The Franco of our times

Commentary By Ron Beasley

 Chris Mathews, David Corn and Ron Suskind:

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I have been around for 63 years and I have disagreed with most public officials at one time or the other.  But with Dick Cheney it was the first time that I thought one of them was evil.  Thom Hartmann described Cheney as a Francisco Franco style fascist on his show this morning and I think that's pretty accurate.  You will notice that both Suskind and Corn agree that what Cheney did was illegal.  Corn also said another thing that was significant - Cheney didn't trust the congress, that is he didn't trust our system of government. 

 

Now I think that Obama is correct if he thinks that investigations and prosecutions of members of the Bush/Cheney administration will tear the country apart.  In the short term that will threaten his agenda.  But in the long term it is necessary.  Hartmann said that we were one more terrorist attack away from a fascist police state.  From his early days with Nixon Cheney has loathed our system of government and the really frightening thing is that there are four justices on the Supreme Court who agree with him. Sheldon Whitehouse:

 

I particularly reject the analogy of a judge to an "umpire" who merely calls "balls and strikes." If judging were that mechanical, we would not need nine Supreme Court Justices. The task of an appellate judge, particularly on a court of final appeal, is often to define the strike zone, within a matrix of Constitutional principle, legislative intent, and statutory construction.

The "umpire" analogy is belied by Chief Justice Roberts, though he cast himself as an "umpire" during his confirmation hearings. Jeffrey Toobin, a well-respected legal commentator, has recently reported that "[i]n every major case since he became the nation's seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff." Some umpire. And is it a coincidence that this pattern, to continue Toobin's quote, "has served the interests, and reflected the values of the contemporary Republican party"? Some coincidence. 

 As a country we just dodged a bullet.  If Cheney is not held accountable now there will more Cheney's and bullets in the future. 

Comments

[Redhand]

It was interesting to see Chris Matthews "lose his sh*t" in the video clip.

I'm 59 and am still very conscious of Nixon's abuses of power in early 70s. In many ways I think Cheney's even-worse abuses in the Bush '43 presidency are a form of sick payback for the fact that Nixon was forced from Office.

I consider Cheney an arch criminal, and a truly evil man. I have no doubt that he has nothing but contempt for the American Constitution, and the separation of powers. I would love to see him prosecuted, especially for his violations of our anti-torture laws.