“Somebody has to step up here.”

Crooks and Liars:

Wisdom in a small-town newspaper, and, I would argue, the best editorial I’ve read this week. From the Port Townsend (WA) Leader.

It took common people - farmers, brewers, printers, silversmiths - to write the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights some 218 years ago. And it looks as if it’s up to the common people to try to defend those principles.

Somebody has to step up here.

The Bush administration mocks each provision of the Bill of Rights that protects private citizens from their government, and likewise pushes past constitutional constraints that protect other branches of government from the presidency.

One must thank God - or Madison, Adams and Jefferson - that the judgment of common people was written into our Constitution and basic legal codes. It was done for times like these, when almost every branch of officialdom gets stampeded into dangerous over-reaction.

Read the rest…