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It's been one of my own thoughts on our government/political establishment. But I think the thing you may not grasp is that the playing field is not level. In fact, it's tilted at a 90% angle to dump all ordinary Americans, and anyone who even comes close representing us (petty corruption or not) straight into a Grand Canyon-sized hole of fascism and ruination. We have to somehow push the playing field back up a few notches, so we all don't perish. And we don't do that by buying into Rove's treasonous games with Department of Justice.
Do you know why there is a very strong provision in the Constitution that forbids ANYONE in the Executive Branch including all police agencies, and ANYONE in the courts or associated enforcement agencies, from stopping ANY member of Congress from entering Congress on the peoples' business, no matter what that person may be accused of by the Executive or Judicial branches? It was to prevent the use of criminal prosecution as a political tool to harass the opposition--a common abuse of royal powers in Europe and England against members of parliament. And, in short, what it means is that the PEOPLE can elect, and the Executive cannot remove--for ANY reason--WHOEVER THE PEOPLE WANT TO REPRESENT THEM. A communist. A terrorist. A murderer. A thief. Anyone! Because those accusations are typical tools of an out-of-control Executive/King in DENYING the People their chosen representatives.
The vote of the people is SACRED. It trumps all petty laws and powers of the Executive. The people may elect whomever they wish. And, in terms of Congress--and its specific protection in the Constitution--there is only ONE entity that can override the will of the people, and that is Congress itself--by impeaching and removing one of its own members.
Neither can the President be removed--for ANY reason--except by impeachment and conviction in Congress. This, for instance, prevents an out-of-control prosecutor like Ken Starr from arresting and removing the President. The OFFICE of president, as with the office of member of Congress, is SACRED. Even if the President is investigated, prosecuted and convicted in a court, he or she CANNOT be touched, CANNOT be arrested, CANNOT be removed, except by impeachment.
I don't know the specifics of state laws, as to extending these principles to state systems: that is, the governor not being removable except by state legislators' impeaching and convicting the governor, and state legislators not being removable except by action of the state legislature, but, whatever the status of such laws, at the state level, the principle of the SACREDNESS of the vote of the People is similar and generally applicable. Police powers--whoever controls them--cannot be used to remove an elected official. Their election and swearing in are SACRED--because the People are SOVEREIGN here. Their elected officials can certainly be pressured to resign--as Eliot Spitzer was. THEN they can be arrested. I'm not sure what happened with Seigelman, but I can tell you what didn't happen: he was not arrested UNTIL he resigned (unless those events were even more irregular than I thought--a throwback to royalist Europe).
Both Spitzer and Seigelman COULD have held on, and fought impeachment battles in the state legislatures, and possibly could even have rallied public opinion to such a degree that the state legislatures refused to impeach. And, in that case, New York and Alabama would have had sitting governors--elected and empowered BY THE PEOPLE--who were felons. It doesn't matter. The People can elect felons! The People can choose to keep felons in office. Legislatures are elected bodies that represent THE PEOPLE. And if the legislature refuses to impeach someone, because public opinion won't allow it, that collective decision overrides any outside investigation, prosecution and conviction. Until the person no longer holds the elected, sworn-on-the-Bible, SACRED office granted to him or her by the SOVEREIGN voters.
Look back over American history, and you will see repeated instances of corruption of every kind in our political system. This is not new (--although the Bushite level of corruption is unprecedented, possibly in the history of the world). Democracy is a corrective to the capitalist economic system. It allows the People to regulate the robber barons, to gain protection for workers and the poor, to even things out. But, often enough in our history, corrupt political machines have arisen that have been beneficial to large numbers of people, at least for a time. Corruption is expected. It is endemic. Democracy, in fact, is a way both for good public servants to arise from the People, and for the poor--the immigrants, people from the underclass--to rise to levels of power that bring riches, and to get rich. We have seen this time and again, and it has never been clean. We saw it in Tamany Hall (the Irish immigrants' political machine). We see it now in the Indian casinos (another excluded group, now making money). We've seen it in the trade unions. Almost every immigrant or lower-class/excluded group has gone through this process. Corruption. Corrupt political machines. Pay-off's. Bribes. Dirty deals. Rigged contracts. 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.' It's as American as apple pie. When the corruption becomes too awful--there is sometimes a cleansing. We've gone through periods of political puritanism--when a vicuna coat was a big scandal (the Eisenhower/Kennedy era)--and through periods in which considerable corruption is tolerated. And it is totally crazy, in a period as corrupt as this one, to expect that our political representatives are going to be saints, are going to be Mother Theresa, are going to be chaste, sinless, pure and voluntarily poor, with empty bank accounts!
Who should be prosecuted? Who should be held to the 'Mother Theresa' standard? Donald Seigelman (if he's dirty)? Or Dick Cheney, who, if the truth were known, has stolen billions? Not petty corruption. Massive corruption, into the pockets of his global corporate predator pals.
And who is being prosecuted? Certainly not Dick Cheney, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Blackwater! They're going scot free. While those war criminals have the nerve, have the arrogance, have the audacity to use their puppets in the Department of so-called Justice to ruin Democratic office-holders, whose crimes are nothing compared to what they've done.
It may be that the Bushites CHOSE Seigelman, and Diebolded him into office, because he was corrupt or corruptible. We don't know that, but it's possible. Things are that Byzantine, yes. But do we then play their game, and pillory Democrats? Their game is to end up with all the power, in control of all the levers of government, with nazi powers over the rest of us. To enslave us. To use us for cannon fodder. We can't let them use the Seigelmans in our party, and selectively prosecute them for political reasons, in order to destroy every little bit of people power we have left.
I certainly don't support corruption of any kind. But neither am I naive. We are suffering a fascist junta. We cannot allow ourselves to get played by them, in this way--to get twisted up in their evil logic, whereby these filthy rotten traitors--Rove, Bush, Cheney and their Bushbots in the DoJ--can parade as VIRTUOUS, as LAWFUL, as POLITICAL PURITANS, and go after petty corruption in Democratic office holders, using cooked evidence and illegal spying. It is mind-boggling. And, if need be, yes, we must assert our right--the right of the Sovereign People--to elect whomever we wish to office, whoever serves OUR interests, no matter what the Bushbots claim they have done. Until we have restored our democracy--and have taken back control of our vote counting system, and our public airwaves, and our regulatory and oversight systems, and our justice system--we cannot know what is true and what is not true. And we must not let them continue to control what happens while the truth cannot be known. We must do the surprising thing--not believe them, no matter what they say. No matter who they accuse.
That is my stance on Seigelman. We don't know. We can't know. And whatever he may have done, it is nothing compared to the crimes of those who put him in jail--not to mention the fact that they did it with a crooked prosecution.
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