Calling Ganders
By Mitch Berg
So here’s a question: It’s conventional “wisdom” among BDS-addled liberals that Bush has gutted the Constitution, razed civil liberties, laid siege to the Bill of Rights.
This from the party that not only pushed the ’94 Crime Bill and the ’96 Counterterrorism Bill – the two greatest guttings of real civil liberties in our lifetimes – but many of whom referred to people who opposed those infringements as “wackoes” and “nutcases”. It’s the party that is not only promotes the return of the Fairness Doctrine, but has a history of trying to censor criticism. They prance and gambol about like poo-flinging monkeys over Guantanamo Bay – but giggled like schoolgirls when the FBI murdered two Americans with conveniently-ugly beliefs and covered up the evidence of their wrongdoing.
So with that background in mind, someone please tell me (and this is not the first time I’ve asked) – precisely what civil liberties have Americans lost under Bush.
And when writing your list, please omit any claims to liberties – wiretapping, data mining – that actually shifted to “puree” under Clinton.
Thanks.
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:53 am
Peev bait, but I’ll bite 🙂
Before boarding a plane you must remove your shoes on the command of a TSA thug or you will Never Be Seen Alive Again. Soon TSA agents will be empowered to enter your home and make you present your footwear for inspection.
Foreigners captured while fighting American soldiers in foreign countries are liable to be taken to other foreign countries without their express consent.
It has now become much riskier to throw an oz or two in your suitcase before you catch your flight from NY to LA.
If you are a Mexican illegal immigrant you are now terrified of being mistaken for an Arab illegal immigrant and sent to cuba, where, ironically, you will not speak the language of your guards or the other inmates.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:37 am
Who was president when Ruby Ridge happened? I’m sure you know, but the sequence of your presentation might lead some to think that it followed the ’94 Crime Bill and the ’96 Counterterrorism Bill.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:50 am
Heh, I use that line all the time….”name ONE civil liberty you have lost under President Bush”. The only one the Democrats can name is that their phones are probably being tapped. It used to be the far right that was the most paranoid, now it’s also the left.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:53 am
Ruby Ridge:(Wikipedia)
“The events took place on August 21, 1992 on the Weaver family property, located on a hillside between Caribou Ridge and Ruby Creek near Naples in northern Idaho.”
“At his trial in 1993, which occurred during the federal siege of the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, Weaver faced an array of charges,…..winning Weaver’s acquittal on all charges except missing his original court date and violation of his bail conditions, for which he was sentenced to 18 months and fined $10,000. He was credited with time served and spent an additional four months in prison.”
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:03 am
PeterH,
It’s true, Ruby Ridge was under Bush I.
Waco was another story; and while I’m far from a Branch Davidian sympathizer, I do think that had Janet Reno been working for the Bush II administration, she’d be pilloried for her actions.
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
The killings at Ruby Ridge were under Bush I; the whitewash was during Clinton’s administration. All in all, I think the whitewash is the more serious offense at the Presidential level.
That said, there’s been an apparent loss of some uses of habeus corpus under Bush.
That’s about all I can play with this one. What lefties usually attribute as loss of liberties under the PATRIOT Act actually happened under FISA, which was passed Dhimmi Carter, and the use of the the FISA provisions
increased under Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II.
That said, and I hope you agree with this: that liberties were, as you say, shredded under Clinton is no excuse whatsoever for the same policies continuing under Bush.
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:21 am
No, indeed. I had hoped, before 9/11, that Bush would roll back some of Clinton’s (Clintons’?) more egregious abuses.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:00 am
Oh, I got one. Happened in Madison Wisc 2 weeks ago. There was a ceremony at the state capital to honor fallen law enforcement officers. They were going to sing a hymn at the ceremony. Anti-Christian bigots in Madison took it to court to get the hymn removed from the event.
Doest that count as a lost liberty?
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
“I do think that had Janet Reno been working for the Bush II administration . . .”
Never married, childless, yet while FL attorney General she was overzealous in her prosecution of child abusers http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1993-03-03/news/reno-reconsidered-part-b/
.
Nevertheless while AG of the United States she took responsibility for killing the 21 children at the Waco Siege. The other thing she’s famous for issending six year old Elian Gonzalez from US soil back to the only remaining hard line commie country in the Western hemisphere.
Her creepy factor is off the scale.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
The prosecution of Georgia Thompson bothers me, though I concede that it does not rise to the level of proving that this administration has shredded the Bill of Rights.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:36 am
what about Brandon Mayfield and Jose Padilla? Weren’t their civil liberties violated?
