Obama campaigned on the constitutional idea that the legislature makes laws. He denounced Bush's practice of altering laws with signing statements. As president, Obama, for a while, used signing statements just as Bush had, to claim more powers for the president (and every future president), including this power to claim more powers. Then Obama established the practice of assuming that prior signing statements or executive orders or secret legal memos could be used in place of new signing statements. This is even worse and more secretive than Bush's practice of announcing which laws he would violate. Obama announced that he would review Bush's signing statements and decide which ones to keep, but not whether those decisions would be public, and with no explanation of how that process was any more constitutional than Bush's. Obama also began making law, including "law" on lawless imprisonment by executive order. Congressional Republicans like Buck McKeon want that particular law to be even worse, and so have objected to its imperial announcement. But they won't push that balance-of-powers fight very far.
Both parties have now established as flawless heroes people who engage in some of the same abuses. And whoever's next will be hard pressed to even call those abuses abuses, should he or she miraculously want to. The U.S. Supreme Court accepts powers used without opposition by multiple presidents as established presidential powers. Signing-statementing laws is now one of those powers.
So is secret and imperial war-making. John Kerry and John McCain want Libya bombed. John Yoo, not yet prosecuted for having "legalized" aggressive war, agrees with them. Obama, to his great credit, has not yet taken that step. But the debate is over policy choices, not laws. The fact that bombing another country is illegal is no longer considered a fact in Washington, D.C. It's a fringe opinion. And that is what scares me.
The abolition of slavery started with one person saying it was wrong and demanding change. We have to do that when it comes to the matter of ending the imperial presidency and establishing a representative republic. I want anyone who engages in the abuses discussed above impeached, prosecuted, voted out of office, and shamed. We have to pursue justice for 4 or 8 years with liberals resenting us and 4 or 8 years with rightwingers resenting us, and so on, back and forth. That means pushing where we spot a little bit of give in the machinery. It means exposing the torture of Bradley Manning and supporting anything Congressman Dennis Kucinich does to expose it and anything any other congress members do if any ever join him. It means demanding a complete end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan. And it means building viable movements of resistance at the state level as Wisconsin is doing. Join us at the White House at noon on March 19th. Get involved here:
http://warisacrime.org/content/upcoming-events
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