{"id":6156,"date":"2005-12-22T12:54:10","date_gmt":"2005-12-22T17:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6156"},"modified":"2005-12-22T12:54:10","modified_gmt":"2005-12-22T17:54:10","slug":"lithwick-asks-the-right-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/lithwick-asks-the-right-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithwick asks the right question"},"content":{"rendered":"

The controversy surrounding Bush’s warrantless-spying program isn’t quite a week old, but plenty of ink has been spilled reviewing the scandal from every angle. To date, my very favorite analysis comes by way of Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick<\/a>, who asked the right questions in a devastating way.<\/p>\n

Lithwick details the way in which the nation thought it was bargaining in good faith with the president since 9\/11, who “was nodding and smiling and taking what he wanted in secret.” It’s quite a list of betrayal, culminating in Bush’s belief that he has “limitless powers to break the law.”<\/p>\n

The biggest problem is not necessarily Bush’s desire to circumvent the law, Lithwick argues, but how he chose to do it.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration is forever quick to point out the flaws in all these bargains we have struck. The Patriot Act didn’t go far enough, so the administration pushed for Patriot II. The Geneva Conventions afforded prisoners too many rights, so those rights were suspended. The statutory definition of torture precluded intelligence-gathering, so new definitions were invented. FISA was too cumbersome in a crisis, so it doesn’t bind the president. Perhaps it’s naive to think we had these negotiations in public because this delicate allocation of rights and powers is fundamental to a democracy. It’s not shocking that the Bush administration sought to expand its powers. It’s shocking that the president unfailingly refuses to ask.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s the explanation? The Slate piece offers two possibilities — that Bush sees the courts, the Congress, and the American people as inconvenient obstacles that forced him to operate outside legal limits, or that Bush sees the laws as “unfixable,” so he won’t bother to try and follow them.<\/p>\n

Lithwick concludes that “the first possibility is grandiose and depressing. The latter is absolutely breathtaking.” Truer words were never spoken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The controversy surrounding Bush’s warrantless-spying program isn’t quite a week old, but plenty of ink has been spilled reviewing the scandal from every angle. To date, my very favorite analysis comes by way of Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who asked the right questions in a devastating way. Lithwick details the way in which the nation thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}