It’s About Freakin’ Time
And I betcha the press is going to give this one a bye, relative to stories of more vital importance, like the 598th consecutive re-hash of the JonBenet Ramsay case.
In short, a federal judge ruled the Bush eavesdropping program to be clearly unconstitutional, but more than that, said that the program:
“violates the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”); the Separation of Powers doctrine; the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and the statutory law. … The president of the United States … has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders as required by FISA….” (PDF of Ruling)
Now can we use the word “impeachment”?
Clearly, it takes an unelected official to have the guts to state the glaringly obvious fact that President Bush without question violated the constitution and broke the law, whatever distinction you may draw between those two. It’ll be interesting to see what fallout this has, if it emboldens the Democrats, what seeds it may plant if the Democrats win and want to begin investigations, and how this may be handled on appeal.
But for the moment, I have to wonder if even this will stop the spying on American citizens. My bet: no.
I was browsing through my copy of British Historian Richard Evans recent book (now available in Paper Back) “The Coming of the Third Reich”.
To read it is to easily conclude that we are living under a Fascist Regime.
Pure and Simple.
Not all Fascist Regimes are a like.
The original Italian strain, was less nationalistic, the German was the most virulent , the Japanese, like the German, was also nationalist and that also made it virulent. The Spanish falangist was more focused on religiousity then it was on nationalism and was perhaps the most docile (and long lived).
The American strain is both religious, class and nationalist based (nationalism being tribalism and religion here being used as a tribal marker). It has full fledged resentment, implied racism, scapegoating, loathing of intelligensia, enemy marking, back stab mythmaking, persecuted majority myth making, and authoritarianistic..
And it bullies its enemies, and the press, leading to silence and obedience.
It is nothing more nor less than full throated fascism within the American reality. In Spain it was religious, In Italy it had to cope underneath a constitutional monarchy, as it did in Japan. Here, it has to limp along under a theory of plurality and classical liberalism. That means we are free, but we are not, we are law abiding but we are not, that we are peace loving but we are not.
And like all Fascist, tell the lies that the public loves to hear.
When they start wheeling off Americans into concentration camps will be the day our Fascism hits stride.