The People’s Champions

Crimes have been committed in the last eight years. War crimes. Treason. Our government stripping our rights and spying on us. Torture. These crimes have been committed in all of our names. We have tried our best to publicize these crimes on the internet, hoping the Corporate Media would brig them to full light for the nation to address. As is being currently illustrated by McClellan’s book and by the Pentagon Propaganda scandal…The Press has failed the People.

We have tried to have the crimes redressed through the channels the Constitution has provided, imploring and demanding that our Representatives start the impeachment process. Their incredibly weak efforts at performing their oversight duties have so far produced only a stalled court case over the right of Congress to even subpoena the criminals in the executive branch. Our Representatives have failed us. We have demonstrated peacefully in the streets, our Right to assemble has failed us, as the protest have been ignored by both the press and the government.

The People have been repulsed at every turn in their quest to even have mere investigations into these crimes. The Powers That Be are invested in the status quo to the point of paralysis. With no one to speak for us in the Press (except Olbermann) and only a few brave Congresspeople speaking out…the People need a new way to press their case to punish the criminals, restore their rights ad make sure that a host horrifying precedents are it set by letting these crimes pass into history.

Today I propose that we try something new, to enlist three champions of the People in our quest for Justice.

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Three powerful men, two Nobel Prize winners and a recent candidate for president. Three men who have spoken out for and fought for justice. Three men who have the ear of both the media and the current crop of politicians in Washington….at least more than The People currently seem to have. A trio that has proven they are concerned more about partisan politics or the opinions of the press and pundits.

Will they take time away from their busy schedules and own important causes to champion the People? There is only one way to find out!

Many folks in the blogosphere have given up on impeachment. But few have give up on a desire to see justice done and the rule of law restored. Some are counting on an Obama Justice Department, ad we can all hope for that. But we have also seen a disturbing historical trend for the new administration to forgive or even pardon the sins of it’s predecessors. Especially if it is politically expedient. And rest assured there will be attempts at back room deals.  We cannot allow that to transpire. Nor any pardons or any of the other John Yoo-like maneuvering that they are sure to engage in to escape the consequences of their actions.

There have been extraordinary crimes, we need extraordinary remedies. The weight that these three me can bring to bear would be extraordinary…and might be extraordinary enough to open a crack….to get the ball rolling on the way to unraveling the knots that Bushco has tied in the skeins of justice.

Many bloggers have proposed some sort Truth and Justice Commission to root out the corruption of the last eight years. Whatever model we come up with….and I hope this essay leads to a discussion of what that should be… we need to get it…or at least the foundation of it, in place before the end of the Bush administration. We need to build a pressure for justice that cannot be ignored.

So here is a start. Three obvious champions…a clear goal…and a reasonable amount of brain power and People power to drive it forward. The questions that remain are concerning what form and what methods would be most effective to move this concept forward. The floor is open!

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  1. Photobucket

  2. … of using that petition software you used for the Rachel Maddow project.  It’s a good way to collect names.  And you could post this essay at other blogs to help get folks to sign on.

    All we need is a short, strong statement to sign onto!  (ooh!  Alliteration!)

    Also, exactly what would it be that we are asking these men to do?  I think we need to be very clear about that.

  3. Edwards.

    Some people think that merely being a lawyer who’s actually tried a case or 2 is insufficient qualification.

    Regardless I hope that someone will show a commitment to restoring Justice and the Rule of Law to this country.

  4. And although these three men have recently been champions of the good fight, their records are not spotless (except for Edwards, whose record I don’t know much about).

    On the other hand, they are respected, recognized statesmen who people will listen to and maybe would rally around.

    I think we’re still too attached to the “great man” idea of history.

  5. I have no answers or even thoughts right now.

    I do know that each of these men, particularly, Gore and Edwards, is acutely aware of all that has gone on and does — I receive letters from each of them quite often requesting money for the DSCC, etc.  Each of their letters always spell out the crimes quite clearly.

    So they are completely aware — now, how does the netroots motivate them to go beyond and take action?

    • Edger on June 3, 2008 at 21:07

    At some point there have to be “real” investigations, with teeth, if people are ever to have any faith (for lack of a better term) in those who govern.

    I think the last time this many people lost this much faith there was a Revolutionary War, no?

