I am amazed that the court ruled against Bush. This gives the impeachment proceedings new impetus, branding Bush the out and criminal he is.

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We wuz just following orders was the defense at Nuremburg

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I have believed for some time that the country is one election away from losing our democracy all together. I just don't know if it's the next one, or the last one.
But I'm not sure the dolts who keep voting for these idiots deserve to live in a free country. They just might get what they deserve this fall.

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The reason why this article lacks a forceful conclusion is for the basic reason that it's hamstrung itself with the premise that "normally" the US is a functioning democratic republic and that the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, war crimes, torture, political repression, and the like are anomalies.

As you may be expecting me to say, none of them are anomalies. They are the modus operandi of the US elite.

Laws govern only the conduct of the commoners. Pampered aristocrats such as our Presidents have always been have an unbroken record of war crimes, wars of aggression, and political repression for as long as the adequate historical record extends. No matter the severity, they've had complete impunity. In matters such as murder, rape, or even theft on the grandest scales, the rich man is above the law. In contrast, it doesn't even matter which commoner actually did what. Just pick one of your favorite color, lock him up, and throw away the key.

The US' atrocities in Latin America are not some Reaganite invention, but stretch back into the mists of the early 19th century. Political repression predates the Constitution; protests against debtor's prisons were the first things crushed after the Revolutionary War was won. The record continues unbroken from coal miners being mowed down with machine guns to the Palmer Raids to COINTELPRO and its various assassinations to the FBI carbombing Judi Bari and Bush's "free speech zones" and "national security events."

The vision of democracy you're railing against isn't Bush's, but that of the "founding fathers" themselves. The purpose of the Constitution was to protect the "minority of the opulent" from the "levelling impulses of the masses" (c.f. Levellers from the English Civil War). Far from freedom and justice for all, only the rich were intended to vote as per Guizot's "enrichez vous;" they explicitly said, "Those that own the country ought to run it." By no means was "democracy" as we conceive of it intended in the least; the "founding fathers" would've called our notions of democracy "mob rule" by dint of universal suffrage alone.

The mechanisms evolved, but the effect and purposes have remained the same. Duverger's law was already known to the writers of the constitution, so the party duopoly was designed. That and the "democratic deficit" inherent in first-past-the-post and gerrymandering had already been seen in action in the British Parliament and were desired for the new plutocracy. Also note that 2000 and 2004 weren't the first Presidential elections decided by fraud and backroom deals; 1876 stands out in particular.

There are indeed issues with what is now happening, but they are the culmination of longstanding traditions. "Bush's sick vision of democracy," is not at play as such. It is rather a fantasy regarding an idealized past that never existed being shattered that provokes such outrage. The Clinton years witnessed massive wealth condensation and sweeping police state laws passed. COINTELPRO raged unchecked during "liberal" administrations prior. Carter started bankrolling OBL and al Qaeda and the neo- Nacht und Nebel extraordinary renditions, too.

Bush Jr. is as transparent a figurehead as the senile Reagan. The neocon ideologues are merely sloppy and bumbling enough to expose what's been ongoing for centuries. The sickness of American "democracy" is far more systemic and ingrained than Bush or any neocon.

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I did not mean to compare anything to anything. I meant Bush has lost his aura of invincibility and will give disseneters new incentive. All the grassroots impeachment proceedings being iniated will set a precedent. They are legal, we don't have to go thru Bush owned courts, if we did there wouldbe no hope

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“Decider” or dictator?

When Bush called himself “the decider,” he really meant dictator. That should be clear to most Americans by now. Bush, the Republican congress and half of the Supreme Court Justices have decided that they prefer a streamlined and more efficient form of government: they call it the unitary executive. That means one man calls all the shots and if you don’t like it, you can lump it.

lump it: to accept a situation or decision although you do not like it.

That sounds remarkably like the definition of dictatorship to half the country.

Maybe it’s time we added another definition to the term “lump it.” As in putting lumps on thick skulls.

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Re: The President breaks a law. A court rules that the President broke the law. Our Congress then responds swiftly by vowing to introduce a bill that would make the President's actions retroactively legal, thereby showing that his astute reading of the Constitution was simply ahead of its time.

I've been wondering why the ex post facto prohibitions in the Constitution don't apply here.

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We need to admit that most of the people in the White House and Congress are criminals guilty on multiple counts then we need to impeach their criminal asses or otherwise get them locked up so we can have our democracy back.

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"I was just following orders" is not a viable defense for anyone who commits war crimes was determined as part of the judgement at Nuremberg. That is the basis for the determiniation that soldiers do NOT have to follow orders when the commanding officer orders a soldier to do something that is illegal or immoral. A soldier has the right to refuse to carry out any orders that are illegal or immoral. (The Geneva Convention has the same rules. US military personnel are supposed to get that information when they enter service, and that was recently omitted from US military manuals.)

The Nuremberg Judgement also determined that pre-emptively invading another nation is also a war crime. (I can't find the quote in my files this minute, but SCOTUS Justice Jackson of the US who was also one of the Nuremberg judges wrote one of the definitive opinions on it.)

Why so many Dems have voted for bills introduced by neoCons that help the Criminal Cabal (who gained their offices by a questionable SCOTUS decision and a rigged election after that) is beyond my comprehension....

It only gives the wannabe dictator the power of the de facto dictatorship currently in place to pass laws that strip US citizens of rights and privileges granted to us under the Constitution.

The current administration is the worst ever in the history of the US. They MUST be impeached; after that, they need to be charged with war crimes by the World Court, tried at The Hague, and put in jail for the rest of their lives!

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We have present examples of gulags and concentration camps, Abu Garib and Gitmo

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The Dictator isn't worth mentioning - he doesn't know if he's coming or went and neither does his wife!

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......and so the President's 'game' goes on, even in the direct face of the Rep. Chaiman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra's demands that the House needs not play 20 Questions with Bush to get the answers that it needs, deserves, requires and will get ONLY by fully, without any further ado, setting the motion and practice to impech him into effect. Hoekstra's demands of the President dates back to c. mid May of this year. How long does it take him to read a 4 page document ? The more important question is when will America be a free country again and not a bush-league dictatorship? When will people stop sending Bush memos? He has already stated that no matter what he signs he has the right to renege on if HE so chooses. Ah, yes. so said Hitler to Stalin and so on and so on and so on. Mr. Hoekstra, the memo thing only works in a democratic framework. The other problem of course is that this is not a game that the President is playing. Remember 911?

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