Eighteen years ago , Justice Antonin Scalia assumed the prophet's cloak and forecast threats to the Constitution's core balance of powers. A threat, Justice Scalia explained, sometimes comes "in sheep's clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf." Today, another wolf scratches at the door: And it is a beast that has already inflicted heavy damage on the Constitution.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Last week saw an almost unheard of scrambling of allegiances after the FBI searched the congressional office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. While the Constitution's Separation of Powers figured prominently in news of the executive branch decisions to bypass laws against torture and domestic spying, this seemed a wholly unexpected front for the White House's push for executive power.