Recent letters to this paper (Maurice C. Fillion, June 7; Marilyn Lejonhud, June 19) express the readers’ fear for our country, based on what the writers refer to as unprecedented attempts by President Bush to extend his power.

Surely neither reader remembers the bold and (some might say) arrogant steps President Lincoln took to expand the powers of the presidency for the purpose of preserving the union. They may not be aware of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt to stack the Supreme Court by adding six new justices. Apparently, they don’t recall Southern Democrats’ use of the filibuster to prevent civil rights legislation, as well as subsequent attempts by Congress to block President Nixon’s appointment of Gerald Ford as vice president in a futile bid to overturn a landslide election and turn the White House over to their party.

The dissolution of due process in the name of a misguided and ineffectual drug war by the Carter and Reagan administrations also seems to have escaped these readers’ memories, as well as similar trashing of due process by the Clinton administration in similarly dubious battles against sexual harassment and domestic violence.

In 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno, a Clinton appointee, demanded the resignation of every prosecuting attorney in the country, an action more closely resembling Adolf Hitler’s Crystalnacht than any other in the history of this country’s government.

Doubtless such concerned readers were simply unaware of these precedents and not simply overlooking them for some other reason.

Chris Mendros, Lewiston

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