Marshall on the DoD Legal Case That the President Is Above the Law
Joshua Micah Marshall is one of many who are commenting on a Wall Street Journal article that describes a Defense Dept. report on legal justifications for engaging in torture and near-torture: The Wall Street Journal has an extraordinary article… At issue is the report’s profoundly anti-democratic argument that the president, by virtue of his commander-in-chief status, can in fact set aside any law that he wants to.
Not in my country he can’t.
I don’t care if Bush never paid attention when this point was covered in the McClasses he specialized in at Yale. (I love that story, by the way, about how one of the jocks, checking the signup sheet during registration, started crowing delightedly when he noticed that then-undergraduate George W. Bush was in a class he’d signed up for, because it meant the course would be easy.) The fact is, neither the president nor anyone else in the US is above the law. That’s one of the key principles, perhaps the key principle, of our system of government, a system that generations of Americans have fought and died to defend, a system that Bush himself is sworn to defend.
For the good of the Republic, Bush seriously has to go.
June 8th, 2004 at 12:59 am
While minor, the clearest example that comes to mind is that a president stands for his country’s anthem, while a king does not.
A king is the embodiment of what the anthem is to, and thus sits and receives it. A president is a citizen of the nation, and thus required to pay respects as any other man would.
June 8th, 2004 at 7:18 pm
Seems Rush Limbaughs flagrant abuse of the law is an example to all Republicans everywhere. Do whatever you want. We’re republicans, and we own the law.