We Have A King!

August 13, 2007 in Congress, Corruption, Dick Cheney, Executive Orders, Executive Privilege, George Orwell's 1984, George W. Bush, Impeachment, Politics, The Constitution, This Administration

Jim Kirwan – August 12, 2007

Our national silence confirms it -­ after only a few hundred years of a supposedly Democratic Republic, we have now chosen to become a Monarchy. However because of our reluctance to get-involved: most Americans have yet to concede that the presidency, presently, only exists as a fictional and strictly ceremonial image because that office was only one of the three parts that once jointly governed the United States…Congress has gagged itself and the courts remain mute, while this executive runs wild.

This new Monarchy is a reflection of the times in which we live, because he isn’t a single figure but a Frankenstein creature with two heads. Cheney-Bush the First is the title of this new Orwellian creation, which has just finished taking all power unto itself.

If you think that this goes too far; perhaps you might want to review some of what we have allowed to happen under Cheney-Bush the First. Spend five minutes and fourteen seconds on this video and think about what this means to your freedoms. (1)

There are some additional outrages that the clip doesn’t mention. The fact that Cheney-Bush the First has added well over a thousand signing statements to legislation passed by the congress: unilaterally nullifying the limitations set by the constitution on that office. His only choices were to sign or veto: but C-B-1 created a third path: he signs the laws but then declares that they do not apply to him.

He has also arrogated immunity to himself and his underlings, bear in mind that the White House has over 5,000 employees ­ who are now apparently also immune from either oversight or prosecution. Only a King could do this. Then there is the Office of the Attorney General of the United States: again someone who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution: except that the last two occupants have chosen loyalty to their leader over their duty to protect the people of the United States from a corrupt president and his gang of thugs that have claimed all power for themselves.

I had a dream about a massive national celebration. It was the Coronation of the King of America. The parade resembled Carnival and it was led through the cordoned-off streets of Washington D.C. by tanks escorted by a thousand motor-cycle cops in riot gear ­ there were no protestors within the camera’s view. Everything was draped in red-white and blue ­ flags were everywhere and the air was filled with balloons, and then a marching band appeared with AK-47’s strapped to their backs, proudly playing “Hail to the Chief.”

Immediately behind them a circus elephant, apparently drugged, was weaving up the boulevard amid an artificial fog that seemed to make everything surreal. Atop the elephant was a platform with oversize Tomahawk missiles supporting a huge crown of brilliant gold, and the whole platform swayed under the weight of the crown, with every drunken step of the beast.

Aboard the platform was an overweight Dick Cheney wearing only a necktie. There were numerous IV bottles ranged around him that swayed in the stagnant Washington air. Cheney wore a mask of himself, perhaps six feet high, that featured his trademarked sneer, and in his upraised pudgy fist he held the strings of his puppet The Decider: whose giant mask looked eerily like Alfred E. Newman, the comic-book version of “What me Worry.”

Bush was wearing his pilot’s uniform, but it was the banner above the crown that read “Mission Accomplished,” which seemed to rule the moment.

It was only then I noticed that Nancy Pelosi was attempting to lead the elephant in her scanty cheerleading costume with “08” upon her sweater. She was cheered by a number of other characters that all seemed eager to help. Rummy was there dressed as a US military version of Darth Vader, with Wolfowitz as Scissor-hands, and there were perhaps two hundred hooded prisoner’s that surrounded the elephant to protect it from any unexpected attacks by the crowd. These figures were chained together and controlled by some hidden weapon that shocked them, whenever they began to falter.

As the procession came abreast of my position, I noticed that behind the two-headed King was Condi Rice, in a gold lame full-length sheath, sitting on a handcuffed and gagged Colin Powell while she ate some grapes and waved to where she obviously thought the crowds might be ­ but the fog machine obscured her view.

The nightmare dissolved, but the thoughts about what all that might portend did not. Then I remembered that recent Bill Moyers’ Journal article that had explored a Monarchy and contrasted the current administration with others where Impeachment was raised.

“JOHN NICHOLS: I think that the war on terror, as defined by our president, is perpetual war. And I think that he has acted precisely as Madison feared. He has taken powers unto himself that were never intended to be in the executive. And, frankly, that when an executive uses them, in the way that this president has, you actually undermine the process of uniting the country and really focusing the country on the issues that need to be dealt with. Let’s be clear. If we had a president who was seeking to inspire us to take seriously the issues that are in play and to bring all the government together, he’d be consulting with Congress. He’d be working with Congress. And, frankly, Congress, through the system of checks and balances, would be preventing him from doing insane things like invading Iraq.

