Why Both Parties Should Lose (but especially Republicans)

While I tend to agree with Cait Murphy's article, I would rather decentralize power right now, which means I hope the Republicans lose one or more houses of Congress and Democrats win. With the Presidency and Courts in the hands of Republicans, this will eliminate one-party control of the federal government for the next two years. The do-no-harm gridlock that ensues will be infinitely preferable to the do-harm actions of the last six years.

The problem with centralized power, as Lord Acton long ago observed, is that it corrupts those with the power. Our Founders understood this when they divided power among two houses of Congress, and Presidency and the Courts. Of course "conservatives" at the time, like Alexander Hamilton, wanted to "conserve" a monarchy in the new United States. "Liberals" like Jefferson wanted to "liberate" the human spirit, and the best way to do this was to prevent government from becoming too big. Good thing Hamilton's ideas were largely ignored at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Today, Republicans preach limited government, but they cannot resist the power of Lord Acton's famous truism. Republican are not inherently bad in this regard, for Lord Acton comments apply to the human condition, not to one party or the other. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

What we know is that we have lived under one-party rule for six years now. I won't bore you with my extensive list of corrupting effects this as had, but I'll note a few. According to Cait Murphy's article:

According to estimates in a September research report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank where almost everyone can be expected to vote Republican, federal spending has risen 45 percent during Bush's presidency, three times as fast as it did under Bill Clinton.

Almost half of the increase is in discretionary spending (not entitlements, a whole other issue the GOP has disdained to address in any sustained fashion). And no, Osama is not to blame. As the exasperated Heritage folks note, non-military spending has gone up by 44 percent. Gross ploys like earmarks (putting pet projects into non-related appropriations bills) have ballooned.

So Reagan fiscal conservatives should vote against Republicans this year. But more -- Jeffrey Birnbaum notes in a Washington Post article from 2005:

The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since 2000 to more than 34,750 while the amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as much as 100 percent. Only a few other businesses have enjoyed greater prosperity in an otherwise fitful economy.

The lobbying boom has been caused by three factors, experts say: rapid growth in government, Republican control of both the White House and Congress, and wide acceptance among corporations that they need to hire professional lobbyists to secure their share of federal benefits.

Lobbying is less expensive when you only have to pay one party, and as Econ 1 informs us, when things cost less, we demand more of it. If you think more lobbyists are a bad thing, vote for divided government and against Republicans.

But most important, there has been no oversight of this administration. It has done what it pleased, arrogantly and to the chagrin of a good 50% of the American population and probably 90% of the world's population, and all for what -- arguably to make us LESS safer, to breed terrorists, to destroy our "good guys to the rescue" image that peaked during World War II and has declined with every arrogant decision we make and family we blow up, to tarnish our moral leadership in the world. Arrogance, Lord Acton would agree, is a by-product of unbridled power.

A Congressional victory for Democrats will also give them the power to hold hearings and the power to subpoena witnesses while memories are fresh and witnesses are alive. Recall that Republicans did this for six years while Bill Clinton was office, the vast majority of it, including 140 hours of testimony over White House Christmas cards, led nowhere. In contrast, Republicans only heard 12 hours of testimony on the Abu Grade prison abuses. Such has been the exercise of their oversight responsibilities.

Hopefully Democrats will seize some power back from Republicans in November. Hopefully they will not seek to exact a pound of flesh for the way Bill Clinton was treated, but they will investigate and exercise oversight. Other than this, there is not much a Democratic Congress can do but put a stop to the ways of the current administration. That itself -- like the Russian army at Stalingrad -- may prove an historically significant event.

The Legacy of Pat Tillman, American War Hero

Not too many people give up a multi-million dollar contract to go fight, and die, for their country, but that is just what Pat Tillman did. After 9/11, he gave up a 3.6 million dollar contract extension with the Arizona Cardinals and joined the elite Army Rangers. In 2002, he was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan. All the same, he is a hero who fought in a heroic war.

Our soldiers in Iraq are heroes too, but the political decision to go to war, as well as other decisions of the current adminstration, was far from heroic. Pat's brother, Kevin, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, apparently agrees.

In a condemnation of the rationale for the Iraq war and Bush's leadership, he writes on Truthdig.com:

"Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes,.... Somehow torture is tolerated. Somehow lying is tolerated. Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma and nonsense. Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world,...."

He notes that the elections on November 7 come just a day after his late brother's birthday: "Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday,...."

I couldn't agree more with Kevin Tillman. He reminds us that you can support your country and its military, and at the same time oppose your country's leadership and decisions. In fact sometimes to support your country, you have to oppose the leadership if it is hurting the very country you love.

You can read the full article, written by Kevin Tillman, at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/

Parts of this blog entry summarize and reword phrases from an AP article by Dan De Luce.

Only in New York

This was reported by the Associated Press:

NEW YORK - A speeding car driven by a naked woman high on drugs hit and killed a pedestrian in the New York City borough of Staten Island, before flipping over and stopping in a parking lot, authorities said Thursday.

. . .

The impact of [the driver's] speeding Nissan hitting 41-year-old Larry Simon killed him instantly and sent him flying into above-ground electrical wires, severing his legs, authorities said.

