CRIMINAL!

[x-posted at DailyKos]

Yesterday's ruling (text here) that BushCorp™'s warrantless wire tap schemes violate both the FISA statute, as well as the constitution comes as no surprise to anybody passingly familiar with the aforementioned legal documents. But has that been Bush's worst crime?

From the ruling:

"Article II of the United States Constitution provides that any citizen of appropriate birth, age and residency may be elected to the Office of President of the United States and be vested with the executive power of this nation.

"The duties and powers of the Chief Executive are carefully listed, including the duty to be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and the Presidential Oath of Office is set forth in the Constitution and requires him to swear or affirm that he 'will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'

"The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself.

"We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all 'inherent powers' must derive from that Constitution." [Enphasis mine-SK]

And aside from such specious reasoning, even most of BushCorp™'s ardent apologists (including Tony Snow, including Bush himself) can't seem to dispute the ruling in legal terms.

All they really seem capable of is arguing that following the law and the constitution they took an oath to defend make the Glorious War on Terror© more difficult.

But why sould freedom be easy?

History books are filled with pages upon pages of stories of tyrants who took the easy way, tyrants who ignored their own laws when push came to shove facing a violent enemy, tyrants whose road to security was paved with the liberties and corpses of laws and citizens crushed beneath the steel-shod boots of fear. Nothing is more common.

And it is little to be wondered that when faced with a threat George the Unimaginative would seek to take the easy way out, he has done so all his life.

Those of us who truly believe in America's greatness, its uniqueness in history and among the family of nations, must understand from whence that greatness arises: our dedication to the rule of law and the freedom that law protects, even in the face of crisis.

And while a willingness to put aside those laws and freedoms is understandable in time of crisis, to do so violates all that makes this country the beacon it had become. It makes America common.

And that George W. Bush and his enablers are so eager to do just that is perhaps their greatest crime.