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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Last night...

Poetry Society meeting (KC Metro Verse) went well last night in spite of my last minute planning. I did some handouts and we discussed David Groff's essay The Peril of the Poetry Reading: The Page Versus the Performance which made for a lively discussion. Groff presents some excellent food for though both favorable and unfavorable to poetry readings.
We also did read-arounds. Some personal work as well as poems by others. When all was said and done, no one suggested impeaching me. Not openly anyway.

Speaking of impeachment, I caught the President's State of the Union address on the drive home last night. Amazing to say the least. At one point, he said:

"So to prevent another attack -- based on authority given to me by the
Constitution [I have yet to hear which specific article references this authority] and by statute [again, what statute?] -- I have authorized a terrorist surveillance
program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected Al
Qaida operatives and affiliates to and from America.

Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority [Really? Because I really am only aware of Nixon using wiretaps that were illegal ]I have and federal courts [Which court? This is really funny because what he is doing is
circumventing the very court (FISA) which was established to deal with warrants
for the very activity he is undertaking without warrants]
have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate members of Congress [Interesting in that many including members of his own party have expressed concern when this became public knowledge] have been kept informed.

The terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist
attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people
inside our country who are talking with Al Qaida, we want to know about it,
because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again."

*red type and brackets are my comments



Ok, he keeps framing this issue like Al Qaida picks up the phone or types an e-mail to someone in the U.S. or vice versa and we know they are doing it, so we listen in or intercept their e-mail. He is suggesting no one else is impacted, no one else but the "bad guys" are being spied on. How damn stupid is the President thinking the American people are? You can't automatically know who's phone calls and e-mail to intercept - this is broader than that and THAT is the reason he isn't going to FISA is because FISA is not going to grant an open season of spying on the American people just to see what we can find.

Bush can travel from city to city and give this speech a million times. He may even be beginning to believe himself that he has the legal authority to do this, just as he convinced himself of the WMDs, but he is wrong on his executive authority and he is breaking the law.

I recommend reading Palace Revolt if you happen to think what I have just said is nothing but liberal bullshit because there are plenty of conservatives who understand what the President is doing is wrong and some of them worked for the President and tried to convince him otherwise.

Enough of that...

Any Adreienne Rich fans out there? I was reading some of her poems this week. She is an interesting read.

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