"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Thursday, January 18, 2007

This is why we need checks and balances
Posted by Jill | 7:32 AM
This morning I was thinking about what an amazing document the United States Constitution is, and how over 200 years ago, the men who hammered together our system of government addressed so many of the potential problems that could arise. For all that these were men of the Enlightenment, they were very well aware of the kind of base venality that can come with power, and for the most part did a heckuva job (!) in addressing that.

Our governmental system isn't perfect by any means. The kind of breathtaking corruption and willful thwarting of the will of the people that has been the hallmark of the Bush Administration is something not even men who had lived under a king ever imagined -- a president who would steal the office by sending thugs to a state run by his brother to intimidate people attempting to recount the vote. A one-party Congress with absolutely no respect whatsoever for either the law OR the Constitution. A president determined to go to and then escalate a war with the support of barely over one-tenth of the American people, asking no sacrifice of anyone other than the families of those fighting.

But let's give props where they are warranted, in this case for the notion of three branches of government, two of them to keep a check on the executive branch. Ever since the 9/11/01 attacks, this Executive branch has conducted itself as if this were a monarchy or a dictatorship. "I am the decider", sayeth George W. Bush, and as long as the Republicans in Congress were allowed to continue to accept golf junkets and gifts from lobbyists, they didn't care what the executive branch did. And when the executive branch flagrantly violated the Fourth Amendment by claiming the right to conduct mass surveillance on the communications and finances of all Americans in the name of "national security", the Republicans ate their prime beef and played golf and drank their premium lobbyist liquor and not just looked the other way, but gave impassioned speeches as to why this is a GOOD thing.

It's not that the Democrats have shown such bravery as of yet, but the mere FACT that the rubber stamp no longer exists may have been enough to put the fear of God into even these most megalomaniacal of men. All of a sudden, without his own party in charge of Congress and with investigations looming, FISA court overseeing the Bush Admininstration's surveillance programs is not an undue burder after all:

The Bush administration, in a surprise reversal, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to give a secret court jurisdiction over the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and would end its practice of eavesdropping without warrants on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists.

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.

The Justice Department said it had worked out an “innovative” arrangement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that provided the “necessary speed and agility” to provide court approval to monitor international communications of people inside the United States without jeopardizing national security.

Some legal analysts said the administration’s pre-emptive move could effectively make the court review moot, but Democrats and civil rights advocates said they would press for the courts and Congress to continue their scrutiny of the program of wiretapping without warrants, which began shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Democrats praised the administration’s decision, but said it should have come much sooner.

"The announcement today is welcome news,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee. “But it is also confirmation that the administration’s go-it-alone approach, effectively excluding Congress and the courts and operating outside the law, was unnecessary.”

Mr. Rockefeller added, “I intend to move forward with the committee’s review of all aspects of this program’s legality and effectiveness.”


You'd better, Mr. Rockefeller, because we have a right to know what this president who has forgotten that he works for us has been doing.

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.
0 comments
Bookmark and Share