smirk screamed: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'

[donsu]

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml


Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'


-snip-

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!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”
-snip-
------------------------------------

Alberto Gonzales said the Constitution was "outdated"

Antonin Scalia "cringes" when anyone calls it a "living document"

smirk, Gonzales, Scalia are living piles of cat shit

[snowbird42]

1. Read CHB sourcing on this story

I know everyone hates him(Doug Thompson) but I think he strives for the truth.

[donsu]

2. what's CHB?

nt

[otohara]

5. Capitol Hill Blue

nt/

[mermaid]

7. But WHERE Is His Sourcing??

see, that is what I have a problem with. I don't see proper sourcing...unless i'm blind. Help me out here.

[mermaid]

3. I Wish There Was Some Substantial PROOF Of This Statement Being Made!!

like having it reported in multiple places, by multiple reliable sources. Because then we ought to be able to legitimately raise a call for impeachment. After all, is not the Oath of Office "to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic?"

And if it can be proved that Bush said...and believes...that the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper (sic) that you could wipe your ass with (sic) then it seems reasonable to assume he places no value on his Oath, therefore, he is trying to break his Oath of Office, thus no longer deserves to sit in office.

And we could impeach the son of a beach.

[enough already]

4. Screw the "proof"

Anyone with a brain can see the chimp bellowing this. We need to push this hard.

[mermaid]

6. I Share Your Sentiments

but "screw the proof" is not going to get a bunch of the House to draw up articles of impeachment.

I want the bastard impeached! We need more than the say-so of one publication in order to make enough noise, and provide enough proof, to encourage our Representatives to, at last, draw up articles of impeachment.

Those sons-a-bitches went after Clinton, this is pay-back time, as far as I am concerned. BUT, since the House is controlled by Repukes, we are gonna need PROOF of this to get THEM on board.

I so badly want to pay back the motherfuckers for what they did to Clinton...he got impeached for stuff far less heinous than stuff Bush is getting away with! And it's high time BUSH got impeached.

[NYCGirl]

8. Here's Capitol Hill Blue's story about Clinton being a serial rapist.

Should we "screw the proof" on that too?

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

[Cronus Protagonist]

9. Actually, the article lists accusations of sexual assault

And appears to source most of them. Haven't checked the sources myself, but it doesn't say anywhere in there that he's a serial rapist.

[dtotire]

10. He says he has three sources

Where there's smoke, there's ire
By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 12, 2005, 08:33


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

Who is this Thompson guy anyway?