July 4, 1774

(Associated Press)

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States 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 heth shown, 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.Continued...

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

So Saith The Declaratioin of Independence

Published on Sunday, July 1, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

‘It is Their Right, It is Their Duty, To Throw Off Such Government ‘
by Caroline Arnold

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.

– Declaration of Independence, 1776

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

The Peoples' Impeachment and The Declaration of Independence

Published on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 by The Progressive

Impeachment by the People
by Howard Zinn

Courage is in short supply in Washington, D.C. The realities of the Iraq War cry out for the overthrow of a government that is criminally responsible for death, mutilation, torture, humiliation, chaos. But all we hear in the nation’s capital, which is the source of those catastrophes, is a whimper from the Democratic Party, muttering and nattering about “unity” and “bipartisanship,” in a situation that calls for bold action to immediately reverse the present course.

These are the Democrats who were brought to power in November by an electorate fed up with the war, furious at the Bush Administration, and counting on the new majority in Congress to represent the voters. But if sanity is to be restored in our national policies, it can only come about by a great popular upheaval, pushing both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will.

The Declaration of Independence, revered as a document but ignored as a guide to action, needs to be read from pulpits and podiums, on street corners and community radio stations throughout the nation. Its words, forgotten for over two centuries, need to become a call to action for the first time since it was read aloud to crowds in the early excited days of the American Revolution:

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government.”

The “ends” referred to in the Declaration are the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” True, no government in the history of the nation has been faithful to those ends. Favors for the rich, neglect of the poor, massive violence in the interest of continental and world expansion—that is the persistent record of our government.

Still, there seems to be a special viciousness that accompanies the current assault on human rights, in this country and in the world. We have had repressive governments before, but none has legislated the end of habeas corpus, nor openly supported torture, nor declared the possibility of war without end. No government has so casually ignored the will of the people, affirmed the right of the President to ignore the Constitution, even to set aside laws passed by Congress.

The time is right, then, for a national campaign calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Representative John Conyers, who held extensive hearings and introduced an impeachment resolution when the Republicans controlled Congress, is now head of the House Judiciary Committee and in a position to fight for such a resolution. He has apparently been silenced by his Democratic colleagues who throw out as nuggets of wisdom the usual political palaver about “realism” (while ignoring the realities staring them in the face) and politics being “the art of the possible” (while setting limits on what is possible).

I know I’m not the first to talk about impeachment. Indeed, judging by the public opinion polls, there are millions of Americans, indeed a majority of those polled, who declare themselves in favor if it is shown that the President lied us into war (a fact that is not debatable). There are at least a half-dozen books out on impeachment, and it’s been argued for eloquently by some of our finest journalists, John Nichols and Lewis Lapham among them. Indeed, an actual “indictment” has been drawn up by a former federal prosecutor, Elizabeth de la Vega, in a new book called United States v. George W. Bush et al, making a case, in devastating detail, to a fictional grand jury.

There is a logical next step in this development of an impeachment movement: the convening of “people’s impeachment hearings” all over the country. This is especially important given the timidity of the Democratic Party. Such hearings would bypass Congress, which is not representing the will of the people, and would constitute an inspiring example of grassroots democracy.

These hearings would be the contemporary equivalents of the unofficial gatherings that marked the resistance to the British Crown in the years leading up to the American Revolution. The story of the American Revolution is usually built around Lexington and Concord, around the battles and the Founding Fathers. What is forgotten is that the American colonists, unable to count on redress of their grievances from the official bodies of government, took matters into their own hands, even before the first battles of the Revolutionary War.

In 1772, town meetings in Massachusetts began setting up Committees of Correspondence, and the following year, such a committee was set up in Virginia. The first Continental Congress, beginning to meet in 1774, was a recognition that an extralegal body was necessary to represent the interests of the people. In 1774 and 1775, all through the colonies, parallel institutions were set up outside the official governmental bodies.

Throughout the nation’s history, the failure of government to deliver justice has led to the establishment of grassroots organizations, often ad hoc, dissolving after their purpose was fulfilled. For instance, after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, knowing that the national government could not be counted on to repeal the act, black and white anti-slavery groups organized to nullify the law by acts of civil disobedience. They held meetings, made plans, and set about rescuing escaped slaves who were in danger of being returned to their masters.
In the desperate economic conditions of 1933 and 1934, before the Roosevelt Administration was doing anything to help people in distress, local groups were formed all over the country to demand government action. Unemployed Councils came into being, tenants’ groups fought evictions, and hundreds of thousands of people in the country formed self-help organizations to exchange goods and services and enable people to survive.

More recently, we recall the peace groups of the 1980s, which sprang up in hundreds of communities all over the country, and provoked city councils and state legislatures to pass resolutions in favor of a freeze on nuclear weapons. And local organizations have succeeded in getting more than 400 city councils to take a stand against the Patriot Act.

Impeachment hearings all over the country could excite and energize the peace movement. They would make headlines, and could push reluctant members of Congress in both parties to do what the Constitution provides for and what the present circumstances demand: the impeachment and removal from office of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Simply raising the issue in hundreds of communities and Congressional districts would have a healthy effect, and would be a sign that democracy, despite all attempts to destroy it in this era of war, is still alive.
Howard Zinn is the author, most recently, of “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.” For information on how to get involved in the impeachment effort, go to www.afterdowningstreet.org.

