"No controlling legal authority." Those are the most profound words Al Gore will ever utter. They define the core of the Clinton-Gore years -- their abusive use of government without any accounting to the people.

"No controlling legal authority." That was Al Gore's excuse for flaunting campaign finance laws when he was illegally trolling for contributions on government property. Al Gore's smug defense was on-the-money because he knows that anyone under the protection of Janet Reno's Department of Justice can abuse the law, bend the law, violate the law-free from any serious scrutiny.

When Bill Clinton and Al Gore took the White House their first order of business was getting rid of all 93 United States Attorneys--an act Janet Reno said created a Justice Department which "represents my views and the views of President Clinton." In one swift slice Clinton-Gore turned the politically neutral machinery of justice into an organ of their political state.

It was a free pass for corruption of government; a free pass for abuse of power.

Then came open retribution against a host of individuals and organizations who opposed the Clinton-Gore election and their schemes to limit freedom. It all came down to paybacks.

And at the top of their "enemies" list has been the National Rifle Association.

Using the Internal Revenue Service, the Clinton-Gore Administration opened a painful "audit" beginning in 1994. It took millions of dollars to defend.

For years, day in and day out, IRS agents pored over books and records--even trying to get our membership list--and demanded the most minute explanation of expenditures going back years. Your staff was forced to waste thousands of hours diverted from their real jobs. Accountants and lawyers had to be hired just to process the mountains of red tape.

Other organizations in Washington opposing Clinton-Gore policies came under similar political harassment and intimidation.

And no major group supporting the Clinton-Gore agenda has ever been placed under the same long-term inquisition.

If the Clinton-Gore machine gave itself a free pass to use government to chill opposition to its political agenda, it looked the other way with its allies and supporters, giving passive protection.

The National Education Association (NEA), which has been vehemently anti-Second Amendment, and is Al Gore's biggest political booster among unions, is a case in point.

Disclosures of NEA's broad political expenditures and operations have been forced through complaints filed by the Landmark Legal Foundation, demanding the IRS investigate the union's political expenditures.

The Wall Street Journal reported "in its strategic plan for 1998-2000, the NEA budgets for a host of political activities, from $386,000 for 'organizational partnerships with political parties, campaign committees and political organizations' to $540,000 for a 'national political strategy' aimed at 'candidate recruitment....'" The Journal concluded all of this is "part of an overall effort not only to involve the NEA in elections and issues, but to commingle union activities with political aims so it is hard to tell where one begins and the other leaves off."

The Journal asked, "So how much of this does the NEA list on the Form 990 it files publicly with the IRS?"

"Zero," was their answer.

And where is the IRS? You can guess.

This is Al Gore's "no controlling legal authority" in action.

It's no coincidence that recently the NEA was the location for what the Associated Press said was a major event where "two cabinet members have lent support to a private effort intended to recruit college students for a gun control campaign."

The nationwide grassroots effort, coordinated through the leftist (and I use this term deliberately) Alliance for Justice, was summed up by its president, Nan Aron: "We intend to launch a mobilization so massive that politicians cannot ignore us." The anti-gun campaign "envisions hundreds of simultaneous rallies, town hall meetings and door-to-door campaigns across the country."

One cabinet member who gave official Federal sanction to the campaign was Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who has led Federal efforts to sue lawful firearms commerce into oblivion. He urged the students "to counter the strength of anti-gun-control forces with their own political involvement. 'We are not going to get beat because they were better at getting their voices heard. It's up to you to make it happen.'"

Who are the "they" he is threatening? Us.

The other cabinet member was Attorney General Janet Reno. The chief law enforcement officer of the Federal government stood with Cuomo--telling grassroots political organizers, "Politics means changing things, it means changing cultures."

Reno--who has tenaciously refused to enforce Federal gun laws against violent criminals--summed up the real target of this grassroots campaign--every honest gun owner. "It is not enough to count the number of victims; we must look at the number of guns. There are over 220 million guns in America, 65 million of which are handguns. One-third of American households contain at least one gun."

Reno told the students, "We've got to take the force, the feeling, the power...and translate it into action!"

This is Al Gore's "no controlling legal authority" in spades.

This is why they have to go.

This is why we must register to vote--to make our voices heard at the ballot box.

We have the clearest choice in my lifetime. It's between a new Administration with respect for law and honor and dignity, and Al Gore's government where there is never a "controlling legal authority," merely a metastasizing raw power against the rights of individual citizens.