Bush takes one more step toward outright fascism.

Clinton squashed a lot of stuff too. Both parties are in on it.

Crash, never said it was all fine, but as long as you are misled into thinking the democrats are any different in this regard, we are not making progress.Clinton squashed a lot of stuff, or his administration. Reno, for example,squashed all independent investigations into China-gate and deliberately refused to enforce Congressional subpoenas so that hundreds of witnesses fled the country.She did, however, authorize more trivial legal pursuits such as Clinton's girlfriend, Monica.....they probably did not know about the dress and so figured trotting out the secretary of State to smear her as a stalker would suffice to silence the issue.

I don't see the difference really, and arguably Bush has more precedence due to this being a time of war. Of course, the fact the "war on terror" is somewhat unending makes presidential power in the time of war a real problem in the long run, but then again, don't blame me..... I'm a North Carolina boy.The imperial presidency really took off under Lincoln.Edited by randman, : No reason given.

And so were the presidencies of:Lincoln
Wilson
Roosevelt
LBJ
Nixon
etc, etc,...

So the AG's client under Clinton was Clinton?Thanks for making my point.

Clinton solicited and accepted bribes from communist China, and in return signed executive orders, appointed a Chinese spy to sensitive posts (highest he could without Congressional oversight), transferred missile technology from Defense to Commerce (where he appointed the spy), and took actions that all appear to show he appreciated the campaign donations the government of China funnelled to the DNC.Bush's actions pale in comparison, but that doesn't make them right. Heck, no president ever did what Clinton did.

It's hard to be outraged anew by something many of us have been aware of for the past 30 years, namely that the NSA and our government spies on us, and does so regardless of who is in office.

the sky is falling too.....take some time to read up on Woodrow Wilson's presidency. We probably came as close to a police state as we have thus far under his presidency. None of this is anything new.Bush doesn't want to be dictator. Does he respect Congressional oversight to the extent of the Constitution?Nah, but Congress doesn't respect the Constitution either. If it did, we wouldn't have a whole bunch of federal programs.

deerbrah, has Bush rounded up and imprisoned thousands of Americans like Palmer did, without valid warrants, etc,...?I suspect a few hundred may actually have been detained and imprisoned in this manner, but so many as under Wilson. Plus, Iraq is much smaller than our grand intrustion into Europe, and don't forget that he also took us into Mexico to "teach them to elect good people", and landed troops in Russia.Now, the technology has changed, but you fail to realize that Bush has authorized nothing new essentially. These spy agencies have been spying on Americans for decades, and Bush didn't install Echelon and Carnivore. That was established prior to his taking office. So all of this spying has been on-going regardless of who was in office, and that means under Clinton and Carter as well.Bush may be seeking more direct presidential access and use, or maybe he is just being shown as many presidents have been shown before, that presidents are expendable and the intelligence services (from their perspective) are not.

Dan, same thing holds true. The AG's client is suppossed to be the American people. His, or in this case her, job is not to be some sort of conciellerge (sp?) for the White House gang.

Dan, the AG is not suppossed to be the White House's personal defense lawyer. They are the prosecutors for heavens sake. They are suppossed to prosecute crimes committed by the White House, not act as a defendant's lawyer for them.

So the AG defends the White House of criminal charges, eh?And who might be the prosecutor then? The AG's office is the one officially responsible for prosecuting federal crimes, including those committed by the president, his staff or the vice president. Reno refused to appoint an independent prosecutor and so her office acted as the investigating prosecutor in the case.The fact she acted as their the defense attorney, as you rightly point out that she acted in that capacity, proves my point entirely.

There was considerable evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the White House. Reno refused to appoint an independent prosecutor, and did wind up prosecuting a few minor players, such as Maria Hsia and others, but let all the bigwigs off the hook despite having videotaped evidence of Gore and Clinton directly being involved in the acts she allowed some smaller prosecutions of bit players in the process.She denied Congress the right to access this information and denied their requests she enforce Congressional subpoenas, all based on arguing the cases were in grand jury, where she kept them for a long time. She stonewalled all proper investigations into blatant bribe-taking by the DNC and White House. What she and the WH did was for worse and blatant than anything Bush is accused of, except the conspiracy allegations of 911 which may or may not have validity.

deerbrah, the point is that government behaviour in the areas of not following the Constitution is an on-going, bipartisan issue. If all you do is point to when one party does it, you are never going to see anything change.Where were all the Bush-bashers when Clinton was selling secrets to China, one of his constituents it seems?The fact is many of us have blasted this type of stuff for decades, but we never hear from most of you on the Left until a Republican is in office. You guys seem to have no problem when democrats break the law, but then act all surprised when a Republican follows suit and does the same sorts of things.Heck, Clinton only got in there when a substantial portion of GOP-leaning voters voted for Perot, and one reason for doing that, was that many did not like all the secrecy and New World Order stuff (nor high spending and taxes). But what happened was someone took office for the dems that many of us felt was even worse. Echelon and Carnivore really got established well in the 90s under Clinton, right? Although they predated Clinton.The fact is the government has run amok for decades. Bush's involvement is fairly minor when you consider that the government already records and researches every single electronic communications of all Americans and all people everywhere. Bush just wants to research this on-going spy operation to look for terrorists.If you want to get to the heart of the matter, you need to question whether the NSA and the CIA are Constitutionally legit or not, and what they are Constitutionally allowed to do.

The Palmer raids were due to a Red Scare and also to round up anarchists. Our invasion of Russia was also based on anti-communism.Bush has become an interventionist president very similar in a lot of ways to Wilson.