For all I can see, to CNN, Jack Cafferty is like that 140 year-old oak tree that’s about to fall over on your car parked in the driveway. It makes all the sense in the world to get rid of him, but you tolerate his presence because you know it just wouldn’t be the same with him gone.

But you and your friends still sit on the porch on a Saturday with a few beers. And it never fapils, you always talk about the oak tree that’s about to make useless scrap metal out of your ride. “Tree’s still there, huh?”. “Yup.”

From Thursday’s Situation Room… 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoRjbIQMXGQ&eurl=

“…Buried deep inside this legislation is a provision that will pardon President Bush and all the members of his administration of any possible crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of detainees dated all the way back to September 11, 2001.”

It’s buried not-so-deep in the U.S. Constitution, too. But more on that in a minute.

“Here’s the deal. Under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Conventions are felonies. In some cases, punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled the Geneva Conventions applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys were suddenly in big trouble. They had been working these prisoners over pretty good.”

Alright, now here is the deal. When the Supreme Court ruled the Geneva Conventions applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, it, in all fact, may well have saved President Bush’s skin.

What Jack didn’t disclose, but I will, is that the eventuality of both his insinuated scenario and the one I’m about to present cannot be defined by anyone except the U.S. Supreme Court. But you can make up your mind for yourself on how you would rule.

Jack’s thinking is, because the Geneva Convention now applies to U.S. practices of interrogating prisoners of war, Bush may be liable. And thus, may be prosecuted.

Well, Jack misled you just a little. The Supreme Court did not just “rule Geneva Conventions applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees”, but more to the point it ratified the sections of the Geneva Convention which were deemed to have pertained to terrorists to the U.S. Constitution. Essentially, the Supreme Court made Article 3 of the Geneva Convention U.S. law under the Constitution. The key: it tied torture to the Constitution.

Now, nearly everyone agrees that the President of the United States can’t be prosecuted for anything as it stands now. Not war crimes or a parking ticket. I say ‘nearly everyone’, because the Constitution really isn’t clear on this issue.

“…shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and midemeanors.”  

We all learned from Clintongate that we don’t really know what ‘high crimes and midemeanors’ really means. But that may be the way the framers meant it.

The Justice Department and many legal scholars have concluded that because the Constitution provides the remedy of impeachment, and because the President has a unique role at the head of the executive branch, impeachment is the only criminal proceeding that can be brought against the President while in office.

Basically, Bush can’t be hauled up in a courtroom like you and I. He can’t be sued either. He can be impeached. Under the rules set out in the Constitution, the House can pass an impeachment resolution, with accompanying articles of impeachment, by a majority vote. The Senate then holds a trial presided over by the chief justice of the United States. A two-thirds majority for conviction on any article of impeachment results in removal from office. With our checks and balances philosophy, the framers thought that to be enough to hold the President accountable while still protecting him from those seeking to remove him on baseless grounds.

What is Cafferty talking about, then? Well, fact is President Bush has some pretty darn good lawyers. Lawyers who know that Article 3 of the Geneva Convention is about as easy to apply to a war crimes of a sitting President as is the Constitution’s meaning on this topic. So the answer is: insurance. It would take an awful lot for somehow the Supreme Court to rule the Bush administration’s Iraq policy an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ not bound by the Constitution. In fact, it really wouldn’t happen. Either way, Bush’s lawyers solved the problem for us.

“But Scott, that’s not fair. This is just more of King George and the Bush Nazi Reich. How can this be possible in a Democracy?”

Well, I wouldn’t know, I’ve never lived in one. I do, however, live in a Democratic Republic. We don’t go home every night and all vote for how much funding should be granted to explore bean growth in the Nappa Valley like Congress does. Apparently, we’d rather watch television. So, once every four years, we grant executive authority to one American to serve as an entire branch of the U.S. government all by his or her-self. We gave such executive authority to Bush… twice, actually. And what he did to get to Cafferty wasn’t illegal any more than what Cafferty thought Bush was trying to cover up.