Elections Have Consequences
by KevinNovember 13th, 2006
A battle is shaping up between Democrats and the White House over the Military Commissions Act, signed into law last month by President George W. Bush.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is expected to take over as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and The (Calif.) Daily Journal reports that Leahy is drafting a bill to undo portions of the new law in an effort to restore habeas corpus rights for enemy combatants.
This is why I stick with the Democrats, despite their numerous faults. They are the only counterweight to the authoritarians that have come to dominate the Republican Party. Leahy understands that you cannot win a war of ideas with indefinite detention and kangaroo courts. Habeas Corpus has been the foundation of freedom for hundreds of years, until the Bush Administration threw it away a few weeks ago. Now Leahy and the Democrats are going to try and win it back.
That’s enough of an agenda for me.
Categories: Legal Issues, Politics, Terrorism, Torture |
“Blue Tide”
I was pleased that the rest of the country went Democratic. The Democrats won back both Houses of Congress and the “tide was blue”.
However, in parts of the South, such as Tennessee, there were mixed results. Tennessee’s moderate Democratic governor won re-election, however, Harold Ford, our Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate lost by a narrow majority.
Bob Corker, the winning Senatorial candidate here in Tennessee did NOT win the city of Chattanooga. However, Hamilton County voted “overwhelmingly” for Corker.
It is ironic, that Bob Corker, a former mayor, did not win the city about which he ballyhooed so much about in his ads. The usual dirty tricks were employed such as running an ad saying that Harold Ford had “Hollywood values” and one ad had an actress in it who asked him to call her on the phone, claiming she met him at a Playboy party. Hey, Ford likes the ladies and a good football game. However, the above republican committee ad was a “low blow” and was renounced even by Corker. The national news said the ad was slated to be removed but it never was around here.
Now that Coker is elected, he’s all dressed up and nowhere to go. The republicans lost their majority.
Kind folks and gentle people I am
PROUD to be a Democrat( capital D) and I approve this message.
I misspelled Corker. Sorry. Oh, I sincerely hope that the Democrats revamp the Patriot Act, so that this wiretapping and kangaroo type court era will end. I remember Nixon’s similar era of dirty tricks and surveillance.
Wars seem to breed this kind of mentality.