| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"sue_doe_cy_ants" |
| Date: |
10 Dec 2005 01:35:29 AM |
| Object: |
High Crime - definitely impeachable |
Capitol Hill Blue - December 9, 2005
Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
By Doug Thompson
<http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml>
Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval
Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about
renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.
Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked
period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused
enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil
Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives
like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more
onerous provisions of the act could further alienate
conservatives still mad at the President from his botched
attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the
Supreme Court.
"I don't give a *****," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and
the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."
"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said.
"There is a valid case that the provisions in this law
undermine the Constitution."
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,"
Bush screamed back.
"It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day
and they all confirm that the President of the United States
called the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper."
And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of
the United States is little more than toilet paper stained
from all the ***** that this group of power-mad despots
have dumped on the freedoms that
"goddamned piece of paper" used to guarantee.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,
while still White House counsel, wrote that
the "Constitution is an outdated document."
Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal
beliefs. It doesn't matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or
Independent. It doesn't matter if you support the invasion or
Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood
for two centuries as the defining document of our government,
the final source to determine - in the end - if something is
legal or right.
Every federal official - including the President
- who takes an oath of office swears to
"uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes
when someone calls the Constitution a "living document."
"'Oh, how I hate the phrase we have-a 'living document,'"
Scalia says. "We now have a Constitution that means
whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not
a living organism, for Pete's sake."
As a judge, Scalia says, "I don't have to prove that the
Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it's better
than anything else."
President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the Constitution
over the last five years, including a controversial amendment to
define marriage as a "union between a man and woman." Members of
Congress have proposed some 11,000 amendments over the last
decade, ranging from repeal of the right to bear arms to a
Constitutional ban on abortion.
Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution
comes from a loss of rights.
"We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones,"
Scalia warns. "Don't think that it's a one-way street."
And don't buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act
is a necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law
that infringes on the rights of every American citizen and,
as one brave aide told President Bush, something that
undermines the Constitution of the United States.
But why should Bush care? After all,
the Constitution is just "a goddamned piece of paper."
.
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| User: "Gray Shockley" |
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| Title: Re: High Crime - definitely impeachable |
10 Dec 2005 03:34:23 AM |
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On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 01:35, sue_doe_cy_ants quoted:
Capitol Hill Blue - December 9, 2005
Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
Well, this is mostly your quotes but
with the E B White one, of course.
####################################
.... a government committed to a policy of
improving the nation by improving the condition
of some of the individuals will eventually run
into trouble in attempting to distinguish between
a national good and a chocolate sundae.
- E. B. White
Where justice is denied,
where poverty is enforced,
where ignorance prevails,
and where any one class is made to feel
that society is in an organized conspiracy
to oppress, rob, and degrade them,
neither persons nor property will be safe.
--Frederick Douglass
"I do esteem individual liberty above
everything. What is a nation for,
but to secure the maximum of liberty
to every individual? What do you
think a nation is? a big business concern?
--D.H. Lawrence
"I don't give a *****," Bush retorted. "I'm the
President and the Commander-in-Chief.
Do it my way." "Mr. President," one aide in the
meeting said. "There is a valid case that the
provisions in this law undermine the
Constitution." "Stop throwing the Constitution
in my face," Bush screamed back.
"It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,
while still White House counsel, wrote
that the "Constitution is an
outdated document."
Scalia says the danger of tinkering
with the Constitution comes from
a loss of rights. "We can take away
rights just as we can grant new ones,"
Scalia warns.
"Don't think that it's a one-way street."
.
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| User: "sue_doe_cy_ants" |
|
| Title: Re: High Crime - definitely impeachable |
11 Dec 2005 04:12:55 AM |
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Gray Shockley wrote:
On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 01:35, sue_doe_cy_ants quoted:
Capitol Hill Blue - December 9, 2005
Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
Well, this is mostly your quotes but
with the E B White one, of course.
####################################
... a government committed to a policy of
improving the nation by improving the condition
of some of the individuals will eventually run
into trouble in attempting to distinguish between
a national good and a chocolate sundae.
