It’s not the War that scares; It’s the power to arbitrarily make war!....

Bill Moyers always gives you lots of value for your time.

Last night, his sermon had to do with torture and the invasion of privacy. And the extraordinary display of power of this president.

Who could resist—especially with a guest like Fritz O. Schwarz, Jr. who is the senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School…and, perhaps more interestingly….

The former lead counsel for the Church Committee, a Senate committee that investigated executive overreach from FDR to Nixon issuing 14 reports over three years.

Moyers, always trying to play a balanced hand, asked Schwarz what he thought was the one thing that worried Schwarz more than anything else about this government.

Schwarz did have to think a moment before answering that his greatest concern was that this president thought that he was above the law; that he had the power to write, change and interpret the law as he saw fit.

He thought that Congress’ ceding power to the Executive to pursue terrorism inferred that he, the president, had the power to do whatever was necessary in his own judgment.

In so doing, Schwarz stated time and time again, that George Bush had violated the Constitution and the law of the land.

His main concern was that Bush did not feel constrained by the law; or that he had to be subject to them which concerned Schwarz because of Bush’s recent rhetoric on Iran that seemed to emulate what happened with Iraq. Schwarz was worried that we may be seeing a repeat of the aggressive behavior that led to Iraq beind duplicated in an unjustified war against Iran.

Moreover, Schwarz pointed out that Bush did not seem constrained when it came to issues of torture or eavesdropping even after he violated the FISA courts by not abiding by the law that stated that the president had to get the permission of the special FISA courts to proceed with spying on fellow citizens….

Nor does Bush feel that he must debate this inasmuch as he is protected by his revised interpretation of Executive Privilege.

To any American, this is scarily reminiscent of the reign of Richard Nixon. Subsequently, during the presidency of Ford, Cheney, who believed that Richard Nixon’s rights had been compromised, fought for Executive Privilege and an expansion of the president’s rights. We are seeing this writ large in the antics of a man who is looking towards Nixon as an example of his own lack of constraints , a man who wants respect but , at the same time, does not feel that his actions are governed by the law.

If the American people do nothing here and Congress does not demonstrate that no one is above the law, we are setting dangerous precedent here that will come back to haunt us….


Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon

The Committee for Positive Change