Stories like this restore my faith in America’s powers of reason. A federal judge has ruled that Bush’s claim that he can blacklist any groups he wants by calling them “terrorists” is unconstitutional.

The Humanitarian Law Project had challenged Bush’s order, which blocked all the assets of groups or individuals he named as “specially designated global terrorists” after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists,” said David Cole, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Constitutional Rights that represented the group. “It was reminiscent of the McCarthy era.”

…

She also struck down the provision in which Bush had authorized the secretary of the treasury to designate anyone who “assists, sponsors or provides services to” or is “otherwise associated with” a designated group.

A lot of Bush’s presidency seems to center around him being allowed to do whatever he damn well pleases whenever he damn well pleases. He wants to be able to name anyone he so chooses a “terrorist”, wants to be able to spy on them with no need for a warrant or oversight, and wants to be allowed to declare wars without Congress.

One of the beautiful parts about America is that for the most part, no one is allowed to do anything on a whim. The country is structured so any such measures require someone else’s approval and can be turned over to someone else in the event of a disagreement. But that’s not how Dubya wants it. I applaud any judge who strikes this crap down.

Admittedly this is just a quickie to remind myself and others that Bush has very little interest in anything resembling compromise, bipartisanship, or fixing his own goddamn mess. In a recent statement concerning Iraq:

“There’s one thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. “We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.”

The “mission” appears to be creating a completely stable Iraq. Now, this is a noble goal and one I think most of us support on principle. However, there is the little problem of whether or not we can actually do this, but that seems to be largely ignored by our Mighty Leader.

It would also be far easier to complete this mission (apparently completing is different than accomplishing) if Bush had, say, a remote understanding of what’s going on in the country.

Earlier Tuesday, Bush blamed the escalating bloodshed in Iraq on an al Qaeda plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge, and refused to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war.

…

“No question it’s tough, no question about it,” Bush said at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. “There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal.”

Folks, this is why there is no progress. Bush refuses to discuss even the possibility that there is a civil war. He has completely blocked that off in his mind and any debate about Iraq must be made as though that’s not within the realm of possibility. It would be like trying to rebuild New Orleans without allowing anyone to talk about the potential for future hurricanes.

How Bush can say these things with a straight face, I don’t think I’ll ever understand.