I don’t watch much TV because the other folks in my home do not share my taste in programming, but the other night, after everybody else was asleep, I was channel surfing and came across an extremely interesting program on C-SPAN. It was a press conference by a conservative group called the American Freedom Agenda. Their stated goal is to restore the checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the Executive Branch.

The four speakers will be well known to conservative readers. Bruce Fein was a Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and is a constitutional scholar and conservative writer and columnist. David Keene is the Chairman of the American Conservative Union, the nation’s oldest and largest conservative organization. Richard Viguerie is a conservative writer who is considered one of the main architects of the conservative grassroots movement. And Bob Barr is a former Republican Congressman from Georgia who served as the impeachment manager against Bill Clinton. He currently holds the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy of the American Conservative Union.

These four gentlemen were speaking for many “true” conservatives, who put their allegiance to the Constitution above their party affiliation. Among the issues they find troubling about the Bush Administration are: the support of torture of suspected terrorists, the practice of extraordinary rendition – where suspects are kidnapped from another country and imprisoned without any due process, the Administration’s claims of the power to unilaterally declare anyone they wish an “enemy combatant”, the denial of habeas corpus in suspected terrorism cases, programs for warrantless wiretapping and opening of mail, attempts to prosecute journalists under the Espionage Act, and the use of Presidential Signing Statements – which amount to a line-item-veto, which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional. While it is true that other Presidents have issued these statements, Mr. Bush has done it more than all previous Presidents combined, and he has stated that he will not enforce these selected portions of duly passed laws.

And speaking of the passage of laws, Congress was not exempt from criticism. They were excoriated for their failure to exercise their constitutionally obligated power of oversight. During the first six years of the Bush Presidency there has been almost no oversight at all. With the Democrats now controlling both houses of Congress, that is beginning to change.

The title of this piece is a joke, I have too many disagreements with conservatives to ever become one, but it is refreshing to see that many of them share my concerns about the excesses of the current administration.

On a related note, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales represents the worst of President Bush’s government. As the chief law-enforcement officer of the nation, he is in position to make sure that the President stays within the Constitution. But he seems to believe that anything the President wants to do automatically becomes legal because of the power of the office. He has signed off on the legality of torture, of warrantless wiretapping and the military commissions to try the Guantanamo detainees, among other things.

In the latest scandal, which appears to show that Mr. Gonzales and other Administration officials fired US Attorneys for political reasons, the Attorney General may have finally overstepped his authority one too many times. Next to Mr. Bush himself, I can’t think of anyone else who deserves more to be shown the door. He may even be gone by the time you read this.