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Originally posted by pajoly
Do you love it that "patriots" could not be motivated to get off their fat arses and protest or otherwise act when Bush literally called the Constitution "that g0ddamned piece of paper," then proved his disgust for it by writing and passing the Patriot Act.
December 12, 2007
Q: Did President Bush call the Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper?"
Is it true that President Bush called the Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper?" He has never denied it, and it appears that there were several witnesses.
A: Extremely unlikely. The Web site that reported those words has a history of quoting phony sources and retracting bogus stories.
The report that Bush "screamed" those words at Republican congressional leaders in November 2005 is unsubstantiated, to put it charitably.
We judge that the odds that the report is accurate hover near zero. It comes from Capitol Hill Blue, a Web site that has a history of relying on phony sources, retracting stories and apologizing to its readers.
The Quote
The report was posted on Dec. 5, 2005. According to author, Doug Thompson, unnamed Republican leaders complained to Bush during a White House meeting about "onerous" portions of the USA Patriot Act, prompting the following:
Capitol Hill Blue: “I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”
“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
The evidence
There's no record of Bush ever using these words in public and no other news organization has reported him using them privately. Thompson based his report on three sources whom he didn't name. He gave the date of the quote as "last month," which would put it sometime in November 2005.
Thompson told us he once removed the story from his Web site when others raised doubts and no other news organization came up with a similar story. But he said he later reinstated it and currently believes it to be true. "I wrote the story and I stand by it," Thompson said in a telephone interview.
Thompson told us he based the story on e-mail messages from three persons he knows, all of whom claim to have been present at a White House meeting and to have heard Bush make the statement. He said he finds their account credible: "Sometimes I just have to go with my gut, and my gut tells me he did say this."
Originally posted by broahes
reply to post by boondock-saint
of offense, but where are you getting the info that there are in fact people at all 50 capitals? If it isn't being reported that is..
On Monday, April 19, 2010 - PATRIOT'S DAY
At the Same Moment in Time in Every State
9am Hawaii, 10am Alaska, Noon - PDT, 1pmMDT, 2pm CDT, 3pmEDT
THE VOICE OF FREEDOM WILL BE HEARD ACROSS AMERICA
We will honor God, our Country and our Constitution
and then serve the Articles of Freedom on our elected officials.
SCHULZ ON CNN: Monday Night
Be on the look-out for CNN's interview with Bob Schulz on the "Anderson Cooper Show" at 10pm on Monday night.
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU DO!
It was fifteen years ago today that Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people by detonating an explosives-filled truck near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in the nation's deadliest-ever homegrown terrorist attack.
McVeigh was an anti-government extremist inspired by the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco; he railed against taxes, gun control and federal interference in Americans' lives.
Those who betray the Constitution, he wrote in a letter, "are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly." After the attacks, McVeigh suggested that he acted for the "larger good" and said that even if he were executed, it would still be "168 to one."
Former President Bill Clinton, among others, see echoes of the rhetoric that drove McVeigh in the current political discourse. In an op-ed in the New York Times today tied to the bombing, he wrote that the bombers were driven by "the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them."
Lamenting the fact that "deeply alienated and disconnected Americans decided murder was a blow for liberty," Clinton went on to say Americans have a right to dissent but not violence when they don't get what they want
There is, he wrote, "a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedoms and the public servants who enforce our laws."
That was a shot at folks like Rep. Michele Bachmann, who last week railed against what she called the "gangster government" at a tax day Tea Party rally. Clinton said it is not appropriate to call elected officials "gangsters" and added, "you can attack the politics" but "don't demonize them, and don't say things that will encourage violent opposition."
Time magazine's Joe Klein, meanwhile, suggested that the rhetoric of Glenn Beck and "to a certain extent" Sarah Palin "rub right up close to being seditious." Added New York Magazine's John Heilemann in that weekend interview: "Joe's right and I'll name another person, I'll name Rush Limbaugh who uses this phrase constantly and talks about the Obama administration as a regime. That phrase which has connotations of tyranny. And what's so interesting about it to me, to get to Norah's point - what is the focus, what is the cause of this? You think back to 1994, there was Ruby Ridge. There was Waco. There were triggering incidents. There's been nothing like that. The only thing that's changed in the last 15 months is the election of Barack Obama. And as far as I can see, in terms of the policies that Obama has implemented, there's nothing."