clipped from: www.smirkingchimp.com So, George W. Bush sees himself as the great defender of the U.S. Constitution.
To many Americans who have been aghast at Bush’s six-plus years of trampling the Constitution, such pronouncements might represent a textbook case of “cognitive dissonance,” a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension when one’s stated principles are at odds with one’s actions.
For Bush, however, this divergence of words from behavior may be closer to the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, when the monarch strutted about in invisible garments while his terrified subjects kept quiet about his nakedness.
Still, Bush’s Nov. 15 speech talked glowingly of the constitutional “checks and balances” as a guard against tyranny.
But for the past six years, Bush has asserted his right as “unitary executive” to ignore any law that he chooses by asserting his "plenary" powers and attaching “signing statements.”