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Originally Posted by roachboy
... the advantage necessarily accrues to the "unitary" executive in this context because the executive can "act" where congress has to deliberate--...
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On one level, for example the President could not act without the authority given to him by Congress to, in essence, go to war. Congress clearly failed to address the needs of reporting, time tables and controls. They just talked about it. Congress furthered the problem by continued authorization of funding to conduct the war in a manner that Bush wanted. They just talked about all of the problems.
On issues such has detaining enemy combatants and questioning techniques - Bush clearly let it be known what he was doing long before Congress seriously addressed these issues (I know Republicans fault). I imagine they were to busy investigating steroids in baseball and other weighty matters.
Every vote mattered in Congress on every issue. Why make excuses for the people who did not support the war and the actions of Bush, yet either implicitly or explicitly gave him the authority. So again, I question were the words B.S. or did they actually support Bush? I don't see this as a Constitutional crisis.
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
Bush's three Attorneys General have repeatedly acted to attempt to provide legal justification for his policies and actions rather than to perform their mandated role "to enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law...." The AG is NOT the president's attorney...he/she is the "peoples" attorney.
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Votes matter. Some Democrats voted for Gonzales. Gonzales was clearly a Bush man. Who were these Democrats? Why did they vote for Gonzales? I know you will tell me about those who did not vote for him or why others had to vote for him, but this is an example of were actions need to be consistent with words.
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WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Thursday to confirm White House counsel Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, setting aside Democratic complaints he helped craft questionable U.S. policies on the treatment of foreign prisoners.
Gonzales, 49, a longtime friend who was President Bush’s legal counsel when he was governor of Texas, became the first Hispanic to be the nation’s top law officer when Vice President Dick Cheney swore him in shortly thereafter in the vice president’s office in the West Wing of the White House.
The vote was 60-36, with all the opposition coming from Democrats. The “no” votes were the second most ever lodged against a successful nominee for attorney general. John Ashcroft, whom Gonzales succeeds, was confirmed 58-42 on Feb. 1, 2001.
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Other Democrats opposed Gonzales, accusing him of being evasive in his answers to their questions about White House policies in the war on terrorism.
“He was so circumspect in his answers, so unwilling to leave a micron of space between his views and the president’s, that I now have real doubts whether he can perform the job of attorney general,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
“In short, Judge Gonzales still seems to see himself as counsel to the president, not attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of the land,” Schumer continued.
Opponents cite interrogation memo
Senate Democrats have used the nomination — as they did with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — to criticize the war in Iraq and the treatment of foreign prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6895355/
Clearly all of these issues were on the table in 2005 and earlier. No real action was taken, why? Why didn't Congress confront Bush right then and there? Why didn't they use their power then?
Here is another thing I found, Bush had the support of Congress and was not acting unilaterally.
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WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 - Democrats who had voted previously to prohibit abusive treatment of detainees in American custody provided the margin of victory on Thursday for a Republican-backed measure that would deny prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/na...se&oref=slogin
And as we sit today, is Congress acting on the issue of what to actually do with these detainees? Has any Senator volunteered their state for holding these people while we wait for their trials? Has Congress given any legislative guidelines to our military on how they are supposed to carryout criminal investigations on a war time battle field? Everything Bush has done is wrong, perhaps now is the time to present an alternative, rather than just complaining. Perhaps our Presidential candidates can tell us what they would do, rather than wasting time on who is a patriot.