Last week, President George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of military tribunals for select terrorists. The order gives the executive the exclusive right to identify, try, and even execute foreign terrorists, without the constitutional or evidentiary protections ordinarily afforded defendants in the United States. Some critics contend the order arrogates congressional law-making authority. Is there a limit to what can legally be done through an executive order, and what are the means to challenge one?
Is President Bush's Executive Order Creating Military Tribunals Legal?
WASHINGTON, July 23 — The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/washington/24prexy.html?_r=0
Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes
a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech—and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;
a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;
a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as “enemy combatants,” strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror— in other words, perhaps forever; and
a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.
Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush | Cato Institute
Constitutional violations? We had plenty with Bush
Constitutional violations? We had plenty with Bush - Opinion - News Item
George W. Bush’s Impeachable Offenses: Newsroom: The Independent Institute
. . . .the Bush administration engineered and presided over the most sustained period of constitutional decay in our history.
The 9/11 Decade and the Decline of U.S. Democracy | Center for Constitutional Rights
Lists of George Bush`s unconstitutional Executive Orders
Lists of George Bush`s unconstitutional Executive Orders