The Promise Breakers

It should be an impeachable offense to substantively mislead the nation's voters during one’s campaign for president. Perhaps there could be a board made up of the heads of the top dozen major universities, non-senile former presidents and vice-presidents, and the anchors of the major networks, PBS and CNN. If warranted, they could have a secret ballot calling for impeachment – which it would take a two-thirds majority to approve. The matter would then be sent to the Congress for debate and disposition.

This current President Bush, for example, won office by saying he was a uniter, not a divider, that he was a compassionate conservative, that he would keep the budget in surplus, that he would respect the environment, that he was against foreign adventures in nation-building, that he would work with the Democrats in a bipartisan manner and that he would respectfully seek the cooperation of our allies around the world. Since his father stood for most of those things, it was easy to believe him. Many saw him as just a somewhat dimmer version of George H.W., someone who would serve the country in a steadfast manner, holding strong in the values department and keeping congressional spending down.

What we got instead was someone who broke all of the above-listed promises, and others as well, and did so with an arrogance rarely seen, even in the ego-circus of Washington. If the Democrats had managed to win control of the House and Senate in 2004, we would have by now seen Bush and Cheney both impeached.

This Shall Not Stand

When you and I read a book like 1984 or Brave New World, or some other fiction dealing with a future dystopia ruled by nefarious overlords, where personal rights are quashed, we see it a cautionary tale, something to be avoided. When people like the current administration’s leaders read those things (well, those of them that read books) they see those types of novels as a wish list, a guide-map, a working manual. Because what they seek is a country, indeed a world, in which the central government, in hand with the corporatocracy, knows all and controls all.

If and when the full truth comes out about the NSA eavesdropping program called "The Program," it will be understood that it went miles beyond anything to do with potential terrorists. Thousands upon thousands of citizens were, and are, having their phone calls and e-mails "vacuumed" by the government, including those who have participated in anti-Iraq-War protests or organizations, or the environmental movement. It’s the Vietnam era wrongdoing (COINTELPRO, etc.) all over again, only with better technology.

Perhaps they think they can pull the warrantless spying off because their polling has shown that only 5% or so of Americans know what the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says (see below) and with their control of the major media they can keep the furor quelled, but I sense that things are going to blow up in their faces, There’s just too damn much overreaching, corruption, incompence and now outright lawbreaking for it not to hit the fan.

The warrantless eavesdropping alone is an impeachable offense but I fear that the only way to get Bush out of there is to get a woman to give him a hummer in the Oval Office and have him lie about that. But seriously, the partial solution is to get the Dems back in control of Congress in 2006 and have them impeach Georgie Boy. I say partial because that would make Cheney the president and nothing much would change, so they better arrange to get him gone as well.

What the administration is apparently basing this surreptitious lawbreaking on is the power given to the president after 9/11 which empowered him to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

The right interpretation of this would focus on the modifier "appropriate," another way of saying within the bounds of the Constitution (which the president took an oath to uphold) and previously established law, e.g., 1978's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which specifically prohibits what the administration has been doing. Also, the force being authorized is targeted at those whom he "determines" to be guilty of terrorism, not a broad dragnet of individuals who are three or four degrees of separation from suspected terrorists.

What they start with in this program is a list of the phone numbers and e-mail addresses found on captured al Qaida suspects, then gather the numbers and adresses that all those people have contacted, then etcetra and etcetra until they have 6,000 or more "suspects." So if you ever called a man you work with and he once called his ex-professor about something and his ex-professor had received an e-mail from Al-Arian (the Florida prof who was found innocent of charges brought by the feds of terrorist ties), who had phone calls to and from Palestinian charities who received donations from al-Qaeda, then you're on the list. You're what the president and attorney general have characterized as "al-Qaeda connected." In other words, a distinct lack of probable cause, and no warrant issued to peruse your phone conversations and private e-mails. Wake up folks, before it's too late to stop this great land of freedom from slipping away. Perhaps it's time to re-read Orwell and Huxley, less as fiction and more as political science.

