Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

As Dwayne Monroe said:

Which demonstrates, once again, the accuracy of Zizek’s six year old insight into the real danger posed by the Bush administration’s modification of executive branch SOP. No doubt, I’ve mentioned this before. But I forgive myself. Our brief lives consist mostly of contending leitmotifs.

THE IRAQ WAR: WHERE IS THE TRUE DANGER?

We do have here a kind of perverted Hegelian “negation of negation”: in a first negation, the populist Right disturbs the aseptic liberal consensus by giving voice to passionate dissent, clearly arguing against the “foreign threat”; in a second negation, the “decent” democratic center, in the very gesture of pathetically rejecting this populist Right, integrates its message in a “civilized” way - in-between, the ENTIRE FIELD of background “unwritten rules” has already changed so much that no one even notices it and everyone is just relieved that the anti-democratic threat is over. And the true danger is that something similar will happen with the “war on terror”: “extremists” like John Ashcroft will be discarded, but their legacy will remain, imperceptibly interwoven into the invisible ethical fabric of our societies. Their defeat will be their ultimate triumph: they will no longer be needed, since their message will be incorporated into the mainstream.

Which was a bit inspired by a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Wall Street Journal [editorial page] - March 9, 2009

Obama Channels Cheney
Obama adopts Bush view on the powers of the presidency.

The Obama Administration this week released its predecessor’s
post-9/11 legal memoranda in the name of “transparency,” producing
another round of feel-good Bush criticism. Anyone interested in
President Obama’s actual executive-power policies, however, should
look at his position on warrantless wiretapping. Dick Cheney must be
smiling.

In a federal lawsuit, the Obama legal team is arguing that judges lack
the authority to enforce their own rulings in classified matters of
national security. The standoff concerns the Oregon chapter of the Al- Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Saudi Arabian charity that was shut
down in 2004 on evidence that it was financing al Qaeda. Al-Haramain
sued the Bush Administration in 2005, claiming it had been illegally
wiretapped.

At the heart of Al-Haramain’s case is a classified document that it
says proves that the alleged eavesdropping was not authorized under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. That record was
inadvertently disclosed after Al-Haramain was designated as a
terrorist organization; the Bush Administration declared such
documents state secrets after their existence became known.

In July, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the President’s
right to do so, which should have ended the matter. But the San
Francisco panel also returned the case to the presiding district court
judge, Vaughn Walker, ordering him to decide if FISA pre-empts the
state secrets privilege. If he does, Al-Haramain would be allowed to
use the document to establish the standing to litigate.

The Obama Justice Department has adopted a legal stance identical to,
if not more aggressive than, the Bush version. It argues that the
court-forced disclosure of the surveillance programs would cause
“exceptional harm to national security” by exposing intelligence
sources and methods. Last Friday the Ninth Circuit denied the latest
emergency motion to dismiss, again kicking matters back to Judge Walker.

In court documents filed hours later, Justice argues that the decision
to release classified information “is committed to the discretion of
the Executive Branch, and is not subject to judicial review. Moreover,
the Court does not have independent power . . . to order the
Government to grant counsel access to classified information when the
Executive Branch has denied them such access.” The brief continues
that federal judges are “ill-equipped to second-guess the Executive
Branch.”

That’s about as pure an assertion of Presidential power as they come,
and we’re beginning to wonder if the White House has put David
Addington, Mr. Cheney’s chief legal aide, on retainer. The practical
effect is to prevent the courts from reviewing the legality of the
warrantless wiretapping program that Mr. Obama repeatedly claimed to
find so heinous — at least before taking office. Justice, by the way,
is making the same state secrets argument in a separate lawsuit
involving rendition and a Boeing subsidiary.

Hide the children, but we agree with Mr. Obama that the President has
inherent Article II Constitutional powers that neither the judiciary
nor statutes like FISA can impinge upon. The FISA appeals court said
as much in a decision released in January, as did Attorney General
Eric Holder during his confirmation hearings. It’s reassuring to know
the Administration is refusing to compromise core executive-branch
prerogatives, especially on war powers.

Then again, we are relearning that the “Imperial Presidency” is only
imperial when the President is a Republican. Democrats who spent years
denouncing George Bush for “spying on Americans” and “illegal
wiretaps” are now conspicuously silent. Yet these same liberals are
going ballistic about the Bush-era legal memos released this week.
Cognitive dissonance is the polite explanation, and we wouldn’t be
surprised if Mr. Holder released them precisely to distract liberal
attention from the Al-Haramain case.

By the way, those Bush documents are Office of Legal Counsel memos,
not policy directives. They were written in the immediate aftermath of
a major terrorist attack, when more seemed possible, and it would have
been irresponsible not to explore the outer limits of Presidential war
powers in the event of a worst-case scenario. Based on what we are
learning so far about Mr. Obama’s policies, his Administration would
do the same.