The Bush Constitutional Record

The conservative/libertarian Cato Institute has published a report on the constitutional record of the Bush Administration. The report is available on-line. It's conclusions follow:

.... far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes

• a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech--and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;

• a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;

• a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as "enemy combatants," strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror-- in other words, perhaps forever; and

• a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.

[A hat tip to Talk Left.]