[Peace-discuss] Impeachment now

C. G. Estabrook galliher at uiuc.edu
Fri Dec 9 20:02:02 CST 2005


   Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a 
   goddamned piece of paper'
   By Doug Thompson
   Capitol Hill Blue
   Friday, December 9, 2005

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the
Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk
about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked
period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American
Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent
conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose
renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more
onerous provisions of the act could further alienate
conservatives still mad at the President from his botched
attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the
Supreme Court.

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President
and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a
valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the
Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed
back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day
and they all confirm that the President of the United States
called the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper."

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the
United States is little more than toilet paper stained from
all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped
on the freedoms that "goddamned piece of paper" used to guarantee.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House
counsel, wrote that the "Constitution is an outdated document."

Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal
beliefs. It doesn't matter if you are a Democrat, Republican
or Independent. It doesn't matter if you support the invasion
or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has
stood for two centuries as the defining document of our
government, the final source to determine -– in the end -– if
something is legal or right.

Every federal official -– including the President -– who takes
an oath of office swears to "uphold and defend the
Constitution of the United States."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when
someone calls the Constitution a "living document."

""Oh, how I hate the phrase we have—a 'living document,'"
Scalia says. "We now have a Constitution that means whatever
we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism,
for Pete's sake."

As a judge, Scalia says, "I don't have to prove that the
Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it's better
than anything else."

President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the
Constitution over the last five years, including a
controversial amendment to define marriage as a "union between
a man and woman." Members of Congress have proposed some
11,000 amendments over the last decade, ranging from repeal of
the right to bear arms to a Constitutional ban on abortion.

Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution
comes from a loss of rights.

"We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones,"
Scalia warns. "Don't think that it's a one-way street."

And don't buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is
a necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law
that infringes on the rights of every American citizen and, as
one brave aide told President Bush, something that undermines
the Constitution of the United States.

But why should Bush care? After all, the Constitution is just
"a goddamned piece of paper."


"Look property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property.
Therefore this ship is mine, Okay?"
-Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag
and carrying a cross.
-Sinclair Lewis



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