VOTE OUT THE RUBBER STAMP!

November is right around the corner. Time to trim the Shrub.

This caught my eye, in the Nation:

BUSH AIMS TO KILL WAR CRIMES ACT

(snip)
“The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act. Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority--perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package. Why are they doing it, and how can they be stopped?”
(snip)

"As David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center pointed out in the August 10 issue of The New York Review of Books, the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rusmfeld "suggests that President Bush has already committed a war crime, simply by establishing the [Guantánamo] military tribunals and subjecting detainees to them" because "the Court found that the tribunals violate Common Article 3--and under the War Crimes Act, any violation of Common Article 3 is a war crime." A similar argument would indicate that top US officials have also committed war crimes by justifying interrogation methods that, according to the testimony of US military lawyers, also violate Common Article 3.”

(snip)
“Lo and behold, the legislation the Administration has circulated on Capitol Hill would decriminalize such acts retroactively. Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told the Associated Press on August 10, "I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous." Human rights attorney Scott Horton told Democracy Now! on August 16 that one of the purposes of the proposed legislation is "to grant immunity or impunity to certain individuals. And these are mostly decision-makers within the government."
(end snip)

In short, this administration is giving itself ANOTHER FREE PASS. What’s my motto, troops? NO FREE PASSES. I don’t give a rat’s fart in a whirlwind WHO you are.

We got us a president who wasn’t elected, hiding behind tragedy every time he screws up, who squelchs dissent in a country that IS a ‘Free Speech Zone’ (every bloody inch of it!), who invades a country on the bidding of an invisible voice, who essentially lives in a Nixonian coccoon (he doesn’t read newspapers, he only watches football on the TV, nothing else – we the people are at the mercy of his misguided advisors), who surrounds himself with syncophants (some of whom actually QUIT), hell, let’s wrap this up and just state for the record: this guy couldn’t run his own nose if he had a lousy cold.
And a Republican congress/senate with a Republican president? So far, it hasn’t worked out well AT ALL.

I’d like to see this clown impeached. But right now, I’d settle for the voice of the people ripping his rubber stamp right out of his fist. He’s run this country by the seat of his pants, and guess what? His ass is hanging out. And this ain’t a strip club: the American people have bigger problems to deal with, and better things to look at.

So get your butts out there, and VOTE, people. Yes, you can register online – here’s the California link, your resident senator or congressman (woman, person, gah! Do I hate the PC crap these days!) is bound to have some way to do this online. I was unsure, registered last week, got my form today.

So let’s trim the Shrub, chasten the chimp, and boot out some of the sock puppet’s sock puppets.

“You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.”- Abbie Hoffman

“When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out.” – Abbie Hoffman

“No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Till the next post, then.