Bush's Sick Vision of 'Democracy'

Larisa at alternet:

Bush's Sick Vision of 'Democracy'

Perhaps the nation would be better served if all members of government simply played ring around the rosy or a good hearty game of tag, because this pantomime of a fully functioning system of checks and balances is an insult to those of us who actually believe in democracy.

Yet anyone reading the reports of this decision would think that the Supreme Court had simply bitch-slapped George across his twitching face and back into some limitations on his imagined power. While that is true to some extent, the real questions around this ruling, however, are once again shuffled to the sidelines of the byte-sized news cycle. And once again the castrated Congress is busy faxing and emailing all sorts of statements of support for the decision or outrage over the decision, falling exactly along political lines.

The obvious and serious issues around this ruling, and really around every action undertaken by this administration, are not addressed, nor will they be as long as there is no functioning Congress and a ratings-obsessed and obedient media.

What is the obvious set of issues here? The game goes something like this:

The President breaks a law. A court rules that the President broke the law. Our Congress then responds swiftly by vowing to introduce a bill that would make the President's actions retroactively legal, thereby showing that his astute reading of the Constitution was simply ahead of its time. Then the President signs the bill into law, which he has the option to disregard according to his own signing edict ..