Harkin's Petition to Censure

Neither Thersites nor I could tell you how long it's been up there, but Tom Harkin has a petition to Resolve to Censure up on his website. If you're already sure that it's the right and legally responsible thing for the Senate to do, then help yourself and click on over.

In case you're just starting to consider the issue somewhat seriously, here's the text of the petition from Harkin's site.

Dear Senator Harkin:

We, the undersigned, support your principled stand with Senators Russ Feingold and Barbara Boxer in favor of holding President Bush accountable, and we urge you to bring the Resolution of Censure to the floor of the Senate for a vote. The President has brazenly, arrogantly and unapologetically broken the law - the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which prohibits warrantless wiretaps of American citizens. Despite getting caught red-handed, he refuses to stop.

Government must protect Americans' security, and that's why the FISA law allows intelligence services to listen to terrorists' conversations legally - by going to the secret espionage and terrorism court to get a warrant AFTER listening.

We are a nation of laws, not of men. No American is above the law. That most certainly includes the President. If Congress fails to hold him to account through censure, then he will believe that he can continue breaking laws with impunity. This is profoundly dangerous to our democracy.

We admire your courage in standing up to President Bush and saying enough! Now, we urge you to take the next step. We - ordinary Americans deeply concerned for the country we love - ask you to work with your colleagues to support and pass the Resolution of Censure in the Senate.

We really are ostensibly a nation of laws. This President is takin' that to hilt in his less than Clintonian ability to dissemble. He's argued like a lawyer with a loaded shotgun point at the Judge in his refusal to submit his Presidency to its required jurisdiction.

I just finished signing it. Here's my version of the additional comment which you can personalize for the Senator from Iowa.

I've petitioned my own Republican Senators in Ohio and only got a negative response from Sen DeWine. I like him. But he's absolutely in the wrong by supporting this neo-fascist stooge - the worst to hold the Office since the Herbert Hoover.

I can't stomach such blatant disregard for Basic and Undisputed Constitutional guarantees of our privacy as American Citizens.

Please convince your cohorts to initiate George W Bush's immediate Censure so that his following Impeachment in the House will be even easier to ensure.

Thanks Sen Harkin.

PS: While I've not supported your previous Presidential bid, I have (almost) always been grateful for your presence in the United States Congress. (That whole Iraq War vote thing, you understand...)

Can't hurt to remind them what they've done and of the impact which such dicey politics usually can have. I still generally attempt to prop the good when dissin' the bad. As I've said before, no one is completely evil. It's generally decent people who cross those kinds of lines, frequently for reasons which they believe are valuable and worthwhile.

Ignoring our nation's Constitution at every convenient turn is gettin' frighteningly close to glass half full of evil, though. This president really is stooging for something or someone (as a group, presumably.) I've trouble believing he is just as dumb - unintelligent and anti-intellectual - as he so often comes across.

I don't know, I guess ya never know.