Right on! the thing that bothers me most about all these passive, yet outraged, voices, is that we Americans are fond of conveniently forgetting that our institutions are reflections of us.

Drunk on petty freedoms, we've got ourselves convinced we have so much to lose. Those 2am hot dog runs to 7/11, the ability to browse hundreds of different cereal brands and the freedom to bitch and moan from the couch.

We have exactly the government and media we have created. It isn't happening to us, as if we are victims. It is happening because we don't actively participate in our democracy, we line up to feed the media beast with our dollars as our ballots. They give us what we are willing to accept. We continue to inform them by continuing to accept what is spoon fed, and even outrage is impotent if not accompanied by some kind of action. They feed on action-less outrage more than silence because it proves even when we are listening and angry, we will still be willing to eat shit.

The question again, goes back to Glenn's question: What are we the people willing to do about it?

Please put on your irony glasses and re-read my post. You said you would ignore and not address, but you did both, repeatedly.

My suggestion was ironic. Perhaps if you intended to both address and pay attention, you might get it right and ignore.

I personally don't give a hoot what he or she said. Your protest only draws attention to what you said you would ignore.

Funny.

I personally don't give a hoot what he or she said. Your protest only draws attention to what you said you would ignore.

Cool, and fine with me, as long as I've established that you can't believe on word LWM says about my views. And I have Anon/LWM.

Gordon set up a blog site a couple of weeks ago, for a long term wide ranging discussion on precisely the issue of what action to take. You could start by participating there.

http://achievingourcountry.blogspot.com/

"Rifkin . . . praised the position [as] consistent with the idea of a 'unitary executive.' In practical terms, he said, 'U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president's will.' "

In other words, everything is political. Invading sovereign countries, prosecuting federal crimes, deciding whose portraits are on postage stamps, it's all political. Government in the Bush-Cheney era has no real purpose other than to reward its friends, punish its opponents, and work toward the ultimate goal of a permanent Gop electoral majority.

The worst illustration of this modern Gop philosophy is of course New Orleans, a big blue city in a red state. Bush-Cheney will gladly spend a trillion dollars of borrowed money on a doomed nation-building exercise in the Middle East if it pleases the Gop base (and it does; see Dow 14,000); but they couldn't get a helicopter to the Superdome that awful week.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, CNN International keeps running the following scroll: "Bush to hand power to Cheney during colonoscopy." The jokes practically write themselves.

I was ecstatic when the Democrats won control of Congress last year. They couldn't override a veto, so there was little hope of getting meaningful legislation passed. But the Democrats were going to exercise oversight! At last there would be investigations; we would get the facts about the abuses of the past six years and the administration would be held to account.

The executive order Bush just issued, if left unchallenged, means that that hope was just a chimera, an illusion. Bush's executive order means that no subpoena's have to be obeyed, no one in the government will be forced to testify.

Congressional oversight of this administration? Finished, kaput, dead, unless Congress acts aggressively to assert it's rightful powers. Unfortunately, I doubt if this happens. The Democrats think that none of this will matter when they gain the White House in 2008.

I wish I agreed with them. I think that Bruce Fein is right, however, when he says these unchallenged assertions of Presidential perogative will just sit around like loaded guns, waiting to be used by the next President who decides to use them. And at that time, it will be much harder to turn the tide. Precedents will have been set, and the final steps toward a dictatorship will be child's play. Why can't people see this?

The Constitution has clearly defined remedies for our malady. It is called impeachment. We have never had a double impeachment but we have never had such total malfeasance, either.

We need to do this now and not later. I saw the interview with Moyers and I agree with the points raised. If we do not intervene now through our elected representatives, we pass to the next President and Vice President an office tainted with a power grab that amounts to a coup d'etat.

Karen

"WASHINGTON (CNN) - President Bush will undergo a routine colonoscopy Saturday, and will transfer power to Vice President Dick Cheney during the procedure, expected to take about two and a half hours, the chief White House spokesman said."

The reason for the transfer of power is that Dick Cheney's arm and the colonoscope can't fit in the same space at the same time.

Not only is Congress afraid to take on the Bush Regime, but the press is mostly silent on their wrongdoing and dastardly deeds.

Mona: If she [Sen. Clinton] isn't keen on pushing some of these hearings, much less impeachment, it is because she would be delighted to step into the Executive-cum-monarch role Bush has prepared for his successor...

At its base, a Presidential election is a Congressional act -- all the reporting is to Congress, all the counting and certifying is done by Congress.

And these guys are saying ‘Congress can’t make us do anything’.

A party that makes fundamental changes in the organic law of a country that would redound to its disadvantage when it inevitably returns to opposition is pretty clearly signaling that it never intends to return to opposition again.

You got a more parsimonious explanation for the phenomenon, I’d like to hear it. Until then, it’s just me and William of Ockham…