THEY WANT TO DO IT ALL IN SECRET, WHILE UTILZING FAULTY LOGIC TO PLACE THEMSELVES ABOVE THE LAW

Some years ago, I took a business trip to Calgary.  I was staying downtown at the Westin Hotel which, at the time, was one of the best inns in the city.  Before dinner, I looked out of the window in my room and noticed a few prostitutes walking the street in front of the hotel.  Police officers walked passed them without as much as a wink of the eye.

At dinner, I asked my business associate about what seemed to be a very odd situation, at least to my New York sensibilities.  He explained that prostitution was neither legal nor illegal there.  The local government felt that it wasn’t a major problem.  He further explained that much of the Province of Alberta still considered itself to be part of the Wild West and didn’t believe that people’s lives had to be over regulated.

That philosophy should describe most conservatives in our country, but, as far as the current crop of neo-cons controlling our country are concerned, it doesn’t.

Bush and his buddies have taken over the government by draconian means.  They stole our elections, and they have gutted our Constitution.  And, their supporters don’t seem to care.

They don’t seem to care that they want control of our bodies, and they want control of who we are allowed to love.  They want to give to the rich and rob from the poor.  They want charter schools and faith based education to be available to those with means and want to provide under funded vouchers for the rest of us, leaving our public schools with no money.   In that way, as the result of their creation of a permanent underclass, their control of the poor will become greater.

And they want to do it all in secret, while utilizing faulty logic to place themselves above the law.

Or so they think.

G. Gordon, oops I mean I Lewis, Libbey, the convicted felon who aided and abetted the outing of American undercover agent Valerie Plame, has just had his prison sentence commuted by President Bush.  Bush used as his excuse for the commutation his “belief” that Libbey’s 30 month sentence was “excessive”. 

Bushlip!

The sentence was well within the guidelines established by the courts and the law, yet Bush felt compelled to commute it. 

Why?

It may have been unspoken, but it is quite clear that The President knew that if Scooter Libbey was remotely close to prison, he would be willing to trade for freedom, and that trade would include rolling over on Vice President Cheney and anyone else in the Administration who had been involved in Plame’s outing.

Please understand this incident involved more than the exposure of a secret agent.  It involved political revenge against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had exposed the Bush frauds that were perpetrated against our country in taking us to war in Iraq.  And, even more important, it likely caused the deaths of hundreds. If not thousands, of American assets (double agents) in the Middle East who were exposed when the Arab nations learned that Plame was not an American business woman.

Simply put, what happened in the Plame/Libbey affair was nothing less than treason, treason on Libbey’s part and treason on the part of Robert Novak.  Most important, it was, in all likelihood, it was treason on the part of Vice President Cheney, but that may be something we will never be able to prove.

You see, Vice President Cheney has informed Congress that he does not actually have to inform them about anything he does, because he is not really part of the Executive Branch of the government.  He says that, as President of the Senate, one of the Constitutional jobs of the Vice President, he is really a member of the Legislative Branch.  As such, he is not required to report his activities to his fellow Senators.  Basically, Dick Cheney has declared himself to be above the law, perhaps, even his own branch of government.

But why should that surprise us?

After all, isn’t this the Administration that issued National Presidential Security Directive number 5, the directive that makes the court’s and the legislature moot in the event of a national emergency?  And doesn’t that directive place the power to declare such emergencies in the hands of the Secretary of Homeland Security, none other than Michael Chertoff, a man to whom I certainly want to entrust the structure of my government?  And, just for good measure, doesn’t that directive also provide us with a blueprint for a permanent Bush dictatorship once that emergency has been declared?  The answer is yes to all of those questions.

I’m not paranoid.  They really are out to get us.

So, two hundred and thirty one years after Jefferson (a Deist, not a Christian) declared that we were endowed by our Creator (not our G-d) with certain inalienable rights, and 226 years after he further created our Bill of Rights, as we celebrate Independence Day, let us understand that those in charge of our country do not believe in that independence.  Let us understand that they and their Supreme Court has begun to systematically destroy everything that the founders of our country set in place to assure our freedoms.

Go forth and barbeque in celebration of the momentous occasion that takes place on every July 4^th, knowing full well that this may be the last time we can celebrate the real meaning of this holiday.

Or go out and find young people who do not realize the danger in which our country finds itself and invigorate them.  Call upon them to get involved.  Tell them that there are people out there who would take away their freedoms.   Let them know that they are lying to us, about the war, about our health crisis, about the insurance companies, about the success of the medical systems in Canada, France and England, about virtually everything.

Change can happen, but change requires involvement.  This is something we cannot do alone.

I am known in my neighborhood for recruiting people to the cause.  I have gone over to tables in restaurants and asked people to join our local Democratic club.  You should do the same, if you are a member of a club.

And if you are not, you should join one.

And if there isn’t one where you live, you should start one.

You should also become involved with organizations like Democracy for America and ACT UP NOW.

We, all of us, need to be heard, or they will take us down the path to dictatorship.

We could become the new Weimar Republic and fall to the latest incarnation of Hitler, Cheney not Bush, or we could demand the return of our rights, our right to desegregated schools, our right to free speech, our right to habeas corpus and our right to choice.

I urge you, each and every one of you, to become involved.

I urge you, each and every one of you, to demand that our Congress begin to take its job seriously and to do what it was elected to do, take our government back from those that stole it from us.

I urge you, each and every one of you, to remember why we celebrate the 4^th of July and become Americans again.

We are not the Wild West as envisioned by my friend in Calgary.  We are the land of Power and Glory as envisioned by Phil Ochs, or, at least, we used to be.

We must become that Land of Power and Glory once again.

HENRY A. HONIG – THE PUNDIT