The Revolution Will Not Be Podcast, Blogged or Wikied

Columnist Joshua Greenbaum has been commenting on IT for as far back as I can remember. His most recent article, "The Revolution Will Not Be Podcast," helps to deflate some of the hype around Web 2.0.

Josh doesn't believe that so-called tech revolutions over the past 20 years -- such as "the PC revolution, the Mac revolution, the Windows revolution, the Unix revolution, the business process re-engineering revolution, the client-server revolution, the ERP revolution, the open-source revolution, and, more recently and most tellingly, the dot-com revolution" -- were indeed all that revolutionary. He writes:

Each one promised to sweep aside the old and wholly replace it with the new. Each proposed ways to disintermediate the sinners of the past from their manifold sins and show the world how the one true way could change everything we say and think and do. And each, by the time it had run its course, proved that "the more it changes, the more it remains the same" trumps "vive la revolution" in the slogan wars every time.

Personally, I disagree with Josh's assessment that revolutions mean "sweeping aside the old and wholly replacing it with the new." Rather, I prefer to think in terms of paradigm shifts, especially in terms of revolutionary changes to the user interface. Paradigm shifts create new possibilities.

Do you remember old-fashioned batch systems which depended on punch cards or magnetic tapes? They were revolutionarily different than the online transactions processing systems that succeeded them. Mind you, online transaction processing systems, such as those built using IBM's CICS with 3270 terminals, didn't really replace or even supercede older batch systems. Rather, they enabled the introduction of entirely new types of applications that had previously been impossible to develop.

The next major wave of software user interface evolution depended on character-based asynchronous terminals, such as DEC's VT100s. Where 3270s displayed entire pages with each communication interaction, VT100s interacted with the host computer one character at-a-time. This allowed portions of a display screen to incrementally change based on a user's input.

The original PCs were quite similar to VT100s except in the revolutionary way that they supported direct memory mapping to the display. This powerful capability eventually led to a Mac-like GUI interface known as WIMP -- windows, icons, menus, and pointing devices (or windows, icons, mouse, and pull-down menus).

Next came Web browsers which, like 3270s, displayed entire pages with each communication interaction.

Now, with the emergence of AJAX (which is reminiscent of VT100s where portions of a screen can be dynamically modified), we're beginning to see new kinds of applications such as what's demonstrated by Google Maps.

Each major paradigm shift brings with it a whole new class of application capabilities. That doesn't necessarily mean that it eliminates all that preceded it. Of course, problems are often defined in terms of available solutions. So it's not surprising that once a new tool is invented, practitioners often tend to look at every problem in terms of how to solve it using the new technology.

Eleven Score and Ten Years Ago

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address began with the famous line: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." He ended that speech with the equally famous and well-remembered line: "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

I wonder if Lincoln were alive today, in addition to changing to: "Eleven score and ten years ago", he'd also modify his speech to "government of the money, by the money, and for the money". After all, Honest Abe would never lie.

Yahoo! Does AJAX Too!

The Yahoo! Developer Network features both the Yahoo! User Interface Library and the Yahoo! Design Patterns Library.

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• The Yahoo! User Interface Library is a free, open source set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications.
  
  The UI Library is a set of JavaScript components, including:
  
  
  
  • dynamic UI elements, like:
    • drag and drop
    • tree views
    • animation
  
  
  • underlying functionality, like:
    • custom events
    • cross-browser XMLHttpRequest connections for building AJAX applications
  
  



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• The Yahoo! Design Patterns Library are a collection of solutions for common web design problems.



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Selling the Computer Revolution

When it comes to computing, I'm practically a fossil. My earliest experiences began back in 1965 when I was enrolled in an honors high school math class. My teacher, Miss Johnson, Ed.D., had arranged for her students to create and run BASIC programs. We accessed a GE mainframe running at MIT via a 110-baud teletype with an attached papertape reader and punch. The TTY communicated at 10 characters per second. Each character was transmitted asynchronously as 11 bits: 1 start bit; 7 ASCII bits; 1 parity bit; and 2 stop bits (2 stop bits were required to give the printhead sufficient time to return to its initial starting position).

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California has created a collection of old Marketing Brochures that are priceless.

