Reply #2: Me too! [View All]

[SmileMaker]

I plan to read Thom Hartmann's piece - Hope that the media does show up too.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0425-20.htm

Published on Monday, April 25, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Frauds of the Clergy
by Thom Hartmann

Why would a multi-multi-millionaire Senator, who consistently votes to harm the hungry and the poor who so concerned Jesus, join forces with religious fundamentalists to stack this nation's highest courts? Could it be because he and his wealthy Republican friends see huge financial benefits for themselves and their corporate patrons in a compliant court?
At the "Justice Sunday" event hyped to national prominence by Bill Frist's appearance, Chuck Colson told America that we should read the Federalist Papers to understand the intent and the mind of the Founders.

Apparently Colson overlooked Federalist 47, published by James Madison on February 1, 1788. Titled, "The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts," Madison wrote about how important it was that the different branches of government serve as checks and balances on each other.

"No political truth is of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty," wrote Madison of the concern about any one particular group dominating all branches of government. He added, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

A paragraph later, Madison quotes the Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu, inserting his own capital letters for emphasis:

"'When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body,' says he , 'there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner.'

"Again: 'Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR.'"