I am the Law

I am the Law and the Law is not mocked

-Javert, from Les Miserables-

Let’s face it; the domestic wiretap activity of the Bush administration is not going to go away just because we discovered it. It’s not some embarrassing little peccadillo that they are ashamed of; it’s the expression of the autocratic powers Bush feels are his prerogative as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Of course as civilians, we are not subject to such powers. We are supposed to have a chief executive not a commander, but with the de facto one party system coming into place, and the tendency toward de facto marshal law, we may have little other recourse but to click our heels and salute.

This Monday, Alberto Gonzales is planning to explain to the mislead public why The Chief Executive simply doesn’t have time to comply with the law, which is another way of saying that George W. Bush is the law. We have already seen, and most have ignored what would have been unthinkable not long ago: a President signing a bill with the provision that the law applies at his whim and pleasure. Perhaps freedom and Democracy are only pep-rally words used by cheerleaders: the game itself is called Power.

Time magazine, in a web exclusive article, says that “Gonzales contends in his 10-page opening statement for Monday's hearing that fighting al-Qaeda "is, in fundamental respects, a war of information," and that asking the FISA court for permission for each intercept "would necessarily introduce a significant factor of delay, and there would be critical holes in our early warning system." A common trick of con men is to push you into immediate action. When you’re told there’s no time to think or you’ll lose the deal, it’s time to walk. We can’t walk away from these con men.

Asked about FISA provisions for eavesdropping first and getting a warrant later, Gonzales says that they could not begin "without knowing that we meet FISA's normal requirements." The Constitution is just too damned much trouble for a warpresident and if you don’t trust him to tell us who’s naughty or nice, well then up against the wall, Liberal traitor.

The pattern is clear, the warpresident was in too much of a rush to find out the facts about Iraq and he is in too much of a rush to determine probable cause before listening in to what war critics are saying in private. What he’s saying is that Bush just doesn’t have time for the law - his will is the law.” The fact that he’s been spying on vegetarian groups and the Quakers and that so far, according to the FBI director Robert Mueller, no al Qaeda operatives have been located by this surveillance, suggests a darker motive – hell, it bleats out a darker motive in neon lights.

Apparently we have lost the passion for freedom this nation once had. Perhaps if Tom Paine and Paul Revere had had iPods, Fox News and the Super Bowl, we would be singing a different National Anthem tomorrow.

The following post

has been posted and deleted without my permission twice today. Perhaps I'm being hacked, but let's see if it remains in view this time.

"The right to freedom of thought and expression ... cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers” Said the Vatican in its first response to the Danish cartoon debacle that’s got the Muslim world in an uproar.

“The hell it can’t” says Capt Fogg remembering the centuries of passion plays, blood libels and inquisitions during which that organization smeared mocked and slandered the Jews and went so far as to exterminate the pacifist Cathars for their beliefs. American Fundamentalists raise holy hell every year when anyone appears not to be bowing down to their retrograde beliefs and seem to be working hard towards an America where our freedom is limited by their faith.

In fact I don’t remember such a huge commotion in Gaza when Islamic radicals blew up the World Trade Center or at any of their other murders for that matter. I have a right to think about hypocrisy and a right, so long as we remain a secular nation, to express my disrespect for it.

Nearly everything one might do offends the “religious sentiment of believers” and what the Vatican is saying here and what the madmen in Gaza are acting out, is that belief conveys a superior right. No one seems to be defending my right to believe the results of scientific investigation or mathematics, so why then do I not have the right to “offend” when the offense simply means a different viewpoint? To many fundamentalists of many flavors, the very existence of another religion is offensive. In fact the “offense” given to the faithful by the presence of unbelievers in Saudi Arabia is the basis of al Qaeda.

If we let faith determine the limits of our freedom; whether it’s our faith or someone else’s, we have no freedom.