Kicking Ass The Right Way

You don't have to wait 'til later to take names when you're kicking ass.  We can do both simultaneously.

In calling on the President to be even more aggressive against our enemies, but scrupulously upholding the fundamental tenants of our society, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

So let us fight by using our strengths - an executive whose errors are subject to checks from both judiciary and legislature and a free, robust press. That's a democracy's advantage in wartime over dictatorships - an openness to internal criticism and thereby correction. The results of one man deciding everything are already evident in the shambles of the Iraq invasion. We are better than that - and it befuddles me to see how little faith some 'conservatives' now have in the procedures of constitutional democracy.

Bush took an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution -- not the American people or the country itself.  There's a reason for that, an oath to protect an abstract concept instead of tangible citizens and land.

Lord knows that this administration has time and time again gone overboard protecting the prerogatives of abstract conceptual entities like corporations. 

The Hamden case reinforces the rationale of swearing an oath to a document.  As long as the President holds sacred the integrity of the Constitution, the rest of us -- We the People, and the other Constitutional institutions we've created will take care of ourselves.  And if POTUS doesn't take care of the constitution, we'll take care of him too, Constitutionally.