Democracy in Spirit and Action

The results are in, at least most of them are. As of this writing there are still two Senate seats that have yet to be determined. But the Democrats have gained the upper hand in the House of Representatives and, if they win the Senate seats in Virginia and Montana, they will also have gained a majority in the Senate. This will go a long way to restoring the system of checks and balances that the founding fathers of the United States of America envisioned.

Congress has, for too long, failed in that mission. They have aided a despotic gang of thugs in undermining the Constitution and allowing the President to assume powers to which he was not legally entitled. Without a proper oversight of the Presidency in place and actively engaged, the Congress has rubber-stamped a usurpation of authority by Mr. Bush and his cronies that can only be characterized as criminal.

But the elections yesterday have provided Congress with the opportunity to once again fulfill its' role in the Constitutional scheme of things. By empowering Congressional committees with proper oversight into the actions of the administration, Congress will be able to hold administration officials accountable for their actions, decisions, and shortcomings.

Launching a preemptive war in Iraq, based on false intelligence and imagined threats and without proper strategic planning, this administration has blindly led the American people, and their allies, into a long-term and disastrous military quagmire that rivals and echoes Vietnam.

When natural disaster struck the Gulf Coast of the United States and almost completely destroyed the city of New Orleans, the administration revealed the incompetency that has come to define it in the eyes of millions of Americans and many others throughout the world.

By undermining the civil liberties of it's own citizens and negating the rule of law, both domestic and international, this admistration has revealed itself duplicitious, despotic, and completely untrustworthy.

And the Republican led Congress, sinking ever deeper into a culture of corruption, has surrendered its' institutional integrity and purpose by allowing the arrogance and incompetency of this administration to go unchecked and unquestioned.

By voting as they did, the American people have set an example for all other democracies, new and old, in showing that the voice of the people can still be heard, and not only if they are being wire-tapped. And the American people have also sent a clear message to both the Republican party and the President with this election.

It is time for a change!!

The Democrats have promised to restore the system of checks and balances, and to hold the administration accountable. But they have also said that they would not pursue an impeachment agenda. Some of the arguments for this magnanimity are set out in the illustration below.