Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the nation’s top law enforcement official, has lied repeatedly to Congress.
President
Bush has openly and audaciously on over 1200 occasions refused to enact
all or parts of hundreds of laws passed by the Congress of the United
States, claiming for himself a non-existent “unitary executive
authority†that purportedly makes him an extraconstitutional tyrant
whose office comprises all executive, legislative and judicial power in
the government, thus rendering Congress and the Judiciary merely
vestigial bodies much like the tiny hip and bones buried deep inside
the body of a whale.
Bush continues to expand a war in
Iraq, adding tens of thousands of overstretched and exhausted troops
and producing hundreds of new dead American bodies despite a clear call
in last November’s election for an end to a conflict that has now
lasted longer than World War II. He also continues to claim that the
war is legal despite overwhelming evidence that both he and the vice
president lied brazenly and repeatedly about the reasons for it..
The
president continues to insist that Americans and captives in various
American wars can be held in violation of International Law and the
Constitution, with no trial, no habeas corpus rights, no right to a
lawyer, and no protection from torture.
The president
refuses to talk about or explain the details of an extra-judicial
spying program against Americans that he authorized, even after it had
been declared a serious felony and violation of the First and Fourth
Amendments. It is a program that was so offensive that even his
one-time attorney general, John Ashcroft, a man who saw nothing wrong
with organizing 20 million Americans to spy on the rest of us, to
refuse to sign on, and indeed to threaten to resign.
And
the president, in myriad ways, continues to obstruct global and
domestic efforts to begin to seriously address the mounting disaster of
global heating—a crisis that threatens the survival not just of the
nation, but of the human race.
In the face of all these crimes and abuses of power, what have the Democrats done?
The easiest way to show the Democratic response to all this criminality is to leave what we writers call a double-space break:
That’s it.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
When
Democrats won the 2006 off-year election, and when they assumed control
of the 110th Congress, there was big talk about pressing ahead with
investigations of administration wrongdoing and bungling, and of
pushing forward a progressive Democratic agenda. There was talk of
investigating the president’s assault on civil liberties, of ending the
Iraq War, of dealing with a national health care crisis that now leaves
45 million Americans with no insurance and no access to decent medical
care, of funding a gutted educational system, of passing legislation to
begin cutting back on America’s prodigious and unconscionable
production of global warming gasses, and of fixing an electoral system
that is a national embarrassment and an invitation to theft and
manipulation.
And what have they actually done? Unfortunately, the answer here is not “nothing,†which might have been better.
No.
Instead, they funded the Iraq war for months to come, in full with no
strings attached, and passed a minimum wage hike that is so minimal
most workers won’t even know it happened, because their own states
already have higher pay mandates.
Little wonder that
support for Democrats in Congress has cratered, plunging from a
euphoric 65 percent right after the last election to 23 percent today.
The
Democratic Congress, incredibly, has managed in five short months of
inaction and diddling around to become less popular than this most
loathed and ridiculed of presidents!
Like Laurel and Hardy
near the end of a disaster skit, in which their antics have caused
nothing but mounting chaos and ruin, the only challenge left for the
great leadership team of Speaker Nancy “Impeachment’s-off-the-tableâ€
Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is to see if they can
succeed in driving Democratic support numbers down below even the 9
percent level enjoyed by Vice President Cheney.
I have no
doubt that this sorry duo can manage this feat, given enough time. All
they have to do is keep funding the war, keep ignoring the president’s
crimes and the mounting popular calls for his impeachment, keep
bottling up the Cheney impeachment bill submitted by Rep. Dennis
Kucinich and co-sponsored, now, by seven other House members, and keep
yacking about wanting to work “across the aisle†and “with the
president.â€
The president has his legacy. He is all set to
go down in history as the most wretched, debased, ignorant,
mean-spirited and treasonous chief executive in the nation’s history.
He really need do nothing more to lock in his title.
Pelosi
and Reid are well on the way, though, to being able to claim the
companion title of lamest opposition leaders in the nation’s history.
--------------------
FLASH! This Non-confrontational "Opposition" Stuff is a Communicable Disease
Today,
we learn from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) that Federal Appeals Court Judge
Brett Kavanaugh lied in his Senate confirmation hearings that he hadn't
been involved in administration discussions of how to handle enemy
combatants, when in fact he had met with and discussed the issue with
White House lawyers in 2002. So does Sen. Durbin call for Kavanaugh's
impeachment? No. He says the Senate may consider "asking" the good
judge to recuse himself from future cases involving enemy combatants.
Another bold blow for justice, for respect for Congress, and for the Constitution by the Democratic opposition!
Vice President Cheney says he doesn’t have to obey the law relating to national security records held in the executive office because as vice president, he’s not part of the executive branch. 
