More Miers Badness: she helped develop Patriot Act

[Atman]

Miers has backed wide executive role
Was on team that developed Patriot Act

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | October 5, 2005

WASHINGTON -- As President Bush's counsel, Harriet E. Miers continued the expansive interpretation of presidential powers favored by her predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, who backed Bush's authority to hold terrorist suspects without trial, as well as the White House's right to withhold more administration documents from public disclosure than in the past.

Miers has also been outspoken in her support of reauthorizing the Patriot Act, which gave the executive branch new powers of surveillance over US citizens.

Now, Miers is Bush's choice to join the Supreme Court, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor.

That selection determines how much power a president can wield under the Constitution. Her nomination, announced Monday, followed the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who supported broad war powers for the president in a case he heard during his brief tenure as an appellate judge.

The two appointments, both of lawyers with extensive White House experience, have raised alarm among critics of the Bush administration's broad reading of executive branch authority.

''The fact that the president is now seeding the Supreme Court with people who have been handmaidens in his efforts to increase the power of the executive without any check or oversight whatsoever is very disturbing," said Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which sued Bush on behalf of prisoners at the US facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Supporters of Miers, too, have invoked her work on Bush's terrorism policies to assuage fears among some conservatives that she may be too moderate.

''In her work respecting the War on Terror and the threats posed to our country by misuse of foreign and international law, Ms. Miers has applied the Constitution as the Framers wrote it," wrote Leonard Leo of the conservative Federalist Society.

A New York University law professor, David Golove, said executive power is emerging as a defining issue for the Supreme Court in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era. In case after case, the Bush administration has argued that it has the authority to take measures it deems necessary to stop terrorists, while others have insisted on maintaining checks and balances.

<snip>

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/10/05/miers_has_backed_wide_executive_role?mode=PF

[indepat]

1. Proponents of the Patriot Act must hate our Constitution IMHO and are out

to dismantle it.

[liveoaktx]

2. VIDEO from April

Miers on Patriot Act

[Straight Shooter]

3. First she sits on her a** after receipt of the 8/6/01 PDB about Osama

Then she participates in the construction of the *gag me* Patriot Act.

What we have here is a rabid wolf in sheep's clothing.

[shance]

4. When exactly were they working on the Patriot Act?

n/t

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. oh about 6 months before 9/11. They just needed an excuse.

and boy, when Harry got through briefing the president in August, they had it all set up.

[natrat]

6. ooh and our boy harry is gonna support

give it all away harry