- E. B. White
Where justice is denied,
where poverty is enforced,
where ignorance prevails,
and where any one class is made to feel
that society is in an organized conspiracy
to oppress, rob, and degrade them,
neither persons nor property will be safe.
--Frederick Douglass
"I do esteem individual liberty above
everything. What is a nation for,
but to secure the maximum of liberty
to every individual? What do you
think a nation is? a big business concern?
--D.H. Lawrence
"I don't give a *****," Bush retorted. "I'm the
President and the Commander-in-Chief.
Do it my way." "Mr. President," one aide in the
meeting said. "There is a valid case that the
provisions in this law undermine the
Constitution." "Stop throwing the Constitution
in my face," Bush screamed back.
"It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,
while still White House counsel, wrote
that the "Constitution is an
outdated document."
Scalia says the danger of tinkering
with the Constitution comes from
a loss of rights. "We can take away
rights just as we can grant new ones,"
Scalia warns.
"Don't think that it's a one-way street."
E. B. White is a bit obscure for my reading foci, I fear,
although I do have a quote of his tagged,
and did read Charlotte's Web once upon a time,
but his New Yorker stuff, I've never spent time with.
Doing a quick lookup on his bio though;
I may have read "Stuart Little" when I was a youngster,
but only the title seems familiar presently, and his Thurber
collaboration might be worth the time.
Still, it's hard for me to comprehend that a president could
describe the Constitution as "just a god damned piece of paper",
and not start off an ugly chain reaction.
So much for Bush's honourable oath.
The Scalia lecture strikes me as brutally ironic too.
His arguments in one of the most convoluted SCOTUS cases
I've ever had the displeasure of wading through is sickening.
The Case was
Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991)
<http://tinyurl.com/ar47t>
and is one of those bright shining lights which make me
damn glad I'm not a SCOTUS justice.
You need a scorebook to figure out who voted
what and where in this multiple split decision.
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
White, J., penned the majority opinion for Parts I, II, and IV,
and filed a dissent opinion in Part III.
Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens, JJ., concurred in
Parts I, II, III, and IV of White's opinion.
Scalia, J., joined Parts I and II of White's opinion.
Kennedy J., joined Parts I and IV of White's opinion.
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
Rehnquist, C.J., owns a piece of majority in Part II,
in regards to harmless error analysis;
and dissented in Parts I and III., post, p. 302.
O'Connor, J., joined Rehnquist's Parts I, II, and III.
Kennedy and Souter, JJ., joined Parts I and II with Rehnquist.
Scalia, J., joined Parts II and III of Rehnquiast's opinion.
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
Kennedy J., filed an opinion
concurring in the judgment, post, p. 313.
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
It seems that no one wanted to claim the court's
opinion in respect to Part III
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
Fulminante was pure scum.
"Early in the morning of September 14, 1982, Fulminante
called the Mesa, Arizona, Police Department to report
that his 11-year-old stepdaughter, Jeneane Michelle
Hunt, was missing. He had been caring for Jeneane while
his wife, Jeneane's mother, was in the hospital. Two
days later, Jeneane's body was found in the desert east
of Mesa. She had been shot twice in the head at close
range with a large caliber weapon, and a ligature was
around her neck. Because of the decomposed condition of
the body, it was impossible to tell whether she had been
sexually assaulted.
Fulminante's statements to police concerning Jeneane's
disappearance and his relationship with her contained a
number of inconsistencies, and he became a suspect in
her killing. When no charges were filed against him,
Fulminante left Arizona for New Jersey. Fulminante was
later convicted in New Jersey on federal charges of
possession of a firearm by a felon."
Fulminante got teamed with a paid prison snitch:
"...Sarivola, a former police officer, had been involved
in loansharking for organized crime, but then became a
paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
While at Ray Brook, he masqueraded as an organized crime
figure."
The other inmates had started to murmer around Fulminante once
the rumours of his involvement in his stepdaughter's murder
started to make the rounds, and Sarivola told him he'd provide
protection, but Fulminante had to tell the truth about
his stepdaughter first. Fulminante later testified that he did not
feel overly threatened by the other inmates though.
