Hey – Not Us, Them!

Ah, spring is in the air. New life, new growth is sprouting outwards all around us. We are all rediscovering our gardens, coming up with new ideas for summer projects and vacations, on and on and on.

With that in mind, it's quite enjoyable to watch the new discoveries being made in Washington by our intrepid Senators and Congressmen. They have discovered the US Constitution and are even beginning to form a tiny kernel of understanding for what it means. Now I'm not saying that they are totally ignorant of the document, after all they swear to uphold it, but their knowledge probably doesn't exceed knowing how to spell the word. The Constitution is suddenly very important to Capitol Hill. One might ask, why? Well apparently our brave representatives have become united in a bipartisan concern about how one of their own had his offices searched by the FBI, on – of all times, a Saturday night! From the rotunda, our rotund, subservient, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert expressed great 'concern':

I am very concerned about the necessity of a Saturday night raid on Congressman Jefferson's Capitol Hill Office in pursuit of information.....The Founding Fathers were very careful to establish in the Constitution a Separation of Powers to protect Americans against the tyranny of any one branch of government. They were particularly concerned about limiting the power of the Executive Branch....... the independence of the Legislative Branch, and the protections afforded by the Speech or Debate clause of the Constitution must be respected in order to prevent overreaching and abuse of power by the Executive Branch.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, sent an email to some colleagues titled "on the edge of a constitutional confrontation," calling the raid "the most blatant violation of the Constitutional Separation of Powers in my lifetime." He urged President Bush to discipline or fire "whoever exhibited this extraordinary violation." Some legal experts have called the raid "an intimidating tactic that has never before been used against the legislative branch."

Now here are guys who have sat silently, have also encouraged, and have calmly downplayed more than five years of violations against the constitutional rights of America's citizens. Now that the Bush thuggery is getting close to them, they are getting concerned. All of a sudden, when it's recognized that Georgie and his fascists might actually be dangerous to America's liberties and freedoms, they realize that the Constitution has a purpose.

Took a long time - didn't it?
Posted on The Human Stain