Newsweek: Bush Claims the Power to Order Killing of Suspects

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
----- Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
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Still think that President Bush, advocate of the "unitary executive" doctrine that the president should be more powerful than both Congress and the Supreme Court, is not overstepping Constitutional (and moral) bounds?

Remain convinced that it's OK for the leader of a democracy and his minions to read your email and snail mail, peruse your medical ailments, credit history and library records, track your internet browsing, and listen in on your private phone calls.....at will and as they please, without permission or oversight from anyone?

Find it acceptable that, as Al Gore brilliantly summarized for us, "...the President has also declared that he has....power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that....the person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer-even to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned," ?

If so, feast your mind and heart on this newly-released shocker from Newsweek magazine....

"In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush's surveillance program.

During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances."

Did you catch the phrase "order the killing ?" Or how about the word "suspect ?" No presumption of innocence. No review of the facts. No inspection of evidence. No trial in the court of law. Just ordering a hit, Mafia-style, based on one person's suspicion.

Still think the Bush Administration is a merely a band of America-loving patriots, just trying their gosh-darn best to be faithful to their vows to uphold the US Constitution?

Or a power-hungry band of oil industry execs who've completely lost sight of moral boundaries and the principles of democracy and justice?

With this new revelation, it becomes ever more obvious that the Bush Administration is a deadly threat to the existence of US democracy and the very stability of our country.

I second Al Gore when he asked in his historic speech on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day last month, "Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do? .
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