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comparison, in critical importance to the restoration of democracy and the rule of law in the United States. The "balance of powers" MUST be restored.
The key for US--we, the people--is restoring our right to vote and TRANSPARENT vote counting, which we should not depend on Congress to do. And that doubt I have--the worry that Diane ("You too can learn to love the Corporate Rulers") Feinstein, who heads the Senate elections committee, will gut, sabotage or kill election reform--MAY indicate as well what will happen on restoring the "balance of powers" between the executive branch and Congress. But there ARE differences. However illegitimately Congress is elected, it still represents the main balance against executive tyranny, as designed by the Founders of our Republic. It is perhaps THE MOST IMPORTANT provision of the Constitution, in the minds of the Founders, and throughout our history (--aside from the civil rights amendments). That Congress holds the purse strings, writes the laws, and is supposed to hold the SOLE power to declare war, are MAIN bulwarks against a Caligula, or a Nero, or the Tsar or another Hitler gaining power here. It is the very definition of constitutional government that Congress is an EQUAL branch of government--a principle with a history going back to the Magna Carta.
And we have never had such lawlessness--and such a profound violation of the Constitution--as we have had these past six years, with Bush-Cheney's assertions of tyrannical powers, and Congress' unwillingness to curtail them. (--indeed, with a Congress of Bushite "pod people" only too anxious to give their power away, and piss on their oath of office).
The hundreds of executive "signing statements" that Bush has attached to Congressional laws, stating that the laws don't necessarily apply to him and his regime--whatever you think of those laws--is frontal assault on the rule of law, the "balance of powers," and Constitutional government. The PRINCIPLE is of abiding importance here, not the content of the laws. And the other violations are of equal importance--the lack of accountability of the executive, the secrecy of the executive, the pre-emptive actions of the executive--such as declaring prisoners of war to be "enemy combatants" with no human rights, in violation of major laws and treaties--and items like Bush's announcement that he has committed felonies--domestic spying without a warrant (from a secret court, that can be obtained AFTER the fact!)--and will CONTINUE to commit these felonies (with Congress inflicting no consequences)--are not just crimes, they are a prescription for tyranny. And the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq is exactly the sort of thing that happens with an out of control executive.
Nancy Pelosi's announcement that "impeachment is off the table" is also a violation of the Constitution and of her oath of office. That power must NEVER be put "off the table." It is the ONLY tool that Congress has to curtail an out-of-control president, and to prevent tyranny in our land. I can understand why she said it. Even with all the Democratic victories in the midterms, Congress still does not adequately represent the interests of the American people--for various reasons, among them, NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting by Bushite electronic voting corporations, our filthy campaign money system, the heavy drag of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies (and what they PERMIT as political debate), and the fact that only one third of the Senate was up for reelection. So she may not have the power to impeach, even if she wanted to. The House itself still contains a block of Democrats of the kind who voted for torture and suspension of habeas corpus last month. Bushite Democrats. And Lieberman and other Senate warmongers will likely block impeachment. They like Bush's war. So Pelosi is probably wise not to make firebrand statements about impeachment, if she doesn't have the votes (can't follow through--also, exoneration of Bush-Cheney, with all their long list of "high crimes and misdemeanors," could be a worse precedent than no impeachment). And impeachment may be back on the table, once the case is built, and especially if Bush-Cheney defy subpoenas. But Pelosi didn't have to put it quite that way--"off the table". There are a hundred other ways she could have put it, without violating her oath of office and seeming to endorse executive lawlessness.
So, with impeachment "off the table," what other ways can Congress restore the "balance of powers"? Cheney's statement--"we've been able to restore the legitimate authority of the presidency"--is so-o-o-o wrong, and so-o-o-o upside down and backwards ("Alice in Wonderland"'s world)--that it makes it IMPERATIVE that "balance" be restored. The president NEVER ever had the powers that Bush-Cheney are asserting: the power to conduct a war of choice, the power to unsign laws passed by Congress, the power to keep the financial business of the executive branch a complete secret from the American people, the power to torture, the power of warrentless search, the power of warrantless seizure, the power to invade a Congressman's office and seize papers. These are fantastic assertions. These assertions of imperial power are WHY we HAD the American revolution. So, when Cheney talks about RESTORING "the legitimate authority of the presidency," he is harking back to BEFORE the revolution, to the authority of the KING.
The new Congress should at least correct the impression that Congress is an adjunct to the White House, and do it in no uncertain terms. They should be writing a Magna Carta, spelling out the wrongful assertions of executive power that they will not tolerate, stating the principle that the president is NOT above law, and asserting Congress' EQUALITY as a branch of government, and especially its SOLE right under the Constitution to make the law.
