Duty to Warn

As some people learned from the minimal and abusive media coverage, on December 8, 2006, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney introduced Articles of Impeachment (http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/ node/16230) against President George W. Bush, making him the 10th president of the United States to face such action. Of course, McKinney was on her way out of office and thus more willing to challenge the Democratic Party leadership by upholding basic Constitutional principles.

Fewer people are aware that Congresswoman McKinney on December 27, 2006, entered into the Congressional Record (pages E2253 - 2255) extended remarks on impeachment that merit our close attention. Why would she do such a thing on her way out the door with no chance of reintroducing her bill in the new Congress? For one thing, she clearly would agree with the response Congressman John Conyers gave to Lewis Lapham when asked what he thought the point was of publishing a lengthy report laying out evidence of Bush's impeachable offenses. Conyers' response was: "to take away the excuse that we didn't know."

Compared with Nixon and the Republicans who followed him, Gerald Ford looks like the embodiment of Main Street decency and prudence. Ford’s judgment seems even better when we learn that he told Bob Woodward that the Iraq war was “a big mistake," concluding, "I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security." Ford’s words should give strength to all of us who’ve questioned the war and were attacked as unpatriotic in the process. They reflect well on his common-sense willingness to acknowledge discomforting truths. But because he’d told Woodward to keep the interview private until after his death, they don’t represent courage, but in fact a failure of nerve.

"He spent the rest of the day working to pull the dead bodies of his family from the rubble of his home, finally reaching his dead son at 4:00 p.m."

- Human Rights Watch, in a 2003 report on the U.S. air war in Iraq and the campaign to execute Baathist leadership with high explosives

Saddam's execution last week was, for the war's apologists, a merciful respite from the chaos and humiliation of this catastrophe and a chance for one last swig of moral clarity - the Butcher is dead! the Butcher is dead! - which, in the Bush era, costs about a trillion dollars a shot.

Few in the mainstream media were willing to be party poopers and point this out, of course, or mention anything, in their pseudo-serious coverage of Saddam's career, about his long, complex involvement with the U.S. foreign-policy establishment going back to the Reagan administration, as both ally and extremely useful enemy.

Unlike the previous majority party in Congress, the Democrats who take power today know their weaknesses.  They know they're not very good at the whole press conference thing where you're supposed to stand there and say something people care about.  So they've announced an open-mic policy. 

And it seems to be working.  It turns out that an ordinary person who's not been through our campaign bribery system and not agreed to a list of positions acceptable to Washington strategists is much more interesting to listen to than Rahm Emanuel.  Speaking at Congressional press conferences could become a regular stop for tourists of our nation's Capital as well as for locals who enjoy karaoke.

Congressman Emanuel had not been informed of the new policy yesterday, but we knew he'd appreciate it.  So, while he was in the middle of trying to impress employees of Disney and GE with his commitment to banning lobbyists from donating small islands to Congress Members except on weekends (or something), Cindy Sheehan livened things up by beginning a chant of

DE-ESCALATE, INVESTIGATE, TROOPS HOME NOW!

These days, a hefty slab of the teenagers alive in America will supposedly live to be 100 (presumably working till they drop to pay for the rest, jobless and dying from diabetes). Given the reproductive shadow hanging over America -- poor semen quality, cryptorchidism, impaired fecundity -- they won't have that many children, although the sparse litters will contain people likely to live to be 125, handing down horrible recipes for turkey giblet gravy to the next generation.

            In short, there'll be a lot of centenarians about, and the name Gerald Ford will mean absolutely nothing to any of them. You had to have been born in 1960 to have been 14 in 1974, hence even vaguely conscious of the genial interregnum between Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, over which Ford presided.

            Ah, the 1970s! More precisely, the mid-1970s, an interval -- from Nixon's resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, to Jan. 23, 1977, when Carter installed Zbigniew Brzezinski as his national security adviser -- when people thought America might head down a different path.

The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck -- so it's up to us. You and me, Bubba.

            I don't know why Bush is just standing there like a frozen rabbit, but it's time we found out. The fact is WE have to do something about it. This country is being torn apart by an evil and unnecessary war, and it has to be stopped NOW.

            This war is being prosecuted in our names, with our money, with our blood, against our will. Polls consistently show that less than 30 percent of the people want to maintain current troop levels. It is obscene and wrong for the president to go against the people in this fashion. And it's doubly wrong for him to send 20,0000 more soldiers into this hellhole, as he reportedly will announce next week.

While Democratic Party supporters celebrate their success in Ohio, where their statewide candidates won four out of five executive offices and they now control both the U.S. House and Senate, they are ignoring massive and verifiable irregularities in the 2006 election. Similar irregularities – including missing votes, undervotes and overvotes – may come back to haunt the Democrats in the 2008 general election.

The only statewide partisan loss for the Democrats was also the closest contest. Republican Mary Taylor defeated Democrat Barbara Sykes for State Auditor by an official vote of 50.64% to 49.36%. Taylor prevailed by 48,826 votes. The Columbus Dispatch’s final poll, usually the most accurate in the state for candidate races, predicted Sykes would win by 10%.

An analysis by the Free Press documents massive discrepancies between the unofficial turnout reported by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell immediately following the election and the official general election turnout numbers reported in December 2006. These discrepancies may help explain Sykes’ unexpected loss.

Is Santa real? What about God? Or Mr. Stranger Danger? A 5-year-old's curiosity is a wonder to behold - more than a wonder if you haven't had your coffee yet, or if you're trying to get last-minute Christmas shopping done at Target and your son says he wants to die right now so he can meet God.

To be a parent is to feel the force of this curiosity like a live spring uncoiling with unpredictable energy against the day's agenda and the furthest reaches of the known universe, pushing you into a possible future not yet imagined.

"When did people first realize there was a God?"

This is my great-nephew Jackson, doing curiosity handsprings across the academic discipline of theology and squeezing an open-mouthed pause from his mom, Carmen, my niece - with whom I had a lively chat over the holidays about such matters when she had a moment to relax. This was a conversation of puzzlement and gold, and I've been thinking ever since about childhood and the precious possible.

This started out to be a reflection on my first year as voting integrity editor for OpEdNews. I do have a lot to say on that – just not right now. Instead, what's pushing itself forward in my mind is a piece on shopping. For anyone who knows me even superficially, this is very out of character. I hate shopping, even if the president has declared that it would be good for us and bad for the terrorists. I hate shopping so much that I look for any excuse not to do it. So what brings me to want to talk about it now?

Actually, what I really want to talk about are actions and consequences – a concept I've been stressing to my kids for the last two and a half decades. I'm a wholehearted subscriber to the theory, although that doesn't mean that following through is easy.

The pardon of Richard Nixon by President Gerald Ford started this nation on the path that eventually gave us the Constitutional abuses of George W Bush. The current media frenzy supporting the pardon is both simplistic and illogical.

Ford pardoned Nixon before Nixon was brought to trial or convicted. The rule of law was ignored in favor of a double-standard where Presidents were not held accountable for law-breaking. The illegal activities of Nixon in the political sphere were an assault on American Democracy and should have been severely punished. Because of Ford’s outrageous pardon, Right-wing Republicans never understood how un-American the tactics of Nixon were. The current national Republican leadership is still Nixonian to their core!