By KIRKPATRICK SALE
Let’s just hold it a bit on this Lincoln thing. If Barack Obama wants to lead the nation as Lincoln did, we’re in for a lot of trouble.
The man whose Bible he took the oath on, whose memory he regularly invokes, presided over the creation of what can only be called a nascent fascist government led by a party of industrial capitalism that ran roughshod over constitution and custom, encouraged a form of bloody warfare that defied all civilized practice to date, and was the cause of untold misery, violence, and destruction for the next half-century or more. He was the ultimate creator of an empire that, thanks to military might in service to corporate interests, spread across the American continent, not just north to south but eventually coast to coast, and would ultimately go on to impose itself worldwide.
We have now come to the culmination of that empire, whether they know it or not, and the meltdown of the global economy is only the first signal of its collapse. Peak oil, extreme climate, unwinnable wars, social unrest, environmental decay, and the multiple whiplashes of a failed capitalist system will hasten its demise.
We’ve got two choices. One is the Lincolnesque way that Obama seems to promise: government subsidies for the larger corporations and banks (as Lincoln pushed in his day, especially for the railroads), refurbishing of the infrastructure (ditto), nationalization of the financial system and reckless printing of currency, increased centralization of the government and its hold on the economy, continuation and expansion of warfare and the war machine (all ditto). That is a continuation of the past, and it is amazing that the nation largely does not recognize it as a recipe for continued collapse. It is in fact not sustainable, nor is the environment in which it is floundering.
The other way is to rejigger, to dismantle, the entire system.
Abandon the empire (which we can no longer afford anyway, of course) and the war system that was begun in 1861 and has been in effective power since 1941 (of which Eisenhower famously warned us).
Dismantle the government-sponsored and –coddled corporate system of large-scale capitalism (agribusiness, Big Oil, Big Pharm, Big Chem, Big Silicone, the lot), overprotected (to keep the lobbyists in business and overregulated (ditto the bureaucrats), and return to a modern variety of an early 19th-century economy, which means small holders, family farmers, local businesses, individual enterprise, neighborhood artisans, community-supported agriculture and power generation, low taxes, and local empowerment.
Dismember the bloated Washington system as we know it (keep it around perhaps for automated record-keeping, but not defense or diplomacy), discard Congress entirely, and return effective power to the states (or better, in time, to bioregions), keep government machinery small even at that level and amenable to true democracy, and, this time around, create prohibitions against a takeover of electoral and legislative machinery by aristocratic interests and corporate cartelizers.
In other words, let’s try it all over again, having learned the lessons from a disastrous experiment in Romanesque empire that we might have learned long ago, had we any sense of history. No point in trying to put bailout and stimulus fingers in these broken dikes, no point in trying to hold on to and restore an economy built on nothing but growth and consumption, and the concomitant exhaustion of resources, befouling of environments, amassment of wastes, and emiseration of masses.
Let’s try something new. In fact we have to.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Jury Duty
A few months ago I got a letter in the mail saying I was going to be summoned for jury duty. I filled out the information and returned it. A few weeks later I received the dates and it was a two week period over the weekend of the Christian Heritage conference and also my flight to Virgina. I requested to have it postponed and just found out today it was granted!
I'll probably get summoned again later in the year which I'm not looking forward to since its a United States District Court and I'll have to drive to Seattle. Oh, well. Dad says it'll be a good experience once we get into the case.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Firearms Freedom Advances In Virginia!
Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
Great news! Last month we alerted you to a superb pro-gun bill pending in the Virginia General Assembly.
HB 69 recently passed the House of Delegates overwhelmingly (70-29) and is now before the Senate's Courts of Justice Committee.
Introduced by Del. Charles Carrico (R-5) and known as the Virginia Firearms Freedom Act, HB 69 is modeled after similar legislation which has been successful in other states, including Montana -- the first state to pass such a law.
The Firearms Freedom Act has a simple concept. HB 69 states that if a gun was made in Virginia, and then stays in the Commonwealth, the federal government may not regulate it under the Interstate Commerce Clause. (Because, you see, the gun was never part of interstate commerce.)
This is important because the Commerce Clause is the "hook" that Congress has used to justify almost every single federal gun control law. But with the passage of HB 69, the Commonwealth will take a stand that guns stamped with the words "Made in Virginia" are no business of the federal government.
Now that we've breezed through the House, we can expect anti-gun forces to try and kill this excellent measure in the Senate. Therefore, it is imperative that we make it impossible for senators to do the bidding of the enemies of freedom.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Tax Return
Today I got the last W2 forum I was waiting for and was able to file my taxes. Why is it that every year I make more money but each time get less back? hmmm...
Friday, January 29, 2010
“Assault Weapon” Ban Being Considered in Olympia
As you will recall, NRA-ILA has informed you about Senate Bill 6396, legislation that would bring California-style gun-control to the Northwest and ultimately ban many semi-automatic firearms commonly owned by Washingtonians. SB6396 was heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee but no action was taken.
SB 6396 is more far-reaching than it appears on the surface and will absolutely impact a gigantic swath of Washington firearm owners, including concealed pistol license holders, hunters and competitive pistol shooters. As examples, consider the following restrictions that flow from the provisions of this horrendous piece of gun control legislation:
- Every semiautomatic AND PUMP-ACTION rifle or shotgun that has a detachable magazine and has a pistol grip located rear of the trigger (yes, that is just about all of them) is defined as an “assault weapon” and is banned under SB 6396!
- If you and your child/children are out in the woods plinking with his or her Ruger 10-22 and there are more than 10 rounds in the magazine, you are a FELON!
- If you are a Concealed Pistol License holder and your semi-auto self-defense pistol contains more than 10 rounds, you are a FELON!
- The use of firearms defined as “assault weapons” (see first bullet point) are banned for use in hunting!
- Competitive shooters will be impacted as any semi-auto pistol that has a detachable magazine and is equipped with a muzzle brake or compensator is defined as an “assault weapon!”
- If you own a firearm(s) defined as an “assault weapon” on the date this bill becomes law, you can keep it if you are willing to allow your Sheriff to come into your home once every year to ensure you store your firearm(s) appropriately!
