From the April 2002 Idaho Observer:

Our state of national emergency began long before Sept. 11, 2001

“The United States has been in a state of national emergency since March 9, 1933.”

By The Idaho Observer

Where did the above quote come from? It was lifted from a 1974 report published by the SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL EMERGENCIES AND DELEGATED EMERGENCY POWERS UNITED STATES SENATE.

The committee was formed in January, 1973. One of its first acts was to commission Dr. Harold Relyea of the Library of Congress to write a chronological history of the federal government in times of declared states of emergency. What Dr. Relyea discovered was that by 1973 the U.S. government had 470 emergency powers statutes on the books, none of which had sunset clauses. They had been accumulating since the days of President John Adams. These laws “...affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing ways. These vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule this country without reference to normal constitutional processes. These laws make no provision for congressional oversight nor do they reserve to Congress a means for terminating the 'temporary' emergencies that trigger them into use. No wonder the distinguished political scientist, the late Clinton Rossiter, entitled his post-World War II study on modern democratic states, 'Constitutional Dictatorship.' Emergency government has become the norm.”

So here we have the published work product of a 1973 Senate committee that admits the people of this country have been governed under a constitutional dictatorship for a very long time. There is no evidence to suggest that things have changed since 1974 except to become exponentially more dictatorial. Congress knows exactly how our government has been devolving and why. Our consciences in government just haven't had the decency to make it a campaign issue because abortion, gay rights and traditional family values are more important than vanishing freedom.