All Posts Tagged With: "The President"

From Proverbs:

Differing weights and differing measures—
the LORD detests them both.

From Glenn Greenwald:

That’s America’s justice system in a nutshell:  the President who deliberately and knowingly violated our 30-year-old law making it a felony offense to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants has the entire political and media class eagerly defend him against prosecution.  Those who enabled him — in both parties — block investigations into what was done.  Ruth Marcus and Cass Sunstein and friends offer one excuse after the next to justify this immunity.  But the powerless and defenseless — though definitively courageous — public servant who blew the whistle on this lawbreaking is harassed, investigated, and pursued by the DOJ’s Criminal Division to the point of bankruptcy and depression.  The high-powered criminals are protected by our political elite while the whistle-blower spends years paying lawyers and devoting his mental energies to trying to fend of the DOJ’s criminal investigation.

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Sad, but true. And this is a practice that is not confined to one side or the other. It happens across the political spectrum. And it seriously undercuts the consistent rhetoric from our nation’s leaders that “no one is above the law.” That’s simply not true. It’s proven again and again that those at the top are indeed above the law because no one ever holds them accountable.

After seeing video of the bizarre incident in which an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President Bush, I found myself feeling oddly mixed emotions.

First, I was taken aback by the assault on our president. While I profoundly disagree with his policies and still continue to believe he is one of the worst presidents this nation has ever had, he is still our president and it was an attack on our leader.

Conversely, my second thought was what an appropriate footnote to this whole Iraq fiasco and I couldn’t help but admire the courage this journalist had to make such a public statement of protest against the world’s most powerful leader, which will have no minor consequences.

Then, my next thought was that I was pretty impressed by the president’s quick response, ducking with lightning quick reflexes. I found myself oddly proud of this man that has done so little in the last eight years to be proud of.

Finally, I was a little troubled by how unprotected the president was and how long it took for bodyguards to come to his aid. Josh Marshall had similar thoughts…

But watching the video of the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at President Bush, I could not help but notice that it took an uncomfortably long period of time for anyone to get to the assailant and, even more, much longer than I would have expected for anyone who looked like Secret Service to get to the president and block his body or get him out of harm’s way.

I guess the point here is that this was a very confined space. Presumably the Secret Service controlled access to the degree that they were confident there were no unauthorized weapons in the room. And they wouldn’t have to worry about someone with a gun at a greater distance. So they may have been less worried about jumping in front of the president, etc.

Maybe I’m just over-analyzing this. And obviously a president can’t be under lock and key at all moments, with Secret Service agents ready to throw him to the floor at a moment’s notice. But for an American president, any moment in Iraq has to be considered a very high risk situation. So it did make me wonder.

I’m sure there will be a thorough review of the incident and Secret Service procedures. But the incident was more than a little unsettling, no matter how one might feel about the president himself.