Their basic argument is that government created the problem, so the only solution is to give government more power; inflation created the crisis, so the only solution is more inflation.

This argument is leavened with dire prognostications of what will happen if Congress doesn't immediately give the President unprecedented power to spend money without any check. It's the same argument he used to ramrod the Patriot Act through after 9/11.

Don't fall for the scare stories!

Surprisingly, these excellent bills are sponsored by the ultra-leftists of Congress, Anna Eschoo (D-CA) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), but they are uncharacteristically short bills -- only one page each. And they are perfectly consistent with the language and original intent of the Eighth Amendment banning "cruel and unusual punishments."

It's a sad day for America when we have to look to Ted Kennedy and Anna Eschoo for leadership in defending the Constitution, a fact that should perhaps be noted in a letter to so-called "conservative" Republican congressmen.

Update March 8, 2008 - President Bush will say in his weekly radio address today that he would veto any legislation containing a ban on waterboarding because it would put the security of the nation at risk. The legislation will likely not be passed as a bill on its own, but rather attached as an amendment to this year's authorization bills.

Summary: President Bush asked Congress on September 19 to make the misnamed "Protect America Act" permanent. The bill gave Congress' approval for unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping for six months. Wiretaps without a warrant and probable cause, as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, are blatantly unconstitutional. The legislation became "necessary" after a secret FISA court ruled that President Bush's wiretapping program was unconstitutional.

After President Bush repeatedly told the American people on at least seven separate occasions that he legally needed to get a court warrant in order to conduct a telephone wiretap, Bush admitted to the nation last year that he had ordered the National Security Agency to tap every American's telephone calls' time and duration and store them permanently in a mammoth database. In addition, he admitted to listening in on perhaps millions of international phone calls made internationally, and to obtaining and storing the American people's banking information - all without a warrant, as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires.

Summary: The bloody civil war in Iraq that has nothing to do with U.S. national security. Begun in 2003 under the purported rationale that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) and ties to the terrorist group al Qaeda, the WMDs never materialized, and the pre-war intelligence that the Bush administration purported to demonstrate Hussein had ties to al Qaeda actually proved that there were no ties and that Hussein had been a longstanding enemy of al Qaeda.

Update April 20: The Right Source has recieved an action alert from the American Family Association indicating that some liberal Democratic leaders want to to add the free speech suppression elements of S.1 to H.R.984. While there is nothing wrong with H.R.984 as it stands on April 20, it is important that constitutionalists contact their representatives and demand that the free speech suppression elements of S.1 stay out of the bill.

Summary: The U.S. Senate came close to passing a bill that would have created a heavy federal regulatory burden for grass roots organizations, requiring staff organizers to file a federal report every time they tried to influence more than 500 people. Clearly against the First Amendment, which declares that Congress shall make no law & abridging the freedom of speech, the U.S. Senate adopted an amendment by Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) that deleted this obnoxious section, and then passed the bill. Because the Bennett Amendment passed by a narrow 55-43 vote, we must be vigilant that the speech-strangling language is not inserted in the House version.

Summary: U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Compean are currently serving prison terms for doing their job: stopping a shipment of 800 pounds of marijuana and defending themselves when threatened by an admitted drug smuggler. The agents were imprisoned on charges of attempted murder after a trial that relied principally on the testimony of the admitted drug dealer, along with "evidence" from the Department of Homeland Security later proven to be false.

Important - Have Congress Investigate Torture and Prison Camps

Summary: President Bush ordered the CIA to set up detention camps where detainees - including American citizens - can be imprisoned and tortured without trial! Torture has been used on a majority of detainees - even though a majority also turned out to be innocent of any acts of terrorism, and were released without charges. These are clear violations of the Sixth Amendment (right to trial by jury) and Eighth Amendment (right against torture) to the U.S. Constitution. Congress needs to investigate these torture camps, put a stop to them, and those responsible for torture, denial of due process, and other offenses must be brought to trial themselves.