I remember purchasing an Apple II computer back in 1978. It literally connected to my TV set which it used for for its visual display, and like the TTY, the Apple II keyboard only supported uppercase characters.



Check out the original Apple logo that appeared on a 1976 operation manual from an Apple I. It's quite different than the Apple logo from my Apple II which consisted of multi-colored horizontal bands shaped like an Apple with a bite taken out.



In 1969, I began working with DEC's 12-bit PDP-8 minicomputers. I can vividly remember when its successor, the 16-bit PDP-11 minicomputer, was originally introduced. Check out the mini-skirt on the brochure cover below.




My first real job after graduate school was at Control Data Corp. where I had the privilege of working on the world's first supercomputer, the CDC 6600, designed by the legendary Seymour Cray. This 60-bit ones-complement machine (it supported both positive and negative zeroes) was surrounded by twenty peripheral processors, one of which drove its awesome operator console, shown below:




Thank you Computer History Museum for a wonderful walk down memory lane.

** Dick ** Rove ** Bush ** Lay **

The names of the people in recent scandal-driven headlines are enough to make one blush: ** Dick ** Rove ** Bush ** Lay ** !!! Toss into the confusion the one-word difference between William Jefferson and William Jefferson Clinton, and it's not surprising that all the sexual innuendo has people once again pondering what "is" is.

Seriously, what I find most difficult to comprehend is how it is possible for Lay, who was found guilty by a jury on every count with which he was charged, to continue to remain free on bond until his sentencing hearing in September. Lay was also found guilty in a separate case of one count of bank fraud and three counts of making false statements to banks. The charges against Lay carry a maximum penalty in prison of 45 years for the corporate trial and 120 years in the banking trial.

I know that Lay had to relinquish his passport. He also posted a $5 million bond secured with family-owned properties, but I tend to believe that's pocket change for someone who, along with his sidekick Skilling, invested close to $70 million into their legal defense. I wonder what the Vegas odds are that this guy is going the route of illegal emigrant. Why isn't this guy locked up NOW? What a country! Everyone is equal -- unless you're rich.

Only in George Bush's America could 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to repeal the federal estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion (see United for a Fair Economy report). The Senate is expected to attempt to repeal the federal estate tax in the first several months of 2006. The House of Representatives passed a repeal measure in April 2005.

Repealing the estate tax will cost the U.S. Treasury $1 trillion over the first ten years of full repeal. Passing the repeal will make it so that 99.73% of all estates will be able to pass on 100% of their assets to heirs tax-free (see United for a Fair Economy report). What a country -- especially if you're rich!!!

American ITIL

Just like American Idol, ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) got its start across the pond over in the U.K.

I recently attended an IBM Briefing on IT Service Management where I learned what IBM Tivoli and IBM Global Services are doing in the area of ITIL.

IBM's 3-layer approach approach to IT Service Management focuses on utilizing ITIL's standard process models layered on top of an open, federated Change and Configuration Management Database that serves as an IT Service Management Platform. At the base of the stack are IBM's suite of traditional IT operational management products that Tivoli has been providing for years.

The IBM Tivoli Unified Process (ITUP) details how IT Service Management can be achieved by making ITIL actionable. ITIL is a collection of best practices that are intended to help an IT organization measure its contributions in terms of business value by integrating internal IT processes across an integrated management database. In other words, managing IT using the same process and database techniques that are used for managing the business at large.

Traditionally, IT has often behaved much like the cobbler whose children wore no shoes. IT preached to business leaders the gospel about needing to integrate information, processes, technology, and people. But internally, IT was typically run as a collection of poorly automated technology silos. The challenge for IT Service Management is to turn this around by automating the delivery of automation.

Just as Technology Architecture organizes and classifies products into product categories, IT Service Management organizes and classifies IT processes into process categories. Where products in a Technology Architecture are tracked in terms of life cycle (e.g., emerging, mature outside your company, mature inside your company, end of life, etc.), the processes associated with IT Service Management must be broken down by roles that show who performs what activities, and when. Collectively, many different people and many different tools collaborate during process workflows.

Data and Process have been marching forward in lock step ever since DATA DIVISIONS and PROCEDURE DIVISIONS first appeared together in COBOL programs. These two -- Data and Process -- became forever intertwined at the start of the object-oriented programming revolution. Soon thereafter objects evolved into components, which today have emerged into services. ITIL and IT Service Management, together with SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture), are the driving forces propelling enterprise computing forward into the 21st-century.

