"By definition?" Frost asked.
"Exactly," Nixon replied.
In the twilight of his failed presidency, President Bush seems to be channeling Nixon's ghost. Bush was remarkably defensive in an interview with Britain's Sky News network, perhaps because he finally realizes he has some things to be defensive about.
When interviewer Adam Boulton asked where Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib fit into Bush's much-touted "freedom agenda," the president accused him of "slander[ing] America." When Boulton mentioned how high fuel prices are hurting people economically, Bush scoffed that "you've got a bunch of people squawking about the price of gasoline."
But Bush saved the best for last. Last week, the Supreme Court overturned the part of the Military Commissions Act that denied habeas corpus rights to "war on terror" prisoners locked up in Guantanamo Bay. Many of them have been there for six years or more with no charges and no trial, something that usually happens only under a dictatorship. When Boulton asked Bush about it, the president responded with something truly extraordinary:
This was a law passed, Adam. We passed a law. Bypassing the Constitution means that we did something outside the bounds of the Constitution. We went to the Congress and got a piece of legislation passed.
Yes, after seven and a half years in office, George W. Bush is still woefully ignorant about some basic legal facts. Like how just because Congress passes a bill and the president signs it into law doesn't automatically mean it passes Constitutional muster. Like how federal courts can (and do) declare laws invalid if they fall afoul of the Constitution.
On the other hand, at least Bush didn't say something like, "This is what I wanted and the courts have no business disagreeing with me." I guess you could call that an improvement.
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