Fairleft

My "big fundamental" is that being _left_ means working for a more egalitarian, democratic society, but also for fairness, not ethnic or other kinds of favoritism. Because the left has turned away from fairness it is lost and unpopular. I'm a small voice hoping to push the left back toward its basics and its natural popularity.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

John Roberts & The President as War on Terror Dictator


The Judge Roberts hearings being 4-6 weeks away, what is important right now for concerned liberals and leftists is to urge Congress not to renew the Patriot Act.

But at the hearings, I hope Democrats raise hell about the near-dictatorial powers the President has been handed (as Commander in Chief of the endless & "not really a war" War on Terror) by the Patriot Act and similar laws, and through Bush's assertion of executive powers without the aid of laws, _and_ the fact that the judicial branch has not thrown out most of this cr-p as unconstitutional or illegal.

Roberts is part of the problem. For example, he has signed on to the Hamdan v Rumsfeld decision, which makes US disobedience to the Geneva Conventions meaningless, with no negative consequences. Hamdan was a case where precedents were more than ambiguous enough to allow his court to do what needed to be done: use judicial power to enforce Geneva Convention POW rights at America's Guantanamo concentration camp. (Of course, the very existence of the concentration camp is an indication of a huge failure of our Supreme Court).

But unfortunately Roberts is most consistent in one thing: the Executive branch is boss and the Judiciary and Congress gotta get out of the way. This is a terrible time in American history -- with Gitmo, the Patriot Act, Jose Padilla, Abu Ghraib and so on all crying out for judicial intervention -- for another executive branch uber alles type to join the Supremes.

Raise hell, Demos.

1 Comments:

At 8:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Everything you say is so sad, and so true!

 

Post a Comment

<< Home