While no one would be happier to be wrong than I would be, I think a lot of commenters here are guilty of some seriously wishful thinking.

Given the incredible -- and at this point unspinnable -- policy disasters of Bushco, there was bound to be some backlash, but, as Hacker and Pierson call it, our system is still rigged to provide "backlash insurance" for politicians that the Republicans in Congress are still taking advantage of. I see no sign of any media whore contrition. Quite the opposite, they are going after Dems like we were right back in the Clinton years. They are under greater attack now because of blogs, but they still have orders of magnitude more readership and viewership than blogs and all I hear is more and more media whore arrogance, the repugnant David Broder being the only the most recent case in point.

The Democrats are still an incredibly weak "opposition" party and before we get all triumphal about the 2006 midterms as a harbinger of a coming realignment, remember the Republicans were actually starting to make a comeback before Mark Foley came along and turned it around. We aren't always going to have a well-timed Mark Foley incident.

The corporations have no problem with Bushco policies, they have profited quite nicely. The right-wing religious nuts are practically irredeemable. They still love Bush. Given the extremism of the Republican junta, I still fear that we are only one terrorist incident away from an even more serious challenge to our democratic system than the one we already face.

Maybe, just maybe, the ice has begun to thaw a little, but it is going to take years more of hard work before we can even begin to say we have safely navigated our way through the shoals of the Bush Psychosis which overtook this country. One key will be publicly and explicitly holding the Republicans accountable for the political (and literal) atrocities they have committed. Just as Reagan relentlessly intoned the anathema, "Jimmy Carter Jimmy Carter" we have to make sure that all of the major disasters Bush and the Republicans have left for our country when they are finally turned out of power -- IF they are turned out of power -- are pinned not only on Bush but also on the Republican party as a whole, which so enthusiastically endorsed his crimes every step of the way.

There has not been an elected Republican president since Eisenhower who did not run seriously afoul of the Constitution and the law. I want to see the Republican party beaten into political submission until they can no longer function as a viable party and fade away into history, replaced by some more respectable successor, perhaps some new libertarian party since they are only half as crazy as the Republicans.

First of all it is based on the notion of natural rights, which, as Bentham said, is nonsense on stilts.

Second, libertarians elevate one value, negative liberty, over all others like positive liberty, equality, security, solidarity, compassion etc. These kind of single value theories are easy to sell rhetorically but don't make much sense.

Third, in practice libertarianism is usually disingenuously held by those who really only seek their own narrowly conceived financial interest and have no concern for other people. That's why we see contemporary Republican extremists spouting libertarian rhetoric while violating libertarian "principles" at the drop of a hat.

They can deny it all they want but here are a few things that should not go unnoticed:

1) Mansfield is a Straussian.

2) Its not just Mansfield. Law Professor Richard Posner's "pragmatic" legal theory also suggests that that judges need not follow the law. He explicitly argued this way in support of the majority in Bush v. Gore. I don't know if Posner is a Straussian but he teaches at the epicenter of Straussianism, the University of Chicago.

3) All that rhetoric about "regime change"? The word "regime" comes straight out of Strauss.

(sorry if these observations have already been made - heavn't read the previous comments yet)

Posner once dismissed the notion of "the rule of law" by noting that it is "an accidental and readily dispensable element of our legal ideology."

I think that ought to be grounds to throw him off the US Court of Appeals, which Reagan appointed him to.

Crotus said, "it is hard to imagine that if they [The Founders]had intended for the President to be able to ignore the Constitution and federal law in times of national emergency -- if, in other words, they had intended to revive the Roman Republic's office of Dictator -- they would not have explicitly said so."

Ah but Crotus, we're dealing with Straussians here. They believe in "esoteric writing". Great philosophers don't come out and say what they mean. Instead they hide it in the text where only those with the secret knowledge can find it. Who has the secret knowledge? Why the Straussians of course!

They simultaneously build up the great classical philosophers to near godlike heights but then insist that only they can interpret them correctly. So if you find a contradiction in Plato, for example, think again! Plato is too godlike to make a mistake. Instead that's a clue that you should be looking for the hidden meaning.

I shit you not. They really think like this. Read Strauss' interpretation of Plato and the 3 waves. I defy anyone who hasn't read Strauss on The Republic to read Plato and come up independently with the same interpretation he does.

Its no wonder they can read the Constitution and find anything they want in there.