Fine Employers of Illegal Immigrants

Americans want immigration laws enforced. That means getting serious about controlling the border. But employers, too, must be prohibited from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

In Bush's presidential address to the nation on the topic of immigration reform and border security, he requested a legalization initiative which calls for "the ability to apply for citizenship for those who can show a history and 'roots' in the United States, payment of a penalty for violation of immigration laws, payment of taxes and show a record of employment and an ability to speak English."

Most likely, applicants would be expected "to have to provide a two to five year history of presence in the United States, a clean criminal record, proof of tax payments, and payment of penalties in line with current penalties paid for visa overstays in the amount of $1,000."

Processing naturalization applications will take time and force applicants to wait their turn with respect to persons who "played by the rules and followed the law." Waiting periods for legal immigrants vary dramatically based on whether they are sponsored by a spouse (three year wait), family member (five year wait), or even longer for normal consular processing and/or labor certification.

No Amnesty
Illegal immigrants who broke the law should not get away scot free.


Employer Accountability
Let's pay -- as a reward -- a percentage of fines collected from employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers. To receive a reward, illegal immigrants would be required to submit accurate and detailed records of their employment history. The reward money could be used to help people return home.

To Rove, Or Not To Rove, That Is the Indictment

The politically left-leaning truthout.org blog has reported "that attorneys for Karl Rove were handed an indictment either late in the night of May 12 or early in the morning of May 13" but that "the office of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will not confirm, will not deny, will not comment on its investigation or on truthout.org's report."

The current speculation is that "Rove may be turning state's evidence," and that "that the scope of Fitzgerald's investigation may have broadened."

Is Vice President Cheney now in the cross hairs of the special prosecutor's investigation? Will the mystery behind the individuals and events directly related to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame ever be solved? Will the public ever learn about what really happened? All these questions reminds me of the old TV cartoon show The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Tune in next week to find out if Boris and Natasha had a threesome with Dick.

Baseball Has It Bass Ackwards

Today marks the start of this season's interleague play in Major League Baseball. That's where teams from the American League play against teams from the National League. I suppose these games are most enjoyable for people who you live in places like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco/Oakland, where there are bragging rights on the line between regional rivalries.

Interleague games began back in 1997 (other than the World Series and exhibition games). But, in my opinion, there's a problem with interleague games. The issue revolves around the fact that American League teams and National League teams each play by different rules -- namely, the American League supports the Designated Hitter Rule while the National League does not.

According to section 6.10 of Baseball's Official Rules, "In the event of inter league competition between clubs of Leagues using the Designated Hitter Rule and clubs of Leagues not using the Designated Hitter Rule, the rule will be used or not used as is the practice of the home team."

This is bass ackwards. A much better solution would allow fans in American League cities to watch games played according to National Leagues rules, and for fans in National League cities to watch games according to American League rules. That way fans could get a chance to experience something quite different when a team from the other league visits their city.

Personally, I love the Designated Hitter Rule. I just love watching runs being scored. I've been an avid baseball fan my entire life, dating back to an era when there were only eight teams in each league and the farthest west where major league baseball was ever played was Missouri (both St. Louis and Kansas City). When I was growing up my biggest heroes were Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams.

I've seen my fair share of pitchers hit. Most couldn't hit their IQ (and baseball players generally aren't the brightest bulbs in the pack to start with). I'd prefer watching David Ortiz play as designated hitter any day of the week.

I have always loved watching games played at Fenway Park because of how its quirkiness plays a role in how runs get scored. I love its nooks, crannies, asymmetries, and the Green Monster. I wish baseball would install two heavily-padded wooden telephone poles out in both left- and right-center fields, at 375 feet. That would add a Pachinko-like quality to well-hit fly balls.

Google Gifts

Google continues to spew out wonderful software innovations beyond just search -- all at no charge. Google Earth provides a 3D interface to the planet. Google's SketchUp is a simple tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects, etc. Google Calendar is a terrific tool for organizing schedules. Google Blogger is the software I use for creating and publishing the ITscout Blog. Google Gmail and Groups provide cool email and group discussion capabilities, respectively. For a complete list of Google's set of awesome free tools, see More Google products.

