A lot has already been written how Obama on assuming office will be challenged to "undo" many much of the disgraceful conduct and actions of George W and his cohorts. It's a long list.....
Richard Ackland, lawyer, commentator and writer, in his weekly op-ed piece in the Sydney Morning Herald considers how Bush "dealt" with the law - or rather, ignored it so flagrantly:
"It's "just a piece of paper" is the way George Bush famously described the US constitution. Bush has scant respect for the piece of paper and surrounded himself with lawyers who systematically worked out ways to shred it.
Barack Obama, by contrast, was a senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago and knows the crevices and crannies of the piece of paper like few other presidents before him.
Among the myriad awful circumstances that Obama inherits, the Bush legal legacy ranks as one of the most wretched. The Administration's view has been that if national security demands it, the president, as commander in chief, can do pretty much what he likes.
Statutes that prohibit secret detention in black-hole prisons, surveillance of the American people without warrant and torture have all been ignored or redefined out of existence.
The protections afforded by habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions have been taken out the back and shot.
Like Louis XIV before him, Bush says, "L'Etat, c'est moi" (I am the state).
He could declare anyone, anywhere, to be an illegal enemy combatant, even though they had committed no war crime or fought in any war. Outside the normal laws of war, or even the criminal law, they could be sent to a black-hole prison, where they could be tortured, and face trial on charges based on "coerced testimony" and hearsay.
The accused could not even testify they had been tortured because to say so would violate a classified secret."
Read on here......
Richard Ackland, lawyer, commentator and writer, in his weekly op-ed piece in the Sydney Morning Herald considers how Bush "dealt" with the law - or rather, ignored it so flagrantly:
"It's "just a piece of paper" is the way George Bush famously described the US constitution. Bush has scant respect for the piece of paper and surrounded himself with lawyers who systematically worked out ways to shred it.
Barack Obama, by contrast, was a senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago and knows the crevices and crannies of the piece of paper like few other presidents before him.
Among the myriad awful circumstances that Obama inherits, the Bush legal legacy ranks as one of the most wretched. The Administration's view has been that if national security demands it, the president, as commander in chief, can do pretty much what he likes.
Statutes that prohibit secret detention in black-hole prisons, surveillance of the American people without warrant and torture have all been ignored or redefined out of existence.
The protections afforded by habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions have been taken out the back and shot.
Like Louis XIV before him, Bush says, "L'Etat, c'est moi" (I am the state).
He could declare anyone, anywhere, to be an illegal enemy combatant, even though they had committed no war crime or fought in any war. Outside the normal laws of war, or even the criminal law, they could be sent to a black-hole prison, where they could be tortured, and face trial on charges based on "coerced testimony" and hearsay.
The accused could not even testify they had been tortured because to say so would violate a classified secret."
Read on here......
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