The Weekly Standard : It's Giuliani Time

Rudi's campaign continues to garner the neo-cons - harvesting their endorsements as well as their cash.  Today's piece in the Weakly Standard is not technically an endorsement - but its fawning tone manages to be both nauseating and frightening.  Filled with praise, yet bereft of fact or truth, it's as close to an endorsement as you can get.

The frightening aspect of a President Rudi was noted by noted by the decidedly un-liberal Andrew Sullivan and the Cato Institute.

Sullivan, succinctly:

It seems to me that a vote for Giuliani is a vote for a police state that uses torture.

The brief by the head of the Cato Institute is also short:

Throughout his career, Giuliani has displayed an authoritarian streak that would be all the more problematic in a man who would assume executive powers vastly expanded by President Bush....
Giuliani's view of power would be dangerous at any time, but especially after two terms of relentless Bush efforts to weaken the constitutional checks and balances that safeguard our liberty.
In 1964, Barry Goldwater declared it "the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power." George W. Bush has forgotten that; Rudi Giuliani rejects it.

The Standard's article considers it unfair to call Rudi an "authoritarian:"

Some view his doggedness, his maximalist position on every issue and the tactics he adopts, as a form of "authoritarianism," but that term is intended to insult rather than describe. It would be more accurate to call him a legalistic disciplinarian. And, indeed, one of the striking aspects of Giuliani's career is that, while he has tacked right in his quest for the 2008 nomination, his worldview seems to have remained consistent at least since his prosecutorial days...

Giuliani sees the law as the tool by which evil is disciplined and the city made safe for law-abiding citizens. And the law means what it says. When Giuliani says he is a strict constructionist, he is saying he has a restrictive view of the rights enumerated in the Constitution and a technical, legalistic approach to statutory interpretation.

It seems like a pretty silly subterfuge - going for "legalistic disciplinarian" instead of "authoritarian," but more importantly - Rudi views the law as something to be gamed, a tool to be used for his career advancement. Rudi believes he can write his own law.

His absolute lack of devotion to the laws of his church is obvious. Since he is in an adulterous relationship, no Catholic church in the country would be correct if it allowed him to partake of the sacrament of communion.  Yet he frequently calls himself a religious man, and cites his Catholicism.  Instead of Catholic law, he follows Rudi's law.

As mayor of New York, he constantly failed to follow His justification that he had to bend the law to govern the city is not true. When he ordered advertisements which made fun of his habit of taking credit for anything going right in the city be removed from city buses, he was acting not for the greater good, but for Rudi. The courts of course ruled his actions illegal, and the city had to pay the company that had sued. His actions against the museum displaying a picture of the Virgin Mary was great for his publicity (as well as great promotion for the artist's work) but was illegal.

When the police accidentally killed a security officer, Patrick Dorismund, Rudy illegally released his juvenile record in an attempt to paint his as an evil doer. The city paid over 2 million to his family. This legal disciplinarian's legacy was scores of lawsuits against the city, and the courts ruled overwhelmingly against the actions he took.

A Judge had to issue an injunction to stop his mistress from sleeping with him in the house in which he lived with his wife and children.  Legalistic Discipline?

In 1997, Abner Louima, against whom no charges were ever filed,was arrested and then sodomized by cops with the handle of a toilet plunger.  When New Yorkers heard that the police responded to his screams for justice by telling him to shut up and forget it because "It's Giuliani Time,"  no one doubted the truth of the story. Rudi claimed to be shocked at what had happened, but no one else was.

(memeorandum)