I saw a reference to this in someone's signature here on DU the other day, and have to admit if I heard about it at the time it had slipped my mind, what with all the other outrages since Dec '05.
So I googled it. It is no surprise, to be sure, but still worth a re-read. It dramatizes what we are up against, and how the coming Constitutional crisis will be viewed by the current illegal occupant of the White House.
I suggest everyone send a copy to their Senators and Congressman. They have heard it before, too, but they can use all the moral support we can give them to 'stay the course' and expunge this evil from our midst.
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp12142005.html
December 14, 2005
Bush and the Constitution
"Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper"
By GARY LEUPP
Doug Thompson, publisher of Capitol Hill Blue, says he's talked to three people present last month when Republican Congressional leaders met with President Bush in the Oval Office to talk about renewing the Patriot Act. That act, passed by legislators who hadn't read it, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 (when most people were shell-shocked and lawmakers in particular disinclined to use their brains), has of course been criticized as containing unconstitutional elements. All three GOP politicians quote their president as saying: "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
At least one of Thompson's sources says the president, when told his insistence on preserving some provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives following the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination disaster, stated, "I don't give a goddamn: I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."
I don't know how credible this report is, of course, but let's suppose it's true. It has the ring of truth, it seems to me, given numerous earlier reports on the Commander-in-Chief's state of mind and penchant for profanity. (Capital Hill Blue has earlier noted his "short temper and tirades" during cabinet meetings. Thompson and Teresa Hampton, citing "a number of White House staffers" wrote in June 2004 that " who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them 'fucking assholes' in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others." The Drudge Report has carried similar stories. The most recent Newsweek contains a report that Rice has to warn foreign diplomats, "Don't upset him" before meeting the Chief.) The man told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2003 that "God told me to smite . And I smote him." Why should a man who conducts such conversations care about a document which makes no reference to God?
One can only hope that if Thompson's story is true, one of those three Republican politicos will at some point share with the public the details of the Oval Office encounter.
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Recall how he mocked Karla Faye Tucker, sentenced to death in Texas? How his former Harvard business professor Yoshi Tsurumi described him as "totally devoid of compassion, social responsibility, and good study discipline"? How his one-time biographer Mickey Herskowitz has quoted him as saying, in 1999, "If I have a chance to invade . I'm not going to waste it"?
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