"A reckless impulse to corrupt national institutions with partisan ideology"

raw story highlights a salon excerpt from joe conason's book...

Joe Conason, It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush

[Conason] states up front that the idea of an American slide into authoritarianism is not based in any paranoia, but comes because the current president "has repeatedly asserted and exercised authority that he does not possess under the Constitution he swore to uphold."

Conason says there is growing public anxiety and anger about the Bush administration's use and abuse of power. Two events that particularly have raised public concern were "the misbegotten, horrifically mismanaged war in Iraq to the heartless mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster." He notes that "we do not know the full dimensions of the scandals behind Iraq and Katrina, because the Republican leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives abdicated the traditional congressional duties of oversight and investigation."

Their unwillingness to take on the President on these issues was due to an acquiescence with authoritarianism, he writes. He says the "style" of the Bush regime is seen in its "almost casual contempt for democratic and lawful norms; an expanding appetite for executive control at the expense of constitutional balances; a reckless impulse to corrupt national institutions with partisan ideology; and an ugly tendency to smear dissent as disloyalty."

i think conason is being a tad circumspect... "authoritarianism" is a fairly mild description of the wholesale constitutional shredding being engaged in by the bush administration... he does use the word "abuse," but it would be much more accurate to protray the bush regime for what it is - a quiet coup d'etat that is bent on reshaping the u.s. into a dictatorial state...

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