I've just been over to firedoglake.com - a leftist "legal eagles" site - and came back here counting the ways that the Bush Junta has shredded the Constitution, the ways that this unelected Junta's shills on the Supreme Court are supporting--or likely will support--unchecked executive power--as we keep hearing that gut-wrenching ripping sound of the loss of the rule of law, the balance of powers and civil rights that the Constitution was supposed to guarantee. And I am also counting the ways that our Diebold-ES&S-shaped "Democratic" Congress has and will continue to crawl under its desk and bite its fingernails whenever George Bush, Dick Cheney or Alberto Gonzales says "Boo!", when they're not cheering on the Bush Junta's "war on earth" and larding them with another $100 billion for Dick's retirement fund.
One of the things that the Bush Junta has exposed for all to see is that the Constitution creates the "rule of law" mostly by means of a "gentleman's agreement" among various government and political players--from President to dog-catcher, from alderman to Senator, from journalists to generals, to judges, lawyers, cabinet members, all office holders, to many agency bureaucrats and heads, and including old money, new money, the super-rich and the not-so-rich (not many poor players these days), big political parties and small ones, law enforcement agencies, all the military services, the foreign service and even spies and members of the secret government. The "gentleman's agreement" is that there are some things you just don't do (or, if you do them, do not expect impunity), and other things that you must do, to honor your oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States, or, if you are not under oath, to demonstrate loyalty to our Constitution and to our nation and its democratic form of government.
"Gentleman's Agreements" involve elaborate forms of both sincere and hypocritical behavior, aimed at holding a political or social establishment together, in common purpose. They can be bad (as with the infamous "Gentleman's Agreement" of long ago to exclude Jews (also Catholics, blacks and other "undesirables") from office, from rich peoples' clubs, from "polite society." They can be good--such as "gentleman's agreements" not to hit below the belt, not to do, for instance, what Kenneth Starr did to Bill Clinton--dragging someone through the mud for no reason at all, except hatred--or what Joe McCarthy did to political leftists--carrying out a witchhunt that paints a whole class of people as "the enemy" for their Constitutionally protected political views.
Like Joe McCarthy, the Bushites are rude, aggressive, callous, demagogic, traitorous, unscrupulous, unethical, fascist dogs. They recognize no "rule of law" except their own imperatives, their own greed, and their own "will to power." They are the cowardly bullies on the playground who knock other kids over and kick them when they're down. They are not civilized. And that includes all of them, from Bush and Cheney to Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, and the corporate fascists and war profiteers who stand behind them, propping up the power of these "front men" in every sphere. Ugly, horrible people, with no consciences.
Unlike Joe McCarthy--whom the political establishment finally curtailed--no one has stepped up to the Bushites, to say, "Have you no decency, sir?"--in a forum of national significance. Indeed, it appears that our political establishment essentially supports a government full of Joe McCarthy's, in every major executive branch office including president.
The Bush Junta has broken the "gentleman's agreement" of Constitutional rule spectacularly, in unprecedented ways, repeatedly and brazenly. And our political system itself--not just the Bushites, but most top Democrats, moderate Republicans, and the non-aligned--has colluded with the Bushites in doing so, in obvious ways--new funding to escalate the war, for instance, with 70% of the American people opposed to it--and in more obscure ways--for instance, the Democrats' total silence as rightwing Bushite corporations took over our election system, between 2002 and 2004, and are now "counting" all our votes in electronic voting systems run on "trade secret" proprietary programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it.
The Bushites are so out-of-control that they have suppressed the 9/11 investigation, the anthrax investigation, the torture investigation, the investigation of the disappearance of billions of taxpayer dollars in Iraq, investigation of the vice president's company getting huge no-bid military contracts, investigation of the lies they told to justify the war, investigation of election fraud, and they have outright obstructed investigation into their traitorous outing a CIA agent and an entire CIA WMD counter-proliferation network. It's as if we have a gang of Joe McCarthy's in charge of federal justice, federal contracting, and all federal policy.
