Sun King

There’s a long list of “froms” behind the quote below. I found it first on firedoglake, followed her link to The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin who is quoting from a quote in a New Yorker profile by Jane Mayer, not available on line.

"Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, who voted for Bush in both Presidential elections, and who served as associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, said that Addington and other Presidential legal advisers had 'staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other Administration. This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He's said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President's reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world's a battlefield -- according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It's got the sense of Louis XIV: 'I am the State.' "

Most of us know that the Bush administration considers itself above the laws and the rest of us to be dumbass tools sent off to shoot up the world, sweep up, and be perhaps useful as organ donators, but what's interesting is this characterization comes from a Reagan Republican.

Update: asshole (a feel good link)