Thursday, August 28, 2008

Our lost constitution: why nobody talks about it ...

As always, Dahlia Lithwick asks pointed questions:
Bill Clinton is a lawyer. Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. Rep. Artur Davis is a lawyer. Michelle Obama is a lawyer. Chuck Schumer is a lawyer. Joe Biden is a lawyer. Ted Kennedy is a lawyer. I have heard virtually all of these people speak poignantly and passionately about the Constitution, the rule of law, and the outrages visited upon the Bill of Rights over the past eight years. Biden was prescient about the legal implications of what had been done at Abu Ghraib. Rep. Davis has been devastating on Guantanamo and torture on the House judiciary committee. When Ted Kennedy gets started on warrantless wiretapping and national-security letters and signing statements, there is nobody better. These are America's constitutional poet laureates. And yet Buchanan is right that almost every prime-time convention speaker has behaved as though President Bush's greatest crimes of the past eight years have involved lost jobs and climbing oil prices. On the streets of Denver, they are protesting Guantanamo, wiretapping, and water-boarding. But inside the hall, you'd think it was just another recession year.

Then she writes,
The great tragedy of the Bush administration was that it operated for years as though the Constitution was something nobody really cares about. The great crime of Denver may be that Democrats feel the same way.

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