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As demonstrators gathered yesterday across the country to protest the first anniversary of the Supreme Court coup that brought Bush to power, 300 law professors have signed a letter opposing Bush's military tribunals plan, saying that they would violate the separation of powers, would not comport with constitutional standards of due process and would allow the president to violate binding treaties. The NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has just filed suite against the Department of Energy to expose Cheney task force secrets in the development of the Bush energy plan, following up another lawsuit challenging the plan itself. Meanwhile Bush's bankrupt corporate sugar-daddy, Enron, declined to testify before Congress today, while his Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton was in court being charged with contempt.
Of course, today (12-13) was the day the Bush Administration finally allowed the public to see the notorious/"smoking gun" Bin Laden video. Yet on this very same day the Administration re-affirmed their contempt for governmental transparency by invoking executive privlege to prevent Congress from receiving requested documents. No surprise since this pResident has already used an executive order to deny public access to Reagan Administration records which were scheduled to be released in January -- striking a devestating blow to the Freedon of Information Act. Legendary journalist Robert Parry anticipated all of Bush II's manuevers to suppress history and advance executive secrecy on the eve of the Nov 2000 election -- after all, the Iran-Contra affair was run out of the office of then Vice-President George H W Bush.
Internationally,
Bush is about to announce the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, thumbing his nose at world opinion, in order to pave the way for a missile defense system. Last month,
50 American Nobel laureates sent a letter to Congress (PDF) urging them not to fund it because it will squander resources needed to fight terrorism, while a
report from the Union of Concerned Scientists finds that "the United States remains years away from having enough information to make an informed decision on the deployment of even a limited nationwide missile defense system." Just to show that Bush and his administration are not alone in their contempt for the rule of law, last Friday the Senate overwhelmingly passed the so-called American Servicemembers' Protection Act, officially putting the U.S. in opposition to the formation of the International Criminal Court.
[ Coalition For An International Criminal Court | Voters Rights March | Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower ]
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