Do YOU believe in the Constitution?

Item number three for the day is this article in the New Yorker magazine, which indicates that both Colin Powell and his former top adviser Lawrence Wilkerson share the opinion that David Addington, current Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney "doesn't care about the Constitution."

Mr. Addington, the article goes on to note, has been a central figure in crafting the Administration's legal justifications regarding the War on Terror.

There's no additional point to this, certainly just because one person in the Administration doesn't care about the Constitution doesn't mean there aren't others on the team watching out for us citizens and our Constitutional rights.

Then again, this is a man who works for a President who is widely reported to have told staff members in a meeting to stop waving the Constitution in his face, that it was just a damn piece of paper.

This is also a man who has been central in crafting a strategy for war which seems consistently to not concern itself with our morals and principles as a nation, the whole litany that I've repeated often, from the new "Enemy Combatant" legal limbo status to extraordinary rendition to the use of torture (or rather, the re-definition of techniques we'd probably all consider torture if used on us or American citizens to be classified non-torture and then used) to secret CIA prisons in so-called "torture friendly" countries.

One more little piece of evidence, all of which together seems to add up to a President who wants to turn the Presidency into a Monarchy, the United States into a dictatorship. Take out the Congress with signing statements and blatant disregard for Congressional decree (such as building a set of small databases which together would comprise the "Total Informational Awareness" program the Administration was told by Congress not to build, claiming that by not putting them all into one database, they're not violating the Congressional edict). Take out the Judiciary by painting them as activist and working to reduce or eliminate their jurisdiction. Take out the press by taking every opportunity to paint them as traitors and anti-American and then hope most Americans will either stop believing the press or will not object when the Administration steps in to "control the loose cannons endangering the troops and American lives". Take out the Constitution by simply ignoring it when it doesn't suit their fancy.

Take out democracy by subverting the electoral process and the will of the people (I still don't believe that in a single election the exit polls could be so vastly off from the official result in so many places when it was entirely unprecedented in this history of exit polling for the official result to differ by more than the statistical margin of error from the exit poll result).

Maybe it's too late at night. Maybe my bad back and minor stomach flu are making me especially negative tonight. But that's the view I have of America, and I want my country back. I want my country to be one I believe in and can be proud of again.

Liam.