“TORTURING OUR CONSTITUTION”

Or, Liberal Republican Is Apparently an Oxymoron

Some have been praising Republican Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner for “standing up” to the President and defending the Geneva Conventions. Any praise was premature. From the reports available on Friday September 22, it looks like they too finally sold out human rights. They apparently want the right to be inhuman. In fact, it sounds like the entire Republican Party now has a pro-torture plank on its platform which is being built out of the scrap lumber it has made of the Constitution.

As far as the so-called “torture-lite” concessions supposedly wrung from the Prez by the so-called “liberal Republicans” (an oxymoron if there ever was one), it still depends entirely on what regulations he chooses to write, on his honesty in reporting and on his willingness to actually obey the law as written, none of which he has ever shown any inclination.

Moreover, has any of the national press stopped to consider that we are now speaking about “legalizing” things that before Bush's election would have been deemed truly unspeakable. Even before their brief “rebellion,” which appears to have only been for show, the three Senators were only opposing a relatively small part of Bush’s plan to dismantle human rights and civil liberties across the board by warrantless searches, automatic assumption of guiltiness of suspects, secret prisons, permanent imprisonment without trial, denial of counsel and prevention of judicial review.

For instance, captives are now supposed to finally be able to see the evidence that convicts them, at least a heavily redacted version blacking out anything deemed "classified." But, throughout our entire nation’s history prior to Bush, it was a right, not a privilege, to see it all. Besides, Bush has long demonstrated a preference to go so far as to “classify” almost everything to be “classified,” “top secret” or “confidential-restricted” information. He would probably like to declare public phone books and even street signs classified to “protect national security.” I am indulging in hyperbole, but barely.

In any event, in just five unjust years, we have morphed so far from the Land of Liberty we once were, that the place is almost unrecognizable. How ironic that all the Republican violations of liberty, democracy and freedom are being done in the name of those goals and allegedly being justified as necessary to save them. Shame on the Republicans for doing it. Shame on us for letting them.

How come only former Communist countries like Hungary seem to care enough about election honesty to riot in the streets when it is proven their leader deliberately lied to the voters?