Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

The government of Syria has started to slaughter civilians who are protesting against the autocratic regime there. Dozens, maybe hundreds, are dead.

When will the United States military start bombing there to protect civilians, as it has done in Libya?

The primary justification for Barack Obama’s rush into war with less than 24 hours of notice to the American people and no opportunity for debate, much less a declaration of war, from the U.S. Congress, was that imposing a no fly zone would protect Libyan civilians from the government run by Moammar Qaddafi.

Yet, after almost a week of bombing by American-led military forces, we now have reports of massive civilian deaths, including the use of government snipers against civilians in the Libyan city of Misrata.

It appears that the escalation of the civil war in Libya by the United States has not been an adequate tool of protection of civilians. Given that, what is the rationale for the United States remain at war?

Will Barack Obama now suggest an escalation of the war, given the failure so far, or will the war simply be a failure?

KDFerz
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Michnik
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I like the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Really, I do. I can prove it – I’ve clicked “Like” on the Facebook page for the Fourth Amendment.

What, is that not enough?

Luckily, I’m doing more. I work with Irregular Times, for one thing, and for years we’ve been writing about laws like the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, begun under George W. Bush and have been continued under Barack Obama, that violate the guarantee the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and seizure. We also have designed the lawn sign of the 4th Amendment that you see here.

I happen to know that this yard sign has had at least a little impact on discussion of Fourth Amendment issues. For one thing, this photograph of our Fourth Amendment yard sign is being used as the profile photo of the Fourth Amendment Facebook page I like.

One particularly current thing we’re doing at Irregular Times to show that we like the 4th Amendment to the Constitution is that we’re initiating a protest against the Patriot Act in Washington D.C. this coming Saturday, March 12, at noon, in front of the U.S. Capitol. As you’ll see in the link in this paragraph, there’s a Facebook page for that too.

The question in my mind is whether all the people who have indicated that they “like” this protest will actually show up. We’ll see how much Facebook social networking is really worth.

At the 2011 Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Forum, right wing Christian activist Gopal Krishna attacked America for building a multicultural society (E Pluribus Unum), in which “every weird and kinky lifestyle” is given equal legal status under the law.

A weird and kinky lifestyle? Whatever could Mr. Krishna have been talking about?

How about people who claim to have a personal relationship with a two-thousand year-old zombie from across the ocean who walks on water? Would that count as a weird and kinky lifestyle?

Today, in the Winona Daily News, Nathan Hansen of the town of Rushford identifies a startling gap between rhetoric and reality on the part of Minnesota’s two United States senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken.

Both of these Democrats claim to be devoted to the defense of Americans’ constitutional rights, but talk is cheap. In practice, both of them voted last month to renew the worst aspects of the plainly unconstitutional Patriot Act – without any attempt at reform. Hansen notes:

“Franken in committee and in public denounces the Patriot Act provisions, including the one roving wiretaps that was extended by his vote. But his voting record does not agree with this. The vote marks the second time that he violated his principles, and his promises to his constituents in Minnesota, and the American people as a whole.

Klobuchar, too, has publicly opposed Patriot Act provisions, but abandoned them in order to keep from rocking the boat. It is sad that this illiberal bill passed by 86-12 margin, but the truly sad part of the story is that Minnesota’s out-of-the-box senators have not really been doing anything out of the box.”

We don’t have to just sit and take it when public officials like senators Klobuchar and Franken fail to live up to their responsibilities. We can, as Hansen would put it, get out of the box.

This coming Saturday, there will be an opportunity for Americans who oppose the renewal of the extraordinary surveillance powers of the Patriot Act to get out of the box and be heard by Congress. There will be a protest demanding repeal of the Patriot Act on Saturday, March 12 at Noon outside the west side of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C. Bring a sign of protest to show that America will not be silent while its constitutional right are sacrificed!

U.S. Representative Lynn Woolsey took on Speaker of the House John Boehner this week, on a topic that Republicans like to think is all their own: Morality. Boehner had just gotten done preaching morality in front of televangelists and radio tent revivalists, but Woolsey pointed out that Boehner’s own agenda in the U.S. Congress has a rather immoral tone. She said,

“In a speech this past weekend to our religious broadcasters, the Speaker of the House called the Federal debt “a moral threat” to our Nation. It’s an interesting choice of words from the leader of the House majority, who has been a cheerleader for the Nation’s most morally objectionable policy of all–the disastrous, despicable war in Afghanistan.

For some reason, their moral sensibilities are not offended by a military conflict that has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and 1,500 of our bravest, bravest people without advancing national security objectives or truly diminishing the terrorist threat at the same time.

So how are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle resolving their moral dilemma? By asking corporate special interests to give up handouts and tax breaks? By asking the wealthiest Americans to give back more to the Nation that has given them so much opportunity?

Nope. By their moral calculations, the answer is to demand sacrifice from the very Americans who are bearing the brunt of this recession–from the people and communities who depend upon public investment. Their moral compass tells them to cut vital programs to the bone or eliminate them altogether: food safety, family planning, health research, public housing, transportation infrastructure, college aid, and on and on.

There was an article in my home newspaper over the weekend about how local health clinics could be devastated by these cuts. California alone stands to lose nearly $13 million in homeland security grants needed to train and equip first responders. The Republican budget cuts also, according to one study, would destroy 700,000 jobs–but that’s not keeping the Speaker up at night. He sees Americans out of work, and instead of saying this is a moral threat, he says, “So be it.”

In what moral universe, I ask you, Mr. Speaker, does it make sense to destroy jobs at home but send more Americans to die in a senseless war abroad?”