Where Are Your Civil Liberties Going?

Two interview segments here from constitutional law expert Joanthan Turley, who lays it out plain and simple about how Bush and Co. regard the Constitution. Scary stuff, indeed.

(Segment #1 is from C&L 6/24/06)

"This raises the question… of the absence of congressional authorization. The president is allowed to enforce the laws, not to make them. He requires authorization from congress. Every week we have some new massive databank or surveillance program being revealed that has not been approved by congress…. in this case, all we know is that some members of the intelligence committees were informed. Under this law they are citing, IEPA, [the president] was only supposed to use his authority for a brief amount of time- in an emergency. He was then supposed to go back to congress to get real authority. Instead, he kept on mentioning it to the same oversight members… Secretary Snow and his associates have said, look- we did have oversight – it wasn’t congress, it wasn’t the court, we went out and hired a private company and they did the oversight. They protected your civil liberties. This is a type of outsourcing of the constitution- it is almost laughable that they believe oversight means that they looked at it themselves, felt good about it, and then hired a private company- and they felt pretty good about it, too."

Segment #2 aired in mid-May (scroll down on C&L 5/10/06) and is even more poignant. Please note the final comment.

"Bush reached out to people who had been convicted or pleaded guilty to crimes during the Reagan and Bush administrations. What emerged through the two terms was that people who seemed to be accused of violating the law had a rapid ascent in this administration, and one has to wonder whether this is suddenly a criteria- that the president likes people who are willing to go the edge of the law and beyond it to achieve what he believes is a worthy purpose.

The real check and balance for [presidential power] rests in Congress. Congress has done nothing- do you realize that congress has not even held a substantive investigation of the NSA operation? An operation that most of us believe was criminal- that the federal law defines quite clearly as a federal crime. Instead of investigating that, the congress gave the president a standing ovation during the State of the Union speech when he promised to continue to violate that law.

This president’s theory of his own power is now so extreme I think its unprecedented. He believes he has the inherent authority to violate federal law. He has said that- not only in the signing statements, but in the infamous torture memo that Alberto Gonzales signed, that he could in some circumstances order federal officials to violate federal law. And this is consistent across the board with this president. Frankly, I am not too sure what he thought he was swearing to when he took the oath of office to uphold the constitution…. I have never seen a president who is so uncomfortable in his constitutional skin.

Civil liberty is a very precious commodity; when you lose it- it tends to run out of your hand like sand and its hard to get it back... presidents, when they acquire power, rarely return it to the people. This country is changing in a very significant way, and its something that citizens have to think about. We’re really at a point where the president is arguing about his own presidential power in ways that are the antithesis of the Constitution and the values that it contains."