Dahlia Lithwick at Slate gives us a little more detail on where things are headed with this presidency and the kind of court that he has created:
There are two ways President Bush likes to wage war on your civil liberties: He either asks you to surrender your rights directly—as he does when he strengthens and broadens provisions of the Patriot Act. Or he simply hoovers up new powers and hopes you won't find out—as he did when he granted himself authority to order warrant-less wiretapping of American citizens. The former category seems more benign, and it's tempting to lump Bush's affinity for "presidential signing statements" in that camp. It's tempting to believe that with these statements he is merely asking that the courts take his legal views into account. But President Bush never asks anything of the courts; he doesn't think he has to. His signing statements are not aimed at persuading the courts, but at reinforcing his claim that both courts and Congress are irrelevant.
Read more. And check out the links to which she points, particularly this one about what she sees as the rationale behind the Alito nomination, which I'm sick of writing about because it just seems to be a broken record.
I deleted a post I put up yesteday for that reason. I'm tired of beating up on ineffectual Democrats. I'm more frustrated with my own ineffectualness. But we need to stay vigilant. We need always aware of what is going on. And we need to be prepared to do something when the opportunity presents itself.