. . .and allowing American to remain a War Criminal nation and pariah to the world is the disdain of the American people.
There is no "getting things done" under rule by signing statement. The Republicans are already "on the record." Watching Dems get steamrolled just earns them the public's disdain, or even worse, sows hopelessness and apathy.
"Oversight" means nothing to the outlaws in the White House. Bush and Cheney break the Constitution and International law without a thought. You think a little finger-wagging does anything but prove how useless finger-wagging is?
I do not mean to single you out. You echo the same losing song the Dems have been singing for decades. It's the song they sang 1987, when the Democratic majority refused to impeach Reagan and Poppy so they could "get things done" and "prove they could govern" and then got steamrolled, proved their impotence, and watched helplessly as the White House was snatched from their waiting hands.
1,2It was the same song -- "Can't seek truth because we need 'to get things done'" -- that Clinton and Co. sang to rationalize their refusal to go after Poppy for abusing pardons to obstruct justice and cover the criminal acts that he and his co-conspirators committed in Iran-contra, or to dig into and expose the truth about Iraqgate and the October Surprise.
3 The tragic irony is heartbreaking. If they had thought less about 'getting things done' and more about exposing the criminal syndicate at the heart of the Republican Party they would have opened doors to actually getting things done -- big, meaningful things that could have actually changed the lives of struggling Americans for the better. Instead, the Democrats haven't even been able to 'hold the line.'
Our so-called Democratic leaders are repeating the same devastating mistakes -- unless we can get through to them.
There is no moving forward with a broken Constitution. There is no moving forward with the Congressional oath once again betrayed by people trapped in a world of irrational rationalization.
The Biggest Problems the Democratic Party faces have absolutely nothing to do with "getting things done" or "issues" -- it is the perception that they are weak and unprincipled. The disdain they have earned for refusing to stand and fight for principle, win or lose. Their inability to demonstrate conviction to overarching principles that inspire.
Impeachment demanded to fulfill their oath, it is the salvation of the Party -- it's an opportunity to take a stand, demonstrate conviction and strength, and define themselves as the champions of the People's Government and the Constitution (and there ain't much that is more inspiring than that)The outraged public voted the Democrats in because they want out of Bush World. There is ONLY one way out. Impeachment -- the one weapon we gave them to fulfill their oath and defend against precisely this kind of attack on the Constitution. They are already losing the public's support and confidence. They will keep losing it, and have no idea why, if they refuse to stand strong in the only meaningful way available to them.
Impeachment or Impotence.
Duty or Complicity.
Cowardice or Courage.
The choice is theirs.
_____________________________________
- http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=142357&mesg_id=142901">"It's like Deja vu all over again"
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting different results."
-- Unknown
NY Times
November 27,
1986 2006http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50716F83C5C0C748EDDA80994DE484D81">Risks for the Democrats
By R. W. Apple JR.
"Flushed with victory in the Nov.
4 7 elections, which gave them control of the
House and Senate, the Democrats see obvious benefits and not-so-obvious pitfalls in the
unfolding ongoing crisis of secret
arms shipments to Iran and possibly illegal diversion of funds to the rebels in Nicaragua CIA-run prisons overseas where abductees are subjected to "incommunicado detention and torture." (1) One main pitfall, in the view of many senior members of the party,
is seeming too prosecutorial, too much like the notorious leader of the Spanish Inquisition.. . .leading Democrats warned that
the worst thing for the country and the party would be an all-out attack on the President, whom they consider personally very popular despite the damage done to his prestige and credibility this month.
. . .a member of the House leadership who asked not to be identified. "The one thing likely to produce sympathy for
Reagan Bush is Democrats in full-throated hue and cry, baying for the blood of the Administration.". . .
Paul Kirk, the party chairman, said the crisis gave the party "an earlier chance than we expected to seize control of the national agenda, by speeding the onset of the post-
Reagan Bush era." He and others believe that while the President and his key aides are preoccupied with investigations into the affair,
the Democrats ought to begin laying out, calmly and methodically, their programs for 1988 2008 and beyond.''It ought to be possible for us to be positive and assertive without being absolutely confrontational here,'' Mr. Kirk added.
But
there was less agreement, as many of the key Democrats headed home for Thanksgiving,
about what the party should do than about what it should not do.
. . .But in the view of most party professionals, their chances of winning the Presidency two years from now, for only the second time in the last six elections,
have been greatly enhanced by the prospect of a lame duck in the White House -
if only they do not overreact.
- http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F40717F8355E0C7A8CDDA10894DF484D81">Limits of Power: How the Democrats are Kept on the Defensive, by Linda Greenhouse, NYTimes, 9-Aug-1987 (emphasis added)
. . .
The Democrats who now control both Houses of Congress for the first time in the Reagan era learned that winning the majority was not the same as winning the power to control events, or even to shape them. Time after time, the Republican minority has demonstrated that being out of power need not mean being out of political instincts. President Reagan, weakened by foreign policy scandal and his lame-duck status, has nonetheless refused to slide into the irrelevancy that Democratic leaders keep predicting for him.. . .
The Power of the Veto
. . .Congress earlier this year voted to make the fairness doctrine legally binding, but was unable to override a veto, leaving the F.C.C. free to act. . . .
Filibusters, as well as vetoes, have left Senator Byrd seething with frustration. . .
On foreign policy, opinion polls showing that the public has more confidence in Congress than in President Reagan. . .
Yet Congress remains all but paralyzed in foreign affairs, unable to translate deep disquiet over Reagan Administration policies into coherent initiatives of its own. The sustained Congressional uproar over the Administration's actions in the Persian Gulf ultimately produced nothing more than a few nonbinding resolutions. . .
It is as if Congress, while rejecting the messengers, has internalized the message that a stream of witnesses delivered to the Iran-contra committees: the inevitable primacy of the Presidency in a ''dangerous world.'. . .'
- http://baltimorechronicle.com/2007/022407Parry.html">The Clintons’ Real Trouble with Truth, Robert Parry, Boston Chronicle, 23-Feb-2007
. . .
Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh was still battling the cover-up that had surrounded the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s; Democratic congressmen were digging into the “Iraqgate” scandal, the covert supplying of dangerous weapons to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1980s; and a House task force was suddenly inundated with evidence pointing to Republican guilt in the “October Surprise” case, alleged interference by the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 to undermine President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.
Combined, those three investigations could have rewritten the history of the 1980s, exposing serious wrongdoing by Republicans who had held the White House for a dozen years. The full story also would likely have terminated the presidential ambitions of the powerful Bush family, since George H.W. Bush was implicated in all three scandals.
After winning in November 1992, however, Bill Clinton and the leaders of the Democratic majorities in Congress didn’t care enough about the truth to fight for it. Heeding advice from influential fixers like Vernon Jordan, Clinton and the congressional Democrats turned their backs on those investigations. . .
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