Happy Independence Day!

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

To Get You In the Mood...

Still my favorite version.

Garrett on Change

This was said on the House floor by Representative Scott Garrett last night:

Most of the candidates are speaking about change. Either side of the party is talking about change. But the fundamental question that the voter has to ask: Is the change that they are espousing and bringing about founded on any constitutional principles or are they simply giving us change for change's sake and change that does not have any constitutional powers or rights given to the Federal Government?

I suppose Garrett doesn't believe that the consent of the people is the basis of the legitimate authority of government, as Alexander Hamilton articulated in Federalist 22. The Founders firmly believed this, which is part or the reason they included "to petition the government for a redress of grievances" in the First Amendment.

Redress is defined as "the setting right of what is wrong." Most of America understands we're headed in the wrong direction. Yet when we ask our representatives like Garrett to deal with it, we get form letters with misleading rhetoric. We also see votes out of touch with what we want on matters large and small. Then of course Garrett delivers the mother of all insults to us as constituents: vote flipping at the behest of special interests.

Change. Yeah, we want it. And if representatives like Garrett refuse to budge and work with us as his constituents, elections become the ultimate form of redress. And that is grounded in the Constitution.

The Boss and Media Consolidation

I saw a post over at Blue Jersey about how the latest Bruce Springsteen album, Magic, isn't being played by Clear Channel owned radio stations. I'm one of the many people Clear Channel drove away from regular radio listening due to their poor programing. I tend to listen to streaming music stations on-line or CDs I buy, so I hadn't really noticed. However, when the Number 1 album in the country is not getting any radio play it is a little disturbing.

The folks over at Fox News say it's because Clear Channel has said that Springsteen is too old. The folks at Blue Jersey, and other spots, think it's a repeat of the Dixie Chicks getting blackballed by Clear Channel and other stations after they were critical of the President.

Either reason raises serious questions about media consolidation, and the impact it is and can have in our nation. With the company taking their 1,184 radio stations private, this power to dictate culture and news is now in even fewer hands.

Clear Channel deciding someone is too old to be played, and therefore not allowing them to be heard manipulates the press in a way the Forefathers never imagined. However, because they've done it before, the smart money would be to bet it's politics.

Unlike when the Dixie Chicks exercised their free speech, the nation knows we were lied into war. The actions of the administration and those who mindlessly follow their rhetoric have worn out their welcome. There is no backlash about what Bruce is saying because the vast majority of Americans now know it's the truth.

Now it seems, in an effort to stop a message contradicting the mindless rantings of their Rush "Phony Soldiers" Limbaugh poster child, Clear Channel has quietly banned Bruce. I'm one of the thousands who got up to see The Boss play the Today Show (hence the pics). As I said to a friend, he came out swinging (about a minute in):

As a bonus, The Boss also played one of my favorites with "My Hometown." It was especially moving, and unlikely to be a coincidence, because this was while the Jena 6 were making daily headlines. If you look in the bottom right corner at minute 2:46 you can see my head and eyes. I was singing along, I promise.

Happy 4th, Everybody

If it's been a while, take a read. This is the soul of America.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain 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 forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, 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 Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

The Price of Silence

According to this week's McLaughlin Group over 70,000 of our nation's men and women have been wounded in Iraq. While criticism for the President's handling of the war helped sweep Democrats into power last November, a growing amount of criticism is coming from Republicans. There's also an increase in the verbal intensity of the salvos.

SEN. RICHARD LUGAR (R-IN): I am not confident that President Bush's plan will succeed.

SEN. GEORGE VOINOVICH (R-OH): We have serious concern about the policy of this administration, and that many of us feel you are not listening.

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R-NE): There is no strategy. This is a ping pong game with American lives. We better be damn sure we know what we're doing before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder.

The question of what took so long for such public questioning to come to light needs to be asked. Based on how things have been run in the Senate and the House the last few years, Vice President Dick Cheney provided the most honest answer in a Newsweek interview.

Let's say I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican

To understand the significance of this statement, you have to understand the authoritarian manner (self-righteous, mean-spirited, amoral, manipulative, bullying) in which the House and the Senate have been run over the last few years. Under rule of Tom DeLay and Rick Santorum, loyalty to the Republican leadership was demanded on an absolute basis. Our former Representative Marge Roukema learned this when she was passed over for Chairwomen of the House Financial Services Committee, despite having the most seniority. Rep. Roukema was a moderate, or centrist, who did not go along with the Republican leadership when it went against the values or interests of our District. For that, among many other things, I hold her in the utmost respect.

Congress, as intended by the Founding Fathers, is meant to be a check against the Executive Branch. It is not meant to be an extension of the Oval Office, as has been the case with the submissiveness of those taking the "11th commandment" to heart. When a Representative takes the Oath of Office, it is to the Constitution, not their party. Regardless of what party the President is, Congress bears the responsibility of oversight. My hope is more Republicans will join those who have stepped up demanding the accountability that has been missing since the beginning. Party loyalty should never be placed above a Representative's Constitutional responsibility.

For the 70,000 wounded, and over 3,000 families who have lost loved ones, the price of silence from Capitol Hill the last few years is unacceptably high. The price for party disloyalty will always be far less than the price those who have volunteered to protect our nation will pay when things go horribly wrong and are allowed to continue down that path. It is up to us as a public to ensure our future leaders have the moral fortitude to stand up and say something.