    “To live outside the law, you must be honest”:

    Freedom and The Law in Dylan’s Lyrics 1964-1966

    A few years ago Elizabeth Brake, in the  Department of Philosophy of the University of Calgary, wrote an essay titled: “To live outside the law, you must be honest”: Freedom and The Law in Dylan’s Lyrics 1964-1966

    It was on the web as an MSWord doc for a long time but seems to be gone now. There was an intersting quote in it that I copied in January 2007 for a comment at TalkLeft…

    Poets, philosophers, and priests have historically presented different ideals of personal freedom. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the relation of freedom to culture preoccupied moral and political philosophers, one school insisting that personal freedom (or autonomy, in one sense of the word) required a certain independence from one’s surrounding culture, the other that such freedom required the internalisation of cultural norms. In this paper, I examine Bob Dylan’s take on the question of how freedom relates to cultural membership – in particular, whether adhering to the norms of a culture – of twentieth century American culture, to be precise – threatens freedom.



    Bob Dylan stands for an ideal of personal freedom, in some sense.



    “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” Why? Outside what law? Is there another law, mandating honesty, outside the law? In this essay, I will trace a philosophical dialectic of freedom in lyrics from four albums of this period – Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde – bringing us finally to this extra-legal imperative of honesty.

    “To Live Outside The Law, You Must Be Honest”, and when enough people do it out of necessity they end up writing documents that begin with words like “We the people…….”

    There was another George who found that out… and the current George has not a clue what he is up against.

    And there is some movement, however small but hopefully not toothless….

    Waxman Calls on Mukasey to Release Bush, Cheney CIA Leak Transcripts

    Jason Leopold, The Public Record, June 03, 2008

    Today, Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey seeking the release of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s FBI interview transcripts related to their roles in the CIA leak case.

    Waxman’s letter was prompted by the publication of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s book “What Happened.”

    In the book, McClellan said Bush authorized the leak to reporters of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s alleged attempt to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger.

    ….

    Btw, did you really mean to say “they are concerned more about”, or did you mean “they are concerned  about more than”?

    The poets know….

    While preachers preach of evil fates

    Teachers teach that knowledge waits

    Can lead to hundred-dollar plates

    Goodness hides behind its gates

    But even the president of the United States

    Sometimes must have to stand naked.

  6. has been responsible to institute some kind of commission since Richard Clarke (before, but i’m being generous)

    any of those brave Congress people you mention should be able to initiate something. they are, in fact, bound by their oath to uphold the Constitution.

    perhaps we could confer with ACLU and also see if we can Jon Turley to join us in ferreting out the basis for such an action

    there are many people/legislatures who have called for a Constitutional Convention. this may be an additional avenue.

  7. “www.ThePeoplesChampions.com” is available as a domain name.  What if they started with a blog?  It could be a good vehicle toward something more substantial.  

    It would immediately get a big following just for curiousity, and all three certainly have a lot to write about government reform.  

    I’d like to see the public get involved in a Justice Commission to give it some grassroots support, and a blog would allow us to do that.  

    But I suppose the wingnuts would troll it unmercifully.

  8. Four media giants — AOL-Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, and Rupert Murdoch’s NewsGroup — control nearly everything we read, see and hear. This growing disconnect with reality is the hallmark of a totalitarian state.

    “Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations. The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda — before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world — lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world.”

    America’s Democratic Collapse

    By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted June 3, 2008.

    In a dramatic speech, Chris Hedges warns that the nation is on the verge of becoming a full-blown corporate state.  

    • Benny on June 3, 2008 at 22:56

    But I think Edwards is already busy with something else:

    Half In Ten

    http://halfinten.org/

    • robodd on June 4, 2008 at 00:09

    is to start a meme that we will not simply put the Bush debacle behind us, like we did with Watergate and Irangate. I think we need to plan this now.  We cannot be the agents of change without knowing what we are changing from and what we are changing to.

    I agree we need powerful voices to make sure this does not happen.

  9. jury nullification by claiming radical worldview.

    I will give zero energy to and seek to educate younger people on the corporate facism embedded and currently being institutionalized in “American” business and personal life.  Remeber corporate power is protected, labor power is nullified.

    The re-education gulag of Orwellian doublespeak known in the business world as Sarbanes-Oxley “compliance” or in it’s more Satanic globalist name “anti-public corruption compliance.

    The medical arm of HIPPA and all the ramifications of everybody has your personal medical data and they can and will use it against you.

    “Left” and “right” political parties are mere focus groups.  The most destructive to America ideas from each of these are weighted, sorted and then only the most Satanic of these make up “the law”.

    Ain’t nobody, but nobody in this administration going to jail.

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