Thursday, December 01, 2011

Yesterday's Letter to President Obama

Yesterday I emailed our President to express my views regarding Senate bill 1867, and the Levin/McCain "Indefinite Detention" amendment. I urge you to email President Obama and all the Senate and let them know that YOU DO NOT CONSENT to having your birthright ripped away from you. For a full list of links to emailing the Senate and the President (with more discussion on the bill itself), please read my fellow blogger SamuraiKnitter's post of yesterday:

http://samuraiknitter.blogspot.com/2011/11/knitters-mobilize.html

This is what I wrote to the President.

Dear Mr. President,

I urge you to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, Senate bill 1867. While you seem to believe it limits your powers, my concern is that it gives unconstitutional powers to presidents, including the power to imprison people without charge or trial. You should use your Constitutional power to veto this dangerous bill.

On your Inauguration Day, which was a great day for me and others who voted for you, you made the following Covenant with the American People:

"I ...do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, PRESERVE, PROTECT and DEFEND the Constitution of the United States."

Our Constitution is under attack with this legislation, Mr. President. Your hour has come. Without you at the Vanguard, everything that America is, everything that we have ever stood for, everything that every soldier in this country from 1776 to 2011 has fought for will CEASE TO EXIST.

I firmly believe that without you making a stand for Our Inalienable Human and Constitutional Rights, US Citizens will be jailed without charge, due process, without a fair trial, and thrown into concentration camps across our country. It's an open secret on Google that these facilities have already been built, at TAXPAYER expense, to detain US citizens. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread59023/pg1

If you do not Act, we will be no worse than Egypt, and potentially as bad as China, North Korea and even Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

Preserve America and the Freedoms that make us who we are. Vote AGAINST the National Defense Authorization Act as it is currently written. Please do not sign *any* legislation that seeks to strip American citizens of their fundamental Human and Constitutionally held Rights.

Mr. President, I urge you to also speak out publicly in the mainstream media not just about the human rights abuses happening to protesters in Egypt, but against identical abuses happening RIGHT NOW IN OUR OWN COUNTRY.

Your DHS currently works with mayors and police departments across the country to suppress the Free Speech Rights of Occupy protestors. Their interference is illegal and Unconstitutional. Militarized police forces across this country are interfering with our rights to free speech and to peaceably assemble. Peaceful sit-ins of the type used by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi are met with pepper spray on our streets and in our educational institutions. Female protesters are being sexually assaulted by police officers. THIS HAS GOT TO STOP. The people need their duly elected President to speak out against this barbaric and wholly illegal abuse of power.

The Occupy movement is not a band of terrorists that the DHS need to monitor and control; the Occupiers are the brave representatives of a concerned citizenry, who are there to remind Congress that our legislative body does not operate in a vacuum, and that We The People hold them morally and legally culpable for the current economic situation.

I feel compelled to remind you, Mr. President, of the Preamble to the US Constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Congress and the Executive Branch are NOT Providing for the Common Defence when it threatens to detain a free citizenry without charge, without due process, without trial, as S.1867 will allow.

Congress and the Executive Branch are NOT Promoting the General Welfare when they bail out free-enterprise banks, which then register record profits at the same time hardworking people are losing their homes, their jobs, their pensions and their health care.

Congress and the Executive Branch are NOT Insuring Domestic Tranquility by allowing harm to come to those Americans who are actively exercising their right to free speech and their right to assemble.

Those Blessings of Liberty that we are promised from birth, that our nation tries to bring to every corner of the world, are being extinguished by this Congress and through policies currently in place in your Administration.

The American People are not blind. We are not stupid. The mainstream network and cable news is currently sanitized by members of the wealthy 1% of this nation in a deluded attempt to keep us in the dark, but we see clearly.

We know that $16 Trillion was paid out to banks by the Federal Reserve while unemployment and homelessness skyrocketed. We know that the Pentagon is being advised by Wall Street Banksters (that's banking gangsters, if you are not up on the current lingo). We know that unfathomable amounts of corruption are happening between our Representatives and those in power in our nation's major banking institutions.

It has to end now, before this nation is ruined by an economic Civil War. I ask you, as our Elected President, to fulfill your duty to uphold the Constitution and promote the general welfare of this nation.

If you do not act, the people will abandon you in the next election.

If you lead, the people will stand by you. If you out the corruption, and demand transparency and change by deed as well as word, the people will rally to you.

The first amendment of Our Constitution says:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

If you do not stand with the People of this great nation, and demand of Congress and the Federal Bureaucracy a Great Reckoning, then the American citizenry will have no other recourse - they can and will own and exercise "...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Stand with us, sir. Stand up with us Mr. President, before it is too late. Don't do it for your legacy, for what people will think of you in 100 years; do it for the children of this nation so that they do not grow up slaves to a Corporate-run Police State.

I urge you to honor the Covenant you made with the free citizens of the United States of America on January 20, 2009. Veto the National Defense Authorization Act. Clear out bureaucratic and Congressional corruption. Uphold the rights of citizens, work to repeal the Patriot Act and return us to a free society.

Open Letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC

Below is a copy of an email I just sent to Senator Graham. If you want to express your opinions to him on the issues of Torture and Waterboarding, email him here: http://t.co/LyVxpRYb

Sir,

I have just been listening to debate on the Senate floor regarding S.1867 and your arguments for your Amendment, and against the Feinstein Amendment.

Regarding your statement "a lot of Americans believe we should waterboard these people (terrorists), whatever we need to do because they're so vicious":

Let me disabuse you of this notion, Sir. I am an American. I do NOT approve of waterboarding. I do NOT approve of "do whatever you need to". I believe in the rule of law, I believe in the US Constitution. I believe in the Eighth Amendment, which states:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

I would posit that waterboarding and other forms of torture would fall under the heading of "cruel and unusual punishments", and against the spirit of America. If we allow such behaviors, we become as bad as our enemies. If we compromise our beliefs in Justice and Liberty, we give away the very things that make us American.

I would like to further remind you, Sir, of the Preamble to the US Constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America."

Congress is not "Providing for the Common Defence" when it threatens to detain a free citizenry without charge, without due process, without trial, as S.1867 with your amendment will allow.

Congress and the Executive Branch are not Promoting the General Welfare when they bailing out free-enterprise banks, which then register record profits at the same time hardworking people are losing their homes, their jobs, their pensions and their health care.

Congress and the Executive Branch are not Insuring Domestic Tranquility by allowing harm to come to those Americans who are actively exercising their right to free speech and their right to assemble.

Those Blessings of Liberty that we are promised from birth, that our nation tries to bring to every corner of the world, are being extinguished by this Congress with this bill, this amendment.

You are the Servant of the People. You do NOT have the right to rob me of my birthright, MY FREEDOM, by means of legislation written in secret, passed without so much as a single public hearing.

No sir. Your actions in the Senate this week tell the Free People of the United States loud and clear that you are treasonous, willing to sell our birthright to continue to promote a war that was started with lies and misinformation, that was never voted on properly in Congress per our Constitution.

If James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were alive, they'd probably take you behind the shed.