ChuckFreeman.Org

The powerful passionate preacher boomed, “We are majoring in minors! I was perhaps 12 years old, but the force of his exhortation still inhabits a drawer in my sacred tool kit. Majoring in minors. What a compact incisive commentary for the happenings brushed on the Congressional canvass this week.

On Wednesday the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee spent 5 hours grilling a Hall of Fame caliber baseball pitcher and his trainer about 3 alleged shots of illegal substances injected into his butt.

Meanwhile Senator Arlen Specter the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee spent an hour and a half of moral fortitude with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell discussing the New England Patriots and the league’s decision to destroy tapes and notes turned over by the Patriots in an investigation that has become known as “Spygate.”

All the while in small independent theaters, that minor league reality show called life on planet earth features our President and Vice President admitting and shamelessly defending torture, the Senate approving unconstitutional wiretapping with a side of immunity for telecom companies, and the announcement of death penalty – no due process – military tribunal trials for alleged 9-11 conspirators.

The passionate preacher’s warning reverberates, “Majoring in minors!”

Old School Prophet Amos is a reliable educational advisor for our major in the in the college of higher ethics. “Seek good and not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you just as you say he is. Hate evil and love good; establish justice in the courts…let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like and ever flowing stream.” (Amos 5:14,15,24)

Be of good courage bearers of the light. Keep shining and sounding the light. Despot’s deeds ultimately get them expelled. Grandstanders who major in minors eventually flunk out.

The poetic truth intersected by William Channing Gannett will persevere and be granted the Everlasting Diploma.

“It sounds along the ages, soul answering to soul; It kindles on the pages of every Bible scroll; The psalmist heard and sang it, from martyr lips it broke, and prophet tongues outrang it till sleeping nations woke.”

“Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly, as the owner of the world.

As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that’s their democratic model. It’s the false democracy of elites. What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?”

What true patriot, what defender of our constitution, what champion of human dignity delivered these insightful salvos? Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela last September before the United Nations. If you edit the feel good “devil” hyperbole, a truer word has never been uttered.

In soul sickening fashion the well-worn reliable adage, “it takes one to know one” is being born out. The Austin American Statesperson writes; “On Sunday, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez expects to become president for life through a referendum revising his country’s constitution.

That vote is a breathtaking grab for absolute control by an autocrat who already commands most of the levers of power. If the constitutional changes pass, Chavez will have dictatorial power rivaling that of his hero, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Since being elected president in 1998, Chavez has steadily eroded the checks and balances on his office. He has shut down media outlets, taken control of the courts and the legislature, and now controls the petroleum industry.

But that was just a start. The Dec. 2 referendum includes 69 articles that, if passed, would abolish term limits on the presidency, grant the president control of the central bank and give presidential appointees power over locally elected officials.

The changes also allow Chavez to declare a state of emergency in which he can suspend the right to due process of law and freedom of information. The president also would be able use to the military to maintain order.”

These developments are particularly heart breaking because our world needs high profile leaders and heads of state that have earned the moral authority to confront the American Empire. Our imperialism has existed before Shrub and will continue after he slithers out of office. President Chavez had that potential, but he has sold it out for his own narcissistic tyranny.

Jesus warned us of the George W. Chavez’s of the world, “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” A capitalist pit is no better than a socialist pit. A white pit is just as perilous as a black pit. A patriarch pit and a feminist will both wreck your hybrid in the bar ditch. A ditch by any other name is just as foul to the sniffer!

The Tao Te Ching offers an alternate way; The Tao is like a bellows: It is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces;

Hold on to the center.”

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.

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