9 Memos Reveal 2nd Rate Bush Lawyers Sought 1st Rate Powers

http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2009/03/03/9-memos-reveal-2nd-rate-bush-lawyers-sought-1st-rate-powers/

By Tommy Christopher
Mar 3rd 2009 12:25PM

On Monday, the Obama administration released 9 memos that bring into clearer focus the powers claimed by Bush administration lawyers. The memos claim, for the
President, authority that stops just short of the right of primo nocte, although I can't be sure that wasn't covered in one of Bush's umpteen-zillion signing statements. From the New York Times:

Some of the positions had previously become known from statements of Bush administration officials in response to court challenges and Congressional inquiries. But taken together, the opinions disclosed Monday were the clearest illustration to date of the broad definition of presidential power approved by government lawyers in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

...The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully." It added that "the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."

The story goes on to detail how Bush Justice Dept. official Steven Bradbury issued an "Oops!" memo 5 days before Bush split town, calling the opinions "doubtful propositions," and blaming the opinions on "novel and complex questions in a time of great danger and under extraordinary time pressure." I guess Barney was just too small to have plausibly eaten their homework.

The memos underscore a fundamental flaw in Bush administration thinking:they turned on its head the axiom that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Their theory seems to have been that it's easier, still, to remove the requirement for permission.

One of the authors of these, John Yoo, also wrote a long-since public memo nearly erasing the goalposts on torture. After reading these, it seems his main intent was to allow himself to torture the law. The memos are filled with a weird Yahtzee scoring system, where some combinations of executive powers outweigh Constitutional rights if they come tumbling out of the cup just so.

This philosophy is powered by a desire to make things simpler, to bend the law to fit any situation. "National security conservatives," which include a whole lot of Democrats, want to legislate for the Jack Bauer contingency, the ticking timebomb, so that the most extraordinary case becomes the exception, rather than the rule.

Yes, it is easier to not need permission, but the bargain that we make when we are born or sworn as Americans is that we will protect our country, even from its own leaders