John Yoo…
…continues to be revealed as the spearhead of an unparalleled attack on the civil liberties and basic human rights of the American citizenry.
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/documents/memostatusolcopinions01152009.pdf
…an interesting analysis here,
http://volokh.com/posts/1236036389.shtml
offers some insight into the Feinstein/Specter FISA legislation of ’06, which just didn’t seem to make sense at the time.
Ugly stuff.
What’s Obama going to do with all the land mines left lying around the DOJ and OLC?
Not much, apparently.
While I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the President’s actions so far (honestly – who really expected him to take such a proactive and forward stance on environmental issues?) there hasn’t been much to laud in his relative Inaction in regard to the constitutional siege warefare of the Bush years. “Inaction” may in fact be entirely too neutral a term, as the current OLC is actually engaged in a concerted defense of some of the more disturbingly Nixonian acts of the Bush years – see
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202428328854
I am frankly – and unpleasantly – not surprised to see the Obama administration essentially falling in line with the Bush administration’s understanding of Executive Privilege and it’s concomitant expansion of Presidential powers. This was my main – and nearly sole – reservation when it came time to vote in the Presidential primary.
I am leery of a strong, charismatic Democratic president working to expand even further the limits of executive power. An implicit endorsement of the concept of the Unitary executive and a buttressing of the legal foundation for it under Deomocratic party control of the executive branch isn’t desireable – it’s scary. Add monolithic partisan conrol of the House and Congress, trying economic times, and a strong desire in certain parts for a “Daddy/Mommy” state, and you have a recipe for disaster.
It’s not so much that I think Obama himself is going to abuse the powers we (The People) cede to him, it’s what comes farther down the road.
Would Bush II have been possible without Clinton? Would Nixon without Kennedy?
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