And when issues of corporate "trade secrets" in our voting system, or the vast, unprecedented secrecy of the Bush White House, or the Vice President defying subpoenas by Congress, or Bush's chief political adviser Karl Rove hiding his Department of Justice-trashing activities, and election thefts, in the Republican National Committee email servers, or numerous top Bushites defying subpoenas by Congress, lying to Congress, lying to prosecutors, grand juries and the FBI, or Bush's presidential "signing statements" (writing his own laws), or the Bush Junta's pervasive, illegal domestic spying, or its widespread use of torture and detention without charge, or its wanton killing of Iraqis and others, or any number of other extremely serious "high crimes and misdemeanors" get to the Supreme Court, for rulings on these matters, there sit three of the worst fascists who have ever held public office in this country--aside from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales themselves--Alito, Roberts and Thomas and their cowardly or bought-and-paid for cohorts--ready to take the remaining shreds of the Constitution and make a bonfire of them out under the Great Penis Monument.
We have suffered a fascist coup. It has, in fact, been in the planning stages, with various parts of it in motion, for several decades, and has culminated in the unchecked outrages of the Bush regime. Its purpose is to destroy the sovereignty of the American people, and their power and their right to regulate the global corporate predators who operate from our shores.
Constitutional government, and the rule of law, are not possible when a segment of the political establishment are not "gentlemen" or "gentleladies"--that is, when they cease to be in agreement with the basic principles of democracy, and cease to be loyal to our country and its people, in this case because they are funded and/or promoted by the very global corporate predators who wish to smash our government to pieces and turn us all into slave labor and cannon fodder.
This is the condition of the Republican Party. It has ceased to be in basic agreement with the rest of us on basic rules of conduct in a democracy. It's ludicrous how they talk about "family values" and "the Ten Commandments." Lying, stealing, murdering--they don't care. Among the Democrats, some don't know how to react, or behave, in the face of this fascist coup--which pervades all of our once public airwaves, and all news/opinion outlets, now owned and controlled by a handful of rightwing billionaire CEO fascist pigs, in vast monopolies, some of which have subsidiaries in the war industry. Some Democrats cower before both--the Bushites and the corporate media. Other Democratic leaders are possibly afraid--being blackmailed, fear ruination by these pigs (not without reason). And some--many of the top Democrats, too many--are Vichy. They are collaborators. Fascist rule suits them, too. It makes them look "progressive"--as they re-fund the illegal war, and fail to fix the election system, and permit all this UNBELIEVABLE criminality and UN-balance of power to proceed without curtailment.
So, it many ways, we are back at 1785, pre-Constitution. If the Constitution has failed, if the Presidency has become what our Founders most dreaded--a tyranny--and if the other branches of government, Congress and the Courts, cannot or will not curtail the power that the Bushites have asserted in the Executive Branch, and if the rule of law in this country is based on a "gentlemen's agreement" and is not enforceable, and is subject to the whim of individual tyrants in the executive branch, what's to be done?
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"The Constitutional Convention of 1787 produced the most enduring written Constitution ever created by human hands."
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_ccon.htmlStatements like this about our Constitution, and our government, can no longer be made. The "balance of powers" is inoperable. Our government has become a farce, a dumb show--and a lethal one.
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What's to be done?
What is needed is a new Constitutional Convention, not to amend the Constitution (except for a few little ideas I want to recommend*), but rather to discuss how to enforce it, in the face of the breakdown of our POLITICAL ORDER, and of gross violation of the various "gentleman's agreements" that have evidently held the "rule of law" together for so long.
If Karl Rove can manipulate the justice system in order to influence elections (or, more precisely, to write false election "narratives" for the corporate media), by firing US Attorneys who won't do his bidding, and hiring others who will, and if he can get away with this, and successfully hide the evidence of it in RNC emails, the "rule of law" is gone. Fini. Kaput.
If Bush and Cheney can destroy executive branch records, or hide them in private safes, and can deny the lawful demands of Congress to disclose those documents, and if Congress cannot or will not enforce their subpoenas, the "rule of law" is gone. The "balance of powers" that is laid out in the Constitution is broken. It is no more.