{I'm adding this today, 2-8-06. It just occurred to me why the administration didn't want to go through the FISA court. That would leave a paper trail and since less than 1% of the illegally surveilled people were found to be in any way worthy of future eavesdropping (this figure being from an FBI source who had firsthand knowledge) that would open them up to massive lawsuits if the list were revealed.}

The Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Requiem for a Lightweight

Hi folks, just dropping a few necessary words into this pocket of cyberspace regarding the political doings back here in the States. Currently, I’m here in New York City for three days (before heading back to Paris) and staying on Riverside Drive at an old friend’s exquisitely appointed apartment. She’s allowing me to use her state-of-the-science computer setup here in her state-of-the-art digs.

I’ve been keeping up with the Bushies while in Europe conducting business, if for no other reason than the fact that everyone over there wants to engage me on the subject. A common opening is usually along the lines of, "When are you Yanks gonna wise up and pitch that idiot cowboy outta Washington?" So here’s my preliminary answer on the subject.

The bottom line on George W. Bush is that he is the least qualified man ever to take the presidential oath of office in American history and he turned out to be (surprise!) the worst president we’ve ever had. The only reason he was governor of Texas was because of who his father was, and the fact that he could be trusted to keep the fat cats fat. In every other respect, he was a lazy and inept governor, every inch the prototypical spoiled son of a rich man.

But the shame for him being able to ascend to the top political office in the U.S. falls only partially on those who voted for him, as many of those people were brain-duped by a massively funded lie machine. The real source of this elected (well, semi-elected) travesty is the dysfunctional American political system (and its enabler, the mass media) which allowed this corporate butt-boy to amass over 100 million dollars by January of 2000, then steam-roll his opposition all the way to the White House, despite his singular lack of governmental and world affairs knowledge.

What a sad century we Americans have gotten off to because of this ill-fated Republican takeover – our problems multiplied, our prestige diminished and our financial stability endangered. All this while the super rich have become super richer. The only glimmer of consolation is that we may only have one more year of this sufferance to endure.

The Republicans gained and maintained power for these past 12 years by being in rigid lockstep with the general conservative program, while the Democrats suffered the fragmentation of individuality and squabbling rivalries. It’s quite conceivable that their will be a reversal of this fortune/misfortune for the two parties as the unholy union between the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives is straining at the seams, and the Dems are doing their best to mount a united front. Add to that the deep resentments by many elected Republicans against the administration for its arrogant incompetences and the seismic potential of the Abramoff scandal, and it adds up to the Democrats taking back control of the House and Senate in 2006.

This will have many ramifications, not least of which will be the many much-needed investigations which will be spawned and, hopefully, a chance to show the nation and the world a legitimately warranted impeachment.

The only explanation that makes sense regarding the administration’s not getting warrants (not obeying the law) for its surveillance of phone calls and e-mails is that it didn’t want a paper trail of who they were surveilling. Since the FISA court allowed for the warrant to be made after the fact, in those cases where time was of the essence, no excuse regarding urgency can hold water. That the whistleblowers were professional NSA officials who felt they were abusing the legal mandates, one is led to speculate that the Bushies created a dragnet which included the communications of those engaged only in business and political activities, information that the Bushies could then use to serve their other greedy overarching purposes.

The hanky-panky that the administration perpetrated regarding the supposed existence of WMDs is a story that has not yet been fully revealed. If the Democrats put certain former CIA types under oath, there's a good chance that Bush will be smoked out as a blatant liar about the reasons for going to war. If that's not an impeachable offense, nothing is.

The Founding Fathers, especially Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, realized that America would not automatically remain a freedom-generating republic, but that strong safeguards and constant care had to be exercised to maintain it, starting with constitutional checks and balances and an active free press. The Bush Administration has taken vigorous steps to impede and upset those safeguards and needs to be removed from office, ideally in early 2007 by means of impeachment, before they can do much more irreparable harm to the nation.