I get tons of email from progressive organizations every day, all that I’ve opted into but can’ really keep up with.  Most I don’t pass on in toto here, especially when it’s an appeal for money, as a lot of it is  ( I don’t degrudge them that, I just can’t help them all, and the few I can, I can’t send much). All this is just preface to making the rare exception with this post, because I’m so convinced that this issue is critical to our country’s future as a republic.

I gave a small donation, and hope some of my readers can too. Whether you can or not, please

Vote in the referendum to Indict Bush (and other high officials)

A message from Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark:

‘Why indictment is a must.’
Dear Rena,

I am writing to you as a long-time supporter of the ImpeachBush movement. More than a million people came forward to demand the impeachment of Bush and other high-ranking officials in the Bush administration.

I am appealing to you to make a donation to a growing new movement for the indictment and prosecution of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and other high officials of the Bush administration who engaged in criminal wrongdoing.

Please make an urgently needed donation today to help the IndictBush movement grow by clicking this link.

The greatest danger arising from impunity for President Bush and his cohorts would be that all subsequent officials will feel secure in committing the same crimes and the people, having failed to compel impeachment for such open, notorious and egregious crimes, will feel even more helpless to prevent them. Ultimately the power and the responsibility to prevent criminal acts by government is with the people.

The movement for accountability is sweeping the country. The Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, are both proposing to launch investigations into the possibilities of criminal conduct by high officials in the Bush Administration.

Now is the time for massive outreach and publicity. This requires organizing national call-in days to pressure Congressional representatives, intensive media work, and providing literature for people of conscience to distribute in cities and towns across the country.

Please consider taking a moment right now to make a donation to this new movement for the indictment of Bush. There is no time to spare. The time to act is now and we will.

The crimes of the Bush administration must be proclaimed, acknowledged and remembered because their disastrous human consequences, dictatorial tendencies, subversion of Constitutional government and violation of the rights and dignity of humanity. They include wars of aggression, the crime against peace and the “Supreme International Crime,” war crimes, and crimes against humanity, genocide by military violence “with intent to destroy in whole, or in part, a national… or religious group,” authorizing and condoning massive violations of the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights and other Amendments, international treaties including the U.N. Charter, Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Convention Against Torture, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Geneva Conventions.

The clear duty of the American people and their elected representatives — on which the changes in U.S. government policies essential to achieve a peaceful, decent and humane future depend — is the vigorous pursuit of the indictment of former President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other high officials who have participated in their crimes, followed by rigorous criminal prosecution wherever the evidence, having been fully and fairly presented to a federal grand jury, results in their indictment.

The indictment of George W. Bush and other high officials is the challenge facing ‘We, the People.’ Will we rise to meet it? This is not a matter of politics or partisanship. It is the defense of the basic tenets of the Constitution. Please consider making a donation so we can get this movement off the ground and into the streets.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark,
Former U.S. Attorney General

The company that knowingly screwed Lilly Ledbetter out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, then spent hundreds of thousands to “defend” itself from her discrimination lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court, was Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Please remember that the next time you are in the market for tires.

Fair is fair. That is all.

There is a great op-ed, Counting Out Women, by Melissa McEwan published today in the Guardian (UK) about Chris Matthews and the general idiocy in the US media (not to mention a huge hunk of the blogosphere) about some parts of the original economic stimulus package, in which she specifically addresses the segment from Hardball that I posted about yesterday.

According to Matthews, the only thing “real people” can “see” are infrastructure projects and the jobs they create – which, as has been pointed out by Linda Hirshman and discussed by Echidne here, are jobs that will disproportionately benefit men. Funding for family planning (arguably) primarily benefits women, rendering it, in Matthews’ estimation, a pointless waste of money.

Subsequently, after Wexler explains that family planning “saves, if done correctly, an enormous sum of money down the road in the healthcare system” – Matthews ignores wholly that planned and wanted children born to non-addicted women who seek out prenatal care are generally healthier children, dismisses out of hand the importance of choice, and instead accuses Wexler (and, by extension, the Democrats) of advocating “a policy of reducing the number of births”.

[...]

“It sounds a little like China,” he notes, conflating the Democrats’ plan to provide women a breadth of reproductive choices with a state-mandated reproductive limitation which has resulted in the mass murder and abandonment of female infants.

