Are we living in a constitutional monarchy?

Or are we about to see a constitutional breach to dwarf Nixon's excesses uncovered?

I'll let Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo explain this to you:

The Wall Street Journal has an extraordinary article in today's edition. The Journal has taken to making an article a day open to the public for bloggers and others to link to. This wasn't the one they chose today; but I hope they'll make an exception and make this one available too.

The article describes a confidential Pentagon report providing legal rationales and interpretations by which US personnel could use torture and methods of near-torture in contravention of various international treaties and US laws. The bulk of the arguments rest on arguments of 'necessity' and the powers of the president as commander-in-chief. They also go into some depth about how people acting at the president's order could avoid prosecution for demonstrably criminal acts.

The article is well worth reading for this alone.

But that whole discussion is different in kind from one passage in the report. I quote from the piece...

'To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."'

Chilling.

More at:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_06_06.php#003046