The unchecked power of this presidency "has weakened the constitutional order on which the American way of life depends."
Those words aren't from the American Civil Liberties Union. They're from the free-market, less-government Cato Institute, generally a durable friend of Republicans.
A Cato report analyzes and decries a "ceaseless push for power (by the Bush White House), unchecked by either the courts or Congress."
Where to begin? One place is a Boston Globe report that more than 750 times President Bush has attached statements to laws he signed claiming a president's authority to disobey them.
Other presidents have written such "signing statements" challenging laws passed by Congress. Bill Clinton wrote 140 over eight years. But Bush has lapped the field many times.
New laws aside, we have bedrock legal principles this White House has simply decided to ignore, such as habeas corpus.
Such rights have been suspended in war, as Lincoln did during the Civil War. But today's "war on terror" has been used, says the Cato report, to effectively pronounce "the entire world, including every inch of U.S. territory, a battlefield."
"If the president can surveil international calls without a warrant," said the Cato report, "can he (or his successor) issue a secret executive order to intercept purely domestic communications as well?" Oh, yes.
This is all about trust, because without a check on one man's power, like warrants, trust is all we have.
Relative to the White House's broad use of the term "enemy combatant" to hold people without trial, "the liberty of every American rests on nothing more than the grace of the White House," warns the report.
As we come into another election cycle the question must be asked: Is this a nation governed by men empowered by a political hold on the three branches of government? Or is this a nation of laws?
That last paragraph is the key question for Americans. It could just be that conservative think-tanks are finely waking up and questioning just where our federal government is heading and realizing the danger to our Democratic Republic.
Another reference: "Cato Handbook for Congress: 21 Terrorism"
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