Wexler was one of the few voices, male or female, that was allowed to even push back on this nonsense on corporate media. So I suppose good for Matthews for making that possible — but it was obviously just a way for the host to make his point, if you want to call his babbling about China and infanticide a point relative to the legislation under discussion.

It is clear that conservatives would like to set up contraception now as something controversial, even shameful. They need a new pet issue to whip up their braindead base over, to keep the coffers full and the ballots filled out as instructed from the pulpit. You wait and see.

So to all the so-called liberal boys who got right on board with the GOP’s misogynist agenda, because family planning money fills clinics instead of building them, don’t wonder later how you got played once again by the culture warriors. Just read your own archives.

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

I can’t believe that President Obama is ALREADY letting the Republicans run (i.e. ruin) his plan for an economic stimulus. Here’s an idea for putting his eloquence and now ownership of a big fat bully pulpit to use: explain to the American people exactly how family planning (more than just contraceptives) — or lack of it — impacts a family budget. In fact, most of us already know this rather obvious reality, but you can perhaps enlighten some Rethugs and the stupid media who obviously have never had to worry about money a day in their lives.

What makes me so furious is, we don’t need the Republicans to pass this package, anyway. Why, oh why are we knuckling under to the people who have already demonstrated their utter indifference to the poor – and their economic incompetence? We voted for Democrats because we didn’t want to see important legislative decisions based on right-wing memes:

Call Waxman’s office and give him an earful:
DC: 202-225-3976
CA offices:
323-651-1040
818-878-7400
310-652-3095

And contact President Obama by email here, or call:

Comments:
202-456-1111
Switchboard:
202-456-1414

I hope Pelosi turns around and gets a much bigger bill for family planning passed. It’s certainly needed, and can help families immediately and for the next several years as the economy recovers. And shame on Obama for not backing the Speaker up on this.

I didn’t vote for Al Gore in 2000 and Joe Lieberman, Al’s stupendously stupid VP pick, is why. He was a whiny sanctimonious prick then, and he’s gotten worse every year since. His political assholery is becoming the stuff of legend. Only now, after being rejected by the Connecticut Democratic Party in 2006, he has an “I” next to his name. But he caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, and, because in the last Congress they needed him in the caucus to maintain majority, he was given a plum chair of an important committee, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

That means subpoena power.

But he did zilch with that power between 2006 and 2008, despite the Katrina debacle, porous ports, multiple instances of corruption and irregularities in the executive branch, all which should have been investigated by his committee. His counterpart in the House, Henry Waxman, was busy as a beaver, and exposed plenty. But without an ally on the Senate side, nothing much but “sternly worded letters” could come of it all.

So now, after a long campaign season in which Independent Joe Lieberman who caucuses with the Democrats was joined at the hip with Republican presidential nominee John McCain, saying McCain loved his country and Obama did not, now there is a grassroots fueled effort to strip Turncoat Joe of his chair at Homeland Security.

And, what do you know! Suddenly, leading that committee is of utmost urgency to Joe Lieberman. Wonder why that is?

Yet, amazingly, many high-level Democrats are willing to let bygones be bygones and let Lieberman keep the chair, where, it is suspected, he will suddenly find a reason to call his committee to work investigating the new Obama administration. Just as Democratic Senators who should have known better, like Barbara Boxer, went to Conn. to campaign for Joe despite the state party’s distaste for him, now they are letting their “friendship” get in the way of political reality and necessity.

The netroots is calling for accountability for How-Low-Can-He-Go Joe, and have set up several tools to persuade the Senate Democratic Steering Committee to give the chair to someone more deserving and trustworthy.

The Dems no longer need Joe for majority status, and based on his recent voting record, he is not even a “progressive vote” on “everything but the war” any more. He is a vile, bitter, corrupt man. I’d kick him out of the caucus completely, but that’s not what’s being asked. He can leave and caucus with the Republicans if he wants — what’s in it for him? He won’t have any leadership role on any committee and no avenue to re-election.

Call the members of the Steering Committee and tell them: Joe Lieberman must GO!

