Op Ed: OUR Constitution:
Defend it TODAY
OR Lose It Tomorrow

Bush sabotage sets precedent For imperial Presidency to replace the rule of law.

Image courtesy: suddenlyeverythingsucks.com

(EUGENE, Ore.) - OUR Constitution and its accompanying Bill of Rights is the organizing foundation-structure on which all else has been built in this nation ever since 1776. Countless pages of our history proclaim, without question, that immutable truth for any freedom and for ALL rights: “USE It or LOSE IT!”

Did you know that “precedent set by Presidential action and negligence of Congress” can change the Constitutional freedoms you now enjoy?

Non-action amounting to negligence --even indicating acquiescence for substitution OR seeming-new/solution-- has in the past created subtle changes-over-time.

Precisely that kind of questionable legislation is now a top issue in D.C.: FISA, it is called, for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, ostensibly to continue and “perfect” Constitutionally-demanded caution and court control for wire-tapping communications of American citizens, purportedly and perhaps relating to intelligence.

Unfortunately, FISA as House-passed last week, contains far from perfect means to guarantee full-level Constitutional freedom to those Americans inadvertently or intentionally impacted.

Current law already allows warrantless-listening to permit rapid access but demands court-issued warrant within a defined short period.

By complicit design on both sides of the aisle, this second-shot, more-slippery, new “law” --adjusting reality already encouraged and allowed by Presidential false prerogative-- grants retroactive escape to conspirators; including those whose obvious public record now shows completely clear violation of already-established American law; under the protective guise of “the imperial presidency”.

The theory is that the President -- empowered by self-declared “state of emergency”, itself in question now because of how it was obtained-- can demand of Congress action to excuse, forgive, protect from consequences --including punishments already established-- any action he so chooses to designate; by anyone, at any time, during such a self-declared “emergency”.

In effect it magnifies and multiplies his Presidential powers from Commander in Chief --oF the ARMED FORCES solely for any REAL emergency-- to Commander in Chief of the WHOLE NATION; at any time he chooses to initiate “preemptive war”.

That’s on his own terms, against any nation, without full-and-probing prior Congressional approval and formal Declaration of War, Constitutionally reserved solely for Congress.

Remember, we “went to war” in Iraq via “perverted intel now generally recognized as ‘sold to a quiescent nation’ via an incredibly unprecedented commercial-market/based sales campaign.”

Here you have the inevitable consequence of any neglect from Congress in defending and preserving those powers potently first portrayed for them by our Founders in our Constitution.

Our first President Washington warned specifically against any such seducing situation, in his famous last address to the foundling nation.

Presciently, so did General, then President-later, Ike Eisenhower, specifically warning against the “undue influence and drive for power at any cost” of the military-industrial complex.

Eisenhower clearly declared a continuing danger arisen from necessities-demanded of modern nations caught in the complexities of world-empire competition and confrontation.

Tested in the past by preceding Presidential actions, the basic concept has been denied and defeated on several occasions, tellingly by Supreme Court decision reflecting precisely that “checks-and-balances” principle embedded presciently by those same Founders. within and throughout our Constitution.

Long ago Americans learned that freedom itself is what guarantees the very “right-to-have ‘rights’” --as reflected clearly and convincingly in The Bill of Rights.

Paramount and precisely the heart-and-very/soul of all freedoms --since it is what creates them and then protects them from any potential destruction-- is the sensitive and very sensible single principle:ALL are equal under the law.

That requires source and sensibilities to “make the law” which can and must carry out, strengthen and support the principle; from whence cometh our shaping American concept that “governance requires consent of the governed”; in turn demanding participation “of the people, for the people, BY the people.”

(It is no coincidence that the most-mirroring of Constitutional definition, support and protection for all our rights is now famously seen by millions in that Civil War phrase, uttered in desperation but with deadly determination by great President Lincoln.)

