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To: garbanzo

"US today is nothing more than a competition for what kind of dictatorship we'll have - a left-wing one or a right-wing one."

===

There you go leaping to totally unwarranted conclusions.

The president HAS the authority to defend us against the enemy. It's WAR, in case you missed 9-11-01.

Read this article written by two attorneys who seerved in the Justice Dept.

Unwarranted complaints
David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey The New York Times

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/12/27/opinion/edcasey.php


The Constitution's framers did not vest absolute power in any branch of the federal government, including the courts, but they did create a strong executive and equipped the office with sufficient authority to act energetically to defend the national interest in wartime. That is what President Bush has done, and nothing more.


309 posted on 12/27/2005 3:30:10 PM PST by Pragmatic_View
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To: Pragmatic_View
The president HAS the authority to defend us against the enemy. It's WAR, in case you missed 9-11-01.

But he doesn't have unlimited or extra-Constitutional authority either. If the Framers wanted the President to have dictatorial powers during war they would have explictly put that in the Constitution. They didn't do that however. The Framers more than anyone understood the balance needed between the legitimate needs of government and individual liberty.

They wrote the Fifth Amendment requirement of indictment for example, even knowing that in some cases, conspirators could be tipped off by the simple fact that an investigation was occuring. They rightly believed this to be a better outcome that simply hauling people into court on flimsy evidence. Ditto for the Fourth Amendment - conspirators may be tipped off by a seach and destroy valuable evidence before the government gets to it - but the Framers thought this was a better outcome than giving the government the power to randomly enter your home.

321 posted on 12/27/2005 3:44:49 PM PST by garbanzo (Don't Let the Government Win)
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