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EXPLOSION
Whole books will be written - and have been - about recent governmental abuses of power, abuses that have tarnished our nation's reputation and put wind in the sails of our country's enemies. Since September 11, 2001, a litany of bad decisions and over-reaching has built to a crescendo, leading more and more Americans of all stripes to realize that the dangerous precedents being set today could have repercussions far into the future.
Civil liberties have been a cornerstone of American democracy since the signing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Yet compromises to these liberties are now being justified as "necessary" measures to protect "our way of life." But what is our way of life without these freedoms? As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Franklin's words were prescient, given the long list of practices that have suddenly emerged in (or re-entered) our national vocabulary, if not our nightmares: unchecked power, rendition, indefinite imprisonment, and torture.
"Unitary" Power
Every school child learns about the "checks and balances" that were part of the genius of the Constitution, which distributes the federal government's power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to protect the liberty of the people.
Yet President George W. Bush has issued more presidential signing statements than all prior presidents combined. Where past presidents have used these to note praise or disappointment with a bill that Congress has passed and they have signed, Bush has used his signing statements as an assertion of his "right" to ignore bills after signing them into law, claiming that they impinge on his "unitary" power as president. The Constitution, however, permits the president only two options, to sign a bill into law or veto it. There is no line-item veto in the Constitution - let alone an implied power.
Consider the dangers posed by a president who considers himself unbound by the rule of law. In the parlance of the Founding Fathers, such an assertion is nothing short of monarchical...