We have issued a blank check for many!

With midterm elections just around the corner maybe it's time for us to start taking a harder look at what happened to "our" civil liberties. What once took for granted as the cornerstone of being an American who seems to be disappearing on an almost daily basis.

The White House had more than a little 'upset with the New York Times broke the news when their highly classified program to monitor bank accounts. This story came just as the storm over "Wire Taps" had finally begun to ease off. President Bush has called them (the New York Times), shameful and said the story had caused "great damage" to America.

We can or should continue to allow "our" presidents the right to use its constitutional responsibility for national security to trample over "our" civil liberties. Our first amendment allows freedom of the press questioning the government, Jefferson believed that democracy could easily descend into tyranny and a vigorous free press was necessary to prevent our future leaders to be too full of themselves. We (the press) have not always understood, but without us questions like Pages Pentagon, Watergate and the recent tragedy at Haditha would never see the light of day.

In the coming months, we must listen carefully to the debates on this topic. The government's assertion that we must leave no obstacles in the way it uses its powers to protect our security could easily disguise their desire to increase executive power. Justice Oliver Wendell Homes wrote the famous: "The best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the market competition". They (our leaders) would do well to remember that we are to judge us (the people) who are the political leaders "our.

Let's look at some of the problems we are facing right now. We have tens of thousands of Americans still displaced after the storm last year, hundreds of thousands of our elderly going without food to pay for more than a health problem and the homeless that would shame a third world country. Surely it is time we (the people) began to demand solutions from our leaders to these problems. How can we put the rest of the world to rights, when we can not put our own house in order.

There is an arrogance of incumbency that comes from a rate of 98% re-election. These people (our leaders) will spend billions of dollars in time to get re-elected. I never understood why we allow these people to spend this kind of money to get elected. After all, most of these jobs in less than a hundred thousand dollars a year.

If they manage to raise such large sums of money for election campaigns because we are still living with the same old problems? We issued a blank check too many!