Oops. Forgot to put a title here. Let's edit this post and consider this to be the title. There.

Details about more than three dozen secret memoranda written by Bush Administration officials now sit atop a chart created by public interest reporting group. The memos track new details about dozens of secret Bush Administration legal positions on torture, detention and warrantless wiretapping.

...

Among the memos' titles: "Criminal Charges against U.S. terrorists"; "Options for Interpreting the Geneva Convention" and "Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to military operations abroad or in U.S."

Little is known about the specifics or the resulting effect of the other clandestine briefs.

For example, the effects of the secret Fourth Amendment memo could be stunning. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in another memo that the White House's lawyers had concluded that the Fourth Amendment's protections against warrantless search and seizure don't apply to the US military -- even when the operations take place on U.S. soil.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Dozens_of_secret_Bush_terror_memos_0203.html

What essentially happened over the past eight years is that attorneys were practicing law again. We had legal masterminds who saw --much to their delight-- that if they connected subsection B with Title Nine and then put a post-it note on it with a reference to a secret executive order over in subsection 4C, that they could make anything legal, that it would pass muster with some guy in a powdered wig and a black robe.

Ta da! Legal!

But in the end, there's only one court that really matters, isn't there? It's the guy on his property with a shotgun who takes a dim look at ya, spits out a plug of chewing tobacco, and then blows your brains out.

And that is the court that you need to be the most solicitous of. You had BEST MAKE SURE that your paperwork is in order with that guy. He's a hangin' judge. Let's not forget who really has the final say of what is and is not legal.

What these geniuses did not understand is that the Constitution serves two functions: It both tells the government what it may do, and it tells the people what the government looks like. IT TELLS GOVERNMENT AGENTS WHAT THEY MAY DO IF THEY WISH TO BE RECOGNIZED BY THE MAN ON STREET AS SOMETHING LAWFUL.

A band of guys with guns who are not the government are to be treated like any common street thug. The principle of self-defense applies.

These geniuses somehow came to believe that they could just will entire parts of the Constitution away by some artful application of legal tricks. It doesn't work that way.

The only thing they succeeded in doing was to modify their behavior to such a degree that the entity became so divergent from the description of the United States that it ceased to be the United States. "What's that?" "Dunno. Never seen it before. All I have is the Field Guide to North American Birds to refer to, and this don't look like anything in there."

The United States is not the United States if it does not resemble the United States. And the Constitution tells everyone, in very plain language, what the United States looks like.

Just because a guy has gotten himself some United States letterhead doesn't mean that he is a United States agent.

The United States is essentially in a state of suspended animation, and the guys running around with US badges are all acting under color of law.

Like I said, it's no way to run a government.