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Our
national silence confirms it - after only a few hundred years of a
supposedly Democratic Republic, we have now chosen to become a Monarchy.
However because of our reluctance to get-involved: most Americans have yet
to concede that the presidency, presently, only exists as a fictional and
strictly ceremonial image because that office was only one of the three
parts that once jointly governed the United States... congress has
gagged itself and the courts remain mute, while this executive runs wild.
This new Monarchy is a reflection
of the times in which we live, because he isn't a single figure but a
Frankenstein creature with two heads. Cheney-Bush the First is the title
of this new Orwellian creation, which has just finished taking all power
unto itself.
If you think that this goes too
far; perhaps you might want to review some of what we have allowed to
happen under Cheney-Bush the First. Spend five minutes and fourteen
seconds on this video and think about what this means to your freedoms. (1)
There are some additional
outrages that the clip doesn't mention. The fact that Cheney-Bush the
First has added well over a thousand signing statements to legislation
passed by the congress: unilaterally nullifying the limitations set by the
constitution on that office. His only choices were to sign or veto: but
C-B-1 created a third path: he signs the laws but then declares that they
do not apply to him.
He has also arrogated immunity to
himself and his underlings, bear in mind that the White House has over
5,000 employees - who are now apparently also immune from either oversight
or prosecution. Only a King could do this. Then there is the Office of the
Attorney General of the United States: again someone who took an oath to
protect and defend the Constitution: except that the last two occupants
have chosen loyalty to their leader over their duty to protect the people
of the United States from a corrupt president and his gang of thugs that
have claimed all power for themselves.
I had a dream about a massive
national celebration. It was the Coronation of the King of America. The
parade resembled Carnival and it was led through the cordoned-off streets
of Washington D.C. by tanks escorted by a thousand motor-cycle cops in
riot gear - there were no protestors within the camera's view. Everything
was draped in red-white and blue - flags were everywhere and the air was
filled with balloons, and then a marching band appeared with AK-47's
strapped to their backs, proudly playing "Hail to the Chief."
Immediately behind them a circus
elephant, apparently drugged, was weaving up the boulevard amid an
artificial fog that seemed to make everything surreal. Atop the elephant
was a platform with oversize Tomahawk missiles supporting a huge crown of
brilliant gold, and the whole platform swayed under the weight of the
crown, with every drunken step of the beast.
Aboard the platform was an
overweight Dick Cheney wearing only a necktie. There were numerous IV
bottles ranged around him that swayed in the stagnant Washington air.
Cheney wore a mask of himself, perhaps six feet high, that featured his
trademarked sneer, and in his upraised pudgy fist he held the strings of
his puppet The Decider: whose giant mask looked eerily like Alfred E.
Newman the comic-book version of "What me Worry."
Bush was wearing his pilot's
uniform, but it was the banner above the crown that read "Mission
Accomplished," which seemed to rule the moment.
It was only then I noticed that
Nancy Pelosi was attempting to lead the elephant in her scanty
cheerleading costume with "08" upon her sweater. She was cheered
by a number of other characters that all seemed eager to help. Rummy was
there dressed as a US military version of Darth Vader, with Wolfowitz as
scissor-hands, and there were perhaps two hundred hooded prisoner's that
surrounded the elephant to protect it from any unexpected attacks by the
crowd. These figures were chained together and controlled by some hidden
weapon that shocked them, whenever they began to falter.
As the procession came abreast of
my position I noticed that behind the two-headed King was Condi Rice, in a
gold lame full-length sheath, sitting on a handcuffed and gagged Colin
Powell while she ate some grapes and waved to where she obviously thought
the crowds might be - but the fog machine obscured her view.
The nightmare dissolved, but the
thoughts about what all that might portend did not. Then I remembered that
recent Bill Moyers Journal article that had explored a Monarchy and
contrasted the current administration with others where Impeachment was
raised.
"JOHN NICHOLS: I think that
the war on terror, as defined by our president, is perpetual war. And I
think that he has acted precisely as Madison feared. He has taken powers
unto himself that were never intended to be in the executive. And,
frankly, that when an executive uses them, in the way that this president
has, you actually undermine the process of uniting the country and really
focusing the country on the issues that need to be dealt with. Let's be
clear. If we had a president who was seeking to inspire us to take
seriously the issues that are in play and to bring all the government
together, he'd be consulting with Congress. He'd be working with Congress.
And, frankly, Congress, through the system of checks and balances, would
be preventing him from doing insane things like invading Iraq.
