The Chilling Effect of Torture On The Constitution

The Republicans are falling all over themselves about the recently released Torture Memos. Their claims range from: these were policy issues, and prosecution of policy differences will set a bad legal precedence. To: releasing the memos has informed our enemies as to the limits of our depravity. To: they worked. Murder works to rid oneself of an antagonist, but it is still illegal. Robbery works to alleviate one's stressed financial circumstances, but it is still illegal. Many things that work and may be expedient are not allowed by a lawful, civilized society. What is at stake is our Republic and the rule of law.

Even anti-torture stalwart John McCain has said: "that prosecution of lawyers who wrote the memos will have a "chilling effect" on the legal advice given the President". John, how about the "chilling effect" on the Constitution if these law breakers go unprosecuted?

No where among their sophistic arguments have any of them bothered to mention that, torture is illegal. It was illegal when the memos were written and its illegal now, according to our Constitution and according to International law. None of them have bothered to mention that this nation was founded to protect "human rights" not trample them, which is what we are supposedly defending in Iraq.

The fact is, "legal opinions" contrary to established law, are not law. These memos are at best, rationales to circumvent the law. At worst they are the deliberate contrivance of the power hungry to impose their views as law and trample the Constitution and international law.

As for the idea that these were junior lawyers running amok writing these memos to lead the administration astray is absurd on its face. Just as absurd as the 12 soldiers who were hung out to dry as "bad seed" running amok at Abu Gharib without direction. Which in retrospect, points to the reprehensible lack of moral courage on the part of the authors of these "policies" who permitted those twelve to take the full brunt of punishment, to cover themselves and their culpability. As a matter of fact a newly declassified narrative shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos were not operating on their own but, at the direction from top administration officials, including Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.

It was the same arrogance of superior thinking that led us into an ill advised war that has bankrupted this country both morally and financially. These were not legitimate "policy decisions" these were deliberate attempts to circumvent the law. Just like the lies about Iraq were the means used to justify the invasion of a sovereign nation. The memos were the means to ignore the law.

John McCain is right about one thing--if America exhibits the moral courage and conviction to refocus and prosecute those who have broken our laws with impunity, it will have a chilling effect on future law breakers.

But then, isn't that why we punish those that break the law?

To make them think twice.

Commentary: For decades the Republicans have said that government doesn't work and every time they gain power have set out to prove the point by sabotaging it with their policy decisions.

Keep the pressure on to appoint a Special Prosecutor at the DOJ.

I am afraid if the Senate forms a "truth commission" it will wither in the morass of the political inaction. I lay the blame on Republicans often, but the Democrats are just as culpable by virtue of their acquiescence.

Let the DOJ know your views about appointing a Special Prosecutor to investigate the authors of torture at: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

America: A Riches To Rags Story

This nation is in dire straits. I think this current financial collapse is going to make make the depression look like a picnic. How we came to this juncture in American history is clouded with charge and counter charge, by paid political pundits, lobbying groups, think tanks and a bankrupt moral climate in our federal government on both sides of the aisle. We have elected officials that pander like whores to highest bidder. I would urge you to consider your vote very carefully. It is how we can impose term limits, its time to clean House, Senate, and White House. No incumbents should be left standing after Nov 4th, on either side of the aisle.

We have MBA economists touting unsound economic theories such as, "Darwinian economics", based on self interest and greed. We have raised such theories to a level of cult worship without regard for the logical outcomes of such pathologically flawed ideas.

Greed without restraint. Unregulated economic rape of unsuspecting consumers all in the guise of unfettered free trade and markets. The list of suspects in this collusion are legion. The radical right wing conservatives who mouth the words spun with guile meant to cloak the real effects of these so called theories.

You've heard the buzz words that hide the truth of their real malevolence: free trade, deregulation, globalization, let the market decide, privatization, outsourcing just to name a few.

In stead of plain talk they weave policies in deliberate obfuscation. Lets have a look at what they are really saying. Globalization and Outsourcing sound innocuous and justifiable after all its just seeking the lowest priced labor pool for the benefit of the corporation stockholders.

But consider what happens when it is put into practice, you or your neighbor are forced out of their job and into lower paying jobs elsewhere in the economy.

