Our Continuing Constitutional Crisis

A great snippet from a new piece- The Founders Never Imagined a Bush Administration- by Joyce Appleby and Gary Hart:

George W. Bush and his most trusted advisers, Richard B. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, entered office determined to restore the authority of the presidency. Five years and many decisions later, they've pushed the expansion of presidential power so far that we now confront a constitutional crisis..

...President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the "war on terror" is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this "war" can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution...

And that is, again, the real issue here.

By the way, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a third round of hearings earlier today on the NSA program (testimony from judges with FISA or national security experience). I listened to the audio via C-SPAN's website; it was an interesting day of testimony. None of the judges who testified seemed to buy the administration's legal argument. A few also cautiously noted we know little about what the program does or how it works. They also stated explicitly that President is bound by the law, though one in particular (Allan Kornblum) did continue to bring up the issue of the President's 'inherent' constitutional authorities. This I suppose leaves the door open for the White House to try and argue that FISA itself was unconstitutional for attempting to limit the President's powers and, therefore, he wasn't bound by it and it should be reworked.

President Bush smash puny mortal laws of Congress!!

Sen. Specter, by the way, did an excellent job of handling today's hearings.

Money quote came from the last testimony, which was from David Kris (a Time Warner executive who used to work for Bush's Justice Department). He stated, when discussing the extreme views of executive power by this President, that "I see this as a Constitutional moment."

Sen. Durbin agreed with that and had some strong statements on the matter.

The Committee will meet again on Friday to discuss the censure resolution.

[PS- More revelations of the government spying on political activists... it's a complicated, but important, story. And, as always, it's important to remember that these aren't isolated incidents:
FBI Keeps Watch on Activists]