New York Times March 9, 2008

Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms Bush’s Legacy

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.

Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.

The veto deepens his battle with increasingly assertive Democrats in Congress over issues at the heart of his legacy. . . . Mr. Bush’s veto — the ninth of his presidency, but the eighth in the past 10 months with Democrats in control of Congress — underscored his determination to preserve many of the executive prerogatives his administration has claimed in the name of fighting terrorism, and to enshrine them into law.

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________________________________________________________________ Enshrine them into law. Enshrine means to 'hold sacred.' Enforced in this country by Michael Chertoff's inability to get anything right, backed by Blackwater brown-shirted thugs as necessary. That's a sacred trust if I ever saw one. The New York Times in an extreme of reportorial insolence, uses the word 'legacy' (three times) while announcing to the nation that this president, who constantly and irritatingly lies to us that 'we do not torture,' has just vetoed a bill that requires him not to torture. This, they claim breathlessly, is in defense of his legacy. The word legacy has been widely misused concerning what presidents leave behind them, more often appropriate to pooper-scoopers than archives. It has an undeserved positive connotation;

Law. a gift of property, esp. personal property, as money, by will; a bequest.
Anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor: the legacy of ancient Rome.
An applicant to or student at a school that was attended by his or her parent.

Inheritance is a synonym. This is our inheritance from this presidency? After eight years, we get crimes against humanity, against our Constitution, against international norms, against the laws of our nation and that's an inheritance? Eight years after being seated as the first president determined by a Supreme Court (so embarrassed by the decision it would neither sign it nor allow the decision as precedent), this man has (almost) singlehandedly destroyed our military, our economy, our reputation, our trust in government, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and tens of thousands of even more innocent American soldiers. And that's a legacy the NYTimes would have us believe is worthy of preservation? We are being gulled into believing there is a defensible position within this administration by a news media whose duty it is to scream from headlines and television that America is in crisis. They are derelict. They have left the field to the Rush Linbaughs and Bill O'Reillys and Ann Coulters of the extreme right. The nation, disavowing the war by 70% and the president by an equal number, is being cheer-led by the media happy-talk of enshrining a legacy. This errant and no longer honorable fourth estate, that so dogged Bill Clinton, has suddenly lost its courage. But pack mentality is like that, ask any kennel-man. The Times frames the inability of Congress to enforce its subpoena powers or to hold this administration responsible to the Constitution, as a power-struggle between George Bush and the Democrats. The credibility of government has been reduced to Saturday afternoon sports metaphor. Meanwhile, Mr. Sulzberger, the America we are in danger of losing, twists in the wind.

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