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King George W.: James Madison’s Nightmare. Notes on the Constitution by journalist Robert Scheer, USC professor, SF Chronicle columnist and editor of Truthdig:

George W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the “foreign entanglements” that George Washington feared would destroy the experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the U.S. Constitution....

...When the prime author of the U.S. Constitution explained why that document grants Congress—not the president—the exclusive power to declare and fund wars, Madison wrote, “A delegation of such powers [to the president] would have struck, not only at the fabric of our Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments.”

Because “[n]o nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” Madison urged that the constitutional separation of powers he had codified be respected. “The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war ... the power of raising armies,” he wrote. “The separation of the power of raising armies from the power of commanding them is intended to prevent the raising of armies for the sake of commanding them.”

Checks and balances were specifically built in to our nation's principles to avoid the possibility of a dictator hijacking the ship of state.

With former White House attorney and withdrawn Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers refusing to respond to a Congressional subpoena to testify on the U.S. Attorney firings, a Constitutional showdown seems to be building.

Another round in the executive privilege fight: Salon,

Tuesday was another banner day for executive privilege. Responding to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee regarding the investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, an attorney for former White House counsel Harriet Miers informed the committee that Miers will still not comply with a subpoena requiring her to produce documents and appear before the committee, and the Republican National Committee asked for more time to consider whether and how to comply.

In a letter to committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., Miers' attorney wrote that his client has been "specifically directed" by President Bush "not to appear, not to produce documents in response to the subpoena, and not to provide testimony."

AP reports that "A Judiciary subcommittee will meet on Thursday to consider the White House's executive privilege claim."

Arafat died of AIDS, confirms Palestinian leader. Israel Today.

'New' bin Laden tape Is 5-Year-Old, Re-Released Footage. Prison Planet, but they seem to have the goods:

The footage first appeared in May 2002, having been released by a Pakistani security official to the Al-Ansaar Islamic news agency, based in Birmingham, England. This CBS video clip clearly shows the same footage as the apparent "new" tape.

Here is a screenshot from the 2002 tape (right) compared to the new tape (left). Notice the sloping mountain in the left background.

Sources indicate that the footage was shot in either October 2001 or March 2002, with the earlier date being the favorite as Bin Laden's appearance matches with the footage from a different tape that was released in October 2001.

Al-Jazeera said they had the footage as far back as October 2001, but chose not to air it as they saw it as "not newsworthy" and "nothing more than a PR stunt." Six years later, and with the footage having been released on two separate occasions already, the western media insinuated that the tape was new and splashed it everywhere as a top headline.

More photos, video, speculation at Gateway Pundit.

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