This was George W. Bush on the campaign trail and debate circuit in 2000.
Here, he espouses humble foreign policy, avoiding playing ‘World Police’ and staying out of the business of nation building.
What the hell happened?
This is Trinity Tomsic. She’s married to the Honorable Cheye Calvo, Mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. She’s distraught because the couple recently lost their family pets — two black Labradors — after cops in Maryland broke down their door, handcuffed the Mayor, opened fire and killed the animals.
The Mayor and his wife weren’t committing any crimes. They were the victims of an on-going crime known as the War on Drugs.
It seems that the couple had received a package, via regular post, of over 30 pounds of marijuana. You know… leaves.
This gave law enforcement rise to forcibly break into the couple’s home, place the mayor in handcuffs (and leave him that way for hours), shoot the couple’s dogs and treat the pair as if they’d committed murder. At the end of it all, the geniuses in Berwyn Heights’ police department figured out that the couple had nothing to do with the delivery.
They wouldn’t even apologize for icing the dogs.
The story is here and it should probably make you rethink the role of government in protecting us from ourselves. In other words, is grass really cause for an overzealous cop discharging a firearm in a family’s home? Which does more harm?
These people are victims, but there’s plenty more victims out there. The War on Drugs doesn’t work. It creates a black market where there should instead be oversight. It creates organized crime where there would otherwise be none. It creates gang violence, turf wars, criminals out of addicts and ruined lives over a plant.
A damn plant.
No wonder potheads are so paranoid.
Vincent Bugliosi may not be a name you know unless you’re over 45 years or age or an avid follower of high-profile criminal cases in the United States.
He was the Deputy Prosecutor during the trials of the Manson Family in California. He’s also the author of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.
He’s no slouch.
Here, now is Bugliosi’s testimoney to a House Judiciary Committee on the matter. Watch and decide.
ThinkProgress reports that on this day, 8 years ago, then-Presidential hopeful and Republican nominee, George W. Bush told convention-goers that he would uphold the honor and dignity of the office of the President of the United States of America:
So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.
He also promised to uphold the laws of our land. Do you think he’s done so?
Over the past 8 years, we’ve been made criminals, guilty until proven innocent, under the United States Patriot Act – legislation so vigorously pushed by the Bush administration that most members of the House and Senate never had a chance to even read it.
We’ve lost our right to Habeas Corpus and Writ of Quo Warranto – the rights that guarantee us the ability to defend ourselves against wrongful persecution and perhaps the most sacred rights we have save our rights to life, liberty and happiness.
We’ve read news story after news story about torture committed by the United States against detainees. We’ve heard the Bush White House defend the practices of waterboarding and other extreme methods of interrogation over and over, in clear opposition of international law and the Geneva Conventions.
We’ve seen members of the Bush administration thumb their noses at the Congress.
We’ve seen monstrous legislation bullied through the chambers of the Legislature that defy our Constitutionally guaranteed rights under the 4th Amendment.
We’ve read over 35 separate articles of impeachment against the President along with a number of them against his Vice President, based on felonies and misdemeanors.
We’ve seen an administration that obstructed justice and blocked the efforts of a commission to investigate and report back to the American people on the events of September 11, 2001.
We’ve all felt the effects of a falling dollar value, hyperinflation and trillions upon trillons of dollars in debt to pay for a military industrial complex in support of a war that the President, himself, lied to the American people about.
We’ve seen articles of the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi citizens and thousands of dead American service people.
So, my question is this:
Precisely what law of the land and what honor and dignity has Mr. Bush upheld?
