Mr. President: Let's look at the 7-decade growth of executive power in the U.S.

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Program::

The Abe and Joe Talk Radio Show

Air date:

Tue, 06/21/2011 - 12:00am

Mr. President: Let's look at the 7-decade growth of executive power in the U.S.

Hosted by Abe Proctor. Joe Uris is off for the summer.

Mr. President: Let's look at the 7-decade growth of executive power in the U.S.

It's been nearly 70 years since the U.S. Congress has declared war. The current administration has enshrined and deepened the surveillance state first ushered in under the auspices of the Cold War and the War on Drugs, and then imposed under G.W. Bush's War on Terror. Once-inviolable rights to counsel, swift trial, due process, security from search and seizure, and habeas corpus have been rendered insubstantial.

Without doubt, the scope of executive power in the U.S. has expanded drastically. It's time to view this expansion not only in terms of the abuses of the Bush Years, but in terms of the gradual growth of presidential warmaking and surveillance powers since the Second World War. We are not the same republic we once were.