Basically you are now in wage competition with third world countries without regulation or protection for their workers, who in many cases will work for pennies an hour. Do these so called American Corporations care? No way. This is Darwinian Economics, basically they are saying, I've got mine and you can go to hell. Patriots that swear allegiance to the dollar, not to flag or country.

To add insult to injury they flood American markets with cheap products and goods produced in China. What country benefits in the exchange? Communist China. Who gets the benefit of bloated profits? The stockholders. Who gets the shaft? American workers.

But we are complicit in our own demise, we purchase these cheap products. It started in the seventies when we allowed foreign auto imports into this country. That has devastated our domestic automakers.

All of that, along with the incessant mantra of deregulation, that has given free reign to the worst aspects of human nature, has brought this house of cards crashing down. Now these "born again" regulators and reformers want us to believe that their thirty year war on the regulations that have kept us safe since the Great Depression has nothing to do with them or their amoral policies.

John McCain seems surprised and outraged that men are greedy and amoral. Which is the reason we need the government, that he has, heretofore despised, and has said "the government is problem".

Now they want us to give them a blank check for 700 billion dollars, in addition to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG and Bear Sterans bailouts we have already given them. Plus they don't want the American people to have any over sight, or put any limits on "the golden parachutes " of the greedy bastards that did this. In the market place if you or I as an employee screwed up we would get fired without severance or unemployment benefits(period)

Their head cheerleader John McCain a suddenly, "born again" re-regulator says he will fix what has been broken, even though he didn't have enough foresight to anticipate the consequences of his own policies that he has been pushing for the last thirty years. He said in a moment of absolute honesty, that he doesn't understand economics very well. That makes John McCain unfit to lead this country.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
—Thomas Jefferson—

Great Speechifying John

John! Ya did it buddy, the demeanor, the pace, they were almost human, but the content, wow! What can you say about the content? It was every republican bromide without one single fresh new idea. Now that's what I call Conservative! Damn, pardner way to go! Way to put it out there! One little suggestion... I think the prisoner of war thing is getting a bit stale, you were in a prison forty years ago, thank you again, by the way. But, even the liberals have thanked you, so maybe ya could let that one ease on by from here on out.

But, John, you really scared me there, pard. You almost blew it Johnny, when you got that honesty thing of yours going, you said that the Republicans party screwed it up and you want America to give you a chance to screw it up some more. Oops I mean, "change things," using the same tax cuts for the rich formula, that your party has spread around forever. I get it more trickle down "voodoo economics", but, John, ya gotta keep that honesty thing under control! You recovered, but ya gotta watch it!

So, John, if you're gonna cut everybody's taxes who's gonna pay for your next hundred years in Iraq? You seem to have forgotten the war, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives it's cost, it is costing 10 billion dollars a month. That's a lot a dough John!

Maybe Blackwater? Maybe KBR and Haliburton or the oil companies, this war was for their benefit after all. What 'am I thinking the people that benefit from war profiteering with no bid contracts should chip in? Crazy me! Maybe the Chinese are still good for it! Or, I know! How about a bake sale?

By the way! Have you read the Party's Platform. It's a corker! I have and I agree with your statement "that you want to change things, namely: the Constitution.

About time too, what the hell did some sissyifyed men in white wigs and stockins' know about writing a Constitution? They were too damn "L-i-b-e-r-a-l", if ya know what I mean. Some ballsy, gun totin', moose guttin', lipstick wearin', hockey mom coulda done a better job. WOW, so that's why you picked Palin! I just now got it. You're brilliant, John.

By the way I was a bit lost at the end of your speech it certainly picked up the pace, but who are we fighting again? Oh' right, I get it, the dreaded liberal community organizers.

The one's that go into a community trying to help the poorest of the poor at great personal financial sacrifice, like a Harvard grad turning down a six figure income for a lousy ten grand a year. I mean what kind of qualifications are those. If you want to be "in the club"?

Hell, ten grand nowadays, won't even buy a pair of Farigamo's, gas for a private jet and pay the mortgage on seven houses. He must be a real nut job. I mean what kind of a person really puts SERVICE before SELF. Everybody knows that's just a slogan to win elections. Damn he must be dumb. I sure was glad to see you guys "put him in his place" with a little ridicule.

Well, John that's a lot to think about. As for another four years, can I get back to you? Say, Nov. 4th, no wait I can't do the 4th, you'd better make it the 5th.

