Bush - Constitution 'Just A Goddamned Piece of Paper '

[Demeter]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_doug_tho_051211_bush___constitution_.htm

"Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act. Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal. GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"



There you have it in a nutshell (no pun intended) Bush is a dictator, by intention. Do the American people agree to this arrangement? I don't think so--not enough of them, at least.

[bkcc]

1. Not sure what to make of this.

This article (from Capitol Hill Blue) was bouncing around the forums all weekend.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5558602

While it wouldn't surprise me to find out this were true, I am not sure of the source.

[Walt Starr]

4. It's the SAME source, Doug Thompson n/t

[Tamyrlin79]

13. Same source...but

Thompson verified it with THREE sources who were at the meeting in question.

[mattclearing]

14. Let's hear them verify it for another publication, then.

There are plenty of reputable mags that would run this.

[tuvor]

2. The original source is not opednews, but Capitol Hill Blue. n/t

[Walt Starr]

3. Doug Thomspon wears his tinfoilhat too tight

This is not a reliable source.

[BOSSHOG]

5. However

do you really think that bush cares one iota about the constitution? I know the answer to that question. CHB may or may not be credible but for bush to call the constitution just a piece of paper sounds like 2+2=4 to me. He's the fucking by gawd president; why should he have to be constrained by a goddamned piece of paper?

[Walt Starr]

9. That's not the point. Crap like CHB does not beliong in LBN

and that's what CHB is, CRAP!

[Walt Starr]

10. That's not the point. Crap like CHB does not beliong in LBN

and that's what CHB is, CRAP!

[dtotire]

6. He Seems to Have Good Sources

Where there's smoke, there's ire
By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 12, 2005, 08:33
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The firestorm over Friday’s column quoting President George W. Bush’s obscene outburst over the Constitution continues to grow with our email box overflowing from outraged readers who think the President should be impeached along with pro-Bushites who want my head on a platter.

I’m surprised by the public’s anger over this. When a GOP operative first emailed me about the White House meeting where Bush called the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper,” I put it aside as one of many reports I get about the President’s temper tantrums.

Bush lashed out at an aide who dared question him on the USA Patriot Act. That’s typical Bush. We started reporting on the President’s outbursts last year and those tantrums are now widely reported now by the so-called “mainstream media.”

As Evan Thomas and Richard Wolfe write in the current edition of Newsweek:

“A White House aide, who like virtually all White House officials (in this story and in general) refused to be identified for fear of antagonizing the president… How many people dare to snap back at a president? Not many, and not unless they have known the president a long, long time. (Even Karl Rove, or "Turd Blossom," as he is sometimes addressed by the president, knows when to hold his tongue.) In the Bush White House, disagreement is often equated with disloyalty… his attitude toward Congress was "my way or the highway," according to a GOP staffer who did not want to be identified criticizing the president.”

We get tips about Bush’s temper and his comments all the time. Most of the tips don’t get used because we don’t go with information from just one source. The tip about “the goddamned piece of paper” seemed destined for the byte bin until a second aide, in casual conversation, mentioned the comment.

So I called a third source who has confirmed information in the past. At first he was defensive.

“Who told you about that?” I told him I’d picked it up from two other sources.

“Look, you know how the President is,” he said. “He gets agitated when people challenge him.”

All I wanted to know was did the President of the United States call the Constitution a “goddamned piece of paper.”

“Yeah. He did.”

So I went with the story. To me it was just another example of a President who too often lets his anger get the better of him, particularly with anyone who dares disagree. I didn’t see it as a rallying cry for those who either want Bush’s head for his various misdeeds or mine for daring report them.

Some say Bush should be impeached. Sorry, I don’t agree. He’s not the first President to consider the Constitution an expendable document and he won’t be the last. Most Presidents have complained that the Constitution gets in their way.

When Teddy Roosevelt decided to send the Marines into North Africa, his Secretary of State cautioned him such an act would be unconstitutional.