The latest Google software marvel is the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), a Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications easy. With GWT, you can develop and debug AJAX applications in the Java language using the Java development tools of your choice. When you deploy your application to production, the GWT compiler translates your Java application to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.

Google Web Toolkit ships with a Java-to-JavaScript compiler and a special web browser that helps you debug your GWT applications.

Here's the GWT development cycle:

1. Use your favorite Java IDE (like Eclipse) to write and debug an application in the Java language, using as many (or as few) GWT libraries as you find useful. You can use GWT's set of UI components (called Widgets) to construct the UI elements that make up your AJAX application. Like traditional UI frameworks, Widgets are combined in Panels that determine the layout of the widgets contained within them. GWT supports a variety of built-in Widgets that are useful for AJAX applications, including hierachical trees, tab bars, menu bars, and modal dialog boxes. GWT also has built-in support for remote procedure calls and other more sophisticated web application features.


2. Use GWT's Java-to-JavaScript compiler to distill your application into a set of JavaScript and HTML files that you can serve with any web server. Your applications run as pure JavaScript and HTML, compiled from your original Java source code with the GWT Java-to-JavaScript compiler. When you deploy your GWT applications to production, you deploy this JavaScript and HTML to your web servers.


3. Confirm that your application works in each browser that you want to support, which usually takes no additional work.

AJAX is what makes Google Maps so cool. AJAX is what enables Google Maps to be dynamic, interactive, and draggable with no clicking and waiting for graphics to reload each time you want to view the adjacent parts of a map.

In my humble opinion (IMHO), Google Web Toolkit is a gift from the Gods. Thank you Google.

Simple Solutions To Complex Problems

I've said it before; I'll say it again. The masses are asses. Our leaders are stupid.

There's a crisis with Social Security. Why not remove the salary cap from the payroll tax? Why should people stop contributing to Social Security on wages they earn above $90,000? Also, why not have means tests for Social Security benefits? Why should the former head of ExxonMobil collect a Social Security monthly benefit check upon retirement?

There's a crisis with Medicare. Why doesn't the government negotiate prescription drug prices like the Veteran Administration does?

There's an energy crisis. Why isn't mass transit free? Why doesn't the government offer tax incentives for people who install solar hot water heaters and solar paneled roofs?

There's an illegal immigration crisis. First, why not hold accountable the companies who hire illegal, undocumented workers? Eliminate the opportunity for illegal immigrants to find work and you'll eliminate the illegal immigration problem. Also, instead of building triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border, why not install a series of blimps with infrared detection gear? Then law enforcement officers, or National Guard soldiers, can be quickly dispatched to arrest intruders.

There's an education crisis. Why not re-introduce a service-style draft where all young Americans are required to volunteer to serve their country for two years after completing their education? People who volunteer to serve in the armed forces ought to receive higher pay than others. Perhaps people who volunteer to teach in disadvantaged neighborhoods ought to have their student loans forgiven. Everyone should serve in some capacity. We as a nation need to return to the spirit of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Unfortunately the future looks pretty bleak. Whoever succeeds Bush is going to inherit a war in Iraq that can't be won militarily, tax cuts set to expire in 2010, and a national debt rapidly approaching $10 trillion that's growing an average of $1.78 billion per day.

Bush and IT

Regardless of whether or not the controversial National Security Agency data mining program directly threatens the Fourth Amendment's "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," it most certainly represents an astounding technological marvel from an IT perspective.

Think about the underlying information-trolling technology that enables a database program to profile virtually every American's phone conversations, giving government instant access to detailed knowledge of the numbers, and thus indirectly the identities, of whomever we phone; when and for how long; and what other calls the person phoned has made or received. Even if one trusts the president's promise not to connect all the dots to the degree the technology permits, the act of collecting all those dots in a form that permits their complete connection is a realization of the Big Brother society that George Orwell described in his novel "1984."

Although the Bush administration may have successfully helped propel forward IT's technological innovativeness, the same cannot be said about the IT industry in general. Unfortunately, the health and well-being of IT departments have pretty much followed the same trajectory as Bush's approval ratings.

