VENGEANCE, THY NAME IS GORE!

It must be out of vengeance.

I can think of no other explanation to account for Al Gore's behavior. His speech on Monday was positively disgusting.

How could a former Vice President of the United States act so nuts?

I've said this about other idiotic remarks uttered by the Dems:

Their statements are not made in a vacuum.

Our troops and their families heard Gore. Our allies heard his insanity. Worst of all, our enemies, the ones intent on killing any American --man, woman, or child -- were listening.

What could be more irresponsible than to call the President a criminal?

This is not about squelching dissent, not at all. It's about expressing that dissent in an appropriate fashion.

I'm not suggesting that Americans must accept the policies of the Bush Administration. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't hold the Administration accountable. Far from it. It's not only appropriate to carefully monitor the actions of the government, but I see it as fundamental to democracy.

That said, what Gore did on Monday was scary.

His speech was not the deep thoughts of an elder statesman. It was the ranting of someone with a score to settle. It was so over the top that it had to be rooted in some intense emotional turmoil.

I think the guy has not come to terms with the fact that he lost the 2000 election. I think Gore's not the only one with that problem. A seething hatred for George W. Bush has driven the Dems and their lib media mouthpieces ever since Gore's defeat.

As far as former Congressman Bob Barr goes, I don't get it. He must have issues as well. Does Barr really believe that "America's Constitution is in grave danger"?

The only grave danger we're facing is al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations bent on murdering Americans.

Do people like Gore and Barr and those in the adoring crowd at Constitution Hall care about the country?

Of course, they do.

Still, sometimes I think these fringe Dems and the other stragglers must hate Bush more than they love America.Transcript

Some "highlights":
At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government.

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An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

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The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

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It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

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It is the pitiful state of our legislative branch which primarily explains the failure of our vaunted checks and balances to prevent the dangerous overreach by our Executive Branch which now threatens a radical transformation of the American system.

I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be.

But there is yet another Constitutional player whose pulse must be taken and whose role must be examined in order to understand the dangerous imbalance that has emerged with the efforts by the Executive Branch to dominate our constitutional system.

We the people are-collectively-still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We-as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here"-must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy.


Is it vengeance that drives Gore to make such reckless comments?

Is he blinded by hate?

I don't know what motivates him. I suspect Gore doesn't really know either.

Maybe it's not vengeance. Maybe he doesn't suffer from "Presidency Envy." Maybe Gore just can't deal with his own irrelevance. Maybe he needs to find approval and he knows it's easily found among the ranks of the radical Left.

Whatever the case may be, I do know that his fiery rhetoric on Monday should be chalked up as just another irresponsible address to add to the ever-growing file of his nutcase post-Veep outbursts.

Many conservatives enjoy it when he goes off the deep end like that because he serves to drive more and more people away from the Democratic Party. Gore shows them to be so out of the mainstream, so crazy.

That may be true, but I don't like it when he loses touch with reality and foams at the mouth that way. It makes me really uncomfortable.

He's an embarrassment as a former Vice President. He disgraces himself and his family. Far more importantly, he endangers all Americans when he speaks so carelessly, distorting reality and adulterating the Constitution.

Again and again, the Dems and RINOs show that they are living in a September 10th world.

While we need to be assured that our civil liberties are safeguarded, we also need to know that the government is protecting us from terrorists, people that want us dead.

Gore and those of his ilk cloud the issue when they claim that we have lost our freedoms. They are fear-mongers, charging that the privacy of ALL Americans has come under attack by the Great Satan Bush. That's false. Only terrorists or those with terrorist connections need to be concerned about the government listening to their conversations or gathering information on them.

It's very simple. The government is protecting the freedom of innocents by fighting the enemies of freedom. It's not out to destroy our liberties or abuse our rights. There is no malice involved, no power grab, no tyranny.

The ones that do want to take away our rights and our lives, the terrorists, are the government's targets. There is no wholesale "spying" happening, no random wiretapping of Americans.

We are at war.

Three thousand people were slaughtered right here -- in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
Remember?

Gore and the Dems don't.

They really don't understand that we are at war.

That's scary.