend against the tyranny that dares us to speak its name. Impeachment can be initiated from the states.
Read this book. Find out what’s going on in your state to purge this corruption from the body politic, and stand in defense of liberty and justice for all.
If you need a little additional inspiration, I suggest this:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure Tranquility, provide for the general defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
WE.
Crossposted at TexasKaos and Dailykos.
