The Bush Administration has been so brazen in its attempts to skirt the law that it is now required of them to be even more brazen in defense of their actions, lest they be held to a full account.  So it is that Alberto Gonzales sits in a room full of lawyers and judges - including President Bush’s staunchest of Supreme Court allies, Clarence “C-Hair” Thomas - and declares himself Minister of Judicial Humility, even threatening disbarment of federal judges should those judges’ rulings fail to curry the favour of the Minister and his Master:

Gonzales Cautions Judges on Interfering - washingtonpost.com

“Respectfully, when courts issue decisions that overturn long-standing traditions or policies without proper support in text or precedent, they cannot _ and should not _ be shielded from criticism,” Gonzales said. “A proper sense of judicial humility requires judges to keep in mind the institutional limitations of the judiciary and the duties expressly assigned by the Constitution to the more politically accountable branches.”

Note if you will the entire lack of Executive humility referred to in this statement, nor is there an ounce of “institutional limitation” upon the president.  Note also that the word “Respectfully,” is merely a formality, not a thing meant to suggest any actual respect.  

Rather than discuss limitations to power respectfully, Alberto Gonzales - the chief lawman in this country- informs us that all that is required of us as a nation to uphold our venerated Constitution is the strict interpretation of Judicial limitations and duties, while turning a blind eye to the creative interpretations of Executive limitations and duties.

Interpretations that have rendered our president and his Executive Branch the sole “decider” of Constitutionality.  Interpretations that have rendered the Executive Branch as the watchful eyes and ears of American morality.  Interpretations which have allowed President Bush to declare all the world at war and all our personal effects the battleground.  Interpretations which are redefining the word “citizen” in this country and bring it dangerously close to “enemy combatant.”  

Interpretations which, even if we choke down the assurances that this administration feeds us - that they are only protecting us, that they need these things to make us safe, that we are doing the right thing when we accept their divine providence - even if we close our eyes and give them one more pass for the sake of Homeland Security, cannot possibly do less than open the door to some other, possibly more sinister, administration to snuff out the very democracy they claim to want to save.

These interpretations, we are told, are necessary.  And we are told, they are not interpretations, but rather “long-standing traditions or policies” which judges seeking to protect our rights will “overturn.”  Why, then, is all this such a surprise to the governed?

And what, then, of the consent of the governed?  Has this concept too become “quaint” and out of step with our modern society?  An overwhelming majority of us object to this administration’s policies, practices and abuses over the last six years, and above all other things, the Founding Fathers made clear that this trumps all other consideration.

As indeed it is doing even now.  Because as much as the administration would like this to be about renegade judges or terrorists hiding in our midst, the majority of American people have woken up to the realization that this is about us and who we are as a nation.  It is our will, not that of judges, being done at this very hour.  Torture, surveillance and warrantless imprisonment aren’t just things we dislike: they are things we’ve been taught since grade school are antithetical to the very idea of a United States of America.  They are things for which we used to scorn other countries, but now they are things that our Executive Branch happily colludes with other governments in, even to the point of dooming a citizen of one country to torture in a third country via prosecution in this country.  This administration does not simply condone torture, it is handmaiden to it.

We as citizens of this country have been taught too well for too long to have forgotten the lessons of what America is all about.  We will have it all back, soon, and the rantings of Alberto Gonzales are merely the keening of the stone before the dark tower falls, and the rulings of these so-called renegade judges, the crushing rumble of the battering rams.

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