The Cup O' Joe Report 01/17/06: Power Corrupts

[Joeve]

This is a transcript of Joe Vecchio's daily "Cup O' Joe Report" podcast, availaible here and posted with the permission of the author.

Nothing scares power-hungry politicians more than someone who represents a real threat to their authority. The USA is supposed to be a nation where the law is more important than any one person, no matter how powerful, but anyone who has studied our history knows that powerful and ambitious people think they're above the law and will use any means necessary to get rid of troublemakers.

President Bush thinks he is a dictator. You don't have to believe me, he's said so himself: when he said he had the right to break the law if he felt it was necessary for national security. The question is, how far will he go? As others have pointed out, just because he hasn't, say, started throwing troublemakers like me into prison isn't relevant: according to Mr. Bush, if he thought it was necessary he would just do it, and worry about the consequences later.

That's what bothers me about Judge Alito. He said he believes in the rule of law, but what's to prevent him from interpreting the law as saying that the President can do whatever he wants? When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they wrote it to prevent that kind of power from falling into the hands of one person or a small group of people. If the Republicans maintain their control of the House and Senate, and are backed by a Supreme Court filled with judges who support Mr. Bush more than they support the Constitution, then none of us is safe. Because people who ask for that kind of power only do so if they plan on using it. And they usually do.

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