There’s a pretty long and important article from the New Yorker about David Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and the purported architect and chief-defender of the Bush administration’s legal strategy in the "war on terrorism."  Reading this piece reminded me of Benjamin Franklin’s famous and oft-quoted statement that "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

The article isn’t important just because it highlights a head henchman in the current regime, but also because it exposes exactly how far past historically established bounds our President has pushed his power.  Most astonishing to me is how quickly these incursions occured because in my mind a lot of what had happened seemed to be incremental over the years since 2001.  That was decidedly not so; the administration moved quickly and aggressively to exert expanded executive powers in 01-02 and most frighteningly did not seem to care whether or not is was legal.  Bush, Cheney and their confidantes seemed to say "it’s legal because we say it is so, no matter what anyone in Congress thinks or for that matter what some of our own lawyers think."

The article was written well before the Supreme Court ruling last week that declared Bush’s military commission system illegal, so it will be interesting to see if this is just the first in a series of events that will reassert the balance of power between the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government or if it’s merely a hickup in the Bush/Cheney march to extreme executive power.

I’ve heard many of the administration’s supporters say that this is a time of war and extraordinary circumstances require the president to assert extraordinary war-time powers.  This quote from Bruce Fein, who as an associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration I think best refutes that argument:

This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He’s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President’s reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world’s a battlefield—according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It’s got the sense of Louis XIV: ‘I am the State.

Scary ain’t it?  Hopefully the Supreme Court ruling signals that the balance of power is truly beginning to be corrected.