A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government

Former Vice President Al Gore has called on Congress and the public to resist "an excessive power grab" by the Bush administration. The event was bipartisan, with Gore being introducted by former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr, one of the House managers during President Clinton's impeachment trial in 1999. From the speech:

Gore said the wiretaps -- combined with Bush's assertion of the power to hold American citizens indefinitely as "enemy combatants," the authorization of harsh treatment of prisoners and his use of signing statements to declare how he will interpret laws passed by Congress -- have "brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution."

"The disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties," he said.

Gore said the dangers of unchecked executive power can be seen in the war in Iraq, which the administration warned was necessary because Iraq was concealing chemical and biological weapons and trying to produce nuclear arms. No such weapons were found after the March 2003 invasion.

He quoted "1984" author George Orwell, who wrote that people are capable of believing things that aren't true until "a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Full text of the speech from Huffingtonpost.com