"Bush won't misuse it. It'll only be used on terrorists," states one writer.

Okay, let's pretend that's true (historical evidence to the contrary). In the early 1930's, in response to a recent crime wave, the right-of-center Weimar Republic passed several "vital, necessary" laws registering firearms and prohibiting Gypsies from owning them. Five years later, a left-of-center leader was in power and used those same laws, amending them as needed, to consolidate his power. The result was World War II and the murder of millions of what the US might today refer to as "unlawful enemy combatants."

Writes Joe Wolverton II:

"Those who fail to see the dire gravity of this legislation and who prefer to take refuge in the naive partisan belief that President Bush and the Republican Congress would never abuse this tremendous power, should contemplate well the fact that both the White House and Congress may very possibly change to Democrat control in the near future. Then will the supporters of the Bush administration's grasp for power have a leg to stand on to even protest, let alone stop, dictatorial exercise of the same power under a Democrat regime run by Clinton, Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Schumer, and the like?"

Like most of this administration's recent legislation and "signing statements," the MCA is a knee-jerk reaction, a product of short-term thinking that will inevitably be used for evil, just as the "vital, necessary" laws of the Weimar Republic were.