. . .

Military Commissions Act of 2006 Signed Into Law Today

President Bush today signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006, effectively doing away with habeas corpus. Most Americans probably have no idea what habeas corpus is, but it one of our most fundamental rights -- the right to challenge in court our unlawful detention. Indeed all of our other rights -- the right to a jury trial, the right to free speech, the right to religious freedom, the right to be presented with our accusers, the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure -- all of them disappear when habeas corpus goes, all of them disappear when we can be detained indefinitely with no access to courts to challenge that detention.

Access to the third branch of government, the courts, is essentially cut off. If our rights rest on a table with three legs -- our three branches of government -- one of those legs can now be removed anytime the President labels you an "enemy combatant," and you cannot even challenge that label

I think Keith Olbermann expresses my sentiments best. Watch the video.

Military Commissions Act of 2006

Congress has just passed sweeping legislation which, among other things, permits the President to interpret the Geneva Conventions (never mind that COURTS interpret laws, and that ratified treaties ARE laws under our Constitution), to detain any non-American indefinitely (that means potentially for life) without a trial (never mind that habeas corpus, or the right to challenge detention in COURT, is a fundamental right under the Constitution), to use evidence obtained through coersion or secret evidence (never mind the Confrontation Clause in the Constitution), and the list goes on.... See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6165648

The vote was largely along party lines. Remember this when history judges this vote.

When I was a child, I believed that the United States was the greatest defender of human rights. The bad guys were always out there, beyond our borders -- the Soviet Union, Apartheid, and so on. Our allies were Amnesty International and other organizations fighting for human rights. Read now what Amnesty International thinks of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The Terrorist Attack that Brought Down the Roman Republic

From "the more things change, the more things remain the same" file, or as an old teacher used to quote: "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9), comes this....

If you watched the latest Star Wars movies (filmed in part in Italy no less), the galactic Empire is so obviously modeled after the Roman Empire that the Roman-styled buildings used in the movies seem overkill. Both empires had their starts as republics (essentially representative democracies), and both republics fell when the people, in their fear, ceded sweeping power to the executive branch. And just as Rome's emperors promised to return power to the people (and never did), so too did our good Senator Palpatine, aka, Galactic Emperor. (See Wikipedia: "The early Julio-Claudian emperors maintained that the res publica still existed under the protection of their extraordinary powers and would eventually return to its republican form.")

Power, once ceded, like water spilt, rarely returns to its former place. Thankfully, all that could never happen in the U.S. Or could it? (Read this recent report.)

Anyway, getting back to that real republic and empire (not the galatic one), there's a wonderful Op-Ed by Robert Harris in the New York Times this weekend, that notes that the decline of the Roman republic began with a terrorist attack. Some excerpts from the article:

In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped. [Hmmm, wasn't a senator kidnapped in Star Wars Episode III?]

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Harris goes on to describe the terrorist then as terrorist non-state actors, capable to spread incredible fear among a people who were not accustomed to being attacked on their own soil (like Al Qaeda). He also notes the check and balances of the Roman republic and the remarkable liberty people had under it. All that changed after the attack at Ostia...

Mr. Harris continues:

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius [by the way, this is the annoying Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars], to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”

.... Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.

Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power.

Harris opines: By the oldest trick in the political book -- the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” -- powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

....

An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.

[The passage of the law] was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar “the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate” was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul....

It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. [Sound familiar?] In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, ....

Caesar crossed the Rubicon (a river in northern Italy, which generals were not permitted to cross with a standing army), and plunged republican Rome into a civil war, from which he would become the first of a series of emperors. The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" today refers to any people committing themselves irrevocably to a course of action.

Of course the terrorists didn't destroy the Roman republic, the overreaction of the people to the terrorists destroyed the republic. And that full quote in Ecclesiastes 1:9, you ask? "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

I rate the article an A- on my rating system:
A = Must read, educational, informative.
B = Should read for more informative details
C = Take it or leave it. I've summarized the main points
D = No need to read.
F = It's so bad, you SHOULD read it.

Iraq War Veteran Running for Congress -- Says It Like It Is!

I'll summarize this article for you: Iraq War Veteran (Black Hawk pilot no less)returns home minus two legs (no one would deny she's a war hero), runs for Congress, claims George Bush has no real plan to win the war, only a plan to win over voters. This is what I've been saying all along. (It was apparent to me there was no real plan during the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco and widespread looting after our invasion of Bagdad went unchecked.)

"Instead of a plan or a strategy, we get shallow slogans like 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Stay the Course,"' former Army Capt. Tammy Duckworth stated. "Those slogans are calculated to win an election. But they won't help us accomplish our mission in Iraq."

The rest of the article, which I rate a "C" (take it or leave it) is at http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/30/Dems.radio.ap/index.html

My article rating system:
A = Must read, educational, informative.
B = Should read for more informative details
C = Take it or leave it. I've summarized the main points
D = No need to read.
F = It's so bad, you SHOULD read it.

I haven't posted in nearly a year, but stay tuned...

I haven't posted in nearly a year, but stay tuned...