Nancy & Harry: Comedic Duo Bring Down the House (and Senate) By Dave Lindorff

[Demeter]

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_dave_lin_070626_nancy__26_harry_3a_comed.htm


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June 26, 2007

Nancy & Harry: Comedic Duo Bring Down the House (and Senate)

By Dave Lindorff

Vice President Cheney says he doesn’t have to obey the law relating to national security records held in the executive office because as vice president, he’s not part of the executive branch.
Cheney is reported to be actively lobbying the president to pardon a convict, L. “Scooter” Libby, his former right-hand-man, his “Cheney’s Cheney,” whom everyone knows took the fall and lied to a federal prosecutor in order to protect his boss. That is, the vice president is seeking a pardon for a man who, if he got tired of sitting in jail, could send him to jail. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the nation’s top law enforcement official, has lied repeatedly to Congress.


President Bush has openly and audaciously on over 1200 occasions refused to enact all or parts of hundreds of laws passed by the Congress of the United States, claiming for himself a non-existent “unitary executive authority” that purportedly makes him an extraconstitutional tyrant whose office comprises all executive, legislative and judicial power in the government, thus rendering Congress and the Judiciary merely vestigial bodies much like the tiny hip and bones buried deep inside the body of a whale.


Bush continues to expand a war in Iraq, adding tens of thousands of overstretched and exhausted troops and producing hundreds of new dead American bodies despite a clear call in last November’s election for an end to a conflict that has now lasted longer than World War II. He also continues to claim that the war is legal despite overwhelming evidence that both he and the vice president lied brazenly and repeatedly about the reasons for it..


The president continues to insist that Americans and captives in various American wars can be held in violation of International Law and the Constitution, with no trial, no habeas corpus rights, no right to a lawyer, and no protection from torture.


The president refuses to talk about or explain the details of an extra-judicial spying program against Americans that he authorized, even after it had been declared a serious felony and violation of the First and Fourth Amendments. It is a program that was so offensive that even his one-time attorney general, John Ashcroft, a man who saw nothing wrong with organizing 20 million Americans to spy on the rest of us, to refuse to sign on, and indeed to threaten to resign.


And the president, in myriad ways, continues to obstruct global and domestic efforts to begin to seriously address the mounting disaster of global heating—a crisis that threatens the survival not just of the nation, but of the human race.


In the face of all these crimes and abuses of power, what have the Democrats done?


.....ARTICLE CONTINUES

Authors Website: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

Authors Bio: Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). His writing is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

[madfloridian]

1. Lindorff, never saw a Democrat he liked.

.

[Speck Tater]

2. Lately, I've seen damn few Democrats I like!

I'm getting fed up with the two party system: Republican and Republican-Lite. Where are the REAL Democrats any more?

[pocoloco]

3. Short answer...

pushed out by politics over principles!

[madfloridian]

4. Lindorff tends to be too critical.

He went after the DNC unfairly once, and Governor Dean asked him to retract. He sort of did, but didn't. He does not know the parts of the party...just blasts everyone.

[Demeter]

5. In a Time of Constitutional Crisis--What's To Like?

Can't say there are any Democrats making history (that anyone could be proud of) in the House or Senate, with the exceptions of Conyers, Waxman, and Leahy. And Lindorff's not picking on them, you'll noticem, just on the so-called Leadership: I'd call it Chicken Little leadership, because they've brought all us "chickens" into the fox's den for "safety".

[Phredicles]

6. Fair enough, but in this column does he have anything wrong?