Welcome to the 18th Century

When I Googled Thank You Keith Olbermann on Sept. 13th, all I wanted to do was add my Thank You to someone else's list. But nothing came up, so here we are. I didn't want set another table for for internet food fights .... there's plenty of places for that. I didn't want to have a place for my personal stuff ..... I already had that ..... Colorado Bob. I didn't want a fan site where folks discuss Olbermann's ties. I just wanted a public forum where support for what Keith was saying could be seen, and added to. I want everyone to write the network .... that's extremely important. The addresses are in the column on the right. But I also want people to be able to see that support. This Prisoner Detainee Bill that Bush buffaloed through congress is just what Keith said it is. And I'm going to break my rule and write about it here. I believe the Jihadies are a crazy, and extremely dangerous, and we must confront them. But tearing up the Constitution isn't going to win this struggle. What's going to win the struggle is for our country to be smart, something we seem to be running low on these days. The modern Republican Party has adopted : ODERINT DUM MET UANT, "let them hate us, as long as they fear us." as their way forward. You know who said that ? ...... Caligula Now I'm a great admirer of the Romans, but things didn't work out real well for the " Viper of the Roman People " The Democratic Party is working on a position paper, and we hope to see it soon .... all 6,000 pages of it. My first ancestor to come to the New World landed in 1628. I know a little about our history, and why we have the system we have. Our system was designed to protect innocent people from being screwed over by powerful people. Our system was designed by people of the 18th century who knew that being human and the exercise of power are two things we always have to watch .... forever. It's just the way humans are. When Franklin left the Constitutional Convention in 1789, a woman is said to have stopped him and asked . " What kind of government have you given us Mr. Franklin ? " His reply was , " A Republic madam , if you can keep it. " So, when I saw this this morning at Juan Cole's site I was compelled to do a little writing. ' Professor Cole: You barely scratched the surface on the unconstitutionality of the so-called terror legislation. Beyond repealing habeas corpus, another grotesque violation of the Constitution is implicated in that legislation. The Constitution specifically forbids the passage of a “ bill of attainder.” In the old days, when kings and others were not certain they get a judge or jury to convict someone of a crime, they would simply declare them guilty (attainted) and imprison, torture and/or execute them. When Parliaments did this they passed a " bill of attainder ” declaring the person guilty of a crime. What this recent piece of legislation has done is to declare a whole class of persons, “ unlawful enemy combatants, ” to be criminals, subject to punishment -- imprisonment without trial and torture -- at the discretion of the president. By the way, this does not exclude American citizens. That's Ed Fury folks I like I said, " Welcome to the 18th Century" ADD YOUR " ATTA BOYS " RIGHT IN HERE :