Al Gore: "Impeach the Sombitch!"

Well, more or less. Prompted by This Modern World and Talking Points Memo, I read the speech Al Gore gave yesterday, On the Limits of Executive Power. He didn't even allude to stolen elections (he's maybe too good of a sport), but after reading this, and thinking about those, well, it's the scariest damn thing, ever. Bush & Co. are slowly but surely angling for totalitarianism.

A few bits of Al's speech that jumped out at me:

On the Attorney General's lame defense of domestic spying:

[H]e concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along?

This reminded me of the sham of weapons inspectors in Iraq before the invasion: ask the question, ignore the answer:

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother.

Here's where I started to really be afraid. It's harsh when it's laid out like this:

The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

...If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?

What about the checks and balances on the power of the Executive Branch? Exactly. What about them?

The President's judicial appointments are clearly designed to ensure that the courts will not serve as an effective check on executive power. As we have all learned, Judge Alito is a longtime supporter of a powerful executive - a supporter of the so-called unitary executive, which is more properly called the unilateral executive. Whether you support his confirmation or not - and I do not - we must all agree that he will not vote as an effective check on the expansion of executive power. Likewise, Chief Justice Roberts has made plain his deference to the expansion of executive power through his support of judicial deference to executive agency rulemaking.

Here's the ultimate argument to all the apologists, televised and not, who say it's all okay, because we're scared.

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

He ends with five specific recommendations:

1. appoint a special counsel to investigate the domestic spying
   
2. enact whistleblower protections for workers in the Executive Branch
   
3. hold congressional hearings on the allegations of criminal behavior
   
4. just say "no" to the PATRIOT Act's extension
   
5. all telecomm companies should immediately stop providing illegal access to private information

I admit it, it's a long one. Read all, I nevertheless entreat you.

Update: MP3 audio available at GlobalFreePress.com; RealPlayer video at C-SPAN.