Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Activists Unite

So, Senator Hatch is offended at the notion that the President might choose a Supreme who is mindful of the rights of ordinary people.  He calls that a sign of judicial activism, and we wouldn’t want an activist justice. Apparently, the good senator from Utah doesn’t mind justices who appoint presidents over the will of the people. They aren’t activist.  They’re just fair-minded, like, I guess “Fair and Balanced” Fox News.  And on that same front, I note that Republicans of Mr. Hatch’s ilk are aghast at the news of the defection of Arlen Specter. They worry that the President will have no checks against his obvious surge towards socialism.  Think of that. Republicans concerned about checks and balances. Wow! What a concept.

And did anyone else catch the latest Bill Moyers Journal?  Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official under his holiness Ronald Reagan, argued strongly, even passionately, that president Obama should pardon the former Prez and his creepy Veep of committing crimes, e.g., torture. Fein argued previously that Congress needed to impeach the President (Shrub that is). He believes now that we cannot, must not, simply sweep their crimes under the carpet and move on. He argues that those crimes will then become a national legacy that will come back to haunt us. It seems clear that Bush, Cheney and the “Principals Group” discussed and then explicitly ordered illegal acts to be committed by public officials. Those principals—all of them—need to be held to account.  He argues that we need a special, independent counsel and committee to pursue an investigation of their crimes and that, like Ford’s pardon of Nixon, we can avoid some of the nastiness of a finding of illegality through the pardons. But the pardons, he insists, include an explicit acknowledgement that crimes were committed by our former republican leaders. That’s key.  That is how we can move on to the important issues now facing our troubled land.

And elsewhere, it seems that Sarah the Impaler has joined the ranks of the Twitterati. Yep, it’s true. Sarah now tweets for the record. Seems appropriate somehow. I mean where’s the one place in the universe where you don’t need to know anything, and spelling is optional. So, gal, welcome to Twitterland where Twits abound, and when you’re driving on that bridge to nowhere, be sure to watch out for stray whales. You never know when one of them might want revenge.

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