tygerland.net

You may have never heard of Bud Cummins. Bud was the appointed District Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas up until the 20th December. Now what scandal could have cost “a good and fair” attorney his job? Well it appears Cummins did nothing wrong other than be in a position greedily eyed by a White House insider and favoured member of Karl Rove’s winged-monkeys.

Tim Griffin was an Arkansan in need of a treat. Check out his résumé, courtesy of The Arkansas Times: -

That political work includes serving from 1995-96 as an associate independent counsel investigating Henry Cisneros, who was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of housing and urban development; senior investigative counsel to the Republican-controlled House Government Reform Committee’s 1997-99 inquiry into foreign contributions to the Democratic National Committee; deputy research director for the Republican National Committee from 1999-2000; legal adviser to the Bush/Cheney recount team in Florida following the 2000 election; special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff from 2001-02; and research director and deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee from 2002-05, after which he joined the White House political affairs office.

Wow. Give the dog a bone.

Griffin was announced as the new Attorney on the 15th December, five whole days before Cummins had even resigned. Subsequent pressure was applied to the incumbent attorney and Cummins eventually handed in his notice on the 20th citing political reasons. Now this is where the story becomes even more baffling… this was the very day that Griffin, our Republican stooge, was sworn in as DA. The White House acts quick does it not?

Now those among you who know a little about the Office of DA, will no doubt be wondering why the Senate approved an appointment that was clearly politically motivated? Well, there is yet more meat on this bone. You may remember a rather controversial piece of legislation called the Patriot Act. Well in March of last year a revised version of the act was passed into law, and one of the revisions gave the President the power to appoint DAs while the Senate is in recess, i.e. without senate confirmation; hence the big rush to appoint Mr. Griffin.

Cummins is actually the most recent victim of this practice. According to Josh Marshall over on Talking Points Memo: -

we already know that the White House has now taken the unprecedented step of firing at least four and likely seven US Attorneys in the middle of their terms of office — at least some of whom are in the midst of corruption investigations of Bush administration officials and key Republican lawmakers.

Let us remember that the Patriot Act is an illiberal and fascistic piece of legislation that was forced through by the House after 9/11. Under the guise of ‘fighting terror,’ the law handed the President almost absolute power, allowing the Federal Government, among other things, to spy on the American people. The office of President, deliberately limited by the founding fathers, was relieved of its constitutional and democratic shackles.

In an unrelated story on CiF, a commenter writes: -

We have an Imperial President who does not think he needs to pay any attention to what his people think or want. A President who ignores the Constitution and tries to undermine its provisions—ignoring the legal rights of Americans. We also have had for six years a Congress which has abandoned its responsibility to act as a check on excesses in the other two branches.

This is the state of democracy in America following six-years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The episode in Arkansas is the sort of tale you would hear about in rural China, where Communist party leaders run the regions like fiefdoms. Dick Cheney has sought to transform America into a fiefdom for Bush, something he envisaged back when he was a member of the Nixon administration so many years ago.

The lesson we Brits should learn from this, and many more stories like this, as that we should be wary of laws that ride on the back of threats of terrorism. We are told that ID cards are necessary to fight suicide bombers, and we are told that the police need top be able to detain terrorists without charge for up to three months. These are just the sorts of laws that should be resisted if we do value liberty. Do we value liberty?

The more we strengthen the hold of government over our lives, the more we lose of our individuality, our freedom, and ourselves.