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Word: kleindienst (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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WHILE Washington police scourged thousands of antiwar demonstrators, Rennie Davis grumbled to the press that Mr. Nixon had "suspended the Constitution" by denying the protestors the right to assemble peacefully. The President, of course, did not suspend the Constitution. Over in the Justice Department, Richard Kleindienst had hardly begun to use the emergency police powers legally available to the Administration. But radicals like Davis (who are, at heart, only the lost children of the ACLU) still fondly imagine that under crisis conditions the Constitution continues to define and limit acceptable law enforcement procedures. They believe that the Bill of Rights...

Author: By Thomas Geoghegan, | Title: The Law Defoliating the Constitution | 5/5/1971 | See Source »

...Berrigan case, the FBI has demonstrated that blanket charges of "conspiracy" can do all the dirty work of the McCarran Act without forcing the President to declare an embarrassing "state of insurrection." If anything, the blunt language of that law has become a liability. Mr. Kleindienst now recommends that Congress repeal Title II of the Act because such action would "allay the fears and suspicions-unfounded as they may be-of many of our citizens...

Author: By Thomas Geoghegan, | Title: The Law Defoliating the Constitution | 5/5/1971 | See Source »

...Canadian Bill of Rights and allowing the government to round up 450 persons linked with the FLQ-the Nixon Administration can do without. According to Dershowitz, the criminal laws here are so flexible that the government requires almost no extra-constitutional emergency powers. In an astounding interview with Kleindienst, which Dershowitz has recorded in The Naton, our Deputy Attorney General made this remarkable point: "There is enough play at the joints of our existing criminal law-enough flexibility-so that if we really felt that we had to pick up the leaders of a violent uprising, we could: We would...

Author: By Thomas Geoghegan, | Title: The Law Defoliating the Constitution | 5/5/1971 | See Source »

...Kleindienst, though, must also realize that the government can count on some dark pieces of statutory authority for use in civil emergencies. Federal law permits the President to take over the airwaves-radio and TV-for the duration of ambiguously defined crises. It is less clear what federal statute has allowed the Administration to censor news from Indochina, but the American press has so far graciously ceded this legal right. But once again, why bother with statutes, anyway? Since the Constitution conveniently passes over the subject of martial law, the President can indeed claim considerable authority inherent in his office...

Author: By Thomas Geoghegan, | Title: The Law Defoliating the Constitution | 5/5/1971 | See Source »

Spiro Agnew has said that if forced to choose between anarchy and repression, the American people will choose repression. Hollywood. Tories like Agnew and Reagan like to periodically remind the left of the impending bloodbath. Wall Street Tories like Kleindienst and Mitchell, though, merely insist that the first duty of the state is survival-and, we may rest assured, they have accumulated a staggering panoply of powers for precisely that...

Author: By Thomas Geoghegan, | Title: The Law Defoliating the Constitution | 5/5/1971 | See Source »

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