ChuckFreeman.Org

Every morning I would walk down the creek bed on the way to my 4th grade class in Rapid City, South Dakota and Seth would be waiting. He wouldn’t allow me to walk up the hill to our elementary school without harassing and punching me. On a lucky day I could out maneuver or out run Seth.

One wintry am. I rounded the bend and I was welcomed with a barrage of snowballs, which Seth hurled at me with machine gun rapidity. I covered, ducked, and ran, but then something inside shouted, “Enough.” In desperation I fashioned a snowball and instinctively flung it in his direction. To my utter astonishment the icy sphere hit Seth square in the face! He scampered off screaming. Seth never bothered me again.

We are long overdue for a Seth moment in America. Bush/Cheney and their co conspirators are textbook bullies. Those who have studied such abusers will tell you that blowhard talk only emboldens sociopaths like these. Decisive action is the only course that will end the cycle of abuse.

Last week Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey used weaker than Democrat semantic double speak to non answer his true convictions that the President can break the law at this pleasure and that torture is just fine. It looked like for once the blue-faced Dems might actually mount a true defense of our Constitution, laws, and common decency.

Upon further review however, Senators Schumer and Feinstein decided they would vote in favor of Mukasey virtually ensuring his confirmation. Schumer justified his vote saying that he visited with Mukasey and he “flatly told me” if Congress passed a measure outlawing waterboarding, “that the President would have absolutely no legal authority to ignore such a law.” This is about as reassuring as saying Alberto Gonzales has recovered from his Alzheimer testimony syndrome. Senator Feinstein whined, “I believe that Judge Mukasey is the best we will get.”

In the legendary story from the Jewish scriptures, NBA sized Philistine warrior Goliath taunted the Hebrew people day after day while the elected officials and trained military leaders quaked in their armor.

Righteously sick of their cowardice a scrawny shepherd boy named David emerged from the pasture and planted a smooth stone with his sling shot between the giant’s eyes. He then used Goliath’s sword against him. At the sight of this the bully’s cohorts ran for the hills. Congressional Democrats, as the bumper sticker insists, “Lead, Follow, or get the Hell out of the way!”

Even the gently flowing Tao Te Ching instructs, “In action; be aware of the time and the season.” Democracy’s sun is sinking low. There’s a time to fling the snowball. The time is now.

Last week Senator Byron Dorgan outed Kevin Martin. This isn’t another one of those pathetic wide stance, foot tapping bathroom stall shenanigans. Kevin Martin is our current Chair of the Federal Communications Commission. His closeted activities promise to have a much broader impact and crushing foot print.

Mr. Martin is clandestinely proposing to do away with media ownership rules that bar companies from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. Martin’s push to rewrite existing rules were revealed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan during a Commerce Committee hearing last Wednesday. If approved the new rules could take effect as early as this December. But Senator Dorgan vowed to put up a fight and said, “If the chairman intends to do something by the end of the year, then there will be a firestorm of protest and I’m going to be carrying the wood.”

According to Freepress.net -

“The past two decades have witnessed the number of major corporations that dominate television, movies, music, radio, cable, publishing and the Internet dwindle from 50 to less than two dozen, with much of the control concentrated in fewer than 10 massive conglomerates. While enriching investors, these changes have endangered democracy.”

In the radio biz, Clear Channel’s current ownership of 1168 radio stations, represents about 8.5 percent of the free radio market.

The health of our Republic relies on informed citizens with access to a variety of voices and viewpoints. In the propaganda feast that created the “mushroom cloud” of support for our illegal invasion of Iraq, the fourth estate was nothing more than well-manicured groundskeepers for the Bush/Cheney Imperial Mansion. They are slowly waking up to their calling as responsible neighbors rather than administration servants.

Conglomerate Media feeds us the latest gossip on Britney, JLo, and the like, reducing us to consumer junkies rather than noble citizens. The spiritually awakened one will ignore the reptilian brain food and munch on organic ideas that resonate with the substance of Being.

An ancient Zen Master offered this earthy truth. “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Spiritual illumination is not confined to monks, nuns, and monasteries. If it don’t spread to the street it is about escapism or autoerotic religiosity.

I am elated that Senator Dorgan is going to be “carrying the wood” of fiery protest. Last night I went to the FCC website and wrote a short note to Mr. Kevin Martin.

“I am not in favor of relaxing the FCC ownership rules in any way, shape, or form. The radio consolidation is already a blight on our democratic climate.”

I invite you to join the sacred work crew. Chop wood, carry water.

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

Soul Talk – “A Spiritual Feast to Leaven the World Soul”

Fresh Off the Grill, KOOP, 91.7 FM Austin, TX.

2-3 pm. CST, streaming on the web, www.koop.org.

Menu for the Day

Soul Food: “Guardians of the Teaching” Rev. Chuck Freeman, Sacred Chef. Chuck contrasts the responses of the American Episcopal Bishops and the Burmese Tibetan Monks in the face of social crisis. One expanded his heart, the other withered his spirit.

Sanctified Segue: “Pearl Buddhist Meditation” Jumelle

Hearty Fare: Response to the Soul Food. A heartfelt dinner conversation with Zoe Irene VanSandt

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Menu for the Day

Soul Food: “In Due Season” Rev. Chuck Freeman, Sacred Chef. Chuck interacts with a Leonard Pitts column about Tom Cousin’s East Lake, Georgia mixed income apartment complex. He points to the amazing ethical unity of sources as diverse as St. Paul and Johnny Guitar Watson! Read Pitts’ article here – http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/story/237926.html

Sanctified Segue: “Never Too Late” Johnny Guitar Watson

Hearty Fare: Response to the Soul Food. A heartfelt dinner conversation with Paul Sullivan.

 

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