Has Israel used unnecessary force to cripple or destroy Hezbollah?

About 1,000 Lebanese have been killed. Many have been civilians placed in harm’s way by Hezbollah guerrillas. More than 3,000 have been injured, and tens of thousands have been displaced. Hezbollah has fired approximately 3,650 rockets at Israeli civilians, killing 51 and injuring 430. At present, it remains a viable fighting force, and civilian casualties on both sides are not diminishing.

The Cheney-Specter National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 (S.2453) constitutes a virtual declaration of war on the Constitution. It would mutilate constitutionally protected privacy, cripple checks and balances, and inhibit political dissent. The bill’s profoundly anti-constitutional philosophy is that “trust the president” should be the measure of our civil liberties.

Presidential signing statements that declare an intention to disregard provisions of a bill passed by Congress that the president has signed into law because he believes them to be unconstitutional constitute great usurpations of the power to legislate. They flout the language and original intent of the Presentment Clause, Article I, section 7, clause 2; and, the president’s obligation under Article II, section 3, to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

As William Shakespeare would have versified, Rep. William J. Jefferson, Louisiana Democrat, deserved Speech or Debate Clause protection from an FBI raid of his congressional office not because congressional misconduct should be punished less but because the Constitution’s separation of powers that safeguard an uncowed legislative branch should be loved more.

Knowledge tempered by prudence is the cornerstone of our democratic dispensation. Popular moral sentiments and sensibilities give birth to the nation’s laws and leadership. Among the first duties of the president is to teach the people to make discriminating judgments, to exalt reason over dogmas, and to be alert to government abuses or follies. Otherwise, the nation’s democratic sinews will atrophy, as highlighted by the fetish for secrecy and anti-intellectualism of the Bush administration.

Congress should reject President Bush’s plea to authorize military commissions to try noncitizen illegal combatants for war crimes when they are already immobilized indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.

President Bush entered office intending to enfeeble congressional or judicial checks on executive authority. The legal theory concocted was that the Constitution erected a “unitary executive” free from restraint or superintendence by coequal branches in exercising executive power.

The United States Congress is spineless.

Its spinelessness is most troublesome in matters of national security where its informing function is most urgent. Since Congress shows no signs of acquiring a vertebrate, it should facilitate the media in playing surrogate by fashioning a newsmen’s exception to the Federal Espionage Act.

The federal newsmen’s privilege statute pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee — the Free Flow of Information Act of 2006 (FFIA) — is nonsense on stilts.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is unlike his vacillating predecessor Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Everything in her constitutional universe was opaque. Justice Alito’s philosophy is made of sterner stuff.