JOHN NICHOLS: People don't want
to let this go. They do not accept Nancy Pelosi's argument that
impeachment is, quote/unquote, off the table. Because I guess maybe
they're glad she didn't take some other part of the Constitution off the
table like freedom of speech. But they also don't accept the argument
that, oh, well, there's a presidential campaign going on. So let's just
hold our breath till Bush and Cheney get done.
When I go out across America,
what I hear is something that's really very refreshing and very hopeful
about this country. An awfully lot of Americans understand what Thomas
Jefferson understood. And that is that the election of a president does
not make him a king for four years. That if a president sins against the
Constitution-- and does damage to the republic, the people have a right in
an organic process to demand of their House of Representatives, the branch
of government closest to the people, that it act to remove that president.
And I think that sentiment is afoot in the land.
BILL MOYERS: Bruce, you talk
about overreaching. What, in practical terms, do you mean by that?
BRUCE FEIN: It means asserting
powers and claiming that there are no other branches that have the
authority to question it. Take, for instance, the assertion that he's made
that when he is out to collect foreign intelligence, no other branch can
tell him what to do. That means he can intercept your e-mails, your phone
calls, open your regular mail, he can break and enter your home. He can
even kidnap you, claiming I am seeking foreign intelligence and there's no
other branch Congress can't say it's illegal--judges can't say this is
illegal. I can do anything I want. That is overreaching. When he says that
all of the world, all of the United States is a military battlefield
because Osama bin Laden says he wants to kill us there, and I can then use
the military to go into your homes and kill anyone there who I think is
al-Qaeda or drop a rocket, that is overreaching. That is a claim even King
George III didn't make--
JOHN NICHOLS: Let me keep us on
Cheney for a second here, because that is--
BILL MOYERS: You think Cheney
should be subject to impeachment hearings?
JOHN NICHOLS: Without a doubt.
Cheney is, for all practical purposes, the foreign policy president of the
United States. There are many domestic policies in which George Bush
really is the dominant player. But on foreign policy Dick Cheney has been
calling the shots for six years and he continues to call the shots.
Remember back in 2000, in the presidential debates, George Bush said
America should be a humble country in the world, shouldn't go about nation
building. And Dick Cheney, in the vice-presidential debate, spent eight
minutes talking about Iraq.
Now the fact of the matter is
that on foreign policy, Dick Cheney believes that the executive branch
should be supreme. He said this back to the days when he was in the House
during Iran-Contra. He wrote the minority report saying Congress shouldn't
sanction the president in any way, President Reagan.
JOHN NICHOLS: And put these
pieces together. If Cheney believes in this expansive power. You've got
a-- unique crisis, a unique problem because the vice-president of the
United States believes that Congress shouldn't even be a part of the
foreign policy debate. And he is setting the foreign policy. I mean--
BILL MOYERS: The power of the
purse-
BRUCE FEIN: --the power of the
purse. That is an absolute power. And yet Congress shies from it. It was
utilized during the Vietnam War, you may recall, in 1973. Congress said
there's no money to go and extend the war into Laos and Cambodia. And even
President Nixon said okay. This was a president who at one time said,
"If I do it, it's legal." So that it we do find Congress
yielding the power to the executive branch. It's the very puzzle that the
founding fathers would have been stunned at. They worried most over the
legislative branch in, you know, usurping powers of the other branches.
And--
BILL MOYERS: Well, what you just
said indicts the Congress more than you're indicting George Bush and Dick
Cheney.
BRUCE FEIN: In some sense, yes,
because the founding fathers expected an executive to try to overreach and
expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative
branch. And you're right. They have basically renounced-- walked away from
their responsibility to oversee and check. It's not an option. It's an
obligation when they take that oath to faithfully uphold and defend the
Constitution of the United States. And I think the reason why this is.
They do not have convictions about the importance of the Constitution.
It's what in politics you would call the scientific method of discovering
political truths and of preventing excesses because you require through
the processes of review and vetting one individual's perception to be
checked and-- counterbalanced by another's. And when you abandon that
process, you abandon the ship of state basically and it's going to
capsize." (2)
If we have a Republic, then we
have constitutional methods to deal with illegality by the president and
the vice-president. If we do not use those powers then the nation will
lose them and we shall have a king instead of a president. The question
asked by the video is still outstanding:
"When Will Americans Have
Had Enough"!
Jim Kirwan
NOTES:
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