GORE:TEXT OF SPEECH Up at Raw Story

[kpete]

Text of Gore speech, January 16, 2006

For those having trouble with C-Span, as I did, Raw Story has the text-
some highlights:

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

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."

Complete text:

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Text_of_Gore_speech_0116.html

[msongs]

1. so, will democrats confirm alito or not? nt

[applegrove]

2. I don't think any Dems are planning on 'confirming' Alito. They

just cannot stop it - unless they go to war. And that would would the agenda into the hands of the WH...leading up to 2006 elections.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

3. It's time to go to war

The White House is unpopular and the "nuclear option" is even more unpopular.

Exercising the nuclear option might well cost the Pukes both houses of congress.

[Roland99]

4. Amazing how much we miss simple elegance in the spoken/written word.

And it's a damn shame that we're so enamored when we hear it.

It should be the norm.

[Demeter]

5. It Reads Like A Bill of Impeachment

It's cetainly too damn long for public consumption.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

6. It will give dem guests on talking head shows something to reference

The details are more than I enjoy reading, but the gist is dead on.

9/11 didn't change a single line of the constitution.

The authorization to use force didn't authorize any spying.

Bush is clearly in violation of the law here and has clearly established a pattern of abusing power.

[enough]

7. Thanks for posting this. (nt)

[Quixote1818]

8. This is an important pharagraph

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.