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Edited on Fri Feb-24-06 12:23 AM by arendt
Re-organized, re-phrased as per your feedback.
Please comment, add new stuff.
arendt
The Constitution is the REAL Contract with America
by arendt
It is finally time to admit that the current incarnation of our two-party system has become deadlocked. We are at a
juncture much like 1860, when the two major existing political parties split into warring factions and expired, to be
replaced by new ones. Today, we don't even have two parties, but one party and a punching bag, both competing
to serve corporate donors instead of the public.
In spite of a torrent of unprecedented calls to get out of Iraq from current and former ambassadors, former
Reagan and Bush officials like NSA General Odom, and conservative theorists like Francis "End of History"
Fukuyama, and even the reactionary media personality Bill O'Reilly, both party leaderships have announced
their intention to "stay the course" in Iraq.
Despite massive outcries over the trampling of our civil rights, despite the administration's stonewalling of its own
Supreme Court on the issue of habeas corpus, the leadership of neither party is willing to stand up and say that the
ever more intrusive (while ever less productive) intrusion of the boondoggle Department of Homeland Security is
beyond the pale of democracy.
But plenty of individual Congressmen and civil servants have stood up on one issue or another from one
party or another. Public opinion polls show that 52% of Americans say Bush should be impeached if
he lied about NSA wiretapping and/or WMDs in Iraq. And the evidence on both those subjects is getting
to the public, despite the frantic damage control efforts of the corporate media. Bush's approval rating has
been stuck at 40% for months. Every day, more and more GOP voters give up on idiocy like handing our
ports to Al Quida supporters, deputizing school bus drivers to look for terrorists, and providing body armor
to police dogs in Ohio while our soldiers go without it in Iraq.
Therefore, we announce the formation of a new political party, called the American Constitution (AC) Party.
The conditions for joining this party are simple and, in a sane country, they should be motherhood and apple pie.
But we are no longer a sane country.
All U.S. government officials and military members swear an oath to Preserve, Protect, and Defend the U.S. Constitution
from all enemies, foreign and domestic. They do not swear an oath to defend a "unitary executive", a commander-
in-chief, or the Bible. Sadly, many officials and members by their actions and/or by their acquiesence have violated
their oaths.
The sole purpose of the party is to restore the rule of Constitutional law to America, by being elected to a majority of
the government, while voting out as many of the politicians who colluded or acquiesced in the dismemberment of the
Constitution. Unfortunately, the fumigation of our government will probably require the kind of "Test Act" loyalty oath to
the Constitution for officials, familiar to students of English Parliamentary history. Nevertheless, that is not such a bad
precedent to follow in times of incipient Religious War. Furthermore, the loyalty oath would merely require adherence to,
and avoidance of weasel-wording on, the fundamental points of the U. S. Constitution stated in the Constitution Party's
platform - plus a few corrective actions designed to prevent the whole sorry mess from happening all over again in a
few years.
Without further ado, here are the points of the party program:
RESTORATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES OF GOVERNMENT, TAXATION, AND MILITARY DOCTRINE
1. The immediate restoration of the Constitutional Separation of Powers.
....A. There is no such thing as a "unitary executive" within U.S. Constitutional history. It is but a euphemism for
....dictatorship. It is an abomination. Signing statements shall be expressly banned by Constitutional Amendment.
....B. The Supreme Court's illegal intrusion into the 2000 election is impossible to reverse. Nevertheless, that decision
.....was a blatant violation of both States Rights and the Separation of Powers, and it cannot be allowed to set precedent.
.....Therefore, the Congress shall pass a law prohibiting any such "from the bench" decisions in the future; and it shall
.....attempt to impeach the five justices that voted aye in that case, should they still be sitting on the bench.
....C. Provision shall be made in both houses of Congress to prevent bills and information from being withheld from
....the minority party or presented in such a manner as to effectively withhold them.
....D. The rules on holding votes open shall be rigidly enforced, and bribery and other arm-twisting
....shall be kept off the floor of Congress. Lobbyists shall not draft the laws, and the out-of-control revolving
....door to lobbying firms shall be stopped.
....E. The Legislature shall investigate whether the Executive Departments are faithfully enforcing the laws.
.....The appointment of industry lobbyists and other sabotuers to the bureacracy, such as the EPA, shall be stopped.
.....We do not appoint anarchists to be Attorney General, nor pacifists to be Secretary of Defense. There is no
.....reason other than malice for appointing polluters to regulate the environment or union busters to regulate unions.
