Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (5780)	9/5/2002 6:44:23 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Liberalism's Patriotic Vision By TODD GITLIN Editorial The New York Times September 5, 2002 With the massacres of a year ago came righteous outrage, bewilderment and a thirst for interpretations: What could such colossal violence mean? What did mass murder require of us? Who were we now? We needed a story. The White House declared that the terrorists hated our freedoms; after an interlude of coalition building, the administration resumed its America-love-it-or-leave-it attitude. Members of Congress became sullen cheerleaders, cowed by the White House's willingess to question their loyalty. Patriotism seemed to function not as a spur to come to the aid of the country, but as a silencer. Absolutists dominated the field — and eerily converged in their penchant for going it alone. The terrorists took it upon themselves to act in the name of all of Islam and all Muslims, to settle all accounts and slaughter all enemies. There could be no appeal or dissent; they expected their allies to be as silent as their enemies. They openly yearned to restore the eighth-century caliphate: a purist theocracy and an empire if ever there was one. Squandering much support from around the world, President Bush soon showed he was ready to go it alone, keeping even Congress at arm's length. He was not content with self-defense. Countries that were not with us were against us. We were launched upon a permanent war against anyone he declared we were at war against; the administration reserved the right to break treaties and to undertake pre-emptive war. The American left, too, had its version of unilateralism. Responsibility for the attacks had, somehow, to lie with American imperialism, because all responsibility has to lie with American imperialism — a perfect echo of the right's idea that all good powers are and should be somehow American. Intellectuals and activists on the far left could not be troubled much with compassion or defense. Disconnected from Americans who reasonably felt their patriotic selves attacked, they were uncomprehending. Knowing little about Al Qaeda, they filed it under Anti-Imperialism, and American attacks on the Taliban under Vietnam Quagmire. For them, not flying the flag became an urgent cause. In their go-it-alone attitude, they weirdly paralleled the blustering right-wing approach to the world. Long before Sept. 11, this naysaying left had seceded. When Ralph Nader's Greens equated a Bush presidency with a Gore presidency, they took leave of any practical connection to America. Rightly demanding profound reforms but deluded about their popularity, they withheld their energy from the Democrats and squandered alliances that would have promoted their ideals. They acted as though their cause had to be lonely to be good. Many liberals and social democrats saw through this hollow negativity and posed necessary questions. What was a war against terrorism? To what did it bind the nation? War against whom, and for how long? Why should American foreign policy be held hostage to oil? How should strong and privileged America belong in the world? Was the United States to be a one-nation tribunal of "regime change" wherever it detected evil spinning on an axis? Some good answers float in the air now. They have not yet found political support, but they could. As the Bush administration paints itself into a corner, we could be headed toward a new liberal moment. Liberals need to step up their promotion of a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan and elsewhere, helping to stifle terrorism. Even conservatives no longer smirk about nation building or foreign aid. Likewise, mainstream economists like Joseph Stiglitz (once chief economist of the World Bank) and Jeffrey Sachs (former free-market shock therapist) campaign to convince rich countries to give more development aid. Liberals should affirm that American power, working within coalitions, can advance democratic values, as in Bosnia and Kosovo — but they should oppose this administration's push toward war in Iraq, which is unlikely to work out that way. Against oil-based myopia, there are murmurs (they should be clamors) that we should phase out the oil dependency that overheats the earth and binds us to tyrants. On the domestic front, corporate chiefs have lost their new-economy charm — and the Bush administration's earlier efforts on their behalf have lost whatever political purchase they had. With the bursting of the stock market bubble, deregulation no longer looks like a cure-all. Whom do Americans admire now? Whom do we trust? Americans did not take much reminding that when skyscrapers were on fire, they needed firefighters and police officers, not Arthur Andersen accountants. Yet we confront an administration whose policies reflect the idea that sacrifice — financial and otherwise — is meant for people who wear blue collars. A reform bloc in Congress, bolstered in November, could start renewing the country. But we need much more than legislation. One year after, surely many Americans are primed for a patriotism of action, not of pledges. The era that began Sept. 11 would be a superb time to crack the jingoists' claim to a monopoly of patriotic virtue. Instead of letting minions of corporate power run away with the flag (while banking their tax credits offshore), we need to remake the tools of our public life — our schools, social services and transportation. Post-Vietnam liberals have an opening now, freed of our 60's flag anxiety and our reflexive negativity, to embrace a liberal patriotism that is unapologetic and uncowed. It's time for the patriotism of mutual aid, not just symbolic displays or self-congratulation. It's time to close the gap between the nation we love and the justice we also love. ____________________________________________ Todd Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, is author of "Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives." He is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. nytimes.com

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (5780)	9/5/2002 7:02:41 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

