Austin's Dome

This actually happened to me. A lot of the rage that Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh pour on "the liberals" comes from how the left acted during the late 70s and early 80s. The problem is that it is 25 years later and now it is the right who is acting self-righteous.



The meeting was in the be-bop-mod church
at the edge of the large lawny
southern sprawl of the campus, the posters
said it would explain what the
words "sandinista" and "contra" really meant
to the people living them.


The usual always-present smatter of concerned
activists sat knee-buckled on
the plush blue carpet with their backs pressed
against the grey backdrop of an
abstract wood sculpture depiction of the Gethemane
passion of doomed christ.
Quite a few beat-nick non-students had driven in
from the small towns all along
the river and old acquaintances weaved in among
themselves to chat before filling
into the amphitheatre ring of wooden pew benches.
One group really stood out,
a contingent of smooth faced, ear nicked, tie wearing
business majors who sat right
in the middle of the pack. They didn't speak much
but sort of suspiciously eyed
everything that rummaged and moved around them.


With out fanfare, the three prelates of the university's
active divinities strode before
the butcher block altar's space and stood until the uneven
rippling of murmuring eventually
came to an the end. One stepped out and started to
explain in his epistle laden voice
what the meeting was and who was hosting it.
The tie wearing group seemed
to get more uncomfortable as he started to include his
own political views into the words.
One by one the other two spoke and the last introduced
the organizers, some group committed
to latin-american friendship, who were waved up to the
unfolded neat row of chairs that
were behind the altar. Everyone clapped, except the tie wearing group.


The leader of the friendship group gave an impassioned
plea for the understanding of the
good that the leftist revolution had brought to the country
and then a few other members who
had been in the country stood to expand upon how their
experiences did prove this.
The second of them so angered one in the business major's
group that he leapt up with his
right index finger pointed to the sky and shouted,
"They're nothing but communists!"
which brought out cheers and chanting from his friends.
This shocked the priest who
had begun the meeting, he was totally unprepared and
confused by the outburst which
continued a few minutes until he finally got his wits and quieted
the noise by explaining that the
question and answer period was when the audience had
the chance to voice opinions.


Since the first few questions were from scruffy beards and
long flowing homespun skirts
were mainly speeches about their support of the organization,
I struggled within myself with
the question I wanted to ask. Finally I found the courage and
got up to my feet and said
"Why on earth does the regime that wants to build hospitals
and schools all through out
the nation persecute the ethnic majority on the east coast?"
At the end of the row of chairs
was a genteel elderly woman wearing her late fifties
activism in the cool way her
expression held herself above moral reproach who impatiently
squawked at me, "Young man,
you just can't believe everything that you read."
Even though I was floored,
I thought maybe that I had confused my question so I
struggled out a simpler twist
to it, but her loftiness pushed itself up higher and she doubled
the shrillness to repeat herself.


It was as if a great shame had blasted all the blood in my
face that soon reboiled white anger,
I wanted to fling out my arms and shriek aloud:
"LADY, JUST BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT
YOU BELIEVE DOESN'T MAKE IT BEYOND REPROACH!!"
but I simply caved knees and slumped down
to clutch both my palms into the grainy wood pew.
As my finger tips rubbed circles on my
temples I stared vehemently at her granite countenance
and then turned to the tie wearing group.
The question and answer period went on to its end,
the business majors got boisterous
to the point of once again having to be brought to order.
They left the church shouting
anti-communist slogans in unison. A sense of betrayal
seemed to course through me.
I was no longer a liberal and what I saw on the conservative
side wasn't any more comforting.
As much as the noisy conservative arrogance
seemed much more human
I was scared because I knew they hadn't heard my question either.



I've kept it out for poetic effect, but someone from the friendship group did search me out after the meeting to tell me that I had made a good point with my question.

I will not go down under the ground
"Cause somebody tells me that death's comin' 'round
An' I will not carry myself down to die
When I go to my grave my head will be high,
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.