Senate Bill 6396 is proof that the gun-ban groups and politicians are not interested in only banning semi-automatic firearms that happen to look like military firearms. This bill shows where they really want to go with their agenda! This gun ban scheme will only punish law-abiding citizens and will do nothing to curb crime or keep criminals from obtaining firearms illegally. This is not only another attack on our Second Amendment rights in Washington State, but an attack on your Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches of your home!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
FBI Reports Huge Decrease In Murders As Firearm, Ammunition And "Large" Magazine Sales Soar
Last week, the FBI issued its preliminary 2009 crime report, showing that the number of murders in the first half of 2009 decreased 10 percent compared to the first half of 2008. If the trend holds for the remainder of 2009, it will be the single greatest one-year decrease in the number of murders since at least 1960, the earliest year for which national data are available through the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Also, the per capita murder rate for 2009 will be 51 percent lower than the all-time high recorded in 1991, and it will be the lowest rate since 1963 - a 46-year low. Final figures for 2009 will be released by the FBI next year.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Gun Owners of America: We Came Heartbreakingly Close to Killing ObamaCare in the House
-- Pelosi "puppets" stab gun owners in the back
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
It would have been nice if we were celebrating victory on ObamaCare today -- and could turn our attention to other issues.
This was not to be, however, thanks to House Democrats who campaigned as "moderates," but in the end, danced at the end of Nancy Pelosi's strings.
Saturday, the House passed ObamaCare by a 220-215 vote. The bill now goes to the Senate, where South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham -- hardly a staunch conservative -- has pronounced it "dead on arrival."
We remain convinced that we can and will kill ObamaCare, but only if the grassroots keep the pressure on.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
It would have been nice if we were celebrating victory on ObamaCare today -- and could turn our attention to other issues.
This was not to be, however, thanks to House Democrats who campaigned as "moderates," but in the end, danced at the end of Nancy Pelosi's strings.
Saturday, the House passed ObamaCare by a 220-215 vote. The bill now goes to the Senate, where South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham -- hardly a staunch conservative -- has pronounced it "dead on arrival."
We remain convinced that we can and will kill ObamaCare, but only if the grassroots keep the pressure on.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
NRA Sues Seattle Over Illegal Gun Ban
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Fairfax, Va. - Today, the National Rifle Association filed a complaint in the Superior Court of Washington State against the City of Seattle, asking the court to enjoin and declare invalid a recently enacted parks and recreation administrative policy that prohibits firearms in parks, community centers and other city-owned buildings. Other plaintiffs in the case include state correctional officers and private citizens.
“NRA members are outraged that the City of Seattle has ignored and defied state law and an opinion of Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist. “The NRA will continue to fight this senseless infringement on the rights of law-abiding Seattle gun owners.”
The city is in violation of Washington’s preemption statute, which forbids localities from enacting this type of ban. In October 2008, Attorney General Rob McKenna issued an opinion, which put the City of Seattle and Mayor Nickels on further notice that Washington cities may not enact local laws prohibiting possession of firearms on city property or in city-owned facilities.
“Law-abiding Seattle gun owners should be allowed to protect themselves when they go about their business, even in a park or other recreation facility,” concluded Cox. “This illegal ban even prohibits the most law-abiding citizens with Right-to-Carry permits from possession in ‘prohibited’ areas.”
The Second Amendment Foundation, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and the Washington Arms Collectors, Inc. are working in conjunction with the NRA and are co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the city.
Read the complaint.
-NRA-
Fairfax, Va. - Today, the National Rifle Association filed a complaint in the Superior Court of Washington State against the City of Seattle, asking the court to enjoin and declare invalid a recently enacted parks and recreation administrative policy that prohibits firearms in parks, community centers and other city-owned buildings. Other plaintiffs in the case include state correctional officers and private citizens.
“NRA members are outraged that the City of Seattle has ignored and defied state law and an opinion of Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist. “The NRA will continue to fight this senseless infringement on the rights of law-abiding Seattle gun owners.”
The city is in violation of Washington’s preemption statute, which forbids localities from enacting this type of ban. In October 2008, Attorney General Rob McKenna issued an opinion, which put the City of Seattle and Mayor Nickels on further notice that Washington cities may not enact local laws prohibiting possession of firearms on city property or in city-owned facilities.
“Law-abiding Seattle gun owners should be allowed to protect themselves when they go about their business, even in a park or other recreation facility,” concluded Cox. “This illegal ban even prohibits the most law-abiding citizens with Right-to-Carry permits from possession in ‘prohibited’ areas.”
The Second Amendment Foundation, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and the Washington Arms Collectors, Inc. are working in conjunction with the NRA and are co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the city.
Read the complaint.
-NRA-
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Christians' Golden Calf by Laurence M. Vance
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." ~ (Exodus 20:3)
Most people know the story of Aaron’s golden calf.
After the Jews came out of Egypt, while Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving from God the ten commandments on "tables of stone, written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18), the children of Israel complained to Aaron, Moses’ brother: "Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him" (Exodus 32:1). So, after the people donated their gold, Aaron made a golden calf and proclaimed: "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 32:4). Then Aaron made an altar, the people offered offerings, and they all had themselves one wild party (Exodus 32:6); that is, until Moses came down from the mount (Exodus 32:19).
Some, perhaps, also know the story of Jeroboam’s golden calves.
Years later in the history of Israel, when most of the tribes rebelled under Jeroboam, he "made two calves of gold" and said to the people: "Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kings 12:28). After placing one calf in Bethel and the other in Dan (1 Kings 12:29), Jeroboam appointed his own priests, ordained a feast, burnt incense, and made offerings on an altar, "sacrificing unto the calves that he had made" (1 Kings 12:32). The people likewise worshipped before these golden calves (1 Kings 12:30). As a consequence, the tribes that sinned under Jeroboam were "carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day" (2 Kings 17:22–23).
Ever since these incidents, a golden calf has referred to some object that is undeservedly worshipped or venerated.
