You Gotta Be Kidding Me

November 2006, what a month it was. Well, Congress is going back to work and the Prez is going back to well whatever the hell he wants to. You might think that being decisively rebuked by an election would slow his roll, but you'd be wrong. Before recess Bush & Co. made known that just cause Republicans didn't control Congress they weren't going to change a damn thing. The Administration "refused to hand over two documents, including one in which Mr. Bush authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to establish secret prisons beyond the reach of American law or international treaties. The other set forth the interrogation methods authorized in these prisons - which we now know ranged from abuse to outright torture." (NYTIMES Editorial)

Then there is the mail-gate thing. I love adding "-gate" to the end of words, it sounds so...illegal. And in this case, fitting. So, Bush does these signing statements which basically "reinterpret" the law he is signing. By "reinterpret" I mean he exempts himself from the law he is signing. Most recently there was the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which, according the the NY Daily News "deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval (NY DAILY NEWS)." Not liking to be left out of anything, Bush read a signing statement that said the Executive could read any one's mail under "exigent circumstances", and left it at that. WTF???!!! You gotta be kidding me!!! What does exigent mean anyway???

"So what?" you might intelligently ask, who cares what he says, the law says something else. Good point, or at least it used to be. The new hot Constitutional phrase of the day is "unitary executive" which should read "imperial executive" as it assigns extra-constitutional (read: illegal) authority to the Executive as a co-equal branch of legislative government. The new "gets" on the Supreme Court are well-known advocates of such nonsense. So, basically what happens is Bush & Co. flaunt the law, and even if they lose keeping flaunting the law until it reaches the Supreme Court (which will take years) and hope one of the moderates dies and they can get their 5-4 majority of unitary exec scholars.

This plus signing statements on torture, the whole what-exactly-did-Jose-Padilla-do??? controversy, extra-Constitutional telephone surveillance, extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay's "enemy combatants", and the terrorists-read-"how-to-be-a-terrorist"-library-books-so-we-gotta-know-what-every-American-is-doing-at-the-library-and-probably-at-Borders-too thing...all of this adds up to the most amazing lack of respect for this nation's values and principles from a sitting President, ever. Oh well, at least television doesn't disappoint, Jack Bauer will be back soon to kill and/or torture possible witnesses and/or innocent Americans. And, lest we forget, American cinema has taken its cue from the Prez and now torture/snuff flicks have become mainstream entertainment...Saw 1-3, Hostel, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Turistas, Apocolypto, Casino Royale, See No Evil, Hitcher, If the Hills had Eyes 1 and 2, The Passion of the Christ, and many others. You know, GDub keeps talking about how "they" hate our freedoms, well, hell, if this is what freedom brings, I do too. Oh well, in the immortal words of the Three 6 Mafia, "roll wit it."