If the President can spy, and torture, and write his own laws, and invade and occupy a foreign country on the basis of a pack of lies, and suppress investigations of his many crimes, and defy lawful subpoenas, and run a crime gang out of the White House, with impunity, the "rule of law" has been destroyed. It is no longer operable. We have been stripped of all protection against tyranny.
That is the situation, in my opinion. These "ifs" have come true--even as to a Congressional rubber stamp on the suspension of habeas corpus, one of the chief issues of the American Revolution of 1776. And it does not matter if there is a cosmetic change of regimes, from ugly Bushites to pretty Democrats, without fundamental reform, and especially without the new regime's specific disavowal of unlawful and tyrannical rule, and even if they do disavow it, the threat remains, because these matters cannot be arbitrary. We cannot have a president who has the OPTION of torturing prisoners!
How do we get the Constitution enforced, without a bloody revolt? That is the question.
I don't know the answer. We need some NEW REVOLUTIONARY LEGAL THOUGHT or some NEW GOVERNING PHILOSOPHY to fix this. It is not a structural problem. There is nothing essentially wrong with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights--except that the informal agreements among political players, that respect these rules, have entirely broken down. Is it a matter of personal character? Should we ban certain people from political office--say, by creating our own "peoples' agreement" about who we will exile and boycott? For instance, rule: we won't vote for anyone who accepts campaign contributions larger than $10 per donor, for a total of, say, $5,000 (for major offices). Period. We will only vote for candidates with no money. Interesting idea, huh? Cut the knees out from under the political establishment. Yes, our elections are fiddled by the non-transparent, Bushite corporate controlled electronic voting systems--and by other means, the chief one being MONEY--but, if we were to get a big enough movement going, the e-voting hackers would not have sufficient bottom-line conditions to steal the election. If, say, 70% of the voters were voting for a Libertarian, or a Green, or a AIPer, or an independent, who would they throw the election to? Someone who was not controllable by the political establishment would win.
This is the kind of thinking we need: a revolutionary but peaceful method of overthrowing the political establishment. A new idea.
I tend to think that the problem is the power of global corporate predators and war profiteers--a force outside of the Constitution, and which the Framers--although they had some concerns about corporate business power--could not have imagined in this present monstrous form. Perhaps we should do a "clean slate" and de-charter them all. They are, most of them, chartered by individual states. Pull all private corporate charters, dismantle these predatory powers, and start over, with business consortiums whose lifespan and ability to accumulate wealth and power are strictly limited (as was the case originally with business corporations). This could be done outside the authority of the President-Tyrant and his/her lapdog Congress and fascist-stacked court system, with a grass roots movement via the state corporate chartering systems. Like election reform, it's more doable at the local level, where ordinary people still have some influence. Forget DC. It is a rathouse of traitors. They will fight back tooth and nail, to be sure--but the gauntlet will be laid down: The People vs. the vicious SOBs who have stolen our country. Halliburton. Exxon-Mobile. Bechtel. Lockheed. Blackwater. NBC. Faux News. Diebold/ES&S. Chase Bank. Monsanto. The lot. Where are they chartered? Which state governments are giving them leave to operate on these shores?
A Constitutional Convention, not about the actual document and what it says, but about how to make it work this time. How to prevent it from being undermined, eroded and destroyed, by officials who won't obey it, officials who disdain the rule of law, officials who are installed and crowned by the Supreme Court, or by corporate voting machines, and not by us? How to insure Constitutional government against powerful corporate entities who are determined to replace "we, the people" as the only sovereign power in this land?
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*Constitutional Amendments to: 1. Ban all "trade secret" code from our election system (open source code with 50% hand-count, or all hand-counted paper ballots). 2. Ban all private money in political campaigns, provide funding for candidate access to the voters with, say, dedication of 1% of the federal budget to this purpose, and reclaim some of our public airwaves for political debate. 3. Abolish the Electoral College (make the president elected by popular vote). 4. Retroactive term limits for Supreme Court and all federal judges, and perhaps make them electable by popular vote. These four amendments would transform our political system for the better--if only we can get public officials and a political establishment that believe in democracy and will enforce them.
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