You know, the trouble with making one wrong decision is that every other decision you make after that is tainted, because you have to support a bad decision you've already made, and then another to support that, and so forth. Bill Clinton decided not to prosecute Casper Weinburger and those other Iran-Contra people from the Reagan administration, and this was a precident supported by a previous bad precident of Ford pardoning Richard Nixon in 1974. But sometimes despite your best efforts you can't keep the Truth from surfacing. Now we learn that Dick Chaney ordered that certain clandestine activities of the CIA be kept secret from congress. The only thing wrong with this is that congress made that an offence thirty years ago. It seems the new CIA chief, Leon Penetta decided to tell congress what the CIA had been doing despite Chaney's wishes. Had Dick Chaney been impeached, like he should have been back in 2007 when congress first went democratic, this would have come out before. My latent fear now is that somehow President Obama is on the wrong side of this issue. Here's a test you can do. Listen to Obama talking on the radio and close your eyes. At times Obama now reminds me of a young Richard Nixon of fifty years ago. There is something about the bobbing and weaving of his voice and the way he answers questions. His own Attorney General, Eric Holder, wants to investigate all these human rights violations by the CIA. New grizzly details of new tortures are coming out all the time. Of course even conservatives point out that the Obama administration never put a stop to "renditions" and they are going on to this very day. Also this "Super Max" hell-hole in which they want to place the prisoners from Guantanamo, may be worse for them then the environs they left. It can't be repeated too often that sunshine is the best disinfectant. We as Americans need desperately to define who we are as a people, and who we are not. There is nothing to be gained by putting off these investigations any longer. But you know that the Republican spin machine opperates best in the dark, where the American people don't know the truth. I guess what I am questioning right now is what sort of man President Obama is. Does he believe the axiom of Clement of Alexandria, who once said "Not all truth is expediant, but only those truths that bring glory to God".
Also a lot of us are wondering whether President Obama isn't some sort of closet corporatist. In Justice Sotomayor's first actual day os testifying before congress - what I have already is enough to change my vote from a "Yes" to a "No". I am not bothered by the race issue or particular statements the Justice has made "off camera" to to speak. The issue of the white firemen doesn't bother me all that much because so I hear, Justice Sotomayer ruled on a technicality. People were also saying that the justice may be pro life. But what she said today put an abrupt end to that sort of speculation. She said that Roe vs Wade was "settled law" in the same way that Griswald was "settled law". Here is a case where one wrong ruline led to another one. Once you've ruled and allowed that certain clearly illegal acts can be committed in private and there is a blanket "right to privacy", then this cracked open the door to ruling that abortion was a "private act", the same way that people are claiming today that medical suicide is a "private act between a patient and his or her doctor". One error leads to other errors. Clearly roe vs wade is not "settled law" because it's still a contraversial "hot button" issue. And popularity of abortion is declining in this country. Buit the justice made other statements. She said that vertical price fixing being OK was "settled law". Her oppinion of what constitutes "settled law" is vastly different from mine. If the court has ruled one way for a hundred years and her way for a couple of years, I think we need to ballance it off. But the biggest "deal breaker" for me was her ruling on private property. She says that nobody is secure in their "private property". Indeed the fourth amendment which some would hold inviolate, is being violated here in a big way. The government can come and take your house or apartment or center of worship, and sell it to a Wal-Mart or it may become anything from a bowling alley to a trancendental medetation center. Clearly this ruling would be used as a vehical to violate religious rights. Clearly there have been cases where areas were ruled "blighted" when the jingle of dollar signs was the real factor and the corporation lobbyests lining congressmen's pockets. The idea that any justice would condone this sort of graft is unjustifiable, in my oppinion. If this ruling is allowed to stand, this won't be America any more. We won't have private property and people secure in their dwellings. For all you know "public use" could be a gambling casino!
We've seen a little of this sort of thing here in LA where public funds were appropiated for use in a purely "private" funeral extravaganza advertizement for the life and carreer of Michael Jackson. How much were his record sales boosted by that big bashy at Staples Center one week ago? LA is going broke and yet LA has sponsored two big celebrations lately as though money flowed like confetti. How many kids were denied a school lunch so that Michael Jackson's memory could be agrandized? If these were not such hard times maybe this would not be an issue. But today we hand out money to banks by the truck load only to have them sit on the money. I've heard a lot of conservatives talk about how the poor shouldn't get anything, and the more they talk, the better Ebonezer Scrooge is starting to look, in comparrison.
You know, some say that Thom Hartman is a liberal. But more than a liberal, I think you could call him a radical. The word radical means "root" and Hartman seeks to get to the root of our economic problems. In order to do this some "radical surgery" is advised. We need to look at how the Courts viewed Corporations two hundred years ago. Hartman has spoken often of the granting of "personhood" to a corporation in a ruling in 1886. After this pivital ruling, all the states turned their laws on corporations upside down. If you have a beef with a person you can come over and kick his ass. Who can you vent your anger on if a corporation messes you over? There are no giant financial "Foundations" based on the founders of our country because none of them were that rich. Some were wiped out in business by the revolutionary war. Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independance paid a price and often a heavy price for their actions being either imprisoned, or losing their wives and children. They said that government was derived from the concent of the governed, and "When a government is destructive of these ends, then it ought to be altered or abolished". These are words to linger over and meditate upon.
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