Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

“This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. … It’s got the sense of Louis XIV: ‘I am the State.’” Bruce Fein, associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department

He's “more grandiose than Nixon,” says Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The headline of this post
says it all.

Led by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme
Court told the president he “is bound to comply with the rule of law that prevails in this jurisdiction.” Bush's stuttering yesterday
revealed that his shock was deep. We can only hope he still feels the sting on Saturday. As for the real man at the legal helm, I wouldn't allow him near objects
not nailed down for at least a week. Who is that you may ask? Read on.

According to someone who knows Powell, his comment about the article was terse. “It’s Addington,” he said. “He doesn’t care about the Constitution.” Powell was referring to David S. Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and his longtime principal legal adviser. Powell’s office says that he does not recall making the statement. But his former top aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, confirms that he and Powell shared this opinion of Addington. Most Americans, even those who follow politics closely, have probably never heard of Addington. But current and former Administration officials say that he has played a central role in shaping the Administration’s legal strategy for the war on terror. Known as the New Paradigm, this strategy rests on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars share—namely, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it. Under this framework, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detention, and warrantless surveillance have been set aside. A former high-ranking Administration lawyer who worked extensively on national-security issues said that the Administration’s legal positions were, to a remarkable degree, “all Addington.” Another lawyer, Richard L. Shiffrin, who until 2003 was the Pentagon’s deputy general counsel for intelligence, said that Addington was “an unopposable force.” The overarching intent of the New Paradigm, which was put in place after the attacks of September 11th, was to allow the Pentagon to bring terrorists to justice as swiftly as possible. Criminal courts and military courts, with their exacting standards of evidence and emphasis on protecting defendants’ rights, were deemed too cumbersome. Instead, the President authorized a system of detention and interrogation that operated outside the international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war established by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Terror suspects would be tried in a system of military commissions, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, devised by the executive branch. The Administration designated these suspects not as criminals or as prisoners of war but as “illegal enemy combatants,” whose treatment would be ultimately decided by the President. By emphasizing interrogation over due process, the government intended to preëmpt future attacks before they materialized. In November, 2001, Cheney said of the military commissions, “We think it guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve.” THE HIDDEN POWER by JANE MAYER The legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror.

But one of the main results of David Addington's rise to power is something
that has made the Congress a joke. As has already been reported, it's David Addington who was the “leading architect”
of Bush's use of signing statements. It's what makes our
current president as close to a king as we've ever had.

David Addington is a satisfactory lawyer, Fein said, but a less than satisfactory student of American history, which, for a public servant of his influence, matters more. “If you read the Federalist Papers, you can see how rich in history they are,” he said. “The Founders really understood the history of what people did with power, going back to Greek and Roman and Biblical times. Our political heritage is to be skeptical of executive power, because, in particular, there was skepticism of King George III. But Cheney and Addington are not students of history. If they were, they’d know that the Founding Fathers would be shocked by what they’ve done.” (source)

Take the time to read Mayer's entire piece. It's important.