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Unitary Executive v. Constitution - You Make the Call

Critics claim the President has used the war on terror to put himself above the law and that he has created a secret presidency of classified decisions and orders, that approve extraordinary renditions, torture, illegal detentions, and wiretapping without warrants with the collaboration of big telecom companies. This boundless secrecy and surveillance evokes images counter to American values. Bill Moyers Journal: Power and the Presidency

What good is broadband for all if this powerful new tool gets perverted and twisted into a means to repress political expression, to enable our government to flout our constitutional rights to privacy, to take away the country we love?

As much as I hate to say it, broadband policy has become more serious over the past several weeks. While the subject has always been inextricably wrapped up in national, state, and local politics, the discussion has generally been about getting access to a benefit, or on the downside, being denied a benefit. And it continues to be about benefits and consumerism, 99% of the time.

But there is a growing awareness of a new aspect to this network. We've shifted to talk about broadband networks becoming a threat to our lives and our liberty. It's not hyperbole to say that the Internet, when used as a tool and operated outside the bounds of laws, under the control of corporations that do not consider themselves to be subject to the same laws that you and I are, has become a realistic threat to democracy.

It doesn't have to be this way, and we are at the very beginning of this discussion. This is an important theme to pursue at this moment in our history.

Along with the excited talk about the potential of dual use iPhones and video over IP, we need to look at a darker underside to this broadband phenomenon. Because when comparing threats, the looming ExaFlood pales in comparison to the present subversion of the Constitution.

Check out this powerful video segment and see if you don't feel the same way. Moyers concludes his segment with this exchange, remembering a seminal moment from a mere 33 years ago.

BILL MOYERS: But listen to this voice from the past. From 1974. The Watergate scandals had revealed astonishing crimes and secret abuses of power by President Nixon and the men around him. The House Judiciary Committee was deliberating Nixon's impeachment. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas went straight to the heart of the matter:

BARBARA JORDAN: My faith in the constitution is whole it is complete it is total and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

Posted on October 31, 2007 at 07:10 AM

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