2. The immediate restoration of the Separation of Church and State, as mandated by the First Amendment and
testified to by the writings of our founding fathers, such as the Federalist Papers, and subsequent court decisions. If
we are forced to abide by the legal fiction that corporations are people (inserted in a decision by a court reporter rather
than decided by the Court) then we very well must abide by the court decisions beginning two hundred years ago
drawing a bright line between Church and State.
So-called faith-based initiatives of fungible cash grants, and the operation of government programs in explicit violation
of civil rights laws, violate that separation and must be ended.
Beyond that restoration of separation within the government, the de facto violation of that separation and the tacit
condoning of that violation by the un-Constitutional regime (e.g., voter guides, political pronouncement such as
the advocacy of assassination on religiously-funded television, gathering of church attendance lists) has demonstrated
that there is no fair way to make some religious activities "privileged" (i.e., tax exempt) under the law. Therefore, we shall
undertake to adopt the European approach of treating churches' financial and employment transactions as any other
business - that is, treating them equally under the business laws of the land.
3. The disclosure of significant (perhaps, conglomerated or otherwise protected) information on the $30 Billion
black budget of the armed forces and intelligence agencies. The U.S. taxpayer is paying blindly for services
that increasingly are being turned against the U.S. taxpayer. We have a right to information about the covert
actions we are funding, since we as individual soldiers and individual citizens will be liable to the consequences
and retaliations for these actions. Increasingly, we see dedicated career civil servants and ranking military
lawyers blowing the whistle on out of control intelligence. We are deeply concerned and demand more transparency.
4. Balance the Budget by Repealing all Bush Tax Cuts. Repeal the Estate Tax giveaway, and the Oil Extraction
Giveaway, and the Prescription Drug Company Enrichment Bill. Reverse the $120 Billion giveaway from the Justice
Department's criminal and unilateral write-off of the hard-won Tobacco Settlement. We also have to repeal the corporate
Welfare Prescription Drug disaster. Corporate Welfare shall be clearly defined, and eliminated.
5. The immediate renunciation of the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, up to and including nuclear attacks and
the removal of this obscene doctrine from the U.S. Strategic Planning Document. The prosecution of those U.S. officials
who have instigated and facilitated the use of torture by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, which is violation
of the Geneva Convention, to which we are a signatory. As a treaty, this convention is United States Law, and we are
bound by it. If we are to be bound by international agreements like the WTO, which is also run from Switzerland, then
we must be bound by the Geneva Convention.
RESTORATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND VOTING RIGHTS; RE-REGULATION OF THE CORPORATE MEDIA
6. The immediate restoration of habeas corpus, and its application to all places on earth where the U.S. government
and its military currently hold and administer a permanent territory, other than troop bivouacs in the field. It can be military
habeas corpus, but there has to be habeas corpus. It is against 800 years of common and statute law in the Anglo Saxon
world to suspend habeas corpus without end date to defend against a stateless, faceless tactic - especially when such suspensions are applied selectively, and not to people making threats against domestic opponents of the current administration.
7. A complete review of the so-called Patriot Act, which was rammed through without being read and renewed by
partisan stonewalling, shall be done. The egregious destruction of Constitutional rights in this bill shall be repealed.
8. All electronic voting machines shall be converted to open source software with paper trails and recount
information provided. It has been demonstrated, publicly and repeatedly by reputable politicians and scientists, that
the existing systems are so flawed that they seem to have been designed to be hacked. Voting is simply too important
to be left to politically-involved and highly ideological private control.
9. The immediate and full funding of national elections by the government and the complete ending of the corrupt
system of legalized bribery known as "campaign finance". The provision of free TV, radio, and internet airtime in
a fair and proportional manner to all significant political parties, along the lines of countries such as the Netherlands.
10. The rollback of weakening of ownership caps on media outlets, the de-conglomeration of the media, and the immediate
review of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and other violations of the right of first sale and the right to own,
rather than rent, personal copies of media. The restoration of some version of the Fairness Act, and post facto
fining of explicit agitation to violence, such as Pat Robertson's call for assassination of foreign leaders and
Ann Coulter's call to "kill the liberals". We can't stop codewords, but we can stop outright verbal assault.
----
Any sitting politician who cannot agree to these propositions, which, at best, roll back the situation to about where
it stood in 1990, should be vigorously opposed by the Constitution Party. Any politician, Republican, Democrat,
Green, or Libertarian, who can agree to this declaration as the platform to implement should join the Constitution
Party.
We should fund this party on the internet, ala the Dean Campaign, turning down corporate donations, and running
solely on personal contributions of less than $1,000.
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