Gore calls Bush 'lawbreaker' (video/podcast)

By Bruce Ackerman . Posted January 16, 2006.

Gore's powerful MLK Day speech (PODCAST/TRANSCRIPT/VIDEO) was titled "Restoring the Rule of Law" -- if that gives you any idea of its focus and force. The former VP reportedly left little to the imagination when describing past presidential policy and fears for the future of the American system of governance.

Woody Allen jokes aside (Q: do you think Democracy can work? A: Yes... but I think the American way can work too.), the Constitution is under attack and Gore makes an eloquent (if frightening) case. Referring to the once arcane -- now merely obscure -- unitary executive theory, eagerly supported by impending Supreme Court justice Sammy Alito:

"This legal theory, which its proponents call the theory of the unitary executive but which is more accurately described as the unilateral executive, threatens to expand the president's powers until the contours of the constitution that the Framers actually gave us become obliterated beyond all recognition...

"This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all powerful Executive Branch with a subservient Congress and judiciary is-ironically-accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish dominance in the world."

Gore touches on the spying scandal, intimidation of opponents, the right to dissent, and nearly every other abuse of power by Bush over the past 5 years, ending with an MLK quote:

"Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us." (Newshounds, Irregular Times, HuffPost)

--> Sign up for Peek in your inbox... every morning! (Go here and check Peek box).

              

Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »