For some years now, you’ve been able to see yard signs plastered around the suburban neighborhoods of certain parts of America declaring commitment to the Ten Commandments. Support for the Ten Commandments on these signs is not simply made as an aspect of religious belief, but as a commitment to seeing them enshrined as a foundation for American political life. “Elect Jesus!” cries one. Another features the tablets of Moses next to a bald eagle and an American flag. The message is clear: here’s your civic foundation, neighbors. It’s American to follow this.

Whenever I’ve seen these signs, they’ve irked me. Certainly people have the right to display these signs in front of their homes, sometimes one after the other. Certainly people have the right to decide that the Ten Commandments will be the guiding moral force in their lives. Certainly people have the right to proselytize, not to demand but to ask that others live according to the Ten Commandments. But these lawn signs do more than that. They make the claim that the Ten Commandments aren’t simply religious in nature, but also are or should be the foundation for American political life. That is a claim in contravention of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the government establishment of religion.

If the Ten Commandments don’t belong in our government, another set of ten principles certainly do. The Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and while they don’t cover the spirit of the Constitution from Alpha to Omega, they contain a concentrated articulation of civil liberty and government restraint which have made the United States a distinctively free society for its citizens. They also are the target of so many unfortunate Bush administration actions, and they need some defending lately.

I’ve often wished that I could plant a lawn sign with the bill of rights on it in front of my home, kind of as an answer to the Ten Commandments yard signs but also as an independent articulation of my own civic commitments. But when I went ahead and tried searching for “bill of rights lawn sign” or “bill of rights yard sign” on my favorite search engine a few years ago, I couldn’t find anything. I still can’t find anything. The difference today is that CafePress has begun making yard signs available for sale. I’ve confirmed with the company that they are made in the USA, too, clearing away worries that they might be printed over the smushed fingers of some kid in India who was sold by his or her family under false pretenses, sleeps on the roof of a factory, and eats rice covered with flies.

And so here they are. I’ve designed an overall “I Support the Bill of Rights” Yard Sign with the text of all ten amendments:

And here are some yard signs with the text of particular amendments to the Constitution:

Help change the premise of civic conversation in your community. For your fellow citizens who might have never even read the constitution, it may be a bit of an education.

I’ve ordered the overall Bill of Rights lawn sign to put by my front stoop, and I’ll share photos of it once it arrives so you can see what it looks like in situ.

I was reading an article just a few minutes ago, about the problem of yet more items manufactured in China tainted with lead, over on Gather.com. The basic point of the article was that people in the United States are being exposed to unhealthy levels of lead in items which they would never expect to be contaminated, yet the Bush White House and Republicans in Congress have failed to respond with legislation or trade restrictions with China because of their adherence to an abstract economic ideology that holds that free markets can do no wrong.

The article discussed important ideas which relate to the identity of the American nation, our relationship with the things we buy, and the distance of the average American from the production of most of the material goods of life. Yet, when it came time for counter-arguments to be made, in the comments section after the article, the Republican response, given by a supporter of Fred Thompson, was merely this: “You Liberals are addicited to bitching, whining, moaning, and complaining. You really need to get a life…”

These were the two values systems on display: The progressive, when confronted with unsafe lead contamination in products from China, considered reforms in the interest of the American people. The Republican, on the other hand, merely suggested that people stop complaining about lead poisoning, as if complaining, and not poisoning, is the problem.

I know which approach I’d rather see represented in the White House.

(Source: Capitalism Gone Wild, Gather.com, October 31, 2007)

In his report on the violations of law that the Bush White House is committing under the cloak of the Military Commissions Act, UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin states an obvious truth that has been ignored for so long now that it has been largely forgotten: The so-called “War On Terror” is not really a war at all. Schein writes in his report that, “the international fight against terrorism is not a ‘war’ in the true sense of the word”.

What the United States is engaged in is an attempt to apprehend and prosecute criminals. The attacks of September 11, 2001 were the acts of a criminal gang, not any existing foreign government that had declared war against the United States.

The United States started two wars using the excuse of that crime, but to the extent that those wars were related to the crime of September 11, 2001, it was to facilitate apprehension and prosecution of criminal suspects. Besides, those actual wars are long over. What the United States is engaged in now in Iraq and Afghanistan are really military occupations, not wars. Neither in Iraq nor in Afghanistan is there a specific military objective which, once reached, would enable victory to be declared.

These distinctions are important as matters of law, because, given that there is no real war going on, the people captured by American soldiers or other agents of the American government are entitled to the legal rights of criminal suspects.

