Information Control and Consent of the Damned

...With a crucial assist from the Supreme Court, George W. Bush became the first president of the 21st century and promptly set about restoring, even increasing, presidential powers. A hallmark of this effort was his assertion of control over information about what the government is, or has been, up to.

The first case was the work of a task force on energy policy chaired by Vice President Cheney. This was followed in November 2001 by an executive order giving an incumbent president decisionmaking authority over release of past presidents' papers. This overrode a congressional act that requires a president's records be available to the public no later than 12 years after he has left office. The Bush executive order makes this contingent upon the incumbent president's consent.

A further opportunity to assert presidential authority came when Al Qaeda terrorists flew two airplanes into the World Trade Center buildings in New York, another into the Pentagon, and would have flown a fourth into another target in Washington (probably the White House or Capitol) but for heroic passengers who forced a crash in rural Pennsylvania.

Historically, wars lead to increased presidential powers. There is an urge in the public and in Congress to rally round the flag and support the president no matter how foolish his actions.

But it was a Democratic Senate that forced Democrat Johnson into early retirement. In 2001, Senate Democrats were overcome by jelly where their backbones had been in 1968-69. True, their numbers had been reduced to 50 out of 100 senators, but 50 senators can be a powerful bloc. Nevertheless, Democrats acquiesced in the misnamed USA Patriot Act which shredded the Bill of Rights. They acquiesced in scandalous tax cuts. Worse, they supported the invasion of Iraq, on the basis of false justifications.

The question of controlling information has arisen again in connection with the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee reasonably want to know what Judge Roberts did and what views he expressed during his service in the Reagan administration. While Bush professes full cooperation with the Senate Judiciary Committee, including its Democratic members, he has been careful about which documents from these periods of Roberts' career are made available. A great many documents have been supplied, but some have been withheld. Many of those that have been supplied have large sections blacked out. The Bush executive order says these redactions should be made on the basis of national security considerations, but in the end they come down to subjective judgments by the incumbent president or his White House staff.

In the name of protecting national security, President Bush has arrogated to himself and to all his successors (unless one of them should be sufficiently public-spirited to change it) the power to control which presidential papers going back to George Washington can be made public. One must ask: Why would Bush be moved to do this?

A cynical, but possibly true, explanation is to protect Reagan and his vice president - the current president's father - from disclosure of the full truth about the Iran-contra scandal, which possibly contained grounds for another impeachment.

Pat M. Holt, The Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 1, 2005

Thanks to Lambert for the tip.

If the Company had the media control it wants, yesterday we would have nothing but the Happy Talk from Bush, Chertoff, and Brown.

The stories of what were really happening in New Orleans would be unheard.

One wonders if the the food and water would have ever arrived- and how many would survive.

One also wonders, since food and water and aid didn't show up to where the cameras were until yesterday evening, how much aid is showing up to where the cameras aren't?

With over a million displaced persons, the possibility of 100,000 dead, and a country reeling, one wonders how much of the apparent ineptitude is an lassiez faire rape of a blue city in a red state?

Last night there was an interesting exhange between a Louisiana Senator and a distaught cable anchorman, and a silent assent by Bill Clinton as Poppy asserted Junior was doing the best he could do- that no one predicted this nightmare.

Landrieu and the Clintons both feel it important to get the Congress to send those billions to the relief of New Orleans and avoid the passive resistance of the Company.

That is, of course, why they are letting themselves get buggered by by Bu$hCo.

They feel compromise is the only way to get the ruthless to help.

The problem is that when you sleep with people to get them to show a little mercy to your babies, they just end up raping the children too.

Clinton and Landrieu make the mistake of thinking they can negotiate with the robber barons. In reality they are being puppets. They may get some relief for the needy in the short run, but in the long run they enable enslavement and despoilation.