Esquire Magazine got the civic bug two years ago and started endorsing political candidates. And they didn’t do it half-ass, either, they endorsed in every single congressional district, up or down. Ditto this year, and in Oklahoma, they didn’t pull any punches:

Inhofe believes that 9/11 was divine retribution. He believes that our Middle East policy should be based on the text of the Bible. He denies the science behind global warming. Doesn’t like students. Doesn’t care for poor people. Hates government. Like Jesse Helms, without the charm. We made a mistake on our “10 Worst” list: Inhofe stands alone as the worst member of Congress.
Esquire endorses: Rice

In the federal House races, by district:

1. Georgiana Oliver (D), challenger
2. Dan Boren (D), incumbent
3. Frank Lucas (R), incumbent
4. Tom Cole (R), incumbent
5. Mary Fallin (R), incumbent

For president, they endorse Obama.

Happy Constitution Day! Yeah, I don’t feel much like celebrating either.

But I read something today that made me proud to be an Oklahoman (albeit a relatively new one), and gave me a little hope.

The amazing Glenn Greenwald, whose blog you should read if you aren’t already, posted Tuesday on the lack of Congressional oversight in general, and, in particular, of Tuesday’s House hearing on the FBI’s investigation of the anthrax case from 2001. He published while the hearing was still in session, because, really, we all know how it will go, or not go, as the case may be.

Of course, being a sentient human and American patriot, he decried the failure of Congress to hold the executive branch accountable for its flagrant law-breaking, of refusals to testify, of blatently dishonest or stonewalling testifying, etc., continuing his valiant series of brilliant reporting and opinon. I have no idea how he maintains his resolve and pace with the current state of our government, but thank goodness he does.

Anyway, in an update, he excerpted from a later hearing in the Senate. I was surprised to see who it was he was prominently featuring.

UPDATE: Long-time former GOP Congressman Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma testified before a Senate hearing today on the rule of law and said this:

There are a great many salient questions facing the American people and those of you who are charged with the responsibility of enacting the nation’s laws: access to affordable health care; repair of an aging infrastructure; reducing energy dependence; ensuring the national security. But not one of those issues – and not all of them combined – is as important now or for the future as securing our position as a nation governed by the rule of law. . . .Let me be both candid and clear: the current greatest threat to our system of separated powers and the protections it affords stems not just from executive overreaching but equally from the Congress. America’s founders envisioned a system in which each of the branches of government would guard its prerogatives and meet its obligations, each acting to serve the nation through the empowerment the Constitution grants and to protect our liberties through the constraints the Constitution imposes.

For most of the past eight years, and for many years before that, the Congress has failed to lived up to its assigned role as the principal representative of the people. . . .

Here is the challenge, stated as candidly as I can state it. Each year the presidency grows farther beyond the bounds the Constitution permits; each year the Congress fades farther into irrelevance. As it does, the voice of the people is silenced. This cannot be permitted to stand. The Congress is not without power. It can refuse to confirm people the President suggests for important offices; it can refuse to provide money for the carrying out of Executive Branch activities; it can use its subpoena power and its power to hold hearings and above all, it can use its power to write the laws of the country. . . .

Do not let it be said that what the Founders created, you have destroyed. Do not let it be said that on your watch, the Constitution of the United States became not the law of the land but a suggestion. You are not a parliament; you are a Congress — separate, independent, and equal. And because of that you are the principal means by which the people maintain control of their government. Defend that right, and that obligation, or you lose all purpose in holding these high offices. That is how you preserve and defend the rule of law in the United States.

So, I wasn’t around when Edwards represented Oklahoma in Congress, and from what I read, his record isn’t sqeaky clean, and he was an advisor to Reagan’s campaign in 1980, not a role I really hold in high regard.

But he’s dead on here, and I applaud him for telling those fuckers what they need to hear — what they shouldn’t have to be told.

Not that it will do a bit of good.

Like I said, Happy Constitution Day. You may want to get a copy of that quaint document and bury in it your backyard or something. So you can show it to your grandkids when you hope Big Brother won’t notice, and tell them how we used to have a country of laws.

Reuters photo

My friend Desiree gets right in the face of Condoleezza Rice, who is, indeed, a “war criminal.”

(Tried to embed the video, but had technical problems.
Updated, with photo from Reuters.)

Update 2: Reuters story

Update 3: This AP photo is better, due to the angle (and Rice’s expression).

This is critical. So please take action RIGHT NOW!!!

Sign MoveOn’s petition and call Congress today.

More info.