Each day reveals more and more the malfeasance toward our constitutional heritage, the intent to force extra-legal "unitary" constructs upon us, and ultimately the foundations of an authoritarian regime change affecting our very future democracy.

What hideous people those Bushies have been! -Kevo

Jeezus kerist. The only thing that was stopping us from a full fledged descent into night and *&^% fog was the fact that although they created the legal framework for having the military kick down our doors and drag us out they were too damned lazy and inefficient and uninterested in public security to actually do any of this except to the odd dark skinned muslim person. Its hard to know what is more disgusting--the fact that they leaped to destroy our constitutional protections against tyranny or that they did so purely, it seems, "in case" they got around to actually needing these new powers. And then they didn't bother to use them because of course they weren't needed and wouldn't have done any good if they had been needed.

aimai

The other striking thing has always been that they did all this in secret (including the retraction.) They claimed to believe the president had absolute power, but they didn't have enough confidence in that idea to actually tell anyone. They knew it would have caused outrage, even in the era of "be afraid and let us protect you." I suspect it was like the Project for a New American Century -- they were waiting for another "Pearl Harbor," at which point this would become the way things had always been, really.

Considering how incompetent and counterproductive their anti-terrorism efforts were, I shudder to think how close we came...

For quite a while, Yoo, Bybee, & Co. believed the "war on terror" trumped the Fourth Amendment.
--------------

You're assuming they believed this. The evidence is that they asserted it, but I very, very strongly doubt they believed any of it.

Why give them the benefit of the doubt?

The Internet Said It
I Believe It
And That Settles It

The real danger in all of this isn't the fact that Yoo and Bybee were effectively creating "legal opinions" that were unequivocally designed to justify the pre-desired path chosen by Bush/Cheney; that's been done before by these scum, and it'll no doubt be tried again in the not-too-distant future, as America once again forgets the crimes committed by its leaders.

The real danger is, of course, that the rank-and-file noisemakers of the Bush administration---the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and their jackbooted kith and kin---are permitted to run-at-the-mouth rampant through the fields of AM radio and visual media. It has been proven, time and again throughout the history of the human species, that the only way to truly defeat tyranny is not to merely remove the reigns of power from the tyrant, but to likewise remove the reigns of drivellous, goo-like verbosity and propagandizing from the machinations built up to promote, support, and defend that tyranny.

Japan outlawed its militancy, and became a free democracy. Germany banned National Socialism, and did likewise. Russia failed to evict the multitude of political malice that was the USSR---and we see today the dangerously negative aspects of that failure.

We, as a nation, can do only one of two things; there are no additional options or choices, and there is no room for political compromise: We can take the path of doing away with, once and for all, that which has sullied our Constitution and risked America from becoming that which we do not dare envision---or we can prepare to allow the eventual descent into darkness that we have just recently only avoided by the barest of margins....

Steven Bradbury, the then-principal deputy assistant attorney general, warned that a series of opinions issued secretly by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel "should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose."

Yes, just before leaving they turned off the monarchical power switch because that only belongs to Republican presidents.

Could they possibly have been any more shameless and nakedly transparent in their illegitimate power grab? They've proven that in the Republican mind, rights and authority are based on person and party.

We're All Socialists Now

In recent days, the GOP has renewed it's cries of "Obama is a socialist and wants the government to take over everything."

I guess "Communism" doesn't have the resonance it used to, being officially on the outs just about everywhere but Cuba and North Korea.

Now, why might Americans fear socialism? There are basically two reasons.

1. Economics. This is the fear that the "means of production" would be taken over by the state, leaving little or no choice in the marketplace. That's a valid concern in principle.

But in practice, in most markets, our choices are practically limited to corporate monopolies anyway. Where I live, if you want cable TV and fast Internet, you end up with Comcast. Yeah, you can go with AT&T, but the DSL data speeds available here are heaps slower, and the terrain around my house precludes the use of DirectTV satellite. It's definitely way better to have some choice than none, but most of us do not lose lots of sleep over the fact that our choices are de facto limited.

2. Repression. The nominally "socialist" parties of Western Europe don't go in for rights abuses these days. But in the US, there abides the fear that socialism leads to Communism. And that is the BIG reason why the word "socialism" invokes fear.

The criminal Communist regimes like the USSR and East Germany did trample on human rights willy nilly, and Cuba and North Korea continue the tradition. Their techniques include arbitrary search and seizure, arrest with limited ability to challenge legalities, aggressive interrogation, extra-judicial detention, trials in which the defense is denied access to "classified" evidence.

But wait. With this week's release of internal legal memos, it is now a matter of public record that the Regime of G W Bush deliberately sought to enshrine in policy EXACTLY the extra legal techniques of repression employed by criminal "socialist" regimes. And they were well on their way to implementing them, but got tripped up by a few principled military lawyers, journalists, and the fact that Congress changed hands in 2006. (Love those checks and balances.)

The other day, the women on The View commented on the fact that for his aggressive speech to CPAC, Rush Limbaugh chose to wear a black suit and shirt, and discussed whether it made him look thinner or not.

I remember that back in the 1930s, there were noteworthy political groupings in Europe that fancied black uniforms. They weren't keen on respecting constitutional rights when they got in the way of the State's plans, either.

The Democrats may well be trending toward Economic Socialism. The Republicans, however, evidently prefer National Socialism.