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:58 am
I’ll have to say, seeing that famous photo of the guy with the gun grabbing Elian Gonzalez was one time I felt like our country is really f*cked. His mom died tring to bring him to freedom. He was with family in Florida. Our gov’t took this little boy at gun point to send him to a re-education camp in Cuba.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Jose Padilla? You mean Abdullah al-Muhajir? Brandon Mayfield was detained as a material witness, not an enemy combatant.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
what about Brandon Mayfield and Jose Padilla? Weren’t their civil liberties violated?
Possibly and arguably. I might even be sympathetic to some elements of their cases. Of course let’s not forget that the question of “what rights does someone accused of being engaged in terrorism actually have” is very much an open one; the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to them, and the US Constitution doesn’t, entirely, either.
But let’s say that Mayfield and Padilla were totally innocent victims, for the sake of argument (and it’s certainly not true in Padilla’s case!). Individual miscarriages of justice are always with us; over 100 Americans have been released from Death Row in the last 30-odd years; each of them involve some constitutional rights being trampled. The fact that the law evolves, and that mistakes and policy disputes happen, are parts of human and legal nature, not Bush Administration policy.
I’m talking about rights systematically stripped from the entire population. The stuff the left has been complaining about ever since John Ashcroft entered the picture (before which they largely figured “libertarians” were idiots). What rights do you, Fulcrum, who are presumably not telephoning muj in Afghanistan for fun, not have to day that you enjoyed ten years ago?
I can name a few that I had 20 years ago that I – a relentlessly law-abiding guy – don’t today.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Well, there is asset forfeiture where you can lose your car, or house or cash without ever being convicted or in same cases charged, with any crime. Oh, wait. That goes back a ways. Can’t blame W for that one. Or Clinton for that matter. I think this goes back at least to Bush I, possibly even Reagan. But I can certainly blame every president since it started, and blame all those screaming idiots accusing Bush II of shredding the constitution for never even mentioning asset forfeiture. There is also the DUI checkpoints that accomplish nothing. Those have been around for awhile. It is now legal to pull me out of a car and shake me down for id if I happen to be a passenger in a car that breaks some sort of traffic rule. All of which predate George W. Bush. Oh, what else. I can no longer buy good cold medicine, I can no longer buy spray paint in bulk. In Ohio pre-Bush I had to provide a Social Security number to get my drivers license and fight to keep them from putting it on the license itself. I can not be friendly to female co-workers according to the sexual harassment laws I hear about every year for the last 12-13 years now as sexual harassment, unlike just about every other law, doesn’t depend on the intent, but rather on the feelings of the person the comment was made to. Or the feelings of someone who overheard it. Or the feelings of someone who heard about it. If I was Martin Luther King Jr I couldn’t make a phone call in the 60’s without the FBI listening in, but that was because of the Kennedys so that was cool. I no longer have a choice about wearing a seat belt, nor do I have a local say in the process as the feds have decided what is good for us and will withhold highway money if my state doest do what they tell us to do. Get kind of a weird feeling as I drive by a state line on my motorcycle when not wearing a helmet seeing those Buckle up for safety signs. I spent the first 20 years or so driving 55 miles a hour for the same reason as the seat belt law. I am sure there are more.
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Buzzkill, look into something called “paragraphs,” ‘kay? Either that or just go all the way and fill up 8-1/2 x 11″ sheets of paper with your musings and hand ’em out at the bus station.
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
typing while working. Kind of got away from me. Assuming everyone here can read. My apologies.
“Either that or just go all the way and fill up 8-1/2 x 11″ sheets of paper with your musings and hand ‘em out at the bus station.”
And why must it be “either or”? Why can’t I continue to do both?
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm
So here’s a question: It’s conventional “wisdom” among BDS-addled liberals that Bush has gutted the Constitution, razed civil liberties, laid siege to the Bill of Rights.
Ok, it’s WAYYYYYYY Beyond liberals or moderates or nearly any group you can name.. Dozens, hundreds of conservatives say the same thing, dozens, hundreds of lawyers – of constitutional historians, of constitutional scholars, say the same thing..
Once again, it’s Mitch creates a fictional argument so that he can prop up a fantasy.. it’s far from just liberals, and it’s absolutely true that Bush has done so.
He suspended habeaus corpus, disagree.. go tell it to Antonin Scalia who reprimanded Bush on this point.
He repeatedly made specious legal claims, stood by them RIGHT UP TO THE POINT they were to be ruled on, and then backed off.
He claimed (and you agreed) he didn’t violate due process by circumventing FISA – yet Congress changed the law to prevent him from being found in contempt legally, or worse, prosecuted for it.
He flouted subpeanas from Congress, lawfully served, and thereby essentially eliminated the oversight capability that Congress has on the enforcement of legislation.
Sure Mitch.. it’s all just smoke and mirrors, it’s just that, it’s Bush with the mirrors and you smoking the pipe.
