Last night I was able to watch this insightful documentary on Frontline on PBS Seattle. It sets out Vice President Cheney's bid to set in place a unitary concept of the presidency which would essentially give the president total unimpeded power to wage war by any means he sees fit under the Commander in Chief power in the Constitution. It is truly sickening to see this viewpoint advocated by administration officials in America.

A few posts back I argued that America was on the verge of becoming an Empire with the form of a Republic, transitioning much like Rome did. Kovie said at that time that nothing is inevitable about this and that to think otherwise is to engage in magical thinking. I agree with him, but I am really writing about the highly probable course of events, not the inevitable.

Glenn quotes a right wing writer in one post today disparagingly writing about exposing terrorists and others disliked by the right wing to the "whimsy of our judiciary." This sort of comment could easily have been made by a French politician during the Reign of Terror, a communist in Stalinist Russia or Mao's China, or a Nazi in Hitler's Germany. It is undeniably totalitarian in tone.

America is indeed at a crossroads. Vice President Cheney's view of presidential power is becoming entrenched aided by John Yoo and David Addington.And where is Congress? Well, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi show you where Congress, even a Democratic controlled Congress, is- they are now the enablers of this administration and of Cheney's law. The snowball of lobbyist influence and increasing lawlessness is gathering speed and momentum.

This is now the greatest constitutional crisis in the history of the American Republic. Indeed, it is the greatest constitutional crisis in the English speaking world since the English civil war in the seventeenth century established the supremacy of Parliament. But the political leaders of America are blithely unaware of the danger for the most part because of a lack of long term historical perspective and knowledge and because of the corrupting influences on political debate so admirably addressed in Al Gore's THE ASSAULT ON REASON. Congress, as a whole, is in a lock step march with this president towards a new American totalitarianisn. Not one traditional American freedom is safe from this onslaught.

While I did not make my view explicit in previous posts, I will now say that if America slips into totalitarianism I do not believe that freedom or democratic rights will long survive anywhere in the English speaking world, much less in the rest of the world without the historical and experiential legacy of the Anglo Saxon polity to sustain it.

Reading the details of this post reminds me of the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the United States under the provisions of NAFTA. NAFTA supposedly creates free and open markets in North America with a binding dispute resolution mechanism allowing arbitration of disputes.

On numerous occasions U.S. lumber and forestry interests have challenged imports of Canadian softwood lumber on the basis of unfair subsidies or dumping. These matters have gone to NAFTA arbitration panels for binding determination many times. The U.S. and its forestry industry interests lose every time. But there is never a final binding decision because the United States will not accept these rulings as final. The United States just imposes duties on Canadian softwood lumber imports and calls for negotiations, and for Canada to be reasonable. Of course being reasonable means caving in to U.S. forestry industry protectionist demands- to the detriment of U.S. consumers, I might add, but the forestry industry lobby is powerful enough not to worry about that.

The government of Canada negotiates and caves because there has been enormous integration of the Canadian and American economies since NAFTA was adopted, and the remedy of cancelling the treaty would be so economically catastrophic as to be unthinkable.

So dealing with the United States as a trading partner is like dealing with a powerful Mafia Don bent on extortion. You pay up, despite the unfairness in the hopes of saving your business.

The victory of the Telecoms in the Senate as described in this post is merely another flagrant example of the rule of vested interests in America and the utter collapse of the rule of law and any concept of honor in the governmental bodies of the United States.

If the Democrats ever find a way to link FISA violations, torture, detaining U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without habeas corpus, and purported presidential power to go to war without congressional authorisation to a sex scandal, impeachment of the President will be a slam dunk.

These former Army Captains are correct. Exactly correct. But the cost in blood and treasure required to stabilise Iraq is just not worth it- especially the lost lives and maimed bodies and minds of young American soldiers.