Former U.S. House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (R) of Texas, is scheduled to stand trial in Austin, Texas. The charge states he illegally sent $190,000 in corporate money through the RNC (Republican National Committee) to help elect GOP Texas legislative candidates in 2002.
Dear Sen. Cornyn,
In your reply to my petition regarding the Citizen's United case, you said:
"I agree with the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a law that violates the intent of the First Amendment, which reads: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the Freedom of Speech, or of the Press."
Put aside the finger pointing. Let's look to a permanent solution to British Petroleum's catastrophe and others which will surely follow if the status quo prevails. The heart of the problem is not difficult to grasp, and the solution rests with the voters.
Put a John Wingnut in a room with 6 doors. Every door leads back into the same room, paired to another of the other 5 doors. As John Wingnut approaches door #5, it dawns on him that the remaining two doors may be no more liberating than the previous ones. His anger and frustration are now building to high levels, but, doors 5 and 6 are tried, nonetheless. Now, John Wingnut is going crazy and is racking his brain for any other option. He wants out. All doors lead back to the same room. John Wingnut now so hates this room, he will destroy it to get himself free of it.
In a democracy, is there such a thing as wise voting? And if there were, wouldn't a majority of voters vote accordingly?
The answers are, Yes and No, respectively. Here's why.
Congressperson after Congressperson can be heard today on C-Span's coverage of Committee hearings confessing to knowing nothing about managing a 'too big to fail' financial institution, or NASA, or a local health care clinic. So, why are they in charge of spending trillions of our dollars on these and myriad of other activities? Is there not a better way of allocating tax payer dollars than to rely upon the managers of lobbying corporations, whose obvious intent is to dig their fingers ever deeper into the pockets of tax payers?
Would you teach your children to make up their own minds about political party and candidates? Or, would you insure their politics were the same as yours? Parenting politics should be a fascinating topic, but, it is under researched. Scholastic Magazine sponsored an election conducted by school age kids, grades 1 - 12, on the presidential races. Obama 54% to McCain's 39% if I recall their interview on TV this morning, correctly. What is interesting is how those percentages mirror the adult population polls.
Believe it or not, in a barely covered announcement made on October 5, which I just ran across, a Constitutional Convention will commence on October 19. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito among others will preside. 23 proposed amendments and changes to the U.S. Constitution are on the agenda for debate.
She was 9 years old. Abducted from her bed in the middle of the night by a pedophile with a record of such crimes, she was terrorized, tied up with speaker wire, sexually molested and tortured, and suffocated. The perpetrator then discarded her body like garbage, used up, and no longer of any use to him. Jessica Lunsford is no longer with us.
We as Americans should never forget this young girl's name or, the terror and horror she experienced in her last remaining hours with us, her society, charged with her protection and care. America failed this innocent young girl, and many, many thousands of other boys and girls, women and men, who are subjected to similar kinds of terror, torture, humiliation, degradation, and too often death, at the hands of a society that profits in the billions of dollars each year from the exploitation of desire and want.
She was born much as a child is born, bloodied, loved, cut from her bonds, but dependent. Her birth came with a hope, a vision, and a promise, marked so eloquently in her Declaration of Independence, "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."
As the Declaration state in the very next sentences, as if to anticipate the loathsome state of government without guidance or structure, and freedom without responsibility:
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.
