restoring checks and balances among the three branches ... Congress is now being Swift Boated by the Bush Administration.

Friday, July 27, 2007 by CommonDreams.org | Congress, Bush and The Real Constitutional Crisis | by Glenn W. Smith

America is in the midst of an authentic constitutional crisis as the Bush Administration moves to reduce Congress to little more than an irrelevant focus group and achieve what no U.S. President has ever achieved: a true above-the-law presidency.

These are the stakes: Will the United States save what is left of its constitutional democracy by restoring checks and balances among the three branches of government?
...
But, there is now no other choice. Bush’s drive to place permanent barriers between the people and their government, to lift the presidency above all laws, must be stopped.

Earlier this week I wrote about the dangerous cultural narrative that frames Congress as an inept community . Our hero myths often include an inept community that must be saved by the lone hero. This cultural narrative has led to a broadly held view that Congress is just such a community.
...
Congress is now being Swift Boated by the Bush Administration. ...

The Bush gambit is to permanently derail progressive policy goals by building an impenetrable wall between the people and their government and by asserting ultimate and absolute presidential authority. These ambitions are made obvious by the Administration’s actions: Bush’s unprecedented veto threats; the obvious “we-don’t-really-care-what-you-think” attitude of Gonzales during his committee testimony; the Administration’s questioning Senator Hillary Clinton’s patriotism when she asked for details of Bush’s Iraq plans; the refusal to disclose details of the Administration’s emergency government plan. ...