To their shame, American Christians, who profess to serve the Lord God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and wouldn’t think of making a god out of gambling, Internet porn, or alcohol, have a god – a golden calf – they honor, reverence, and pay homage to. This god demands perpetual thanksgivings. This god demands obeisance on national holidays. This god demands special appreciation days. This god demands songs to be sung in praise to it. This god demands prayers to the Lord God on its behalf. This god demands sacrifices of young men and women. This god demands signs, buttons, shirts, bumper stickers, yellow ribbons, and lapel pins inscribed with its various names and slogans. This god tolerates no criticism of its activities.
The Christian’s golden calf is the U.S. military.
Not all Christians, mind you, but a great many Christians from throughout Christendom have exchanged biblical Christianity for imperial Christianity. From Catholic just-war theorists who oppose abortion (but not the killing of people outside of the womb) to progressive Christians who oppose the war in Iraq (but not military intervention in Darfur) to the Religious Right who oppose the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries (but not the American killing of Muslims in Muslim countries) – Christians of all branches and denominations are engaged an idolatrous affair with the U.S. military.
The worst offenders are the independent, evangelical, fundamentalist, and other conservative Christians. And I say this as one of them. With them it is the majority who bow before the golden calf. Yes, the majority. That is the conclusion I reached during the Bush years and that is still my conclusion now. In spite of the waning support for the war in Iraq and the venom directed toward Barack Obama by right-wing Christians, Christian reverence for the military remains unchanged.
I don’t make this golden calf accusation lightly. I say it after years of listening to conservative Christians, talking with them, reading hundreds of e-mails from them (both friend and foe), hearing scores of reports from disconsolate church members about their warmongering pastors and church leaders, reading numerous books, articles, blogs, and newsletters by Christian defenders of war and the warfare state, seeing the negative reaction to my book Christianity and War, and reading countless pathetic attempts to justify Christian participation in the state’s wars.
I still see on church signs and church websites the "support our troops," "pray for our troops," and "God bless our troops" mantras. It doesn’t matter where U.S. troops go, how many go, how long they stay, or what they do when they are there – support for the military is a fundamental of the faith, right up there with the Virgin Birth and the Deity of Christ.
And here is a resolution passed by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Baptist Churches at their annual meeting last year:
C. Support for Soldiers: Whereas there are young men and women from our country and our churches in military service, and some in perilous situations around the world, and whereas we appreciate their sacrifices and willingness to protect our freedom, BE IT RESOLVED that we will pray for our troops, support them in tangible ways as we have opportunity, and encourage them to make their field of service a harvest field for the Kingdom of God.
These are conservative, independent Baptist churches – and they are spewing forth anti-biblical nonsense.
And it is not just Red-State Christian fascists, Reich-wing Christian nationalists, theocon Values Voters (who recently expressed their support for warmonger Mike Huckabee in a Family Research Council Values Voter Summit), Christian Coalition moralists, and "God and country" social conservatives who support federal funding of school vouchers, abstinence education, and faith-based initiatives who venerate the military. It is also Christians who don’t consider themselves part of the Religious Right, Christians who don’t vote, Christians who oppose an interventionist U.S. foreign policy, Christians who denounce abuses of the FBI, CIA, IRS, and BATF, Christians who oppose the Iraq War, Christians who caution against Christian service in the military, and Christians who oppose basically every other government institution.
Support for the military among Christians is pervasive, systemic, sacrosanct, and codified.
It is also an unholy alliance, an illicit affair, an affront to the Saviour whom Christians worship as the Prince of Peace, a blight on Christianity, and the worse form of statolatry. It also violates the whole tenor of the New Testament:
Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:14).
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (2 Corinthians 6:16).
Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen (1 John 5:21).
I fear that things are hopeless. I see no end in sight to churches publicly honoring veterans, praising the troops for defending our freedoms, turning national holidays into military recognition days, having special military appreciation days, encouraging or not discouraging their young men (and sometimes women) to join the military, helping young men to become military chaplains, ostracizing those who disparage the military, equating admiration for the military with patriotism and criticism of the military with treason, imploring church members to pray for the troops, regarding the military’s acts of aggression as benevolent, presuming divine support for U.S. military interventions, accepting the militarism of society, having a superstitious reverence for the military, and remaining in willful ignorance of U.S. foreign policy and its use of the military as a force for evil in the world.
I have spoken about these things again and again and written about them time after time after time after time. I am afraid that my words are being heard and read for the most part by the wrong group of Christians – those who already reject the warfare state and a militarized Christianity.
The day is long past (if it ever existed) when the function of the U.S. military was limited to what it should be: defending the United States, securing U.S. borders, guarding U.S. shores, patrolling U.S. coasts, and enforcing no-fly zones over U.S. skies – not defending, guarding, patrolling, attacking, invading, or occupying other countries. And not providing disaster relief, dispensing humanitarian aid, supplying peacekeepers, enforcing UN resolutions, nation building, spreading goodwill, launching preemptive strikes, changing regimes, enforcing no-fly zones, rebuilding infrastructure, reviving public services, promoting good governance, stationing troops in other countries, garrisoning the planet with bases, and killing foreigners in their countries and destroying their property.
A military not strictly for defense of U.S. borders, shores, coasts, and skies is nothing more than the president’s personal attack force staffed by mercenaries willing to obey his latest command to bomb, invade, occupy, and otherwise bring death and destruction to any country he deems necessary.
Christian, it is time to slay the golden calf.
October 19, 2009
Most people know the story of Aaron’s golden calf.
After the Jews came out of Egypt, while Moses was up on Mount Sinai receiving from God the ten commandments on "tables of stone, written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18), the children of Israel complained to Aaron, Moses’ brother: "Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him" (Exodus 32:1). So, after the people donated their gold, Aaron made a golden calf and proclaimed: "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 32:4). Then Aaron made an altar, the people offered offerings, and they all had themselves one wild party (Exodus 32:6); that is, until Moses came down from the mount (Exodus 32:19).
Some, perhaps, also know the story of Jeroboam’s golden calves.
