Censureship

Okay, this is political. I’m sure some of you won’t agree with me, and believe me, you don’t have to agree with me to be my friend. I live in a very purple area and we all have to get along around these parts. But this is my blog and I’ll say what I believe here when the mood strikes, and believe me, the mood has been building lately until I have to say it now.

Only, other people have said it much better.

Like this guy. I don’t know what his qualifications are. I just know that what he wrote here resonates with me deeply, and I’ll excerpt it just in case you want to know what you’re getting in for before you go there:

Which brings us to President Bush. Try to read the following paragraph without letting the doors slam shut:

Many people believe that the president marched us into one of the most ill-conceived wars in our history when he invaded Iraq. They believe that this war is a disaster of monumental proportions that increased the power of our enemies while bringing about a dangerous erosion of our stature around the world. Worse still, they believe the president used false information to mislead Congress into approving the war.

However — and this is a big however — even if you believe all of that, it is not justification for censuring the president.

His judgment may have been catastrophically flawed, but it was just that: judgment. He made a call, however wrong you might think it was.

What he didn’t do was break any laws.

(Obviously, I’m assuming that the president actually believed everything he told us when he was making his case for going to war. While that to me is actually more frightening than if he’d lied, at least he didn’t lie.)

Having said that, though, there is another issue on the table, and that is the president’s handling of domestic wiretaps.

The law on using a domestic tap is quite specific: It has to be approved by the FISA court which was set up for just that purpose.

The rules here are unambiguous. There is no wiggle room.

President Bush has been authorizing domestic surveillance without seeking approval from the FISA court. He says the Constitution gives him the right to do that.

He’s wrong. It doesn’t. By his interpretation, the Constitution gives him the same rights as King George III had, so long as there is a declared war under way. He could even nuke Milwaukee.

The reason we know that he’s wrong is because there is a law that says he is, a special court formed in compliance with that law, and no lawsuits challenging the authority of either.

I further believe — and have heard no serious claims otherwise — that if there were to be a formal legal challenge to FISA, it would be summarily dismissed by a lower court and laughed out of the Supreme Court before it ever got past a clerk’s desk.

Which is why no formal legal challenge has been mounted by the administration.

But even if I’m wrong, one thing brooks no debate: This president has broken the law, as the law presently stands. Even if you believe that it’s a bad law, it doesn’t matter.

And it’s not a “spitting on the subway” kind of law, either. It’s an important one. It goes to the very heart of everything I’ve been talking about thus far.

It’s one of those laws intended to make sure that what the Founders feared most doesn’t come to pass: One guy calling the shots.

That’s why Senator Feingold’s censure resolution is more legitimate than party-line Republicans and timid Democrats would have us believe. The reason is that, contrary to what Republican attack ads are saying, it is strictly limited to the president’s use of unauthorized wiretaps in contravention of law. Contrary to what Republican attack ads have been saying, the resolution doesn’t even mention the Iraq war.

(Don’t take my word for it: read it yourself, here.)

As it happens, Senator Feingold has stated repeatedly that he fully supports domestic surveillance

Censureship is a mere slap on the hand, people. It doesn’t DO anything but embarrass the president. So why the hell are the Democrats hanging back on this and allowing Feingold to carry the torch almost alone? Hell, there are grounds for impeachment, and while I understand we really do not want Cheney as president (OTOH, he’d likely go down for the same crimes at the same time) I certainly can’t comprehend why they aren’t lined up fighting over who signs on the censureship wagon first.

And then there’s this woman. I do know who she is. So do you.

Sandra Day O’Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party’s rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.
In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O’Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.

Ms O’Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: “We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary.”

I don’t like what I see coming out of the White House or the right-wing controlled Republican Party. And I’ve voted Republican in the past, so I’m no kneejerk leftwinger. But this is not the Republican Party as it once existed. This is the party built by the likes of this jerk, and the rest of them went along with it because they loved his money.

If you or anyone you know is swallowing the bullshit line that the Republican Right is Christian and protecting us from evil — here is how they do it:

But as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Frank Murkowski became furious at the abusive sweatshop conditions endured by workers, overwhelmingly immigrants, in the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, of which Saipan is the capital.

Because they were produced in a territory of the United States, garments traveled tariff-free and quota-free to the profitable U.S. market and were entitled to display the coveted “Made in the USA” label.

Among the manufacturers that had profited from the un-free labor market on the island were Tommy Hilfiger USA, Gap, Calvin Klein and Liz Claiborne.

Moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants — from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh — were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.

So compelling was the case for change the Alaska Republican marshaled that in early 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill.

But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay.

How? Why? Well, he was protecting us from the immorality, I guess, when he:

DeLay fully approved of the working and living conditions. The Texan’s salute to the owners and Abramoff’s government clients was recorded by ABC-TV News: “You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system”

Later, DeLay would tell The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin that the low-wage, anti-union conditions of the Marianas constituted “a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It’s like my Galapagos Island.”

The White House is not going to change.

Congress has to.

It is imperative to support Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections in any way possible. They need money to battle the Republican war chest assembled by DeLay and friends. They need volunteers to make phone calls and work in offices. They need votes.

I have never supported the idea of having Congress and the White House controlled by the same party. But what’s happening now is more frightening than anything I ever imagined.

I’m not a Democrat. I’ve always been Independent, but frankly have only voted for a Democrat for President one time. So I’m not just touting the party line.

But come November I’ll be voting Democrat (for what good it will do me in Texas, sigh) except for governor.

And for governor?

Well, of course. I’m still kinky, because he’s got a better chance of winning the governor’s race than the Democrat.

“May the God of your choice bless you.”
— Kinky Friedman