Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 9, 2005, 07:53
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“Constitution is an outdated document.”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.”
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