Myopia (mine)

[pecunium]

Bertie has (though I forget it sometimes... I am not free of tunnel vision) a more damning statement than the torture paragrapgh.

He thinks the President is the law.

Ponder that.

It's a staggering claim, the authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

Inherent. Part and parcel of the office is the ability to set aside the laws. If the President says do it, it isn't a crime. If the law says do it, and the President says don't, that isn't a crime either.

Forget Nuremburg. Forget Nixon (though he tried that gambit) forget the Rule of Law (how can one who is able to set a law aside, break one? The don't apply). Forget the consent of the governed. Forget the Magna Carta.

The President is above, nay, beyond the law. He defines it. He is the same, in effect, as Louis XIV. "L'Etat, C'est Moi"

Everyone should recoil. Republicans should be apalled. Democrats should be disgusted. Libertarians should tremble with righteous indignation.

But all of us should step back and think on it.

The proposed head of law enforcement for the United States has said that his boss answers to nothing but his sense of right and wrong.

I recall a previous leader of the people of America who thought that. His name too was George; George III.

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I hate being an Old Fogy, but guess that's what I am. It didn't use to be that any significant number of Americans would agree the The President is Above the Law, or that torturing anyone was acceptable behavior for Americans. Nor would any Government Official have even thought of asking Congress to establish and fund prisons intended to detain, indefinitely and without a jury trial, people who were merely suspected of criminal activity. Now... I don't think the majority will agree to these horrible and un-American ideas, but it looks as though quite a few will, and a majority of the voters seem to have elected a President who supports them. My world has been turned topsy-turvy, and I'm suddenly feeling too old to cope with this kind of thing.