The Boston Tea Party

I shall therefore conclude with a proposal that your watchmen be instructed, as they go on their rounds, to call out every night, half-past twelve, “Beware of the East India Company.”

-Pamphlet signed by “Rusticus,” 1773

From: From The Ashes - A Spiritual Response

We live in a time of extraordinary opportunity, poised on the edge of events that may literally reshape the world and the world mind.

The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) called on media to stop
inviting Ann Coulter as a guest commentator and strongly condemned her
comments that Jews should be “perfected” by accepting the New Testament
and that America would be better off if Judaism were “thrown away” and
all Americans were Christian.

When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire
island was covered by lush forest. The Taino “Indians” who loved there
had an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left
to us by literate members of Columbus’s crew such as Miguel Cuneo.

Columbia University, by inviting Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
to speak, has shown confidence in the wisdom and adultness of their
students and our republic.

The eerie juxtaposition of General Betrayus testifying today before
Congress, and it being 9/11 (which helped Bush bring us disasters
ranging from the PATRIOT Act to the Iraq War and Occupation) brings an
opportunity to re-understand what’s been happening here and in Iraq
these past six years, and offers an insight into a way forward.

The President of the United States has the unrestrained Power of
granting Pardons for Treason; which may be sometimes exercised to
screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit
the Crime, & thereby prevent a Discovery of his own Guilt. – George
Mason (1725-1792), the “father of the Bill of Rights,” noting his
objection to presidential pardon powers in his first draft commentary
on the Constitution of the United States he helped write...

It’s difficult to watch Democrats play checkers while Republicans play
Chess with Iraq. It’s particularly difficult on Memorial Day as more
Americans and Iraqis die. But the Republican Party has been playing
politics with Iraq since the day after the Supreme Court installed
George W. Bush in office in 2001, and they have no intention of
stopping now. They may have borrowed some techniques from Richard
Nixon, but they have no intention of repeating his mistakes.

According to James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” if a
President were to order or allow the “wanton removal of meritorious
officers” such as US attorneys, such an action “would subject the
President to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.”

The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking civilization is the right to challenge governmental power of arrest and detention through the use of habeas corpus laws. Habeas corpus is roughly Latin for "hold the body," and is used in law to mean that a government must either charge a person with a crime and allow them due process, or let them go free. Last autumn the House and Senate passed, and the President signed into law The United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, which explicitly strips both aliens and Americans of the right of habeas corpus, the right of recourse to the courts (as provided in the Fifth through Eighth Amendments to the Constitution), and denies appeal through mechanisms of the Geneva Conventions to those designated to lose these rights by the President.

This issue - the power of the Parade, of We The People speaking up and speaking out and participating in the political process - was the primary debate in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. Tragically, it will again be hotly contested as the House of Representatives begins to investigate potential crimes by the Executive branch and the Bush administration begins to push back and claim executive privilege (a doctrine that appears nowhere in the Constitution).

Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham were presented with an opportunity to uphold the fundamental human right known as habeas corpus, or flinch and write a law that would retroactively make sure that George W. Bush could not be prosecuted for violations of habeas corpus in our overseas concentration camps and prisons. It was a contest between protecting the President and protecting the Constitution. The Republican senators flinched, and in last week's so-called "compromise" chose Bush over the Constitution.

The Republicans are trying to keep George W. Bush out of jail. So far, the media and the Democrats haven't done much to stop them.