loquitur, I want to start by offering an apology to you for using your quote as an example. If I could think of another way to make my point, I would, but quoting you....someone who I do respect for your willingness to participate in discussions on this forum....you post what you think,,,you don't play games...
seems to me to be a clear way to respond to your post on the "Impeach Cheney" thread, and to respond to roachboy's statements, and most importantly to briefly and clearly examine the schism in American politics that might provide answers to why the Bush administration is still (permitted to be...) in power, and still at war in Iraq,
Quote:
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Originally Posted by loquitur
As I said, people need some perspective here. When the come up with politically motivated tax audits, FBI investigations of opponents and discussions of raising bribe money, you might convince me we're getting there. Right now I don't see it. I do see some mismanagement and political overreaching but nothing qualitatively different from many other presidencies.
<b>I think people have to get over this notion that if your side loses an election the other side has to be deligitmated.</b> It wasn't any more attractive when the cranks on the right were trying to get Clinton charged with murder or claiming that Hillary had Vincent Foster bumped off.
I'll try to remember to write a longer post later, but my short-form response is that we should help where our help is likely to do good, and stay away where it's likely to be futile. In the short term we shouldn't try to help people who are likely to feel that what we consider help is actually a form of invasion. The trick is in knowing which is which. Long term, helping one group, if done right with a successful result, is likely to incentivize others to want to conform. But that's a long-term scenario, and presumes an ability to know what we're doing. We kinda made that mistake before, so I'd be very wary of making it again.
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=198 |
<b>I remember this...I was entering kindergarten during the month that it happened...and it was talked about and printed and broadcast about, for the next 50 years:</b>
<center>
<img src="http://www.ardemgaz.com/prev/central/images/central2.jpg"><br>
Orval Faubus, called out the National Guard to try to block integration four decades ago.
"That's when I knew that they were just not going to let me go to school ... that they were not there to protect me, too, like the other students," remembers Elizabeth Eckford, one of the "Little Rock Nine." She was 15 at the time.
Instead, Guardsmen turned Eckford toward dozens of rabid hecklers.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/24/little.rock/
<img src="http://www.ardemgaz.com/prev/central/images/central1.jpg"><br>
Instead, Guardsmen turned Eckford toward dozens of rabid hecklers. Among them was Hazel Bryan Massery. "I was behind her and the crowd was jeering saying: 'go home nigger ... go back to Africa' and things like that," Massery recalls.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/24/little.rock/
<img src="http://www.queervisions.com/img/cowardlykick.jpg"><br>
.......Nineteen days later, the nine tried again but were driven out by the mob. Still photographer Will Counts, who nearly won a Pulitzer Prize for his shot of black reporter Alex Wilson being kicked, recalls "They were yelling: 'Run, nigger, run.' And he said: 'I fought for my country in the war and I'm not running from you' -- and he didn't."
http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/24/little.rock/
<img src="http://www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/aa/eisenhower/aa_eisenhower_littlerock_3_e.jpg"><br>
The Little Rock crisis was the first time the federal government had enforced court-ordered integration. It took 1,200 troops of the 101st Airborne division, sent by President Dwight Eisenhower, to accomplish the task.
Eisenhower's action in the showdown set the stage for school desegregation programs across America.
Ernest Green was among that first handful of black students. "Victory was at hand. I thought I had finally cracked it," he recalls.
It was a victory indeed, and it marked the first time that the federal government used its full power in enforcing the desegregation laws of the land.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/24/little.rock/
<img src="http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civilrights/images/cr0013s.jpg">
Quote:
http://rcarterpittman.org/essays/mis..._Arkansas.html
The Federal Invasion of Arkansas
In the Light of the Constitution
By R. Carter Pittman
S INCE the Federal Government is a parchment created by a written instrument, which we know as the Constitution, all officers of that Government, including the President, must look to that parchment for every power that they exercise, whether in Washington or in Little Rock. That is true, not only of the President, but of the Congress and of the Federal Courts.
The Tenth Amendment states that truism, but that was true before the Tenth Amendment was adopted. It was spelled out merely to settle and satisfy the minds of those who were fearful of the evils that lurked in the shadows of the new and untried government. Thus, the Federal Constitution is the power-of-attorney of those whose offices were created by the Constitution.
The exercise of a power not granted in the Constitution itself is usurpation. The usurpation of power creates no legal authority. Upon the integrity of that principle rests the validity of every right man has ever wrested from power and every liberty he has ever torn from tyrants. The soundness of that proposition is not disputed among men of learning and honor anywhere.
So, we must search the Constitution to see if we can find authority for the actions of President Eisenhower in sending federal troops to Little Rock and in federalizing Arkansas troops. There are only two provisions of the Constitution relating to such a situation.
One, relating to the use of federalized state troops, appears in Article I and the other, relating to the use of federal troops, appears in Article IV of the Constitution. The latter provides that the United States shall protect each state "against invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence."
O BVIOUSLY, there has been no invasion or threatened invasion of Arkansas, hence the President had no authority to send federal troops into Arkansas, except upon the application of the Legislature of Arkansas for the purpose of putting down domestic violence. The Legislature of Arkansas did not ask for federal troops and since there is no reason why it could not be convened, the Governor of Arkansas has no authority to call on the President to send federal troops. If the Governor of Arkansas had such authority he has not exercised it. Therefore, the President had no authority to send federal troops into Arkansas under any fair construction of Section 4 of Article IV or of any other provision of the Constitution.
The other provision relating to the use of military force by the President, in Section 8 of Article I, empowers the Congress "to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrection and repel Invasion".
