Look up those in Congress who are supposed to work for you, and demand that Bush and Cheney be impeached. Impeach them for obstruction of justice, of harboring a felon (the person in their administration who undermined US intelligence by outing a CIA agent), of aiding and abetting the enemy, of showing flat-out disdain for their role as public servants — whatever. But it needs to happen, and it needs to happen now.
When they announced that they would be invoking executive privilege to protect the liars responsible for corrupting Pat Tillman’s death for political gain, I started to waffle. Now…I simply can’t believe that they’re actively obstructing justice by preventing the justice department from following contempt charges. It’s one detestable thing to pardon people or commute sentences for your cronies — it’s an outright affront to American ideals to prevent justice from even looking into a possible crime. And in this case, the crime is blatant: it’s showing contempt, both legally and personally, for the Constitutional role of Congress.
The Bush administration has finally done it. They have left the realm of simply being a bad administration and have become a real threat to America. They have declared themselves above and beyond the laws, and need to be reigned in now while there is some way to do it.
I am genuinely afraid at this point.
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You’re not alone. I mean, consider this quote:
Whose the paranoid conspiracy theorist, some far left Republican-hating radical? No. It’s Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts. Even intelligent, honest Republicans are starting to worry.
This also explains the “stupidity” of the Republicans in the Senate defending the war. They don’t have to worry about repurcussions in the election if there isn’t going to be an election…
Thanks for the quote. It’s going into my letters to my Congresspeople.
That’s the part that frustrates and scares me the most. The Democrats seem to be playing more into playing politics and/or pussyfooting around than doing the necessary and hard work from that country.
I am again and again reminded of the prescience of Paul Krugman’s preface to “The Great Unravelling”. In this preface, he talks about Henry Kissinger’s PhD dissertation about the problems of a “stable diplomatic order” has when facing a “revolutionary power”- one that does not recognize the legitimacy of the system and seeks to overthrow it.
It should be clear beyond debate at this point that the Bush administration is just such a revolutionary power- that it does not accept the legitimacy of and seeks to undermine constitutional democracy. The Bush administration will break the law simply to prove that they can, and to undermine the rule of law.
Note that seeking to completely eliminate the New Deal programs does not make you unamerican- wrong, yes, but not unamerican. Seeking to the President and his allies above the law- that makes you unamerican. Another name for the “unitary executive” is “king”.
As a revolutionary power in the Kissinger sense, there is no limit to what the Bush administration would be willing to do- the only question is wether there is a limit to what they are able to do, and at what point will they be forcibly stopped. Declaring martial law? Arresting Democratic senators and congressmen? Arresting Democrats, and rounding them up into already built concentration camps? I would put none of these beyond what Bush would like to do, and I am uncertain in they are beyond what the Bush administration is capable of doing.
As long as the courts matter, US citizens can’t be “unlawful enemy combatants”.
Of course, if they’ve clandestinely picked you up and dropped you into a concentration camp without any rights or outside contact, it’s awfully hard to sue them for your freedom.
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