Saving the Constitution

Patriots on both sides of the aisle need to put aside their policy differences and stand together in defense of constitutional government - while we still have a democracy worth saving.

So says Ira Eisenberg in Will the real conservatives please stand up? San Francisco Chronicle 03/10/06. His op-ed has some really good descriptions of the Constitutional issues at stake. For example:

Central to the neocon doctrine is the notion that the president possesses "inherent powers" - nowhere to be found in the Constitution but somehow divined from his role as commander in chief - to take the law into his own hands when confronted with a threat to "national security." It is the basis upon which the Bush administration has justified torturing "enemy combatants," holding them incommunicado indefinitely without judicial hearing, a hope of a trial or, in most cases, access to a lawyer. In addition, as we only recently learned, snooping on countless ordinary Americans without congressional permission or supervision by the courts.

I wouldn't exactly deal with the concept of "real conservatives" the way he does. But his descriptions of the issues that Bush and Cheney's power grab raises is really good.

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