Bob Dylan wrote "Let Me Die In My Footsteps" in the early 60s when the panic of "what if the commies dropped the bomb" swept fear into the people and brought on the craze of people building their own bomb shelters and big cities like New York use to have air raid practices where at the blowing of a siren people would all file into the subways. Schools showed films about how to survive a nuclear attack and how to live after one occurred.


There's been rumors of war and wars that have been
The meaning of the life has been lost in the wind
And some people thinkin' that the end is close by
"Stead of learnin' to live they are learning to die.
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.


It's funny to think that here we are 45 years later going through the somewhat of the same panic. The panic of terrorists blowing up something someplace. From what I have seen on my short stay in blogosphere, this fear is generally perpetuated by radical conservatives who believe that Muslim extremists are out to conquer the world and will not stop at any means to achieve it and therefore the President of the United States has the unlimited power granted to him under his powers in war to suspend the 4th Amendment to the Constitution to all Americans in order to protect them.


I don't know if I'm smart but I think I can see
When someone is pullin' the wool over me
And if this war comes and death's all around
Let me die on this land 'fore I die underground.
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.


Dylan's song became a cult classic among the people who finally decided that the fear of the bomb wasn't going to stop them from living a normal life. That as terrible as having a nuclear horror would be, they weren't going to cower around underground in a miserable existence if it did. If living life meant no more than just eking out a mole like existence, then life wasn't worth it.


There's always been people that have to cause fear
They've been talking of the war now for many long years
I have read all their statements and I've not said a word
But now Lawd God, let my poor voice be heard.
Let me die in my footsteps
Before I go down under the ground.


Terrorists win when they instill terror on the people they are out to terrorize. I refuse to be terrified that the subway or the building I'm in will suddenly be blown up. My death is left to the fate of God anyway. But, the only thing I have to carry until death is by remaining true to my ideas of freedom and liberty I will have refused the fear that terrorism creates in hopes of compromising me. I would rather literally die in my footsteps than live continually looking over my shoulder.

I have been thinking of William Zantzinger all day. Zantzinger's story is documented by Bob Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." He was a rich Baltimore socialite who was arrested and convicted for the killing of Hattie Carroll in 1963 and was then sentenced for six months in jail when the charge got knocked down to asault. I've been thinking about him because the US probably is going to get "Zanzingered" from this NSA spying scandal.


There is no doubt now that the NSA warrant-less spying broke the law. Some legal analysts said this right after the President admitted that he had authorized the program, and the constitutional defense that the Administration has come up for it is so riddled with holes and inconsistencies that the White House caved in on the central point of it when it started to brief all the members of the Intelligence Committee on it. The debate had reached the point of past argument when Senator Arlen Specter told Attorney General Gonzales that his interpretation of FISA "defies logic and plain English" at the Judicial Committee hearing.


So now that we have a President that has over-stepped his constitutional duty, what we are we going to do about it? Defy logic, of course. After getting the Administration to back down on the constitutional argument, Specter is now going to write an amendment to get the NSA spying program legally checked out by the FISA court and "If they say it is unconstitutional, then there ought to be a modification of it so that what the administration is doing is constitutional."


So, the Senator is proposing that we simply supply the legislation to make an act breaking the constitution into one that doesn't. I thought that the lawyers who could manipulate and twist law like this were all Democrats in the mold of John Edwards. Well, at least that was what the Bush campaign in 2004 was telling the nation.


It's is a good thing that the Administration finally got the idea that they have to work with Congress on the NSA spying program. It means we aren't going to have a constitutional crisis on our hands. But, it doesn't end the question of what exactly is going on in this secret of all secret spying. The head of NSA, General Hayden, thinks that all he needs is reasonable suspicion to spy on someone and as any 8th grade civics student can tell you the 4th Amendment says that he needs probably cause.


