So Help Me God

It's taken me a couple days to get past the blind rage I had over the president's signing of a bill that starts us down the road to a military dictatorship.

Now that I've been able to form words that don't rhyme with "rock-chucker," I thought I might pass along a helpful tip to the President of the United States about what he's supposed to be doing.

First of all, here's what the Decider thinks his job is:

My job is to protect the American people. It used to be that we could think that you could contain a person like Saddam Hussein, that oceans would protect us from his type of terror. September the 11th should say to the American people that we’re now a battlefield, that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist organization could be deployed here at home.

So, therefore, I think the threat is real. And so do a lot of other people in my government. And since I believe the threat is real, and since my most important job is to protect the security of the American people, that’s precisely what we’ll do.

And, to contrast, here's the oath of office he's sworn twice now:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

He's charged not with protecting the American people, but protecting the Constitution. Instead, he's ignoring it, altering it, and generally defiling it. Awesome.

This might not stick in my craw so much if Bush hadn't made the oath of office such a centerpiece of his 2000 campaign. You may remember this from countless stump speeches and his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention:

So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.

It was a not-too-subtle swipe at Bill Clinton, and one that played well to the conservative base. Still, it's important to note that, in fact, Bush did not swear an oath to uphold the honor and dignity of the office -- and thank God, because he's failed at that too -- but only swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Preserve. Protect. Defend. Pretty simple, right? Not alter by executive order. Not subvert by signing statement. Not undermine through craven legislation that suspends the 800-year-old rights of habeus corpus.

Nope. Preserve. Protect. Defend.

The President has violated his oath of office, plain and simple. (Sure, if he's impeached for this, Bush might throw himself on the mercy of the court by pointing out the "to the best of my ability" clause. But that assumes we still have courts by then.)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure we get these un-American idiots out of office before they destroy this country.

So help me God.

Update: Olbermann.