Bush: Constitution "just a goddamed piece of paper."

[Frank Smith]

From Capitol Hill Blue

The Rant
Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 9, 2005, 07:53
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtm

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to
meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial
USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period
immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that
liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces
with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose
renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous
provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the
President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet
Miers to the Supreme Court.

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the
Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that
the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just
a goddamned piece of paper!"

I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all
confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution "a
goddamned piece of paper."

And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is
little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of
power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that "goddamned piece of
paper" used to guarantee.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote
that the "Constitution is an outdated document."

Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It
doesn't matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn't
matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences,
the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our
government, the final source to determine - in the end - if something is
legal or right.

Every federal official - including the President - who takes an oath of
office swears to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the
Constitution a "living document."

""Oh, how I hate the phrase we have-a 'living document,'" Scalia says. "We
now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The
Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete's sake."

As a judge, Scalia says, "I don't have to prove that the Constitution is
perfect; I just have to prove that it's better than anything else."

President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the Constitution over the
last five years, including a controversial amendment to define marriage as a
"union between a man and woman." Members of Congress have proposed some
11,000 amendments over the last decade, ranging from repeal of the right to
bear arms to a Constitutional ban on abortion.

Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution comes from a loss
of rights.

"We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones," Scalia warns.
"Don't think that it's a one-way street."

And don't buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is a necessary
tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law that infringes on the rights
of every American citizen and, as one brave aide told President Bush,
something that undermines the Constitution of the United States.

But why should Bush care? After all, the Constitution is just "a goddamned
piece of paper."

C Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue