Convictions : Bush

Executive (Over)Privileged -- Must the Abuse Continue?

Doug Kmiec — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:07:00 GMT

Karl Rove's assertion of executive privilege should be the straw that breaks the judicial tolerance for assertions of privilege that have no constitutional warrant as a matter of original understanding. Judge Bates should give The White House an opportunity to prove otherwise, and when it likely cannot, enforce the subpoenas. Let's have at least one tip of the hat to the rule of law before the Bush folks saddle up for the ride back to Texas....(read more)

Tony Snow and Tim Russert Together Again

Doug Kmiec — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:15:00 GMT

To encounter Tony Snow on the streets of Washington D.C. was encountering a kindness and friendship that is rare in the Nation's capital. Truth be told, Tony told it better than most. Fox usually winks when it self-proclaims itself to be "fair and balanced." When Tony was reporting, the wink was unnecessary....(read more)

High Crimes?

Phillip Carter — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:54:00 GMT

Today comes a bizarre follow-up to Deb's post regarding the Supreme Court's decision to grant cert in a case involving legal accountability for high officials. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr points to news that a group of legal academics is planning to convene a conference to plan the prosecution, trial, and punishment for senior Bush administration officials. The effort is reportedly being led by Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover:

"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."

"We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice," Velvel said. "And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s."

... "For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said.

Somehow, I don't think this is what the Supreme Court had in mind when they granted cert ...

Rx for OLC: Pursue Integrity not Investigation

Doug Kmiec — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:29:00 GMT

President Obama wisely signals that his administration will not start out by setting old scores with the Bush administration absent the most unmistakeable showing of criminal intent. His own appointments will determine whether history repeats itself....(read more)

Why Bush Is Our Most Shakespearean President

Kenji Yoshino — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:09:00 GMT

"Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever." —President George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 12, 2008

"Let me live here ever / So rare a wondered father and a wise / Makes this place Paradise."—William Shakespeare, London, England, circa 1610.

Our presidents have always loved Shakespeare. In April 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford-upon-Avon. "They shew us an old Wooden Chair in the Chimney corner, where He sat," Adams wrote in his diary. "We cutt off a Chip according to Custom." Adams lamented that "[t]here is nothing preserved this great Genius," with no apparent recognition that more might have been preserved if tourists had not taken away chips of the fixtures.

Lincoln could recite hundreds of lines from the plays by heart. Along with the Bible and U.S. Statutes, a volume of Shakespeare graced his White House desk. While steaming up the Potomac in April 1865, Lincoln read aloud lines from Macbeth describing the peaceful postmortem sleep of the good King Duncan. After Lincoln was assassinated five days later (by an actor who had played some Shakespearean roles), Lincoln further cemented the reputation of Macbeth as an unlucky play.

Passing to more recent times, Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt writes about attending a 1998 White House event in which Clinton mentioned being forced to memorize passages from Macbeth in junior high. It was not, Clinton said wryly, the most propitious beginning for a political career. When Greenblatt shook his hand afterward, he asked the president: "Don't you think that Macbeth is a great play about an immensely ambitious man who feels compelled to do things that he knows are politically and morally disastrous?" Still holding his hand, Clinton replied: "I think Macbeth is a great play about someone whose immense ambition has an ethically inadequate object."

It might be hard to see George W. Bush's place in this great presidential tradition. Internet searches reveal no evidence that Bush has ever quoted or referred to Shakespeare. But while others only parrot Shakespeare, Bush emulates him.

Shakespeare is famous for having introduced more words into the English language than any other individual. Those words have become so much a part of our vernacular that we no longer associate them with the Swan of Avon. Words used above—like birthplace, fixture, and assassination—originate with him. Perhaps Shakespeare's most enduring legacy lies in his unseen mark on our semantic stock.

Along this metric, Bush stands alone among the 43 presidents. His coinages are the stuff of legend, including terms such as misunderestimate, mential, and embetterment. Many critics lament how busybody editors "corrected" Shakespeare's Quartos because they did not conform to their pedestrian notions of proper usage. For the same reason, we should not let stenographers "correct" Bush's contributions to our literary heritage. Bush's words do not belong to us. We hold them in trust—for our childrens, and for our childrens's childrens.