Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror

The abuses of the Bush White House—old news? Far from it. The work of the next administration will be to undo the damage that's been done, and this book will be the guide. As chief counsel to the Church Committee investigating executive branch abuses in the early 1970s, Fritz Schwarz is uniquely qualified to comment on the current administration's power grab.

Called a "masterly account of the roots of contemporary executive over-reaching" by former vice president Walter Mondale, Unchecked and Unbalanced puts our current political situation in historical perspective. A new introduction written for this paperback edition looks at the steps a new administration will need to take to restore the checks and balances of American government.

Schwarz (whom Bob Herbert of the New York Times described as one of America's "quiet patriots") and his co-author Aziz Huq, director of the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center, find today's abuses of a different, more frightening magnitude than those of the past. Whereas previous presidents and their staffs have sought to hide actions outside the law, this administration has instead sought publicly to justify NSA domestic spying, torture, rendition, and black sites through contorted and flawed legal reasoning ultimately designed to create a monarchical presidency.