Michael Hanscom

An excellent rumination of the state of our country and our rights as individuals today, from Amy at Spiffariffic:

I hated my 8th grade Social Studies teacher with a passion, but she certainly did make one point very well: we are all supposed to be ‘Constitutional watchdogs’ (her exact choice of words). I wonder what she’s telling her mortified students now, about enemy combatants, the refusal to grant a marching permit for the peace protests in NYC, the Supreme Court upholding the ridiculous extension on copyright terms, the searching of cars at airports and the delivery of sensitive passenger data, roaming wiretaps and Carnivore, secret military tribunals for so-called ‘enemy combatants,’ the FBI investigation of people who ask for “something other than the flag” stamps at the post office and college kids who have anti-Bush posters in their dorms. Certainly the Constitution has never been followed to the letter, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating much when I say that our Constitutional rights are being removed or reduced, drastically, at an unprecended pace even, every time we turn around.

Last weekend, when Miranda was visiting, she asked me, “what’s up with all the political stuff on your site lately?” Well, Amy sums it up quite well — when this is the situation, I find it reprehensible for people not to care. To shrug their shoulders and turn away. To deem it “somebody else’s problem.” It’s in times like these that we must pay attention, and do what we can to prevent things from getting any worse, and to right the wrongs already in practice.

This may be somewhat new in my life — but it’s hardly a new idea…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

(via Damien Barrett)

You know, until just a few minutes ago, I had no idea that the ERA, giving constitutionally-protected equal rights to women, was never ratified. This completely blew my mind. Passed by the House of Representatives and by Congress in 1972, there was then a seven year deadline to get 38 states to ratify the amendment. Unfortunately, only 35 states ever did, even after Congress extended the deadline for an additional five years, until 1982.

After the deadline passed, the ERA was re-introduced to Congress in 1982, and has languished there ever since.

Currently there is a move to keep the original 35 states that ratified the amendment legally attached to the current bill, should it ever make it though Congress and the House of Representatives and go back into the state ratification phase, thanks to the “Madison Amendment” becoming the 27^th^ amendment to the Constitution, 202 years after being passed by Congress. Should that happen, though, we still need at least three more states to admit that women are equal members of society, and should be legally protected from discrimination.

So — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia — what do you say we move into the 21^st^ century and get the ERA passed?

(via Bob Harris, mentioning the death of Martha Griffiths, who spent most of her life championing equal rights for women)

From ABC News:

To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy.

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam’s weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.

“We were not lying,” said one official. “But it was just a matter of emphasis.”

So — what many have been saying for months is starting to be admitted. The U.S., recognized as the world’s leading superpower, went to war to prove a point, and ~~lied about~~ emphasized the danger in order to get support that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Bleah.

(via Atrios)

Wow — looks like Howard Dean went and pissed everybody off! Here’s why…

BLITZER: But governor, nobody — nobody disagrees there are going to be problems. But aren’t the people of Iraq so much better off now without Saddam Hussein on their back?

DEAN: We don’t know that yet. We don’t know that yet, Wolf. We still have a country whose city is mostly without electricity. We have tumultuous occasions in the south where there is no clear governance. We have a major city without clear governance. We don’t know yet, and until we do…

But here’s the part that everybody seeems to be conveniently ignoring:

BLITZER: You think it’s possible — excuse me for interrupting — that whatever emerges in Iraq could be worse than what they have for decades under Saddam Hussein?

DEAN: I do, I do. We have to think of this from an American perspective not an Iraqi perspective. The reason the president gave for going into Iraq which I disagree with is Iraq was a security threat to the United States. I don’t believe Saddam was. But I believe a fundamentalist Islamic regime would be. That we have to guard against, that may be very, very difficult. I think the jury is out in terms of what we’ve created. The other thing is, you have to remember that this president has now created a new American foreign policy a preemptive doctrine. And I think that’s going to cause America some serious trouble down the line, too. I don’t regret my opposition to the war, I think in the long term interest of the United States, we have yet to see whether the war is going to be successful or not.

Context is always important, and much as I use the ‘soundbite’ style of quoting when I’m grabbing snippets for this weblog, I do try to ensure that I’m not taking quotes out of context in order to make a point. Dean, in my opinion, has a very good point here.

We know that Saddam was a “bad man,” and that his regime was hardly a role model to be looked up to and followed. We know that atrocities were comitted. What we don’t know yet is what is going to happen now. It’s looking more and more like more hardline political groups are gaining power, and stand a good chance of heavily influencing Iraq in the months and years to come. We may very well have traded one sadistic regime for another, no matter what Bush tries to assure us.

We hope that that doesn’t turn out to be the case. But the jury’s still out, and the deliberations don’t look very good right now.

Why’d we go to war with Iraq again?

First it was to find and destroy all of Saddam’s WMDs, but we can’t find any.

Then it was to find and destroy Saddam, but we can’t find him.

Then it was to liberate the Iraqi people and install a new, democratic government in Iraq — only that new goverment is looking like it might not be very friendly to the US:

As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq’s future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites’ organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.

The burst of Shiite power — as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala yesterday — has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

“It is a complex equation, and the U.S. government is ill-equipped to figure out how this is going to shake out,” a State Department official said. “I don’t think anyone took a step backward and asked, ‘What are we looking for?’ The focus was on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.”

We’re on a roll, folks. It’s just not going where the powers that be expected it to.

(via Tom Tomorrow)