Sold out

Although it is my sincere hope that things in the United States will change after the fall election, recent news is not encouraging. Although the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives had as recently as March displayed the unprecedented existence of a spine while upholding the rule of law and the 4th amendment rights of Americans, on Friday 20 June they gave AT&T and other lawbreaking telecommunication companies a free pass for helping the executive branch to spy illegally on US citizens. They also opened the floodgates to domestic spying on a new and breathtaking level. They sold us out to the telecom lobby: Nancy Pelosi got $13k (good to know our worth); Barack Obama "opposes" telecom immunity (but won't do anything to stop it); wholesale spying, that he thinks is just dandy and we can trust him to use it responsibly once he's elected.

Although it would be hard to surpass the evil of Cheney/Bush over the past eight years, the amount of power being concentrated in the executive branch is frighteningly corrupting, and it continues to expand. Mother Teresa would be tempted by that amount of power. I don't trust anyone to wield absolute power responsibly, and I'm not supposed to have to: that's why the US has a constitution, at least in theory. I guess that's really just a quaint historical document now, and we'll be at the mercy of whoever gets elected. That's not the way it's supposed to work, folks.

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." - John Adams [1772].