Of Blogs, Blogging and Blogojevich...Oh, and I'M BACK!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a task left long undone becomes next to impossible to tackle! I've left my blog for so long I'm beyond rusty. And Dorothy with her oilcan is nowhere in sight. So I'll just have to crank back into gear on my own power here. If you hear a whack, whir, wheeze, whine, sputter, splat, squirt, scrape, clink, clank, clunk, clatter, crash, bang, beep, buzz, ring, rip, roar, retch, twang, toot, tinkle, thud, pop, plop, plunk, pow, snort, snuk, sniff, smack, screech, splash, squish, squeek, jingle, rattle, squeel, boing, honk, hoot, hack, belch...it's just me, stretching my blog limbs again.*

*With thanks to Jane Austin and Todd Rundgren, from whom I stole the opening and closing of the paragraph.

So how are you all in blogville nowadays? Nowadays filled with Gaza, Iraq and Mumbai; cool ash, foreclosures and inaugurations; Warrens, Blagojeviches and Kennedys? Hmmm. Maybe I shouldn't have taken up the blog reins again quite so fast...

Naw. I'll jump in. But just in the shallow end.

I understand the democrats are planning to unceremoniously oust the honorable Mr. Roland Burris from the Senate before he gets to put a crease in his trousers.

Right.

And so we're off and running into 2009 with the exact same attitude toward THE LAW that defined 2008. Just what is the difficulty the dems have with following laws, rules and directives? Here are a few that come to mind:

*The presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This is covered by the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. And it should cover Blogojevich in his present pickle, if I'm not mistaken.

*When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies. This is from the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. And it should speak to Blagojevich's duties, again, if I'm not mistaken.

*Did I mention 'Everyone is supposed innocent until having been declared guilty'? This is broached in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and the legal codes of untold numbers of the nations of the world.

But it's evidently not included in our majority leader's vocabulary. Just this morn I listened to him declare Blagojevich guilty of contemptuous crimes, thereby nullifying that governor's rights and duties of office.

Right.

I guess we can just dispense with that whole indictment, plea and jury business.

You Get What You Vote For...As Well as the Consequences When You Don't

Nevada held its primary two days ago. Voter turnout, statewide, was 20%.

What do you suppose it might take for Americans to understand the criticality of their involvement in their world?

Let's see. I guess these little matters didn't do it:

Our children, and others' children, dying needlessly in Iraq,

People from here and away being held against their will and without recourse in Guantanamo,

The inalienable right of habeas corpus now alienated,

Gas resting at $4 a gallon while oil companies roar with laughter,

Countries around the world having passed the stage of incredulity at a president supremely ill-suited for power,

An education system bound inexorably toward the voucher system as No Child Left Behind creeps to its goal,

Larger and larger swaths of the population joining the ranks of the homeless,

Veterans neglected by an administration that is incapable of understanding the lifelong debt owed to the individuals who offered up their lives for lies,

Americans now left with no alternatives in the political process as the parties have become indistinguishable in their corruptness, self-aggrandizement, and heedless pursuit of their own private agendas,

More and more species of wildlife and tracts of land tossed off the preservation lists,

Crime after crime committed by public officials who sneer at the idea of answering to the citizens who put them there...

And no wonder they sneer. They know their careening, crashing, cataclysmic foray through the Constitution, our pocketbooks, our wildlands, and our honor will never be halted when 20% of the populace votes.

Governing...On the House

Over at wexlerwantshearings.com there are a quarter of a million people who've declared their desire for impeachment hearings against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. There's also an exhortation to contribute to the effort.

So, the American populace must sign on and contribute to the goal of impeachment.

Really.

Here's the way I thought it was supposed to work:

Article 2, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article I, Section 2, Clause 5: The House of Representatives shall...have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Article I, Section 3, Clause 6: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.

According to our Constitution, it appears launching of impeachment hearings is the sole purview of our House of Representatives. And despite unassailable evidence that there's been some pretty dicey goings-on in these past seven years, the House is disinclined to even ask questions about them, in the form of hearings. Oh, yesterday saw a half-hearted stab at it, but it was more an effort to pacify the undeterred Wexler and Kucinich than any real attempt to DO THEIR JOBS.

In fact, doing their jobs, or the lack it, seems to be the real problem here. Let's look at just a couple of their duties—for which, incidentally, they receive hefty compensation, the best, free medical care to be found in the United States, and an unending stream of perks:

To declare War...This duty was handily handed over to the Executive Branch a few years back.

To define and punish...Offenses against the Law of Nations..With respect to the Geneva Conventions, which tenets have been dismissed by the Bush administration, this duty requires the convening of impeachment hearings, which were pronounced 'off the table' in 2006.

Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises...and provide for the...general Welfare of the United States...They've got the first part of this down but virtually ignore the second.

And here's a limit on the duties of Congress:

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it...This evaporated when our Congress blithely passed the Military Commissions Act in 2006. With a margin of 65–34 in the Senate and 250–170 in the House, our elected officials not only made it possible for our president to declare any one of us 'unlawful enemy combatants' and thereby forfeit our rights to habeas corpus, they defied the Constitution. They did the opposite of their jobs.

It's worth noting here that this Congress, since 2006, has a Democratic Party majority, albeit razor slim. Our loss of habeas corpus occurred on the Democrats' watch. The refusal to impeach has been on their time. One is battered consistently by the remonstrance that the Republicans are filibustering all good actions, but one must then wonder, where was the Democratic filibustering in the preceding Republican majority? If the Republicans are utilizing the tools of the minority to their advantage, I can only applaud the resourcefulness of one party and bemoan the lack of it in the other.

I'm not a fan of what our two-party system has become, but with a tip of my hat to reality, at the very least I'd like our elected officials to make a stab at doing their jobs, and quit asking us to do them for them...while they head off to their doctor visits—on the House.