I am not a violent woman. But if I see House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on
TV one more time I could get violently ill. Of all the whining,
sniveling carrying on - and I'm paraphrasing her excuses - she was lied
to, she didn't know or when they briefed her they left the torture
stuff out. And my favorite, she must not have been listening when they
mentioned torture.
The election of Barack Obama to the presidency may have caused some
Democratic members of Congress to think that the constitutional
questions raised by the executive excesses of the Bush-Cheney era had
been resolved, just it may have cause some Republicans members of
Congress to start thinking about executive accountability.
But this personality-defined approach our battered system of checks
and balances is a throwback to the days of powerful monarches, when the
people of a country waited for the day when a bad king was replaced by
a good king.
President Obama, on his first day in office, can make a number of
changes that will mark a clean break with the Bush presidency. He can,
and should, issue an executive order revoking any prior order that
permits detainee mistreatment by any government agency. He should begin
the process of closing Guantánamo, and he should submit to Congress a
bill to end the use of military commissions, at least as presently
constituted.
How quickly can a motivated legislative chamber impeach a scoundrel?
Very quickly, indeed.
The Illinois House of Representatives, acting just hours after the
chamber's investigative committee recommended action against
scandal-plagued Governor Rod Blagojevich, voted 114-1 Friday morning in
favor of impeachment of the man who allegedly hung a "for sale" sign on
the Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama.
Seattle artist
Deborah Lawrence says she is crestfallen that the ornament she was
commissioned to design for the White House Christmas tree will not be
displayed. But then again, she always suspected the "ornament might not
be met with full enthusiasm."
