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March 8, 2008

Open Letter to Congress

Must the system of checks and balances come from overseas?
By Kathryn Smith

Dear Congress:“My will, not thy will be done” is my joke about The Lord’s Prayer. A
friend of mine replies with a smile: “And God says----NOT!”
Where God and man are concerned, such is the relationship. But where Congress, the
people and the Constitution are concerned, it really is the job---the paid position--- of
Congress to say to Us, the People: “Thy will, not my will be done”. America is
supposed to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people. The
Constitution never defined the US government as being “of the corporations, by the
corporations and for the corporations“. It also never said “Of the politicians, by the
politicians and for the politicians”. Your job as Congress is to uphold, protect and
defend the Constitution, which means intrinsically to implement the majority will of
the American people. No one else.
I regret to inform you, Congress, that you have chosen to do anything but that. The
written statement by Sen. Diane Feinstein is a great example:
“We are going to have to disagree about this bill”, writes the Senator in
her auto-reply about the flag burning amendment. However strongly
many among us may agree or disagree about flag burning as a
protected form of free speech is beside the point: The fact remains
that with only a few exceptions, the overwhelming majority of you
have taken the attitude that you are “the deciders”, seizing power
which was never yours to begin with.
Please be reminded, Congress, that we *pay* you to be implementers of the public
will and not your own whims. You are our employees. You work for us, not the other
way around! And that means that we have the right to fire you when the going gets
rough. And we will, for all the reasons stated below.
A) Regardless of the fact that we are in a recession, you continue to fund the war, as
if to deliberately bring the country into a depression, not merely a recession.
Is this the thanks you have for the masses of people who pay your salaries with their
tax dollars? Should we pay our own way into a depression and starvation just
because you desire to squander *our* money in this way? Congress, you are
frivolously playing with our financial and physical health. We hold you legally and
morally responsible.
B) A war based on lies is better known as a mass murder ring. This is far from an act
of “incompetence” as you say: It is a premeditated act. Is this what you insist on
paying for, with our tax dollars? Unacceptable.
C) Must the system of checks and balances come from overseas?
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While still governor of Texas, our President un-elect had the highest record of capital
punishment of any governor in US History. Hmm…..What of the fact that our
President has broken more than 900 laws? Let me state that only gang leaders
endanger a life out of revenge, as exemplified by the Valerie Plame case. Who but a
criminal would abandon Katrina victims to die and withhold medical care from
children and our soldiers? Since you refuse to impeach our President and our
Vice President un-elect, is this the kind of behavior you support, Congress?
Let me ask another very direct question: Who but criminals would treat
signing statements as the law of the land?
D) You have run roughshod over our civil liberties here at home, while touting
Democracy abroad.
“Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, or of the press” says our
first amendment: What about warrantless wiretapping? What of censoring and
filtering the news media? What about gagging scientists from speaking up about
global warming? What about gag orders in the National Security Letters part of the
Patriot Act?
The first amendment “right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition the
government for a redress of grievances” is surely being violated by tasering peaceful
protestors, by threatening to jail or forcibly remove impeachment button-wearing
citizens from Congressional offices, and jailing those who rightfully tell Condi Rice
that she “has blood on her hands”.
“The right of all persons”----not merely all citizens----“to be safe in their persons,
houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or
things to be seized” states the fourth amendment. Only Red China jails people
without warrant or probable cause, as legislated into the Patriot Act which you,
Congress, voted for by overwhelming majority not once, but twice. What about CIA
kidnappings and extraordinary renditions to countries overseas for torture?
You know better than we, Congress, that Martin Luther King was wiretapped and
shadowed by the FBI until he was finally murdered. And that’ s why laws prohibiting
warrantless wiretapping were passed to begin with. So for what exact purpose would
you now vote for warrantless wiretapping, if not to shut vocal people up? Oh, lest you
think I forgot, the claim that this assists the hunt for terrorists is bogus:
The Nazis tortured innocent people and called them “The Enemy”, as you have done
with more than 850 Guantanamo detainees who have actually been proven innocent.
Yet you won’t let those innocent people go and you won’t close Guantanamo, despite
torture being outlawed by US and International Law alike. Of all forms of racial
profiling, this has got to be the most heinous.
Don’t talk to us about having “specifically discussed a system of checks and
balances”, as Sen. Diane Feinstein claimed when it became known that 143,000
National Security Letters had been served between 2003-2005. Of these, 53% were
for Americans, with only one single terrorist caught between 9-11-01 and 2005,
according to former FBI agent Mike German. Do you mean, that “an authorized
investigation” in the absence of judicial warrant, ie that the FBI may authorize their
own gag order-carrying investigation, as in the National Security Letters portion of
the Patriot Act, is an effective system of checks and balances? The “specific
discussion about checks and balances”: What crocodile tears! You deliberately gave
the FBI unilateral and whim-based powers, knowing very well what you were doing.
