Friday, June 22, 2007

Cheney to Rule of Law: Go Fuck Yourself!

by Rich Miles
June 22, 2007


(Originally posted in a slightly edited form as a comment on BluegrassReport.org)

(Updates below 1 - 2)

Without further introduction, from today's WaPo on this matter:

...Vice President Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.

Since 2003, the vice president's staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney's staff this year proposed eliminating it.

(emphasis added)

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To all the right-wingnuts who visit and occasionally comment on this site:

Where do we go from here? I mean, is this just OK with you, that this sort of lawlessness in the highest offices of our land go not only unpunished but virtually unremarked for nearly FOUR YEARS?

Will Pres. Bush call Cheney down on this, and fire him if he refuses to comply? (See update #2 below for the answer.)

Will the Gonzales Justice Dept. cite him, and charge him if he refuses yet again to comply with the law?

Will the stacked, 5-4 in-favor-of-Bush-as-God Supreme Court find constitutional fault with his recalcitrance?

Or will the just-barely-Democratic Congress find the votes, or more to the point the political courage to impeach an Executive Branch official who flaunts the law in this way?

Where do we, the people, go for redress when our leaders are not only lawbreakers but flagrant and admitted lawbreakers, who protect each other at the grave expense of our democracy?

This is the box that the Bush administration has built for our country: they have so successfully loaded our government and our courts with their friends and fellow-travelers that there IS no redress. Cheney will almost certainly NOT be called to task for this unconscionable breaking of the law, and no one can do anything about it.

And some folks, mostly right-wing nutcases who seem incapable of seeing what damage is being done to America and Americans on a daily basis, but also a few people who see themselves as "thinkers", think that's just A-OK. They think it will never backfire on them, and that the government that takes their civil rights from them is "protecting" them by doing so. They never seem to imagine what it would be like if some of these "protections" were used against them.

And so our nation sinks ever lower into the pit of despotism, and there are still folks who cheer the descent and those who are taking us there.

Seriously, folks, you on the right who think all this is OK: do you really want this - lawbreakers in positions of power - to be America's message to the world?

Never mind, I fear your answer would only depress me further.

In closing, let me offer this from Salon's Glenn Greenwald. Yes, he's a liberal - but that doesn't make him wrong. At least not automatically. If you still think Bush is a strong and steadfast and righteous leader, read this, with at least a half-open mind. See if there isn't something you can learn from it.

A tragic legacy: How a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency

The America Bush has created is NOT the America I grew up in, and is most assuredly not the America I wish to die in.

UPDATE 1: Cheney DID NOT say he is No Longer a Member of the Executive Branch: The Real Story is Much Worse

UPDATE 2: Bush claims oversight exemption too


Will no one stop these monsters?

1 comment:

Yellow Dog said...

It's still, in a small way, the America we grew up in and still love as long as eloquent, passionate people like you are still willing to expend time and energy trying to get through to the RWA sheep.

Bless you for not giving up.