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Doug Thompson at Capitol Hill Blue:

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

The rant allegedly came up during a discussion of proposals to renew the USA Patriot Act.

If true, this rant is both sad and sickening. This President, like all his predecessors, swore an oath before God:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Yeah, the emphasis is mine. Not that the emphasis should be necessary - anyone who can identify what building the Oval Office sits in knows the gist of what the oath means. Some, apparently, care more than others.

So here’s the question - did he really say it? Did he really mean it? I think so, and here’s why. Most proponents of a muscular Patriot Act fall in the “Constitution is not a suicide pact” camp. In times of war, proponents argue, government power may infringe on the individual’s sphere of autonomy and push up against civil liberties, in the name of promoting national security. It is clear that President Bush falls in that camp, and it is not difficult to imagine him regarding the Constitution as an obstacle to his efforts to make the country safe from Islamofascist lunatics.

But the counter-argument is equally persuasive:

[I]t is in times of emergency—such as during war—that it is most necessary to safeguard procedural due process, for this is when “there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees.”

This is especially true with the “War on Terror.” (”TWOT“) It is widely agreed that TWOT cannot be “won” in the conventional sense - we drop a metric ass-load of ordinance on some major military targets, the Emperor capitulates, his generals sign an unconditional surrender, and we spend a metric Marshall Plan of coin rebuilding the vanquished and the victimized. No, “Terror” cannot surrender because there is no singular enemy, no centralized command and control. Unlike Star Wars, in this war evil has no Emperor.

What this means, in effect, is that we will be at war with “Terror” like we have been at war with poverty, crime, hunger, and to a lesser extent, graphic video game content. This war will never end. We may make great strides, we may chalk up tremendous successes, but there will always be at least one Ted Kaczynski to keep that end of the “war” alive. If the war never ends, then the justification “we’re at war” as a rationale for eroding civil rights never ends either.

Eternal war powers. Is that what the Founders had in mind when they drafted the Constitution? Surely not. Why is it, then, that conservatives, supposed proponents of small, limited federal government, have mostly failed to oppose the entrenchment and expansion of the Patriot Act? Have they forgotten their forty years in the wilderness as the minority? Have they forgotten about J. Edgar Hoover’s enemies list? What do they plan to do when a Hillary Clinton, a Joe Biden, or their future equivalent wins the White House?

Our government needs to take a good hard look at its role in protecting not just our bodily integrity but our way of life. The Constitution is supposed to be a check on government power; not a mere inconvenience, and if our elected officials can’t understand that, it’s time to cash them out for a new set.