While we are focused on the democratic primaries we mustn't lose sight of the Republican front runners. Our candidate will be running against one of them. I find all the Republican candidates frightening for one reason or another. One of them wants us to keep our troops in Iraq until we "win" the war, even if it is another 10-20-100 years. Another wants to rewrite our Constitution to suit his notion of what God wants. A third candidate wants to keep cutting taxes for the richest among us, with no plan at all as to how we will pay the bills.

In this article Paul Campos states that "Mitt Romney is more dangerous than George Bush"! With Romney in office we would likely see the "Bush Doctrine" on the same "B12" shots that have done so much for sports. Here we find a brief outline of Romney's beliefs about presidential powers.

An example of this new argument is provided by Mitt Romney, in his response to a Boston Globe questionnaire regarding the limits of presidential power. Romney's basic position is that, given the supposedly existential threat posed by terrorism, there are almost no limits on what a president may do.

Romney either explicitly claims or strongly implies that, among other things, the president may spy on Americans without a warrant, even in the face of a statue that prohibits this; that he may attack other countries without congressional authorization; that he may ignore treaties ratified by the Senate; and that he may issue signing statements reserving the right to ignore laws enacted under his signature.

What justifies these extraordinary claims, which in effect would turn the presidency of the United States into something resembling a dictatorship? The answer, it turns out, is exactly the same one given by Schell: [Jonathan Schell's cold war book "The Fate of the Earth.] given the magnitude of the threat, "liberty" is something we can no longer afford. As Romney puts it, "our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive." http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/4127