Who's Attacking the Constitution? Citing the Threat of Terrorism, a Cabal of Influential Saboteurs Is Proposing Assorted Amendments That Would Destroy Our Constitutional Checks and Balances

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The Continuity of Government Commission (COG) has burst onto the scene with great fanfare. Virtually unknown a year ago, its reports and press conferences now command headlines and the rapt attention of major news networks. In record time, it has launched a movement to amend the U.S. Constitution, ostensibly to correct the document's shortcomings relative to the Age of Terrorism.

It helps, of course, that the commission boasts an impressive lineup. Its honorary co-chairs are former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Its co-chairs are former White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler and former Senator Alan Simpson. Other prominent COG members include former House Speakers Tom Foley and Newt Gingrich, Clinton Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, Reagan Chief of Staff Kenneth Duberstein, Clinton adviser and confidant Strobe Talbott, Bush Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin, Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume.

The commission wields considerable clout that it is using to force-feed the American public what it claims are urgently needed remedies for the plague of terrorism. A close look at the COG proposals and the individuals and organizations behind them, however, shows that there is more cause to fear the offered cure than the potential illness. In short, the individuals leading the COG initiative and the groups backing the effort have been involved in a decades-long subversive campaign to overturn the Constitution. They are publicly on record in favor of striking down the Constitution's checks and balances and its separation of powers. Many of them have openly advocated transforming our republic into a parliamentary system similar to that of various European governments. Over the past two decades they have pushed hard for a constitutional convention (con-con) for the purpose of restructuring our government based on the parliamentary model, which would be more conducive to centralized control than our present constitutional system. Now, in this current "crisis," they are attempting to achieve piecemeal what they have failed to …