Restore the Constitution

With the demise of the Bush presidency we hope that whoever leads this country for the next four years will make a serious effort to restore the Constitution of the United States.

It has been badly rewritten during the Bush presidency.

We saw the vice president declare, in order to avoid congressional subpoenas into criminal wrongdoing, that his office isn't part of the executive branch.

We saw the rights of habeas corpus ignored, suspended and rewritten, along with a number of basic tenants of due process of law, which both the American people and Congress went along with as a result of the fear campaign over terrorists that Bush pushed so heavily.

We saw wiretapping and mail opening without court orders on a massive scale, never seen before in this country. The bureaucracy was handed huge amounts of power that previously had belonged solely with the judiciary.

Large sections of the Patriot Act need to be revoked or seriously modified to come back into compliance with the Constitution. Fearing terrorist attacks (which can happen any time they want it to, just due to the nature of the beast), is not sufficient reason to withdraw the personal protections built into the Constitution.

Restoring the Constitution to its primacy as the fundamental law of this land has to be a priority of the new president and Congress.

-- Kelly Everitt