Pro-Lincoln revisionism

[Bradley in DC]

http://ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/owens/07/civilliberty.html

This is probably my favorite:

While the Constitution is silent on some of the steps he took, it is possible to argue that everything Lincoln did was justifiable under the powers stipulated in Article 2 of the Constitution.

[Under Article I Sec. 9, emphasis again, Article Numero Uno referring to Congressional powers, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."]

 

[beerista]

I wrote a bit in reply to this and then realized I'd much rather hear what Prof. DiLorenzo has to say than to fisk this tool myself. Think I'll put down the keyboard and spend some time with my copy of "The Real Lincoln."
Thanks for the link. Got my blood pressure up anyway.

 

[bbachtung]

This guy is so sad; he takes letters written by Thomas Jefferson and uses them to make an ends-justify-the-means argument that the Constitution means whatever the President wants it to mean if there's some "emergency."

How does Congress' (Article I) power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion justify Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus?

Under what authority does Lincoln have the power to arrest and deport a U.S. Congressman?

I love his parsing of the word dictator. Since Lincoln acted somewhat predictably (although I believe that ordering the arrest of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shows otherwise) and allowed elections (which were hardly free in that they were monitored by Union soldiers and involved ballots colored according to party that had to be marched past those soldiers to be deposited in the ballot boxes), he is not a "dictator." Whatever.

And he concludes his essay with that classic logical device employed for centuries: the other guy (the Confederacy) behaved worse than our guy (the Union). What that has to do with whether Lincoln acted within the confines of the Constitution is beyond my comprehension.

It is awful that they allow this person to teach at the Naval War College.

 

[constituent]

so what, do we start lobbying for a constitutional amendment to clarify the issue?