Thursday, July 26, 2007

King George W, Imperial President

Robert Scheer has an interesting article about our current president up at Alternet:

"George W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the "foreign entanglements" that George Washington feared would destroy the experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

With the "war on terror," Bush has asserted the right of the president to wage war anywhere and for any length of time, at his whim, because the "terrorists" will always provide a convenient shadowy target. Just the "continual warfare" that Madison warned of in justifying the primary role of Congress in initiating and continuing to finance a war -- the very issue now at stake in Bush's battle with Congress."

It's been a while since I went off on Bush, mostly because I figure that anyone left needing convincing is a lost cause. 20-30% of folks drank the Kool-Aid, and they would certainly be following Hitler if he were in George W's spot. Congress would do well to reconsider articles of impeachment....I know that would not be best for the Democratic Party, but it would be best for our country. We don't need no stinkin' king!