Judiciary Act of 1789, meet the Supreme Being

money quotes for me out of the Orange Count Register (4.00 / 2)

The thing I am really struck with is that when you are in the government, you have very little time to make very important decisions. You don't have the luxury to research every single thing

Just undo the Bill of Rights in a flash without thinking things through. Just sounds like a lazy conservative who had no problem with dictatorship. What did Mr. Bush get quoted saying twice? Things would be easier if he were the dictator.

These memos I wrote were not for public consumption. They lack a certain polish, I think - would have been better to explain government policy rather than try to give unvarnished, straight-talk legal advice.

WFT? He did not even understand the basic function of the OLC. The opinions were so bad because they were to justify the policy already set by Libby and Addington in Cheney's office

In terms of music, what I tend to listen to is classical music and then Top 40. Basically, there's a 400-year gap in my knowledge of music.

I'd say there is a 220 year gap in his knowledge of democracy.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Thu Mar 05, 2009 at 19:22:44 PM UTC

A personal testimonial: (4.00 / 3)

I live in a small West Virginia town. It's the one I grew up in. I work in another one, a lovely one-stoplight county seat in the eastern panhandle.

I hold a position of no small public trust there, and I'll admit that I've not always been exemplary in holding up my end of that bargain.

But I love that place, and the people in it. It's a place in our world with a large Democratic majority, but the dominant point of view is conservative.

That's okay. I'm hardly a textbook liberal on each and every issue, and I've learned a lot from the bootstraps wisdom of the folks there.

Still, I've often had to be a chameleon and adopt protective ideological coloring to get along there. That's frustrating sometimes; other times it's been rewarding to have fundamental assumptions and reflexive opinions challenged.

But I'll never forget the political aftermath of 9-11 in small town America, because I felt fascism blowing in the wind and blowing hard.

And it's because of the nature of my public position, one that requires febrile sensitivity to popular opinion in a little place where the social fabric is strong and yet, for reasons of size, quite weak, too, that I felt it so acutely.

Certain things simply could not be said. I remember thinking, "Is this what McCarthyism was like in the Fifties for someone in public life who'd been a lefty in the Thirties and Forties?"

Even in the economic circumstances we find ourselves in today, there is in my opinion no greater issue facing our country today than that of coming to terms with and rectifying this situation, even if that ultimately means the prosecution of former public officials and, yes, "criminalizing" policy differences between the current administration and the last one.

And I come to that conclusion the hard way: trying to first think like the good conservative folks in that little town and, if absolutely necessary, staking out a position opposite of theirs.

But only if absolutely necessary. And, in this case, it may be.

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by: benjaminwalter @ Thu Mar 05, 2009 at 21:00:05 PM UTC

I spent the Nixon years (4.00 / 3)

in the high desert of California. There was made for TV movie in 2004 about the Big One hitting California and part of it breaking off. Panned, but I was one of the 20 million that watched. The high desert became ocean front property. I remember feeling the San Fernando quake in 1971 that pancaked the interchanges.

We could see the base of the Sierras where the water to Los Angles, fought over as Chinatown portrayed, runs from the north down to the greedy swimming pool south. How did the native populations make their way in the past in this area? I would wonder what would happen if the Russians decided that the Naval Weapons Center was a good target.

East of the Sierras, California is Red. There was an active John Birch Society. Imagine my surprise when I was trick-or-treating for UNICEF in high school. I do remember the Impeach Earl Warren billboards, and he had served three terms as California Governor!

What I would find amazing about these times and the place I live now was having to remind my fellow Catholic parishioners, those who want to hang plastic fetuses in bags on the bulletin board, that the Pope was against the "War in Iraq". The dolts cannot image that maybe, just maybe, the cantor, would not need to be reminded of the Church's position before the election in that manner, or any woman who suffered a miscarriage. I am a lector and take my reading of The Word seriously.

When I went off to school, my dad did not want to see my picture on TeeVee or my name in the paper. I have a local position, and so does by lil bro' in Calif. so that's a had parental edict to keep now. I think he was talking about student protests at Cal. My position locally means I get one of those crimpy thingamajigs and carry a blue ink pen at all times.

"criminalizing" policy differences between the current administration and the last one.

This is not policy differences. This is little d differences. Shrub's dictatorship of because he said so, or democracy with three co-equal branches. Article I makes the law, not unpublished OLC opinions or secret executives orders. Article III interprets the law, not Richard B. Cheney's consiglieres.

Shrub saw the power benefits to war and maybe the way to a successful presidency. Wilson seemed to not like people with last names like mine, too many constants. In Calif. the Japanese-American internments camps were filled with those assembled at fairgrounds, now historic parks. Bush's group targeted those with too many vowels in their names. Like Benjamin Franklin said, I have never seen a good war or a bad peace.  

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

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by: CA Berkeley WV @ Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 03:45:20 AM UTC

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