Pat Roberts sees no limit on presidential power

February 13, 2006

Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) has been embarrassing for quite a while in his willingness to play the role of partisan hack, but yesterday, on Meet the Press, I was surprised at just how far Roberts was willing to go.

Russert: Senator Roberts, let me ask you a very serious question. Do you believe that the Constitution gives the President of the United States the authority to do anything he believes is necessary to protect the country?

Roberts: Yes, but I wouldn’t say anything he believes. I think you go at it very, very carefully.

I don’t mean to sound picky, but what kind of standard is that? The president has the authority do anything he wants as long as he’s “careful”?

As Nico put it, “Roberts should stick with Nixon’s version, it’s simpler.”

Soon we’ll see Chimpy running through the streets of DC shooting folks in the face with a 28 gauge shotgun.

  • What is wrong with these people are they so enamored of Bush or suffering such an extreme case of bunker mentality disease that they can’t see a bad idea?

  • I really wish tweety bird had followed up with “even President Hillary Clinton, for example?”

    just watching Roberts then explode with apoplexy would have made it one of the top 10 TV moments ever.

  • Roberts: Yes, but I wouldn’t say anything he believes.

    Roberts: Cuz he believes some really batshit crazy things. But you need to go at it carefully, cuz if you upset him, well, let’s just say that you might get sent out to hunt with Dick.

    Maybe he’s spent a little too much time around Sam Brownback.

    Roberts and Brownback have been reported to go on fishing trips together. Sometimes, they’ll make a weekend of it and camp along one of Kansas’ finer waterways. But as Roberts is the only one to own a tent, they usually buddy up. I don’t feel like getting into all the details, let’s just say it ends with Brownback mountin’.

  • I didn’t quite catch the quote for sure, but I think Roberts said yesterday on Meet the Press that because Roosevelt ignored the supreme court over wiretapping in WWII, the president has the constitutional power to wiretap.

    ????

    Doesn’t that just mean that Congress should have tried to impeach FDR when he ignored the Supreme Court?

    And since when to you define constitutional powers by ignoring the Supreme Court?

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