Republicans are fond of saying that giving prisoners the rights of criminal suspects is equivalent to coddling them. That’s a convincing statement, in its swaggering tough-guy pose, if you aren’t concerned at all about the survival of legal rights of the accused in criminal trials. If you aren’t worried about being unjustly accused of a crime, then perhaps you believe that you have no need to live in a country that gives legal rights to accused criminals.

If that’s the case, then you have a profound discomfort for the rule of law, and you prefer to live in a country where people in power have the right to make up the law as they go along, according to their whims. You prefer despotism.

Those aren’t my values. They aren’t the values of the Revolution of 1776. They aren’t American values… or at least, they didn’t use to be.

(Source: Addendum to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, October 25, 2007)

You know things are bad in your country when someone like the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism assembles a report warning about your government’s abuse of human rights and assaults against liberty. We here in the United States are used to hearing about such reports describing the despotic governments of other countries.

Now, Americans must face a report of this nature about their own country. UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin has issued a report decrying the role of the Military Commissions Act in allowing human rights abuses by the US government, in defiance of some of the most ancient traditions in law.

“It is most regretful,” Scheinn writes, “that a number of important mechanisms for the protection of rights have been removed or obfuscated under law and practice since the events of 11 September, including under the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and under Executive Orders and classified programmes.”

Scheinn also points out that the American government is in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which as a treaty ratified by Congress and signed by the President has the force of law within the United States. The Military Commissions Act, he writes, ” purports to expressly deny the jurisdiction of ordinary courts to hear an application for habeas corpus. The Special Rapporteur reminds that according to the Human Rights Committee, article 9(4) [of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] cannot be derogated from even during a state of emergency.”

The USA should not have to be lectured about respect for human rights and the need to obey the law. America should be leading the way on these issues, a positive example for other nations to follow. Instead, our government is serving as an example of how to break the law and get away with it.

(Source: Addendum to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, October 25, 2007)

This morning, presidential candidate and member of Congress Ron Paul tied his shoes, violating the Constitution.

Go ahead, tell me where in the Constitution it gives members of Congress the power to tie their shoes! It is therefore a power that devolves to the states.

I trust that Representative Paul will be more careful in the future. If he is not capable of such care, he should consider wearing slippers.

Two years ago, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, some members of the House of Representatives stood up to look at the underlying problem of climate change, while others buried their heads in the sand and refused even to ask what the problem was.

On October 26, 2005, Dennis Kucinich introduced H. Res 515 to the floor of the House of Representatives. The resolution, if passed, would have created an official request that President George W. Bush provide all documents “in his possession relating to the effects of climate change on the coastal regions of the United States”.

Given the climate-related disasters that have befallen the United States over the last two years, including extreme drought, deadly heat waves, and unusually strong wildfires, this sort of resolution has proven to make a great deal of sense. Even at the time, without the subsequent disasters, the need for Congress to have this information, in order to fulfill its duty of oversight of the Executive Branch, was so clear that the Kucinich resolution received 150 cosponsors.

However, the Republicans that occupied leadership of the House of Representatives at the time refused to allow the full House to vote on the resolution, and blocked any attempt even to hold a committee hearing on the subject. The Republicans on the Science Committee actually wrote that getting information on the impact of climate change on the coastal regions of the United States “would not advance any public policy goal”.

The Republican position on the matter was that even getting information about the impacts of climate change would be a bad, bad idea. Given plenty of reason to believe that the United States would be facing new problems, the House Republicans deicided that they just didn’t want to know about any of it.

This resolution wasn’t just an issue two years ago. It should be an issue again today. The reason is that four members of the House of Representatives are now running for President. How did they perform on this issue?

Dennis Kucinich, the author of the resolution, did the right thing.

Ron Paul did the wrong thing. Ron Paul stood with the ignorance-is-bliss Republican leadership. He refused to cosponsor the resolution.

The two other Republican presidential candidates from the House of Representatives, Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, made the same pro-ignorance move.

The opposition of Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter to this resolution should be a reminder to voters that, when it comes to running the federal government, the Republican presidential candidates are more interested in ideology than solid scientific information.

(Source: Library of Congress)

Climate change associated with global warming won’t just make things hotter. Extreme weather events, fueled by the additional energy in the Earth’s atmosphere, are predicted to become more common. In fact, this change is already happening. 2007’s extreme heat wave and drought in the American South are just one example of the unusual and destructive weather we’ve been facing recently.

The impact of such events on human communities, in turn, is resulting in amplified social conflicts, as people fight over dwindling natural resources. Water wars in places like Africa are already taking place. Here in the United States, bloodshed has not yet begun, but intense political conflicts between neighboring states are occuring.

In the case of the great southern drought of 2007, the states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia are now fighting over water that they once took for granted. Reuters news service refers to the conflict over the waters of Lake Lanier as a “dam war”, though for the present, the battle is taking place purely through paperwork and political positioning.