They should NOT underestimate these statements of Cheney's, and the powers that he still possesses. Some posters here are ridiculing his statements and saying it's all over for him. Not so. We don't know what's going on between Bush and Cheney, and we must presume that both of them still have the power to give orders to the military, who are obliged to obey them. What if they declare martial law? What is Congress going to do THEN?
Re-stating the fundamental principles of Constitutional government, in some form of Magna Carta, would at least put them on notice that Congress understands and intends to exercise ITS powers. It may not be any more effective than the Magna Carta was with King John, but the principles MUST be stated, if the rule of law is ever to be re-established. It seems a bit strange. There they are, in black and white (on hemp paper!) in our founding document. But we have to realize that Bush-Cheney have ripped that document to shreds. And they furthermore have appointed Supreme Court justices who are not at all reliable as to unshredding the Constitution. (Even their ruling on Guantanamo Bay detention contained a loophole, that Bush-Cheney rammed right through!)
This may seem like a sideline struggle to those who perceive that the real rulers of our country are out-of-control global corporate predators. But I think that restoring the "balance of powers"--and TRANSPARENT vote counting--are the keys to dealing with those overarching rulers. And they know it, too. They have gone out of their way to gain absolute power within our election system. They KNOW what a REPRESENTATIVE body of Americans (Congress) can theoretically do to them (--pull their corporate charters, dismantle them and seize their assets for the public good--as well as busting up their monopolies, taxing them at a fair rate, and regulating them). They have not made a Congressional seat a million dollar proposition for NO REASON. They have not forced corporate-controlled electronic voting on us for NO REASON. They have not monopolized all news and opinion, overseen by 5 rightwing billionaire CEOs, for NO REASON. Congress is the symbolic and real representation of our sovereignty as a people, and it is that sovereignty that is under grave assault now.
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The OTHER mechanism of our sovereignty:
The election reform movement needs a backup strategy for achieving transparent vote counting by the '08 primaries. We don't have a strategy--a practical, on the ground approach to achieve our goal. We mustn't count on this Congress--which is already so compromised, even with the Democratic majority--to restore our right to vote. Many members of this Congress are among the ones who took it away! (--with the 2002 so-called "Help America Vote Act"--which virtually all of our Democratic Senators, and most Democratic House members voted FOR). Even the best proposed bill--HR 550--is a patch-up or fix-it bill, with loopholes and dubious provisions (making a 2% audit the standard--way inadequate--encouraging more e-voting and e-voting contracts, and centralized federal power). And Kucinich's bill doesn't have a prayer of passing, given the bipartisan corruption related to the HAVA billions, and it applies only to the presidential vote (paper ballots, handcounted in public). My prediction: If we get any election reform at all from Congress, it WILL reward these criminal, lying corporations--Diebold and ES&S--with more billions in contracts, and it will NOT entirely remove their secret code from our voting system. They will retain the ability to tamper with our elections.
I think the voters themselves have suggested what could a very effective strategy at the state/local level. There was a huge increase in Absentee Ballot voting in the recent midterms. AB voting has been on the increase in direct proportion to the cancerous spread of Diebold/ES&S and other election theft machines. The voters are onto the rigged electronics, in big numbers, and are trying to get around the machines by AB voting. 50% of the total vote in the entire state of Calif. was by Absentee Ballot this year--and the increase was big all over. This big AB vote was a BOYCOTT of the machines--a PROTEST against them, by millions of individual voters. These AB voters are the natural constituency of the election reform movement, and they should be organized into AB voting groups at the local level, to pressure local officials, to, a) HANDCOUNT the AB votes, and b) POST the results BEFORE any electronics are involved. We thus begin to create a paper ballot system BY DEFAULT. Right now, most AB votes are just scanned right into the rigged electronics. These simple, common sense demands--hand counting and posting the results immediately, which are what the AB voters want, and are trying to get--are DOABLE, at the LOCAL level, with such a large constituency of discontented and distrustful voters. And once AB voters starting getting these concessions, it will snowball. Everyone will want their votes to have this security. This strategy also avoids a head-on collision with the vast corruption wrought by the HAVA billions--the major obstacle to reform. Corrupt election officials and their corporate masters can keep their expensive, crapass, new machines, for the time being--and use them for double-checking the handcount, and for storage/reporting of data. But their lock on vote tabulation, by means of the secret code, will be broken.
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