Last January, Matt Welch posted a series of questions to Bush administration supporters about executive power. His aim was to pin them down on where they’d draw the line on war powers for use when the Bush administration inevitably tries to assert those powers.

Given developments since January, I thought I’d come up with a revised set of questions to reflect the latest White House power grabs.

Thing is, I have a hard time coming up with any. The Bush administration now claims that it can arrest, detain, and imprison U.S. citizens indefinitely (which means forever) without ever charging them or bringing them to trial. It claims it collect data on U.S. citizens, listen in on their phone conversations, monitor what books they read and what websites they visit, and track their credit card transactions — all without a warrant. It claims it can fine or imprison libraries, ISP, phone company, and credit card company employees who complain or reveal that the information was handed over. And it now claims it can arrest and imprison journalists who dare to tell the public that any of this is happening.

Last February, one Justice Department official even argued that the president has the power to order the assasinaton of terror suspects living in the U.S. — even U.S. citizens . No trial, no arrest, no public hearing.

Given all of this, it’s difficult to come up with a series of questions aimed at pinning down Bush supporters on the limits of executive power because, quite frankly, there don’t seem to be any limits left.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 at 9:09 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.