Recently in Constitution Category

Funny how a Democratic President can remind all Members of Congress that they hold the power of the purse and do not have to accept an out-of-control executive branch. As CQ Politics David Nather reports after the House voted 429-2 to negate an Obama Administration signing statement:

Cut off the money? Congress can do that? Well, yes, that's one of the most basic oversight tools Congress has. It's just odd that no one remembered that during the years when President George W. Bush was burying the Hill in signing statements, and making far more sweeping claims of executive power than Obama has.

Ah, yes, this highlights another problem. Yes, it is hypocritical for Congressional Republicans to suddenly remember they have an oversight role in our Constitutional Republic. (Does one get a headache after such a sudden revelation?) But, for me, the bigger problem lies with the Obama Administration continuing to issue signing statements after all we experienced over the past eight years.

Better choices, please.

I agree with Digby, and thank Richard Clarke for pointing out that the trauma of September 11, 2001, is no excuse for bad decisions made by government leaders. As Clarke writes:

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

I believe this zeal stemmed in part from concerns about the 2004 presidential election. Many in the White House feared that their inaction prior to the attacks would be publicly detailed before the next vote -- which is why they resisted the 9/11 commission -- and that a second attack would eliminate any chance of a second Bush term. So they decided to leave no doubt that they had done everything imaginable.

There should be no excusing this. Nor forgiving it. And as the evidence suggests, more investigations are in order.

We must come to terms with what happened if we hope to restore our national honor.

As Harpers' Scott Norton explains, Senator Leahy endorses this necessary idea.

Rick Perlstein wants concerned people on the internet to highlight an outrageous quote from then Rep. Dick Cheney -- a quote that could have served as a warning to us had we remembered it.

In the Minority Report about the Iran-Contra hearings, Rep. Cheney asserted:

To the extent that the Constitution and laws are read narrowly, as Jefferson wished, the Chief Executive will on occasion feel duty bound to assert monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit him to exceed the law.

Yes, to read the Constitution narrowly is to reject it. Suddenly, we are not a nation of laws. We are not a nation of checks and balances. The president, according to Cheney, can ignore our Constitution.

I hope the nation can recover from the past eight years of Vice President Cheney's outrageous reading of what the Founding Generation intended.