The Washington Times writes: During the Civil War, for instance, President Abraham Lincoln extraconstitutionally summoned an army, expended unappropriated funds, unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and suppressed speech friendly to the Confederacy. Congress belatedly ratified Lincoln’s legislative usurpations.
Keep in mind this is being said in defense of President Bush’s own extraconstitutional actions. This is why I have no respect for Abraham Lincoln, one of my childhood heroes. He was a dictator; regardless of whether you approve of the Civil War or not, Lincoln was no friend of freedom, the Emancipation Proclamation notwithstanding. Like Bush, he had his own Guantanamo Bay and then some, jailing more than 10,000 New Yorkers for daring to speak out against the war and the draft.
I’d never questioned that Bush would be re-elected, but this travesty of an amnesty program may yet sink him. When thinking die-hard conservatives like Michael Savage and John Derbyshire are against you, your base is looking a little shaky. The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are over, and unless the president has a new invasion in mind, we could see again how wartime politicans don’t tend to fare too well once the guns fall silent. See George Bush Sr. and Winston Churchill for details.