Prior to Bush's presidency, IT was almost impervious to market swings in the economy. The staggering nonstop growth of IT stocks like Microsoft, Cisco, and Intel, even after severe market crashes like in October 1987, was cited as tangible proof of America's never-ending ingenuity. But none of these stocks, nor those for hundreds of other IT companies, have ever come close to fully rebounding from the triple whammy of the Y2K debacle, the Internet bubble, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Other parallels between IT and the Bush administration include loss of faith in the future and gross managerial incompetence.

According to Gartner, IT is now a "non-growth industry" with spending lagging behind general economic growth. Today's conventional wisdom is that there are no compelling reasons for vigorous investment in IT. In other words, businesses have lost faith in their ability to generate returns from technology investments. They have concluded that IT, nowadays, is just a commodity. So, when it comes to IT, there's no longer any tangible value to be achieved by striving for excellence or being innovative. How myopic!

The mistake many business leaders are making is believing that computer networks are pretty much plug-and-play and that industry standards have eliminated the need for them to have to do much systems integration any longer. The reality is that the opportunity to innovate through IT has never been greater. Doing so, however, requires significant paradigm shifts on the part of business management. The loss of faith must be restored. Incompetence must be pushed aside. Business leaders must be willing to nurture and foster innovation.

For an example of software innovation, look at how Boston's new TD Banknorth Garden was sold out for the final 14 Boston Celtics basketball games despite the team's woeful performance on the court (see "Sold out at the Garden"). A tiny Cambridge, Mass. software firm called StratBridge developed a system which enabled the Celtics' executives to see which tickets were not sold, act on the information by designing promotions to sell them, and watch the results live to make sure their promotions were working. This single IT-based innovation is probably going to revolutionize ticket-selling at sporting events as much as frequent flier programs affected the airlines business a generation back. All that's needed is a combination of out-of-the-box thinking and the courage to invest.

Mea Culpa

With the ITscout Blog, I have been guilty of a major faux pas by repeatedly crossing back and forth between it being: 1) a professional blog that focuses on issues related to IT architecture; and 2) a personal blog that indulges in political commentary.

I've rationalized that it's okay for me to do this because ITscout is, and always has been, my personal web site. ITscout is most definitely NOT my company's web site. (ITscout's content is simply made available at no charge for my company's customers.)

Also, the size of the ITscout Blog readership is quite small. I feel that provides me tremendous freedom. Rather than worrying about why more people aren't caring about what I have to say, I simply write my web log as a personal journal.

Perhaps someday I'll seperate my commentary between two different blogs. But for right now, I plan to continue writing on topics that may, or may not, be business related.

Vietnam vs. Iraq

Both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney successfully avoided Vietnam -- the President by serving in the Air National Guard and the Vice President through draft deferments. But I wonder if, in their heart of hearts, either of these politicians ever truly supported America's withdrawal from Southeast Asia. Based on their rhetoric, I seriously doubt it.

I think most Americans agree that the Vietnam War was a very costly mistake -- a blemish on our nation's proud history. We never should have gotten into that war in the first place and we sure as hell should have ended our involvement much sooner than 1973. There was no domino effect. Indeed, in 1978 Vietnam even briefly went to war against its communist ally China. Who knows what to say to the families of over 58,000 Americans who gave their lives for their country in Vietnam?

So, what about Iraq? Most Americans today believe we should never have started this war either. I don't know what to say to the families of over 2,400 Americans who have already given their lives in Iraq. All I can say is that the parallels with Vietnam seem frighteningly similar.

Many dissenting generals have said we needed more soldiers in Iraq -- not to win the war, but to win the peace. Now, it's too late because America is perceived by most Iraqis as occupiers, not liberators. Why did we not have enough troops? The simple answer is because we ended the military draft in 1973. If there were still a draft, you can be sure there would once again be demonstrations in the streets and student strikes on campus, just like there were in the late '60s and early '70s. On the other hand, if America really and truly is at war, why is there no draft? That's unconscionable.

President Eisenhower warned Americans about the military industrial complex -- that combination of U.S. armed forces, arms industry corporations, and associated political and commercial interests. Right there, square in the middle of the bulls eye, you'll find President Bush and Vice President Cheney, orchestrating the unprecedented, obscene profits being generated off this war in Iraq. Follow the money. Then, you'll understand the true purpose of the Iraq War.

