Is it still yours if you don't use it?

America is, according to the documents that made us a country, a Democracy. That means we are a country where the citizens are the final oversite to government. The Declaration of independence is quite blunt about this, it says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Not from God, not from the head of some religion, not from the leaders of a political party, Not from some king, but from the PEOPLE. That would be us.

But what happens when the people give away their right to govern themselves? What happens when the people, rather than taking up their responsibilities as citizens of the United States, allow people to speak for them without a care or concern as to what these people do?

"The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight."
Theodore Roosevelt

It is Un-American to allow the decisions of government to be made without your voice being heard.

If we, as citizens of the US, are not writing our representatives to let them know what we think on a regular basis then we are giving over the most fundamental right we have as Americans.

Up will notice on the sidebar of this blog I have put links to the federal, state and local representatives of our country.

Please think about taking a little time once a week to drop your congressmen and senators a note letting them know how you feel about the issues that your country faces. Let them know how you want them to vote on these issues. You could do this even if you had to give up watching "jeopardy" or your favorite Sit-com, any you will feel better about yourself for doing so.

After all it's the American Way.

Republican Shell Game

How do the Republicans manage to get so many incredibly Un-American bills through congress?

It is simple, all they have to do is keep the spending bills on hold, then at the last minute, roll everything up into one huge bill and insert whatever little things might prove useful to destroying the constitution. Congress has to do something before shutting down at the end of the year, otherwise there is no budget for running the government .

This has happened for the last three years straight.

This year, the last minute bill (called an omnibus) was 3300 pages long. The House and Senate had a  day to read through it.

As you can imagine it was just stuffed full of special interest clauses, and one huge attack on the First Amendment.

Hidden within the pages of the omnibus was a provision that would let Congressional aids examine the tax returns of US citizens.

"The problem with an omnibus, lawmakers and independent analysts agree, is that it creates an opportunity for what Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called "legislative mischief." Others call it pork, and this year's bill is chock full of it. The measure will send taxpayer dollars all over the country, from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to a homeless shelter in Hawaii"

Quoted from the New York Times

Of course we cannot entirely blame congress for this. We elect them and sent them to Washington, and then completely ignore what they do for the next four years.

You get the Government you deserve, people!

If you are not regularly emailing your local, state and Federal representatives, don't be surprised if they turn out to only do what is in their self interest.

Don't Dis' the Beef!

Did you know that if you criticize the quality of your food (especially beef) or the way that cattle are raised, or fed, or say anything that the beef industry doesn't like that you can face criminal and civil charges?

there is a saying in Colorado "Cattle have more rights here than people do" And by in large this is the truth.

All these laws do is make it impossible to make the public aware of the fact that we are being poisoned for the sake of greed.

Here is a list of the statutory food-disparagement laws as enacted in thirteen states. Twelve of these statutes are civil and one is criminal (Colorado).

Information provided by The coalition for Free Speech Foodspeak site

Louisiana
1991
La. Rev. Stat. Ann. 3:4501 (West Supp. 1995)

Idaho
1992
Idaho Code 6-2001 (1995)

Mississippi
1994
Miss. Code Ann. 69-1-253(a) (1995)

Georgia
1994
Ga. Code Ann. 2-16-1 (Supp. 1995)

Colorado
1994
In 1994, the Colorado legislature amended an earlier statute, Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 35-31-101, in such a way as to criminalize "knowingly to make any materially false statement" regarding an agricultural product. Id. (West Supp. 1996).

South Dakota
1994
S.D. Codified Laws Ann. 20-10A-2 (1995)

Texas
1995
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. 96.001-.004 (West 1995)

Florida
1995
Fla. Stat. ch. 865.065 (1994)

Arizona
1995/ 96
Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. 3-113 (Supp. 1995)

Alabama
1996
Ala. Code 6-5-620 (Supp. 1995)

Oklahoma
1995
Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 2, 3011-12 (West Supp. 1996)

Ohio
1996
Ohio Rev. Code Ann. 2307.81 (Anderson 1995 & Supp. 1996)

North Dakota
1997
North Dakota Century Code 32-44-02 (03, 04)

For a general account of the history of the food disparagement laws and the effort behind them, see Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber, Mad Cow U.S.A. (Monroe Maine: Common Courage Press, 1997), pp. 17-24; pp. 137-145.

