Audience at conference proposes remedies

Attendees at the Restoring America After Bush conference were asked to fill out cards listing actions the nation could take to meet the goals of the conference. The results are:

• Subsidize and protect objective journalism, nurture its growth, and create public opinion exchanges.
• Put an end to private (out of control) armies, like Blackwater.
• Websites with discussion forums can bring public input into government and decision-making productively and efficiently, while making Congress and agencies more transparent.
• Responsibility for breaking laws remains after a politician leaves office. If the heads of the Bush Administration cannot be prosecuted while they are in office, justice can be pursued after the leave.
• Impeach Scalia, Cheney, and Bush.
• Questions for presidential candidates: how do we restore trust and better relations between the President and Congress so we can rebuild our respect internationally and speak with a united voice? (Assume the action component here is that we spark this question wherever they go.)
• Significantly reducing the power of the federal executive so that our democracy becomes more representative requires giving up the two-party system (impeach Bush, just for the symbolic value of it).
• Demand commitment and accountability for the Millennium goals.
• Insist on replacement of US troops and mercenaries, with international forces to achieve cessation of hostilities in Iraq.
• Help protest the choice of Michael Mukasey as commencement speaker at Boston College Law School ext Friday, May 23. The so-called attorney general doesn’t know whether waterboarding is torture.

Conference speaker Louis Fisher , in testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Jan. 30, 2007

In recent years, advocates of presidential authority have argued that the title “Commander in Chief” empowers the President to initiate military operations against other countries and to continue unless Congress cut off all funds, presumably by mustering a two-thirds majority in each House to overcome an expected presidential veto. Such a scenario means that a President could start and continue a war so long as he had at least one-third plus one in a single chamber of Congress. Nothing in the writings of the framers, the debates at Philadelphia and the ratifying conventions, or the text of the Constitution supports that theory.

Conference speaker Andrew Bacevich, in “Rescinding the Bush Doctrine,” Boston Globe, Mar. 1, 2007

Today, Iraq teeters on the brink of disintegration. The war's costs, already staggering, continue to mount. Violence triggered by the US invasion has killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. We cannot fully absolve ourselves of responsibility for those deaths. Our folly has alienated friends and emboldened enemies. Rather than nipping in the bud an ostensibly emerging threat, the Iraq war has diverted attention from existing dangers (such as Al Qaeda) while encouraging potential adversaries (like Iran) to see us as weak.

The remedy to this catastrophic failure lies not in having another go — a preventive attack against Iran, for example — but in acknowledging that the Bush Doctrine is inherently pernicious. Our reckless flirtation with preventive war qualifies as not only wrong, but also stupid. Indeed, the Bush Doctrine poses a greater danger to the United States than do the perils it supposedly guards against.

Conference speaker Norman Ornstein, in “Checks and Balances? The President Has Few, if Any,” Roll Call, posted Dec. 21, 2005

The Bush approach to presidential power is simple, straightforward and clear: “L’etat, c’est moi.” As conservative constitutional scholar Bruce Fein puts it, even King George III would blush at asserting this level of bald, unchecked power. But the way in which the president is handling the revelations of secret wiretaps on Americans—unapologetic, and promising to continue doing it—makes it clear that this is just what the president believes. (posted Dec. 21, 2005)

Conference speaker Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, from The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track

[Congress] has strayed far from its deliberative roots and [is] a body that does not live up to the aspirations envisioned for it by the framers. This problem is not just stylistic, or something that offends academics and other analysts… Those consequences affect all of us. (2006, pp. 12-13)

Conference speaker Charles Fried, from Modern Liberty and the Limits of Government, (2007)

[W]hen we are deprived of our power of choice, we are not just infantilized, we are dehumanized, whatever good things are returned to us in exchange. (p.50)

Conference speaker Charles Fried, from “The limits of law,” Boston Globe, October 23, 2007

Lincoln and Roosevelt were lucky. They chose their transgressions—if transgressions they were—well and sparingly. They did not seek to provoke—only to succeed. In fairly short order, it became obvious that they were right. Bush, through a combination of bad judgment, bad advice, and bad luck, had made the case for discretion and reasonableness disreputable. To paraphrase St. Paul: judgment, advice, and luck, and of these three, luck may be the greatest.

Conference speaker Detlev F. Vagts, from “Military Commissions: A Concise History,” 101 American Journal of International Law 35-37 (2007)

Familiar failings from the Cold War era and earlier history returned to haunt the nation in the wake of 9/11. But this time abuses were compounded by a new and dangerous idea. To justify illicit invasions of liberty and privacy, the executive branch’s lawyers argued that the president has unlimited power to violate federal statutes. President Bush agreed. Specifically, he asserted under the Constitution a novel authority in the name of “national security” or “military necessity” to disregard permanently any law enacted by Congress…

No sitting president before President Bush asserted or used power under the Constitution to set aside laws wholesale. Such power means a president can ignore statutes passed by Congress whenever he claims that “national security” or “military necessity” is at issue. (p. 153)

Conference speaker Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, from statement on the floor of the Senate, Dec. 7, 2007

Our Constitution has as its most elemental provision the separation of governmental powers into three separate branches. When the government feels it necessary to spy on its own citizens, each branch has a role.

The executive branch executes the laws, and conducts surveillance. The legislative branch sets the boundaries that protect Americans from improper government surveillance. The judicial branch oversees whether the government has followed the Constitution and the laws that protect U.S. citizens from violations of their privacy and their civil rights.

It sounds basic, but even an elementary understanding of this balance of powers eludes the Bush administration. So now we have to repair this flawed and shoddy “Protect America Act.”