Freedom Isn't Free - Up Off Your Duffs!

If you haven't discovered Glenn Greenwald's blog on Salon, stop reading this post and go there right now this minute.

Greenwald's June 13 post is a brilliant, passionate dissection of this maladministration's destruction of the rule of law.

I won't say more except to read it and send it to everyone you know, but I will repost one wonderful comment.

For you children who don't remember the Free Speech movement at Berkely, a tiny history lesson: Mario Savio was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 when, during a student protest that was being put down by police in Gestapo style, he jumped up on to the roof of a police car (after politely removing his shoes) and delivered a passionate plea for freedom and democracy. He is remembered as the founder of the Free Speech movement.

And no, he was not a communist. He was an American patriot. And he lived Edward Abbey's admonition that "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

Here's Lish's profound comment:

The reality is that it will take the sacrifice of people who are willing to put themselves on the line to block and disrupt the lawless actions of a corrupt and criminal government. It will require many acts of defiant conscience and civil disobediance before the deadly enterprise of war profiteering can no longer proceed with business as usual. It's either that, or resigned and bitter complacency.

We've been up against this wall before, and the words that need to be spoken have been said over and over again. The ones that I recall most vividly are those of Mario Savio from 1964:

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

Amen, Hallelujah, and May the Flying Spaghetti Monster Touch You With His Noodly Appendage.

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Salon Update's Prosecutor Firings.

"I would never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in Senate testimony in early January. As the AG is learning if the other party wins the election, you might as well be truthful when under oath. Strange thing about the truth, it seems to dribble out.

According to an article in Salon that is exactly what they did.

In a Feb. 6 hearing, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told lawmakers, "When I hear you talk about the politicizing of the Department of Justice, it's like a knife in my heart."

Knife meet heart.

According to Mark Follman at Salon:

at least three of the eight fired attorneys were told by a superior they were being forced to resign to make jobs available for other Bush appointees, according to a former senior Justice Department official knowledgeable about their cases. That stands in contradiction to administration claims that the firings were related either to job performance or policy differences. A fourth U.S. attorney was told by a top Justice Department official that the dismissal in that attorney's case was not necessarily related to job performance. Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico -- who officially steps down from his post on Wednesday, and who says he was never told by superiors about any problems with his work -- plans to go public with documentation of the achievements of his office.

"I never received any indication at all of a problem" regarding performance or policy differences, Iglesias told Salon on Monday. "That only leaves a third option: politics."

UPDATE: By Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers is reporting that:

The U.S. attorney from New Mexico who was recently fired by the Bush administration said Wednesday that he believes he was forced out because he refused to rush an indictment in an ongoing probe of local Democrats a month before November's Congressional elections.

David Iglesias said two members of Congress separately called in mid October to inquire about the timing of an ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order to benefit the Republicans. He refused to name the members of Congress because he said he feared retaliation.

Two months later, on Dec. 7, Iglesias became one of six U.S. attorneys ordered to step down for what administration officials have termed "performance-related issues." Two other U.S. attorneys also have been asked to resign.

Iglesias, who received a positive performance review before he was fired, said he suspected he was forced out because of his refusal to be pressured to hand down an indictment in the ongoing probe.

"I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I was asked to resign," said Iglesias, who officially stepped down Wednesday.

If true Mr. Iglesias was fired for putting his duty to the United States ahead of the needs of the Republican Party. That folks is about as political as a US Attorney firing can get.

There's more: "Salon Update's Prosecutor Firings." >>