The Threat of an Unchecked Presidency

Co-blogger Marketingace in PA suggests I post this piece from the Progress Report:

James Madison warned Thomas Jefferson, "Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." The threat to the United States today is real. Yet, in recognition of this threat, Congress painstakingly produced a constitutionally-sound system that allows our government to monitor the activities of those who wish to do us harm, whether they be foreign agents or American citizens. A much different danger has been exposed by President Bush's warrantless spying program: an active hostility by one branch of government to the checks and balances designed to protect our nation's democracy. This hostility "is as pernicious and as damaging as any abuse or panic or misstep of the past," Washington Post defense analyst William Arkin writes. Americans have been asked to "pledge allegiance to a certain post-9/11 Order, abandon the rule of law, compromise our values, turn against our neighbors, enlist in a clash of civilizations, all in the name of defeating the terrorists. We are being asked to destroy our country in order to save it."