Right on. I think the legal opinions of Yoo and Gonzales have exaggereated GW’s delusions about the extent of Presidential power. All sorts of precedents have been set such as a little torture is acceptable in a pinch and national defense requsires that individual liberty be sacrificed. These will come back to bite citizens in the future when some new megalomaniac uses the precedents as a rung on the upward ladder of goverhmental power vis à vis the public.
What are you, the fucking hall monitor?
The oath of office for *all * federal officeholders, AG included: “I (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
Yep. He didn’t swear to support and defend the President but the Constitution.
When I made that affirmation in 1944 there was no “So help me God.” in it.
Added in 1962 for enlisteds and 1959 for officers, around the time God was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance.
Well yeah, but you can be sure that El Presidente Himself certainly views the job that way, and that nobody disagreed would be permitted to hold the job.
That’s curious because the inclusion of the “swear (or affirm)” is still in there and the “affirm” is to allow those who object to taking a religious oath to serve.
You don’t want to take a religious oath so you make the affirmation and end it with “So help me God.”
What a world.
Let’s just ask the Bush-lovers what they think President Hillary Clinton will do with all that power.
(Stand back as heads explode.)