I wish Senator Specter would at least check out what is what with the General before he decides he has to change the 4th amendment. I can only let Bob Dylan sing out the rest of what I think for me:


In the courtroom of honor the judge pounds his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the noble get properly handled
Once the cops have chased after and caught'em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom


I haven't gotten my rag out yet, but I certainly am going to search through my chest drawers to find one.

There is no better way than Robert Frost's poem to state what Arlen Specter will be doing this week.


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Specter has fallen all over backwards to give the Bush Administration an out for the NSA domestic spying program flap. First, he showed up on This Week and said the "I-word" (Impeachment) but then back pedaled on Meet the Press to give a legal mumble-jumbo defense of Bush's 2004 Buffalo campaign speech where the Prez said he used warrants for wiretaps. In the middle of this, he wrote a list of questions for Attorney General Gonzalez to ponder before his appearance with the Senate Judicial Committee which included giving an rationale for why the DeWine amendment was argued down by the DOJ. Question #10 really left the barn door open for Gonzalez when it asked him if him would now be willing to go to the FISA court.


Specter really greased the Administration's palm when the hearing began. He decided that Gonzalez didn't need to be under oath, ruled that the Bush campaign video didn't need to be shown and introduced a 9/11 victim's family member to the room. It seemed that the Senator was strongly looking down the worn path, but when Gonzalez's performance didn't clear any of the undergrowth away, and in fact pulled down a few pine boughs to further obscure the view, Specter refused to move from the crosswords. So, what does he do? He spreads open the nearest branch a bit and yells out louder hoping someone out there will hear:


I hope you will give weighty thought to taking this issue to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, lock, stock and barrel. Let them see the whole thing and let them pass judgment.


Senator Specter in the yellow woods waiting for a reply. Will it be a human voice or will it be the echo of his own voice?


If we go by the Vice-President on "The News Hour", Specter might well be hearing his own echo. Cheney admitted that the NSA spying program was meant to be a kept secret and when Jim Lehrer pressed him, he said that it would have been at least until the end of the war. Of course, the Administration has been telling us that this is a long and protracted war against terrorism, so you know he meant a perpetual secret. Lehrer asked him why he thought the four Republican Senators on the Committee who were questioning the spying were doing that and he said "because they haven't been briefed about the program" and went on the say that if they had been briefed they'd have no problem with it.


OK, why not go and brief them now about it? If this program is all legit and run "judiciously" why are the boughs as thick as a fence? This is why the Administration started briefing all the members of the Intelligence Committee about the NSA spying. But interestingly, it wasn't enough for Specter who is going to write legislation that would make the White House submit the program to see if it was legal. So, the peering down the path will continue, will the Administration allow the secret FISA court to see if the program is as clean and law abiding as they say it is? Or will they continue to hide behind the rationale that it is even too secret for a secret court to judge upon it?


I watched the Cheney interview on the NHK network in Japan which runs a translated transcript in English on the screen during the interview and when the Vice-Prez, talking about the spying, said it was run in a "judiciously prudent manner" it was translated as "judiciously prudent marihuana." One has to wonder where Senator Specter's nose has been leading him on this.

My Mom was teaching English in a college in Hungary in the mid-1990s and my wife and I went over and stayed about three weeks and travelled around Europe after. Of all the great things we saw, the one thing I remember the most is something I didn't see.



My mother just pointed down the street and explained the tall building on the right as a synagoque. She said that she had once been to a concert in there and that the building was basically used for that because there were no services held in it now. That floored me and I nearly dropped the bag I was carrying. I was numbed and I stood dumbstruck until my wife called for me to catch up. Just the night before I had stayed up and watched a movie that my mother explained as being about a war orphan who was taken in by an elderly Jewish man who was later marched off to a death camp. I spent most of the walk home thinking about going a concert held in there. No matter how beautiful the music was, I am not sure how much I would enjoy it. Although I could only imagine what it would have been like, the thought of it bore a hole into my soul.



