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Sep 27, 2007

Not to Be Outdone ... House Makes 2nd Claim to Ignorance

As referenced in the Candy Ass post from 9/20, the Senate recently condemned the political advocacy group, MoveOn.org, for exercising its First Amendment rights. That's right they took time out of their busy schedule to play a rousing game of For Shame against the citizens of this country - 3 million citizens, who, including myself, are members of MoveOn.

And how exactly do you think that Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid let that little number into the schedule?

I imagine it something like this:

"Hmm, I wonder what we should put on the agenda today? Debate the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind or the PATRIOT Act? Nah! Debate and pass the 12 spending bills necessary to fund federal government operations for the next fiscal year? Nah! Pass some sort of legislation that gets us closer to ending our immoral occupation of Iraq? Nah! Oh, wait! I've got it! We'll pass a sense of the Senate resolution that says that MoveOn is mean, rotten, and icky for saying those things about General Patraeus. Yes. Now that'll show the public we know how to get things done down here in D.C.!"

Or something like that.

But wait! There's more ...

Not wanting to cede the soapbox, er ... uh, I mean the high moral ground to their big brothers and sisters in the Senate, the House passed its own scolding resolution against MoveOn yesterday - a full 16 days after the Patraeus ad ran in the NYT! Can you say "Me too, me too!"

It passed 341 - 79. That's right, 78% of the House voted in favor of condemning criticism of a man charged with prosecuting a war that 70% of Americans disagree with! Here's the vote tally. More than likely your House rep is in the Yea column.

Now there may be some of you gentle readers who agree with the criticism of the ad. You may think that it goes to far. That it unfairly questions the general's sense of duty to the military, to the nation, and to the administration under which he serves.

So what! Who cares? Big deal! And, oh yeah ... grow up!

This issue is not about whether a pinko, lefty liberal group is smearing the good name of a God-fearin' Amer'can. This issue is about government censorship of constitutionally guaranteed free speech.

While the resolutions are non-binding and carry no legal weight other than the opprobrium of Congress, these votes can be seen as nothing but censorship. They are literally our elected representatives saying "We don't like what you have to say." And even without the legal authority to do anything about that opinion, they cannot be ignored.

Think of it this way:

Did they vote to condemn Dick Cheney's lies about Iraqi WMDs? No. Did they vote to condemn the despicable comparison of former senator Max Cleeland - who, as a young serviceman, left both legs and an arm in a Vietnamese rice paddy - to Osama bin Laden? No. Did they vote to condemn the outright lies of the Swift Boat veterans against John Kerry? Hell no. But they found it in their hearts to express a special kind of outrage against the free speech of private citizens.

This is not a legitimate role for the United States Congress to be playing, especially now, especially with all of the true harm that they have stood by and watched, and sometimes enabled, this administration to create since 9/11.

They are not nannies and nursemaids to say "Tsk, tsk" when we speak out of turn. They are not arbiters of good taste to publicly chide us if we say too much. They are not a church tea clutch to revile us for our misdeeds. These are supposed to be men and women of substance and character whom we send to Washington to decide laws for us, not to reprimand us when a political ad comes close to the line of poor judgement or rings too uncomfortably true.

It's bad enough when the Decider-in-Chief uses his bully pulpit to call such ads "disgusting." It rises to another level of misuse of power, however, when the full weight and stature of Congress votes to quash our right to speak truth to power.

As Justice William Brandeis wrote 80 years ago the "freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."

If our government votes to discourage such free expression then we are doomed to never know any kind of political truth, whether as Republicans or Democrats. Which, of course, may be just what they want.

2 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 4:06 PM

Sep 20, 2007

A Bunch of Candy Asses

That was the term that my high school football coach used when the team didn't perform to his level of expectation. Even if you've never heard this colorful phrase before, you can pretty much tell that it's not uttered as a compliment.

We heard it and we felt shamed. We knew that we weren't the sissies that the term implied, but we also knew that we hadn't performed well and should figure out a way to play better.

With that in mind, I would like to use that very descriptive epithet and call the U.S. Senate a bunch of candy asses!

How else to explain the sham vote on Senate Amendment 2934? They can't pass the Webb Amendment that would require all troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan be sent home for periods equal to their deployment times.

Neither could they pass a motion to suspend debate on restoring habeas corpus, a legal right dating back to the mother f*****g Magna Carta.

They can, however, get up on their soapboxes and moralize over and condemn the freedom of speech. It seems they all got their knickers in a twist after MoveOn.org ran this NY Times ad (PDF document) questioning General David Patraeus's honesty in his testimony before Congress last week. Apparently they think that MoveOn doesn't have the right to make such criticisms of the good general or any other member of the U.S. military who may be playing loose with the truth. The purpose of their little charade was supposedly:

To express the sense of the Senate that General David II. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.

The result, however, was a 72 to 25 drubbing of the 1st Amendment.