Years later in the history of Israel, when most of the tribes rebelled under Jeroboam, he "made two calves of gold" and said to the people: "Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kings 12:28). After placing one calf in Bethel and the other in Dan (1 Kings 12:29), Jeroboam appointed his own priests, ordained a feast, burnt incense, and made offerings on an altar, "sacrificing unto the calves that he had made" (1 Kings 12:32). The people likewise worshipped before these golden calves (1 Kings 12:30). As a consequence, the tribes that sinned under Jeroboam were "carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day" (2 Kings 17:22–23).
Ever since these incidents, a golden calf has referred to some object that is undeservedly worshipped or venerated.
To their shame, American Christians, who profess to serve the Lord God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and wouldn’t think of making a god out of gambling, Internet porn, or alcohol, have a god – a golden calf – they honor, reverence, and pay homage to. This god demands perpetual thanksgivings. This god demands obeisance on national holidays. This god demands special appreciation days. This god demands songs to be sung in praise to it. This god demands prayers to the Lord God on its behalf. This god demands sacrifices of young men and women. This god demands signs, buttons, shirts, bumper stickers, yellow ribbons, and lapel pins inscribed with its various names and slogans. This god tolerates no criticism of its activities.
The Christian’s golden calf is the U.S. military.
Not all Christians, mind you, but a great many Christians from throughout Christendom have exchanged biblical Christianity for imperial Christianity. From Catholic just-war theorists who oppose abortion (but not the killing of people outside of the womb) to progressive Christians who oppose the war in Iraq (but not military intervention in Darfur) to the Religious Right who oppose the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries (but not the American killing of Muslims in Muslim countries) – Christians of all branches and denominations are engaged an idolatrous affair with the U.S. military.
The worst offenders are the independent, evangelical, fundamentalist, and other conservative Christians. And I say this as one of them. With them it is the majority who bow before the golden calf. Yes, the majority. That is the conclusion I reached during the Bush years and that is still my conclusion now. In spite of the waning support for the war in Iraq and the venom directed toward Barack Obama by right-wing Christians, Christian reverence for the military remains unchanged.
I don’t make this golden calf accusation lightly. I say it after years of listening to conservative Christians, talking with them, reading hundreds of e-mails from them (both friend and foe), hearing scores of reports from disconsolate church members about their warmongering pastors and church leaders, reading numerous books, articles, blogs, and newsletters by Christian defenders of war and the warfare state, seeing the negative reaction to my book Christianity and War, and reading countless pathetic attempts to justify Christian participation in the state’s wars.
I still see on church signs and church websites the "support our troops," "pray for our troops," and "God bless our troops" mantras. It doesn’t matter where U.S. troops go, how many go, how long they stay, or what they do when they are there – support for the military is a fundamental of the faith, right up there with the Virgin Birth and the Deity of Christ.
And here is a resolution passed by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Baptist Churches at their annual meeting last year:
C. Support for Soldiers: Whereas there are young men and women from our country and our churches in military service, and some in perilous situations around the world, and whereas we appreciate their sacrifices and willingness to protect our freedom, BE IT RESOLVED that we will pray for our troops, support them in tangible ways as we have opportunity, and encourage them to make their field of service a harvest field for the Kingdom of God.
These are conservative, independent Baptist churches – and they are spewing forth anti-biblical nonsense.
And it is not just Red-State Christian fascists, Reich-wing Christian nationalists, theocon Values Voters (who recently expressed their support for warmonger Mike Huckabee in a Family Research Council Values Voter Summit), Christian Coalition moralists, and "God and country" social conservatives who support federal funding of school vouchers, abstinence education, and faith-based initiatives who venerate the military. It is also Christians who don’t consider themselves part of the Religious Right, Christians who don’t vote, Christians who oppose an interventionist U.S. foreign policy, Christians who denounce abuses of the FBI, CIA, IRS, and BATF, Christians who oppose the Iraq War, Christians who caution against Christian service in the military, and Christians who oppose basically every other government institution.
Support for the military among Christians is pervasive, systemic, sacrosanct, and codified.
It is also an unholy alliance, an illicit affair, an affront to the Saviour whom Christians worship as the Prince of Peace, a blight on Christianity, and the worse form of statolatry. It also violates the whole tenor of the New Testament:
Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:14).
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (2 Corinthians 6:16).
Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen (1 John 5:21).
I fear that things are hopeless. I see no end in sight to churches publicly honoring veterans, praising the troops for defending our freedoms, turning national holidays into military recognition days, having special military appreciation days, encouraging or not discouraging their young men (and sometimes women) to join the military, helping young men to become military chaplains, ostracizing those who disparage the military, equating admiration for the military with patriotism and criticism of the military with treason, imploring church members to pray for the troops, regarding the military’s acts of aggression as benevolent, presuming divine support for U.S. military interventions, accepting the militarism of society, having a superstitious reverence for the military, and remaining in willful ignorance of U.S. foreign policy and its use of the military as a force for evil in the world.
I have spoken about these things again and again and written about them time after time after time after time. I am afraid that my words are being heard and read for the most part by the wrong group of Christians – those who already reject the warfare state and a militarized Christianity.
The day is long past (if it ever existed) when the function of the U.S. military was limited to what it should be: defending the United States, securing U.S. borders, guarding U.S. shores, patrolling U.S. coasts, and enforcing no-fly zones over U.S. skies – not defending, guarding, patrolling, attacking, invading, or occupying other countries. And not providing disaster relief, dispensing humanitarian aid, supplying peacekeepers, enforcing UN resolutions, nation building, spreading goodwill, launching preemptive strikes, changing regimes, enforcing no-fly zones, rebuilding infrastructure, reviving public services, promoting good governance, stationing troops in other countries, garrisoning the planet with bases, and killing foreigners in their countries and destroying their property.
A military not strictly for defense of U.S. borders, shores, coasts, and skies is nothing more than the president’s personal attack force staffed by mercenaries willing to obey his latest command to bomb, invade, occupy, and otherwise bring death and destruction to any country he deems necessary.
Christian, it is time to slay the golden calf.
October 19, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Gun Owners Win the Opening Battle on ObamaCare!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Congratulations!
