To Uphold and Defend the Constitution...

No matter how you look at it, President Bush has failed to keep his oath of office, and done it in spectacular fashion. He keeps saying that he took an oath to "protect the American people." What he actually swore to do was to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, but what he has done is slowly destroy that very same Constitution.

Let's assume for a moment he did, in fact, take an oath to protect the American people. In spite of all the claims he and his flunkies made at the time that no one ever considered that someone might use planes as weapons by flying them into buildings, we now know that the World Trade Center was, in fact, built to withstand such an attack. If the architects and builders could foresee such a thing in the 1970's when the idea that terrorists might attack us on our own soil seemed about as likely as $2-a-gallon gas, then the people charged with preventing it should have at least had an idea it could happen, don't you think?

The truth is, he had numerous warnings about an impending attack on the WTC before 9/11 and did nothing about it. If his oath was truly to protect the American people and he allowed (as we now know he did) the attacks to proceed (assuming he wasn't involved somehow in those attacks), then he again failed miserably to keep his oath.

If he really believes that he has a responsibility to "protect" us, it seems to me that the best way to do that is to keep his oath--the one he actually took, which was to uphold and defend the Constitution. To uphold and defend those values that made us the country that everyone wanted to come to, the beacon of freedom and opportunity to those who lived in oppression and crushing poverty. Not the country those people are fleeing because the government spies on them and throws them in prison for having the temerity to question it and its policies.

The Fourth Amendment says that: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Pretty simple, right? The language is clear enough that even you should be able to understand the intent and know that everything you are doing with your Patriot Act and warrantless wiretaps and using firemen as de facto spies, directly violates the Fourth Amendment. But that Amendment, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, is part of the Constitution which you swore to uphold and defend. Violating the Constitution, any of it, no matter what your reason is, is a violation of the oath of office as President and makes you unfit for the office.