The Executive Branch and the Constitution

regardless of what party is in power (although Civil Service discourages the patronage system, it also builds and perpetuates power).
In recent years, the President’s power to pardon has become a powerful tool of that branch.
The framers of the Constitution intended that power of the president to be used to pardon those who had not taken up arms against Great Britain or those who had actually fought on the side of the Mother Country (Tories). However, since that period, successive presidents have seized upon that power to pardon common criminals and white collar criminals, thus using it as a political tool.
The size of the legislative and judicial branches and their aides has remained relatively constant. On the other hand, the executive branch has grown into an insatiable monster, employing millions of people, either directly or indirectly, in scores of agencies, bureaus, and offices. The executive branch is today one of the largest employers in the United States.
The takeover of the executive branch did not happen overnight. The powerbrokers have very often used war or the threat of war as a pretext that allowed that branch to rise above the remaining two branches and to reduce or eliminate rights guaranteed to Americans under the
Bill of Rights. The attack on the Twin Towers caused Congress to give George W. Bush unprecedented powers. Once again, this paper is not a primer on American rights. However, to make my case that presidents have striven to strengthen the executive branch and curtail
American rights, I offer a few illustrative points about several chief executives.
Woodrow Wilson (1912-1920)
Started a secret group called MI-8, or the Black Chamber, the forerunner of the National
Security Agency (NSA). That organization spied on “friends and foes alike.”
During WWI, Congress passed the Espionage Act in 1917 and the Sedition Act in 1918 to discourage opposition to the war. In its September 2006 internet edition, the UT [University of
Texas at Austin] Watch called those acts “the most serious attacks on the civil liberties of
Americans since the short-lived Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.” UT further states: Wilson tried to strengthen the Espionage Act with a provision giving broad censorship powers directly to the president.
Wilson allowed his postmaster general to use “his new censorship powers to suppress all mail that was socialist, anti-British, pro-Irish, or that in any other way might, in his view, have threatened the war effort.”
Wilson established The Creel Committee on Public Information, which asked all Americans to "report the man who . . . cries for peace, or belittles our efforts to win the war." Send their names to the Justice Department in Washington.”
A 1995 UT Watch report sums up the Wilson administration’s American rights record: “After
World War I, the Wilson administration's attacks on civil liberties increased, now with anticommunism as the excuse. Neither before nor since these campaigns has the United
States come closer to being a police state.* That summation was written, of course, before the events of September 11, 2001.
Franklin Roosevelt (1932-1945)
As early as 1939, Roosevelt allowed British agents to wiretap Americans who were believed to be aiding the Nazi cause.” (The War Years: Part 1, The Failure of the FBI)

Afraid that the U.S. would be drawn into the war in Europe, Congress passed the Neutrality
Act. Yet, despite the intentions of Congress, FDR conspired with Winston Churchill to undermine the Congressional act and restrict American rights.
Once the U.S. entered the conflict, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which incarcerated Japanese citizens. The wording on that order carefully avoided its real purpose, stating that the Armed Forces could designate military zones "from which any or all persons may be excluded."
Later, Roosevelt inspired the formation of the National Committee for Religious Recovery, which allied business and religion against the threat of Communism (thus, providing a precedent for President Clinton’s Infragard).
Roosevelt’s Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover put specified American citizens under surveillance and created secret files on many citizens.
Approved the development of the Atomic Bomb, a secret kept from even his vice president as well members of Congress.
Harry Truman (1945-1952)
Created the National Security Agency, believed by many targets to be the government unit responsible for most of the electronic stalking and mind control.
William J. Clinton (1992-2000)
Established the Infragard, using businesses and other Americans to spy on Americans.
George W. Bush (2000-2008)
Little needs to be said about the usurpation of our rights under Bush. Reeling from the surprise attacks of September 11, 2001, the legislative branch, the Congress, capitulated to the executive branch when it passed the Patriot Act, giving the President unprecedented and unrestrained powers. The language of that act was vague enough to allow the President total leeway in waging the so-called War on Terror. There was not one single limitation on the
President’s power in those statutes.
For almost five years, under the ubiquitous Patriot Act, Bush’s team acted legally in carrying out their illegal activities. Then on August 17, 2006, a lone and little-known United States
District Court judge challenged his power. Without going into the circumstances, I shall simply quote from Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s decision, as seen in Anthony D. Romero’s In Defense

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