Independence Day

About 230 years ago, King George II made some of his subjects so militantly unhappy with his reckless disregard of their wants and desires in his governmental style that they revolted. The taxation without representation, the imposition of the his world view upon his subjects, the intolerable acts all led the founding fathers to declare independence from England on July 04, 1776.

Two hundred thirty-one years later, George II of the United States sees himself as a king, immune to the will of the people rather than as the elected chief executive of a representative republic. (But then, to be fair, many of his alleged constituents have a hard time seeing him as an elected anything! But I digress…)

Granted, as Wanker in Chief, he has the constitutional right to commute sentences, or otherwise grant clemency. To anyone he chooses. But please, under the tenets of the religion he professes to be a practitioner of (far too often for my taste) lying is a sin. Therefore, he should come clean and not try and blunt his transparently partisan back-scratching by claiming that he has done soul searching and careful consideration and decided that the punishment was too harsh.

(Well, I guess it is not as if he had any credibility left to lose! Hands up, who really thought that Scooter would spend a single day in prison? Anyone think that he will really ever pay the fines? That's so cute! You with your hands up are so trusting!)

The plain, simple and readily apparent truth is that he was paying Lewis Libby back for covering-up the fact that the administration had intentionally leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent to the media in violation of federal law. Can there really be any doubt as to who in the administration thought he was above the law? Who has recently declared himself independent of his branch of government so as to avoid the rules?

I guess that the vice president just started celebrating Independence Day a bit early!

Wherever you are today, I hope that you'll have a wonderful day to celebrate!

Don Bergquist - 04 July 2007 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK