Italy trip: Rome
My little girl and I arrived in Rome in the morning of April 7. We were still a bit groggy from a difficult flight -- difficult mainly due to our unfortunate seating smack in front of the in-flight movie screen, although at least with eachother. My wife arrived by a separate flight about an hour later (long story short: she's on a work-related trip to Rwanda that she attached to this one).

While we were waiting, Maddie and I made friends with a nice Italian family waiting for someone, immediately confirming the friendliness I remembered from my travels in Italy 26(!) years ago. I went to a terminal cafe and got an excellent capuccino. Without putting down the rest of a trip, arriving someplace new is often a high point for me; everything is possible, you're feeling good and feeling like the die is cast and here you are. This arrival was like that.

Crickey finally arrived and we piled into a taxi waiting to take us to Pensione Panda on the Via della Croce, which turned out to be the good choice we hoped it would be: close to the Piazza di Espagna and the Spanish Steps, nice room, comparatively decent price. Bit of a slog up a couple of flights with luggage -- including a suitcase full of French books destined for some lucky Rwandan primary school -- but no problem, really, that's what I was there for.

We unwound and maybe napped a bit, and then headed out for a look around. Our first stop was the Spanish Steps; as per international karmic regulations, there were a bunch of American kids there playing "Mr. Tambourine Man."

We just wandered around the city, with no particular goal in mind; I bought some roasted chestnuts, Maddie probably tried her first gelato, soon to be one of her principal Italian food groups, along with cheese pizza. Just looking around was fun: neighborhood grocery stores with salamis hanging in the window and cheeses stacked below, tiny hardware stores (ferramenta) or cigarette/knickknack stores (tabaccheria) where it turned out you can get stamps. With the April 9-10 general election approaching, there were countless campaign posters for alliances like "Daisy" or "Olive Tree" as well as ubiquitous (and somewhat cynical) "Vota Homer!" spoof posters put up by the Italian FOX Network.

We crossed the Tiber, took some pictures, and headed back towards our neighborhood. The long flight was catching up with all of us; I don't recall getting a supper, we must have all dropped off pretty quickly, at least for a while.


April 8
The night was rough for Maddie, who'd picked up a stomach flu that made her briefly but violently ill; the problems continued at breakfast, which she redeposited onto the venerable cobblestones of Via della Croce. We had no idea what we were up against at that point, and wound up calling the U.S. embassy for help; some nice fellow gave us some doctors to call -- but it was Saturday, and no one was answering calls.

The folks at the pensione desk told us to just head over to an emergency room that was in walking distance, so we did. Didn't cost a thing (at least so far, they got our address if I recall correctly). A brief examination showed there was nothing serious, and a second doctor translated the diagnosis by a for us: just a stomach bug, keep her hydrated. We got a prescription for something to mix with water to keep her electrolytes etc. on an even keel.

Moreover, Maddie was proving quite resilient and was even game enough to do a little shopping on her way back to the pensione; we found a very nice English language bookstore, The Lion Bookshop, on the Via del Greci, where we bought some travel books and a children's book for Maddie, and had a nice chat with the cashier, an English fellow. We eventually got back to the pensione to give Maddie a chance to rest up and rehydrate.

By the afternoon we were ready to do some sightseeing, and decided to head for the Colosseum. While it would have been walkable on most days, under the circumstances we decided to use the Metro; there's a stop at the Spanish Steps and another at the Colosseum. The fares were not too bad: 1 Euro for stop-to-stop transportation, some small fee for a few-hour or maybe a day pass, but we never used that.

And then there we were. The Colosseum is a huge old thing, tremendously impressive, yet also more than a bit horrible, too. I won't pretend to know more about it than I do; I was mildly surprised to learn it was completed after Jesus' death, I had thought it was older than that. Looking down into the maze now exposed below the arena gave a sense of the deeper purpose of the place: massive doorways, massive boltholes, designed to keep people and animals in their place until summoned. As Maddie wrote in her journal, it was "were the poor old Christian peoples waited for there doom, and were the lions and mabey bulls, waited too attack."

We went on from the Colosseum towards the Roman Forum, a glorious grab bag of early and late Roman and early Christian ruins that was completely impossible for me to take in except as Antiquity Writ Large. An early Christian church on the site illustrated the "palimpsest" principle of Rome and Italy: much was painted over and built out of and on top of the ruins of older things. We peered inside a Roman Senate building -- apparently rebuilt as a symbol of the golden olden days of the Republic, by an emperor now long gone himself.

We made our way home, stopping at a restaurant for a nice supper -- and yet more gelato. The final adventure was still ahead, though: when we got to the Termini Metro station at quarter to ten to change to our line to the Piazza di Spagna (or just "Spagna" in Metro lingo), it turned out that line was closed for the night! Working out the somewhat cryptic Italian note with some equally nonplussed Germans, we headed for the bus terminal above and hoped someone would confirm which bus line to take to get home. Which they did. None of which would be such a big deal, unless you've got a little girl suddenly at the end of her rope again, and worried she wouldn't get to bed.

But everything worked out fine.

[Italy travelogue: home] [next entry] [posted on 4/24]

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FURTHER READING (headings link to Wikipedia entries)

Spanish Steps, Piazza di Spagna: Great Buildings.
Colosseum: Great Buildings. Official Italian site: Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma: Il Colosseo. Inspired enthusiast site: Colosseum.net. NOVA transcript: how awnings may have been hung over the arena.
Roman Forum: Great Buildings. There's a wonderful "Thinkquest" prize winning site developed by some Dutch high school students, and a similar Forum Romanum Project site sponsored by the "VRoma" NEH grant; both have clickable maps of the Roman Forum. Finally, there's an official Roman archeological authority English language site about efforts to restore Santa Maria Antiqua, the 6th century A.D. church that is the most ancient Christian monument in the Roman Forum. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:00:00 PM -- |    

 
Darfur: Rally to Stop Genocide, 4/30/2006

Nearly three years into the crisis, the western Sudanese region of Darfur is acknowledged to be a humanitarian and human rights tragedy of the first order. The humanitarian, security and political situation continue to deteriorate: atrocities continue, people are still dying in large numbers of malnutrition and disease, and a new famine is feared. According to reports by the World Food Program, the United Nations and the Coalition for International Justice, 3.5 million people are now hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced due to violence, and 400,000 people have died in Darfur thus far. The international community is failing to protect civilians or to influence the Sudanese government to do so.

Sign up.

Stand in for a victim.

Be there. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:31:00 PM -- |    

 
Off to Italy!
We're off to Italy starting Thursday afternoon! We're taking advantage of an opportunity to visit some relatives who have a place to stay along the coast. I will therefore almost certainly not be posting anything to this blog from April 7th through the 17th. We'll be in Rome, Florence, and points in between; we'll take plenty of pictures, and I'll post a few once I get back.


Arrivederci! (?) posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Cool stuff
Wikocracy --- Sick of the same old boring Digital Millennium Copyright Act? USA Patriot Act? U.S. Constitution? Rewrite your own, wiki-style! "Over time, this platform could reflect a collaborative statement of what we think the law should be. Or it could reflect a moment-by-moment statement of the most recent editor's views. This will be as bloody or as civil as you make it... This is only a test." --- There are four new amendments to the Constitution so far.

Connexions -- Possibly more of a future in this Wiki-like collaboration system for writing textbooks. "Our Content Commons contains small "knowledge chunks" we call modules that connect into courses. "

Antarctic ice collision --- In 2000, several large pieces of the shelf broke off and wandered around in the Ross Sea, breaking into several smaller bergs over the next few years. Among the survivors of the initial calving event is piece C-16. In late March 2006, C-16 worked its way northward along the coastline and plowed into the tip of the Drygalski Ice Tongue. The collision knocked loose a chunk from the tip of the ice tongue.

Self-propelled liquid droplets --- "This phenomenon is called the Leidenfrost effect (or film boiling) and occurs beyond a surface temperature called the Leidenfrost point (about 200 - 300 C for water on flat surfaces, depending on surface quality). ... We discovered that film-boiling droplets move at speeds of several centimeters per second when placed on asymmetrically structured surfaces (movie), such as a piece of brass with periodic, saw-tooth shaped ridges (see highspeed movie)." --- The author thinks pumps and other devices could be powered by the effect.

Tune in and prosper --- unusual Star Trek footage over at Gary Farber's "Amygdala."

Estimate the effect on North America of a 7m rise in sea level. --- Things get even more exciting when you zoom in. You can switch to other parts of the world. Elsewhere, a 3/24/06 Scientific American article warns:

Experts predict that at current levels of greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide alone is at 375 parts per million--the earth may warm by as much as five degrees Celsius, matching conditions roughly 130,000 years ago. Now a refined climate model is predicting, among other things, sea level rises of as much as 20 feet, according to research results published today in the journal Science.

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NOTES: Liquid droplets via sofa. rites de passage; Connexions via Savage Minds, sea level simulation via Making Light "Particles".
posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:25:00 PM -- |    

 
More bush Bush Lincoln linkin'
The need to connect Bush and Lincoln comes from the very highest administration sources. In his Salon piece "A deluded king and his court lickspittles," Blumenthal writes,

In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, Bush was flattered by the analogy that he was like Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, winning a world war and present at the creation of a new international order. However, since the election of 2004, a period during which the violence in Iraq has not diminished, Bush has been told he more closely resembles the beleaguered Abraham Lincoln. He is the Great Emancipator who has freed 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq but has not yet won the war.

Told by Condoleeza Rice, for example; on the May 11, 2005 Larry King Show, she said, "I've often wondered, in the darkest hours of the Civil War, what people were saying to Abraham Lincoln about whether this was going to turn out all right." Not surprisingly, Bush likes that idea; Blumenthal also notes Bush's comments at Kansas State University on January 23, 2006:

... I understand politics, and it can get rough. I read a lot of history, by the way, and Abraham Lincoln had it rough. I'm not comparing myself to Abraham Lincoln, nor should you think just because I mentioned his name in the context of my presidency -- I would never do that. He was a great President. But, boy, they mistreated him. He did what he thought was right.*

True, Bush disavows the explicit comparison, but in the manner of a TV courtroom lawyer who's introduced an inadmissible point -- "...withdrawn, your honor!" It's a small thing amidst the other news of the moment, but the reason Lincoln's memory is cherished is not just that he did what he thought was right, but that he did it well, and that he actually was right. We weren't so fortunate this time around.


=====
* His very next sentences must be a rebuke to Vice President Cheney:

A lot of politicians, a lot of Presidents have gone through some tough times in the presidency, and I understand that. One of my biggest disappointments is the tone in Washington, D.C. I've done my best to try to elevate the tone. I just -- needless name-calling, to me, is beneath the dignity of the office of the President.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:50:00 PM -- |    

 
Lincoln v. Bush
A couple of months ago, Jim Henley took note of a conservative commentator using Lincoln's Civil War actions as cover for Bush's warrantless surveillance. Andrew McCarthy:

[Eavesdropping] was critical in the Civil War, when, by definition, it was done domestically — and without the slightest suggestion that federal courts should be involved.

In his post, Henley counted such arguments among the costs of Lincoln's Civil War record -- and suggested that those costs were another part of the cost of slavery itself, the "woe due to those by whom the offense came":

Lincoln really did engage in high-handed, constitutionally dubious acts and got away with them. And because he got away with them, excuse-makers for Executive Branch martinets have used the “Lincoln did it!” defense ever since.

Lincoln’s domestic security actions during the Civil War represent a cost we continue to pay, today. For that reason there will be critics of government power who judge him harshly, and with reason.

Lincoln
How do Lincoln's actions and justifications for those actions compare to Bush's?

McCarthy notwithstanding, the question of domestic technical eavesdropping was probably not much of an issue at the time simply because the Fourth Amendment (against unreasonable search or seizure) was considered to be only applicable to physical searches until well in to the 20th century.

Moreover, even had there been 19th century versions of FISA and Katz v. United States -- two of the main legal pillars protecting domestic electronic communications today -- "domestic" would not have been quite the right word for telegraph communications between Richmond and its generals. Had the Fourth Amendment immediately protected telegraph communications, communications within the Confederacy would have probably (and I would say rightly) considered "enemy" rather than "citizen" communications, judging by the 1863 Supreme Court Prize Cases rulings. If Lincoln could blockade the ports and seize the ships of enemies in the face of obvious war (and prior to the declaration of war), it's hard to see why he could not wiretap their telegraph lines as well.

