This is why

I am obsessed with the evilness of this administration. This is why I read the blogs obsessively, why sometimes I have a hard time talking about something other than politics, why I spend too much time at the computer ignoring my kids and husband.

Because this administration is fundamentally trying to change this country. I am not naive enough to think that before January 2001 we were always a beacon of light and freedom. I know about the Contras, getting rid of Allende in Chile, supporting dictators in Africa etc. But this is different. This is not sneaking around in other countries doing things that the majority of Americans would be shocked at. This is out in the open. They are trying to change the thing we all learned in elementary school- our separate but equal branches of government. Firedoglake takes this quote from the important Boston Globe article- it was the one that struck me the most too:

But in frequency and aggression, the current President Bush has gone far beyond his predecessors.

All previous presidents combined challenged fewer than 600 laws, Kelley's data show, compared with the more than 750 Bush has challenged in five years. Bush is also the first president since the 1800s who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments.

Douglas Kmiec , who as head of the Office of Legal Counsel helped develop the Reagan administration's strategy of issuing signing statements more frequently, said he disapproves of the ``provocative" and sometimes ``disingenuous" manner in which the Bush administration is using them.

Kmiec said the Reagan team's goal was to leave a record of the president's understanding of new laws only in cases where an important statute was ambiguous. Kmiec rejected the idea of using signing statements to contradict the clear intent of Congress, as Bush has done. Presidents should either tolerate provisions of bills they don't like, or they should veto the bill, he said.

``Following a model of restraint, [the Reagan-era Office of Legal Counsel] took it seriously that we were to construe statutes to avoid constitutional problems, not to invent them," said Kmiec, who is now a Pepperdine University law professor.

By contrast, Bush has used the signing statements to waive his obligation to follow the new laws. In addition to the torture ban and oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, the laws Bush has claimed the authority to disobey include restrictions against US troops engaging in combat in Colombia, whistle-blower protections for government employees, and safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research.

Read the whole thing and feel the shivers on your spine....

UPDATE: I wrote "getting rid of Pinochet" above and as my dad pointed out that is not what I meant. It has been changed.