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This Week You Need To Know
On Jan. 19, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued a 42-page unclassified legal opinion defending the Bush Administration's indefensible illegal spying on Americans. The Gonzales document represented one of the most radical and Sophistic assertions of the Carl Schmitt doctrine of unbridled Presidential dictatorship—otherwise known as the Führerprinzip—claiming that the President's authority as Commander-in-Chief allows him to take actions which are "beyond Congress' ability to regulate," and "affords the President, at minimum, the discretion to employ the traditional incidents of the use of military force," including the full range of National Security Agency (NSA) capabilities to conduct domestic spying.
Informed of the Gonzales document, Lyndon LaRouche declared: "This proves the case. This document, probably dictated by Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff and general counsel David Addington, simply confirms that this Administration is in the hands of a fascist cabal. Nobody who is concerned and thinking clearly can, in their right mind, support the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court under these conditions." LaRouche pondered, "Is President Bush prepared to ask for the resignation of his Attorney General, over this flagrant violation of the spirit and letter of the U.S. Constitution?"
LaRouche had earlier suggested that, given time, the Cheney cabal would respond to the growing opposition to the Alito nomination with some arrogant "flight forward" act, which would highlight just how dangerous the Alito nomination was to the survival of the Republic. Not only did the Gonzales memo, released to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), publicly display precisely such arrogance. The very day that the Gonzales document was being released, Vice President Cheney travelled to New York City, to deliver a speech at the Mont Pelerin Society-linked Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, in which he defiantly defended the NSA spying and lied that "the activities conducted under this authorization have helped us to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people. As such, this program is critical to the national security of the United States.... These actions are within the President's authority and responsibility under the Constitution and laws, and these actions are vital to our security."...
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