Senate report concludes: no proof of contact between

[SwissMercenary]

My mistake. I thought when you used the slur "Dubya" you were talking about that one man, our President. But instead you were saying the entire establishment, consisting of 435 members of the House (and all their aids), 100 members of the Senate(and all their aids), the President, Vice President, his Cabinet, and all of his aids and appointees. So that's probably like 1000 or so people. I can see how we have trouble communicating then.

As for the Supreme's.... Don't forget that "Dubya et. al." stacked the court. You can go ahead and include them in your ~1000 since it's only 10 more.

Most of those people are going along because of the party line, or in the case of the opposition, because they are completely spineless.

There aren't too many that actually set the policy. The rest, for the most part, rubber stamp it.

How about Dubya and Pals, then?

As for the SCOTUS, stacked or not, it seems to me that they are the most sane of the three branches at this point in time.

So now we get closer to a crux of your argument which is "for his own benefit - to excess." So first I'd like to understand how either bills benefit anyone (other than the accused in that they get rights that no other nation would give to terrorists)

No other non-western nation.

How do they benefit him? My bad with the 'benefit himself'. More along the lines of 'Push forth an agenda unfit for consideration in a free society'

and second, if the bills admitedly limit his power how can they be excessive?

I see it this way:

Act I: Shrub excersises what I see as various infringments on civil liberties.

Act II: Those darned SCOTUS rulings keep getting in the way, claiming its illegal.

Act III: Draft some legislature to make it legal.

Act IV: Carry on as he did before.

The problem in II was not solved - he simply legalised his actions.

You can cite outdated legislature, and that argument carries some weight, but not to the levels that he's been going.

You resent the President for trying to apply the law as his lawyers interpret it?

Most certainly. Within the letter of the law? If you do some arm-twisting, possible. Within the spirit of the law? Hardly. Now, you may say that various civil liberties that we have taken for granted, which are meant to be protected by the law, are not part of the spirit of it... In which case, that's your opinion.

I'm also sure that you're able to point out a few couple of hundred historical precendents of presidents paying no heed to the spirit of the law, emergency powers, and the like, but once again, the War on Terror, and the abuses of civil liberties associated with it, are a different ballpark.