New Old Paperwork on Bush's Dictatorial Assault on the U.S. (updated below)

Those who have directed static my way for noting the dictatorial character of a lot of George W. Bush's rule have long ago been corrected by history, if they paid it any attention, and now, there's something else to add to that rarely-examined pile we broadly call "the historical record." New documentation on Bush's assertions of anti-constitutional dictatorial powers. Not much new; it's just good to have in writing that administration's assertions that it had the power to freely do things like illegally spy on Americans, illegally kidnap people, send soldiers storming into private residences without warrant or any legal procedure and crush free speech and press rights at will. They flatly assert, in short, that Bush could operate a military dictatorship within the U.S., entirely free of constitutional or legal restraint. These positions aren't theoretical either--they were official Bush policy until only a few months before the administration left office.

Those in the corporate press have maintained a 10 year practice of smelling what they seem to consider the pleasant, rosy aroma of Bush's breath via the noses they've kept tightly jammed up his ass--a rather roundabout way of getting at it, it must be said--and nothing, it seems, has changed about this with the change of administrations--the "liberal media" have largely refused to report most of this. Par for the course.

--classicliberal2

UPDATE: 03/05/09:
"We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship."
--Harper's Scott Horton, on the newly-released "legal opinions"

"This is a theory of presidential dictatorship. These views are outrageous and inconsistent with basic principles of the Constitution as well as with two centuries of legal precedents. Yet they were the basic assumptions of key players in the Bush Administration in the days following 9/11."
--Yale law professor Jack Balkin
"Reading these memos, you've gotta almost conclude we had an unconstitutional dictator. It's pretty deadly and pretty serious, what's in these materials."
--Former White House counsel John Dean