The president is getting a lesson on Iran and despotic thugs. He’s also apparently learned something about the architecture which George W. Bush put in place to conduct the war on terror: it works! Or at least there is no viable alternative. The Washington Post reports:
The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.
Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.
After months of internal debate over how to close the facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president’s January deadline.
Well, I’m sure the ACLU and Left blogosphere will have a meltdown. Once again, those who cheered the president on and took his campaign rhetoric seriously are left disappointed. As the Post puts it:
Instituting long-term detention through an executive order would leave Obama vulnerable to charges that he is willing to forsake the legislative branch of government, as his predecessor often did. Bush’s detention policies suffered successive defeats in the courts in part because they lacked congressional approval and tried to exclude judicial oversight.
Still unclear is exactly where this indefinite detention will occur. But at least we know that all that talk about “shredding the Constitution” was just that — talk.
A key difference with AMT is that in 1969 it was easy to tell who was going to be affected. This witch hunt over the bonuses calls into question job and career decisions by a lot larger portion of the population initially, and it has lots more potential for morphing into plans that affect all C level corporate executives and virtually everybody in high level sales.
For a start virtually everybody working for a TARP recipient bank whose compensation plan includes a significant bonus component probably checked and updated their resume after watching the Barney follies the other day. In the current job market there can’t and won’t be a rush for the exits; but that spectacle has to change a lot of people’s forward looking career plans.
For myself I expect good times. Recruiters with mortgage and financial experience are going to be at a premium as the difficulty of filling such positions increases dramatically.
“—— to the Smoot-Hawley tariff that effectively began the Great Depression.”
At that time,exports were only 5% of our GDP so the idea that the Great Depression was started by SH doesn’t make much sense. Instead look at the effect of Germany’s Default on its post WW1 debt on the world economy.
I may be mistaken,but wasn’t the AMT removed as part of the Stimulus package????????
I still maintain our country would be better off eliminating the current tax code and adopting the AMT. We’d have a broader base of income to tax so there would be less special interest exemptions, marginal tax rates would be lower, and low-income households in any given calendar year would still continue to escape income taxation altogether.
#3 – I hope you are right. #4 I would happily accept a flat tax arrangement with less special interest deductions with the hopes that more people, including the lower 50% of earners paid at least some tax.
#3, it was not removed, but only amended to not capture as many “working-class families”. As with all things in politics, the politicians are afraid of their own shadow when it comes to undoing the unpopular things they did.
#6, Thanks for the clarification.