DEPOSITIONLAND. Just in case anyone has forgotten, there's still a president of the United States who answers only to the voices in his head. When he looks into a mirror, they tell him he's a king. Two stories in the last couple of weeks -- this one and this one -- evince not only the delusional view of Executive power held by the White House and its pet lawyers, but also a certain unease with what may happen this fall. It is possible -- how likely I will leave to the numbers-crunchers -- that one or both houses of Congress will fall into the hands of the Democrats. Congress might then decide to exercise the constitutional powers of oversight that the Republican majority long ago placed on the back shelf of the hall closet, behind all those copies of the code of congressional ethics that are still in the shrink-wrap. In fact, the rightist political gnomes are already scandalizing the faithful with this ominous possibility. So, in apparent anticipation of the cataclysmic reinvigoration of representative democracy, the brave yeomen of the Unitary Executive are seeking to immunize their sorry asses from the possible consequences of what would in fact be crimes in any country not sockless drunk enough to have traded James Madison for John Yoo. The Democrats should do all they can to kill these measures dead. Come next year, then, if they have the opportunity, they should arrange for a number of people to ride every ride in Depositionland.
--Charles P. Pierce
