Chalmers Johnson gets shrill

For those who believe that the structure of government in Washington today bears some resemblance to that outlined in the Constitution of 1787, the burden of proof is on them. The president now dominates the government in a way no ordinary monarch possibly could. Meanwhile the "defense" budgets of the Pentagon dwarf those of the rest of the government and have undermined democratic decision-making in the process. Funds for military hardware are distributed in as many states as possible to ensure that any member of Congress who might consider voting against a new weapons system would be accused of putting some of his constituents out of work.

The Congress regularly goes out of its way to bow down to the president rather than attempt to restore that balance of powers that the Founders envisaged. After the press revealed that the National Security Agency was illegally eavesdropping on the private conversations of American citizens and that President Bush had trashed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the majority leadership in Congress introduced legislation retroactively forgiving him. A Congress that is indifferent to the separation of powers has given up its raison d'etre as surely as the Roman Senate became a mere social club of old aristocrats paying obeisance to Augustus Caesar.

Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Metropolitan Books, 2007.

Reading publishers catalogs is bad for my mental health.

The saddest part is, this is volume 3 of a trilogy by Johnson. Heard anything in the MSM about the first two? Neither have I. Still, better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Maybe these books are part of the change that's in the air, even if the pundits and pooh-bahs and prominent bloggers don't mention it.