Lincoln was chiefly criticized for canceling habeas corpus -- the right to dispute one's arrest before a judge. Lincoln initially ordered the suspension in connection with protecting railway access to Washington, D.C., but subsequently allowed and encouraged the same suspensions to speed the arrest of draft resistors and anti-draft agitators.

In a famous June 1863 letter to "Erastus Corning and Others," Lincoln addressed his critics on the occasion of the controversial and questionable arrest of Congressman Vallandigham, a Democrat vehemently opposed to further prosecution of the war. The letter is best known for the memorable question, "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wiley agitator who induces him to desert?" But there were more than folksy soundbites in what was a deeply considered, prepared communication to the nation.

Lincoln's principal goal was neither to justify nor disavow the Vallandigham arrest in particular, but to assert that the Constitution's own formal guarantee of habeas corpus -- embedded in Article I, Section 9 -- permits a president to broadly suspend that writ in cases of rebellion or invasion:

I concede that the class of arrests complained of, can be constitutional only when, in cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety may require them; and I insist that in such cases, they are constitutional wherever the public safety does require them—as well in places to which they may prevent the rebellion extending as in those where it may be already prevailing—as well where they may restrain mischievous interference with the raising and supplying of armies, to suppress the rebellion, as where the rebellion may actually be—as well where they may restrain the enticing men out of the army, as where they would prevent mutiny in the army—equally constitutional at all places where they will conduce to the public Safety, as against the dangers of Rebellion or Invasion.

The letter was more than just a prompt, effective public defense of Lincoln's wartime administration. In further sad contrast to our current president's pronouncements, it did quite as much to limit a future president's powers as it did to assert them:

If I be wrong on this question of constitutional power, my error lies in believing that certain proceedings are constitutional when, in cases of rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety requires them, which would not be constitutional when, in absence of rebellion or invasion, the public Safety does not require them—in other words, that the constitution is not in it’s application in all respects the same, in cases of Rebellion or invasion, involving the public Safety, as it is in times of profound peace and public security. The constitution itself makes the distinction; and I can no more be persuaded that the government can constitutionally take no strong measure in time of rebellion, because it can be shown that the same could not be lawfully taken in time of peace, than I can be persuaded that a particular drug is not good medicine for a sick man, because it can be shown to not be good food for a well one.
(emphases added)

As Benjamin Kleinerman points out in his excellent essay "Lincoln's Example: Executive Power and the Survival of Constitutionalism,"

Lincoln did more than merely take those actions necessary for the preservation of the Constitution; he also publicly announced his reasons behind the constitutionally questionable actions he took. ... Lincoln attempted to avert the danger, suggested by the medicine metaphor, that the public will become ’addicts’ of executive power, by trying to teach the public that his questionable actions were acceptable only within the limits imposed by the Constitution’s preservation.

Beyond arguing his case publicly, Lincoln saw to it that his argument -- all of it -- became well known. In Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin writes: "Lincoln took every step to ensure that his words would shape public opinion. Printed in a great variety of formats, the letter eventually reached an astonishing 10 million people in their homes and workplaces, on isolated farms and in the cities."

Although Lincoln also took early and strictly speaking unauthorized military action after the fall of Fort Sumter, he promptly submitted all actions "pushing the Constitutional envelope," so to speak (independently calling up militia and expanding the military, transferring funds, imposing a blockade) to Congressional approval, indeed, within the 90 days prescribed by a War Powers Act more than one hundred years later. As Daniel Farber comments in his book Lincoln's Constitution:

Thus, even under a highly Congress-centered view of the war power, Lincoln acted appropriately. Indeed, given current laments about the ineffectiveness of the War Powers Resolution, it is somewhat ironic that Lincoln's record of "compliance" with the resolution is better than that of the modern presidents at whom it was aimed.*

Summing up, Lincoln conducted his tests of emergency presidential powers publicly, acknowledged criticism of his actions publicly, rebutted those criticisms publicly, sought widespread knowledge and acceptance of his analysis rather than hiding it behind a cloak of secrecy, and submitted his actions to congressional approval as soon as possible.