Commentary:
John McCain, said something else that was true, about his party, that they didn't change Washington, Washington changed them. Sadly, last night McCain showed that he couldn't change his party, so he changed himself. paraphrased from E. J. Dionne Jr.Washington Post

A Dream That Was America

If there was any doubt about whether John McCain is the agent of change he claims, it was laid to rest with Sarah Palin's acceptance speech.

Not only is his ticket more of the same, it's more of the same on steroids.

Sarah Palin's nasty, personal attacks were distasteful even in the dog-eat-dog world of American politics. It was completely devoid of anything that approached a new idea, that would bring this nation together to face the future. I was stunned that the press, instead of asking hard questions as they should have, sounded more like cheerleaders for her nomination.

A future that has been made less bright, by eight years of a Republican regime, marked by stunning failures in every area the Republicans have always claimed as their own.

Namely the economy, foreign policy, and protection of the Constitution.

As Palin spoke, I started reading the Republican platform. The fine print of what the Republicans are offering this country, if we rehire them this fall. Their religious, culturally driven agenda is stunning.

It is full of their disingenuous words that would strip certain groups of their rights under the Constitution. The question is whose traditions and values? Not mine.

It suggests numerous constitutional amendments that would codify their narrow minded and self righteous views.

These are dangerous people, that worship a mythical ideal that never was. A christian America that never was, because, the founders had first hand experience with religous persecution and didn't want a theocracy which is much too narrow in its view to include the kind of equality and freedom they envisioned. The separation of church and state was a deliberate choice.

Much like the nazi obsession with an idealized, heroic Germanic myth of aryan superiority in some forgotten age. Their same obsessive nature allows them to dismiss groups they find repugnant and strip them of their unalienable rights.

That same sense of self righteous superiority allows them to lie deceive and push their agenda even through violent means, invading other countries on manufactured evidence that they leak to the press and then site as confirmation.

They have become masters of "Orwellian" double speak. And nothing will change under their continued administration. Except a dream that was America.

Let them eat cake!

Really John, Obama playing politics with Gustav???

John, who's in New Orleans,
acting all Presidential, doing photo OPs???

Where were you when New Orleans
was drowning three years ago after Katrina?

You remember Katrina don't you John?
Here's a little reminder.

(U.S. Coast Guard photograph by Petty Officer 2nd Class Kyle Niemi)

Oh yea! That's right! I forgot, you were
in Arizona eating cake with the Decider-in-Chief.














And do you remember how you expressed your concern
when the request for Katrina relief funds came before the Senate?

New Orleans does! You voted NO, not once but time after time!

And now you are are so concerned about New Orleans,
that you closed down the Republican Convention?

What A LOAD OF HORSE CRAP!!
WHAT HYPOCRISY!!

Gustav closed it down!

So much for your legendary honesty and integrity John.
You blew your judgment argument when you picked Palin as a VP.

But hey opportunity knocks, and what an fantastic photo opportunistic* moment for you?

* op·por·tun·is·tic?
adj. Taking immediate advantage (even others misfortunes), often unethically, of any circumstance for possible (political) benefit.

Shame on you John McCain, shame on you!

THE TRUTH IS: MCCAIN VOTED AGAINST RELIEF MEASURES FOR VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA

"Just this week John McCain said that "[t]here must be no forgotten places in America" and is traveling to New Orleans today to make the case.

But don't believe the rhetoric.

The fact is, McCain has a history of denying the Gulf Coast aid when it needs it most and a record of outrageous votes to show for it.

Instead of helping the area rebuild after Hurricane Katrina and the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast get back on their feet, McCain actually voted to deny emergency funding to the area, and he voted against giving victims of Katrina access to Medicaid and unemployment benefits.

[McCain Campaign Email, 4/22/08;
2006 Senate Vote #112, 5/4/2006;
2005 Senate Vote #285, 11/3/2005;
2006 Senate Vote #6, 2/2/2006;
2005 Senate Vote #229, 9/14/2005;
2005 Senate Vote #234, 9/15/2005]

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS198703+24-Apr-2008+PRN20080424

Far from being the Change We Need McCain is, the Past We Must Reject Forever!

What Evil Lurks In The Hearts Of Men?

