If it walks, talks, and acts like a crook....

Welcome again to my pretentious section of cyberspace. I'm now officially 27. According to my wife I'm old. According to me I'm awesome. Maybe we should take a vote. We are a republic after all.

I want everyone to go out and read a book called The Final Days. It's a thick, poorly written, badly time-shifting, confusing, but incredibly detailed tome by Woodward and Bernstein (if you don't know who they are, I invite you to look them up) about the last months of the Nixon administration.

The reason I want you to read it is this: the incredible parallels between the Nixon government and every administration since (and many before). The amount of illegal, questionably legal, and down-right unethical actions that are accepted as standard practice in government is truly incredible and appalling. The fact that domestic wire-tapping and spying has been going on for more than 60 years has apparently been forgotten in the current debacle. Apparently, if it's kept secret, the public doesn't care. Once it's out in the open, we complain a little and then go back to accepting it. It's incredible to me that a man who obviously had great respect (I use that term liberally) for the executive office could be such a terrible representative of it.

To me, it's more than the fact that the commander-in-chief does illegal things. It's that they lie about their actions. They cover them up. Then they blame others. Or worse, they lump their actions under the catch-all term "national security". Please people...I'm begging you. Please realize that this term is utter bullshit. Should you keep your military strength and position secret? Sure. Should you be selective about what allies you share intelligence with? Yes. But for actions that are patently unconstitutional and unethical, whether domestic or foreign, national security is NEVER an acceptable excuse. And that's all it is. An excuse. National security has come to mean "in the interest of the government" not the national interest. You cannot live in a democratic republic (sorry folks...stop using the word democracy since that's not what we live in) if the government is keeping secrets directly related to keeping it in power. That's nothing better than glorified despotism.

Anyway, I recommend the book. It's a fantastic look into how far removed the government is from what its supposed to be according to our own rules for government. It's an incredible view into the minds of federal lawyers who justify illegal actions by claiming "executive privilege". It makes you wonder how much we don't know. And how much of that knowledge could be used to make this country and world a better place.

I end with this. Some powers have been handed to the federal government. The states and, by implication, the people of those states, have given the government authority over money, military, foreign, and some domestic policies. That's the whole point- to have a central body that handles things so each individual state doesn't have to. But all of those things were designed with oversight, including congressional, judicial, and civilian. The most important is civilian, since we entrusted these people to represent us. I think it's obvious we can't rely on congressional or judicial oversight, since those branches are just as bad as the executive (witness the court rulings about the 2000 election, rulings on the patriot act, the lack of congressional oversight of the war, and Congress' own poor record of ethical behavior). We the public have not been doing a very good job. It's time we stepped up our policing of the government. If they truly work for us, then they have to answer to us. It's idealism in the extreme, but you have to ask for the galaxy just to get a star.