"As Mr. Goldsmith recounts in his chilling new book, �The Terror Presidency,� he and his Justice Department colleagues (in consultation with lawyers from the State Department, the Defense Department, the C.I.A. and the National Security Council) reached a consensus in 2003 that the Fourth Geneva Convention (which governs the duties of an occupying power and the treatment of civilians) affords protection to all Iraqis, including those who are terrorists. When he delivered this decision to the White House, he recalls, Mr. Addington exploded: � �The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,� he barked. �You cannot question his decision.�

The portrait of the Bush administration that Mr. Goldsmith � who resigned from the Office of Legal Counsel in June 2004, only nine months after assuming the post � draws in this book is a devastating one. It is a portrait of a highly insular White House obsessively focused on expanding presidential power and loathe to consult with Congress, a White House that frequently made up its mind about a course of action before consulting with experts, a White House that sidelined Congress in its policymaking and willfully pursued a �go-it-alone approach� based on �minimal deliberation, unilateral action, and legalistic defense.�

Similar portraits, of course, have been drawn by reporters and other former administration insiders, but Mr. Goldsmith�s account stands out by virtue that he was privy to internal White House debates about explosive matters like secret surveillance, coercive interrogation and the detention and trial of enemy combatants. It is also distinguished by Mr. Goldsmith�s writing from the point of view of a conservative who shared many of the Bush White House�s objectives (and who was an ideological ally of John Yoo, one of the main architects of the administration�s legal responses to a post-9/11 world and the author of some of the very opinions Mr. Goldsmith would later call into question). But he found himself alarmed by the Bush White House�s obsession with expanding presidential power, its arrogant unilateralism and its willingness to use what he regarded as careless and overly expansive legal arguments in an effort to buttress its policies."

-- The New York Times

BuzzFlash has always been hesitant to offer books written by conservatives who threw their hats in with the Bush Administration. However, we occasionally make an exception and "The Terror Presidency" is one of them.

When a hardline Federalist type unitary authority GOP lawyer thinks that the Busheviks have gone too far and are acting above the law, well we ought to take notice.

Ergo, we recommend "The Terror Presidency," because it provides concrete evidence and conversations about just how far the White House has gone in shredding our Constitution.

The title alone gives away that Jack Goldsmith was appalled by the authoritarian
grab for power, primarily by the staff of Dick Cheney. And, remember, Goldsmith was what we would call a hardliner to begin with. So, "The Terror Presidency" reveals just how radically UnConstitutional the Bush Administration has been.