Sunday, April 26, 2009

Preserving the Constitution

A common theme in the April 15 TEA parties was that protests were needed to uphold and/or restore the Constitution. A typical (and typically vague) example of the type appeared in last week's Gazette.

So what threats to the Constitution need protester response? Electric City Weblog suggests two: a balanced budget amendment and term limits.

That's it? Pretty weak TEA.

Especially since an astonishing number of TEA party protesters were conspicuously quiet and may even still defend the Bush administration, which offered these novel constitutional theories:

1. That the president could suspend habeas corpus without meeting the constitutional test for suspension.

2. That the president has the power to torture, regardless of Congress, law, tradition and international treaty.

3. That the president had the power to imprison anyone at any time, without access to legal counsel, without charges and without evidence.

4. That lawyers for those accused of terrorism should be subjected, if civilians, to public ridicule and, if military, to blocked promotions.

5. That constitutional rights do not extend to prisoners held in U.S. custody outside the borders of the United States.

6. That suspects could be transferred without their knowledge or consent to foreign countries where they could be interrogated and tortured beyond restrictions of U.S. law.

And we're worried about term limits?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you. Well said.

Ken & Carol said...

Shouldn't you alert someone other than the readers of your blog to these outrageous ideas? Keeping quiet could suggest to some that you are part of the conspiracy.

Kirk Dooley said...

I'm sure he would, but the Outpost's new website is a bloody mess! ;-)