Funeral for a Fourth Amendement

I sent the rants below to Congress today. You should do the same.

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Sent to Nancy Pelosi:

I am a native Californian, and constituent of yours due to your tremendous power over my life, and the future of my country, as Speaker. You control what gets to the floor, etc. PLEASE DERAIL THIS TELECOM BILL going through the House today. I'm angry enough that Impeachment - or even investigation - is "off the table," but don't shred the Constitution on top of it. You are the "check" in "check and balance," and I haven't seen much checking going on. Fine, compromise on some things, but NOT THE FOURTH AMENDMENT, PLEASE!

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And to Jay Inslee, short and sweet, because I trust him to do the right thing:

NO on the Telco Bill, including immunity!!! This bill leaves oversight and enforcement almost EXCLUSIVELY in the hands of the very people who we can count on to abuse it: the Executive Branch.

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But don't take my word on it. Read it for yourself:
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM104_080619_fisapromise.htm

And then let your representatives hear your rage! Call AND write.

The Senate takes this up next week, so get those dialing fingers ready!

I should know better

Scott McClellan testifies before Congress tomorrow. And, fool that I am, I find myself being just a little, teensy, tiny bit hopeful. I should know better. When it became apparent after the 2000 election that there were serious irregularities in the Florida election, and Bev Harris was sounding the alarm with her Black Box Voting organization, I thought “Well, this will get straightened out.” But it didn’t. Then we had 9/11, and after the dust had cleared, we started hearing about ignored PDBs, and I thought “This group will now be exposed for the incompetents that they are!” But we were too collectively traumatized to absorb it. When the facts started coming out after the invasion of Iraq (well, the facts were there before the invasion, but eventually people starting talking about them), I thought “OK, maybe people will finally start to catch on.” But there was never any real traction to it. Then there was the Valerie Plame affair. And I thought “This is clearly a matter of treason. Now the American people will be outraged enough and demand some answers!” Nope.

We passed milestones of 1000 dead Americans in Iraq. Two thousand dead. And the big three-oh-oh-oh, a tie with the unrelated but often cited number of people killed on 9/11. But the death toll only served to justify shutting our eyes, stopping our ears, and plunging ahead, to honor those who had died by sending in some more.

There was the 2004 election, and the obvious problems in Ohio. Surely, if there is a tipping point for outrage, this was it!.. But it wasn’t. Then there were the fired US attorneys. The stolen election in Alabama. The political prosecution and imprisonment of Governor Don Siegelman. Muzzling of government officials. Contractor fraud and waste in Iraq. Illegal wiretaps (and denials, followed by “Yeah, we did that. So what?”). Abu Ghraib. Katrina. Secret prisons. Extraordinary renditions. Torture. Just Google “Bush administration scandals” and you will have no shortage of lists. Just don’t do it before bedtime, though.

We’ve had testimony and tell-all from Paul O’Niell, Richard Clark, Richard Carmona, David Iglesias, John McKay, James Comey - again, there are lists aplenty to be had on line.

And now Scott McClellan. From what I have heard about his book, his testimony should be enough to sink any administration in a democratic society with a free and independent press... Oops! Forgot where I was.

Still, I’m hoping there will be that moment. That Watergate “What recordings?” moment. Call me foolish, but I remember a time when we impeached a president for a lie in a civil deposition. His detractors certainly accused him of much more, but that was the one thing they felt they could actually indict him on, and they had to dig for years to get just that. The Bush crimes are not even buried, but the press and our elected officials keep stumbling over them like so much clutter, and moving on to matters apparently far more important than defending the foundations of our liberty. Although they don’t say it, Congress’s actions - or inactions - reflect Bush’s own assessment of the Constitution as a “Goddamn piece of paper.”

But I’m hoping there will be that one question, and that one answer, that one piece of clutter that, despite their worst intentions, Congress will no longer be able to ignore. Yes, I should know better, but I keep hoping the obvious will finally be obvious enough. Call me a romantic, but if I don't keep hoping - and speaking and writing and voting - then it's over. And I rather like the country I grew up in. I want it back.

Dear Rep. Conyers: Protect and Defend, Please!

To Representative Conyers of Michigan:

On June 5th, you had a meeting with Code Pink, and laid out five reasons why you felt impeachment was not possible. What I hear in these reasons, as summarized in a number of sources, is “we’re too scared.” But we have men and women dodging bullets right now, because of what many of us believe to be impeachable offenses committed by this President. Those men and women took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Kinda’ like the oath you took. If our fighting forces in Iraq can take that oath and look death in the face, you can certainly look into the news camera and fulfill your own oath.

So here are my reasons against your reasons against impeachment:

• Reason one: While the majority of people in this country want Bush gone, they don't want impeachment.

