The Right to Wear T Shirts

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Americans should also be careful about Bush's ram-it-and-jam-it, get-real style of pre-emptive global law enforcement--Wyatt Earp on a mission of Napoleonic Wilsonianism. On the other hand, humility and self-doubt can get you killed in a dangerous world.

In the obscurities of a bad moment, we need the clarity of the Constitution. Just as the Constitution is clear about freedom of speech, it is explicit about the power to make war. Article I, Section 8, gives Congress the authority to declare war. Article II, Section 2, makes the President Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Is it constitutionally necessary for Congress to declare war in order for a President to make war? No: the U.S. has declared war only four times (1812, Spanish-American, World War I and World War II). Bush has congressional resolutions authorizing force. But you do not want to go into a (to say the least) controversial war, opposed by much of the world, when protected merely by the fine print. I wish Bush had the full constitutional writ behind him. He is a gambler, of course. He's going to be awfully lonely if this goes wrong. Will he be a hero if it goes well?

A hard rain, in any case, is going to fall. Keep the Constitution dry and legible. The danger to America is that in trying to protect what it has, it will lose the very thing that is worth having.