Court to Bush: Quit Doing Whatever You Want
Federal justices restrict powers of unstoppable president
SNAPPER McGEE
Camp X-Ray “prisoners of war,” left bored without due process or lawyers to talk to, have taken to playing “Duck, Duck, Goose”.
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An exasperated federal appeals court dealt a severe setback to the Bush administration this week, should they decide to obey it, by mandating the president could not arbitrarily label foreigners on U.S. soil enemies of the state and imprison them without due process. The court officials also implored the president, “Please, for the sake of everybody in the world, quit doing whatever you want just because you feel like it.”
It was a major change in recent legal policy. Riding the coattails of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, most courts and other administrative officials have endorsed a policy of “let the baby have his bottle,” (Supreme Court v. ACLU, 7281). In the past year, especially around the second anniversary of the infamous terrorist incidents, the legal wind began blowing in another direction. The president has been losing ground on his doing-whatever-he-wants agenda.
Court decisions have been turning against the president as early as May, when following the end of formal hostilities the president sought to throw a “victory kegger” in the former palatial estate of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The court sided with congress that the palace party would violate international war time code of conduct, infuriate U.S. allies, and be distinctly unpresidential.
The court also intervened when Bush declared several of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners guilty of heresy, and wanted them put to death on national television by celebrity executioner Lee Majors, the Six-Million Dollar Man. Bush attorneys, when defeated in the federal court, addressed reporters on the courthouse steps: “It seems to me like the courts aren’t as against terrorism as they claim to be.”
The latest defeat is the most serious, and it appears to legal analysts we didn’t bother to consult that the tide is turning against the president in the long wake after Sept. 11. In a case brought by a brother of one of the alleged terrorist suspects, the constitutionality of keeping prisoners without due process for two years was challenged and the federal courts sided with the family. According to the justices, the president cannot go around all “willy-nilly” and hold people for years at a time without the benefit of counsel. The “willy-nilly” was added by the commune, for effect.
The court, in a written decision, also implored the president to take his authority seriously and stop misjudging the limits of his power.
“We understand the need for alacrity and effectiveness in dealing with terrorist bodies,” said the decision, apparently misreading the president’s mastery of the language, “but the president would do well to see his presidential powers more realistically. He should read the constitution, or have a friend read it to him. He may not have been elected by the populace, but he is still not a dictator for life, and should consider his powers accordingly.”
The president reportedly did not take the defeat well, and insiders say he is consulting attorneys and historians about a plan to replace all current federal and Supreme Court justices with former frat buddies. White House press secretary Scott McClellan played it close to vest when addressing reporters.
“The West Wing made this job look like so much fun,” said McClellan, shaking his head and lost in thought. “All I can say is, fuck that show.”
the commune news, too, has undefinable powers that no court can take away. Watch us test that theory this spring when the landlord wants to re-negotiate our office lease. Lil Duncan is the commune’s sex correspondent. We mean White House correspondent. Sexy White House correspondent.
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