Underneath the
joyous music,
a hollow
long chilly
crescendoing echo.



"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Anne Coulter

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it." Pat Robertson


I'm all for free speech, but why have these people become popular? And why do they both proclaim Christian values? And why don't we hear more condemnations from moderate conservatives about them?


"Right-wing kooks."
Isn't it
about time
the phrase came
back into daily usage?

Senator Pat Robert's reply to DNC Chairman Howard Dean comments about the NSA reminding people of Nixon is at:

http://roberts.senate.gov/02-03-2006.htm

My response to the Senator are under the italics


With respect to this important program, you stated, President Bush's secret program to spy on the American people reminds Americans of the abuse of power during the dark days of President Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. As Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, I find your statements to be irrational and irresponsible. Any suggestion that a program designed to track the movement, locations, plans, or intentions of our enemy particularly those that have infiltrated our borders is equivalent to abusive domestic surveillance of the past is ludicrous.


Senator Roberts does make a good point about not pre-judging the intentions of the NSA spying program, but can't the same argument can be said about his position? We haven't even had a single Judicial Committee meeting on the legal aspects of the spying yet, but he has already come out with a strong public defense of it. Chairman Dean's statement is easy to understand because the secrecy and the recent confused public defense of it DOES remind many people of Nixon and Agnew.


You'd think that Senator Roberts, who as the head of the Intelligence Committee has access to the inner workings of domestic spying, would be interested in getting the Administration's full argument made public before he would make the statement that any accusations about the abuse of it is ludicrous. If the program is all above the board legal and hasn't abused domestic surveillance, let the Judicial Committee and his own committee give the Administration the platform to do so. His getting ahead of the Judicial Committee is also a reminder of what the Nixon Administration did once the accusations of impropriety started against it: stonewall any investigation into it.


When Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson approved the electronic surveillance of Martin Luther King, those Presidents were targeting American citizens based on activities protected by the First Amendment. When President Richard Nixon used warrantless wiretaps, they were not directed at enemies that had attacked the United States and killed thousands of Americans.


Of course, we were in the midst of a cold war at the time when Kennedy and Johnson approved the surveillance of King and Nixon used warrantless wiretaps. The threat of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was a real danger which was borne out by the Cuba Missile Crisis. The terrorist capabilities of al Queda do not compare to what a Soviet Nuclear attack would have wrecked upon our nation. Sure, we don't want another terrorist attack in the US, but let's not lose perspective about what threat terrorism is to our national security because having the ability to kill thousands doesn't mean our nation is in grave peril.


The Senator seems to missed the whole point of FISA. No one argues that the President can't order surveillance of American citizens, the argument is that they have to the show reason why they want to surveil upon somebody because of the abuses that happened to this unchecked power in the past. The problem wasn't that Martin Luther King was surveilled upon, the problem was that the information gotten through surveillance was used to try to intimidate him. I know the Senator isn't implying here that the government does have the right to use surveillance in this way, but the question has to be asked, how can anyone be sure this isn't happening unless there is some independent oversight?


I believe Americans understand that the careful and targeted program authorized by President Bush has no relation to the abuses of the past. Indeed, its closest antecedent is the direction of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Attorney General Robert H. Jackson on the eve of World War II. With war looming and reports of lurking enemy saboteurs, President Roosevelt ordered the use of domestic electronic surveillance to target persons suspected of subversive activities. As President Roosevelt noted, "It is too late to do anything about it after sabotage, assassinations and fifth column activities are completed." Significantly, President Roosevelt's direction was issued despite a statute (Section 605 of the Communications Act of 1934) and Supreme Court precedent (United States v. Nardone, 302 U.S. 379 (1937)) that prohibited such wiretapping.


