TRY BUSH, NOT BLAGOJEVICH

The government spent millions of dollars and took their best shot but utterly failed to convict former Illinois Governor Blagojevich of corruption, getting instead a rather silly conviction of lying to the FBI five years ago about whether he personally managed his political fundraising. The jurors indicated that the evidentiary tapes contained a lot of political hot air but there was no smoke and no gun, much less a smoking gun demonstrating guilt.

Instead of wasting more millions on what is now a frivolous case, how about trying another former officeholder, George W. Bush, for initiating his criminal war against Iraq which killed upward of a million innocents, and made casualties or refugees of several million more. Roll the tapes of Bush blatantly lying America into war and the the tapes showing not only thousands of American smoking guns but smoking smart bombs and smoking corpses of the uncountable innocents, and you've got the opposite of the Blagojevich fiasco.

Jury deliberation won't take 14 days to convict; 14 hours should do just fine, if not 14 minutes.

A WORTHY NOMINEE

Some folks in the war party have been calling for the arrest or even the assassination of Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange. They oppose him, his organization and the upcoming release of 15,000 more Afghan war documents because they know those documents will further expose the corruption, failure and outright criminality of our Afghan war.

Don't arrest Assange and don't kill him; instead make him unanimous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Not too many holding that honor have had to risk their freedom and possibly, their life, to achieve the peace we so urgently need and deserve.

Originally published in the Glen Ellyn News, August 18, 2010

DROP IN THE BUCKET

Republican Senators John McCain (AZ), Charles Grassley (IA), Mitch McConnell (KY) and Lindsey Graham (SC) are ill-advised in their effort to amend the Constitution to revise the 14th Amendment (1868), guaranteeing US citizenship to natural born Americans regardless of their parents legal status. That clause in the 14th Amendment overturned the Dred Scott Decision of 1857 in which the US Supreme Court ruled that blacks could not be US citizens.

These Senators allege that hordes of pregnant illegals risk all to enter America "drop a baby", which instantly becomes a US citizen. Regardless of greatly increased Administration resources which have, in part, reduced illegal immigration; and declining crime rates in Arizona which has become the poster state of over reaction to the immigration issue, these Senators stoke the flames of fear and loathing by proposing a radical revision of the 142 year old legacy of Constitutional principle championed by their party when it served the people and not the wealthy corporate elites.

Originally published in the Daily Herald, August 15, 2010

Scratch the surface of reality and their gambit is exposed for the shameless sham it is. Figures for 2008 reveal that of over 4 million live US births, a tad under 8 thousand were attributed to the aforementioned "baby drop'. The gusher that our fearless four rant about turns out to be a mere drop in the bucket.

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