Response: Polls don’t excuse you from your constitutional duty. Again, that pesky oath thing. And even though we don't all live in Michigan, every American is your constituent, because the Judiciary Committee, which you chair, is the People’s sole instrument for controlling potential tyranny from the Executive Branch. We cannot hold a recall election. We cannot put up an initiative for vote. We cannot knock on the door of the West Wing and execute a citizen's arrest. But if the President orders me snatched off the street and locked up because he takes exception to what I’ve written here, you and your committee are my only hope. That hasn’t happened to me yet, but the day is young. President Bush has said he has the power to declare me, or anyone within our borders, an enemy combatant. In Presidential Directive 51, he has also said he can declare martial law if he perceives a threat to the homeland - and he gets to define “threat.” It could be anything from another crime like 9/11 to a hurricane. And then he alone gets to decide when, or if, we get our Constitution back. That level of power should not be trusted in any one person, regardless of how popular the polls say he or she is.

Terrorists can blow up buildings, they can murder people, they can burn down our capitol, but that will not destroy the nation. The erosion of our rights and freedoms, however, will destroy us. There may still be a land mass dubbed “USA,” but the nation born in 1776 is slowly disappearing. At this point in time you, and you alone, could stop it.

Please stop it.

• Reason two: The corporate media will slay us.

Response: Once the facts start coming out, the media will be like a dog with a meaty, juicy bone. If it sells cars, computers or video games, they will pounce on the hearings, and the salacious facts coming out of testimony, like flies on honey. A jilted press secretary pouring his heart out over deceptions, lies, and the outing of a spy? If it means higher ratings, the corporate media will eat it up and ask for more.

• Reason three: Not enough time.

Response: Just what is the statute of limitation on mass murder?

• Reason four: Not enough votes.

Response: You’re a lawyer, Mr. Conyers. You know that we don’t decide whether or not to hold a trial by polling the jury before presenting evidence. Until you have hearings, how do you know how many votes there will be? Have hearings, uncover information, and see how many votes you get. Plus, even if you don’t convict anyone, you’d at least get the truth on the record, and maybe prevent this from happening again.

• Reason five: It could cost the Democrats the election if we pursue impeachment.

Response: It could cost my grandchildren their lives if we don’t. Failure to call them out on their offenses leaves the door open to more wars, not to mention more renditions, more secret prisons, more domestic spying, and a constant drumbeat of "be afraid, be afraid."

And historically, though there isn’t that much precident, elections have not always been the price of impeachment. After Nixon, Democrats won new seats. The hearings alone shocked the American public, and Nixon’s crimes were shoplifting compared to Bush’s. And although the Republicans lost seats after they impeached Clinton, consider the fact that Clinton was enormously popular at the time. The majority of the American people saw through the Republican’s sham. (We'll skip the trip in the WABAC Machine to the impeachment of Democrat Andrew Johnson, although that one didn't turn out to badly for the Republicans, either.)

So just have hearings, please? Have a hearing, maybe? Ask some questions. See where the momentum goes. Is that too much to ask to protect and defend our Constitution? PULEEEEEZE?

An open letter to my Democratic sisters: You're missing the point!

An open letter to Harriet, Koryne, and all my other sisters who would rather vote for John McCain than for the "spoiler" Barack Obama:

I am a woman "of a certain age." I have not forgotten the struggles of feminists during my life time. But in case you have forgotten: the whole point of the feminist movement was to make gender a non-issue. I remember the bad old days. I was told by my boss that while I could marry for money, my less-qualified coworker had his family to support and needed the higher salary. I have been told that my highly technical profession, because it is primarily a female workforce, should be content to take home "pin money." I have suffered the slings and arrows of sexism, and I apologize to no one for my feminist creds.

Hillary was the first woman in history to win a presidential primary, in any state. She had the first real chance at making it all the way. But under the Democratic primary process, that we have carried out for decades, the other candidate won. Not because Obama was a man and Hillary was a woman, but because the necessary number of people, in the necessary states, voted for Obama. The victory was that for the first time in history, a woman was taken seriously as a candidate.

So I have this to say to you: If you want to vote for McCain because you think he would do a better job than Obama of addressing those issues that inspired you to support Hillary, then God bless you (and God help you, while she’s at it!). But if you want to insist that, because Hillary is a she, either Hillary has the nomination or you will vote for Bush’s heir apparent, regardless of how many more wars result, how many more children go to bed hungry, or how many women die because of reproductive rights eroded by McCain-appointed judges, then you are as sexist as any of the men who have patted us on our pretty little heads throughout history. This is not about our "tribe." This is about the Supreme Court. This is about our tenuous national security. This is about our crumbling infrastructure, our unequal health care, our children’s education, and the next generation’s very survival.

Barack Obama won the nomination. He would have won even with Florida and Michigan counted at 100%. We followed the process, Hillary had an honest shot at it, and she nearly made it. That’s progress. Now please don’t disenfranchise the rest of us who want an end to this right-wing insanity before we lose more of our children, whether in the Green Zone or the inner city. Voting for McCain to spite the rest of us is not going to get you any closer to what you say you want: a woman in the White House. Because if you are holding gender over all other qualities, then you have truly missed the point of the feminist movement.