In this way, climate change is transforming the United States of America into the Divided States of America.

(Source: Reuters, October 30, 2007)

There’s an idea I hadn’t heard except in street protests for a very long time, and it is the idea of the peace dividend. I hadn’t heard it spoken of for a decade until the Democratic Party debate of October 30, 2007:

There’s a statue above the House of Representatives of a woman whose arm is outstretched, and she is protecting a child sitting next to a pile of books. The title of this statue is “Peace Protecting Genius.” We need to have a country that stands for peace, that gets us out of the wars. We see the connection between global warring and global warming; we cut the Pentagon budget 15 percent, and $75 billion will go into a universal pre-kindergarten program so our children ages 3, 4 and 5 will have access to full-time day care, and more money would go into elementary and secondary education.

That was Dennis Kucinich speaking, and his point is dead on. People like John Edwards and Bill Bradley and organizations like Unity08 and Common Cause talk in generalities about the “system not working anymore.” But there’s a very prosaic reason for the “system” being broken: we’re spending huge amounts of our money and borrowing money we don’t have to pay weapons manufacturers for more ammunition and weapons systems to replace the ones getting used up, ground down and blown up in a war of choice we didn’t have to choose. The war of choice in Iraq has been a boon for one industry: the armaments industry. Investment in armaments is temporary and buys someone else’s death. Investment in schools, investment in education, investment in learning is lasting and buys a more productive, less destructive adult. Thanks to Dennis Kucinich for having the courage to identify a major source of our current troubles, and a possible solution to our future challenges.

To understand how important it is to reform the Democratic Party, consider the statement Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson made just before a televised presidential debate on the eve of Halloween 2007.

Telling other Democratic presidential candidates to stop criticizing Hillary Clinton’s reliance on campaign donations bundled by lobbyists, Richardson said, “It’s OK to get aggressive on the issues, but to make personal attacks on somebody’s attachments to lobbyists, that’s not the kind of positive tone I want to see.”

What Bill Richardson cannot seem to fathom is that the power of corporate lobbyists over the American political system in general and political candidates in particular is one of the most important issues of the 2008 presidential election. If Democratic presidential candidates can’t address the problem of lobbyists purchasing influence over elected officials, because the issue is just too personal, then they cannot address the issue of corruption.

If looking the other way while corruption twists the Democratic Party into a corporate tool is what Bill Richardson thinks of as a “positive tone” for the 2008 election, that’s not a very positive reflection on Bill Richardson’s integrity. A political party’s primary process is supposed to be about giving voters the chance to decide for themselves which candidate best represents their ideals. Sweeping problems under the rug and pretending that they don’t exist can only be considered positive by those who prefer to pretend that those problems don’t exist.

It’s up to voters to refuse Bill Richardson’s cover for corruption within the Democratic Party. It’s the responsibility of voters to find true progressives within the Democratic Party, and give those progressives their support, instead of just going along with whomever the corporate lobbyists have bankrolled as the Party’s candidate.

(Source: Associated Press, October 30, 2007)

“America is seeking a president who says the same thing.” — John Edwards

Well, this American is seeking a president who says the thoughtful thing, the considered thing. Maybe that’s not always the same thing.

“Everyone knows that the war against Iraq was about oil…. Everyone knows that the saber-rattling against Iran is driving up the price of oil.”

– Dennis Kucinich

Pretty direct statement there. Do you think Kucinich is right?

Joe Biden gets the best line in the debate so far:

Think about it: Rudy Giuliani? There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb, and “9/11.”

“We need to elect a Democrat. A Democrat that’s electable.” — Chris Dodd

As opposed to electing an unelectable Democrat. I hear John Kerry was an electable Democrat, except that he wasn’t elected. Well, good point there anyway, Chris. Almost as good a point as John Edwards’ “I’m not interested in patting myself on the back.” Right, John, right.

This debate is listing, slowly, and I don’t know in what direction.

[9:41 pm] There’s a lot of horse-race jockeying going on in the debate so far. There’s a lot of “I’m the only one on this stage who…” posturing. And there’s a lot of criticism of Hillary Clinton. But I’m not getting much substance out of it, to tell you the truth. Not much substance yet at all. Barack Obama is very much impressed with the resonance of his voice.

[9:43 pm update] Oh, goodness gracious. Brian Williams of the big haircut has just asked Hillary Clinton whether she’s “electable.” Why doesn’t he just ask if she’s fuckable? What a waste of a question! She’s at least 35, she’s a natural-born citizen. Hillary Clinton is therefore electable! What Brian Williams actually means to ask is whether Hillary Clinton is popular. Whoop-dee-doo. The election will decide that.