The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush

The Cato Institute has published a report, Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush. You can read it online or they will mail you a free copy. My copy came in the mail last week, and I highly recommend it. It's eminently readable, in the format of a magazine. It addresses everything from the torture memos to searches and seizures, from wiretapping to habeas corpus.

Here's the conclusion:

.... far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes

a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech--and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;

a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;

a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as "enemy combatants," strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror-- in other words, perhaps forever;

a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.

....On the campaign trail in 2000, then-governor Bush typically ended his stump speech with a dramatic flourish: he pantomimed the oath of office. But the oath is more than a political gimmick; for the founding generation it was a solemn pledge, designed to bind the officeholder to the country and the Constitution he serves. Throughout his tenure, President Bush has repeatedly dishonored that pledge. And because of that, he has weakened the constitutional order on which the American way of life depends

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