Author: hankkalet

In the current political atmosphere, poisoned by a harsh partisanship that reduces every question and criticism to one of political party and electoral advantage, the danger to the constitutional form of government we have come to rely on has been underdiscussed.

Yes, during the confirmation hearings of John Roberts and particularly Sam Alito, there was some vague discussion of the theory of the unitary executive — basically, a theory that attempts to place the presidency above the other two branches of government, expanding its commander-in-chief powers beyond the war sphere — but that has been it.

The question of executive branch power, however, is one that has far-reaching implications, ones that go well beyond the dangerous powers that the current president has claimed for himself.

As Elizabeth Drew points out in The New York Review of Books, the president has claimed for himself an array of powers — the right to disregard Congressional intent, to ignore laws, to minimize judicial oversight, etc. — in its actions regarding wiretapping and data mining, in the signing statements it attaches to new legislation, in its arguments concerning “detainees” at Guantanamo and its disregard for legally ratified treaties.

The dangers are known to those on both sides of the partisan divide:

People with very disparate political views, such as Grover Norquist and Dianne Feinstein, worry about the long-term implications of Bush’s power grab. Norquist said, “These are all the powers that you don’t want Hillary Clinton to have.” Feinstein says, “I think it’s very dangerous because other presidents will come along and this sets a precedent for them.” Therefore, she says, “it’s very important that Congress grapple with and make decisions about what our policies should be on torture, rendition, detainees, and wiretapping lest Bush’s claimed right to set the policies, or his policies themselves, become a precedent for future presidents.”

But there have been few real challenges. That’s why she says:

For the first time in more than thirty years, and to a greater extent than even then, our constitutional form of government is in jeopardy.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Check out today’s edition from The Cranbury Press for stories on:

• A soil cleanup in Cranbury
• A new Cranbury bus deal
• A local bands show
• The county considering Monroe’s open space list
• The Jamesburg Civic Association
• GMB students moving on to high school

Get the paper for more details.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

There is reality and then there is the words spoken by the president. His triumphant announcement yesterday about the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi echoed triumphant announcements of the past: “mission accomplished” and his words following the capture of Saddam Hussein.

The reality is far darker, as The New York Times points out:

But as Americans discovered earlier, after Saddam Hussein’s two sons were killed and the Iraqi dictator himself was arrested, it will take far more than the elimination of a handful of iconic leaders to stem the tide of the Iraqi insurgency and reverse the country’s alarming slide into civil war.

It will take, most of all, the consolidation of an effective Iraqi government of national unity that can win the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of Iraq’s Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs by respecting their religious and ethnic diversity, protecting their personal security and assuring them the essentials of modern life. These include, at a minimum, reliable electricity, decent hospitals and schools, and a functioning economy that generates adequate employment.

Perhaps the paper is correct in saying that some small steps are being taken — “with the parliamentary confirmation of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s remaining cabinet members” and the hopes that they “will now take on the critical and daunting job of reforming Iraq’s unreliable national army and out-of-control police forces.”

But, as we watch Iraq on the precipice of civil war, we need to remember that the reality is not an end to the insurgency with Zarqawi’s death, but an uncertain future that is likely to be filled with considerable bloodshed.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

This week’s second Dispatches, from The Cranbury Press, focuses on a plan from three state legislators who are looking for state workers to give something back as part of the state-budget fix.

Here is the latest from The Star-Ledger on it.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Here is today’s editorial from The Cranbury Press and The Princeton Packet:

The send-’em-back-where-they-came-from crowd has a new poster child this week: Princeton University salutatorian Dan-el Padilla Peralta.

Back in April, The Wall Street Journal broke the story that Mr. Padilla, a classics scholar with a 3.9 grade-point average, was facing a dilemma. As the recipient of the university’s prestigious Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship, he had the opportunity to continue his studies at Oxford University in the fall. If he took advantage of this opportunity, however, Mr. Padilla would not be allowed to return to the United States for at least 10 years.

If, on the other hand, he decided to turn Oxford down, Mr. Padilla had no prospects for employment or graduate work in this country. He could not work legally, and no Ph.D. program that requires teaching could support his studies.

Mr. Padilla is what people sympathetic to his circumstances call an undocumented alien. To everyone else, he is, simply, an illegal immigrant. Mr. Padilla’s case drew a fair amount of interest following publication of the Journal article. The Daily Princetonian ran a detailed feature story. U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, whose district includes Princeton, got involved, as did Sens. Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer from New York, where Mr. Padilla grew up. But there was little they could do; Mr. Padilla’s mother, who brought 4-year-old Dan-el with her when she arrived from the Dominican Republic seeking medical treatment for a complicated pregnancy in 1989, had plainly broken the law when she overstayed her visa. Her son, for all his academic success, was in this country illegally.

With this week’s Commencement, Mr. Padilla’s story reached the mainstream media — and the reaction has been depressingly predictable. On TV news channels, on Web logs, on right-wing talk radio, the verdict is in: It doesn’t matter whether he was 4 or 40 when he came here. It doesn’t matter if he could turn out to be the next Einstein. An illegal immigrant is an illegal immigrant — no ifs, and or buts — and he should be deported immediately.

And that’s not the worst of it. He must have lied about his citizenship to get into Princeton. He must have taken the place of a real, honest-to-goodness American citizen when he was accepted. He must have benefited from affirmative action, and his education must have been supported by our tax dollars. The university must have violated the law when it failed to report him to immigration officials.

That none of these accusations happens to be true does not stanch the flow of invective coming from angry xenophobes whose idea of immigration reform is building a wall and throwing everyone who got here, sub rosa, before it was built — regardless of their current circumstances or the conditions under which they arrived — back over it.

The pervasiveness of this attitude is perhaps best described in Mr. Padilla’s own words, in an article he wrote for the Princeton Alumni Weekly:

“The national immigration debate is not merely something I watch on television; it is personal. I had been wary of disclosing the details of my status problem to my friends, in part because I have seen that the words ‘illegal immigrant’ tend to arouse a visceral reaction in people. I have had several conversations over the last four years with students who are vehemently opposed to illegal immigrants — who see them, at best, as an onerous weight on American citizens or perverse riffraff who deserve their place on the margins of society and should be deported as soon as possible.”

We know of no one whose life story does more to shatter this stereotype than Dan-el Padilla Peralta.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press