Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World

Ivan Eland from the Independent Institute has written a short essay discussing the excesses of claimed power by the Executive Branch during the Bush Administration.

You can read it here:
"Executive or Imperial Branch?", Oakland Tribune column by Ivan Eland, 4/13/08
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2170

This is an area in which I frequently differ with some of my more conservative readers. It's also an area that some other readers (notably Bob P.) think I haven't written enough about, especially in comparison to how strongly I scold McCain about his lack of respect for the Constitution.

For the record, I agree with Eland's position and believe Bush has exceeded his authority and has overstepped what is good for the nation in the long run by essentially claiming the right to do anything that he claims to be in pursuing the War on Terror.

Grabbing power during war is one of the favorite reasons of leaders through history to go to war. I don't believe that Bush had anything like that in mind, even as a minuscule factor, in the decisions to go into Iraq and Afghanistan. And, unlike Eland, I am not convinced that the idea of taking out Saddam Hussein was a bad idea even with the hindsight of the poor prosecution of the war after its first few days. My issue is therefore not that we're at war...especially because it's clear to me that war was declared on us by Al Qaeda. It's that we should not allow the Constitution to be consistently weakened in the name of the war. A vigorous prosecution of the war, even with a Democratic congress, should not require wrecking our civil liberties, or our system of checks and balances without which our government would be even more of a mess than it is.