Only the President Can Stretch (Break) the Law

Attorney General Gonzales is apparently concerned that judges may make decisions about security issues that they are not qualified to understand. According to MSNBC:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says federal judges are unqualified to make rulings affecting national security policy, ramping up his criticism of how they handle terrorism cases.

Of course, the administration that brought us the Iraq war and FEMA run by a much-underqualified lawyer is qualified to tell us that no judge is qualified to hold them accountable. Ultimately this leads to the attitude that now pervades the Bush administration that even the voters cannot hold them accountable. In their view nobody is qualified to hold them accountable, because they just know.

In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday, Gonzales says judges generally should defer to the will of the president and Congress when deciding national security cases. He also raps jurists who “apply an activist philosophy that stretches the law to suit policy preferences.”

In other words, only the administration is qualified to stretch the law. Those judges should just keep out of it.

“We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected judiciary inferior to Congress or the president in making policy judgments,” Gonzales says in the prepared speech. “That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country.”

Following on some other really stupid remarks, this displays an astounding level of arrogance.