Sen. Whitehouse Reveals Secret DoJ Legal Memos: Bush Determines What Is Constitutional

[wildbilln864]

This morning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivered an impassioned floor speech to help frame the debate over FISA reform. Using his privilege as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Whitehouse said he has “spent hours poring over” secret opinions issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) — and he took notes.

Whitehouse is a lawyer, a former U.S. Attorney, a former legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and a former State Attorney General. He said he sought and received permission to have his notes declassified because he wanted to show the public “what the Bush administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking.”

“To give you an example of what I read,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor, “I have gotten three legal propositions from these secret OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note-taking could reproduce them from the classified documents”:

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

Watch it:

link

[lonestarnot]

1. So how many fucking votes do we have on Monday 166?

[Patsy Stone]

2. Love me some Sheldon Whitehouse

Un-fricking believable. The second one, if you read it over and over, just makes you angrier and angrier.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. So, like, are all these revelations (this, the NIE, the torture tape revelations)

actually leading up to some point, or are they just hoping to maybe get us really mad at the Republicans so we will vote in another wave of malfeasant Democrats in November?

[TahitiNut]

4. It'd be nice if we chose a President who could read.

:puke:

[Radio_Lady]

6. ... and who could TALK! This nutjob makes most of us cringe every time he opens his mouth!

:puke:

:puke:

:puke:

I love the English language with all of its faults, failures and idiosyncracies. I hate to see it mangled -- in speaking or in writing.

[proud patriot]

5. GRRRR

:mad:

[NoodleyAppendage]

7. And...what distinguishes Bush from a DICTATOR knowing these points? NOTHING.

I'm thinking America needs an heavy dose of 18th century French populist JUSTICE.

J

[bleever]

8. Tautology.

Does not compute.

[wildbilln864]

9. kick! n/t