Go Gore!

Please take the time to go read Al Gore's speech on the constitution. It's an extremely important statement on the state of the republic and the crimes of the Junta currently governing. It's one thing for a crackpot blogger like me to sit here and tell you that the executive is out of control and is jackhammering the foundation of democracy. It's another thing to read a major establishment political figure - the man who won the presidency in 2000 - call a crime a crime.

Here's a snippet:

"At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law, repeatedly and insistently.
(APPLAUSE)

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government.
(APPLAUSE)

Our founding fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not
men.
(APPLAUSE)

They recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution, our system of checks and balances, was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law.

As John Adams said, "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers or either of them to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men." An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the founders sought to nullify in the Constitution, an all-powerful executive; too reminiscent of the king from whom they had broken free.
(APPLAUSE)

In the words of James Madison, the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elected, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
(APPLAUSE)

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet on "Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that, in his phrase,
"the law is king." Vigilant adherence to the rule of law actually strengthens our democracy, of course, and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation
ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint under the rule of law.
(APPLAUSE)

And make no mistake: The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested,
studied, reviewed and examined through the normal processes of government that are designed to improve policy and avoid error.

GORE: And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents overreaching and checks the accretion to power.

A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability helps our country avoid many serious mistakes that we would otherwise make. Recently, for example, we learned from just-declassified documents after almost 40 years that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which authorized the tragic Vietnam War was actually based on false information. And we now know that the decision by
Congress to authorize the Iraq war 38 years later was also based on false information.
(APPLAUSE)

Now, the point is that America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. And that is the reason why following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

(APPLAUSE)
The president and I agree on one thing: The threat from
terrorism is all too real.

There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the
wake of the attacks on September 11th and we must be ever vigilant in protecting
our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is on the proposition that we have to break the law
or sacrifice our system of government in order to protect Americans from
terrorism when, in fact, doing so would make us weaker and more
vulnerable."

Thank you, President Gore. It's no surprise that this sort of anti-constitutional over-reaching has been accompanied by historic incompetence from the governing Junta. It goes together like peanut butter and jelly. Anyone who would force a radical anti-democratic take-over of America is necessarily an incompetent. Government done in the dark with only a handful of opinions counting will be wrong far more than it is right.

It makes us less safe in every aspect of the word. We are more vulnerable to terror, not less. The Department of Homeland Security is so highly politicized and incompetent that its presence makes us radically more exposed to terror, natural disaster, industrial accidents - everything. Our foreign policy is so radically idiotic that we've created a terrorist recruiting and training camp in Iraq that never existed before, we've allowed Iran and North Korea to do whatever their bad intentions lead them to do.

As we've become less secure, the executive has consolidated power behind a prodigious wall of lies. The chances of voting them out grow smaller each year as they put their own voting machines in districts, hoard dirty political money to fuel their campaigns, and use massive disinformation campaigns to hoodwink voters.

America has made such blunders in blindly following these people that future generation may look back on us and say we are the 'Worst Generation.' Where we rightly look back on the heroic generation of the 1940's who fought for freedom and defeated some of the most powerful forces of evil in the history of the world - and beat the Great Depression at the same time - as the 'Greatest Generation,' our current batch are an embarrassment.

No leadership from Congress; where Harry Truman investigated defense profiteering while his own party was in power, the pathetic milksop war profiteers in our current congress won't call their president to task for actual crimes he's actually admitted to. It's the sort of deep shameful failure that will be the end of the great republic.

Please, go read Al Gore.