You have stymied the shady tactics used by Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi to try to pass the ObamaCare bill and -- in the opening salvo of the battle -- you blew them out of the water.
Gun Owners won a huge vote Wednesday in the Senate.
As you remember, the ObamaCare bill would dump your gun-related health data into a federal database. It would also put your (government mandated) insurance at risk if you keep a loaded gun for self-defense.
But there was a problem: The anti-gun health bills cost too much, and Obama had promised to pass a bill which would not raise the deficit by "one penny."
So what Obama, Reid, and Pelosi did was to try to pass a separate bill (S. 1776) which would fund the anti-gun ObamaCare bill by raising the deficit another $247 billion dollars.
But, they would argue, because S. 1776 was a "separate bill," the ObamaCare bill itself would not raise the deficit.
In a Senate not known for morality, this rose to a level of sleaze and corruption that embarrassed many Democrats, in addition to all Republicans.
With gun owners responding vigorously to our alerts on this issue, the motion to invoke "cloture" (or shut off debate) on the bill failed by a 47-53 vote -- 13 votes short of the 60 votes the anti-gun socialists needed.
The victory on S. 1776 means that it will be much harder for Obama, Reid and Pelosi to pick up the somewhat fiscally-minded Blue Dog Democrats they so desperately need to get their anti-gun ObamaCare legislation passed.
So congratulations! It is true that this is only the first battle... but, if we continue battering Congress as we have, it will be the first of many victories.
To see the official listing of how each Senator voted, you can go to http://tinyurl.com/ykb6kjb.
But in the meantime, pat yourself on the back for a job well done... and have a great weekend!
Congratulations!
You have stymied the shady tactics used by Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi to try to pass the ObamaCare bill and -- in the opening salvo of the battle -- you blew them out of the water.
Gun Owners won a huge vote Wednesday in the Senate.
As you remember, the ObamaCare bill would dump your gun-related health data into a federal database. It would also put your (government mandated) insurance at risk if you keep a loaded gun for self-defense.
But there was a problem: The anti-gun health bills cost too much, and Obama had promised to pass a bill which would not raise the deficit by "one penny."
So what Obama, Reid, and Pelosi did was to try to pass a separate bill (S. 1776) which would fund the anti-gun ObamaCare bill by raising the deficit another $247 billion dollars.
But, they would argue, because S. 1776 was a "separate bill," the ObamaCare bill itself would not raise the deficit.
In a Senate not known for morality, this rose to a level of sleaze and corruption that embarrassed many Democrats, in addition to all Republicans.
With gun owners responding vigorously to our alerts on this issue, the motion to invoke "cloture" (or shut off debate) on the bill failed by a 47-53 vote -- 13 votes short of the 60 votes the anti-gun socialists needed.
The victory on S. 1776 means that it will be much harder for Obama, Reid and Pelosi to pick up the somewhat fiscally-minded Blue Dog Democrats they so desperately need to get their anti-gun ObamaCare legislation passed.
So congratulations! It is true that this is only the first battle... but, if we continue battering Congress as we have, it will be the first of many victories.
To see the official listing of how each Senator voted, you can go to http://tinyurl.com/ykb6kjb.
But in the meantime, pat yourself on the back for a job well done... and have a great weekend!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Will You Love Every Future President?
by Tom Engelhardt and David Swanson
Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion beyond what the Constitution outlined, and what a government of, by, and for the people requires, since George Washington was president. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo boost during the co-presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Some of the new powers that those two stole from Congress, the courts, the states, and us the people are being abused less severely in this new age of Obama; others, more so; but far more crucially, in a pattern followed by recent presidencies, all are being maintained, if not expanded, and thus more firmly cemented into place for future presidents to use. Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, you are likely to strongly oppose some major decisions of some future presidents. So it shouldn't be hard to envision some pretty undesirable consequences that might flow from presidential power that increasingly approaches the absolute.
Our television news and newspapers don't seem terribly interested in this story, despite scraping its surface with reports on the many "czars" Obama has appointed or lectures on the importance of renewing, or only marginally amending, the PATRIOT Act. And Congress seems, if possible, even less interested. That's not so surprising, given that we've replaced the three branches of government with the two parties, so that at any given time roughly half the members of Congress take as their leader a president who is theoretically supposed to execute the will of Congress. And the other half usually obey their party's "leaders" in Congress, whose primary interest is in electing one of their own as the next president. Both parties continue to value presidential power itself either for its uses in the present, or for when their candidate is elected. Everyone wants to inherit the imperial presidency, not constrain it.
Under these circumstances, bills to create commissions investigating presidential abuses, to place a judicial check on claims of "state secrets," limit the use of presidential signing statements, or to allow more than eight members of Congress to be given "security" briefings by the executive branch prove not to be priorities for either party.
These days, the old-fashioned idea of checking executive abuses of existing laws through the issuance of subpoenas or by impeachment is, in Washington, widely considered a scandalous proposition. Congress impeached a judge this year who had groped his employees, but Jay Bybee, who signed secret memos purporting to legalize aggressive war and torture, and who now holds a lifetime seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is protected from such a step by his recent membership in the executive branch (and the displeasure Fox News would express toward his impeachment).
In April, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Bybee to testify, and the judge refused, just as many of his former colleagues in the Bush administration had in 2007 and 2008. Leahy may be unwilling to follow up by issuing a subpoena that even the new Department of Justice might refuse to enforce. The current department, for instance, allowed the White House Counsel to negotiate partial compliance with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena by former presidential advisor Karl Rove. And if Leahy is like most members of Congress, he will not even consider the option of using the Capitol Police to enforce a subpoena himself – something that no committee has done in 75 years.
All Power to the President
Any quick survey of the powers the presidency now claims would have to include the power to make laws, the power to make wars, the power to spend money, the power to make treaties, the power to grant immunity for crimes, the power to operate in secrecy, the power to spy without warrants, the power to detain without charge, and the power to torture.
Laws are still made by Congress, but they can be rewritten via signing statements; that is, statements announcing a president's intention to violate particular sections of the very bill he is signing into law. Neither Congress nor President Obama has thrown out all of Bush's extensive signing statements that did indeed alter laws. In fact, Obama has announced that his subordinates will review his predecessor's signing statements only as the need arises.