Democracy in America, Today is That Day

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  We move toward a lofty ideal.  On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

H.L. Mencken

With Plain, Ordinary Understanding

A few words from the Founding Fathers, in this case Jefferson.

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823

"Common sense [is] the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction." --Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812

"Whenever the words of a law will bear two meanings, one of which will give effect to the law, and the other will defeat it, the former must be supposed to have been intended by the Legislature, because they could not intend that meaning, which would defeat their intention, in passing that law; and in a statute, as in a will, the intention of the party is to be sought after." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1808

"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793

"[It is] the people, to whom all authority belongs." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821

"We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named and removable for unfaithful conduct by themselves immediately." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence, 1776

"What government [a nation] can bear depends not on the state of science, however exalted, in a select band of enlightened men, but on the condition of the general mind." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1817

"Our fellow citizens have been led hoodwinked from their principles by a most extraordinary combination of circumstances. But the band is removed, and they now see for themselves." --Thomas Jefferson to John Dickinson, 1801

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them." --Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787

"If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's." --Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 1786

"The mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816

The Baghdad Legacy: Support Corrections to the PATRIOT Act

The Baghdad Legacy: Support Corrections to the PATRIOT Act

Here is something everyone should know about.

The United States is not a "Christian Nation"

At least not according to the people who founded our country.

We find explicit evidence to this effect in the treaty of 1797 between the United States and Tripoli

This treaty was negotiated during the las administration of President George Washington, read aloud to the Fifth Congress of the United States, which passed it unanimously ,  John Adams, our second President, signed it into law.

The interesting section of the treaty is  this:

ARTICLE 11.

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

The full document, along with some interesting articles can be found here

So the people who created this country, who fought against England to found the first nation of free men and women, who understood the tyranny of sectarian religion because they had lived under it, understood that the United States of America was not founded as a Christian State!

The next time some home-grown "Christian" Taliban Dominionist  starts spouting off about America as a "Christian nation", quote this to them.

We went to war to destroy the Taliban government of Afghanistan, why would we want to turn around and have a Taliban government in this country? That is what the Dominionists are you know, a "Christian" based Taliban. Tyranny is tyranny, no matter what religion it claims for its justification.

keeping religion out of government

Since the Dominionists have gathered so much political power there have been numerous challenges to the separation of Church and State, the latest being the So-Called Constitution Restoration Act (which should have been called the Constitution Evisceration Act)

The big argument from the Religious Reactionary  Fundamentalists (our own home-grown Taliban) is that our Founding Fathers didn't REALLY mean that we should keep the agendas of Christian sects out of Government.

Well it just ain't so!

Thanks to the FBI Crime Lab, we now have the unedited version of Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists where he first uses the phrase "Wall of Separation between Church and State". We can see from the original draft that Jefferson's wording was just a bit stronger that in the final published letter.

After Jefferson completed the draft he gave it to the two New England Republican politicians in his Cabinet, Postmaster General Gideon Granger of Connecticut and Attorney General Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts for comment.

In the left margin, next to the deleted section, Jefferson noted that he excised the section to avoid offending "our republican friends in the eastern states" who cherished days of fasting and thanksgiving.

In his New Year's note to Lincoln, Jefferson revealed that he hoped to accomplish two things by replying to the Danbury Baptists. One was to issue a "condemnation of the alliance between church and state." The other reason, as he told Lincoln, that he was looking for an opportunity for "saying why I do not proclaim fastings & thanksgivings, as my predecessors did"

So hear you have it, yet more proof that our Founding Fathers had no intention of allowing any Christian sect to gain political power in the United States.

Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists

The Draft and Recently Discovered Text

To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem & approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful & zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and, in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more & more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" thus building a wall of eternal separation between Church & State. Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from prescribing even those occasional performances of devotion, practiced indeed by the Executive of another nation as the legal head of its church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect,

[Jefferson first wrote: "confining myself therefore to the duties of my station, which are merely temporal, be assured that your religious rights shall never be infringed by any act of mine and that." These lines he crossed out and then wrote: "concurring with"; having crossed out these two words, he wrote: "Adhering to this great act of national legislation in behalf of the rights of conscience"; next he crossed out these words and wrote: "Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience I shall see with friendly dispositions the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced that he has no natural rights in opposition to his social duties."]

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & the Danbury Baptist [your religious] association assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Th Jefferson
Jan. 1. 1802.

The Final Letter, as Sent

To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Th Jefferson
Jan. 1. 1802.

Hearing Voices

There was a time when, if a person started hearing voices, especially if those voices were telling him to hurt people, we would make sure that he got medical help. If he did indeed hurt or kill people on the instruction of the voices he heard in his head, we would lock him up someplace where he would not hurt anyone else.

Now our President is hearing voices telling him to "Strike at" people. Check out one instance when we get to see what goes on in Bush's head:

From Haaretz article `Road map is a life saver for us,' PM Abbas tells Hamas

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."


lest you go "we wouldn't elect a crazy person to the office of President" let me remind you that history is full of examples of countries that allowed totally insane people to take the highest offices of the nation. Germany with Hitler, Cambodia with Pol Pot, At least half the Roman emperors, the list goes on and on.

George W. Bush sure is beginning to look like a paranoid Schizophrenic with profound religious ideation, delusions of grandeur and auditory hallucinations.

Fox in the chicken coup

George W. Bush, in his infinite wisdom has appointed Dr David Hager  to the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. This is a man who is either so stupid or so dishonest that he tells people that birth control pills WORK BY INDUCING ABORTION. He is an M.D. mind you, he should know better.

Appointing Dr. Hager to the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee is like appointing Torquemada to head the Congressional Committee on Religious Freedom, or Jack the Ripper to the Committee on Women's Rights. It is a complete travesty!

How can we expect Dr. Hager to objectively evaluate new drugs involved with women's reproduction when he is operating from a Dominionist religious mania. The man has put aside all scientific inquiry for an apocalyptic wet dream based on the twisted visions of the Dominionists.

HE CANNOT BE TRUSTED WITH THE HEALTH OF AMERICAN WOMEN

The South

Here is something I just ran across, it expresses exactly how I am feeling these days.

The language is pretty colorful so be advised.

With that in mind take a look at how more and more "Northerners" are seeing The South

The South Shall Rise Again (but only if we pay for it)

I wonder if anyone else has noticed that the so-called "family value" Neo-Conservative States have been by-in-large unable or unwilling to support themselves? Well someone noticed, check out the Tax Foundation and see just how the wealth of our nation has been distributed.

The Southern States, where the Dominionist movement hales from, are getting a free ride from the Northern States when it comes to our tax dollars.

Why do we support people who are in fact the backbone of the "Welfare Lifestyle" when the best they can do is produce tobacco? These are the people who are talking about "Moral Issues" and Family Values"!

Did you know that the "Red" States (which are mostly Southern States) have the highest divorce rates in the nation? That they have the highest incest rates, the highest rape rates, the highest child molestation rates, the highest rate of pornography consumption? These are the kind of family values that "Neo-Conservatism" produces. The Red states add the least to the overall good of the nation, take the most from the public trough and are so grateful for what they receive from the Blue States that they want to scrap our Constitution and replace it
with their version of Deuteronomy.

We shouldn't have let them back into the Union. The Red States need to stop talking about "family values", stop trying to gut the Constitution and start pulling their own weight.

So you've never heard of Dominionism?

Doninionism is one of the greatest threats to our freedoms as Americans that anyone has seen since the Civil War, but very few people in the US know anything about it. You owe it to your self and your freedom as a US citizen to find out what these Apocalyptic whack-jobs want to do to our country.

Check out these links.

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

http://www.harpers.org/JesusPlusNothing.html

http://www.alternet.org/story/16167

http://theocracywatch.org

Hermann Goering's last interview

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.



"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."



"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."



"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."