Common-sense courageous concern then creates our Congress and “representative government”; allowing US to select-and-ELECT those we trust first, last-and-always to “protect and preserve the Constitution.

That simple, single concept has served us well over all those years since 1776 and our Revolution; “reversing the rule of royalties across the world”; and based first and foremost on that single principle of “equality for all under law.”

That clearly-then and just as clearly-NOW, includes the chief of the Executive Branch, as initially determined and developed by the Founders; then supported with the unique concept of “three branches, all in cooperation”; but “each one serving as ‘checks and balances’ on each other” --when competition for power and decision inevitably arises.

That “defiance-of-imperialism” is the WHY of our Revolution, exemplified by mirroring action in other nations ever since.

Nowhere in this system --defined as “democracy” by common understanding everywhere-- is there any place, nor even any mention, of a “single unitary executive” with the supreme powers accorded to Himself by George W. Bush and his cohorts.

Nowhere in this system --now under constant, repetitive, remorseless and lawless attack from the Bush cabal-- is there any possible empowerment for his too-simple “signing letter”: seducing and then sabotaging the concerted cooperative will-of-Congress, in the bill he is about to sign.

Each “letter” denies, then defies, any provision or the whole law sent to him by Congress, reflecting representative choice-and-will, overwhelmed and frustrated by simple imperious “decision” -- HIS alone for responsibility and accountability under our famed Constitutional democracy.

Nowhere in this system --despite all claims-to-the contrary by his surrounding co-perpetrators-- is there any possible pretense providing and protecting his simple defiance and denial of his premier, overshadowing Constitutional duty: To act only “within existing law”, nor ever to seek or allow “retroactive immunity”; for himself or co-perpetrators -- no matter whether persons or incorporated private-interests.

Never before in the history of our nation --and our Constitution-- has there been perpetrated the insidious, then direct, always-determined (and now brutal) attack on the original principles and concepts of our Constitution like the Bush-assault.

One must conclude, on probing examination of the public record, that there has now occurred a unique attack; led by a conscienceless cabal of co-conspirators, out to destroy our Constitution for their own malign purposes.

They would --if they could-- take us back to times before our Revolution, reducing our freedoms once again to the whim and wild caprice of “royalty”: “The Imperial Presidency”

Assumed additional-empowerment in times of “national emergency” has forever been the cover of those seeking to renew, expand and install the “unitary executive”; replacing that essential “three-Branch and effective checks/balances” concept, conceived and conscientiously then achieved as our American governance system, by our Founders.

If we as Americans truly preferred to live our lives under imperialism -- “one/person/rule by whim and presumed wisdom”-- we need never have fought our American Revolution; nor succeeding struggles, including the Civil War; surely the world example of “equality under law”.

But we DID “fight the Revolution”, and we continue to fight it today, when we directly confront the same forces --and the same personality/twists-- we first encountered in the universal, unavoidable, inevitable ongoing struggle for freedom and liberty.

When will we ever learn?
Why not return, once again, as for our entire national history, to those same prescient principles bequeathed to us by our Founders?

Surely that includes the impeachment process, forcefully built-in for us by those same then-leaders, who knew freedom and liberty when encountered’ and how to protect it, at all costs.

Among key books consulted were:

1. The Imperial Presidency:; Arthur M. Schlesinger; (1973 !); ISBN 0-395-177713-8

2. Why Americans Hate Politics; E.J. Dionne,Jr.; (1991 !); ISBN: 0-671077877-3.

3. WHAT HAPPENED: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception; Scott McClellan; (2008 !); ISBN: 978-1-58648-556-6

4. THE CREATION OF THE MEDIA: Political Origins of Modern Communications; Paul Starr; 2004; ISBN: 0-465-08193-2

5. Democracy in America; Alexis de Tocqueville; (George Lawrence translator);ISBN 0-06-091522-6

6. Several varying editions summarizing The Fedeeralist Papers, the great dialog-conversation among the principal Founders.