Greenwald: “...the role of the judiciary and the Congress in our system of government has never been smaller...”
Increasingly, there is simply no role for courts to review the President's actions, nor for citizens to challenge the legality and constitutionality of those actions...[For example] Henry Lanman details in Slate today:George W. Bush started a war that apparently will have permanent duration. And by invoking "war powers" during that war, George W. Bush has accumulated something the founders worked hard to prevent: maximum power in the hands of one individual.Never heard of the "state secrets" privilege? You're not alone. But the Bush administration sure has. Before Sept. 11, this obscure privilege was invoked only rarely. Since then, the administration has dramatically increased its use. According to the Washington Post, the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press reported that while the government asserted the privilege approximately 55 times in total between 1954 (the privilege was first recognized in 1953) and 2001, it's asserted it 23 times in the four years after Sept. 11. For an administration as obsessed with secrecy as this one is, the privilege is simply proving to be too powerful a tool to pass up.The Bush administration has now invoked this doctrine in virtually every pending legal proceeding devoted to challenging the legality of the warrantless NSA eavesdropping program - all but assuring, yet again, that no court can rule on the legality of that program.
The only way to stop him is for the other two branches to assert their constitutional checks and balances against the Executive branch.
And it would help if the traditional media would investigate and report honestly and freely about what is happening in our government.