Learning from Lincoln

Powerline:

On Saturday in "Thinking about the Great Liberator" I wrote a little on Lincoln's exercise of the commander-in-chief's war powers during the Civil War. Wielding Lincoln as his club, left-winger Robert Kuttner coincidentally attacked President Bush in a column for the Boston Globe on Sunday: "What Bush could learn from Lincoln." At Discriminations, John Rosenberg commented on Kuttner's column: "What would Lincoln do? What Lincoln did."

My point was that Lincoln's construction of the war powers of the commander-in-chief belies much of the silly commmentary by liberals like Kuttner on Bush. I would enjoy reading Kuttner on Lincoln's defiance of Chief Justice Taney's order to free John Merryman on the ground that Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional. Lincoln respectfully disagreed and declined to honor Taney's order. I hope Kuttner will get around to writing such a column someday; he might learn something if he studies up enough to write it.

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