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:36 pm
And Mitch, sorry, we have no obligation to NOT talk about wire-tapping, etc.. Those were Gross violations, and your bullcrap complaints regarding Clinton don’t make the problems of Bush any less, or any more legal, that is, unless you think only in terms of victory and ‘my side’, etc.. rather than in terms of what’s right for the country…
But.. well, that IS how you think, so I guess I’m not surprised you’d try to backhand real complaints that don’t fit your mold.
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
ummm Peev, miboy. When asked “What did Bush do?” you don’t say. “Well Clinton did…” that doesn’t answer the question.
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:40 pm
And Mitch, sorry, we have no obligation to NOT talk about wire-tapping, etc..
PB, you missed the point. My point wasn’t that we don’t have no obligation to avoid talking about wiretaps. Indeed, I didn’t avoid saying that at all. In fact, having never been one that avoided failing to ignore the deafening quiet that comes from not failing to ignore discussions of civil liberties, your lack of a point isn’t surprising.
Those were Gross violations, and your bullcrap complaints regarding Clinton don’t make the problems of Bush any less
Actually, it’s more like “your whinging about Bush doesn’t excuse Clinton’s crimes against liberty”.
But.. well, that IS how you think, so I guess I’m not surprised you’d try to backhand real complaints that don’t fit your mold.
No, PB, as usual it’s not, and your “backhand” comment is highly ironic in that context.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Rut-Roh
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-271.html
The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for “national security” purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president “has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes.” [51] According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place.
The warrant clause was designed to give the American people greater security than that afforded by the mere words of politicians. It requires the attorney general, or others, to make a showing of “probable cause” to a magistrate. The proponents of national security searches are hard-pressed to find any support for their position in the text or history of the Constitution. That is why they argue from the “inherent authority” of the Oval Office–a patently circular argument. The scope of such “authority” is of course unbounded in principle. Yet the Clinton Justice Department has said that the warrant clause is fully applicable to murder suspects but not to persons suspected of violating the export control regulations of the federal government. [52] If the Framers had wanted to insert a national security exception to the warrant clause, they would have done so. They did not.
The Clinton administration’s national security exception to the warrant clause is nothing more, of course, than an unsupported assertion of power by executive branch officials. The Nixon administration relied on similar constitutional assertions in the 1970s to rationalize “black bag” break-ins to the quarters of its political opponents. [53] The Clinton White House–even after the Filegate scandal–assures Congress, the media, and the general public that it has no intention of abusing this power.
Attorney General Reno has already signed off on the warrantless search of an American home on the basis of the dubious “inherent authority” theory. [54] The actual number of clandestine “national security” searches conducted since 1993 is known only to the White House and senior Justice Department officials.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Oh dear.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-271.html
President Clinton and the Legislature
President Clinton claims the Constitution gives him the unilateral power to attack other countries whenever he deems that course of action appropriate. Over the last four years, he has authorized missile attacks against Iraq, ordered air strikes in Bosnia, and threatened to invade Haiti. In each instance the president claimed that it was unnecessary to seek any constitutional authorization from Congress.
The Framers of the Constitution gave the war power careful consideration. Although in the European countries of the 18th century the war power was commonly vested in monarchs, the Framers made a deliberate decision to leave the war-making power with the national legislature, not the president. [114] Article I of the Constitution states that “Congress shall have the power . . . to declare war.” The president was to exercise his article II responsibilities as commander in chief within the framework established by the Constitution. The American executive would direct the military operations that the people’s representatives in Congress had authorized.
When President Clinton threatened to invade Haiti, 10 prominent legal scholars sent him a letter to remind him of the constitutional boundaries of his office:
The President may not order the United States Armed Forces to make war without first meaningfully consulting with Congress and receiving its affirmative authorization. . . . In our view, those principles, as well as your oath of office, require you to follow President Bush’s example in the Persian Gulf War: to seek and obtain Congress’s express prior approval before launching a military invasion of Haiti. [115]
President Clinton ignored that letter and came perilously close to commanding U.S. forces to attack the Haitian military. [116]
Haiti was not an isolated incident. The Clinton administration has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to use military force without congressional authorization. In September 1996, for example, President Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on Iraq. [117] The president characterized that attack as a “retaliatory strike” because Iraqi forces were engaged in murderous activity in an “exclusion zone” that President Bush had created, on his own authority, in 1991. (Recall that Congress only authorized U.S. military forces to expel the Iraqi military from Kuwait; President Bush created exclusion zones on Iraqi territory for the Kurdish people after the successful conclusion of Operation Desert Storm.)
