-Caveat Lector-
Bush's Banana Republic
By Francis Boyle
10-13-2
- George W. Bush was never elected
President by the People of the United States of America. Instead,
he was anointed for that Office by five Justices of the United States
Supreme Court who themselves had been appointed by Republican
Presidents. Bush Jr.'s installation was an act of judicial usurpation of
the American Constitution that was unprecedented in the history of the
American Republic. Had it occurred in a developing country, such a
subversion of democratic process would have been greeted with knowing
derision throughout the West. What happened in America could only be
likened to a judicial coup d'etat inflicted upon the American People,
Constitution, and Republic. There should now be no doubt that the United
States Supreme Court is governed by raw, naked, brutal, power politics.
Justice has nothing at all to do with it. This Supreme Court's
constitutional sophistry proved a harbinger of the new administration's
disrespect for the Rule of Law, whether domestic or
international.
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- BUSH JR.'S CONSTITUTIONAL COUP D'ETAT
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- From the Supreme Court's installation of Bush Jr. as
President to the Ashcroft/Federalist Society post-September 11 regime of
police state "laws," the politico-legal functioning of America is
increasingly resembling that of a Banana Republic. Since September 11th,
we have seen one blow against the U.S. Constitution after another. For
example, Attorney General John Ashcroft unilaterally instituted the
monitoring of attorney-client communications despite the Fourth
Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures and the Sixth
Amendment right to representation by Counsel in criminal cases. He just
went ahead and did it, without even bothering to inform anyone.
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- Over 1100 aliens have been picked up and "disappeared"
by Ashcroft and his Department of Injustice. The American People have no
idea where most of these people are. They are being held on the basis of
immigration law, not criminal law, for a period of detention which has
not been defined.
-
- Ashcroft proclaimed another ukaze that these
immigration proceedings must be held in secret. The phenomenon of
"enforced disappearances" is considered to be a crime against humanity
by Article 7(I)(i) of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal
Court.
-
- It appears that many of these aliens have been
deprived of their basic human rights to consular notification and access
as set forth in the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to
which the United States is a contracting party and which even the U.S.
State Department concedes constitutes binding customary international
law. Apparently Bush Jr.'s left hand does not care about what his right
hand does. Yet another international convention set at naught.
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- The one characteristic these detained foreigners have
in common is that they are mostly Muslims, Arabs, and Asians. Everyone
needs a scapegoat for the 11 September tragedy, and it looks like we
have one, both at home and abroad. Thousands more such aliens are being
moved into the pipeline for the Ashcroft gulag by the FBI.
-
- Ashcroft is now planning to reinstate the infamous
COINTELPRO Program, whose atrocities against the civil rights and civil
liberties of the American People have been amply documented
elsewhere.
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- It is just a matter of time before the Bush Jr.
Leaguers unleash the newly-augmented powers of the FBI, CIA and NSA
directly against the American People. And we already have 2 million
Americans rotting away in prison -- the highest rate of incarceration in
the world, a disproportionate majority of whom are Americans of Color,
victims of the Nixon/Ford, Reagan/Bush, and Clinton administrations'
racist "war on drugs," which is really a war against People of Color.
The American Police State has already arrived for People of
Color!
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- ASHCROFT'S POLICE STATE
-
- This brings the analysis to the Ashcroft Police State
Act. There are no other words to describe it. While Bush failed to get a
formal declaration of war that would have rendered him a constitutional
dictator, clearly Attorney General John Ashcroft and his right-wing
Federalist Society lawyers took every piece of regressive legislation
off the shelf, tied it all into what they called an anti-terrorism bill,
and then rammed it through Congress, giving it the appropriately
Orwellian name of the <U.S.A>. Patriot Act.
-
- According to one report, Ashcroft's first draft would
have had Congress suspend the ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus - the
necessary prerequisite for imposing a police state in the United States
of America.
-
- Many Members of Congress publicly admitted that they
did not even bother to read the Ashcroft Police State Act. Another
Congressman said basically:
-
- "Right, but there's nothing new about that."
Interestingly enough the so-called liberal Democrats in the House and
the Senate were willing to give Bush Jr. and Ashcroft more police state
powers than the conservative Republicans in the House. But there are no
real differences that matter between Republicans and Democrats when it
comes to promoting America's self-proclaimed "Manifest Destiny" to
control the World and now Outer Space too.
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- BUSH'S KANGAROO COURTS
-
- It would take an entire law review article for me to
analyze all the legal and human rights problems with the Bush Jr.'s
proposed military commissions. Here a cabal of Federalist Society
Lawyers in the White House got President Bush to sign an Executive Order
on 13 November 2001 which, when implemented, will be widely recognized
to constitute a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and establish a
prima facie case of criminal accountability against the President
himself.
-
- It is emblematic of this particular war that right
towards its very outset President George W. Bush personally incriminated
himself under both international criminal law and United States domestic
criminal law.
-
- The Bush Jr. administration has severely undermined
the integrity of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949. By doing this, the
Bush Jr. administration has opened up U.S. Armed Forces and civilians
around the world to similar reprisals, which has already
happened.
-
- As a licensed attorney for 25 years, a law professor
for 23 years and someone who has done a good deal of criminal defense
work in U.S. Federal Courts, I am appalled by the insinuation of these
Federalist Society Lawyers that America's Federal Courts established by
Article III of the U.S. Constitution cannot hold accountable those
responsible for the crimes of 11 September 2001. This is an insult to
all Federal Judges, Federal Prosecutors, Federal Public Defenders and
all the Lawyers who are Officers of these Courts.
-
- In one fell stroke these Federalist Society lawyers
have besmirched and undermined the integrity of two Branches of the
United States Federal Government established by the Constitution - the
Presidency and the Judiciary. So far the U.S. Congress has supinely gone
along with the Bush Jr. police state agenda. If and when these
Bush/Ashcroft police state practices make their way to the U.S. Supreme
Court, many of them will probably be upheld. After all, a 5 to 4
majority of the Supreme Court already gave the Presidency to Bush Jr. We
need to seriously consider whether they would strike down laws and
practices that would give Bush Jr. a Police State as well.
-
- Philosophers have taught that a People get the type of
government they deserve. If the American People permit the Bush Jr.
Leaguers to impose a Police State at home in the name of furthering Pax
Americana abroad, we will have deserved it by abnegating our
responsibilities as Citizens living in what is supposed to be a
constitutional Republic with a commitment to the Rule of Law. The same
thing happened to the Romans and to the Athenians. The United States of
America is not immune to the laws of history.
-
- Sic transit gloria mundi!
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- Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of
Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University
Press, and The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Clarity Press. He can
be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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- http://counterpunch.org/boyle1011.html
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