Obviously, there was no insurrection to be suppressed and no invasion to be repelled in Arkansas; therefore, the Congress had no power to authorize the President to call forth, or federalize the state troops or militia of Arkansas, unless it was "to execute the laws of the Union."
Those the least familiar with American History know why the framers of the Constitution were careful to restrict the power of the President to use military force against his own people. ......
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<h3>Above is a 1958 "states rights" argument against the decision of a republican president Dwight Eisenhower's decision to use federal troops to enforce the 1954 SCOTUS decsion in "Brown vs. the Board of Education"</h3>
....by 1980, a republican presidential candidate had "progressed from Eisenhower's 1957 executive decisions on civil rights, to this:
Quote:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/polit...gan90_2-6.html
ROGER WILKINS: Well, every once in a while Reagan would just send out these laser beam signals that were crystal clear. His first speech in his campaign in 1980 was in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which nobody outside of Mississippi had ever heard of except for one thing and that was that three civil rights workers were killed there in 1964. Reagan said then I'm for states rights. If you say I'm for states rights in Mississippi, everybody knows what you're talking about. Some years later he went to Atlanta and he said Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine. Everybody knows what you're talking about then, too. He went to Charlotte, North Carolina, where the first federal court ordered the first bussing remedy and he said, I'm against bussing. So....
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....more examples in this post:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...4&postcount=22
<b>....and now, from Eisenhower in 1957, it is reported that we've come full circle, toi this:</b>
Quote:
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0507/420376.html
.....Roberta Baskin on set: ONE OF THE TOP PRIORITIES OF THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT IS TO PROSECUTE VIOLATIONS OF OUR CIVIL RIGHTS. HOWEVER THE TEAM OF PROSECUTORS THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HAS PUT TOGETHER LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE AMERICA IT'S SUPPOSED TO PROTECT.
Story: Some of the most notorious crimes committed in America � police brutality..cross burnings..violence at abortion clinics..modern day slavery - all federal crimes - are prosecuted by The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
But our investigation has found that the Justice Department is missing a key component in its mission to protect civil rights - DIVERSITY � diversity in the attorney ranks to prosecute cases.
Congressman John Conyers: "They need someone to investigate them."
The I-Team has learned that since 2003...the criminal section within the Civil Rights Division has not hired a single black attorney to replace those who have left. Not one.
(Graphic)
As a result, the current face of civil rights prosecutions looks like this: Out of fifty attorneys in the Criminal Section - only two are black. The same number the criminal section had in 1978 - even though the size of the staff has more than doubled. ......
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and this....
Quote:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwash...n/17188481.htm
Posted on Sun, May. 06, 2007
email this
print this
U. S. ATTORNEYS
Congress considers broadening Justice Department inquiry
By Greg Gordon and Margaret Talev
....... Sen. Claire McCaskell, D-Mo., told National Public Radio last week that she wants to hear testimony from Schlozman because "more answers under oath need to be given."
One of the former Justice Department employees, Clevenger, is pursuing a whistleblower suit alleging he was wrongly fired for exposing mistreatment of employees by his Special Litigation Section chief.
Clevenger and the other lawyer recounted Schlozman's odd handling of their job applications in the spring of 2005. Clevenger said his resume stated that he was a member of the conservative Federalist Society and the Texas chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association. The other applicant's resume cited work on President Bush's 2000 campaign, said the attorney, who insisted upon anonymity for fear of retaliation.
They said Schlozman directed them to drop the political references and resubmit the resumes in what they believed were an effort to hide those conservative affiliations.
Clevenger also recalled once passing on to Schlozman the name of a friend from Stanford as a possible hire.
"Schlozman called me up and asked me something to the effect of, `Is he one of us?'" Clevenger said. "He wanted to know what the guy's partisan credentials were."
Schlozman, who recently completed more than a year's service as interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City that was marked with controversy, has drawn harsh criticism over his conduct as the top deputy in the Civil Rights Division starting in 2003 and a term of roughly seven months as its acting chief beginning in the spring of 2005.
Several former department lawyers assailed his treatment of senior employees and his rollback of longstanding policies aimed at protecting African-American voting rights. They blame him for driving veteran attorneys, including section chief Joseph Rich, to resign from their posts.
Rich recently told Congress that 15 of the 35 attorneys in the voting rights section have resigned since 2005. Former employees of the Voting Rights Section told McClatchy of at least eight hires since then of employees with conservative political connections.
The Boston Globe, which obtained resumes of civil rights hires under the Freedom of Information Act, reported Sunday that seven of 14 career lawyers hired under Schlozman were members of either the Federalist Society or the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Rich, who left the agency on April 30, 2005, and now works for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, told McClatchy Newspapers that Schlozman was "central to implementation of the politicization of the Civil Rights Division" and said he treated career lawyers with "disdain" and "vindictiveness."
His former deputy, Robert Kengle, told McClatchy that "Schlozman was never wrong and to even raise that possibility was asking for retribution."
Schlozman's hiring favored lawyers "with one primary characteristic - links to the Republican Party and right-wing groups," said David Becker, who left the section the same day as Rich. .......
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<b>My point roachboy, is that loquitur is an educated and a reasonable person, and he doesn't see anything amiss....and to boot...he's an attorney. The drift away from a commitment of preservation of civil rights, is just one "canary in the coal mine".....but, it is a "tell", for me, at least. Nothing will change until "reasonable" republicans find things that Bush and his administration, and even things like the "reagan lovefest", last thursday night, objectionable.....and I predict, we've got a long wait until that happens, because their "ballsy" attitude, irregardless of wher it sits, vs. the law, and principle, is perceived to get them votes.....</b>