Two news stories recently caught my eye, not only for what each one told us about the state of the Republic, but even more so, what comparing them tells us about the sorry state of journalism today. In the first story, Chris Wallace of Fox News managed to be so obsequious that it made even George W. Bush uncomfortable to accept the gesture. In the second, a high school age girl took on Karl Rove.

This is now the fourth posting in my "In Concord" series, in which I have been trying to capture the thoughts and reflections that occupy me when I go to the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, a hallowed place that has served as my church for most of the 21^st Century. These postings have come in the order that their subjects arise in a typical visit, contemplating the enemy graves, the battle and fallen Minute Man memorialized there. We now follow the path to the Visitor's Center. After a short while it turns sharply to the right. The road used to fork here and the left fork continues on as a mowed path through the grass past the ruined foundation of Capt. David Brown's farm. I often stop here to contemplate the subject of this posting, but for a while there has been an even more concrete focus to be found further up the path.

In this installment, I tackle the cannons of Concord and what they have to tell us about the right to bear arms.

This is the third in my series of postings capturing my thoughts and reflections from my frequent visits to the Old North Bridge in Concord, the site to which I most often go to pray and meditate these last half dozen years. The course of this series has followed my usual path through the site. In the first, I started where each visit begins and ends, at the graves of the two British soldiers. In the second, I proceeded to the obelisk and contemplated the historic parallels between their mission to Concord and our invasion of Iraq. In this installment we proceed across the bridge to the monument that was the reason for my visit  on September 12, 2001, the first time I came to the site explicitly to pray.

In this installment we visit the prototype for the brave passengers of Flight 93: the Minuteman... Patriot and Unlawful Combatant... Symbol of our freedom...

This is the second of my postings, capturing my thoughts and reflections at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, site of the "shot heard round the world". In the first, I introduced the series with a consideration of the import of the memorial to the two fallen British soldiers. In this installment, I will consider how they came to be there and how those events echo our own time.

I go often to pray and ponder at the North Bridge, walk down the processional aisle between the twin rows of pines, stop to pay my respects at the graves of the two British soldiers and to pray not only for them but for all soldiers who fight and die in foreign lands, for our soldiers who are overseas and for our Republic. My next stop, is the obelisk, a few feet behind me.

This is the first in a series that I plan to post, capturing the thoughts and reflections that I have when I go to one of my favorite and most sacred places, the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. For most of this new millennium, the bridge and its environs has been my church and my retreat, the place I go to pray, to think, to find my balance. It has been such for a number of reasons. First, it was the site of pivotal events which shaped history for the centuries to come, and which resonate with the events that move us most profoundly today. Second, it is a place where men laid down their lives for their country. Finally, as a piece of nature, the arching bridge over the flowing river reminds me of the miracle of nature and creation.

Each of these articles should be short and focus on one theme, one line of thought of the several that I focus on when I go to the bridge. My time there, my meditations on nature, life, death and sacrifice, my ponderings of the history made there and its place in the larger fabric of American life and history have provided me with what I regard as important lessons and reminders, and so I'd like to share those with others.

The Democrats are failing us, as the recent FISA Court vote clearly demonstrates. They are not protecting our Civil Liberties, they are cowering before the political threats of a "politically weak" president and worst of all they are allowing him to arrogate more and more power into the Presidency. We need to make them understand that we want political leaders who will stand up for the People, our Liberties and the Republic.

Much has been written about how Bush is a "politically weak" President, and about how the FISA amendment threatens our Civil Liberties, but in a very real sense this president is far from weak, and there is a greater danger in the FISA and other changes than to just our Civil Liberties.

The time for action is now.

John Yoo Review, part II

In part 1 of my review of John Yoo's book, The Powers of War and Peace, I criticized him for his flawed understanding of history, and of how things today differ from from the last century or two. In this article, my focus is more his reasoning and analysis of history. I think that the inescapable conclusion of this review is that even if we accept his premises and his reasoning we find that he provides arguments that directly contradict the doctrines and actions of the Bush administration.

I have been reading The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11 by John Yoo, and my reactions to it are strong and complex enough that I've decided to critique it here on on Vox Libertas. This page is the first in a planned series. I have not finished reading the book yet, and so the course of this series is not planned out, but so far, I see three major classes of difficulty with the book. They are:

1. His assumptions about history and the state of the world today are wrong.


2. His arguments are fallacious, often based on cherry-picking his evidence to suit some agenda or preconceptions.


3. Even if you buy in to his reasoning and conclusions, the actions of the Bush administration are often in conflict with the results.

In this diary I will address his flawed understanding of history and the post-9/11 world, after the jump...

It's been a while since I posted to Vox Libertas. Most of that time has been spent reading and watching congressional hearings and small symposiums. This posting will attempt to pull together some of what I've learned and to point out both specific and general sources that I think will be of interest and use.

The first of these will hopefully be familiar to Kossacks, as it was the subject of Teacher Ken's excellent diary, No title can do justice to this. Vox Libertas is posted to 4 other services, and I have included discussion of Freeman's speech to spread the word there, and insure that no one missed it here.

The remaining articles help understand exactly where we stand relative to the legal issues that Freeman raises.

Before I brought Vox Libertas here to The Daily Kos, I posted an entry commending The Daily Show for its willingness to address the appropriateness of Wolfe Blitzer's asking Dick Cheney about James Dobson's criticism of Mary Cheney's having a baby in the context of a committed lesbian relationship. My posting also criticized the mainstream media for an unwillingness to deal with these issues, which I see as vital.

Since then, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts jr. has written a couple of  thoughtful columns on the topic. As a result of that and discussions and arguments with fellow bloggers and my own mother, it seems worthwhile for me to revisit my original article and expand upon it here.

One of the key issues that triggered my current focus on political activism, my creating of this blog and my previous post "The Real Tragedy of 21st Century America", is that of habeas corpus, and the Military Commissions Act.

Given the introduction of S.B.576, the "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007", it seems like this might be a good time for a posting that will try to explain what this is all about and why it troubles me. This diary borrows from two of my Vox Libertas blogs on the topic.

But, don't take my word for it. One of the themes of Vox Libertas is the importance of individual involvement. Read what I think, but make sure to get involved, formulate your own views and then work to insure that they get acted upon.

One of my concerns regarding the state of the Republic is with what I see as a trend towards a government of men not laws, in a reversal of one of our most important principles. In this diary (a revised version of my Vox Libertas blog published on Vox, LiveJournal, BlogSpot and MySpace), I consider two examples seen in recent news videos, explore of the theories behind these statements, and the ways that these have been implemented as executive orders and legislation.

Leaping ahead to the conclusions for the purposes of being able to couch my poll question...

The final result of these theories and changes in the law is that we have a President who is the sole decision maker in a unified hierarchical executive branch with inherent unenumerated powers as Commander In Chief and Chief Executive upon which Congress may not intrude, who is responsible for interpreting the laws and Constitution and how they are carried out, who is authorized to take sole command of all federal and state military force and use it domestically in any circumstances where he believes that justice or the execution of his interpretation of the laws is impeded.