It is a measure of the bleakness of these times when the good news is that a Democrat has the courage to stand up and tell the truth (and the media will report it, maybe).
John Nichols, blogging at the Nation, seems to have had a peek at the speech Al Gore will deliver tomorrow at a bipartisan event. From Nichols' account, it is clear that Gore will go for the Bush jugular by invoking the specter of Nixon and issuing "a 'call to arms' in defense of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law" at a time when our Imperial President presumes that he is the law.
The former Vice President will be introduced by another defender of the Constitution, the infamously conservative Bob Barr.
Can we expect to read about this on the front pages of our free press? Will CNN take a break from the crisis of Oprah's book club long enough to pay attention to the trainwreck of the U.S. Constitutional Crisis?
If the glorified Founding Fathers were alive today, I swear they'd either be on a fast plane to Canada or arming the citizens for a revolution.
The Nation blog: (snippets)
In a major address slated for delivery Monday in Washington, the former Vice President is expected to argue that the Bush administration has created a "Constitutional crisis" by acting without the authorization of the Congress and the courts to spy on Americans and otherwise abuse basic liberties.
Aides who are familiar with the preparations for the address say that Gore will frame his remarks in Constitutional language. The Democrat who beat Bush by more than 500,000 votes in the 2000 presidential election has agreed to deliver his remarks in a symbolically powerful location: the historic Constitution Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. But this will not be the sort of cautious, bureacratic speech for which Gore was frequently criticized during his years in the Senate and the White House.
Indeed, his aides and allies are framing it as a "call to arms" in defense of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law in a time of executive excess.
Coming only a few weeks after U.S. Representative John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, introduced resolutions to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and to explore the issue of impeachment, Gore in expected to "make the case that the country -- including the legislative and judicial branches and all Americans -- must act now to defend the systems put into place by the country's founders to curb executive power or risk permanent and irreversible damage to the Constitution."
Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, the Georgia Republican who served as one of the most conservative members of the House, plans to introduce Gore. Barr, an outspoken critic of the abuses of civil liberties contained in the USA Patriot Act critic who has devoted his post-Congressional years to defending the Bill of Rights, refers to the president's secret authorization of domestic wiretapping as "an egregious violation of the electronic surveillance laws."
Gore Bush Bob Barr Al Gore Impeach Bush Gore Speech King George Constitutional Crisis
