Your World Today....RE: Iran Standoff!

9/21/06.... Your World Today....RE: Iran Standoff!
AUDIO:
http://www.apfn.net/pogo/L001I060821-iran-8-22.MP3

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Did you get my attachment regarding my contest PIC I sent to the President of Iran?; Israel's HoloCrap?

Blog: clifylq
Post: Mr. President of Iran
Link: http://supportbordercontrols.blogspot.com/2006/08/mr-president-of-iran.html

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BUSH ACCOUNTABILITY....MARK GREEN....Losing Our Democracy:
CLIPS BUSH'S NEWS CONF...(A VERY CONFUSED MAN)
AUDIO:
http://www.apfn.net/pogo/L001I060821-bush-accountibility.MP3

Mark Green: Losing our Democracy to the "New Authoritarians"
SOURCE:

Mark Green Thu Aug 17, 9:56 PM ET

With today's federal court ruling that Bush's domestic spying program is unconstitutional, here's the first of a two-part commentary from Mark's new book, Losing Our Democracy: How Bush, the Far Right and Big Business are Betraying Americans for Power and Profit

Democracy can come undone. It's not something that's necessarily going to last forever once it's been established."-- Sean Wilentz in The Rise of American Democracy.

Much has been written about Bush's war for democracy abroad, but how much have you read about his war against democracy at home?

Just as the last half of the twentieth century saw a quadrupling of the number of democracies--just as, in Professor John Gaddis's view, "the world came closer than ever before to reaching a consensus that only democracy confers legitimacy."--the greatest democracy ever is being assaulted by a group of "new authoritarians" in Congress, the courts, corporations and the clergy. And leading their war on democracy is a president lauding its virtues.

President Bush does not wake up everyday wondering how to sabotage democracy. But the issue is not his intent but his actions. And connecting the dots of Bush's presidential actions reveals a clear and present danger to our constitutional traditions. While we surely haven't lost our democracy, we are now only another Bush-like presidency, another couple of Tom Coburn's in the Senate, another couple of Justice Scalia's away from losing our democracy. That's not alarmist, only descriptive.

For while there is no Great Depression or 9/11 heralding the disaster, we are moving away from rather than toward the far horizon of a better democracy. Consider five key areas:

What Rule of Law? This government invades a country contrary to the UN charter, condones torture, outs a CIA operative, ignores warrants for wiretaps, selectively leaks classified information for partisan gain, rounds up thousands of American Muslims without evidence, incarcerates hundreds at Guantánamo without charges or lawyers, and asserts the power to ignore hundreds of duly enacted laws because of an unending war on terror--and then Bush urges the world to follow his devotion to "the rule of law."

Bush views the law as largely an extension of politics, a means to an end, a speed bump to be overcome. So when he was asked about the legality of his invasion of Iraq, he sarcastically answered, "Is it legal? Oh my, I'd better call my lawyer." For 200 years after Marbury v. Madison, courts had the final say on interpreting laws and the Constitution. Then Bush aides made up a theory called the "unitary executive"--and the President in effect said that he could veto laws after signing them into law. Why? "We're at war." But a) the constitution makes the president the commander-in-chief of the military, not the country and b) since this is a war without end, the "unitary executive" is euphemism for authoritarianism.

It took the United States Supreme Court--seven of whose nine members were appointed by Republican presidents--to remind Bush that the rule of law is not a means but an end in itself. "A state of war," wrote Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor, "is not a blank check for the president.