Dahlia Lithwick, writing for Slate, today, on the attorney-general firing fiasco, comes up with a new form of Catch-22, where you're damned if you do, and double-damned if you don't:
As Mukasey has argued and Jonathan Turley has decoded, the Bush administration formulation of executive privilege constitutes a perfect legal möbius strip:
"[L]awyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president—and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers."
That's just for firing the innocent for no cause other than political.
It gets worse when the president vetoes congressional legislation forbidding the torture of prisoners in your name and mine, by the country we knew and loved, where such was forbidden by law and policy.
Bush, as Godfather, seems to be out to have the U.S. indicted under RICO.
The argument goes that although the president is not above the law, when he exercises his constitutional power, say as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he is the law. So, if the president says that torture of prisoners to obtain information or cooperation is necessary, say to save the country from enemies foreign and domestic, why then it's okay to torture them just like Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Office, Archbishop Torquemada did in Spain during the Inquisition. A president outranks an archbishop, wouldn't you think?
If the president is the law for the executive branch, the logic must run, then Congress cannot rein in the president or any of the executive agencies, such as the armed services or the CIA, those most likely to encounter enemies with information or needed cooperation. But there's also the FBI, the DEA, the immigration and customs people, the Coast Guard, etc., all of whom encounter people we'd like to know more about and who their friends and suppliers are. All enemies of the people, including drug suppliers and people who don't like us very much, perhaps for good reason, such as that we're arrogant, throw our weight around, and destroy their culture, as they see it. Apart from that we're a bunch of nice guys.
But we need to torture them because otherwise something bad may happen to us and our president is the guy we look to so we're all nice and protected. So torture of prisoners is okay with us, just as it was in Germany under Hitler and the Soviet Union under Stalin. Just nice leaders protecting their favorite people.
The problem is that I grew up thinking that we were better than Hitler and Stalin and their supporters.
In fact, I'd thought we were exactly the opposite from them.
Now I find that I have a president who agrees with them.
Either I'm very wrong about torture of prisoners, or unlimited executive power, or my country is.
I've been wrong before, but I've also been right, as well.
Right now I'd be willing to bet on me, and not my country.