Still Insisting that Reporting on Unwarranted Domestic Spying Endangered America
See, because if you just repeat something over and over and over and over again, it becomes true!
You all in the reality-based community are probably still asking people to explain how it endangers us, and asking for reasons in support of the claim and all that crazy kinda stuff.
But Jack Shafer and Glenn Reynolds have transcended such petty concerns.
See, because if you just repeat something over and over and over and over again, it becomes true!
You all in the reality-based community are probably still asking people to explain how it endangers us, and asking for reasons in support of the claim and all that crazy kinda stuff.
But Jack Shafer and Glenn Reynolds have transcended such petty concerns.
posted by Winston Smith at
12:40 PM
4 Comments:
What is infuriating about the press reaction to this whole affair is their near universal stuffing of the issue into the privacy vs. security box. Even supposing the the President's defenders are right, and this is a new kind of situation that demands additional power of suveilance, the administration simply never asked for it. Instead, they *told* the legislative and judicial branches of the government what they were going to do, and then ordered them to keep it secret from the public. Basicly, the President treated both Senators and federal Judges like employees in some buisiness that he owned. This would be a gross usurpation of power even if the law the Prez wanted to break was genuinely stupid and dangerous. To make as if what is wrong with all this is that the administration has stayed too far along some safety/liberty continuum is to miss the point entirely. Unfortunately, that is the way the question is couched in the Post poll, and we cannot be surprised at the numbers that came back.
That's right, A.
That's the real point. I wasn't even seeing this quite right.
Thanks for the insight.
Basicly, the President treated both Senators and federal Judges like employees in some buisiness that he owned.
Sounds exactly like what I read on Wikipedia just this morning about "Unitary Executive." (The doctrine that "all executive power is excercised hierarchically beneath the President, in the same manner that all the officers of a corporation might be organized beneath a chief executive officer.")
Yes, this is the issue here, and to my mind, is the main concern in the Alito confirmation debate.
Alito has called the Unitary Executive "gospel" and says the concept "best captures the meaning of the constitution’s text and structure." (Saw that last quote in a Sidney Blumenthal editorial.)
I've looked everywhere for 'Originalist' opposition to Alito's nomination, and alas, it's nowhere to be found.
You see, believing that in the post-Revolutionary period, after the long struggle to rid themselves of George's yoke, the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution imagined the President a 'unitary executive' requires either a severe ignorance of American history or good mind-altering chemicals.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home