Enforcing Illegal Immigration Laws -- Not!

Currently in America there are somewhere between 11 million and 20 million illegal aliens. Citing an official GAO document, dated August 31, 2005, CNN's Lou Dobbs reports that in 2004, only 3 employers were fined for hiring illegal aliens. In fact, during the first four years of Bush's presidency, 2001 through 2004, only 318 employers (out of 5.5 million employers) have been fined for hiring illegal aliens.

As Lou Dobbs suggests, "The problem in our lack of border security and illegal immigration is becoming increasingly obvious: two political parties that are beholden to corporate America, the largest employers of illegal aliens, and the leadership of both parties that are selling out American citizens in search of cheap labor and political advantage."

Lookin' for a Leader

Neil Young's new album, "Living With War," includes the song 'Lookin' for a Leader.'

Lookin' for a leader
To bring our country home
Re-unite the red white and blue
Before it turns to stone

Lookin' for somebody
Young enough to take it on
Clean up the corruption
And make the country strong

Walkin' among our people
There's someone who's straight and strong
To lead us from desolation
And a broken world gone wrong

Someone walks among us
And I hope he hears the call
And maybe it's a woman
Or a black man after all

America has a leader
But he's not in the house
He's walking here among us
And we've got to seek him out

Yeah we've got our election
But corruption has a chance
We got to have a clean win
To regain confidence

America is beautiful
But she has an ugly side
We're lookin' for a leader
In this country far and wide
We're lookin' for a leader
With the great spirit on his side

Someone walks among us
And I hope he hears the call
And maybe it's a woman
Or a black man after all

Frankly, I don't personally care if America's next leader is a black man or a woman. All I want is someone who believes, like the late, great economist John Kennenth Galbraith, that markets and governments must work together to produce:

1. great schools and universites


2. first-rate healthcare for all


3. an environment protected -- not destroyed


4. personal freedom that's not dependent on what people own or or who they know

It's Time To Change America's Motto

In 1956, Congress officially designated 'In God We Trust' as the current national motto superseding 'E Pluribus Unum'. The most common place where the motto is observed is on U.S. currency -- both paper money and coins.

Inflation has shrunk the value of the dollar so much that coins nowadays have become virtually worthless. When was the last time you bought something costing less than a buck? The days of 15-cent hamburgers and 10-cent Cokes are long gone! There isn't even a character on modern day keyboards corresponding to the cent character ( ¢ ).

While it would be extremely difficult because of physical constraints to stamp a longer motto onto coins, there would be no problem printing a lengthier motto onto paper currency. I recommend an Act of Congress that would replace 'In God We Trust' with the 'Serenity Prayer':

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

This new motto would be a much better reflection of the true essence of 21st-century America.

How Does Bush Get Away with Disobeying Laws?

America is fundamentally broken. I'm pretty confident the cause lies somewhere between money and apathy. It's impossible to say which of these two powerful forces contributes more to the stifling of America's liberties.

Wanna get angry? Read Charlie Savage's Boston Globe column entitled "Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws."

The article is an expose disclosing how "President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution."

Sadly, no one seems to care -- not the public, nor the Congress, not even the courts.

The scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty 'to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to 'execute' a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts. Bush and his legal team have been quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files 'signing statements' -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

The statements serve as public notice about how the administration is interpreting the law. But, the documents are being read closely by one key group of people: the bureaucrats who are charged with implementing new laws. Lower-level officials will follow the president's instructions even when his understanding of a law conflicts with the clear intent of Congress. Years down the road, people will not understand why policy doesn't look like the legislation.

Congress can check a president who goes too far. But oversight gets much reduced in a situation where the president and Congress are controlled by the same party. Bush has essentially said that "We're the executive branch and we're going to carry this law out as we please, and if Congress wants to impeach us, go ahead and try it." Although the president is daring Congress to act against his positions, they're not taking action because they don't want to appear to be too critical, given that their own fortunes are tied to the president's because they are all Republicans.

A president who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to challenge him, can make the Constitution simply 'disappear.' The American system of government relies upon the leaders of each branch 'to exercise some self-restraint.' But Bush has declared himself the sole judge of his own powers, and then ruled for himself every time. This attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy, is moving us toward an unlimited executive power.