"...Fulminante then admitted to Sarivola that he had
driven Jeneane to the desert on his motorcycle, where he
choked her, sexually assaulted her, and made her beg for
her life, before shooting her twice in the head."
Sarivola, and then Fulminante get out of prison. Fulminante gets
another weapons possession charge dropped on him, and then
gets indicted for murder 1 in Arizona. He gets convicted,
and then appeals, claiming:
"...his confession to Sarivola was the product of
coercion and that its admission at trial violated his
rights to due process, under the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments of the United States Constitution. After
considering the evidence at trial as well as the
stipulated facts before the trial court on the motion to
suppress, the Arizona Supreme Court held that the
confession was coerced, but initially determined that
the admission of the confession at trial was harmless
error, because of the overwhelming nature of the
evidence against Fulminante."
So here's a loser child molesting premeditated killer who has had
his core constitutional protections violated. If law is going to
be righteous in its application, it must be equally applied, yet
if Fulminante walks, there will be no justice in law's equal
application, and this ***** will be free, until he gets arrested
for something stupid, like a weapons charge, or something evil,
like sexual predation and murder on a preadolescent girl.
A fractured Supreme Court decides, mostly in 5-4 splits that:
1) the confession was coerced
2) that even though the confession was used to secure conviction,
an automatic reversal, and retrial is not necessarily required,
and instead, "harmless error" review can be used.
3) that even though harmless error is the standard:
"it must be determined whether the State has met
its burden of demonstrating that the admission of
the confession to Sarivola did not contribute to
Fulminante's conviction."
This standard was not met, and the conviction was reversed.
== == ==
Scalia was the only justice to hold that the conviction was
coerced, and that coerced confessions can be reviewed judicially
using a "harmless error" standard. In effect, he was the deciding
vote for both of these findings. This isn't a trial error
technicality, it's the Fifth Amendment. Scalia's stance in this case
seem to make him a dangerous Constitutional tinkerer, and when
Scalia tinkers, it is almost always a taking of liberty; with him
it is a one-way street.
A couple more points. Kennedy offered one of his hands
in the air, shoulder shrugging WhatTheFuck? opinions:
"For the reasons stated by THE CHIEF JUSTICE, I agree
that Fulminante's confession to Anthony Sarivola was not
coerced. In my view, the trial court did not err in
admitting this testimony. A majority of the Court,
however, finds the confession coerced, and proceeds to
consider whether harmless error analysis may be used
when a coerced confession has been admitted at trial.
With the case in this posture, it is appropriate for me
to address the harmless-error issue.
[. . .]
The same majority of the Court does not agree on the
three issues presented by the trial court's
determination to admit Fulminante's first confession:
whether the confession was inadmissible because coerced;
whether harmless-error analysis is appropriate; and if
so whether any error was harmless here. My own view that
the confession was not coerced does not command a
majority."
In his opinion, Rehnquist bastardized one of the Warren Court's
finer moments, Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967),
which held 8-1 that it is unfair for the prosecution to imply guilt
from a defendant's lack of testimony in their defense. Scalia
has often joked about this "cruel dilemma" facing a defendant,
and would certainly overturn Chapman, if given the opportunity.
A low point for Rehnquist's tenure on the court in my opinion.
Maybe the lowest point. At least in the case of
another low point, Bowers v Hardwick, it is easy to get
a chuckle from the incredibly apt name of the case,
given the controversy in question.
(look it up, and you will never forget
the citation <http://tinyurl.com/cvl2x>)
-----
i seemed tp have rambled on tonight.
seems a bit theraputic. a respite from
contemplating what the Bush Administration
has done to the American Dreamtime with their
cowardly equivocations regarding torture,
and renditions to despicable states.
Here's a classic bushism though:
At a March 16, 2005 Press conference, a Bush out of context answer
to a question, seems to indicate that he knows damn well what
happens when he renders prisoners to certain states; in this
case, Uzbekistan:
Q As Commander-in-Chief, what is it that Uzbekistan
can do in interrogating an individual that
the United States can't?
BUSH: We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured
when we render a person back to their home country.
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/03/20050316-3.html>
will peace,
but keep your cartridges dry.
.
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