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

An Open Letter To Congress

This week will go down in history, for a number of reasons. Mainly, it will be seen, in retorspect, as the week that determined whether or not our political system will work or if, we, the people, must step in and make it work.

This week will mark the first time that any Congress has said or done anything official about the debacle in Iraq since October, 2002, when another Congress voted to give this president authority to wage war, as a last resort, which he then misused and abused. The only official action of Congress, since then, has been to keep authorizing one war supplemental after another with no real oversight, resulting in a depleted treasury, huge debt, as far as the eye can see, war-profiteering, eye-popping mismanagement and fraud, run amok.

Since that fateful vote in 2002, much has happened and much has changed. Just to recap a little:

• Let us recall, while Bush was making public statements that war would be a last resort, the decision to go to war had long since been made. (Ref.; the Downing Street Minutes, Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke, The Price of Loyalty, Paul O'Neil with Ron Suskind, just to name a few sources) Intelligence was being fixed around the intention to invade Iraq. U.N. Arms inspectors were allowed into Iraq (though Bush has stated on three different occasions that they were not) and were getting some cooperation, before they had to leave or get their butts blown off by "shock and awe." Furthermore, we have it on good authority (Paul O'Neil) that regime change in Iraq was on the table in the first NSC meeting in February, 2001, long before 9/11/01.
• A plan for re-drawing of the middle-east and surrounding areas, to favor U.S. corporate interests were included in a document put out by PNAC and shopped to President Bill Clinton. He turned it down.
• The whole world now knows that the case for war was built on deception of a particularly egregious sort. The lies that members of this administration told the American people were specifically designed to do two things: 1) T0 cause fear in an already vulnerable population 2) To stir the hateful desire for vengeance in those so prone and, what's worse, against a people who had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.. Visions of mushroom clouds, rising over American cities, were painted, along with fairy tales told about Iraqi drones spraying the eastern seaboard with one plague or the other. Dick Cheney convinced an astonishingly huge number of Americans that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were in cahoots; about as likely as Pat Robertson and Madonna teaming up for a music video.
• This administration has brought out so many whistle blowers, they have had to form their own support group. We should get to hear from some of these people before Mr. Bush gets one more life or dime for his war, other than the monies necessary to keep the troops, already there, from being the last man or woman to die for a lie. (Don't make the error in thinking that the debacle in Iraq was a mistake. A mistake is something I make regularly while balancing my checkbook. What has transpired under this administration is far more serious than a mistake and everyone with a grain of sense knows it.)
• There are documented cases of wide-spread war-profiteering, fraud and abuse in Iraq, not to mention billions in tax-payers' money simply lost.
• This administration, it is clear, has deceived this nation into the mother of all war crimes, a war of aggression, which has led to crimes against humanity; torture, extraordinary renditions, rape, religious and sexual humiliation, just to name a few horrors, committed in our name and with our blood and treasure.
• This administration has cost this country in ways that cannot be assessed in dollars and cents; the blood of our young people in uniform as well as civil service employees and contract workers. Many thousands have suffered life-altering physical injuries and thousands will never be the same in a psycho-emotional sense. Its actions have alienated friends and cost us our credibility the world over, making Americans less safe at home and abroad.
• What moral authority we enjoyed before the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq is now gone. It may take generations to regain it, if ever.
• A very unique American City was left to literally drown by this administration and very little has been done to restore it. What has been done, once again, involves total incompetence or out-right callousness and disaster profiteering.
• Our regular military and National Guard are stretched to the breaking point, families are disintegrating as a result of long and repeated deployments, and no one has ever been given a reasonable explanation, though we have been given a litany of false excuses.

These are but a few of the revelations and happenings since this insane war began.

So, we, the people, ask you, our elected officials of a new Congress and a new majority, what are you going to do about it?

Last November, we voted for change. Need we remind you that you work for us?

We have waited patiently through the holidays, the swearing in of the newly elected Congress and, now, the SOTUS. We have waited long enough.

Now is the time. There will be no other.

You are being tested by the bullies in the administration, with this perfectly useless surge, escalation, augmentation, whatever the buzzword of the day is. If you allow this foolishness to go forward, you are signalling the White House that you will do nothing of any consequence if the escalation becomes an expansion, which could easily lead to WWIII, the nuclear edition.

Are you paying attention to the Libby trial? You should be. We are.

There are criminals in the White House.

Do you understand that we are facing a national, constitutional crisis unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes, including Watergate? Are you going to accept your responsibility, as members of the Legislative Branch, and carry out your duty of holding the Executive accountable for their actions? We ask because we know that this nation, this union, cannot surive more forgiveness without accountability. Not this time. Too much harm has been done.

That is what we elected you to do. We acted, in historic numbers, in a Democratic, legal way to stop the insanity. It appears that we are going to have to demand, now, that the people we voted for, to have the courage of our convictions, as the administration has not heard us.

Now, you must act, or we will, for the good of our country and our progeny. We will have no choice, if we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in a country, even vaguely resembling the country of our youth.

We pray you, our public servants and fellow citizens, do our bidding with all due haste and wisdom. Our nation is in peril. We will come to its aid if we must.

Time has run out.