The Rant
Bush on the Constitution:
'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 9, 2005, 07:53
Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet
with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA
Patriot Act.
Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately
following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups
like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent
conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous
provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the
President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers
to the Supreme Court.
"I don't give a goddamn,"
Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my
way."
"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid
case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back.
"It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they
all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution
"a goddamned piece of paper."
And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States
is little more than toilet paper stained from all the crap that this group of
power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that "goddamned piece of paper"
used to guarantee.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that
the
"Constitution is an outdated document."
Put aside, for a moment,
political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn't matter if you are a
Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn't matter if you support the
invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood
for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source
to determine -- in the end -- if something is legal or right.
Every federal official -- including the President -- who takes an oath of
office swears to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the
Constitution a "living document." "Oh, how I hate the phrase we have
a 'living document' " Scalia says. "We now have a Constitution
that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living
organism, for Pete's sake."
As a judge, Scalia says, "I don't have to prove that the
Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it's better than anything
else."
President Bush has proposed seven
amendments to the Constitution over the last five years, including a
controversial amendment to define marriage as a "union between a man and
woman." Members of Congress have proposed some 11,000 amendments over the last
decade, ranging from repeal of the right to bear arms to a Constitutional ban on
abortion.
Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution comes from a loss of
rights.
"We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones," Scalia
warns. "Don't think that it's a one-way street."
And don't buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is a
necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law that infringes on the
rights of every American citizen and, as one brave aide told President Bush,
something that undermines the Constitution of the United States.
But why should Bush care? After all, to him the Constitution is just "a
goddamned piece of paper."
###
"If I Were a Dictator... "
George W. Bush has stated he'd prefer to be a dictator at least three times:
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier,
just so long as I'm
the dictator."
-
GW Bush during a photo-op with Congressional leaders on 12/18/2000.
As broadcast on CNN and available in transcript on their website:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html
"You don't get
everything you want. A
dictatorship would be a lot easier."
Describing what it's
like to be governor of Texas.(Governing
Magazine 7/98) -- From Paul Begala's "Is Our Children Learning?"
"A
dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier,
there's no question about it. "
[Bush] said. -- Business Week, July 30, 2001