Pres. Bush is Gored; Corporate Media Totally Misses the Point

Oh, how they missed the point!

Here?s the point:

We are in an extraordinary constitutional crisis as the current Administration has systematically and with malice aforethought gone about trashing the carefully designed American system of checks and balance built into our Constitution.  Destroying the division of government powers (legislative, executive, judicial) has one purpose, to install George W. Bush as what they call the ?unitary executive" (but which Gore prefers to call the ?unilateral executive"). The goal is nothing less than to replace our hard-won Government of Laws (not Men) with the ancient system of Rule by a Strong Man.

Bush refuses to accept any constraints whatsoever on his conduct, arrogantly avoids any form of accountability to either the legislature or the courts, insists on secrecy and personal loyalty, and uses the politics of fear to intimidate and control. Fear drives out reason and is the path which leads to oppression. In the absence of accountability (checks and balance) incompetence flourishes (think "Brownie"), mistakes are made, and screwups are secretly covered up.  Then, the Chief Executive demands even more power to overcome whatever went wrong.

Both the Courts and the Congress today are withering compared to the Presidency. The power of the Courts have been weakened not only by Bush's refusal to seek warrants for wiretapping.  They have been weakened not only because Bush ignored them throughout the process of imprisoning so-called ?enemy combatants,? of using torture, and of employing "rendition" of captives into the ugly hands of foreign torturers.  It's also because Bush has relentlessly filled court vacancies everywhere with judges dedicated to the primacy of the executive power.  Like he's trying to do with Samuel Alito, for instance. 

What's happened to the courts has been bad enough, but the biggest decline in power has been that of Congress.  Gone are the days of robust Congressional oversight, vital and meaningful debate on the floor, and powerful, independent-minded leaders. Instead, Congress now operates as an utterly submissive body to the executive branch, passing laws (including budgets) which they have not even read, and generally ceding its law-making role to the Executive Branch.  Why is this happening? In part, because most Senators and members spend most of their time raising money to pay for hideously expensive (and hideous in general) 30-second TV ads in order to get re-elected. Congress therefore pays more attention to the people dispensing money than to their constituents. Jack Abramoff, says Gore, is just the tip of a very big iceberg.

With the courts and Congress on life support, with the corporate media completely missing the point, it is now up to another element of our American system to restore our Constitutional balance and ensure the survival of our democracy. That element is "We, the People". We, the people, created the convention that drafted the Constitution, We, the People, refused to ratify it until the Bill of Rights was added.  And We, the People now need to stand up, ?dis-enthrall ourselves? from our television sets, and demand restitution of the traditional constitutional protection of our rights and liberties.  We need to do this by:

1. Demanding the immediate appointment of a genuinely independent, fully empowered Special Counsel to investigate the criminal use of warrantless searches and wiretapping illegally ordered by the President;

2. Telling Congress to pass new, stronger whistle-blower protections for workers in the executive branch so they cannot be intimidated by their bosses into silence and conformity;

3. Requiring both houses of Congress to undertake comprehensive and genuine hearings? in other words, re-institute oversight;

4. Refusing to renew the (ironically named) PATRIOT Act, despite Bush?s fear-mongering, without ironclad additional safeguards of our liberties; and

5. Forcing any telecommunications company which cooperated in secretly giving the government private and personal information (gathered through data mining or other means) to cease and desist immediately. We must have freedom of communication or our democracy cannot survive. The Internet, too must remain free, not controlled by either government or big corporation.

All that sounds more like detailed marching orders rather than the sound bite fed to us by the corporate media.  Read the Gore speech for yourself, or watch it on C-Span.  Make up your own mind whether Gore is right or not, then take action!

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