And We Shouldn't Take It ANYMORE

What patriotic, law-abiding, Constitution-respecting, independent-thinking citizen of this fine country is not just absolutely outraged by the news of this last week? Especially when the president takes a righteously indignant stand over the last two days claiming that anyone reporting on the story and the spread of questioning into the story constitute the aiding and abetting the enemy? This, of course, is a typical Bush/Cheney/Rove tactic: scare the hell out of people, not with facts, but with the usual fear tactics that play on people's insecurities and prejudices. The New York Times (which ridiculously held onto the story for over a year at the request of Bush - subtract "over a year" from now and what you basically have is a scandal just before the g*****n election) is not the Washington Post of the early 70s and should be implicated in yet another reporting fiasco (what does this make, three in the last three years and yet we still respect its "credibility"?) and should be leading the charge in reporting of this story. Most outrageous was the president's press conference yesterday and the number of misstatements, lies, distortions of the truth or outright fabrications Bush gave the press yesterday. Bush claimed that the intelligence community's attempts at tracking Osama bin Ladin were compromised when a story covering the type of cell phone bin Ladin was carrying broke the case open - sheer bunkum. That's another ploy at pressuring Congress to approve the most draconian law ever created since the Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I (laws found uncontitutional, anyway), the USA "Patriot" Act. The doublespeak there is that anyone challenging the passage and execution of those laws is unpatriotic, but again, the demagoguery coming from the Rove White House is ludicrous but I repeat myself. Bush also screwed up and said "Saddam" when meaning, and later correcting himself on "Osama" (which makes for another interesting psychological exam as to whether in Bush's mind the two men are the same person) and then proceeded to state that he would continue further spying on Americans through the NSA.
When will we, the American citizenry, stand up and say, "ENOUGH!!!!!"? This president is in clear violation of a 1978 limiting the executive branch to, god forbid, actually following a series of laws in order to receive permission to secretly spy on citizens, something that has only been denied the government four times in the twenty-six years since its passage. Bush's actions post-9/11 have been truly impeachable - illegal spying on citizens, skewing intelligence (or, as most of us see as outright lies) to start an illegal war, creating a policy of torturing and detaining prisoners of war that fly in the face of international law (anyone remember that in 2002 the Bush Administration pulled the U.S. out of the International Criminal Court - no doubt in order to avoid being charged for war crimes when it would carry out actions such as removing the nails from a detainee's fingers, waterboarding and the other heinous acts U.S. soldiers or the CIA have been caught doing), overstepping his Constitutionally-defined powers as president by authorizing wiretapping and spying, and let's not forget the whole White House-orchestrated Plamegate CIA-leak scandal that has yet to nail Rove and possibly him. All of this and yet yesterday marks the seventh anniversary of Bill Clinton's impeachment for carrying on a sexual liason with a consenting adult!!! Personal behavior aside, we as Americans have our priorities completely out of whack when we demand our presidents to behave like puritans and yet allow them to act like Richard Milhous Nixon. To every one of our fellow citizens who voted to re-elect George Bush last year, shame on you for your stupidity; for the Republican Party for pushing the neocon reactionary selfish white rich good old boys club, including this man for our leader, to Hell with you, and may God help us all the next time another horrific terrorist attack because we as a nation is not ready nor united enough to fix the solution; we'll only want to destroy what is left of ourselves because instead of protection we have politics, instead of solutions we have agitprop, and instead of policy we have demagoguery.