The Right Message . . .

When the sale of our ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates was announced, there was a cry from the people that would not be silenced. How is it that the administration would condone selling our security to the very people who attacked us on 9/11? This was the position that I, myself, took earlier.

Last week, legislators on both sides of the isle made it clear that they would do whatever it took to investigate this incident and prevent such a sale. Now, after much debate and even more pondering of just what the company headquartered in Dubai would do, most thinking people realize that such a sale would have no substantial effect upon our security. Their operation would be almost entirely financial and logistical, as it is in many other countries around the world, while security would remain the province of the United States.

With all of that said, and the President ranting that stopping such a sale would "send the wrong message" to the rest of the world, I have a different belief. First, we should understand that the "American" company to which the port deal will be "transferred" is still owned, indirectly through Haliberton (Vice President Cheney's old company) by the UAE, so nothing has really changed but the names. More importantly, though, is that Mr. Bush's own party members deserted him on this issue. They remembered that there are elections coming soon, and they didn't want to be caught in the backlash that now surrounds "W" regarding his incredible incompetence and mendacity involving everything from 9/11 to Katrina, and now the port deal. They remembered what Bush, Cheney, and their cronies seem to have forgotten. The legislators, are still elected by the people and are responsible to them. After years of blindly following Bush, they finally acted as a co-equal branch of government and did their duty.

Send the wrong message, Mr. President? NO! We have finally sent the right message, not only to the world, but to congress and, most especially to the administration – we are still a democracy! Once more the United States has demonstrated that the state of the Union is strong. We can even survive you, Mr. President.

South Dakota Strikes Blow For Tyrany

South Dakota, today, proved conclusively that evolution of humans from a form of proto-humans not only is proven, but that some of those proto-humans have survived, taken up residence in South Dakota, and have been elected to the legislature and the Governor's office. I can think of no other explanation for the passage of an anti-abortion law, so draconian, as to remind one of cutting off of hands for the crime of theft.

I understand that those who believe that abortion is murder have a moral imperative to attempt to convince those of us who do not share their view that they are correct. I understand their renewed zeal to bind the hands of physicians in performing a procedure they feel should not be performed, in the wake of President Bush's appointment of known anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court. I even understand that we live in a democracy in which our elected representatives have both the right and the obligation to vote their consciences. I cannot understand their indifference to the plight of women who have been victimized by rape and incest and their insistence on doubling their plight by making them victims, again.

I cannot understand their imposing a felony conviction and up to a five year sentence on physicians who attempt to assist these women in putting their lives back together. I cannot understand making criminals of physicians who weigh the serious potential that a pregnancy impose on women with a variety of underlying medical conditions and want to reduce the risk to those women by removing a small ball of cells that would be recognized by no one as human without a DNA test.

The passage of this law is not only morally reprehensible and unconstitutional by any standards accepted by the civilized world, but in and of itself is the best argument against itself. Essentially, the existence of legislators who would victimize women in this way proves uncontrovertibly that abortion is a morally acceptable alternative to their existence. Their mothers should have had this simple procedure and prevented the rest of us from having to protect ourselves from their disdain for women's health and the need to defend our lives, our wives, and our legal rights from these petty tyrants.

I am put in mind of Thomas Jefferson's pronouncement that "[t]he tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."