What's the price of gas these days?

The reason I ask is closely related to this administrations masterful Overton Window manipulations.

The oil barrons jacked up the price of gas last year to over $3/gallon, and everybody freaked out, it was all over the news, sirens blazing, alarms firing.

Guess what? The price of gas is now over $3/gallon and there isn't a peep to be heard. Move the price to $3.75/G, then back it down to $3.25/G, and nobody will be bothered anymore by the $3.25/G

Classic.

So, this administration is introducing radical concepts regarding the rule of law, and there is protest. Then they relax just a bit, and the protest stops. Mission accomplished. Window moved to the right, to more power for the executive branch, to more immunity from prosecution. The radical ideas are now mearly questionable, the questionable are mainstream and soon to be de facto policy.

If we just keep being reasonable, we will never stop moving backwards, inch by inch.

> has suggetsed that within the year, the US will be a police state

What exactly constitutes a police state? Is it one in which the government is entirely within its legal rights to grab any number of citizens off the street and lock them away forever without ever answering to anyone? Is it one in which a single man is allowed to issue any order he wishes on any topic and nobody else is allowed to contest it? Is it one in which the military commander can simply declare war on anyone he wants for any reason and the populace has no choice but to comply?

Why do these metrics sound so very familiar? Could it be because Bush & Cheney have already claimed exactly those powers?

Congress And What Army?

I hope, if such a confrontation reaches its ultimate conclusion, that the soldiers who would be required to arrest the President remember that their oath is to support and defend the Constitution, not the office of President or its current inhabitant.

I hope.

except from a slightly different angle, i.e., will we one day be cheering a military coup to restore our democracy?

No reasonable person can dispute that in the absence of genuine compulsion (and perhaps even then), the administration will continue to treat "the law" as something optional, and their power as absolute.

I'd prefer explicit use of the i-word here, but fair enough.

The democratic calculus regarding the Constitutional Crisis currently sitting in their laps is a complete mystery to me. While many Americans feel outrage about the ever-more-flagrant behavior of the administration, we unfortunately cannot feel outrage for the congress. They are the ones who have sustained the institutional damage and insult. They are the ones who must be willing to see that this is not about George Bush and Dick Cheney as individuals. It is not about those two men, but about what the nature--the very definition--of the Executive and Congress will be going forward.

Waiting for the next election will solve nothing, regardless of the "victor". That election will by itself do nothing to arrest the cancerous growth of the Presidential power and the equally cancerous withering of Congress as co-equal constitutional entities.

The only cure I can envision is impeachment and removal. The issue must be addressed while this president is still in office, so that the claims being made can be clearly refuted by Congress, and, importantly, so Congress can be seen to have maintained its constitutional powers.

Some will argue that conviction in this senate is impossible, and therefore the attempt should simply be left untried. I couldn't disagree more. The congress simply must at least make the attempt to maintain its constitutional position.

just like Chavez

sounds like these guys have been paying attention to Venezuela and decide "why not us too?"

-- Glenn A.

It would be all too easy to reach that conclusion up here. Certainly any Democrat here in the U.S. will condemn Chavez just as quickly as any Republican. Even Avedon Carol, who comments here frequently, did so a little over a month ago when she wrote this:

OK, that's it: Hugo Chavez is definitely off my Christmas list.

http://sideshow.me.uk/smay07.htm#05291146

However, a few posts later she had a more open mind about the matter:

Maybe I was a bit hasty about Chavez - I think directing a coup to overthrow the government from your broadcast station probably constitutes a sufficient act of treason to justify losing your broadcast license.

http://sideshow.me.uk/smay07.htm#05291438

Then: Boing Boing readers correct the record on the Venezuelan media "crackdown".

http://sideshow.me.uk/smay07.htm#05292355

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/28/venezuelan_media_cra.html

It could just be that the people down there complaining about Chavez are like our GOP up here and he has the cajones to do what's necessary to keep them from doing down there what ours have done up here. I don't know for sure but I am willing to keep an open mind about it. I'm certainly not inclined to trust this administration or our useless media. This is not to suggest that Hugo may not be playing it fast and loose and tough in some ways, but if I'm right about what he's up against, what are we all arguing for here? Then again, it could all be "enemy propaganda" I'm buying into.

Glenn G responding to Gator90... It is hard to reach any other conclusion.

I think the same exact thinking applies to Iraq. Most Democrats in Congress don't REALLY want to force the end of the war. They want to appear to oppose the war but have it linger on, so that when 2008 rolls around, the public is just as angry as the Republicans as they were in 2006 and punishes them by electing the "anti-war" Democrats.

It's difficult to watch Glenn becoming so cynical. But I suppose he recognizes that although the Democrats are not much better than the GOP, they are our bastards, and we have to go to war with the bastards we have - until we can elect some better bastards. Keep banging the drum, Glenn.