It is our civil liberties -- the freedoms we are guaranteed in the first ten amendments to the Constitution -- the Bill of Rights.
By which I mean such issues as prisons, extraordinary renditions, Guantanamo, indefinite detention, military commissions, gun crime, warrantless wiretapping, National Security Letters, the Drone Kill List, Afghan corruption, infiltrating Muslim mosques, the rule of law, religious freedom, judges who aren't ideologues, and on and on and on.
In hour after hour after catatonic hour, the words "civil liberties' were not mentioned once. Not once.
Yet there are no values that come even close to constructing the picture of America these freedoms help us build and maintain.
And on these, our candidates were silent.
To my in-box this morning came an article written by an Internet friend of mine. It urged me to "not vote, or vote independent." Well, as Rachel Maddow likes to say, "That would be fulfilling someone else's plan."
And indeed it would. So, no I won't sit this one out. I'll vote for Barack Obama as far superior in everyway to the tin-man of Washington.
I'd rather vote for Gordon Gecko.
And hope we do better four years from now.
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