Now the right want to make government accountable?

Would you believe it? The very same people who have been arguing that Bush, as Commander in Chief in a time of war, has the power to do whatever he wants and that there is nothing that Congress or the courts should be able to do to stop him; have suddenly realised that this might not be a good thing when it comes to Paulson and bailouts?

We don’t allow this kind of free agency from elected officials, let alone political appointees. Not even in his role of Commander-in-Chief does a President have a mandate that is completely unreviewable.

It’s absurd, and at its heart, it’s un-American, in the sense that America exists precisely because of our desire to rein in government and make it accountable to the people.

It's not a desire which has been much in evidence for the past eight years as these same people fell over themselves to justify Bush's every worst excess.

Glenn Greenwald sums it up best:

How is it humanly possible for that to be written without the author recognizing that everything he claims to oppose is what he's spent the last eight years endorsing? Even given the well-established authoritarian capacity to simultaneously embrace two precisely antithetical thoughts, wouldn't a minimally functioning human brain -- the kind necessary just to do things like turn on a computer -- alert someone to the fact that the ideas they are vehemently criticizing are the ones that have animated everything they've said and done for the last eight years? How does a human brain evade that recognition?

Perhaps this absolute 180 degree U-turn is motivated by the fact that the next President might be a Democrat? We will now watch the very people who argued for Bush's unlimited executive power start to argue that it is the job of Congress to limit the president's executive reach.

And they'll do it without even blushing. They are all now beginning to resemble John McCain's campaign team. The truth is whatever position you happen to currently hold.

Tags: Right wingers, Bush, executive power, Paulson, 180 degree turn, U-turns