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Saturday, November 11, 2006

BULLSEYE!

Columnist Maureen Dowd explains the midterm elections of 2006 (hat tip to AMERICAblog):

Republicans were oddly oblivious to the fact that they had turned into a Thomas Nast cartoon: an unappetizing tableau of bloated, corrupt, dissembling, feckless white hacks who were leaving kids unprotected. Tom DeLay and Bob Ney sneaking out of Congress with dollar bills flying out of their pockets. Denny Hastert playing Cardinal Bernard Law, shielding Mark Foley. Rummy, cocky and obtuse as he presided over an imploding Iraq, while failing to give young men and women in the military the armor, support and strategy they needed to come home safely. Dick Cheney, vowing bullheadedly to move full speed ahead on Iraq no matter what the voters decided. W. frantically yelling about how Democrats would let the terrorists win, when his lame-brained policies had spawned more terrorists.

And that's that.

JC

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Comment from a different post, but needs to be seen to fully appreciate the true liberal agenda:

"I don't give a flying rat's ass what the constitution, nor what the majority of the people, has to say about gay marriage."

We KNOW none of you liberal leftwingnut neocoms give a rat's ass about the Constitution or majority opinion. Thanks to one of you - eff - for finally being honest enough to admit it!

MrArchieBunker said...

Like all good propogandists, Mo Dud takes a diamond of truth and wraps it in a turd of lies.

Michelle said...

Thank goodness America woke up!!

http://hnn.us/articles/23297.html

The Founders Never Imagined a Bush Administration

George W. Bush and his most trusted advisers, Richard B. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, entered office determined to restore the authority of the presidency. Five years and many decisions later, they've pushed the expansion of presidential power so far that we now confront a constitutional crisis.

Relying on legal opinions from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Professor John Yoo, then working at the Justice Department, Bush has insisted that there can be no limits to the power of the commander-in-chief in time of war. More recently the president has claimed that laws relating to domestic spying and the torture of detainees do not apply to him. His interpretation has produced a devilish conundrum.

President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the "war on terror" is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this "war" can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution.

When President Nixon covertly subverted checks and balances 30 years ago during the Vietnam War, Congress passed laws making clear that presidents were not to engage in unconstitutional behavior in the interest of "national security." Then Congress was reacting to violation of Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures without judicial warrants establishing "probable cause," attempts to assassinate foreign leaders and surveillance of American citizens.

Now the Iraq war is being used to justify similar abuses. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, providing constitutional means to carry out surveillance, and the Intelligence Identification Protection Act, protecting the identity of undercover intelligence agents, have both been violated by an administration seeking to restore "the legitimate authority of the presidency," as Cheney puts it.

The presidency possesses no power not granted to it under the Constitution. The powers the current administration seeks in its "war on terror" are not granted under the Constitution. Indeed, they are explicitly prohibited by acts of Congress.

The Founding Fathers, who always come to mind when the Constitution is in danger, anticipated just such a possibility. Writing in the Federalist Papers, James Madison defined tyranny as the concentration of powers in one branch of the government.

"The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department," Madison wrote in Federalist 51, "consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others."

Warming to his subject, Madison continued, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition;" the interest of the office holders must "be connected with the constitutional rights of the place."

Recognizing that he was making an appeal to interest over ideals, he concluded that it "may be a reflection of human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government." "But what," Madison asked, "is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

Madison's solution to the concentration of powers that lead to tyranny relied upon either Congress or the Supreme Court to check the overreaching of a president. In our present crisis, Congress has been supine in the face of the president's grab for unconstitutional, unlimited power, and no case is working its way towards a Supreme Court judgment.

If Madison's reliance on the ambition of other office holders has failed us, we need to look elsewhere. Can what Thomas Jefferson called the "common sense and good judgment of the American people" help us now? In the past, they have been a critical last resort when our leaders endangered the constitutional checks and balances that have made us the world's oldest democracy. But first the public must wake up to this constitutional crisis.

Anonymous said...

JC you will soon see how out of touch the Democrats are when the immigration reform bill hits the house floor. Your lefty buddies that you wrap yourself around will give away the whole enchilada (pun intended) You're so busy blaming Bush and the republicans for every little microbe that affects your life, that you can't even see what your Demo team is doing to you. These aliens aren't just fruit pickers anymore. They've taken advantage of every employment opportunity out there. Remember the evil corporations you loath so much? Well Mom and Pop are hiring illegals as fast as they can, so don't blame the big boys anymore. Remember those unions that fought for the American worker? They're hiring illegals NOW, so you know they'll hire more after the Demo team passes the bill. Remember those disadvantaged youth you say could benefit from a skilled trade so they can have an opportunity to make a living? Well the Demo team will give that to the illegals. Remember that chance your son or daughter may have had at a scholarship? Well you can kiss that goodbye because the Demo team has already set their sights on illegals getting a free ride in college. Oh and the one's that can't get a free ride can get in-state tuition. Quiet a package huh. Make sure you check who voted for all this before you blame Bush. The Demo team in the Senate has already given it all away. The house is next. Oh and don't screw up at work. There will be a WHOLE lotta college educated illegals to take your place once your boss gets pissed. Like I said ... They aren't just fruit pickers anymore

AnonymousPoster said...

This post says, "an unappetizing tableau of bloated, corrupt, dissembling, feckless white hacks who were leaving kids unprotected."

I guess "white hacks" isnt a racist comment to Claus.

Hypocricy exposed.

WFG said...

If not supporting draconian concepts with no basis for their inclusion in the constitution being anything better than paranoia and unreasonable intolerance makes me a liberal, good. The constitutional can be a blalance against the majority and the minority. What you submit with arguments to tradition and right of majority rule on social issues is support for majority tyranny, not reason.

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