Political Games - Where the fuck’s the reset button?

In a nutshell, this is it. The key highlights:

“A capitalist liberal (libertarian) democracy is merely a theory that is unsustainable under threat of war or terrorism”

I strongly reject this terrible message and I urge you and the Democratic Party to do the same. I sternly reject the notion perpetrated by Bush and his cronies that somehow American’s admired liberal democratic traditions cannot be sustained in wars and in the fight against terrorism. President Bush, in his words and actions, has demonstrated that he is always quick to raise the white flag of surrender and cut and run from America’s fundamental governing principles and philosophies. The words and actions of Bush and his blind supporters in Government and the media, regrettably, help America’s enemies perpetrate the myth that people worldwide should abandon dreams of liberal democracy because such democracy is not possible under threats to the people’s security. I simply and soundly reject this false notion and act of surrender to terrorists and communist dictators everywhere, an act that also deceives all our children - the future of America - into believing that you cannot have a liberal democracy in this world as long as there are terrorists around.

Read here, here, and here for my takes on it [the second is Justin, but he sums up my feelings nicely].

The Bush [and the pseudo-libertarians and conservative apologists who follow him] idea is that he has the authority to do WHATEVER he wants, unchecked by any other branch or authority, so long as he claims he is furthering the war on terror. When asked what checked him, he said “his oath to uphold the Constitution”.

That is bullshit. The Legislative Branch is suppose to check the power of the executive. The Judicial Branch is suppose to check the power of the executive. And vice versa, all the way around. But now we have a President of the United Fucking States claiming he can do whatever he wants. The only check on him is his word. I trust President Bush about as far as I can throw him: not at all [the Secret Service wouldn’t let me near him]. The man has lied, repeatedly. He said, on numerous occasions, that the intelligence community still had to get a court warrant in order to get wiretaps. He said this throughout 2004 and 2005 when he was asked about the Patriot Act. All the while, he was knowingly ordering wiretaps against American citizens without getting these orders. Because, apparently, when it comes to terrorism, our laws and our civil liberties mean jack shit. They don’t matter one damn bit, because the President has the authority to do anything to win the war on terror.

Bush has argued that the NYT people who broke this story have compromised national security. If so, John at Americablog asks, did Bush have the authority to assassinate the editors of the NYT to prevent the story from being leaked? If not, why not? If Bush has the authority to break a law forbidding him to wiretap, why does he not have the authority to break the law against assassination [or murder, or any law]? Are some laws more equal than others?

Are we a nation of laws, of principles… or are we a nation of men, of cults of personality?

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