Of course, the key statement here is "the eve of World War II." There is no doubt that al Queda has the capability to launch a terrorist attack, but it is also apparent that they don't have the ability to launch a naval fleet with the firepower that the Japanese were able to against Pearl Harbor. Saying President Roosevelt ordered a similar program doesn't in anyway diminish the fact that President Nixon abused a similar program. I believe President Bush when he says that he will do everything in his power to protect US citizens from another attack, but I also expect the President to be forthcoming about what programs he is enacting for this and when most members of Congress have to learn about such a program from the news media, it makes the legality of this program seem suspicious. The Administration then compounds this by arguing in the media a rationale that they earlier used to argue against amendments submitted in Congress to change FISA.



When President Bush exercised his constitutional authority and responsibility as Commander-in-Chief to target international communications between potential terrorists within this country and al Qaeda members overseas, he recognized, just like President Roosevelt, that after a terrorist attack occurs [i]t is too late. Our nation had been attacked on September 11, 2001, by foreign enemies. We were, and are still, at war with an enemy that Congress identified in an Authorization for Use of Military Force (Pub. L. No. 107-40 (Sept. 18, 2001)). Much of the war against al Qaeda is being fought overseas Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq. But the war against terrorism is not confined to foreign lands. The war against terrorism is being fought every day in our own backyard. America is a battlefield.


If America is a battlefield, then don't be naive enough to expect "no civilian casualties." We recently bombed Pakistan in hopes of killing al Queda members and we killed civilians while we did it. If we can ask those countries to accept the death of civilians because this is war, we shouldn't expect that we won't suffer some of our own along the way. No one wants another terrorist attack on US soil, but you cannot argue "that terrorism is not confined to foreign lands" and then expect that your country won't share its burden of war.


In peacetime and especially when our nation is at war, our leaders, including the chairmen of our political parties, should be more careful and better informed before they criticize the intelligence programs that protect our nation. Vibrant debate is important in our free society, but that debate should be serious and rational, especially where national security is concerned. Too many are looking at national security issues through partisan lenses. I have seen it on the Intelligence Committee for the past three years. Our nation, and the men and women of the military, law enforcement, and the intelligence community, deserve better.


The Senator is elegance here, but let's bring to mind the statement he made when he voted for President Clinton's impeachment:

http://www.ameriroots.com/impeachment/senator_roberts.html

Are we to have standards for the President different from standards applied to other citizens? Americans long ago rejected the imperial presidency. The President is not above the law. He is not a king.


The precise reason why so many people on both sides of the political divide in our country are troubled by the administration's admission that it has been been spying without using the FISA court is because we have "long ago rejected the imperial presidency." If Senator Roberts is confident that this secretly ordered domestic spying program is in good legal order and is run judiciously, than he should have no qualms with either his Committee showing how it isn't being abused or the Judiciary Committee openly showing the President's rationale for it. If it is legal and above board, let's quickly get it back under the rug so it doesn't damage the effectiveness of it anymore. If the Senator really believes we don't have "imperial presidents" or "kings" then he should do everything in his power to show how this Administration isn't acting either. This is the way to honor the people who are fighting this war.

Something has changed. Two years ago, I got on line to check the accuracy of Franken's "Lies" and found a few sites that charged he was the liar and a pretty great site which was dedicated to explaining the spin of everything. Now, the explain the spin site is in moth balls and everyone is either left or right. What is happening ? I guess I have been living in a country for a long time where people who vote don't have the foggiest idea why you would write a letter to your Senator and where political discourse is too often limited to people driving around in cars with loudspeaker asking you to vote for them. So, I have decide to start my own blog about politics. I wrote quite a few political poems in the late 1980s which document the changes I felt in society around me then and in the past few years I have written quite a few political haiku about the current events. I'd like to blog somehere.



Yeah, I have been in Japan a long time, but I have always looked homeward from afar. When I left home long ago it was a politcal given that the country I returned to would be pretty much the same one I left. I find myself wondering about this: can I safely assume this now?

Dialogue with a Fascist....

How dare
you dare
that my dare
has anything wrong!
You're a Fascist.