Meta-crime and Meta-criminals

[arendt]

Meta-crime and Meta-criminals
by arendt

The people who wrote the U.S. Constitution were really smart. They understood that the whole of government is more than and different than its constituent parts. Just as you can't run the entire economy as a large version of a home budget (a homeowner doesn't get to print his own money), you can't run the creation and enforcement of law in a simple, letter-of-the-law manner.

In the Federalist Papers, the Founding Fathers discussed at length how a malevolent Executive could have his underlings commit crimes for him and then pardon those underlings. Selective enforcement, and non-enforcement of the law is another way for the Executive to twist the rule of law in its favor. In order to prevent the dominance of the Executive, and a captive judiciary appointed by that same Executive, the Constitution gives the Legislature the unilateral power to remove the Executive and Federal Judiciary from office. Impeachment is NOT a "Constitutional crisis" anymore than a judge disbarring a crooked lawyer is a "legal crisis". It is merely the Constituion working at a higher level.

One of the phrases often repeated of late is that "impeachable offenses are always 'political crimes' " - that is, abuses of power, attacks on the very system of government. In an age of the "Imperial Presidency", we need, once and for all, to clarify and normalize impeachment if our democracy is to survive. Part of the problem with impeachment is the obscurity of the word itself. Most Americans never think of this word in any context other than a presidential blowjob. The GOP did a great job of using a scalpel as a screwdriver when they impeached Bill Clinton. They got what they wanted and they broke the impeachment process that might be used against them. That, in itself, was a political crime. But, since we lack the language to say so, it is very hard to turn such a perception into useful law.

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Given all the above, I want to propose some new terminology for the media age. We should call "impeachable offenses" meta-crimes, and those who commit them meta-criminals. The "above-ness" of the prefix "meta" matches well with the archaic language of "high crimes". The extreme danger of meta-crimes is that, while they are "de facto" crimes, they are "de jure" lawful actions. This kind of second-order crime is extremely hard to explain to people who know less about politics than about Paris Hilton. And, the letter-of-the-law legality is a powerful club for the troglodyte right.

Meta-crimes are laws and administrative actions that legalize crimes. But, no matter how you spin it, you can't legalize murder, robbery, torture, and dictatorship under the U.S. Constitution. Another name for meta-crime is "lexicide", killing the rule of law and replacing it with dictatorial fiat, a.k.a. Executive Orders, National Security Directives, Executive Privilege, and just plain stonewalling the Congress. Without fairly and impartially enforced laws, "Executive crime" is disappeared. Whatever the Executive decides to do is, by definition, not illegal. The Executive, like kings of old, can do no wrong; it is above the law. When America sits silent in the face of lexicide, it is declaring democracy and the rule of law to be dead. Of course, you can't kill the law in the abstract; you have to kill it in its particulars. So, we have specific meta-crimes - otherwise known as impeachable offenses.

With the executive order confiscating property of those who "give aid and comfort to the enemy", we have a Bill of Attainder - something mentioned by name as illegal in the Constitution. This executive order is meta-theft. It is an impeachable action. The various "no bid" contracts given out directly by the executive and not monitored or sanctioned despite massive fraud are yet another variety of meta-theft, call it meta-fraud - this time, from all taxpayers at large. So is the missing $9 Billion from the first year of the occupation, including the $2 Billion of cash handed out in duffel bags in Baghdad.

With the disavowal of the Geneva Conventions on prisoners and on the responsibilities of occupying powers, we have "cruel and unusual punishment", another crime specifically prohibited by the Constitution. This executive fait accompli is meta-assault and battery, right up to meta-murder. The officials responsible for the twice illegal (Constitution and Geneva Convention) actions that have led to the deaths of tens of prisoners under extreme duress should long since have resulted in an impeachment action and a war crimes trial in the Hague.

By now, even the corporate media is forced to tacitly acknowledge that there was absolutely no basis in fact for the lies about WMDs that were used to push us into the Iraq War. In fact, those lies were actively manufactured by agents in Dick Cheney's inner sanctum and torture-lovers shop. Without a basis in fact, this war is a war of aggression. Such wars are in violation of the Geneva Convention. (Just to be clear, lying us into war is just a plain old-fashioned crime, just as ignoring the victims of Hurricane Katrina is plain and simple dereliction of duty.)

Of course, none of these crimes and meta-crimes are deemed to have merit, to be worthy of sustained attention by the lying, propaganda press that proudly serves its corporate masters instead of being the "fourth estate" that is protected by the First Amendment. The corporate media, which takes its marching orders directly from the neocon cabal skulking around various basements and caves in Washington, is constantly committing meta-perjury in its refusal to state the significance of the executive actions of lexicide. Why do we have "papers of record" if they are free not to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"?Why does Judith Miller and a long string of right wing shills get to distort and disappear the truth, and to refuse to connect the dots, about the particular meta-crimes that make up the lexicide of the U.S. Constitution? Because a particular judge committed the particular meta-crime of saying a newspaper has no duty to tell the truth; and because a castrated Congress holds no hearings on the duties of media ownership.

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Its time for the progressives in this country to become the Meta-Law and Meta-Order Party. Just as the GOP endlessly ranted on about coddling criminals, we need to rant about coddling meta-criminals, like Scooter Libby. And, maybe, with this platform, the progressives can finally eject the corporate-funded, meta-criminal coddling, DLC wing of the party from its roadblocking position on the illegal war and the overall meta-crime spree of the Bush Gang.

I want to hear "meta- dah duuump" - the theme sound of the new hit TV series "Meta Law & Order" - on every channel, in syndication forever. I want my MLO-TV!

[lynnertic]

1. k & r

[arendt]

2. front page kick n/t