We pride ourselves as a nation of being a beacon of freedom, land of liberty, shelter for the oppressed masses....or at least we used to before George Bush became President. As bad as we saw it get under our last President, it was much, much worse. It was obvious President Bush didn't have much respect for the laws, but not to the degree that Attorney General Eric Holder has uncovered.
From ThinkProgress:
Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder released several Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel memos, which show the astonishing extent to which the administration expanded its wartime powers. An October 2001 memo from John Yoo, for example, states that the “Fourth Amendment would not apply” for domestic military operations. The memo also restricted basic First Amendment rights:
In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Yoo wrote in the memo entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States.”
Thank goodness we have a competent and truthful Attorney General now that is willing to uncover and expose the abuses from the previous Administration. The more I hear from Holder, the more I like him. Of course, I could like a horde of rats in a dark subway tunnel more than John Yoo and the Attorney Generals that he worked for from 2001 to this past January. Hopefully these small nuggets of truthful morsels will keep coming out and ideally, that we prosecute each and every Bush Administration official that willingly broke the laws of our country that are supposed to keep us as free a nation as possible.
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