That’s One Impeachment Down; Two More To Go!
"The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice. I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight!"
- Emile Zola, J'accuse! (1898) –
http://cfc.news8.net/external.cfm?p=inauguralsched1217
In my book, The Uprising , I wrote an entire chapter about the state of the antiwar movement, and the chapter included a look at Moveon.org. The chapter examined an organization that had - at the time - become a reflexive appendage of the Democratic Party (as opposed to a more movement-based organization focused on progressivism). I experienced a bit of backlash from Moveon partisans for the book, but that was to be expected. Talk about a taboo subject - in this case, the problem of movement-branded organizations becoming megaphones for anyone with a D behind their name - and you are bound to get people pissed.
I consider a lot of the Moveon.org leadership friends, I think they are solid progressives, and my book's chapter was meant as an honest look at both the success and failure of the organization. And I didn't enjoy writing the part about the book that explored Moveon's behavior in early 2007 - specifically, when the organization backed off pressuring congressional Democrats to take a strong position on ending the war. That's why I was thrilled to read this dispatch in the Huffington Post today - it suggests a positive shift:
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Now he’ll be looking for a jury of High School Graduates, Families that have a foreclosed relative and those with histories of Breast Cancer.
Michael Bloomberg was just a year old when, in 1943, the author Esther Forbes published a children's novel, "Johnny Tremain," the tale of a young Revolutionary-era silversmith apprentice in Boston on the eve of war. The book would come to dominate Bloomberg's imaginative life. As a boy growing up in Medford, Mass., he recalls, "I must have read it 50 times." In the great rhetorical scene at the heart of the story, the revolutionary James Otis addresses a small tavern gathering that includes Sam Adams, John Adams and John Hancock, reminding the nascent rebels that their fight is not only national but global. America would make war, Otis said, so that "there shall be no more tyranny." Between deep sips of grog, he went on: "The peasants of France, the serfs of Russia. Hardly more than animals now. But because we fight, they shall see freedom like a new sun rising in the west. Those natural rights God has given to every man, no matter how humble … We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skills … We fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up." A few moments later, the meeting over, Johnny, who would ultimately be the messenger who tells Paul Revere what to watch for in the tower of the Old North Church, muses on Otis's words. " 'That a man can stand up'—as simple as that. And the strange new sun rising in the west. A sun that was to illumine a world to come."
Purplish and sentimental, yes, but to a young man growing up surrounded by the legend of the Revolution, it was stirring, and the sun Forbes wrote of in her fervid way illumined Bloomberg's childhood. Holding a copy of the book at the beginning of an interview with NEWSWEEK at New York's Gracie Mansion last week—he had written of its influence on him in his 1997 memoir, so I brought one with me—Bloomberg said with a flourish, " 'One if by land, two if by sea!' " He smiled, still gazing at the cover, before snapping back to the autumn of 2007. "I don't know why I loved this book so much."
The question is actually not a very difficult one. He loved Johnny Tremain because Johnny Tremain was a hero, a boy of obscure origins who made himself indispensable to Revere and others through hard work and ingenuity. It was a very American story, one in which dedication was rewarded to the sound of trumpets. The drama of Bloomberg's young life, which has become the drama of his entire life, took shape as he absorbed stories of Revolutionary heroes, both real and fictional, who acted alone and boldly for the good of the many—and who were therefore celebrated and commemorated as great men, the kind of men whose graves Bloomberg and his Scout troop festooned with flags. Bloomberg decided early on that he wanted to be a great man, too. Most teenagers, if they can, seek glory in sports. Bloomberg was not a great baseball or football player, and so he had to look elsewhere to find his place in the world.
Request For Special Prosecutor for Bush War Crimes - Petitio ...
US Politics & Gov't (tags: bush, cheney, ethics, corruption, cover-up, crime, propaganda, abuse, constitution, dishonesty, cia, congress, Govtfearmongering, lies, war, freedoms, economy, usa ) David - 3 hours ago - democrats.com ...
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t r u t h o u t | Blagojevich Impeached, Will Face Trial
Perhaps the 111th Congress will at least institute investigatiions of the charges against Bush and Cheney so that we have a Congressional record of their abuse of power and other impeachable offenses. ...
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