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01.02 Blaming the Victims - The Dominant Media Vilify Hamas 12.30 Shock, Awe and Lies: The Truth Behind the Israeli Attack on Gaza 12.10 We All Failed Gary Webb US Politics, Policy & Culture
01.07 Gaza Voices, American Silence 01.06 The $6 Million Social Worker 01.06 Bush Spins Scandalous Neglect of Vets 01.02 2009 is Starting Off with a Shameful and Criminal Bang 12.27 Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths 12.24 Madoff Scandal Exposes Government Failure 12.22 Cheney's Contempt for the Republic 12.19 Obama's New Appointments 12.18 Obama v. Washington Mythmaking 12.17 The Electoral College Has Got To Go 12.16 A Million McVeighs Now: The American-Made Insurgency in Afghanistan 12.15 Thinking About Illinois 12.14 Obama and US-Russia Tensions 12.12 A Time Machine to Save America 12.11 Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite? 12.10 Workers of America: Wake Up! We All Need a Union! US High Crimes
12.31 America's War On Islam - The "Fort Dix Five" 12.30 Henry Kissinger: Eminence Noire 12.28 The Grinning Skull 12.22 Obama v. Richard Falk on Israel and Occupied Palestine 12.19 White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy, But That’s Not the Biggest Scandal 12.18 Judge Declines to Jail 'Ghosts of the Iraq War' 12.18 Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture: No One Can Be Above the Law 12.17 Cluster Bomb Treaty and the World's Unfinished Business 12.17 Abandoned by the World: UN Declares Open Season on Somalia 12.17 Assessing the Bush Legacy: The Measure of the Man and His Administration 12.16 Cheney Admits Detainee-Abuse Role 12.15 The Abduction, Secret Detention, Torture, and Repeated Raping of Aafia Siddiqui 12.12 Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush 12.11 Atrocity Unlimited: US Seeks to Turn Somalia into Global Free-Fire Zone 12.10 The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
01.05 Thinking About the 2008 Numbers 12.29 Thinking About Realities 12.26 Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff 12.24 The Federal Reserve Abolition Act 12.22 Thinking About Expectations 12.12 Excess Debt and Deflation = Depression International
01.07 The Quartet's Hypocrisy and Failure in Occupied Palestine 01.07 Gazing at Gaza's Destruction: Israelis Sip Pepsi, US Progressives See 'Silver Lining' 01.05 Fallujah by the Sea: Aping America, Israel Unleashes Chemical Weapons in Gaza 01.05 Global Human Rights Groups Protest Slaughter in Gaza 12.30 How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills 12.29 Israel's Wanton Aggression On Gaza 12.26 Christmas 2008: Hell in the Holy Land 12.17 Canada's Prince of Darkness Assumes Leadership of the Liberal Party We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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A GROWING OPINION:Whatever Happened to Signing Statements?The president, now surely among the least popular leaders in the nation’s long history, has no need of signing statements any longer because he faces no organized opposition in Washington.
Perhaps the best indication of the toothlessness and complicity of the new Democratic Congress is that President Bush, who between September 2001 and December 2006 used so-called “signing statements” and a bogus claim of extra-constitutional executive authority as commander in chief in time of war to invalidate 1200 laws or parts of laws passed by Congress, hasn’t issued a single one since January.As for vetoes, there was just one, for the first Iraq War supplemental funding bill—the one that actually contained a deadline of sorts for ending the conflict.
The truth is, there has been little for this president to object to coming out of this supposedly oppositional Congress. On Memorial Day, as close to 150,000 US troops risk death and create mayhem in Iraq, as 3500 soldiers’ graves at home get fresh flowers, as 26,000 gravely injured Iraq War veterans nurse their wounds with little help from an over-stretched and underfunded Veterans Administration medical system, we Americans have to face the fact that we have lost control of our government to a trillion-dollar war machine that moves of its own accord. A criminal president and vice president have succeeded in tricking us into a war that had no justification, and that can have no good end. And what once was an opposition party has succumbed, though a combination of greed and cowardice, to become an accomplice in crime. The president, now surely among the least popular leaders in the nation’s long history, has no need of signing statements any longer because he faces no organized opposition in Washington. The amazing thing is that most Americans seem to understand what has happened. A few years ago, it took a certain amount of fortitude to wear a peace button, or to put an anti-war bumper sticker on one’s car. It took a certain amount of courage to hold a sign calling for the president’s impeachment. Today, do any of those things, and you’re far more likely to get a thumbs up sign, or a wry smile of agreement anywhere you go in the country. Americans everywhere know we’ve been lied to, misled and sold a bill of goods with Iraq and the so-called War on Terror. But we also are coming to understand that there is little we can do about it with the Congress we’ve got. We elected people who vowed to stand up and put a stop to the crimes, and after we voted them into office, they have failed us. We’ve all learned this without the help of the mainstream media, which goes on about its devious business of pretending that everything is as it was, with two combative and ideologically opposed parties. The public knows better. Maybe now we can really start to tackle the problem. Some progressive Democrats like Progressive Democrats of America and Democrats.com are calling for candidates to mount primary challenges against the sell-out Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who are making president Bush’s job so easy.
Will we revert to form and vote yet again for what used to be called the “lesser evil,” but which is now revealed as just another face of the same evil? Or will we abandon the frauds and withhold our vote from those who promise much and then betray us?
That’s great. With luck, the voters will realize this is their chance to revivify the rotting corpse that is the Democratic Party, and maybe some of those leaders will be dumped.
The next step will be what we, the voters, do in the next general election. Will we revert to form and vote yet again for what used to be called the “lesser evil,” but which is now revealed as just another face of the same evil? Or will we abandon the frauds and withhold our vote from those who promise much and then betray us?
About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is co-author, with
Barbara Olshansky, of The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on May 30, 2007. |
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