[mburbank]

I believe it is a two pronged strategy for concentrating power in the executive.

One prong is the cumbersome legal process of actually writting laws that give the President greater and greater powers.

At the same time they casually break those laws to excercise powers not yet written into law.

There is some small (Very small) debate as to wether a crime has taken place here. Gonzales argues that the President acquired powers suprior to laws when congress granted him authority to use all neccesary force in the W.O.T. but absolutely no one is arguing that ths is a particularly strong legal defense. If this is determined to be a crime, W committed it 30 t6imes and publicly stated his intent to go on doing it. That is WAY beyond the high crimes statute for impeachment.

Concider that Clinton was impeached for a single act of purgery.

I strongly doubt he will be impeached, as many of the same republicans who inisted Clintons impeachment was strictly about Presidents not being above the law will have the stomach to pursue their own commnader in chief. This is a legitimate constitutional crisis. It can go one of three ways. Their is no determination of crime by, one assumes the Supreme court. We will have then established that the Presidents power is supreme and determined by him without checks or balances. We will no longer be a democracy by definition. We will be an autocracy.

The court could determine a crime has been committed, and congress will refuse to fulfill it's duty of impeachment. This would mean that while the President is above the concept of the law, he is comfortably beyond it's reach.

There is an unlikely third scenario, impeachment. I can only imagine this happening if either the Democrats get control of congress, or similar illegal shoes continue to drop (a real possability). There are still some ideologic conservatives among the Republican elite who will eventually have had enough. I think there are already several who have a great deal of trouble with W and where he has taklen the party.