President Clinton’s rationale for his Iraqi missile attack is extremely distressing because it perfectly illustrates the dangerous propensities that the Founders apprehended at the Constitutional Convention. The Framers wanted the legislative branch to have the war power because of the ambitious tendencies of the executive branch. As James Madison noted, “The executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.” [118] James Wilson, though an advocate of a strong presidency, approvingly observed that the new constitutional system “will not hurry us into war” since the war-making power “will not be vested in the power of a single man.” [119]
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:15 pm
PB, I can imagine how happy you must have been when the Clinton term finally came to an end. You probably looked forward to the lifting on the repression. And the disappointment you must have felt when it was just more of the same. No wonder you’re so bitter. All the energy you must have expended opposing the shredding of the constitution by Clinton, and now Bush comes along.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
What’s funny is how you wingnuts criticize Clinton for relatively limited military interventions and incursions on personal liberty, while completely absolving Bush for their wholesale expansion. Not to mention how you fail to recognize the slightly flaw in what normal people recognize as the most incompetent presidency in modern history.
It’s why you wingnuts can’t be trusted to run anything of importance. It’s why you’ll find yourselves back on the margins, where you belong, after the next election.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Wow, for a lawyer your reading comprehension needs work. The point is that you all were completely silent during the Clinton years. It was only after Bush was elected that your side discovered civil liberties. Then again, you did say “limited military interventions and incursions on personal liberty” Limited in that when done by a democrat, your cool with it. But if a Republican does it BUSHITLER!! What was posted above was a very small sample of what you now call limited. There is a great deal more.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:49 pm
relatively limited military interventions
Actually, Clinton sent a VAST number of small interventions and deployments out there, more than any previous president. The military was getting overtaxed even then.
and incursions on personal liberty
Limited incursions? So what, you are going to tell us which “incursions” are and aren’t important?
Property forfeiture laws. Echelon. No-knock raids. Crap-through-a-goose authorizations of wiretaps for “drug dealers” and “domestic terrorists”.
Limited?
, while completely absolving Bush for their wholesale expansion.
Bzzzzt.
Not to mention how you fail to recognize the slightly flaw in what normal people recognize as the most incompetent presidency in modern history.
Well, one flaw I DO recognize is someone slipping the mantle of “most people” on, erroneously.
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:03 pm
“limited military interventions and incursions on personal liberty, while completely absolving Bush for their wholesale expansion.”
What’s funny is watching the smartest clown in America misusing the word “their”.
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Buzzkill blathered: “Wow, for a lawyer your reading comprehension needs work. The point is that you all were completely silent during the Clinton years.”
Your point maybe. It’s a stupid one, so I chose to make my own. Try to keep up, big fella.
Mitch fantasized: “someone slipping the mantle of “most people” on, erroneously. “”
Still reading those 9/12/01 polls to keep from getting depressed? Can’t say I blame you.
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Kermit korrected: “What’s funny is watching the smartest clown in America misusing the word `their’”.
In the section you quoted? Don’t think so, Kermie.
You are talking about standard English, right?
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Yes I know. Under Clinton, we were just a little bit pregnant. Under Bush, it turns out we’re going to have a baby!
“Your point maybe. It’s a stupid one, so I chose to make my own.”
Is that really the stance you want to take? You are admitting that under a democratic administration, violation of civil liberties really didn’t mean anything to you?
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
“What’s funny is watching the smartest clown …”
What’s funny is watching Kermit miss spell “smart ass”.
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:21 pm
You were referring to Bush and not the expansion?
Friggin’ lawyer.
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:36 pm
“What’s funny is how you wingnuts criticize Clinton for relatively limited military interventions and incursions on personal liberty, while completely absolving Bush for their wholesale expansion.”
“Their” is the 3rd pers pos pronoun that takes the place of ‘incursions on personal liberty’.
Gotta go with AC on this one, Kermit.
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:44 pm
I want my money back from the lousy public education I got.
October 4th, 2007 at 6:07 am
? You are admitting that under a democratic administration, violation of civil liberties really didn’t mean anything to you?
That, indeed, is my point; that the whole idea of “civil liberties” made Democrats chuckle and joke about guys with ZZ Top beards and camouflage blazers living in cabins in Wyoming. When people warned about Clinton’s assaults on civil liberties, people that Angryclown and I know giggled about all those paranoid libertarians.
On the one hand, I suppose I should be happy that they’re learning – but of course, with Hillary and Pelosi and Boxer giving warm smoochies to the return of the “Fairness Doctrine”, it’s clear that they have learned nothing.
October 4th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Angryclown continues to giggle about paranoid survivalist militia types. Not so much real concerns about civil liberties.
October 4th, 2007 at 7:01 am
As Talleyrand said of the Bourbons, “Learned nothing and forgotten nothing”.
October 4th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Thierry dit: As Talleyrand said of the Bourbons, “Learned nothing and forgotten nothing”.
French pansy.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
I was only a teenager when Jimmy Carter was President, but I remember it well, and only someone under thirty could possibly think any President since Jimmy was more incompetent than he. Mr. Carter took Presidential incompetence to a level never seen before and devoutly hoped never to be seen again.