This policy might please those imagining that the Obama administration will always make the right decision about whether to maintain or reject a Bush-made amendment to a law, but it does nothing to strip the presidency of the power to use the mechanism of the signing statement to re-make or amend or alter new laws. As it happens, Obama has already published his own law-making signing statements.
Presidents now also routinely determine national policy through executive orders and, in doing so, run the country out of the White House rather than through departments headed by officials approved by Congress. They also increasingly dictate a legislative agenda to Congress – and both members of Congress and members of the public generally accept without comment or opposition that inversion of our constitutional system. And then there are the secret memos.
In those secret memos, Bush's lawyers in the Department of Justice dutifully "legalized" numerous illegal acts, including aggressive war and torture. Despite years of public back-and-forth between the White House and the Congress over the question of whether to ban torture, any act of complicity in torture was already a felony in the U.S. code under the Anti-Torture Act, which enforced the Convention Against Torture signed by President Ronald Reagan. However, the secret Justice Department memos were taken as the final word in legality, no matter what the law said.
Obama has directed the Justice Department not to prosecute those at the highest levels responsible for producing those memos, though he has permitted consideration – whether seriously intended or not – of the possibility of prosecuting a handful of low-ranking staffers who strayed beyond the illegal policies outlined in the memos. Not only does this bestow immunity on the most prominent criminals, reversing the approach – starting at the top – that the U.S. took at the Nuremburg war crimes trials after World War II, but it has the potential to create a terrifying precedent for the future. If a president can use his justice department to legalize a crime simply by asking a lawyer to write a memo, then who can doubt that a president has something approaching absolute power?
Presidents, not Congress, do indeed make wars now, whether or not they consult Jay Bybee's memo on the subject. They make wars without congressional declarations of war, using instead vague bills to maintain a pretense of congressional involvement – and then they don't even comply with the terms outlined in those authorizations. Illegal (as well as unconstitutional) as they may be, these wars can be expanded into apparently permanent occupations that include the construction of gigantic military bases from which additional wars may be launched. In the process, mercenaries often take the place of soldiers, and as "private contractors" they then operate even further from congressional oversight or the law.
To invade Iraq, President Bush spent money not appropriated for that purpose. He also gave himself the power to transfer money into "black budgets" beyond the purview of all but a few members of Congress, and so use it for secret tasks signed off on by his officials. Of course, massive secret budgets under the control of the president are nothing new, though they've grown through the years. Neither are they constitutional or sustainable.
On October 6th, the leaders of the two parties met with President Obama and, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's account, let him know that he could end, decrease, maintain, or escalate the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan as he saw fit. The Senate had voted the previous week not to call on war commander Stanley McChrystal for public testimony about that ongoing war until after the president determines his war policy, which of course means a war policy for all of us. Two days later, in a surprising flicker of dissent, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey released a statement suggesting that, contrary to everything he'd said for years, he recognizes that Congress has the power to choose not to fund those wars and thereby to end them.
As his presidency was winding down, George W. Bush concluded an unofficial treaty (though it was called a Status of Forces Agreement) with the government of U.S.-occupied Iraq for three more years of war there without feeling the slightest need for it to be ratified by the Senate. Ever since, the U.S. military has actually violated the terms of that document, while its key commanders continued to publicly state their intention to remain in Iraq beyond the end of 2011, a clear violation of the agreement. In the meantime, this White House has used the treaty as cover for an ongoing illegal occupation of Iraq with, at this point, 120,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of private contractors.
Is Congress Broken?
When many feared that Bush might pardon his subordinates for crimes he had himself authorized, the consensus among members of Congress and scholars was that he could, in fact, do such a thing. In some ways what both Bush and Obama have actually done is worse. With a big assist from Congress in the form of bills like the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act, they have worked to grant immunity for crimes without even naming the criminals or revealing what they have done. Obama's Department of Justice is now arguing, appealing, or re-appealing in various court cases to keep secret the abuses of government officials and corporations involved in torture and warrantless spying. Recently, the Justice Department even argued that, when it comes to denying information to a court or the public, telecommunication corporations must be considered a part of the executive branch of the federal government, and earlier this year the administration threatened the British government with an end to intelligence sharing if it revealed evidence of torture.
President Obama announced that he will only claim the right to hide information from a court on the grounds that important "state secrets" are involved after careful review by lawyers at the Department of Justice. This may be an improvement over the Bush years – not exactly a hard standard to reach – but notably this decision still cedes not an ounce of power to any branch other than the executive, even as Obama's lawyers make radical "state secrets" claims in attempts to block entire court cases, rather than over particular pieces of information.
While this president is ceding modest amounts of territory claimed by the previous one, he is ceding nothing when it comes to presidential power itself. For example, the president said he would release White House visitor logs (as the Bush administration had not), just not those already recorded, including the ones that held records of the visits of deal-making health insurance executives, nor any future logs that he thinks would endanger "national security." That offers change of a sort, however modest, but leaves it entirely in the president's hands to decide which logs to release.
This administration has indeed released some of the secret memos that Bush's Department of Justice used to justify torture and never shared with the public, but only when compelled by courts. The Justice Department has, in fact, fought fiercely against their release and has redacted significant sections of them before making them public.
Bush claimed for the presidency the power to detain people without charge or legal process – and then used it. Obama stood in front of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives in Washington and asserted the same power, in violation of the right of habeas corpus found in that torn and tattered document. Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta and presidential advisor David Axelrod have similarly made clear that the president still claims the power to engage in "harsh interrogation techniques" but chooses not to use it. Torture in this way has been transformed from a crime into a policy choice, with the intended message apparently being that we can stop torture temporarily by choosing to elect Democrats. This is perilous territory.
