Where is the line and when will Bush step over it? How long before we take back our country?

“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
— President George W. Bush, Dec. 18, 2000

What is it going to take for the American people to wake up to the presidential coup d’état that is now under way, a takeover that is occurring in broad daylight by a president who has declared that as commander in chief he has unfettered power to fight an undeclared and never-ending war on terrorism, even if that means ignoring the courts, disregarding laws passed by Congress and circumventing the Bill of Rights in the process?

First the Bush administration rams through the so-called Patriot Act in the hysteria immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, legislation that includes the infamous “sneak and peak” provision. Then they usurp the power of the Senate (though our senators didn’t put up much of a fuss) and use fabricated intelligence to initiate a pre-emptive war against a nonaggressive nation. Next this administration decides that it can detain foreign (and several domestic) adversaries as “illegal enemy combatants” without charge for as long as it desires. After that, it chooses to authorize torture of selected prisoners under the designation of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Now we discover the Bush administration has used the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on telephone conversations and e-mails of U.S. citizens on American soil without a warrant and that several other government agencies have been illegally tracking our computer activities.

If the president has the unfettered power that he and his acolytes proclaim, what is the logical next step? Dissolving Congress should it endeavor to forestall his illegal activities? Packing the Supreme Court with his supporters should it declare some of his actions unconstitutional? Proclaiming times so dangerous that he must remain in office even after his term is over?

If you skimmed the above section I encourage you to read it again.

And then ask yourself, is the author correct in his assertions? I think that he is! I think that he is identifying the same pattern of aggressive power grabbing that many others of us have noticed as well. It seems like an outlandish assertion that anybody would make so blatant an attempt to subjugate a nation with the eyes of the world watching him. But has anybody called him on any of his manipulations of our military, of our media, of our fears? Has anybody called him on anything?

The answer is no, we haven't! But don't you think that it is past time that somebody did?