Teddy snapped back: “Why destroy the beauty of the act with legalities?”

Presidents, by their nature, look for ways to skirt the law when that law gets in the way of their agendas. If we impeached every President who disregarded the Constitution when it didn’t suit his purposes we probably would have tried just about every President in the last 50 years.

Those who support the President no matter what now demand that I release the names of aides who passed on the information.

Sorry. Doesn’t work that way. I don’t burn sources. Never have. Never will. And, as every news outlet that covers Washington knows, the Bush administration comes down hard on anyone who talks out of school about the President.

“Sometimes the only way to get a story is to promise confidentiality,” Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press advocacy group, told the Christian Science Monitor recently.

In a White House where any disagreement with the President is branded as disloyalty or, in some cases, unpatriotic, the only sources who will tell us what’s really going on are those who choose to remain anonymous.

It ain’t perfect but in these imperfect times, it’s the best we’ve got.

© Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue

[Walt Starr]

7. Doug Thomspon's sources are the little voices in his head

He's never right.

[Brotherjohn]

11. Exactly. Just b/c he says he has sources, and quotes a Newsweek article...

... about Bush's temper, doesn't mean he actually HAS sources.

He makes up stuff like this all the time.

He's the Weekly World News of political web logs.

[Tamyrlin79]

12. Okay, so prove that he makes it up.

I'll admit that it is gossipy, but that doesn't mean it isn't true, particularly if it is sourced. I have yet to see proof from all you CHB nay-sayers that 1) CHB is consistently wrong/unreliable, 2) that it knows it is wrong and publishes such wrong info anyway and 3) how this, if true, is distinguished from similar behavior at mainstream outfits like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Yet, I don't hear clarion calls to not believe anything read from those outfits.

[NYCGirl]

15. What about this article about Clinton as a serial rapist? There's more

just like it—

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/Feb1999/022599/clintonwomen022599.htm

[jobycom]

17. Why?

I don't care if he makes it up, or if these unnamed sources are real but lying to him, or if he's got the truth but can't prove it. If he wants to be a journalist, he needs ways to prove what he says, other than claiming other unnamed sources back up his other unnamed sources. The other side does this all the time, and it has led to horrendous mistakes--from Joseph McCarthy to the Iraq invasion. Let him prove to me that his stories are reliable. Until then, he's just spreading gossip, and it could be gossip he created.

As for the WP and the NYT, a reporter has to convince an editorial board to let them print a story, and these editors are very critical of unnamed sources. That's not to say that people like Judith Miller or CeeCee Connally or Kathleen Seelye don't write lies that slip through, but there is a stronger path of evidentiary confirmation than CHB uses. CHB is one guy sayng "Trust me." Even if I did trust him, he'd still have to have proof before I'd cite him as a source.

Believe him if you do. I just don't see any reason to stake my opinions on him. And it wouldn't matter. If Bush is really a calm, reasoned man who treats all of his staffers with respect and has the deepest reverence for the Constitution, his action still show him to be a bad president, a traitor, and a war criminal. We can prove that with well-documented facts, not unnamed sources.

[wtmusic]

8. Then he wiped his ass with it, and screamed, "I don't care

what they say about me on Democratical Underground!! They'll change their tune when I'm DICTATOR OF THE WORLD!!"

Yup, read it on Capitol Hill Blue this morning.

[Texasgal]

16. "un-named sources"

Yeah...CHB is telling the truth! :eyes:

[jobycom]

18. Awfully pat. Too much like the Hitler quote.

Wasn't it Hitler that called a major treaty "Just a piece of paper" as he violated it to invade someone? This story sounds too much like that one. Maybe Bush said it, maybe not, but for some reason, to me, CHB's "unnamed sources" all sound like the same voice, and they sound like fictional dialogue more than the way people actually speak.

Just my impression. It wouldn't matter much to me if Bush did say this. At this point my opinion of him can't go up or down much at all.