Further, you voted for the Patriot Act not once, but twice. Your deliberate and bi-
partisan intentions to convert the USA to a dictatorship are hereby clearly
and publicly confessed.
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With torture being defined in the Military Commissions Act (torture bill) as invoking
pain levels “equivalent to severe organ failure and death“, the Republicans among
you passed that law. No partisan jab here: I have checked the Congressional voting
record. Further, the Republicans among you granted war crimes immunity to the
President for himself “interpreting” the Constitution and Geneva Conventions, so that
he may himself decide what form such “torture” (euphemism) takes: Could Charles
Manson be any more delighted with such an arrangement? Murder in the absence of
actual death, on a continual basis, dreamed up by himself, with no jail in sight? And a
big fat paycheck to boot?
Don’t tell me that the Democrats among you, who did not vote for the torture bill,
are still not in support of it: How many “Democrats” among you voted for telecom
immunity, just to protect Bush from lawsuits? How many of those torture-based
lawsuits you are sheltering him from would be directly connected to warrantless
wiretapping, which is nothing but a fishing expedition to catch innocent people
*dubbed* as terrorists?
Do you really think we Americans believe that a mere photograph in the newspaper
is adequate burden of proof of some alleged terrorist’s innocence or guilt? Your
bipartisan motives to pretend to be on the hunt for terrorists, while actually
committing a ring of violent crimes and passing unconstitutional legislation in
pretense of concerns about terrorism, is hereby publicly confessed.
Sometimes we have to question our assumptions. And for you to assume, Congress,
that to pass or even to consider laws such as S.1959/HR1955, The Violent
Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act “and for other purposes”----
WHAT other purposes???----is to squelch dissent, you are assuming very wrongly
indeed. You lie to us that this bill merely “Studies” terrorism, yet propose to have
government infiltrators *spy* on our college students, who just so happen to be the
most vocal citizen cross-sector in our country. You say that this bill “Should not”
clamp down on civil liberties, yet you set up a Commission of government personnel
who themselves will conduct hearings of Americans (like vocal college students)
*dubbed* as “Homegrown terrorists“. No judge to check random government power,
no citizen jury are proposed in this unconstitutional bill. Congress, did it ever occur to
you that when you step on somebody’s head, they just might rather fiercely object?
Do you really believe that by stepping on their mouth you will silence them? My bet is
that the mouth will bite your foot---hard too----because by heaping injustice on top of
injustice, you are only going to create the homegrown terrorist wrath which you are
trying to squelch in the first place. If a civil war breaks out in America, guess who
created it? Mission Accomplished.
It’s very interesting to me to see how routinely Congress and this Administration has
projected its own shadow onto an entire nation of people. By stating in the Violent
Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism *Exacerbation* Act “and for other
purposes”, that for a citizen “to further his or her religious, political or social beliefs“
through “radical ideologies” and the “use, planned use, or threatened use of violence
or force” is illegal, I must say that you, dear Congress, are the most guilty of all
parties on this planet. Under that proposed law, we ourselves could hold you so
responsible in court, as could other nations, that it would be a laugh of triumph. I
pray for that day to arrive, and the sooner the better! As the Psalmist said, the snare
you have set for us will become the snare you will have set for yourselves, and ye
shall all indeed be sitting in jail. Bring it on!
(Qualifier: I am adamantly opposed to violence. And I radically, strongly and
vehemently oppose S. 1959 and HR 1955, in furtherance of my social, religious and
political beliefs, not to mention that of our own US Constitution).
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E) Congress, you are coaching us to hate others based on racial profiling. We hereby
stand united, publicly calling the shots for what they are and widely spreading word,
thus dismantling your attempts to further your agenda at the expense of innocent
people:
What of the fact that Bush’s own grandfather was a key person in the Nazi
movement, and now we have “the enemy” Muslim, Middle Easterners, Afghanis and
Pakistanis as our targets where previously it was the Jews? Sure there are Middle
Eastern terrorists, but does that make *every* Middle Easterner a terrorist? Far from
it. If so, we would all have been dead long ago. What nonsense this is---and what a
brainwash, just as occurred in Nazi Germany! Even Germans themselves have
openly said so, themselves. This is not a distorted “take” on the situation,
at all.
Is it better for you, Congress, to be considered “Soft on terror” or to promote Nazi-
like propaganda resulting in shock and awe, torture and war without end, while
raping our civil liberties, all for the sake of a cognitive distortion (every Middle
Easterner=terrorist) and a blown-up hoax (weapons of mass destruction) ? To think
or not to think, that is the question.Which leads me to my next point.