Crucially, Lincoln also acknowledged distinct and very narrow limits on why a president could take such constitutional initiatives: if the survival of the Constitution itself demanded it. And despite the life and death struggle of "government of the people, by the people, for the people," Lincoln made sure the people knew it.



Bush
By contrast, the first thing to notice about Bush's approach to governance is that it's difficult, if not impossible, to find any limits whatsoever that he and his advisors acknowledge for his presidency. Perhaps the best known evidence is in the infamous August 1, 2002 Department of Justice Bybee memo discussing the administration's legal stance on interrogation and torture:

In light of the President's complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, we will not read a criminal statute as infringing on the President's ultimate authority in these cases.

Any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of battlefield combatants would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the Commander-in-Chief authority in the President. ... Congress can no more interfere with the President's conduct of the interrogation of enemy combatants than it can dictate strategic or tactical decisions on the battlefield. (emphases added)

This is but one outgrowth of a wider "unitary executive" theory that was already being implemented by the Bush administration well before the 9/11 attacks -- a trend most apparent in its growing use and abuse of "signing statements," in which the president outlines reservations about a law he is signing into effect, and may in effect signal he will not enforce it or always abide by it.** Among the better known signing statements are those signaling less than full, unqualified support for enforcing the McCain anti-torture amendment or certain provisions of the Patriot Act.

In his 2005 article Rethinking Presidential Power -- The Unitary Executive and the George W. Bush Presidency, Christopher Kelley describes one case showing just how pernicious the practice is. A law introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy and passed by Congress required the Bush administration to report "any instance in which the executive branch either refused to enforce a law or defend a statute it deemed unconstitutional" -- e.g., signing statements. But even in Bush's signing statement for this legislation, he stated:

The executive branch shall construe section 530D of title 28, and related provisions in section 202 of the Act, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authorities of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, the national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties.
(link added)

Further, the Bush administration routinely relies on secrecy to hide even more constitutionally problematic actions (e.g., rendition, warrantless surveillance, torture) from view. While that's understandable in a way, given the revolting nature of many of those secrets, the point here is that it is also a conscious decision not to engage in constitutional rule, but in unilateral rule. "Secrecy in the Bush Administration," a minority staff report for the House Committee on Government Reform, has found that

...the average number of original decisions to classify information increased 50% over the average for the previous five years. [...]

In over 100 instances in which Rep. Waxman attempted to conduct oversight on important issues, the Bush Administration ignored requests for information, refused to provide information, or provided incomplete and inadequate responses. In addition, where the Administration provided responses, whether complete or incomplete, they were usually substantially delayed, commonly missing the deadlines for responding by several months or more. [...]

Through legislative changes, implementing regulations, and administrative practices, the Administration has undermined the laws that make the federal government more transparent to its citizens, including the Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and the Federal Advisory Committee Act. At the same time, the Administration has expanded the reach of the laws authorizing the Administration to classify documents and to act without public or congressional oversight. Individually, some of the changes implemented by the Bush Administration may have limited impact. Taken together, however, the Administration’s actions represent an unparalleled assault on the principle of open and accountable government.

To forestall one argument, many of these tactics were in full swing well before 9/11, most notoriously in the case of Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force, where the struggle to obtain information about who participated in this task force and what was said was stonewalled at every turn -- and was eventually ended by a complacent, compliant Supreme Court. Of course, many post-9/11 secrets were also kept mainly to avoid political embarrassment; for example, the Bush administration worked long and hard to keep the Presidential Daily Brief warning of Al Qaeda attacks in America out of the hands of the 9/11 Commission.

Finally, and perhaps most damaging to any comparison with Lincoln's constitutionalism, Bush not only engages in untrammeled extraconstitutional actions, and not only often keeps those actions secret, but actively lies...

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution. -- 4/20/2004

and lies...

First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order. -- 7/14/2004

and lies...

Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, a federal judge's permission to track his calls, or a federal judge's permission to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S. -- 6/9/2005

...about what he's doing.*** Far from "acting in good faith," as Senator Arlen Specter has claimed, this president has actively misled Americans expecting that he will "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" -- to quote from the oaths of office he swore in 2001 and 2005.

Mentioning these lies are not some afterthought to Senator Russ Feingold's S.398 censure resolution -- they are crucial, damning, and irrefutable charges against this president. Constitutional faith has been broken between a president and the people of the United States, whether enough of them see it that way or not.


Conclusion
Having defended Lincoln's grounds for his actions during the War of the Rebellion, it's important to concede that military arrests were overused and abused during his presidency. But it's far less important to defend all of Lincoln's and his generals' actions per se than to remind ourselves how his open, honest, and narrow necessity- and Constitution-based defense of those actions should guide Americans facing new challenges.

No Lincolnian doctrine of necessity can possibly apply to the current situation. A terrible attack took place five years ago. It killed a great many people, far too many. But it did not threaten the continuity of the nation or its Constitution the way the Civil War did. To answer both McCarthy and Henley: yes, Lincoln took critical and constitutionally questionable actions in the Civil War - but many of those actions were very arguably constitutional, and all were taken precisely because the survival of the Constitution really was at stake. The same is not true today -- at least not via exterior threats. And if McCarthy is arguing that Americans in general are a threat on the order of Confederates of yesteryear, he should say so more plainly.

Future attacks like 9/11 or worse are a real concern. But many, many, many straightforward, constitutionally unproblematic steps remain to be taken before we can feel reasonably confident we have done all we can to minimize the likelihood of such attacks, and all we can to weather those that occur. Airport precautions should be reviewed and refined; ports, nuclear, and chemical plants should be made more secure; nuclear materials around the world should be inventoried and secured; public health preparations should be taken; continuity of national, state, and local governments should be assured; emergency preparedness plans should be drawn up, refined, funded, and practiced. And yes, well-targeted surveillance, within a careful framework of judicial and legal oversight, should continue.

When and if all normal preparations of this sort are taken, and there still remain valid concerns about the risks to the survival of the United States itself, then -- and only then -- should extraconstitutional means be considered by a president. As Kleinerman writes in an exchange about his article with AEI's Joseph Knippenberg,

...the distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary so essential to Lincoln’s justification of his actions no longer applies given the open-ended threat from asymmetric warfare.

We are nowhere close to requiring constitutionally questionable or illegal actions by a president in the last defense of a continuing Constitution. To pretend that we are, or to support such pretensions, is to place the self-regard and political ambitions of an amoral, secretive, and dishonest president above the obligations he has to that Constitution. To quote the final lines of Kleinerman's essay:

The question becomes: are we, or can we become, a constitutional people attached enough to the rule of law so as to prevent the overextension of executive power? In other words, are we capable of insisting upon our Constitution even when presidents do not?

=====
* p. 142.
** Partisan defenders of the Bush administration will rightly point out that the "unitary executive" theory was implemented and defended by other presidents including Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton well before George W. Bush's presidency. However, compared to this administration, their use of such extraconstitutional mechanisms as "signing statements" was sporadic and limited. Kelley counts 76 signing statements by all presidents before Carter, 322 for all presidents before George W. Bush -- and 435 in Bush's first term alone (p. 31).
*** In order, the statements were made on 4/20/2004 -- Protecting the Homeland Q and A, Buffalo, New York; 7/14/2004 -- President's Remarks at Ask President Bush Event, Mid-States Aluminum Corporation, Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin; and 6/9/2005 -- President Discusses Patriot Act, Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy, Columbus, Ohio. Constitutionally significant lies by Bush and his administration have not been limited to warrantless surveillance. Most recently, Murray Waas has reported that Bush knew that he and his administration might well be making false statements about Iraq procuring aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons development.

NOTES: Kelley article via Barbara O'Brien ("Mahablog": The Unitary Executive, Part I: Signing Statements). Kleinerman article via Joseph Knippenberg (AEI): Lessons from Lincoln and Lincoln and Bush (at "No Left Turns"), both via e-mail from Brett Marston. Waas link via Dan Froomkin, washingtonpost.com.

CROSSPOSTED to Daily Kos. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:00:00 PM -- |