No one person should have this much power

I wrote earlier about a judge in Pakistan who was standing up for the rule of law. Today he was reinstated:

Pakistan’s Supreme Court today reinstated the country’s Chief Justice unconditionally in a blow to the Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf, who had suspended him.

The historic ruling – the first a Pakistan court has ever made against a military ruler – comes after four months of unrest in Pakistan since Iftikhar Chaudhry’s suspension on allegations of misconduct and corruption.

Judge Chaudhry refused to quit, despite pressure from the president and his intelligence chiefs, and became a symbol of resistance to General Musharraf, lionised by supporters in rallies round the country.

In contrast, today the White House made a stunning declaration that our president has supreme rights over Congress.

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration’s stance “astonishing.”

“That’s a breathtakingly broad view of the president’s role in this system of separation of powers,” Rozell said. “What this statement is saying is the president’s claim of executive privilege trumps all.”

No one person should have this much power. The founders of our country knew that no president could ever be so perfect that he (or she) should have the rights of a king. But the current president is making wilder and wilder claims about the power to which he is entitled.

Let’s go back to Pakistan, a nation with which we have had profound differences:

“The president has said the judgement of the Supreme Court will be honoured, respected, and adhered to,” said retired Major General Rashid Qureshi, the president’s spokesman.

There’s a critical difference to note: The White House claims are being made anonymously. That means that our president isn’t quite sure enough to stand up and say in public that he has the right to overrule Congress like this. Letting his staff speak to the Washington Post is a way of testing to see if Americans will swallow this outrageous claim.

If you agree that nobody should have this much power, call your senators. Or better yet, write them.

posted by Sra. Bibliotecaria ⋅ tagged america, law, politics

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