No comfort in obeying bad law

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/177496_lawed.html

Looking angry and clearly frustrated, President Bush leaned across the lecturn at a news conference Thursday in response to a question of whether torture is ever justified. "Look, I'm going to say it one more time," the president snapped, "The instructions went out to our people to adhere to the law. That ought to comfort you."

Bush's remarks were hardly comforting. What comfort is there in assurances that Bush would adhere to the law after Justice Department lawyers wrote the president memos saying the law allowed him to authorize the use of torture?

Donald Gregg, a former CIA officer and national security adviser to the first President Bush, wrote in The New York Times Thursday, "These memos cleared the way for the horrors that have been revealed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo and make a mockery of administration assertions that a few misguided enlisted personnel perpetrated the vile abuse of prisoners."

The president's verbal parsing about "the law" is more disingenuous and far more dangerous than his predecessor's machinations over "sexual relationship" and "what is is," because it implies that for Bush the law is what he says it is.

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When Congress relinquishes the right to its Constitutional duties and allow the office of the president to "make" law, we have lost our country.

That is bad. Lying about torture is worse.

I take no comfort from Bush's claim that "instructions went out to our people to adhere to the law" for the Administration has worked diligently to circumvent the spirit of the laws. The circumventing has not stopped at the doorstep of laws; but, continues into both American principals and religious tenets. Disingenuous greatly understates Bush's contempt for tenets, principles, and even laws that get in his way. Each day, the paradox between what Bush says he believes and the cavalier discarding of those beliefs with his actions appears to be ever growing. Blindly, his apologists follow him down the path of self destruction. The only question left is "where will it all end"?

we've voted in over the years any way. AS if America sends a message to government that we really mean we'll vote you out if you don't uphold the Constitution. I want my damn congressmen and women to demand an impartial investigation and not allow Bush to get away with testifying not under oath, not in public and with Chenney by his side! I want to make sure this thug is telling the truth and my representatives are doing more than debating if Reagan should be on a 10 dollar bill! We should kick them all out! Every one of them!Maybe that will send a message that Americans are serious about listening to your constituents.

"No comfort in obeying a bad law"?!

No, no, no -- it should be "No comfort in obeying a bad interpretation of laws."

And of course there would be absolutely no comfort in obeying a bad, nonbinding interpretation of laws because you would still be liable to prosecution.

The president and his legal counsel can interpret and reinterpret all the laws they want, but they cannot legislate. I know, it may be a case of bad headline writing, but this kind of sloppiness breeds confusion among the citizenry.