Perhaps presidents simply cannot be expected to give back powers gained by the executive branch, but shouldn't we expect Congress to work to take them back on our behalf? When Alberto Gonzales resigned as attorney general, he did so because a rapidly growing list of members of Congress signed onto a one-sentence bill directing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate possible grounds for his impeachment. Such an approach toward Judge Jay Bybee could begin to restore the power of Congress to assert itself in other areas as well, while pressuring the Justice Department to enforce the law, and potentially making public a great deal of information through the subpoenas involved in any impeachment hearing, which does not permit claims of "executive privilege." Information subpoenaed in an impeachment hearing must be produced, or the failure to produce it can become another impeachable offense.
Many of us probably consider our current president a much nicer guy than our local congressional representative. That doesn't change the fact that influencing a president, or even a senator, via grassroots pressure is infinitely more difficult than influencing a member of the House of Representatives.
This is not a new discovery. After all, isn't this, in part, why the House was given the power of the purse and the power of impeachment? Being closer to the ground, that body is, by its nature, going to be more amenable to democratic pressure and direction. If we want once again to have a real hand in making our nation's policies, our best shot – admittedly still a distinctly uphill course – is to focus on the person who represents us in the House.
Unfortunately, we have to compel each of them to do something they have come to collectively fear: taking back the power originally bestowed on them and not on behalf of their party, but of their branch of government, of the Constitution to which they've sworn an oath, and of the proper sovereigns of this nation: we the people. Otherwise the chief legacy of the Obama years will, like those of his immediate predecessors, be the slide from republic into empire and the continuing growth of an imperial presidency.
October 19, 2009
Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion beyond what the Constitution outlined, and what a government of, by, and for the people requires, since George Washington was president. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo boost during the co-presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Some of the new powers that those two stole from Congress, the courts, the states, and us the people are being abused less severely in this new age of Obama; others, more so; but far more crucially, in a pattern followed by recent presidencies, all are being maintained, if not expanded, and thus more firmly cemented into place for future presidents to use. Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, you are likely to strongly oppose some major decisions of some future presidents. So it shouldn't be hard to envision some pretty undesirable consequences that might flow from presidential power that increasingly approaches the absolute.
Our television news and newspapers don't seem terribly interested in this story, despite scraping its surface with reports on the many "czars" Obama has appointed or lectures on the importance of renewing, or only marginally amending, the PATRIOT Act. And Congress seems, if possible, even less interested. That's not so surprising, given that we've replaced the three branches of government with the two parties, so that at any given time roughly half the members of Congress take as their leader a president who is theoretically supposed to execute the will of Congress. And the other half usually obey their party's "leaders" in Congress, whose primary interest is in electing one of their own as the next president. Both parties continue to value presidential power itself either for its uses in the present, or for when their candidate is elected. Everyone wants to inherit the imperial presidency, not constrain it.
Under these circumstances, bills to create commissions investigating presidential abuses, to place a judicial check on claims of "state secrets," limit the use of presidential signing statements, or to allow more than eight members of Congress to be given "security" briefings by the executive branch prove not to be priorities for either party.
These days, the old-fashioned idea of checking executive abuses of existing laws through the issuance of subpoenas or by impeachment is, in Washington, widely considered a scandalous proposition. Congress impeached a judge this year who had groped his employees, but Jay Bybee, who signed secret memos purporting to legalize aggressive war and torture, and who now holds a lifetime seat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is protected from such a step by his recent membership in the executive branch (and the displeasure Fox News would express toward his impeachment).
In April, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Bybee to testify, and the judge refused, just as many of his former colleagues in the Bush administration had in 2007 and 2008. Leahy may be unwilling to follow up by issuing a subpoena that even the new Department of Justice might refuse to enforce. The current department, for instance, allowed the White House Counsel to negotiate partial compliance with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena by former presidential advisor Karl Rove. And if Leahy is like most members of Congress, he will not even consider the option of using the Capitol Police to enforce a subpoena himself – something that no committee has done in 75 years.
All Power to the President
Any quick survey of the powers the presidency now claims would have to include the power to make laws, the power to make wars, the power to spend money, the power to make treaties, the power to grant immunity for crimes, the power to operate in secrecy, the power to spy without warrants, the power to detain without charge, and the power to torture.
Laws are still made by Congress, but they can be rewritten via signing statements; that is, statements announcing a president's intention to violate particular sections of the very bill he is signing into law. Neither Congress nor President Obama has thrown out all of Bush's extensive signing statements that did indeed alter laws. In fact, Obama has announced that his subordinates will review his predecessor's signing statements only as the need arises.
This policy might please those imagining that the Obama administration will always make the right decision about whether to maintain or reject a Bush-made amendment to a law, but it does nothing to strip the presidency of the power to use the mechanism of the signing statement to re-make or amend or alter new laws. As it happens, Obama has already published his own law-making signing statements.
Presidents now also routinely determine national policy through executive orders and, in doing so, run the country out of the White House rather than through departments headed by officials approved by Congress. They also increasingly dictate a legislative agenda to Congress – and both members of Congress and members of the public generally accept without comment or opposition that inversion of our constitutional system. And then there are the secret memos.
In those secret memos, Bush's lawyers in the Department of Justice dutifully "legalized" numerous illegal acts, including aggressive war and torture. Despite years of public back-and-forth between the White House and the Congress over the question of whether to ban torture, any act of complicity in torture was already a felony in the U.S. code under the Anti-Torture Act, which enforced the Convention Against Torture signed by President Ronald Reagan. However, the secret Justice Department memos were taken as the final word in legality, no matter what the law said.
Obama has directed the Justice Department not to prosecute those at the highest levels responsible for producing those memos, though he has permitted consideration – whether seriously intended or not – of the possibility of prosecuting a handful of low-ranking staffers who strayed beyond the illegal policies outlined in the memos. Not only does this bestow immunity on the most prominent criminals, reversing the approach – starting at the top – that the U.S. took at the Nuremburg war crimes trials after World War II, but it has the potential to create a terrifying precedent for the future. If a president can use his justice department to legalize a crime simply by asking a lawyer to write a memo, then who can doubt that a president has something approaching absolute power?
