Dahlia Lithwick expounds on a point I made below in a Washington Post story 1/14/07. My point pertained to the expansion of presidential power that, though not unique to the current administration, is being accelerated by it. Her story points out the means by which it is done. The detention of terrorist suspects in Guantanamo Bay, as well as that of Jose Padilla, have less to do with the merit of the cases than with the establishment of executive perogative in those areas.
Here's a key quote: "The president is as much a prisoner of Guantanamo Bay as the detainees are. Having gone nose to nose with Congress over his authority to craft stripped-down courts, guaranteed to produce guilty verdicts, Bush cannot call off the trials. The endgame in the war against terrorism isn't holding the line against terrorists. It's holding the line on hard-fought claims to limitless presidential authority."
In 2301 and 2302, when appropriate, we discuss controversies regarding the establishment of an executive headed by a single individual. The Anti-Federalist wanted to know what guarantees there would be that this position would not lead to the developkent of a military king? This was a natural state of affairs in their mind. Are we naive to think that it couldn;t happen here?
