Once there was a Constitution

We say that the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, that it is thus almost 220 years old. But in a very real sense, it is younger than some who could be reading this blog.

The Warren Court (which started in 1953) arguably created much of what we now think of as Constitutional Law. The Burger Court and every other court since has been hell-bent on undoing what Earl Warren, William O. Douglas and a few others did. But today it wasn't the Court that surrendered a major battleground. Today Congress did it.

I am not going to catalog the long list of rights lost. This blog has logged those offenses for almost 4 years now. Others have done it better in and in greater detail. But it is a very long list, and it got significantly longer today.

What is most appalling to me is not so much what he lost, but how we lost it.

The Bush has been pursuing a FISA get-out-of-jail-free card for something like two years. The Democratic party delivered what the Republicans could not. And the most significant and humiliating cause of that capitulation was the first Presidential candidate in my lifetime I was briefly tempted to vote FOR (as opposed to being the beneficiary of my vote AGAINST their opponent.

That impulse is as dead as the rule of law and 4th Amendment. I'm back in hold-my-nose territory.

U.S. Constitution, 1953 -2008