The revolt of the conservatives marches on

No Checks, Many Imbalances by George Will.

Back in my formative years of voting straight-ticket GOP, I valued what I took as the central pillar of conservativism: that the two main roles of government are to defend our country and stay out of our business.

It still shocks my old sensitivities to see Republican loyalists bent to defending an all-pervasive, unlimited government - precisely what we as Republicans wanted to avoid, last I checked.

As the institutional GOP has solidified its hold on Washington in practice, it has sacrificed its long-term ideological solvency, by so drastically narrowing and walking away with the spectrum of ideas acceptable to the institutional GOP, that few people will be left not feeling alienated by the time they're done. Teddy Roosevelt would be swift-boated as a soft-on-security eco-radical leftist if he came back today.

[Edit] - George Will's piece is brilliantly put together, until the last paragraph. I don't see what nothing more than a retroactive statutory blessing would accomplish, after the Bush team has already denied the authority of Congress to affect its actions one way or another, besides to set a precedent for a show Congress that exists only to rubberstamp what the imperial presidency has already done behind closed doors. There must be a definitive reassertion of Congress's Article 1 powers, that doesn't stop until an effective submission to that role by the presidency.