The unjust Justice Department

All right. You know by now, I hope, that the Justice Department has defended Bush's warrantless spying on the American people. I'm linking you to an article by Matthew Rothschild entitled "Bush's NSA Hubris" and I want to call your attention to one small passage:

The gist of the Justice Department's argument is that the President's "inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief" and the Congressional Authorization of Military Force (AUMF) right after 9/11 give him all the power he needs to eavesdrop in the United States without a warrant.

It's that "Commander in Chief" bit I want to talk about here. Friday night I watched a re-run of "Close to Home" - a series about a young mother who's also a prosecuting attorney. The defendant in this episode seemed to be clearly nuts and so she was given a psychiatric exam to determine competency to stand trial. So far, so good. As we all know from watching such shows, a standard question during psychiatric exams is to ask the person to state the day's date and who is president in order to determine whether he or she is in touch with reality. But this psychiatrist did not ask, "Who is president?" This psychiatrist asked, "Who's the Commander in Chief?"

I was horrified. This was clearly deliberate propaganda - an effort to plant in the public's mind the idea that we are first to think of our president as "Commander". All I can say is, read the post below about the "unitary executive" theory. I fear we have lost the Republic. Past tense. Tyranny has already begun. Oppression is soon to follow. It is only a matter of time.