Relight the Torch

I’ve gone beyond anger, I am just terribly sad.

I have loved my country for as long as I can remember. I love it still, deeply and with all my heart. And my country yesterday was dealt such a blow.

This blow wounded America far worse than September 11, 2001. That terrible event brought death to no few of our people, grief and loss to many more, but this blow damaged the very soul of our nation.

September 28, 2006. On this date the President of the United States of America gained for himself the power to detain and imprison without recourse, a power heretofore held only by kings and dictators. He has been usurping this power for some years and has been seeking to have Congress make his illegal activity legitimate, and on this date a supine Congress gave him the dictatorial power he sought.

For more than 200 years the Constitution of this nation has stood as a bastion of the principle that freedom and liberty stand taller than the power of government. Forty-two presidents have lived within that principle, not all of them entirely by their own choice. The forty-third has fought hard enough to secure personal power in abrogation of that principle that he has finally succeeded.

For 120 years Liberty has held aloft in New York harbor a torch, a light that has been a symbol of liberty to the world.

On September 28, 2006 that torch became dark.

On November 7th America has an opportunity to relight the torch, to restore a government of checks and balances as our founders intended, to end the obscenity that is this Imperial Presidency.

Two more years of this power grab is unconscionable.