Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice by Pantheon

	Title: Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice Purchase Item Manufacturer: Pantheon List Price: $26.95 Our Price: $14.99
Customer Reviews:
Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice by Pantheon A Must read--even if it makes you sick
It took me a while to read this book. Not because it wasn't well written, on the contrary, it is an extremely well written book. No, I could only stomach around 20 or so pages at a time, before I was so angry I had to put it down. This is a must read for people who want to know what the Bush Administration has been up to for the last few years. Unfortunately, some of the details cannot be included, as they are either unknown or classified. In any case, a book that flows, that is easy to read and has (IMHO) one of the most pressing themes of today.
Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice by Pantheon My Husband Read It
I asked my husband to read this book. He is learned in History, especially U.S. History, and I was interested in his remarks. He was surprised at the depth of the deception taking place by the Bush Administration and the assault on our civil rights.
Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice by Pantheon The compelling story behind the story
This is a very impressive and unusual book written by a reporter who has covered the Justice Dept for a long time. There have been any number of good books published about the War on Terror and the Bush Administration's response to it. What sets Licthblau's book apart from the rest is that large sections are written in the first person and not only recount the events and facts but describe the mindset and calculus employed by policymakers who in real time had to make the decisions necessary to protect the country from follow-up attacks after September 11. Perhaps the strongest chapter in the book details the pressure the White House put on the New York Times that led the paper--much to Licthblau's chagrin--to hold off on publishing the story about NSA's surveillance program for a year. For this reason, I agree with the reviewer in the NY Times book review who wrote that this book is the equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein's classic "All the President's Men" for the terror age.
Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice by Pantheon enemies, enemies....
This is a good solid work about law and justice in the Bush Administration. It's a story of good and evil, law and lawlessness, trust and distrust. You might want to consider first reading Robert Conquest's fine book The Great Terror, which is about the purges, the show trials, law and justice under Stalin. Much is different, of course, but there are some uncomfortable parallels. Perhaps the most striking thing in The Great Terror was that under Stalin, being suspected of anti-Soviet activities was a serious crime. This is not the same as actually being guilty of such activity, but rather just the fact that you had been suspected (even if totally innocent, as the vast majority were) earned you a trip to the cellars to be shot, or a death sentence in the labor camps. Bush's Law makes it clear that suspicion earns punishment in one form or another. Bush's Law emphasizes the use and misuse of national security letters, the bypassing of the normal legal safeguards, the punishments for Justice Department and FBI people who "weren't on the team". Loyalty becomes the paramount virtue: "meine ehre heist treue" (my honor is loyalty). The book talks about the firings of the US Attorneys: being "loyal Bushies" was crucial to being kept on, and the dissembling explanations by Gonzales and the White House made a mockery of the traditional image of blind justice with a scales in one hand and a sword in the other. The book describes how Gonzales explored the possibilities of prosecuting journalists under the Espionage Act of 1917. You get the strong impression that a free press was considered a greater threat to America than al Qaeda. For a book on a similar subject, try Clive Smith's Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side. The focus here is limited to Guantanamo: the treatment of the prisoners, the lack of hearings, the regarding of lawyers for the detainees as the enemy. It's a very depressing book, and it packs a very powerful punch indeed. Taken together, Bush's Law is primarily about the threats to Americans when laws are routinely broken and the Constitution is regarded as an annoyance, Smith's book is an extension: without the safeguards, without some judges and the free press standing up, the next steps could lead to Guantanamos, and then another few steps perhaps to the Soviet system where the law is whatever authority says it is, and justice is meaningless. What Bush's Law describes is not new: we might do well to ponder on John Mitchell (Nixon's Attorney General) who had serious discussions about the possibility of kidnapping war protesters and sending them to secret Soviet-style gulags. We can also think about the death threats Lichtblau describes, and the suggestions that he and other reporters be arrested, tried for treason, and hanged. There are those who believe that the war on terror justifies any suspension of civil liberties and justifies any actions by those in authority. Such people are not alone: Stalin, Hitler, and Mao had large numbers of adherents who felt the same way. So--a good book, replete with heroes and villians galore.
Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice by Pantheon The Full Story?
I'm really disappointed that Lichtblau and others in the press can't seem to look at all of the available facts when reporting on the Bush presidency and the war on terror. Allow me to explain: We're all worried about possible erosion of civil liberties and the ongoing war in Iraq, but if the press does not engage in neutral reporting, then how are we ever going to keep our civil liberties? In making our decisions about what to do, we need to know if the press is giving us the full facts of the story or instead presenting parts of a story to push its point of view. I feel that Lichtblau is doing the later. The New York Times, for which Lichtblau writes, is noted for its anti-Bush reporting practices. See Bush's War: Media Bias and Justifications for War for details. While the press is now saying it did not do enough to stop Bush, this book looks at about 5 years of press coverage and claims that starting about 8 weeks after 9/11 the press began to frame Bush as an enemy and to actively oppose his policies. Lichtblau does not take this type of criticism into consideration, but pushes the "Bush lied, people died" meme even further. See Alterman for an example of this: The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America. Evidence that contradicts Lichtblau is out there, and I would have liked to seen him and others come right out and take on accusations of bias rather than just ignoring it. Instead its more of the same stuff I read in the New York Times on a regular bases. So that is why I'm disappointed in this book; I wanted something new and fresh that would tackle the fuller picture. There just really does not seem to be any surprises here.
Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice by Pantheon Product Description
In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush and his top advisors declared that the struggle against terrorism would be nothing less than a war–a new kind of war that would require new tactics, new tools, and a new mind-set. Bush’s Law is the unprecedented account of how the Bush administration employed its “war on terror” to mask the most radical remaking of American justice in generations. On orders from the highest levels of the administration, counterterrorism officials at the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA were asked to play roles they had never played before. But with that unprecedented power, administration officials butted up against–or disregarded altogether–the legal restrictions meant to safeguard Americans’ rights, as they gave legal sanction to covert programs and secret interrogation tactics, a swept up thousands of suspects in the drift net. Eric Lichtblau, who has covered the Justice Department and national security issues for the duration of the Bush administration, details not only the development of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program–initiated by the vice president’s office in the weeks after 9/11–but also the intense pressure that the White House brought to bear on The New York Times to thwart his story on the program. Bush’s Law is an unparalleled and authoritative investigative report on the hidden internal struggles over secret programs and policies that tore at the constitutional fabric of the country and, ultimately, brought down an attorney general.