All just power is derived from the consent of the governed (John Locke). I've got the family tree to be a DAR, and a couple of my great aunts are actually members. Therefore it is significant to me that Al Gore spoke on MLK day at DAR Hall.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution – our system of checks and balances – was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: “The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.” An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution – an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

It's a compelling speech. It's even more compelling because a presidential candidate who forfeited his race to the presidency is delivering it. Despite winning the popular vote, Al Gore lost the election as the result of a legal decision. Perhaps the most important point in the tragic 2000 election is that Gore abided by the Supreme Court's decision without hesitation.

Almost eight years later, will Bush finally get his commupin's?  ¶ 12:04 PM