You Could Shut Down Congress
[pp. 70-71] In time, [David] Addington and his cohorts’ legal excesses succeeded in uniting liberal champions of civil liberties and conservative critics of statism in opposition. … Bruce Fein, the Republican legal activist, said that Addington and other presidential legal advisers had “staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other administration.” Bush, he said, had “made claims that are really quite alarming. He’s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President’s reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world’s a battlefield — according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It’s got the sense of Louis XIV: ‘I am the State.’”
– Jane Mayer
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday; $27.50) In Stock.
