Thursday, June 21, 2007
Where Is The Outrage?
Washington, D.C. — The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”Vice President Cheney declared himself out of the jurisdiction of congress and above the law. That's interesting dear. Pass me some salt please. That appears to be the collective response to a drumbeat of stories like these during the tenure of the Bush administration.
As described in a letter from Chairman Waxman to the Vice President, the National Archives protested the Vice President’s position in letters written in June 2006 and August 2006. When these letters were ignored, the National Archives wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to seek a resolution of the impasse. The Vice President’s staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President’s executive order.
The constitution is being continually violated, and we joke about it, say nasty things on blogs about it, and it goes on. Would that the media send a pack of journalists twice the size of the Paris Hilton slow cop car ride episode to the Vice President's office tonight to demand answers.
He would still ignore them because he frankly doesn't give a crap about them, the constitution and the law, but still...
My first political memory was watching 'All The President's Men' in the back of my parent's green pinto at a drive-in theater. It saddened me that my country could have an executive branch breaking the law with disdain, but it was heartening to watch the intrepid young reporters keep digging for the truth, and bring him down.
Of course when I got older, the facts got in the way. The break-in happened in June 1972, the people elected Nixon in a landslide in November, and most papers and tv stations ignored the story for eighteen months.
Since that time we have had journalism swallowed by large businesses, some of these media groups actually have defense contracts and are profiting off of our insane foreign policy. Journalists are no longer working class heroes from the mean city streets, but in many cases prep school students who went to university with the subjects they are covering.
When does this ever end? Fourth amendment is invalid? Our government lies, sends people to backwards countries to be tortured, rigs the justice department with political hacks, thinks Geneva Conventions and Habeas Corpus are quaint notions from the past.
What does give reporters the nerve to focus on John Edwards' haircuts when all these things occur? Just wondering.
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