As usual, there will be no debating the issue, no "commentary period," and, likely, no hope of stopping this new Clinton onslaught against the Constitution. What will happen, however, is that the president is likely to get away with this, just as he has gotten away with such usurpation of the Constitution since first taking office in 1993.

Naturally the Republican "opposition" is speaking out against this appropriation, but there is nothing in recent GOP history to indicate that action will follow these words. So unless Congress grows a spine, consider millions more acres of public land officially "off limits" to the taxpayers and corporate interests, even though both groups will have to support these lands until the end of time.

Welcome to America 2000 -- where politics is no longer a necessary evil but instead a shell game designed merely to give us the impression that we still have a functioning Republic. No one has played this game more masterfully than William Jefferson Clinton.

These new assaults on our liberties are nothing more than Clinton's ongoing attempt to build some sort of legacy for himself -- other than being an ethically challenged, morally depraved criminal who has run his administration like a bunch of nine-year-olds run their clubhouse. What Clinton doesn't understand, however, is that millions of Americans already believe he has his legacy -- one of almost continual usurpation of the Constitution.

Since he took office, Bill Clinton has written more executive orders, presidential decision directives and proclamations than any of his predecessors. And because he holds his opponents at bay -- either because of the hundreds of FBI files he has or for some other reason -- he has largely been able to get away with the most blatant abuse of our system of government since FDR.

Presidents have always used executive orders; even George Washington used them. The difference is, however, the same as it always has been with Clinton: character. Presidents like Washington used them correctly -- to manage the Executive Branch of government. Others though, and especially Clinton, have used them to govern the country, as if he were a king and his executive orders were monarchical proclamations to be obeyed without question.

So far, most of them have been obeyed without question. Enter the "character issue" again. If Congress was filled -- or even nearly filled -- with character-minded representatives and senators, a class act criminal like Bill Clinton would have been thrown out of office within a year of taking his oath. Draw what conclusions you will from that example, but you and I both know it's the truth. And yet, Congress would have you believe that anytime an unconstitutional executive order or regulation from some government agency is issued, there is nothing they can do about it. That's just a lie, pure and simple.

After all, if Congress really can't do anything about such orders and rules, then why did the Founding Fathers even bother to create a Legislative Branch in the first place? Why didn't the Founders simply establish another monarchy and be done with it?

Obviously our Founding Fathers had the divine insight to foresee Bill Clinton over 200 years before we elected him. What our Founders could never have imagined, however, is that our entire system of government -- all three branches -- could be co-opted by such a hoodlum at the same time. Who could have imagined such a thing would happen, short of a coup?

There is a way out of this political quagmire: Congress needs to reassert its own authority, and it needs to rein in the power of the Executive Branch to match its constitutional limitations. Once that happens, Congress can then go to work disbanding extra-constitutional entities like the Department of the Interior and the dozens of other federal agencies that do nothing but serve as usurpation tools for presidents and congressmen who care nothing about our unprecedented form of government.

It may look grim now, but it will happen if we want it to.