Author: Don

Nancy “Impeachment is off the table” Pelosi’s feelings on the subject aside, the “I” word has gained a lot of traction lately, what with at last count 15 congressfolk signed on in support of an impeachment bill, Bush’s poll numbers going down faster than the power grid in Baghdad on a hot day, and lots of republicans trying to pretend they’re not that kind of Republican, the kind that blindly follows the dictates of King George. The Gonzales mess, the refusals to appear before congress or enforce congressional subpoenas, and the utter failure of the more-of-the-same “surge” are further helping to sway even the blindest of the blind away from BushCo in spite of its massive propaganda machine and its army of flunkie-pundits.

Within the blogosphere, impeachment talk has been all the rage lately, too. Most on the left argue (quite rightly, in my opinion) that impeachment has become a necessity at this point, that it’s the only way to save our Constitution from further abuses, or simply that it’s necessary for America to say to the the world via this action, “We’re back, see? We’re not going to take this kind of shit from our own leaders anymore. Fool me once, shame on… uh … fool me… can’t get fooled again!”

But scariest argument for kicking out the neandro-cons, one which in a sane America, under any other administration at least in my lifetime, could be written off as nutty conspiracy-theory rambling, is this one: If we don’t impeach them now, we might not be able to later. Into the open wound of our loss of habeus corpus rights, Bush and his handlers have recently poured the salt of seizure of property and the putrid lemon juice of impending martial law, all subject only to the whim of the chief executive.

Thinking of joining a peaceful war protest? Bush can, should he desire, declare you an enemy combatant and have you arrested, dragged away to an undisclosed location, imprisoned indefinitely without charges, and waterboarded for fun.

Legally.

Thinking of supporting a charity that tries to arrange for food and medical relief to reach Iraqi civilians? Careful, because The Decider can Decide that you’re providing material aid to Al Qaeda (a group whose numbers have apparently expanded of late to include every single Iraqi), and take away your house, your car, your savings, even that rare comic book that for some reason your mother didn’t get around to throwing away when you were a kid.

Legally.

And what if we’re struck by some catastrophic event sometime between now and January 20, 2009? A terror attack, a hurricane, an earthquake? Have no fear, Bush is here! For our safety and protection, he’s given himself the right to throw out checks and balances (what few we have left), set aside the democratic process (which the Neandros never really understood anyway), and transform our country into a dictatorship overnight.

Legally.

Ernest Partridge over at The Crisis Papers wrote an essay last week called “A Republic, If We Can Keep It“, that summarizes the danger quite well. He argues that with signs pointing to massive Repub losses in ’08, these guys can’t afford not to go to extreme measures to stay in power – because if they don’t, there’s a vague shot that they could actually be held accountable for their actions, and hey, our prisons are crowded enough already.

I have a small problem with this part of his analysis, though. Why should republicans fear that the Dems – even given control of two full branches of government – would pursue real legal action against these lying, war-mongering, murdering-by-proxy Constitution-shredders? What in their experience over the last seven years has happened to suggest they’ll be subjected to anything worse than a slap on the wrist en route to their cushy jobs at think tanks and Saudi-supported oil concerns? Maybe a stern talking-to before they go off to host their own liberal-bashing radio shows?

The only thing Bush (et al) have been totally, consistently right about – hell, pretty much the only thing they’ve been close to accurate on, period – is that when push comes to shove, the democrats will keep pushing weakly against right-wing shoving.

Contrary to the information that was available at the time of my posting earlier this week about the VT shooter, it turns out that the guy did, in fact, have a history that should have barred him from being able to purchase guns. In 2005, a judge ruled him mentally ill and a danger to himself. In spite of this, he was able to walk into a gun shop and purchase a 9mm pistol, and order another online.

So it seems that in this particular case, a simple background check should have raised red flags. A few moderate, sane gun laws – or perhaps merely the enforcement of existing statutes – could very likely have saved over thirty lives.

Yet still the NRA would have us believe that .50 caliber sniper rifles are perfectly valid purchases for hunting or home defense.

My favorite post and follow-up discussion (with good points made by both sides, highlighting what a difficult topic this is to deal with) on the subject so far is from Elayne Boosler over at HuffPo – “We are getting tired of prying your guns out of your cold, dead hands”.

Oh, and in my list of People Who Need to Shut Up about VA Tech in the last post, I missed the obvious: The Jack “Virginia Tech is Bill Gates’ Fault” Thompsons and the Dr. “How The Hell Did I Get a Doctorate” Phil who lay the blame squarely on video games (despite the fact that apparently Cho had no violent games on his PC and apparently hadn’t played them in years). I also missed the news of the Scientologists who are swooping in to prey on the grieving students, and the debate on good ‘ol FUlly Unbalanced Fox News (beacon of reason that it is) over whether Cho was possessed by Satan.

