November 2, 2008
Ed Tubbs
Reno, NV
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I woke up this morning with hope in my heart . . . Dashed!_
For what now seems an eternity, but which has been only a screaming whisper beyond seven years, I have clung to the hope the Bush administration would not have engaged some scurrilous or thoroughly incompetent conduct that would not leave me wanting to jam sharpened pencils in my ears and eyes. And every morning I found myself sickened at the fact they had done or said something that would send me to a drawer for pencils to sharpen.
In 2000, while a California resident, I looked forward to the chance to vote for John McCain in the June Primary. Sadly, for me, Karl Rove truncated that opportunity in South Carolina. Somehow, for the fine, progressive Christian folks in that state’s backwater regions, the mere chance that a Caucasian would have impregnated a black woman and had a child by her was sufficient cause to disqualify such a candidate. That John and Cindy McCain adopted a baby with a tinged hue didn’t matter. Even a tinge was sufficient.
Now that the years have passed, more of John McCain has come to light, and I find myself having to ponder whether I should thank Mr. Rove for his service to his country.
Here’s why. The United States of America, born not on the Fourth of July, actually came into being December 15, 1791, when the Constitution of the United States was ratified. That Constitution was promulgated with two distinct objectives: One, to outline the structure of the government, and Two, to PROTECT the people (NOT only the citizens! The “PEOPLE”) AGAINST the GOVERNMENT of the UNITED STATES! You see, the framers all had done their homework. They knew history; something sorely lacking in today’s population. And what they knew was that an executive, be he (now also possibly her) a president, an emperor, or a king, would have a natural inclination to aggregate power to him- or herself; the finis to the experiment in democratic self-government.
The Constitution is EVERYTHING! There is no America in the absence of absolute dedication to the letter and the precepts of the Constitution. More succinct? The Constitution IS AMERICA. Everything else is just geography, geography with a lot of people on it.
All of us have been witness to an administration that regarded the Constitution cynically; an irritating obstacle to their unfettered rule, and not the girding superstructure it was intended to be, that it must remain, if America is to survive.
Now, after the terrible mal- and misfeasance that has defined the past seven-plus years, with every cell in my being, I had hoped the tolling death knell might cease. But what I have been forced to endure is the abject ignorance that is John McCain, now also Sarah Palin.
When the Supreme Court found against the administration’s Guantanamo policies, Senator McCain first called the decision one of the “worst in US history,” then nothing but “a bunch of Miranda cases.” If there exists anyone who cannot summon at least two Supreme Court decisions that truly do fit the senator’s description, all who cannot also, and tragically, do fit my earlier description as dangerously ignorant. Next, the case McCain referred to was an Article 1, habeas corpus case. Miranda is exclusive to the Fifth Amendment. Lastly, for the purposes of our present discussion only, Senator McCain called for those who disagreed with him to be “kicked out of the country.” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/14/politics/main3262322.shtml)And such is the person so many want in charge of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution?
The matter only gets more convoluted, despicable, terrifying when it comes to Sarah Palin. In gross ignorance, the woman has actually made concerted efforts to replace Constitutional limits on power with her highly confined prejudices. Again, in what can only (and most kindly) be described as utter ignorance, she has sought to upend any legitimate reading of the document’s First Amendment with her own virulent dicta.
That being insufficient to disqualify her from any governmental office, we now learn that Sarah Palin is contemptuous of the proposal that she should even have read about the Constitution, that newspapers and reporters have infringed her First Amendment rights by questioning her!!!!
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