The Pizzeria Principle

Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them at Mike's Pizza over here.

It's time to check the balance of power / Congress must rein in Bush's abusive actions

Since 9/11, President Bush's repeated assaults on the Constitution and celebration of international lawlessness in confronting al Qaeda have needlessly made Americans less safe. The president, for example, has flouted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in intercepting the conversations and e-mails of American citizens on American soil on his say-so alone. He has claimed authority to break into and enter our homes, open our mail and commit torture in order to collect foreign intelligence.

He has insisted that the entire United States is a battlefield -- even pizza parlors -- where lethal military force may be employed to kill al Qaeda suspects with bombs or missiles. He has detained citizens and noncitizens alike as enemy combatants based on secret evidence. And he has insisted that he is constitutionally empowered to keep U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely.

Congress should restore the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses. Citizens would be safer. And international terrorism would be more effectively arrested by restoring cooperation with allies; by cultivating friendly democratic regimes abroad through democratic example; and by preventing injustices that serve as recruiting fodder for al Qaeda (for instance, Mahar Arar, the Syrian Canadian who was mistaken for a terrorist and tortured in Syria with U.S. and Canadian complicity).

Congress must act on behalf of the people to restore balance to the Force, lest the Dark Lord Cheney and his Sith apprentice Dubya blot out the sun forever. (OK, I admit I've watched "The Revenge of the Sith" too many times.)

Sci-fi inspired hyperbole aside, that means impeachment, NOW.

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