Saturday, October 07, 2006

Thirty Days and Counting

If the Democratic Party needs a theme for the final thirty days before the mid-term election, it can be summed up in one word: "Accountability". There has been so little of it in the six years of the Bush regime that its hard to recognize our federal government anymore. If you would have told me after Watergate that the United States would be directly or indirectly torturing prisoners in a secret prison system and illegally spying on its citizenry again in twenty years, I would have told you to take a hike. And as Harry Truman succinctly told us, accountability for the lies, mismanagement, corruption, cronyism, and arrogance stops with the occupant of the Oval Office.
Thankfully the founders gave us a mechanism to rid ourselves of would-be dictators, impeachment. Lord knows there are ample and grievous grounds upon which to impeach George W. Bush and his hatchet man, Dick Cheney. Pick up one of the several books now in print on the subject. The Republicans trivialized this fundamental corrective process by attempting to remove Bill Clinton for lying about consensual sex with an adult female. The Democrats do not even want to mention the I word in public. When former NSA director General Odom mentioned the word at a conference as a way to control the illegal spying now underway, there was uncomfortable silence from the politicians in the room.
Its understandable that Democratic politicians do not want to face the inevitable accusations of revenge hurled at them by Republicans if the House takes up Articles. But the polls show that the public is dog tired of the Republican farce in Washington. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, "drain the swamp". The little boy with his finger in the dike is George W. Bush. No better way to get the job done than to hold him accountable for the worst presidency in our history.

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