Reid's sentencing

It's a good comment, about the very best possibilities of the American system of law. What I wish is that the present US Administration was as worthy of it as the justice system itself. Here's a quote to go with that one. It's from a very recent speech by Jim Marcinkowski, a former

============== We fought the Soviets and I fought the Soviets because they had a banely flawed, intolerable system of government where (and think about this):

The government was always right and never apologized;

Any dissent was suppressed, ridiculed, banned or worse;

Secret prisons were denied and never acknowledged or spoken about;

The torture of captives (in Lubyanka) was condoned;

State incarceration was not subject to the checks and balances of a legal system;

Economic plans, like for oil, were established-determined in closed sessions between politicos, commissars and production managers, far outside public view, and where government claimed privilege in so doing;

Wages were set at the lowest common denominator, no matter what Bloc country you were in;

Government agents had access to your medical records, your library records, your telephone, and your e-mail.

A place where judicial power and judicial review were proclaimed concepts, but simply ignored in application;

Where criminal records of young adults were closed to all but the military;

Where a Consbreastution was a mere facade and ignored by state actors.

Any dissent, debate and protest were deemed unpatriotic;

The public media was bought, paid for, and provided by the state;

The military clandestinely and shamelessly influenced the national media and public opinion;

A place where wrong was declared right;

Where tapping a phone was like tapping a pencil;

Where lying was considered a patriotic skill;

The extraction of natural resources was paramount to any concern for the environment and the impact on the health of its people;

Where the use of "state secrets," (those things embarrbutting to the government) were confused with legitimate issues of "national security";

A place where "secrecy" and "national security" were used to control debate;

Where legitimate secrecy, was subject to political use and abuse;

Where "legislators" were mere mouthpieces for and rubberstamps of whoever was in power;

Where you lived and died with the permission of the government;

A place where foreign policy was more important than domestic concerns;

Where fear was used as a political weapon and an acceptable means of control;

Where the best medical care was reserved for the influential;

Where wealth was concentrated in the top 5%;

A place where there was no middle clbutt - just a small economic and political elite, and the working poor.

The Soviet Union- A people's paradise where the people were in control of their state - but we here in America knew better and we fought the Soviet system with everything we had because we could not endure a Soviet style system here in the United States.

Since 1995 the Republican Party and its friends in the American corporate structures that so vigorously contribute to and support them have---in the space of a decade---created in this country more than the beginnings of a system that this country spent 50 years trying to dismantle.

While it remains to be seen how much we, the working clbutt, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens, Libertarians, Liberals or Conservatives (or just plain confused) can do to unwind this damage, it is an absolute certainty what the Republican Party has done, and is doing. I shudder to think where the Republican Party wants this country to be, but I pray we do not have to find out.

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Rifty -- Academic and Computing Help