Incidentally, while at a wake yesterday I met a guy who’s got a daughter attending V-Tech who knew at least one of the victims and coached the child of one of the teachers who was killed. He seemed a little shaken just from talking about it, even though he knew his own daughter was unhurt. To have any sort of personal stake in an event like this must be stressful and nerve-wracking in the extreme.

(Of course, shortly after this conversation I got to experience some minor stress and wracking of nerves myself when my youngest daughter fell face-first on the glass ice cream bowl she was carrying and we had to take her in to get a bone-deep gash over her eye sewn up. Yeah, eight stitches on an eyebrow is a far cry from wondering if your child is alive, but I’ve been fortunate in that for the most part my life has been boring enough that a nasty cut is what passes for a crisis.)

Traditionally, in my infrequent posts here, I try to come up with a title for each post that is, depending on one’s taste in humor, either clever and witty or pathetic and obvious. The goal is to elicit either a chuckle or a groan… I consider either to be a victory.

But as I sit here contemplating what to say about Monday’s bloodbath at Virginia Tech, I just can’t seem to force the Pun Machine (an apparatus to which, I’m convinced, at least a full 2/3 of my mental capacity is dedicated) to crank up and churn out anything suitable. There’s just nothing pun-worthy about the situation.

The gun advocates and the gun control folks were out in droves before the bodies were even counted, pointing blaming fingers at one another while ignoring the fact that the real culprit here was a sick, sick person who decided that his own lack of personal fulfillment was justification for the taking of innocent lives, and decided to handle the work himself rather than the more acceptable method (i.e. achieving high office and then sending other people off to fight an unnecessary war – yes, it’s harsh, but it’s true, and as one blogger pointed out, Iraq suffers two Virginia Techs a day on average.)

The gun control crowd (which I suppose I fall into, in that I favor sane and reasonable controls on who can stop at Wal-mart to pick out a shiny new fully-automatic killing machine loaded with armor-piercing rounds) was quick to assert that America’s gun culture is at fault for this shooting, but I’m not convinced that’s the case in this particular instance. What’s been revealed about the shooter doesn’t, as yet, indicate that he had any history of being a gun nut. In fact, at least one of the firearms he carried was purchased just a few weeks ago. The guy apparently had no criminal history or any other red flags on his record that would have kept him from legally purchasing a weapon even in a state with much stronger gun control laws than Virginia’s.

On the other side, the NRA fans are chiming in with claims that more guns are the solution. Had other students or faculty been armed, they say – and correctly, in my opinion – someone likely would have fired back and stopped the shooting spree earlier on, and even the almost inevitable crossfire and ricochet casualties from the ensuing shoot-out would probably have left fewer dead in its wake than the slaughter on Monday did. The fundamental problem with the philosophy of fighting crime by making firearms ubiquitous is that while it may be possible to nip the occasional mass murder in the bud, the overall body count, I’m convinced, wouldn’t decrease. Instead, the killing would be broken off into more manageable, less news-worthy, bite-sized chunks of powder-burned single- or double-murder goodness. Heat-of-the-moment, crime-of-passion shootings just don’t happen if you need to run home to fetch the pistol in your nightstand, but I wouldn’t want to be the guy assigned to give a Glock-toting co-worker his annual review while he’s fondling his holstered faux penis.

So, having heard from the left and the right (and finding myself in less than total agreement with both sides), I turn now to the fringe elements: the folks who assumed without any factual basis that the attack was carried out by muslim extremists, or that the teaching of evolution is to blame. Those two should be given about as much credence as conspiracy theories that the Busheviks planned this massacre to draw attention away from their current problems, or the idea that dry cleaning chemicals are the real culprit.

(Side note: Yes, I know I said I’d write something for the Blog Against Theocracy weekend, and yes, I know it didn’t happen. So let me use this space to concisely summarize what I would have written: Theocracy = Bad. Separation of Church and State = Good. Overzealous Fanatics = Danger, Will Robinson!)

A number of successful (read: people have heard of them, unlike this blog!) bloggers are teaming up on Easter weekend for an effort they call the Blog Against Theocracy in support of the constitutional principal of separation of church and state. If I’m not distracted by shiny objects all weekend, I’ll try to cobble together a few thoughts on the subject and post them.

PM Carpenter’s blog today deals with John McCain’s continued progress in transitioning himself from our reality into a world where the streets of Baghdad are filled with faeries and unicorns dancing around maypoles. If I were the sort who regularly chose some sort of “quote of the week”, this week’s award would almost certainly go to the title of his latest entry: “But Jesus Loves the Boneheads, Too”!