ChuckFreeman.Org

Is waterboarding constitutional Whitehouse asked? “I don’t know what’s involved in the technique,” he responded. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

“Can a president put somebody above the law by authorizing illegal conduct?” Leahy inquired.

“The president doesn’t stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution. It starts with the Constitution,” he replied.

These are a few key answers Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey offered last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The buzz is Mukasey is sure to be confirmed. Brace yourself anew. Our next United States Attorney General will occupy that noble office continuing the policies of torture, illegal warrantless wiretapping, and the President being above our laws and constitution.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy whimpered, “He’s at least answered the questions, which is better than his predecessor.”

We now have a bar so low for the highest law enforcement office in the land that an ant could jump it. Answering the questions. The content of the answers don’t matter. Is there a person reading this that could get a job with this pitiful standard?

I grew up a literal Bible believin’, Bible quotin’, Bible thumpin’, Bible memorizin’ guy.

Some of those teachings still have potent relevance. Jesus exhorted in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Mukasey’s tack is as old as humanity; using weasels words to bypass honesty.

How long will “we the people” allow this administration to blaspheme our sacred covenants and human dignity for imaginary security?
Mukasey, “at least answered the questions.”

Yesterday President Bush lectured Cuba, “You can bring about a future where your leaders answer to you.”

Friends and Fellow citizens, what will your answer be?

He is a “universal symbol of peace and tolerance, a shepherd of the faithful and a keeper of the flame for his people….Americans cannot look to the plight of the religiously oppressed and close our eyes or turn away,”

This is an excerpt from President Bush’s remarks yesterday, where he personally handed the Dalai Lama the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal, our highest civilian honor.

After meeting privately Tuesday with President Bush, The Dalai Lama, brushed off China’s furious reaction to the U.S. celebrations, “That always happens,” he mused, with his liberating laugh.

The president’s attendance at the ceremony marked the most public embrace ever of the Tibetan leader by an American leader. “I will continue to urge the leaders of China to welcome the Dalai Lama to China. They will find this good man to be a man of peace and reconciliation.” Bush pointedly chastised nations where there has been a “stubborn endurance of religious repression” and urged China to relax its policy on Tibet.

President Bush then waxed sappy and self congratulatory. “As a nation, we are humbled to know that a young boy in Tibet –, His Holiness kept a model of the Statue of Liberty at his bedside. Years later, on his first visit to America, he went to Battery Park in New York City so he could see the real thing up close. On his first trip to Washington, he walked through the Jefferson Memorial — a monument to the man whose words launched a revolution that still inspires men and women across the world. Jefferson counted as one of America’s greatest blessings the freedom of worship. It was, he said, “a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government, and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.”

Today, I want to praise President Bush for a historic, weighty and risky use of his office. Other Presidents have played parlor games in offering the Dalai Lama the clout of our superpower.

At the same time I challenge Mr. Bush on his shallow caricature of the Dalai Lama as a quaint spiritual teacher seeking “freedom of worship.”

He is a religious leader in the most noble and integrated lineage of Moses, Gandhi, King, and Mandela; carrying himself with deep dignity, meekly yet firmly insisting, “Let my people go!”

In many ways the Dalai Lama has become to American’s and our government like the plastic Jesus on our collective car dashboard, a figure who is ultimately discounted into oblivion via excessive honor.

Rev. Clinton Lee Scott preached, “It is easier blindly to venerate the saints than to learn the human quality of their sainthood. To worship the wise is much easier than to profit by their wisdom. Grandchildren of those who stoned the prophet sometimes gather up the stones to build the prophet’s monument….It is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision.”

As His Holiness remarked, “that always happens.”

Scott offered this altar call. “Great leaders are honored, not by adulation, but by sharing their insights and values.

America, and President Bush, I’ll see you at the altar.

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“The President shall take the following oath or affirmation…. To the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“The President of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The history of the present would be King of these United States “is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”

He has led us into a war with premeditated and intentional falsehoods, thus undermining the will of the People and the Congress to consent to this course of action.

He has prosecuted and illegal war of aggression in violation of the United Nations charter and Nuremberg Principles of which we are co-founders and signatories.

He has flagrantly and continually violated the writ of Habeas Corpus guaranteed in our Constitution.

He has claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws through the tactic of Presidential signing statements.

He has flaunted the separation of powers over and over through secrecy; refusing to turn over documents requested by the Congress.

He has authorized and persistently practiced “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment amounting to torture of prisoners, wantonly violating the Geneva Conventions.

He has brazenly violated the fourth amendment – “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” by means of warrantless wiretapping and surveillance.

We, therefore, as citizens of the United States of America…”appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these States, solemnly publish and declare” the impeachment of George W. Bush as President of our nation.

Rev. Chuck Freeman