In my latest crosspost in the series on Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment, one of the commenters linked to this editorial.
Editorialists, while refusing to honestly report on this Constitutional crisis, have been parroting the claim of gutless and calculating Democratic Party leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in saying that with the nation at war and with a critical election approaching, there are “more pressing” matters to consider than impeachment, and that impeachment would be a “diversion.”
This is nonsense. As hundreds of American troops continue to die each quarter in a war that never should have happened, and that was launched five years ago and continued for half a decade thanks to administration lies and deception, there is nothing more important facing this nation than restoring Constitutional government and Constitutional checks and balances—something that can only be done through the Constitutional process of impeachment.
Unless this is the end of our form of Constitutional government, we will have later Presidents who will try to do the same things unless we show them that we will not stand for having everything we stand for destroyed.
The Obama campaign has a website called FightTheSmears.com, on which they give the truth about various smears that have been going around. The lead story currently is the non-existent “whitey” tape.
I just saw a poll linked to McCain’s campaign site that I decided I had to vote in. Once I clicked through the “give us money” page to get to the main site, I found the following. Nice worldview, huh?
I’ve said this before, but not nearly so eloquently.
But he is not alone in the delusion he propounds in the first sentence of today’s killer graf. Nearly every candidate, commentator and speechifier will, at convenient times, refer to the President of the United States as “the nation’s commander-in-chief” or “our commander-in-chief.”
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution begins:
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”
This is a very specific delineation. When broad powers are claimed for the President, many rightly so, in his role as “commander-in-chief,” these broad powers do not automatically apply to those persons not in the armed forces of the United States. Where they exist at all, they apply to the men and women of the uniformed services of the Army and Navy, the state Guards and other armed services.
The president not only is impotent to hold me without allowing me to demand the charges against me, he is impotent to search or seize my person, goods and papers without a warrant showing probable cause. He is enjoined from quartering his armed troops on my property.
In point of fact, the president of the United States cannot do a damned thing to me that the Constitution does not specifically allow him to do. And this limitation to his powers, embodied in the purposefully broad Tenth Amendment, holds because I am not a member of the armed forces.
In short, the president is not my commander-in-chief. Odds are, he is not yours, either. He is not Antonin Scalia’s commander in chief, not Hillary Clinton’s nor Chris Matthews’.
For us, the citizens of and visitors to the United States, he is the Chief Executive, pledged to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. He is not our commander. He is our servant.
Over on Downeast Politics, I’ve started publishing a series of articles on Kucinich’s Impeachment resolution. Every day (I hope), I’ll post the text of an article, and link to the original source for each assertion he makes (or as close as I can get).
Hunter over at Daily Kos analyzes the crowingcrowning mistake of the Clinton campaign.
The Clinton campaign was premised from the start on the notion that Clinton would win, and nobody else could…. It was not a narrative, but a meta-narrative. She was electable because she was electable, and anything that disproved that theory was dismissed as an exception. It was the campaign equivalent of Intelligent Design.
It was, in short, a terrible, mind-bendingly awful strategy. That is not to say that there was not substance discussed, in the debates — but the campaign was not about that substance. That is not to say that there were not good points to be made in “electability” — but her spokesmen made them shabbily. In the end, it was not an argument that could convince.
But Clinton would never have been in such a position had she not fallen behind to begin with, and that is where I think the more damning mistakes of her campaign lie. If I could wrap all critique of the Clinton campaign up into a single sentence, it would be this: her campaign did not campaign.
Edit: fixed typo above.
That was the final straw.
“I’m hanging around waiting for the nominee to get bumped off”?
Senator Clinton, I assumed that if Senator Obama did not win the nomination, I would support you over McCain in November. No longer. If I have to write in Mickey Mouse and pray that the electoral votes in Maine don’t go to McCain, I will, but you will not get my vote.
You don’t deserve it.
Over on his FriendFeed, Scoble linked to this article about a Londoner trying to move his company to Silicon Valley.
Yesterday, on Daily Kos, I posted a diary calling an action alert sent out by RedState.com “ignorant”.
Today, on RedState, I posted the video that I thought the one they were complaining about was based on in the comment thread. Shortly thereafter, the following shows up, and I couldn’t log in to reply to it.
:Brightly: Hi, SarekofVulcan! by Moe Lane
Stay on your own site if you don’t have the guts to talk to us like that here.
*blink*
They’re kicking me off for trying to be a good guest on their site? I guess my adjective was modifying the wrong noun.
Edit: The posting rules for RedState:
- No profanity.
- No personal attacks.
- No harassment or demonization of a particular individual.
- No disruptive behavior or off-topic remarks for their own sake.
It escapes me which one of these I violated.
