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Dowd: GOP Has Short Memory

'Quaint' calls for balance follow reign of 'Boy Emperor'

By Matt Cantor, Newser Staff

Posted May 3, 2009 10:57 AM CDT

(Newser) – As their party contracts with the defection of Arlen Specter, the GOP is complaining about a disappearing balance of power: “How quaint,” writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times—this from the party whose “arrogant” previous administration “did its best to undermine checks and balances.” Meanwhile, the current “professor in chief” is playing constitutional scholar, assuring us he won’t run things like “the Boy Emperor and his regents.”

One of those regents this week faced a challenge from a student at Stanford, where Condoleezza Rice is planning to return as a professor. The student asked if waterboarding was torture, and Rice’s response—“if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture”—was “almost quoting Nixon’s logic,” Dowd notes: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

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Former Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., walks in the halls of the Dirksen Senate office building Thursday, April 30, 2009. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Barack Obama smiles as he makes a surprise appearance during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Friday, May 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

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The specter of Specter helping the president have his way with Congress has actually made conservatives remember why they respected the Constitution in the first place. - Maureen Dowd

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Dowd: GOP Has Short Memory