‘We the People’ Must Save Our Constitution
I watched Al Gore’s speech on CSPAN this afternoon and it was a tremondous speech. After listening to 5 minutes of the speech I believe now that he is going to run in 2008. He has regained his passion. He is no longer holding up Clinton’s DLC policies, he is passionatly talking about the progressive issues he believes in.
Here is an excerpt from Gore’s speech…
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 that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.
Once violated, the rule of law is 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 actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.
Some more quotes from the speech:
“The President has been breaking the law repeatedly and consistently.”“I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you’re supposed to be.”
~ Al Gore, January 16, 2006
Here are links to the transcript and mp3 of the speech.
pstans
January 16th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
An exceptional speech from the rightful winner of the 2000 presidential election.
As far as 2008 goes, that would be a neat trick if he could pull it off. It would be a maverick move as most presidential candidates I can recall have historically run on the back of some other office – be that from a governorship, senate seat, etc. Gore has been a bit of a journeyman for the past several years.
Of course the Liberal Media couldn’t resist every opportunity to call him stiff, boring, etc…but this speech shows how he’s almost infinitely more competent than the current bozo we have occupying office. It’s truly disgusting what’s happened in this country.
Something has got to give.
January 17th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
The historical referrences in the speech and quoting the likes of Thomas Paine and George Orwell show that Gore is more competetent of a leader than Bu$h. I’d like to see Bu$h try and throw some quotes like that in a speech. The mangled mush of words would be eerily similar of the mess we have in Iraq or the Gulf Coast.