The Lantern Brigade: Liars, Traitors, and Thieves! Oh my!

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Liars, Traitors, and Thieves! Oh my!

The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
—U.S. Constitution

Religion throughout history has been exploited by liars, traitors and thieves to justify lies, treason and theft.

Bush has wrapped up all three under a single cover: a dictatorship in turn rationalized by a "War on Terror" which Bush alone defines; Bush alone takes his orders from God —not Congress. What a convenient, circular rationalization for a would be dictator! Bush's dictatorship, therefore, is not only above the law, it is THE law.

All this has a very, very familiar ring to it.

Charles I of England made the same argument in a dispute with Parliament that erupted into the English Civil War. Parliament had challenged his attempts to augment his own power. He was also opposed by Puritans —hostile to his religious policies. Incidentally, it was the Puritans, ancestors to today's "religious right", who waged the first "War on Christmas". Charles was defeated in the Civil War; he was arrested, tried, convicted and ultimately, executed for high treason

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it!
—Georges Santayana

George W. Bush has committed high treason in the United States and he has done so for precisely the same reason: he considers himself above the law.

The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!
—George W. Bush

Every guilty action that Bush has engaged in follows inexorably from that statement —arguably treasonous in and of itself. From Article III of the U.S. Constitution:

Section 3.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

As the Constitution embodies the very sovereingty of the "United States", Bush, to the extent that he has deliberately subverted the Constitution, is guilty of treason, prima facie.

Clearly, Bush has gotten carried away in his delusions of grandeur. But one still holds out hope that Congress will reassert a separation of powers established by the very document eschewed by Bush so vociferously in both word and deed: