Rod Blagojevich, the beleaguered Governor of Illinois, must be incredibly naive to fail to recognize that warrantless wiretapping and other forms of police state surveillance are accepted methods of control in the Reign of Bush. Does Blagojevich think he is immune from such tactics just because he is an elected official? Silly him.
Does Blagojevich actually expect to be tried in court for alleged crimes and abuse of power? The very fact that he is charged is sufficient reason to strip him of power and oust him from office. Surely he must realize that the archaic notion that one is innocent until proven guilty is clearly out of synch with a government which has redefined justice through bold, visionary creations such as The Patriot Act, The Military Commissions Act and the elimination of Habeus Corpus.
Then there is the issue of buying and selling politicians. Everyone understands that corporations and wealthy power brokers, not government officials, have the exclusive prerogative and privilege of owning politicians. It is not a free market. How could Blagojevich be in the political game and not recognize this basic reality?
Governor Blagojevich must bite the honorable, patriotic bullet and resign from office. He is woefully out of touch with the concepts of justice and democracy enshrined in The Project for a New American Century, which replaced the antiquated US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Sue Bastian, Bend
This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2009.
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This LTE begs the question… What constitutes A Loyal Party Apparatchik?
Let’s examine the record, shall we? In the aftermath of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center a prosecution ensued of the perpetrators. This was the notorious “blind sheik” case. On the prosecution team was one ambitious young prosecutor named Patrick Fitzgerald. But completely unnamed in the courtroom proceedings was an FBI informant named Emad Ali Salem. Salem was crucial to the plot to blow up the WTC tower, and he was both an instigator and a provider of crucial bomb-making material. He was also snitching on the “terrorist cell” on a daily basis to his FBI handler. When the crucial time came and Salem assumed that the FBI sting would occur in the week before the bombing, his FBI handler/supervisor told Salem to let the bombing go ahead. Patrick Fitzgerald was perfectly aware of this as he prepared the case against the blind sheik, and Fitzgerald went along with the government’s decision to whitewash Salem out of the prosecution’s case.
Flash forward to the outing of Valerie Plame by notorious right-wing propagandist Robert Novak in July, 2003. This was an act of pure vendetta against Joseph Wilson for his editorial in the New York Times in early July, 2003 exposing the fraud of the “yellowcake” lie being spread by Dick Cheney. Patrick Fitzgerald was brought on, after a huge brouhaha in the press and among more progressive leaning Democratic Party officials about a prosecutor to find out who had “outted a CIA officer”. The answer was obvious to all of us who paid attention that this travesty sprang from within the White House and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove were deeply implicated. This was obvious by August, 2003. But conveniently for George Bush’s re-election chances, Fitzgerald pushed the prosecution back to after the 2004 elections.
There’s more, but comments are limited… To be continued.
Must of had a good batch of kool-aid today!
Koolaid boy (Ray Duray) …
1) the Nigerian Yellowcake was proved to be in Africa, UK and US intel proved it to be valid. Joe Plame lied. Repeatedly.
2) Karl Rove knew of the Plame Wilson link, but he did not out Plame to Novak. Same with Dick Chenney. So who outted Valerie? Richard Armitage did. Unless you are saying that Mastermind Karl Rove controlled Armitage (via Karl’s Vulcan mind-meld techniques) to leak Plame’s name to Novak.
Waiting for more Progressive BS Pablum that is so easy to debunk…. to be continued.
Is Bastion implying from her alternate reality that Illinois Governor Blagojevich was a victim? Certainly a better case could be made elsewhere for a snarky attack on the soon-to-be-defunct administration’s domestic policy gone wrong. The Illinois state legislature voted almost unanimously to impeach yesterday–a single lone hold out. This letter was probably a weak attempt at some kind of sarcasm–can’t approach irony.