Inasmuch as each member of the OLC was quite familiar with what was desired by the unitary executive, our very intimate knowledge rendered invalid any judgement or relevance to law, as the power of the unitary in eye to eye gaze or hand to shoulder contact to displace all moral duty, fortitude or resistance; it became the job of the OLC to comply because National Security requires that we each take leave of our own senses in subordination to the omnipotent unitary in whatever capacity he may require whether personal or professional.

The idea of "the war on terror" is for Yoo, Bybee, et al what the idea of "counter-revolutionary acts" was for Lenin and Stalin. But why worry about unchecked power located in a single leader and a vast bureaucracy acting in his name? What could go wrong with that?

Can someone explain why Berkeley School of Law is paying John Yoo to be teach law? Heck he should be disbarred.

Yoo should be booted from the Berkeley law school. Bybee should be impeached. This isn't just shoddy work or controversial minority opinions for which they should be insulated from adverse actions. This was facilitation and advocacy -- while in important positions in government -- of disregard of the constitution and flagrant violation of constitutionally protected, and historically recognized, civil liberties. They have a right to say whatever they want as private citizens, but Bybee is wholly unfit to be a judge, and Berkeley has no business giving Yoo a platform or allowing him to teach students.

Steve W.: If I understand your point, please remember that unlike Japan and Germany, we have a First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech. The way to counter Rush is with the likes of Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow, not with legislation.

legal excesses that were "far greater than previously known,"

Why do I get the feeling that this will be a recurring theme as we learn some of the dark secrets of the Bush cabal?

That Settles It- your argument that they didn't beleive what they were writing and probably saying in private is utter semantic nonsense. Do you go around asserting destroying the constitution as a frivolous lark.Bullshit.

"And by 'broad definition,' we're talking about Bush's authority to do pretty much anything he pleased." - Steve B.

And just last week, we had right wing-nuts complaining because President Obama was not enforcing all the laws (HOLDER TO END MEDICAL MARIJUANA RAIDS).

And I pointed out that the Unitary Executive can enforce/break whatever laws s/he likes.

Q.E.D.

"Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties. Not only is that thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good."

To this day, a majority of the wingnuts I know are still willing to give up all civil liberties to "fight the terrorists." Arguing with them that giving up what makes us who we are - our civil liberties - means that the other side wins without a fight will only get derision and name-calling.

It's very scary to see just how close we came to taking the path of that guy whose political rise in German was financed by Bush's grandfather.

But...but...Rush just said that conservatism was about liberty!

There has been some speculation that Bradbury's retraction was to cover his ass, retroactively. I have wondered if was it done to proactively undercut Obama's use of these rulings going forward.

Unbelievable. It's as though they were making it up as they moved along...

I'm sure all the victims of the illegal Bush/Cheney so-called anti-terrorism tactics are happy that their imprisonment, torture, invasion of privacy, and denial of due process was "not [to] be treated as authoritative for any purpose." Hey, just a mistake.

Does a last minute cancellation of the unconstitutional policies that resulted from the bogus DOJ legal opinions insulate anyone from prosecution for their implementation?

Or was it only the freedom from reprisal from within the Bush thugocracy that allowed an official to find the courage to finally overthrow the totalitarian dictums commissioned by war criminal Cheney?

Hopefully, by releasing all this bilge Obama is slowly building a case for a special prosecutor to hold those at the top responsible.

While it doesn't lessen the impact of these ongoing revelations, we didn't really need the revelations to understand what was going on in the minds of the WH. Just refer to multiple Congressional hearings with Mr. Gonzales where he specifically refused to admit that there was anything that the President did not have the authority to do, legislation or even the Constitution notwithstanding.

The only thing that was stopping us from a full fledged descent into night and *&^% fog was the fact that although they created the legal framework for having the military kick down our doors and drag us out they were too damned lazy and inefficient and uninterested in public security to actually do any of this except to the odd dark skinned muslim person.

Or, possibly, that while they could lay the theoretical foundations, they couldn't really be confident in enough people going along with it if they tried to put what they theorized about into much more practical application than they did (which was, in itself, rather extreme, but nowhere near as bad as the authority they claimed.)

Question, does anyone know if these policies have been discarded yet under Obama? If not, then vilifying the other side doesn't make much sense.

Lately I just look at all of Congress as being on the same page on 'the important things' like bank bailouts and such while they continue to stir up bickering about the usual BS. The things they argue so fervently about will effect us a lot less than continued corporate rule through bailouts... but it is just a show.

"...Here's hoping the Obama administration takes this to heart, and does far more to distance themselves from the abhorrent ideas that the president's predecessor embraced for far too long."-Steve Benen

Like most of us here you don't like seeing Obama continuing the Bush/Cheney imperial presidency.
His DoJ has gone out of its way, including defying a court order to continue the "state's secrets" agenda of making sure that the president can do anything he wants and as long as he claims it as a states secret issue no court or judge or congress or ANYBODY but the president can review it or investigate it.

So sad...Obama=Bush secrets. Glenn Greenwald has been keeping us up to date...because most other bloggers can't bring themselves to talk about it.

Do you go around asserting destroying the constitution as a frivolous lark.
==========

1. I don't advocate (I suspect that's probably what you meant) destroying the Constitution.
2. I don't think Yoo & Co. were frivolous or fooling. I think they were perfectly serious about destroying the Constitution.
3. I don't think they believed that there was a Constitutional basis for their claims, and I don't see a reason to give them the benefit of any doubt about that.

The Internet Said It
I Believe It
And That Settles It