An Evening Ruined

Fucking shit, we were going to enjoy a non-humid evening watching baseball as if we were an aging (mostly) Anglo American male or something, but The New York Times had to cross our path w/ a story that will allow us to screech, among other things: "Posse comitatus!" "Constitution trampled!" & "Where are the armies of Acorn thugs you awful, ignorant white people live in fear of now? What do you have to say about your half-baked paranoia of 'FEMA Concentration Camps?'" & so on & so forth, ad fucking nauseum.

In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose. “The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.

Was that memorandum written by a graduate of Liberty "University" or Regent "U." Law School? Shit like that might not be surprising from a Podunk State Law & Agriculture School graduate who's afraid he'll lose his job as a staff lawyer for a family owned business if he tells the boss in so many words that it's illegal to make employees work overtime w/o pay dumping untreated waste, but the DoJ? We imagine the calculation was: "Why just keep the State Dep't. out of the foreign policy loop when you can turn the Justice Department into a personal injury law firm at the same time?

Delving deeper:

Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna. Mr. Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody.

Fuck, there you have it, plain as day. The absolute end of Constitution as we knew it.

John Yoo was one of the authors of the memo, also. We can only assume he was injured chasing an ambulance & had to take easy gov't. work after he got out of rehab.