Believe me baddog I wasn't giving you a hard time :) I was heartily agreeing with your sentiments. And emotionally, I happen to think that the succor given to commies like Hiss and Wallace and White is the thing that sticks in my craw most about FDR. I just finished reading Witness by Whitaker Chambers. When he revealed confidentially that there were commies in government to a high FDR official (I think that official was Adolf Berle) nothing whatever came of it. Later when Chambers went public with his accusations (with Nixon leading the charge) Chambers became an enemy of the Truman administration who did all in their power to destroy him.
I was simply pointing out the SC packing scheme in 1939 which FDR tried to pull off because the SC had nixed some of his more egregious New Deal legislation and programs. Against all advice he decided he would expand the SC from the traditional 9 members to something like 16 or so. That way he could have enough of his own people on the court to that it would be a rubber stamp. I think it was the Senate that kept this from happening. So from a constitutional perspective that was huge and it shows that FDR was not all that removed philosophically from his buddy Stalin.
Also the fact that FDR got 4 terms which not even George Washington or anyone before or since took is, to me, outrageous and again goes to the heart of our system of government. An ammendment was passed (22nd??) afterwards to make sure that never happened again.
FDR was lower than whale s**t.
I think in the long run historians will look at the Clinton/Bush presidencies in much the same way they look at the Hoover/FDR presidencies. Hoover's passivity toward developing economic problems is blamed for the stock market crash and the great depression, and FDR, whether you agree with what he did or not, did actually take on the problems and try to do something about them.
Similarly Clinton chose to react to growing terrorism in a very passive and ultimately ineffectual manner, which lead to 9/11. Even those who disagree with Bush's handling of the problem have got to admit that he is at least actively trying to do something about it.
FDR was the worst ever. He started us on the downhill path to socialism and we have followed that path for over 70 years. His method was to make us all dependent on government and it has exceeded all of his expectations for certain. We are now, as a nation, slaves to government. Happy days are here again.