Milbank cited the 14-year-old law that requires all sales to state-owned companies, such as the one to Dubai Ports World, that may affect U.S. national security to undergo a 45-day review process. The review, of course, was never done.
Milbank picks up the testimony from there:
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who wrote the 1992 law, demanded to know “why that investigation was not carried out.”
[Sen. John] Warner [R-Va.] asked Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt to “clarify.”
“Senator,” Kimmitt told Byrd, “we have a difference of opinion on the interpretation of your amendment.” The administration, he said, views it “as being discretionary.”
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), reading the statute to Kimmitt, said the law "requires—requires—an investigation.”
“We do not see it as mandatory,” Kimmitt repeated.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) grew irritated. “If you want the law changed,” he told Kimmitt, “come to Congress and change it. But don’t ignore it.”
“We didn’t ignore the law,” Kimmitt again maintained. “We might interpret it differently.”
How, one wonders, does the executive branch of a constitutional democracy get away with telling lawmakers that it doesn’t feel like being bound by duly enacted and fairly easy to understand laws? It is an act of breathtaking arrogance and gall from an administration that has frankly displayed no shortage of either commodity since George W. Bush first came into office in 2001 claiming that “we will show purpose without arrogance.”
People who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and its laws, now think they have the right to decide which laws they have to obey or interpret laws in accordance with their own wishes?!!! That "the war on terror" puts them above the law.
This is much more than just arrogance. This is breaking the oath of office, and treasonable. This is the attitude of dictators and totalitarian governments.
People of America, take heed. Your Constitutional freedoms are in grave danger.
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