POWER POLITICS The Constitution Isn't the President's Plaything Making war, not sense: Why Bush is wrong By Jack N. Rakove Editorial The San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, September 1, 2002 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone who has lost sleep recently wondering whether President Bush can unilaterally decide to go to war against Iraq can rest easily again. The president's lawyers have assured him he can. We can be confident they must be right, since the president surrounds himself with good men, and there can be no reason for Congress or the public to question their judgment or integrity, much less their devotion to the Constitution the president is sworn to "preserve, protect and defend." End of story. Alas, the reasoning on which this assertion of authority rests is deeply problematic, especially in the context of an intended military action requiring extensive preparation, where the nation would be anticipating an eventual threat rather than responding to an immediate attack. White House counsel apparently rest their case on two sources. One is found in the president's explicit constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. The other cites the congressional resolutions adopted in 1991 to authorize the use of force to reverse the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. These extend to the enforcement of United Nations resolutions requiring Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction and to be subjected to inspections by U.N. officials. There is, of course, some irony in the image of an administration criticized for its unilateralist posture toward the international community invoking U.N. resolutions to justify its unilateralist posture toward Congress. But put this irony aside and simply consider the administration's claims within the framework of the Constitution. Three problems immediately arise. The first lies in the text of the Constitution itself. No casual reader can avoid noticing that the bulk of the national security powers it vests in the government are given to Congress in Article I, including, of course, the power to declare war. The president's sole source of authority is his status as commander in chief. The president's power to use that authority decisively to engage in hostilities is strongest when the nation is already under attack or the threat is so immediate and palpable as not to allow for congressional consultation and approval. As the saying goes, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. It would be absurd to say that the president has to await congressional approval to defend the nation when hostilities have begun or are demonstrably about to erupt. This is the plain meaning of an oft-quoted passage from the Aug. 17, 1787, debate at the Constitutional Convention, when the framers voted to give Congress the power "to declare war" rather than "make war." As James Madison's notes indicate, this was understood to leave the president "the power to repel sudden attacks," while preventing Congress from making war in the sense of actively "conduct(ing)" or directing military operations, "which was an Executive function." But under other circumstances, when the same urgency did not intervene and there was time to deliberate, the framers clearly regarded the decision to go to war as the business of Congress. Had the framers really thought the president had some inherent power to initiate hostilities, it is also puzzling that they explicitly reserved to Congress the power to "grant letters of marque and reprisal" authorizing privateers to raid foreign shipping. Why would they bother to reserve this most trivial form of war making to Congress when the president already enjoyed the extensive power the administration's lawyers claim? The second major problem lies in the idea that congressional resolutions adopted over a decade ago, under different circumstances, provide an open- ended authorization for the resumption of large-scale hostilities at the president's discretion. No fewer than three presidential elections and six congressional elections, presuming the oft-hinted "action" takes place after November, will have intervened since Bush 41 carried the United States into war in 1991 and before Bush 43 can launch the projected intervention in Iraq. To claim that the narrow legalism of relying on a resolution from 1991 provides an adequate measure of continuing approval from the people or their representatives would make a mockery of the democratic notion of government by consent. Democratic consent in any serious sense cannot be defined as a one- time vote of convenience which subsequent presidents can turn on and off at their pleasure. The third problem derives from juxtaposing the claims for inherent presidential power with the indefinite state of national emergency in which the nation has arguably existed since Sept. 11 If we are truly living in such a condition, with endless threats of a catastrophic nature awaiting us for who knows how long, then it is high time to reconsider what the appropriate boundaries and competence of the different branches of government should be Rather than rely on the quaint language of our 18th century Constitution (I for one would love to hear our loquacious secretary of defense fire off a zinger on "letters of marque and reprisal"), we might need to rethink the whole constitutional enterprise as it relates to matters of national security. But if this is what we must do, it will require deeper reflection and intelligence than administration lawyers have yet provided. __________________________________________________ Stanford history professor Jack N. Rakove was the winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for "Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution." sfgate.com

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (5780)	9/5/2002 7:22:20 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Our VP thinks he's above the law... Cheney Won't Release Energy Papers Wed Sep 4, 4:38 PM ET By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Citing constitutional concerns, Vice President Dick Cheney ( news - web sites) and the White House are refusing to turn over information in two lawsuits against the Bush administration's energy task force. In court papers filed this week, the Justice Department ( news - web sites) said that requiring Cheney's energy task force to produce documents and provide written answers to Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club ( news - web sites) would interfere with the executive branch's authority to give confidential advice to the president. "Further responses" by Cheney and the task force "would impose upon the Executive unconstitutional burdens," the Justice Department wrote. The information the two private groups are seeking is "under the direct control of — and therefore from — the president of the United States." Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club are attempting to learn the details of industry influence on the national energy plan which Cheney's task force formulated more than a year ago. The results of that plan, a comprehensive energy package, are before a House-Senate conference committee. The latest move by the Bush administration in the two court cases will require further rulings by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has already ordered evidence-gathering to proceed in the lawsuits. The judge has said he wants the process to be narrowly focused to avoid raising constitutional issues. Sullivan had given the administration until Tuesday to file any objections. The next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 13. Various federal agencies that are also defendants in the two cases have produced thousands of pages of documents to the two private groups. The administration is objecting to the requests to Cheney, two assistants to the president, the former executive director of the energy task force and the task force itself. "Judge Sullivan made it clear that he would not tolerate this type of gamesmanship," Larry Klayman, chairman and general counsel of Judicial Watch, a conservative group, said Wednesdsay. news.yahoo.com