Bush: Burn the constitution to save it

The white house resident has informed us that the terrorists are such a threat that we must now become terrorists to save the world from terrorists. We must torture, disappear people into secret prisons, deny trial, rule as dictators. All in the name of 'freedom.'

If you believe all that, I've got a secret computer voting system to sell you.

Secret CIA prisons not so secret

So Bushie came out and admitted what everyone already knew, but his group of official liars never conceded. It was the elephant in the room, the CIA had secret prisons. Where? Who knows. They're still not telling. I wonder why.

They have closed all these clandestine torture -- ooh, I mean -- interrogation centers, he said. And you know he wouldn't be hiding anything. "Mr Bush said he was making a limited disclosure of the CIA programme because interrogation of the men it held was now complete and because a US Supreme Court decision had stopped the use of military commissions for trials," says a BBC story on the subject. Damn judicial branch! Always getting in the way, even with the stacked court.

Life would be so much simpler if Bush were King -- he said so himself, in so many words, weeks before he took office in 2001, when he quipped, "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." But he's not a dictator. At least not yet. Not until the next terror attack on U.S. soil, when he can declare martial law. Do I really think that will happen? Well, no. But I wouldn't put it past this arrogant bunch of political bullies to try it.

Anyway, Bush continues to act as if he were king, ignoring the law of the land, signing bills with his own little proviso back doors so he can ignore said bills, just as he ignores his generals, anyone with contrary opinions and 60% of the population of the country.

Bush said the CIA treated detainees humanely and did not use torture. Oh, but of course! They wouldn't do that! That's only for those barbarians at Abu Ghraib and Guantonimo. They did, however use an "alternative set of procedures." Uh huh. And the Clear Skies Initiative was all about stopping pollution -- not about letting polluters off the hook. This was a kind of "no prisoner left behind" program, it was.

The problem is, this administration and this president have been lying through their collective teeth since day one. And we're supposed to think they're coming clean now? Yeah, right. The abuses of this presidency are historic in their scope and number -- just read the meticulously researched Conyers Report, Constitution in Crisis, if you don't believe me.

There's another pink elephant in the room, and everyone knows it. And that is that this president and his cabinet should be impeached.

Wanted: an informed electorate

"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives them." – James Madison

Indeed, an informed electorate is the lifeblood of democracy. And yet, here in this "information age," we are seeing the most secretive administration ever, so paranoid of an informed citizenry that they even classify information that has long been public!

On August 21st, the Washington Post ran a story based on a report from the National Security Archive, a research library at George Washington University. According to the report, the Bush administration has been deleting previously public information on the nation's strategic military capabilities. It is doing this, it says, in the name of national security.

Well, sure, we wouldn’t want to give away any top secret information that could help enemies harm us. However, the information they are "protecting" dates back to the Cold War! These include memos, charts and papers that over the past fifty years or more have been cited in open congressional hearings, used in history books and reported in newspapers. We're talking about information the government long ago deemed innocuous enough to provide even to its former mortal enemy, the Soviet Union. The administration has been systematically re-classifying long-public documents.

As Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald said, "This is a classic case of locking the barn after the horse has escaped – and died of old age." In Pitts’ report, he continued, "From its 18-hour blackout of news that the vice president had shot a man, to its paying a newspaper columnist to write favorable pieces, to its habit of putting out video press releases disguised as TV news, to its penchant for stamping top secret on anything that doesn't move fast enough, this administration has repeatedly shown contempt for the right of the people to know what's going on. At a time when information is more readily available than ever, this government is working like 1952 to enforce ignorance."

Indeed, one might wonder what fuels such paranoia. But we already know. It’s the same paranoia that causes them to have their lawyers do back flips trying to explain how the Geneva Conventions aren’t applicable anymore, how it’s ok for America, land of the free, to hold people without charge indefinitely, use torture, and invade countries at will. These people are guilty of voluminous crimes, as documented extensively in Congressman John Conyers’ recent report, "The Constitution in Crisis." The staggering report gives hard evidence of a multitude of crimes and abuses committed by President Bush and his administration. No wonder they’re paranoid!

This is no way to run a free country. And the constant efforts to diminish our civil liberties to "defeat the terrorists" is also quite counter-productive. After all, what are we defending, if not our freedoms?

Secrecy is not the answer, but education is. As Thomas Jefferson said, "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."