When Did Believing In Checks and Balances Become a "Liberal" Position?

I'm 57 years old and I remember the Watergate era quite well. So I found it interesting to see John Dean testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. His basic point is that our system of government is based on the premise that no one is above the law. Unfortunately, this current administration just doesn't seem to believe that. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the FISA law is really pretty straightforward and unless you can show me a statute that supersedes it, the Bush Administration is breaking the law. FISA was enacted specifically to deal with wiretapping abuses that were performed by the Nixon administration.

While we can hope that the current administration hasn't used the program to hurt their political enemies, we simply have no way of knowing one way or the other. Senator Feingold echoed Ronald Reagan's saying: "Trust, but verify". We simply have no way to verify. There is no check and balance mechanism. I'm not that trusting of ANY administration.

I was a history major in college and I remain an unabashed admirer of this country's founding fathers - despite their flaws I have yet to see any nation-building exercise that has gone nearly as well given the existing institutions they had to work with.

They were rightfully suspicious of unchecked executive power and did their best to devise a system that would provide some sort of counterbalancing equality between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. They hadn't thrown off British rule for nothing. Glen Greenwald's post (which Senator Feingold quoted today) and the "What Would the Founders Say?" post in response are well worth the time to read if you care about the long-term viability of our system of government.

I would argue that by any traditional definition, holding an administration accountable for ignoring a law that it was sworn to protect is a conservative position - but you'd not get that idea from most of the mainstream media.

Update: Anonymous liberal writes, "Even if you trust Bush to use this power only on terrorists and never on anyone else, can you really say the same about all future presidents?"

My point exactly.

UPDATE: A commenter pointed out a possible misinterpretation of my basic point. I was not trying to imply that liberals are not in favor of upholding the constitution. Hell, they are the only ones who currently seem to take it seriously. I was deploring the abandonment of that core American value by self-proclaimed "conservatives" despite the fact that it is a traditional American value. The generic definition of conservatism, as I understand it, is something like "opposition to rapid change in governmental and societal institutions." I consider the abandonment of our systems of check and balances and accountability to be a rapid change in our governmental institutions.