Monday, March 27, 2006

Slacktivist takes a Sock at an MSU grad.

...and rightly so:

It's hard to imagine a lead sentence more perversely undemocratic than this, from Gina Holland of the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON -- His wartime powers undercut once before by the Supreme Court, President Bush could take a second hit in a case in which Osama bin Laden's former driver is seeking to head off a trial before military officers.

Oh, that meddlesome Supreme Court, always going about undercutting the wartime powers of our wartime president. Those whiny justices, always worrying about whether or not the executive branch's claims of unchecked, absolute power are constitutional. It's always "blah, blah, blah, rule of law, blah, blah, blah" with them.

If they keep this up, eventually they'll undercut everyone's power to break the law with impunity. And then where will we be?

Seriously, is this really how Gina Holland understands the role of the Constitution? As some kind of threat to the president's otherwise limitless power? This is the framework she presents. Read that again:

His wartime powers undercut once before by the Supreme Court ...

Are there no editors at the Associated Press who remember fourth-grade social studies?

President Bush's earlier claims to unlimited power were ruled -- with the definitive final say of the Supreme Court -- to be unconstitutional, illegitimate, nonexistent. He has no "powers" -- wartime or otherwise -- other than those granted to him by the Constitution.

Holland turns this on its head. She seems to think it is the courts' concerns about constitutionality and legality that are illegitimate. Not just illegitimate, but dangerous -- undercutting the president during wartime, after all, sounds like something that would weaken America.

If one accepts Holland's view then not only does the Constitution become irrelevant, but the Magna Carta starts to look a bit shaky.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

and you send this as a LTE at the Clarion Ledger...PLEASE? PLEASE ...OH PRETTY PLEASE!!!

LOVE THE POLLANTARY!!!

gorjus said...

Y'all bit me. Gina Holland is an ace reporter, and I think she was just using this as a figure of speech . . .

Polly said...

figure of speech? maybe so. she's talking about how he behaves...as if these powers where clearly his w/o question. from that point of view, maybe so.