Gore to Take on "Constitutional Crisis"

Former Vice President (and former Presidential candidate) Al Gore is expected to address the "Constitutional crisis" that Bush has created by spying on Americans without legal authorization. Reportedly, Gore will not just "address" the issue on Monday, but will actually grow some balls and harshly criticize the administration.

Aides who are familiar with the preparations for the address say that Gore will frame his remarks in Constitutional language. The Democrat who beat Bush by more than 500,000 votes in the 2000 presidential election has agreed to deliver his remarks in a symbolically powerful location: the historic Constitution Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. But this will not be the sort of cautious, bureacratic speech for which Gore was frequently criticized during his years in the Senate and the White House.

Indeed, his aides and allies are framing it as a "call to arms" in defense of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law in a time of executive excess.

The vice president will, according to the groups that have arranged for his appearance -- the bipartisan Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy -- address "the threat posed by policies of the Bush Administration to the Constitution and the checks and balances it created. The speech will specifically point to domestic wiretapping and torture as examples of the administration's efforts to extend executive power beyond Congressional direction and judicial review."
Gore, while perhaps not being quite bold enough to call for impeachment outright, is expected to make some frank comparisons between Bush and Richard Nixon, who was, of course, caught in a maelstrom of controversy over his abuse of executive power more than thirty years ago.

“We are at a point of constitutional crisis," the aide said, relating how Gore has articulated his speech. "The president who has violated the law is acting above the law. It’s a wakeup call for Congress, the American people and the courts. If we continue down this road we will have a different constitution.

"Nixon’s quote about if the president does it it is legal, it’s kind of like Bush saying, if it’s about national security, it’s legal. This is going to be called transpartisan; it’s not about who your party is, it’s about what America stands for."

Gore, the source said, will talk about the framers of the constitution.

"You can’t defend freedom while abandoning it at home," the source said, speaking of Gore's planned remarks. "The founders thought about this. They didn’t want a king, that’s why they didn’t set up a system to anoint a king. We have checks and balances in this country and we cannot abandon them."
Will anyone pay attention to Al Gore? That remains to be seen, but it's certainly encouraging to hear that a recognizable (albeit former) politician is not going to mince words (of course, that too remains to be seen).

Hat Tip: AbeVigoda

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