Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush

Through transcripts, memos, and analysis, Representative JohnC. Conyers, Jr. and the House Judiciary Committee reveal howthe Bush administration again and again assumed more power thanthe Constitution allows, and circumvented the traditional checksand balances of our system. From ignoring laws that forbid torturing, to determining that the president himself not the courts candecide the reach of the law, to using creative counselors to recastthe statutory law or the Constitution itself, the administration s approach to power was, at its core, little more than a restatement ofRichard Nixon s famous rationalization of presidential misdeeds: When the president does it, that means it s not illegal. Reining inthe Imperial Presidency includes forty-seven separate recommendations, including calls for continued committee investigation, ablue ribbon commission to fully investigate administration activities, and independent criminal probes. Conyer writes, The Constitution has been sorely tested over thelast eight years. But … I am confident in our capacity to self-correct. Doing so will require much hard work and diligence, and thateffort only continues with the release of this Report. Our work isfar from complete.