Constitutional Crisis

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

This article appeared in the May 22, 2006 edition of The Nation.

May 4, 2006

Using the insidious pretense of the "unitary executive," George W. Bush has renounced two centuries of American democracy, violating the rights of citizens and brutalizing our system of checks and balances. If you have any doubt that this is a time of crisis, read Charlie Savage's frightening (and undercovered) story in the April 30 Boston Globe. It documents an accumulating pattern of presidential lawlessness. Here's one way to "nationalize" the 2006 elections: Demand that all candidates defend the Constitution. Defending our country means defending not only our physical safety but our Constitution from White House attacks.

About Katrina vanden Heuvel

Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor and Publisher of The Nation.

She is the co-editor of Taking Back America--And Taking Down The Radical Right (NationBooks, 2004).

She is also co-editor (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (Norton, 1989) and editor of The Nation: 1865-1990, and the collection A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.

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