As of 1/19/2006 there are over 400,000 Google hits on Al Gore We the People Must Save Our Constitution.
Not bad for a speech that the mainstream media has utterly ignored.
There's something about Gore journalists dislike. We suffer for their folly. Whenever I feel some regret about the collapse of the print newspapers, I remember how journalists covered the Gore campaign. Their current peril is not desirable, but it does have a silver lining.
Rumor has it that the first murder is the hard one. After that, they get easier. The Bush administraiton is a serial constitutional murderer.... The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.
Where we disagree is on the proposition that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government in order to protect Americans from terrorism. When in fact, doing so would make us weaker and more vulnerable.
And remember that once violated, the rule of law is itself in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its mistakes and reveal errors, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police its activities. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws...
PS. David Brin described an alterantive universe in which Gore became President. It was a far better place, except the media hated him and the right wing was launching an indigenous American terrorist movement.
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