Explain how the farmers of the constitution intended the separation of powers to work

Democratic Congress and administration," says Tea Party leader Michael Johns.

Is this a new fight?

Actually, it's a recurring theme in American history. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was portrayed as a tyrant who had trampled the Constitution - and states' rights. Among his sins, according to the Southern states, were imposing the nation's first income tax and insisting that slave states remain in the Union. In the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, government attempts to improve labor conditions sparked a debate on laissez-faire economics not unlike the one raging in Washington today. In the 1920s, the Republican U. S. Solicitor General James Beck warned that because of the erosion of traditional morals and personal liberty, "The Constitution is in graver danger today than at any other time in the history of America."