The cruelty of the Taliban in Afghanistan was an appalling spectacle, with its public executions for minor slights against the Quran. It was guided by the narrow intolerant views of men called Ayatollahs. In their fervent, fanatical and absolute adherence to the literal interpretation of the Quran they turned Afghanistan into an absolute hell. Their religious pronouncements in the form of fatwahs were absolute and binding. They had the power to call for the assassination of writers like Salman Rushdie that they say blasphemed Islam.

While the rise of that particular expression of Islamic fundamentalism was obviously abhorrent to Americans sensibilities and its sweeping disregard of individual freedom, as it was much noted in the press, a less obvious, more insidious and even more disturbing rise of narrow-minded religious inspired intolerance was under way in this country by Fundamentalist Evangelicals.

The assault on the American Constitution by these so called Fundamentalist Evangelicals has been relentless over the past several decades and they now form the base of the Republican Party. Their narrow, literal interpretation of the bible is the basis of their socially conservative political agenda. And just like their Islamic counterparts they heaped derision and contempt on anyone who disagrees with their narrow political social agenda.

They are the driving force behind the movement to change our Constitution to overturn Roe vs. Wade and a women's' right to choose, to prevent the marriage of gays, protected under the fourteenth amendment, the criminalization of burning the flag, protected under the first amendment, and forcing prayer in school, which violates the separation of church and state.

In their twisted logic they and they alone are the keepers of all things good and righteous. Gays are labeled as a deviants undeserving of equal protection and bereft of rights that are unalienable to the rest of society. They rail at abortion and applaud the death penalty. They are jealous in guarding their expression of free speech in school, in the form of prayer which they would impose on believers and non-believers alike, but, say that free speech does not extend to those who would burn the flag as a statement of political protest.

Such socially driven assaults on the Constitution are not new, and notably there is only one such amendment that was added (the eighteenth) to the Constitution and that was ultimately repealed. (by the twenty-first).

The bedrock of this country is the protection of its citizens from the over-reaching intrusion of government into our daily lives.

The Bill of Rights protects the freedoms of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom of assembly; the freedom to petition; and prohibits unreasonable search and seizure; cruel and unusual punishment; and compelled self-incrimination.

The Bill of Rights also prohibits Congress from making any law respecting establishment of religion and prohibits the Federal Government from depriving any person of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness or property, without due process of law.

In Federal, criminal cases, it requires indictment by grand jury for any capital or "infamous crime," guarantees a speedy public trial with an impartial jury composed of members of the state or judicial district in which the crime occurred, and prohibits double jeopardy.

In addition, the Bill of Rights states that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage other(s) (rights) retained by the people," and (the ninth) reserves (gives) all powers not granted to the federal government to the citizenry or States.

In other words if its not enumerated in the Constitution, the assumption and rule of law require that the people(s) rights supersede any denial of rights by the government. The government cannot say because its not enumerated you don't have the right. The presumption is exactly opposite you inherently and automatically in fact do have all and any rights not enumerated. For example the right privacy which is not specifically enumerated.

Conversely anything the federal government does that it is not permitted by the Constitution is unconstitutional because all powers not given explicitly to the federal government are reserved to the people or the states, according to the Tenth Amendment.”

When I was young, before the age of television we listened to the radio, there was one program in particular that made an impression on me, it was The Shadow.

At the opening of the program a deep sinister voice would always ask; Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? And then answering his own question the announcer would say, The Shadow knows!

The Shadow was a vigilante who used his power of hypnotism to cloud the minds of ordinary men and render himself invisible before the evil doers.

What brought this to mind was the recent one hour interview of Barrack Obama and John McCain by Pastor Rick Warrens and his question, Does evil exist? And what should we do about it?

McCain was rather simple and direct in his answer; We should defeat it! And named Islamic terrorism as the transcendent evil facing us.

Obama was more thoughtful and introspective and in part of his answer he cautioned that in confronting evil we should take care not to do evil in the name of trying to do good.

It touched on a the Christian idea of the duality of human nature. We are at the same time, the devils we fear, and the angels we want to be, something I fear that was completely lost on the host and his audience.

The point is, that in America, no one can take these unalienable rights away, like the Islamic Fundamentalists did in Afganistan, not the God that bestowed them in the first place, or the self righteous American Ayatollahs that claim to represent Him on earth.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? God knows!