The Bush Crafted Dictatorship.
Scott Horton and Keith Olbermann discuss the powers which the Bush administration granted itself in secret. It matters not whether they ever availed themselves of these powers, it is shocking enough that they ever put forward the argument that they possessed them.
Bush was claiming the power of a dictator. He was claiming that he had the right to lock up anybody, American citizen or otherwise, and that no judge or jury had any right to even question what he had done. That is truly shocking.
And, the fact that they repealed this nonsense in the final five days of the presidency, does not change the fact that they claimed to have these powers for most of Bush's time in office.
The very least that needs to be done is that John Yoo must be disbarred and forbidden from ever again practicing law, a subject of which he appears to have no knowledge.
As Duke University law professor Walter Dellinger said, "You can never get over how bad these opinions were."
"The assertion that Congress has no role to play with respect to the detention of prisoners was contrary to the Constitution's text, to judicial precedent and to historical practice."Yoo simply couldn't have got it more wrong if he had tried. And yet, until January 15th 2009, these flawed opinions remained unrebuked. That's astonishing.
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