A Pox On Both Their Houses!
Yesterday, Congress decided that winning elections was more important than the US Constitution and more important than basic human decency. Members of both Houses also gave the Emperor yet more power. Some Democrats colluded by voting for the bills in question. From an AP on-line article:
Breaking with their party, a handful of Democrats in competitive congressional races voted to approve President Bush's system to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects.
In doing so, they took away one arrow Republicans plan to use in their soft-on-security attack on Democrats.
...Six weeks before congressional midterm elections, the Republican-controlled Congress overcame differences within the GOP to approve the president's sweeping anti-terrorism legislation that prohibits war crimes while defining such atrocities as rape and torture, and establishes military tribunals to prosecute terrorism suspects.
The Senate approved the measure 65-34 on Thursday, one day after the House voted in favor 253-168. The House was taking a final vote on the bill Friday before sending it to Bush.
Among the eight House Democrats who supported the bill are two congressmen running for Senate seats in states that Bush won in 2000 and 2004.
Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, cast as an ultra-liberal by Republicans, is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Mike DeWine in Ohio, and may be trying to project a more moderate position. That also could be the case in GOP-leaning Tennessee, where Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr., also being tagged as a liberal, is challenging Republican Bob Corker.
The six House Democrats running for re-election who voted in favor of the legislation are in GOP-leaning districts that Republicans are making a play to win in November. They are: Democratic Reps. Melissa Bean in Illinois, Jim Marshall in Georgia, John Barrow in Georgia, Leonard Boswell in Iowa, John Spratt in South Carolina, and Edwards in Texas.
"They are voting in line with what they perceive to be the views of a majority of their constituencies on this issue," said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist.
The Democrats who broke ranks in both houses should be ashamed. They took the coward's way out by not distinguishing between the unconstitutional dumping of habeas corpus and real security, and they did it just to get some votes. To say they did so to align themselves with what "they perceive to be the views of a majority of their constituencies" is a cop-out. Yes, they are supposed to represent the people of their district or state, but they are to do so in the best interests of those constitutents and of the country.
Each one of those Democrats took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. They failed miserably, and the fact is, they didn't have to.
They could have challenged the accusation of being obstructionists by stating that they were indeed obstructionists in that they were obstructing a power-mad administration from defying the basic rights accorded to Americans by the the very Constitution they have sworn to uphold.
They could have rebutted the accusations of being soft on terror by pointing to the recently released NIE report which shows that this nation by going to war in Iraq and in engaging in horrible abuses of human rights by using torture in interrogations and detentions in secret prisons have caused an increase in the number of terrorists sworn to attack this country. By fighting the root causes of that increase, they could have shown the world that Americans do not condone the criminal behavior of the current regime.
But no, these Democrats chose the easy path, the low road.
Quislings. Each and every one of them.
Breaking with their party, a handful of Democrats in competitive congressional races voted to approve President Bush's system to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects.
In doing so, they took away one arrow Republicans plan to use in their soft-on-security attack on Democrats.
...Six weeks before congressional midterm elections, the Republican-controlled Congress overcame differences within the GOP to approve the president's sweeping anti-terrorism legislation that prohibits war crimes while defining such atrocities as rape and torture, and establishes military tribunals to prosecute terrorism suspects.
The Senate approved the measure 65-34 on Thursday, one day after the House voted in favor 253-168. The House was taking a final vote on the bill Friday before sending it to Bush.
Among the eight House Democrats who supported the bill are two congressmen running for Senate seats in states that Bush won in 2000 and 2004.
Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, cast as an ultra-liberal by Republicans, is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Mike DeWine in Ohio, and may be trying to project a more moderate position. That also could be the case in GOP-leaning Tennessee, where Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr., also being tagged as a liberal, is challenging Republican Bob Corker.
The six House Democrats running for re-election who voted in favor of the legislation are in GOP-leaning districts that Republicans are making a play to win in November. They are: Democratic Reps. Melissa Bean in Illinois, Jim Marshall in Georgia, John Barrow in Georgia, Leonard Boswell in Iowa, John Spratt in South Carolina, and Edwards in Texas.
"They are voting in line with what they perceive to be the views of a majority of their constituencies on this issue," said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist.
The Democrats who broke ranks in both houses should be ashamed. They took the coward's way out by not distinguishing between the unconstitutional dumping of habeas corpus and real security, and they did it just to get some votes. To say they did so to align themselves with what "they perceive to be the views of a majority of their constituencies" is a cop-out. Yes, they are supposed to represent the people of their district or state, but they are to do so in the best interests of those constitutents and of the country.
Each one of those Democrats took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. They failed miserably, and the fact is, they didn't have to.
They could have challenged the accusation of being obstructionists by stating that they were indeed obstructionists in that they were obstructing a power-mad administration from defying the basic rights accorded to Americans by the the very Constitution they have sworn to uphold.
They could have rebutted the accusations of being soft on terror by pointing to the recently released NIE report which shows that this nation by going to war in Iraq and in engaging in horrible abuses of human rights by using torture in interrogations and detentions in secret prisons have caused an increase in the number of terrorists sworn to attack this country. By fighting the root causes of that increase, they could have shown the world that Americans do not condone the criminal behavior of the current regime.
But no, these Democrats chose the easy path, the low road.
Quislings. Each and every one of them.
posted by Diane at 4:10 AM
1 Comments:
Amen
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