So another day passes that they fail to force the hand on this administration's lies, distortions, and deceptions. But free speech has been safely chilled by our moral guardians on the Hill.

Now is not the time for political theatre. Now is the time to be doing anything and everything necessary to end our military occupation of Iraq. Simply put, this is not how a supposedly freedom loving democracy behaves. I'm sure they all feel proud and happy that they can say they took a stand against the haters who would dare criticize our military commanders in time of war. Is there a another time to criticize them?

It was not, as they assume, patriotic to pass this resolution. It was authoritarian. It was censorious. It was done in a bold attempt to stifle free speech and avoid the awful truth that Congress gave this president the authority to do what he is doing in Iraq.

Oh, yeah! Thanks again Bob f'ing Casey for going along with today's little passion play. With Democrats like you, who needs Republicans.

2 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 5:17 PM

Sep 18, 2007

Mazel Tov!

Congratulations to my old friend Brian Wooley and his lovely bride, Carla Parks, on the occasion of their wedding. Conventional wisdom suggests that the smiles you see on their faces in this picture will be their last as they speed headlong into 40+ years of "marital bliss."

Never fall for conventional wisdom. It's all a bunch of hooey, I tell ya!

Now, if I may, a bit of advice: Wake up each day with joy for each other and go to sleep each night full of thanks for another day spent with the one you love.

And since I wasn't able to be there ... A toast!

May the roof above you never fall in,
And those gathered beneath it never fall out.

Congratulations, Brian and Carla!

2 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 10:10 AM

Sep 11, 2007

Stop The Spying

What better way to honor the victims than to demand that Congress demand warrant for surveillance activities and to hold the Bush administration and its corporate flunkies held accountable for illegal wiretapping.

Visit StopTheSpying.org and contact Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and ask them to agree to this pledge:

Stop warrantless surveillance of ordinary Americans. Congress must stop the NSA's domestic spying, repeal the "Protect America Act," and ensure that whenever a U.S. person is the intended or unintended subject of surveillance, the government must first get a warrant.

Don't legislate in the dark. Congress should oppose any expansion of spying authority until a full, thorough, and public investigation is complete.

Don't let the phone companies off the hook. Congress must allow the courts to rule on the president's program by rejecting efforts to give private entities immunity for illegally assisting the government's spying.

This is the very least that the timid and feckless Democrats should be doing.

Link

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 9:55 AM

Sep 10, 2007

The Real Lessons of 9/11

To continue on a theme, here's is Mike Gravel's incredibly cogent take on the events and aftermath of 9/ll.

...I know that our government was partly at fault by engaging in polices that inspired it, failing to take aggressive steps to stop it, and sacrificing the liberty and safety of our citizens after it. It's time we find out why and do something about it.

Sadly, Mike and Dennis Kucinich have been relegated to also rans because of their obvious inability to break through the marketing hype and get themselves into the White House.

Even my very own Barrack Obama has been backsliding into traditional campaigning memes and means. His recent rhetoric sounds hauntingly similar to Hillary, who sounds hauntingly similar to a Republican-lite automaton barking jingoistic phrases designed to capture disenchanted Republicans streaming away from the GOP.

Platitudes are not what we need from our candidates. We need specific and defined plans for reversing the damage of 8 years of the Bush Regime. We will never learn any lessons from 9/11 until we stop pursuing the failed policies that led to it and those that have sprung from it.

Link

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 1:53 PM

Remembrance and Villany

If only for the remembrance of the dead, tomorrow is a solemn day. I, like you, have worked hard to minimize the crippling grief of watching the instantaneous deaths of thousands unfold on cable news. As if an asthmatic, my breath came in short bursts with precious little oxygen to keep my heard free from confusion. Seeing was not believing, and believing was just not possible. We were all united in despair.

After the initial shock, however, the camps began to divide. On the right rose screams of outrage of an unprovoked attack and a new "WAR ON TERROR!" On the left rose questions about what we might have done to provoke such evil and a call to rethink our political schemes. And, of course, the backroom plans for finishing the job in Iraq came to the fore.

And so today Gen. Patraeus gives us the "progress" report of where we are 6 years later and 5 years into an unjust war.

Here is what we know:

• As long as you act like you know what you are doing and killing some foreigners in the process, a large portion of Americans will support you regardless of your effectiveness (or sanity).
• Illegitimacy breeds illegitimacy.How can any action taken by this administration be sound given the way in which it rose to power?
• Yes, you can create a mess so huge that there literally is no valid way to fix it.
• There is no moral or ethical depth that will go unplumbed for the sake of ideology and the maintenance of the status quo. See Carl Rove and the new Democratic Congress.
• Political calculus is a zero sum game that only benefits those who play it. The rest of us suffer the consequences.

As for me, I'm still crippled by grief, since joined by anger and contempt, that this country is being led by treacherous cowards who are incapable of measuring the value of ideas or action without first determining the net profit.

0 Comments | Link to this post   posted by Teddy 10:40 AM

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