The Madness of King George

When I posted in November about the growing threat of fascistic power in America, I was worried I was indulging in a bit a rhetorical excess.

Check out this cogent and impecably reasoned blog entry today by Glen Greenwald.

Do Bush defenders place any limits on his "wartime" power?
Thursday, December 22, 2005

[excerpts below]

Virtually no serious Bush defenders claim any longer that the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens was authorized by FISA. To the contrary, FISA expressly prohibited such surveillance. Thus, to defend George Bush they must literally claim that the President has the right during "wartime" to violate Congressional statutes which relate to national security. [...]

On its face, this theory that Bush as a "wartime" President has the right to break the law squarely contradicts their insistence that they are not advocating for monarchic rule. Once you advocate a theory that authorizes a President, even during times of an undeclared and endless war, to violate any Congressional laws he wants as long as he says -- with no judicial review possible --that doing so is for the sake of our security, what possible checks or limitations on Presidential power are left?

This debate is about the President's claimed wartime power to break the law, not his power to order surveillance. Put another way, for those who want to advocate this theory of unilateral executive power -- but who then also want to deny that they are foisting upon America the King it never wanted -- the question that must be answered is this:

Are there any limitations at all on what the President can do under the guise of national security and, if so, what are they? And, given this theory of the "wartime" President who can violate the laws of Congress and who can ignore the courts in areas of national security, what legal foundation could exist to argue for any such limitations? [...]

Once it is accepted that George Bush has the power to violate the laws of the United States (such as FISA) based on his status as a "wartime" President, there is no coherent way to claim that he is without the power to unilaterally impose still-greater intrusions. A theory that allows the President to violate Congressional statutes and which denies any role of judicial review is a theory which has no theoretical or legal ground for limiting the President’s conduct in any way during "wartime."