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Ref. : Letters to the editor
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
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!
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
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
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
COMMENTARY
Democrats Revert to Form
Democrats in Congress, still in full cowering mode, are about to hand the most unpopular president in the history of polling even more power to spy, unchecked, on Americans, despite clear evidence that the president has abused that power for the last six years, and despite his refusal to even answer questions about what those abuses have been to date.It is hard to believe that this is the party that told voters only last fall that they should vote in Democrats so that the president would finally be held to account for his ongoing destruction of constitutional government.
It's a bit like my earlier observation that no real Manchurian Candidate could have done more damage to the United States than Bush and Cheney have managed to do in their six and a half years in office.
Which raises the bizarre thought that maybe all four of these people are actually treacherous spies working in collusion on an evil plan of national destruction--perhaps as a top-secret Al Qaeda cell?
Sadly, I suspect that the real situation is much more prosaic: Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid appear to simply be small-minded politicians with no real principles and no regard for their oaths of office or for the Constitution that is supposed to be their "bible," while Bush seems to be a dimwit with an inflated view of his importance and Cheney is simply a power-mad criminal of limited intellect but with limitless ruthlessness.
Given this sad reality, the only hope, it seems to me, for this tottering republic, is for the public to reject both parties in the coming election. One thing has been clear of late, and that is that the right, the left and the middle--speaking here of the American people, not the political class--have a great deal in common with regard to their common desire for a nation at peace, for a government that responds to their needs, not the needs of corporations and the super rich, and for leaders who listen to them, not to those with fat wallets.
As long as we remain shackled to a system of these two thoroughly corrupt political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, there seems little hope for national salvation.
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
. His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on August 3, 2007.
