The Testy Kid
Ivins, Molly
Small Favors Molly Ivins The Testy Kid Uh-oh. Excuse me. I'm so sorry, but we are having an hon-est-to-goodness constitutional crisis as the Testy Kid violates his oath to uphold the laws and...
...The courts, the press, the Congress all functioned superbly...
...Let's try this again...
...Her latest book is "Who Let the Dogs In...
...And the Bush Administration has already targeted vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals-and boy, if those aren't outposts of Al Qaeda, what is...
...I wish I thought I were being too pompous about this, but the greatest danger to our freedom always comes when we are scared and distracted-and right now we are both...
...That the President of the United States unconstitutionally usurped power is not in dispute...
...The President is not above the law...
...The usual suspects, like that silly Congressman Dan Burton, solemnly try to scare us with the dread specter of war, as though they alone were the hardheaded pragmatists while only woolly-minded liberals care about the Constitution...
...On his own, the President decided to use secret branches of government to spy on the American people...
...But why that justifies treating Unitarians like Islamofascists is beyond me...
...Molly Ivins writes in this space every month...
...There would be no place to hide...
...I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night, telling each other scary stories, but there's a reason we have never given our government this kind of power...
...This could scarcely be clearer...
...He and his Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, both claim he has the right to do so on account of he is the President...
...Well, yes...
...As an ACLU liberal, I would like to say how honored I am to stand with so many American conservatives on this issue...
...He is, of course, using 9/11 to justify his actions in this as he does for everything else: 9/11 happened so the Constitution does not apply, 9/11 happened so there is no separation of powers, 9/11 happened so 200 years of experience in curbing the executive power of government is something we can now overlook...
...Anyone think we're up to that again...
...Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic...
...Here is a curious fact about the government of this country spying on its citizens: It always goes wrong immediately...
...You do credit to all your heroes-Barry Goldwater would be so proud...
...We get it wrong from the beginning every time...
...As the late Senator Frank Church said, "That capability could at any time be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter...
...The first time this happened, the institutional response was magnificent...
...Burton asks whether these people realize we're at war...
...I'm so sorry, but we are having an hon-est-to-goodness constitutional crisis as the Testy Kid violates his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the President, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants...
...For some reason, it's not as though we start with people anyone would regard as suspicious and then somehow slip gradually into spying on the Girl Scouts...
...And if a dictator took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back...
...The Department of Defense has just proved this yet again with its latest folly of mistaking a flock of Florida Quakers for a threat to overthrow the government...
...Never seem to be able to distinguish a terrorist from a vegetarian...
...Either the President of the United States is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached...
Vol. 70 • February 2006 • No. 2
