roachboy

in today's ny times there is a "magazine preview" of a piece about jack goldsmith and his tenure in ths bush administration. it is a bit long (7 pages) and reading it requires that you subscribe to the times--but its free so why not, eh?

here's the link to the story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/ma...ewanted=1&_r=5

this piece is very interesting for a number of reasons:

it gives a relatively detailed idea of how some of the most controversial (and to my mind repellent) aspects of the administration's conception of executive power and its relationship to existing law came to be formulated. it references the bush people's position on their "war on terror" and the geneva conventions, their "expansive go-it-alone view of executive power" and outlines a number of ways in which the latter has ended up being entirely self-defeating.

it shows the tight intertwining of bureaucratic power and policy within the administration--a relation that i am sure is not unique to these people, but which in this case generated a riot of problematic outcomes.

within this, you get a portrait of how dissenting views were/are handled within this administration--and this seems the problematic area (rather than the above, which seems kinda inevitable, at one level or another)--or rather the set of relations that enables particularly problematic views to become policy.

it is also a bit of pr for goldsmith's forthcoming book. so keep that in mind.

i wonder what you make of this piece....

i know the question is terribly broad, but hopefully it will serve as a point of departure. it can be refined. feel free to do it.

aside number 1:

it is obvious that in addition to being pr for the book, it is also one of a number of post-mortems for the bush administration that originate from conservatives themselves. this is something to consider as well--the extent to which this piece (and the book) is about driving a wedge between bush-style conservatism and an actually viable form of it.

aside number 2:

of course this is in the new york times, so i expect some "well whaddya expect" type responses which i would dismiss out of hand now if i thought it possible, but which i suspect will have to be dismissed out of hand on an individual basis.

i think the caricatures of the nyt as a source from the right have largely played out and that such "bias" as there is in the piece can be easily controlled for, if you pay attention.

this is not an argument against the critical reading of sources in general (quite the contrary) but rather a proactive attempt to bypass the still-too-close-to-inevitable "but the ny times is an element of the liberal press conspiracy of fifth columnists blah blah blah" which is usually little more than an excuse not to do the work required to actually undertake a critical reading of information that happens to be presented there.

we could have a debate about the critical interpretation of press accounts in general, but it'd be another thread and so if that seems a good topic, please feel free to frame up that thread and that can get under way as well.


the conclusion is qu

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

guyy

A couple disjointed thoughts:

-- I've heard civil servants with no detectable publishing or political ambitions (high up in the State Dept. and in the violent apparatus of the American state) describe the Bushvolk in similar terms: as a small but fanatical group that seized key positions in the American state. That is a convenient interpretation in that it absolves one of responsibility for what has happened in the Bush years. However, that such an interpretation is convenient doesn't necessarily make it untrue.

-- What with the contortionist, secret readings of texts, Leo Strauss seems as important as Carl Schmitt to the Bush cabal.

dc_dux

Goldsmith is the latest of a small, but increasingly vocal group of conservative legal practitioners and legal scholars who have expressed deep concerns with Bush's expanded use of executive power at the expense of the system of checks and balances.

In an article in Slate last week, Bruce Fein, an Assistant AG in the Reagan Justice Department, suggested that there is enough evidence of 5+ years of FISA violations specifically authorized by Bush to justify an impeachment inquiry. He further suggested that Bush's use of signing statements with the Patriot Act to ignore the Act's requirements for the FBI to inform Congress of the use of national security letters was also a blantant abuse of power.

Earlier this year, Fein and several other Reagan-era true conservatives (Bob Barr, Richard Viguerie) created the American Freedom Agenda :

An alliance of prominent national conservatives today announced the formation of the American Freedom Agenda (AFA), a campaign to restore governmental checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the current Administration....

....“We’ve spent the greater part of our lives working to build a national network of like-minded conservatives who remain true to the founding principles of our country, outlined in our Constitution, and we do not believe that any President– Republican or Democrat – trumps these principles. “We plan to work through our networks, and to reach out to all Americans, regardless of partisan or ideological affiliation, to build a movement that demands that our government return to those principles upon which our nation was founded.”

They have a 10-point "freedom pledge":

1.No Military Commissions Except on the Battlefield

2. No Evidence Extracted by Torture or Coercion

3. No Detaining Citizens as Unlawful Enemy Combatants

4. Restoring Habeas Corpus for Suspected Alien Enemy Combatants

5. Prohibiting Warrantless Spying bythe National Security Agency in Violation of Law

6. Renouncing Presidential Signing Statements

7. Ending Secret Government by Invoking State Secrets Privilege

8. Stopping Extraordinary Renditions

9. Stopping Threats to Prosecuting Journalists under the Espionage Act

10. Ending the Listing of Individuals or Organizations as Terrorists Based on Secret Evidence
http://www.americanfreedomagenda.org...edompledge.htm

The issue of executive power is a partisan issue, but the partisan divide is not necessarily between liberals and conservatives, but between those who believe in the systems of checks and balances/separation of powers as opposed to those who believe a President should have the right to act unilaterally and decide solely on the legality of executive powers.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire