The question is whether George W. Bush is trying to destroy whatever's left of constitutional government in the United States. The Bush administration's assault on all that we hold dear is boundless. Books upon books as well as investigative news and magazine articles are regularly exposing what happens when fanactics are allowed to take control, much like what happens if you let children run kindergarten or alcoholics run the local tavern.

The latest outrage is George W's promise to ignore Congressional authority in his effort to escalate troops in Iraq and drag the military even further into the civil war that we handed the Iraqi people. On 60 Minutes this week, Bush said that he's going foward with troop escalation no matter what Congress says. There's a problem with this. The U.S. Constitution says that Congress has power "To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years."

In addition, "A new report from the Center for American Progress details how, over the last 35 years, Congress has passed bills, enacted into law, that capped the size of military deployments, prohibited funding for existing or prospective deployment, and placed limits and conditions on the timing and nature of deployments." Congress also has the power to declare war and to fund Presidential initiatives, such as war. The analysis here only confirms that Congress does not have to sit back as a potted plant and allow Bush to further squander the national treasure at the tune of $5 billion a month.

Second on the list is the recent news that a Bush administration official wants to organize a corporate boycott against the large law firms that are devoting attorney time to representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Pro bono lawyering is very much within the tradition of American law. Often the only time that prisoners and other unpopular clients get any representation is through the generocity of these mega-firms which can obviously afford to devote unpaid time towards defending the American principle that everyone has the right to a lawyer and that government policies need to be challenged in court to ensure they comply with the Constitution.

From the New York Times:

The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.

. . .

I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.

I fully endorse the following critique by blogger David Kurtz: "The Administration has already done virtually everything possible to deny detainees any hope of justice. Encouraging boycotts of the law firms representing detainees is an effort to close off any last chance that the detainees will be treated in accordance with Anglo-American legal standards. Each of us will mark our own low point of the Bush presidency. This is on my short list."

Consolidating power and destroying constitutional freedoms is the hallmark of authoritarian government. I am not the first person to suggest that the Bush administration is on the road towards authoritarianism. John Dean, former counsel to President Nixon, recently published a book on this topic. Dean is no liberal. But even principled conservatives see authoritarianism when they see it.