F) Congress, Bush and Cheney, your hand-and-glove operation to gain world
domination is doomed to fail from the start. Because you see, it’s basic economics.
Even someone as uneducated in the area of economics as I, can understand that
endless war will result in an economic depression. And finally, as world banks start to
bail out our collapsing system in the sub-prime mortgage crisis, it is those other
countries who will actually gain domination over us, not the other way around. It
takes no brains to figure out that any country may gain domination over another
country through economic control. Your quest for world domination is short-sighted
indeed.
G) Immunity is an illusion:
Congress, if Hussein could first be supplied with weapons and then killed by his
suppliers for having possessed them, aren’t you yourselves vulnerable to the
unconstitutional laws you are passing? What of the Congressman whose office was
searched, and the cry of bloody murder which followed----and yet it was you
yourselves who voted for that same law which resulted in that search, ie the Patriot
Act? Congress, if you believe you are immune, and your friends and family members
too, you are so wrong. Your slave masters will whip you with the very chains with
which they promise to hold your enemies. Make no mistake about it. And you know
just exactly to whom I am referring.
H) The War on Terror is Fake:
What of the fact that the terrorist database is now close to one million people? Is the
song “Morning Has Broken” by Cat Stevens a terrorist work, and why should a plane
be grounded because Stevens was on board and happens to be a Middle Easterner
and a Muslim? Should planes be grounded because Buddhists, Jews and Catholics are
on board? What of the fact that infants, children, peaceful activists (ie vocal citizens),
and only Democrats in Congress (no Republicans) appear on the no-fly list? How
much credibility does that lend the war on terror? More likely, people will finally wake
up, en masse, and recognize it for what it is: The war OF terror is much more
accurate.
I) How long do you expect us Americans, dear Congress, to take all this lying down
and actually pay to fund our own abuse?
Now don’t take my statement out of context: I am not suggesting that we will stop
paying our taxes. My point is: We are being coerced to funding our own victimization.
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And while we are not going to stop paying our taxes, we also have every right to
object to the ways our moneys are being diverted, particularly when it is used as a
weapon against our own selves. Economic depression and starvation are not
acceptable uses of *our* tax dollars, and neither are mass murder rings such as the
Iraq War and torture of innocent people.
J) Contrary to what you might like us to believe, wherever there are huge problems,
there are almost always very simple solutions. Peaceful, effective ones.The day is
coming soon, when We the People will ourselves campaign to unseat you-----90% of
you----from public office. We will campaign to challenge your Congressional seats, in
ratios of 10 citizens for every Lawmaker-or-breaker.We will pull the levers at the polls
and “Just say NO” to treason.We will broadcast your wrong-doings in letters to the
editor and in open letters to the public, such as the one you are now reading.
We will expose your individual voting records in the newspapers serving the areas
which you supposedly represent, urging voters to “Just say NO“ to your seat in office.
In so doing, we also will very clearly expose the lies with which your mouths woo us,
while your feet indeed walk all over us while we pay you for it.
We will not be silenced. We the People, as the first branch of government with the
power and duty to enforce the system of checks and balances on the Executive and
Legislative branches alike, will never stand down in our patriotic and moral duty to
uphold, protect and defend the Constitution.
We will boycott the corporations which sponsor those law-breaking Senators and
Representatives in our own areas, sending them a strong message.We will work for
campaign finance reform and election reform. Never, ever will we let this happen
again to America.
And as protest, we will claim every last legal and legitimate tax break, refusing to
fund such Missions as you would love to see Accomplished.
K) Food for thought:
Congress, would you yourselves be willing to pay good money to someone to abuse
you? Would you say that they were pretty unreasonable to threaten you with jail for
objecting to such a thing? Are we all psyche hospital cases diagnosed with
masochism as our malaise?
L) Conclusion:
As stated in our Declaration of Independence, it is our right, it is our duty, to alter or
abolish any government which becomes destructive to those ends of the pursuit of
life, liberty and happiness. Congress, you have threatened all three, in spades: Life,
liberty and happiness have never been so at risk in all of American history as they
now are.
Have you lived up to your oath of office to uphold, protect and defend the
Constitution? Do you have any respect for the self-evident, inalienable rights of all
human beings granted by our Creator, for dignity and respect? Methinks not.
Get ye gone. It’s time for real Americans to be in office, not Iron Curtain-like
dictators such as yourselves whose work is to deliberately convert America to a
dictatorship.
I am asking that each and every reader pass this letter on to their friends by e-mail. I
am asking them to post this letter to blogs and to circulate it widely.
I am asking, above all, that they check the Congressional voting record and
vote to unseat each and every Public Offender.
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I am urging interested individuals to step forward and campaign to

challenge Congressional seats by a ratio of 10:1. We are all going to work
for campaign finance reform, for election reform, and to vote 90% of you
out of office.