Memo to Pelosi: Fix Consitutional Crisis BEFORE '08

After Downing Street reminds us there are still a lot of issues unresolved.

The Perfect Storm of Citizen Revulsion
...even with the House and Senate in Democratic hands, we need to remember that the immense power of the presidency is still in the hands of Bushistas like Richard Cheney and Karl Rove and George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley and Alberto Gonzales.

Dude, I Tapped Your Mother

They have refashioned the Constitution to make Bush immune from obeying laws he doesn't like; they have invented theories that permit him to round up anyone, American citizen or not, and throw them into a military clink without access to lawyers; they have so bent the definition of "torture" as to make it unrecognizable (it now means that the government can do anything to you short of killing you or doing great injury to your internal organs); the president claims to be able to "pre-emptively" attack any foreign country and power regardless of whether they are an imminent threat to the U.S.; the security forces can now enter your home, search your house, peek into your private email and computer files, without you ever being informed and without you even knowing; the government can now violate the privacy of attorney/client privilege by listening in on all such conversations; the government can declare martial law whenever it so chooses; and on and on.

Let us not forget that the Executive branch still possesses these immense police-state powers, they've used them before against American citizens, and they have made it plain that they are quite prepared to keep using them. Among the issues that must be dealt with by the new Democratic-contolled Congress is to find a way to bring us back to judicial sanity and respect for the rights guaranteed to American citizens under our Constitution.

ADS points out the President still has these powers as the problem. I wish to point out that is not the worst possible case; the worst case would be something I consider fairly likely unless We Do Something Now: Democrats and Republicans together decide that they really kinda like the idea of the Presidency retaining those powers.

There's only one thing that frightens me more than George Bush holding the powers of the Unitary Executive, and that would be a more intelligent and better advised person in the oval office, of either party.

The idea of Al Gore, Hillary Clinton - or frankly, ANYONE, even me, having such power is terrifying. In a sense, the raw stupidity of George Bush and the ideological splits within his administration have been a blessing in disguise. Hes managed to sabotage and expose a 30 year plan to turn the United States into an Empire, with the vast majority of it's citizens made irrelevant to the political process.

An ironic round of applause is due for George and Karl.

But we have an edifice of power to dismantle, lest anyone better qualified to rule scale the heights. That would be pretty much anyone, of any party.

We all need to demand the process go forward. Investigation will officially reveal what is generally already known - and if that investigation does NOT verify and expand upon what is already public knowledge, we will know that the corruption spreads more widely than previously thought.

Remaining members of Congress - and particularly those members who seek re-election in 2008 - had better re-acquaint themselves with their oaths of office and their primary duties.