A Review of 2000-2007

You don’t have to be a political science major to notice that things have been changing here in these United States over the last several years. First, there was that highly irregular election in Florida back in 2000 that was finally decided by the Supreme Court. I’d never heard of anything like that happening before, but the guy I was rooting for won so I didn’t make a big stink about it. Then came 9/11/2001 and afterwards a commission report that indicated that for the attacks to have taken place the government would have had to look the other way at an astonishing amount of intelligence. As a result, about a third of Americans now believe that the government was complicit in the attacks and the rest of us believe that the government was simply massively incompetent. (Does either theory make you feel safe?) But I put away my doubts about the 2000 election because it was important that we all pull together.
Then came 2003, when we started a preventative war against Iraq on the grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. This claim turned out not only to be untrue but a deliberate lie because the Downing Street Memo proved that Bush and Blair knew there were no WMD at the time they chartered our course to war. But I figured that Sadaam was a bad guy so that made it okay for us to overthrow him for having WMD whether he had them or not. After all, the President said we should and Congress said okay and the only people who didn’t like the idea were the French. (And since when did we listen to the French anyway?)
Then came 2004 and the revelation that the United States is torturing prisoners of war in violation of the UN Convention Against Torture. Only the “prisoners of war” weren’t really “prisoners of war” they were “enemy combatants” and as such they had no rights that we were bound to respect. This story caused some alarm bells to go off in my head. It smelled like the Dred Scott decision and sounded like doublespeak from Orwell’s 1984. I felt that cold sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach but many of my friends told me that I shouldn’t complain because “the men in those prisons are bad guys.” Yet I couldn’t stop asking, “But aren’t we the good guys? Don’t we keep international law? How can we determine who is a criminal without trials?”
Then came election 2004. At the time, the media reported it as a fair and free election and my guy won again so I was as happy as a lark. However, we now know that there was massive voter fraud in Ohio. On You Tube you can watch the courtroom testimony of the guy who wrote the hacking program for the voting machines. If the House Judiciary Committee’s report is to be believed, Ohio’s twenty electoral votes are rightfully John Kerry’s and they were “improperly” awarded to Bush. He is what we used to call a pretender. That’s why I think he shouldn’t be impeached. Impeaching him would only lend credence to the idea that he is the legitimate President. Besides, who really wants to live in an America run by Dearth Cheney?
Anyway, 2005 rolled in bringing with it Hurricane Katrina and the near destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. As usual, our government raised failure, inefficiency, incompetence, and waste to the level of a high art. There were the two-thousand dollar debit cards, the FEMA trailers that took months to arrive and had to be recalled due to Formaldehyde contamination, and a court ruling that allowed insurance companies to break faith with their policy holders.
Mid-term elections came in 2006 and the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. That’s when the vetoes and the signing statements started coming down from the President. A “signing statement” is a statement of how the President interprets the law. If the term “signing statement” sounds unfamiliar, it is probably because there is no such thing in the Constitution. Nor would we expect to find such in the Constitution, since the Constitution designates that the interpretation of the law is properly the domain of the judicial not the executive branch. In the “signing statement,” Bush found the political equivalent of having one’s cake and eating it, too. He could now sign a bill into law and not have to be bothered by enforcing it. Perhaps he thinks this is beneath him.
This year I have made it a point to stay abreast of the news, and it’s been one wild ride. I’ve seen stories about increased eminent domain abuse. I watched a UF student get tazered for asking too many questions. I’ve read about the domestic use of spy satellites, warrantless wiretaps, and a program called “sneak and peak” which taken together probably ring the death knell for the fourth amendment. I’ve read that we’ve redeployed injured soldiers, “stop lossed” other soldiers (forced them to stay in the military after their contract ended), and that we are employing a mercenary army called Blackwater that answers only to the President and has a tendency to shoot first and ask questions never. A few weeks ago, I saw what could only be described as the pièce de résistance as President Bush got caught lying about Iran and trying to lead us into yet another war.
In light of the fact that we have multiple Constitutional crises and an incipient police state on our hands, wouldn’t now be a good time to start asking substantive questions about the people who are putting themselves forward for this nation’s highest elected office? I don’t want to hear about the candidates’ religious views. Article VI section 3 of the Constitution says, “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” (I can’t prove it by the Constitution, but I suspect Hillary’s hair, voice, and marriage are also irrelevant.) I want to know how the candidates stand on the Constitution. How much power do they believe belongs to the President? Where do they stand on the Bill of Rights? What do they believe about the use of military assets in domestic law enforcement? Where do they stand on torture? Will they restore Habeas Corpus? Will they pledge to observe Constitutional and International law? I wish we had a political climate that allowed for serious examination and discussion of the issues, but I am afraid we’ll still be talking about Rudy’s divorce and Hillary’s marriage right into November 2008.