JOHN NICHOLS: People don’t want to let this go. They do not accept Nancy Pelosi’s argument that impeachment is, quote/unquote, off the table. Because I guess maybe they’re glad she didn’t take some other part of the Constitution off the table like freedom of speech. But they also don’t accept the argument that, oh, well, there’s a presidential campaign going on. So let’s just hold our breath till Bush and Cheney get done.

When I go out across America, what I hear is something that’s really very refreshing and very hopeful about this country. An awfully lot of Americans understand what Thomas Jefferson understood. And that is that the election of a president does not make him a king for four years. That if a president sins against the Constitution– and does damage to the republic, the people have a right in an organic process to demand of their House of Representatives, the branch of government closest to the people, that it act to remove that president. And I think that sentiment is afoot in the land.

BILL MOYERS: Bruce, you talk about overreaching. What, in practical terms, do you mean by that?

BRUCE FEIN: It means asserting powers and claiming that there are no other branches that have the authority to question it. Take, for instance, the assertion that he’s made that when he is out to collect foreign intelligence, no other branch can tell him what to do. That means he can intercept your e-mails, your phone calls, open your regular mail, he can break and enter your home. He can even kidnap you, claiming I am seeking foreign intelligence and there’s no other branch Congress can’t say it’s illegal–judges can’t say this is illegal. I can do anything I want. That is overreaching. When he says that all of the world, all of the United States is a military battlefield because Osama bin Laden says he wants to kill us there, and I can then use the military to go into your homes and kill anyone there who I think is al-Qaeda or drop a rocket, that is overreaching. That is a claim even King George III didn’t make–

JOHN NICHOLS: Let me keep us on Cheney for a second here, because that is–

BILL MOYERS: You think Cheney should be subject to impeachment hearings?

JOHN NICHOLS: Without a doubt. Cheney is, for all practical purposes, the foreign policy president of the United States. There are many domestic policies in which George Bush really is the dominant player. But on foreign policy Dick Cheney has been calling the shots for six years and he continues to call the shots. Remember back in 2000, in the presidential debates, George Bush said America should be a humble country in the world, shouldn’t go about nation building. And Dick Cheney, in the vice-presidential debate, spent eight minutes talking about Iraq.

Now the fact of the matter is that on foreign policy, Dick Cheney believes that the executive branch should be supreme. He said this back to the days when he was in the House during Iran-Contra. He wrote the minority report saying Congress shouldn’t sanction the president in any way, President Reagan.

JOHN NICHOLS: And put these pieces together. If Cheney believes in this expansive power. You’ve got a– unique crisis, a unique problem because the vice-president of the United States believes that Congress shouldn’t even be a part of the foreign policy debate. And he is setting the foreign policy. I mean–

BILL MOYERS: The power of the purse-

BRUCE FEIN: –the power of the purse. That is an absolute power. And yet Congress shies from it. It was utilized during the Vietnam War, you may recall, in 1973. Congress said there’s no money to go and extend the war into Laos and Cambodia. And even President Nixon said okay. This was a president who at one time said, “If I do it, it’s legal.” So that it we do find Congress yielding the power to the executive branch. It’s the very puzzle that the founding fathers would have been stunned at. They worried most over the legislative branch in, you know, usurping powers of the other branches. And–

BILL MOYERS: Well, what you just said indicts the Congress more than you’re indicting George Bush and Dick Cheney.

BRUCE FEIN: In some sense, yes, because the founding fathers expected an executive to try to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch. And you’re right. They have basically renounced– walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check. It’s not an option. It’s an obligation when they take that oath to faithfully uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. And I think the reason why this is. They do not have convictions about the importance of the Constitution. It’s what in politics you would call the scientific method of discovering political truths and of preventing excesses because you require through the processes of review and vetting one individual’s perception to be checked and– counterbalanced by another’s. And when you abandon that process, you abandon the ship of state basically and it’s going to capsize.” (2)

If we have a Republic, then we have constitutional methods to deal with illegality by the president and the vice-president. If we do not use those powers then the nation will lose them and we shall have a king instead of a president. The question asked by the video is still outstanding:

“When Will Americans Have Had Enough”!

kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net

1) When Will Americans Have Had Enough

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P682rGIhZwI&mode=related&search  

2) Impeachment the Conversation Continues

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/transcript4.html