Presidents, not Congress, do indeed make wars now, whether or not they consult Jay Bybee's memo on the subject. They make wars without congressional declarations of war, using instead vague bills to maintain a pretense of congressional involvement – and then they don't even comply with the terms outlined in those authorizations. Illegal (as well as unconstitutional) as they may be, these wars can be expanded into apparently permanent occupations that include the construction of gigantic military bases from which additional wars may be launched. In the process, mercenaries often take the place of soldiers, and as "private contractors" they then operate even further from congressional oversight or the law.
To invade Iraq, President Bush spent money not appropriated for that purpose. He also gave himself the power to transfer money into "black budgets" beyond the purview of all but a few members of Congress, and so use it for secret tasks signed off on by his officials. Of course, massive secret budgets under the control of the president are nothing new, though they've grown through the years. Neither are they constitutional or sustainable.
On October 6th, the leaders of the two parties met with President Obama and, by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's account, let him know that he could end, decrease, maintain, or escalate the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan as he saw fit. The Senate had voted the previous week not to call on war commander Stanley McChrystal for public testimony about that ongoing war until after the president determines his war policy, which of course means a war policy for all of us. Two days later, in a surprising flicker of dissent, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey released a statement suggesting that, contrary to everything he'd said for years, he recognizes that Congress has the power to choose not to fund those wars and thereby to end them.
As his presidency was winding down, George W. Bush concluded an unofficial treaty (though it was called a Status of Forces Agreement) with the government of U.S.-occupied Iraq for three more years of war there without feeling the slightest need for it to be ratified by the Senate. Ever since, the U.S. military has actually violated the terms of that document, while its key commanders continued to publicly state their intention to remain in Iraq beyond the end of 2011, a clear violation of the agreement. In the meantime, this White House has used the treaty as cover for an ongoing illegal occupation of Iraq with, at this point, 120,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of private contractors.
Is Congress Broken?
When many feared that Bush might pardon his subordinates for crimes he had himself authorized, the consensus among members of Congress and scholars was that he could, in fact, do such a thing. In some ways what both Bush and Obama have actually done is worse. With a big assist from Congress in the form of bills like the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act, they have worked to grant immunity for crimes without even naming the criminals or revealing what they have done. Obama's Department of Justice is now arguing, appealing, or re-appealing in various court cases to keep secret the abuses of government officials and corporations involved in torture and warrantless spying. Recently, the Justice Department even argued that, when it comes to denying information to a court or the public, telecommunication corporations must be considered a part of the executive branch of the federal government, and earlier this year the administration threatened the British government with an end to intelligence sharing if it revealed evidence of torture.
President Obama announced that he will only claim the right to hide information from a court on the grounds that important "state secrets" are involved after careful review by lawyers at the Department of Justice. This may be an improvement over the Bush years – not exactly a hard standard to reach – but notably this decision still cedes not an ounce of power to any branch other than the executive, even as Obama's lawyers make radical "state secrets" claims in attempts to block entire court cases, rather than over particular pieces of information.
While this president is ceding modest amounts of territory claimed by the previous one, he is ceding nothing when it comes to presidential power itself. For example, the president said he would release White House visitor logs (as the Bush administration had not), just not those already recorded, including the ones that held records of the visits of deal-making health insurance executives, nor any future logs that he thinks would endanger "national security." That offers change of a sort, however modest, but leaves it entirely in the president's hands to decide which logs to release.
This administration has indeed released some of the secret memos that Bush's Department of Justice used to justify torture and never shared with the public, but only when compelled by courts. The Justice Department has, in fact, fought fiercely against their release and has redacted significant sections of them before making them public.
Bush claimed for the presidency the power to detain people without charge or legal process – and then used it. Obama stood in front of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives in Washington and asserted the same power, in violation of the right of habeas corpus found in that torn and tattered document. Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta and presidential advisor David Axelrod have similarly made clear that the president still claims the power to engage in "harsh interrogation techniques" but chooses not to use it. Torture in this way has been transformed from a crime into a policy choice, with the intended message apparently being that we can stop torture temporarily by choosing to elect Democrats. This is perilous territory.
Perhaps presidents simply cannot be expected to give back powers gained by the executive branch, but shouldn't we expect Congress to work to take them back on our behalf? When Alberto Gonzales resigned as attorney general, he did so because a rapidly growing list of members of Congress signed onto a one-sentence bill directing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate possible grounds for his impeachment. Such an approach toward Judge Jay Bybee could begin to restore the power of Congress to assert itself in other areas as well, while pressuring the Justice Department to enforce the law, and potentially making public a great deal of information through the subpoenas involved in any impeachment hearing, which does not permit claims of "executive privilege." Information subpoenaed in an impeachment hearing must be produced, or the failure to produce it can become another impeachable offense.
Many of us probably consider our current president a much nicer guy than our local congressional representative. That doesn't change the fact that influencing a president, or even a senator, via grassroots pressure is infinitely more difficult than influencing a member of the House of Representatives.
This is not a new discovery. After all, isn't this, in part, why the House was given the power of the purse and the power of impeachment? Being closer to the ground, that body is, by its nature, going to be more amenable to democratic pressure and direction. If we want once again to have a real hand in making our nation's policies, our best shot – admittedly still a distinctly uphill course – is to focus on the person who represents us in the House.
Unfortunately, we have to compel each of them to do something they have come to collectively fear: taking back the power originally bestowed on them and not on behalf of their party, but of their branch of government, of the Constitution to which they've sworn an oath, and of the proper sovereigns of this nation: we the people. Otherwise the chief legacy of the Obama years will, like those of his immediate predecessors, be the slide from republic into empire and the continuing growth of an imperial presidency.
October 19, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Trade in those pigskins for guns and bullets?
Despite what media coverage might seem to indicate, there are more deaths related to high school football than guns. Over a recent three year period, more football players died from hits to the head, heat stroke, etc. (32), as compared with students who were murdered by firearms on campus (29) during that same time period.
There has never been a documented case of a football saving people’s lives. And yet, when you look at the statistics, guns are actually safer than pigskins on high school campuses!
Read full story...
There has never been a documented case of a football saving people’s lives. And yet, when you look at the statistics, guns are actually safer than pigskins on high school campuses!
Read full story...
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