According to a new article in
Time
Magazine, members of Senate on both sides of the aisle are considering a
constitutional amendment that will limit the powers of the President at wartime.
A source familiar with the nascent constitutional amendment says one
version would make clear that any actions by the President as Commander in
Chief that affect domestic policies or U.S. citizens are subject to the
exclusive control of Congress. “Congress can’t completely cede wartime power
to the President,” the source says. Talk of an amendment could end up as
merely a lever in hearings. Then again, the first 10 amendments–better
known as the Bill of Rights–were demanded by the states in part to curb the
Constitution’s broad presidential powers.
Complete article
here.
Considering that Donald Rumsfeld even conceded this past week that the war on
terror could be a generational war, I believe we are overdue to outline exactly
what the President’s powers are. Perhaps the extra powers is what gives
Presidents the determination to go to war as opposed to taking peaceful
alternatives. If Bush has his way with Presidential powers then we will be
looking at spending the rest of our lives under a near dictatorship. That can
not be allowed to happen and if it does we can no longer consider ourselves the
“beacon of liberty and freedom”.