The aide (a senior advisor to President Bush) said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” — as reported by Ron Suskind, in the New York Times Magazine, 10-17-2004 –Geov Parrish, History ignored, President’s men rebrand ‘War on Terror’ as World War III, WorkingForChange.com, 09.12.06
[White House Press Sec.] Tony [Snow]: No, as a matter of fact the president has an obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is an obligation that presidents have enacted through signing statements going back to Jefferson. So, while the Supreme Court can be an arbiter of the Constitution, the fact is the President is the one, the only person who, by the Constitution, is given the responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend that document, so it is perfectly consistent with presidential authority under the Constitution itself. –In which Tony Snow laughs at me (but the last laugh is on Tony), BTC News, 9/22/2006
They believe we need a different kind of government now, an Executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with signing statements. Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says “I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.” –‘A Coup Has Occurred,’ Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked the secret Vietnam War “Pentagon Papers”), Sep. 20, 2007
[Film maker George] Lucas’ own geopolitics can sound pretty bleak: “All democracies turn into dictatorshipship, but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea “ Dark Victory -April 23, 2002, 12:40:03
