Al Gore made a fine speech today about the risks of broad executive power. It's not long, and worth reading.
The speech isn't solely about the NSA wiretapping legal crisis (although it certainly covers that issue carefully). It's more an indictment of the entire idea of unconstrained Presidential discretion.
We seem to live in a time of "inherent" and unquestioned powers, a time when "you're either with us or against us," when every conversation is a litmus test of loyalty. The K Street Project is just one symptom of this problem; there are so many others that are far more serious. As Dean Koh said (and he's quoted by Gore), "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution." Perhaps this President won't go that far, but the next one might -- that's Gore's point.
Gore even got in a plug for the internet, as his very last word of concern:
It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.
Back in 1994, Gore said this:
A nascent GII [Global Information Infrastructure] already exists. What we seek is a superior GII, one that has higher capacity, is fully interactive, faster, and more versatile. One that is less expensive to use than existing systems, and more accessible to all the people of the world. But our goal is not merely technological advancement – more bandwidth, faster switching, more powerful processing capability, and greater compression and storage capacity. We view technology not as an end in itself but as the means through which the GII can realize its potential to improve the well-being of all people on this planet.
Some good speeches.