With the Presidential Primaries less than a month away, I decided that it was time to stop hemming and hawing over which Presidential candidate to endorse. I’ve chosen John Kerry.

However, I have not chosen him necessarily because I support him with the fullest enthusiasm possible. I have chosen him because I believe that what Bush has done with this country is unjust and wrong. I recognize, that Kerry may continue current policies for the next four years (and likely will in several areas); however, I feel that Kerry has a much better chance of improving environmental law, resolving the War in Iraq, and preserving Social Security. I am among a mass of voters who vote not because they feel any affinity towards any candidate, but because not voting means not being heard.

The American public is still disillusioned in politics. We expect that our political figures will lie to us. We expect that those in power will abuse that power. Despite what Bush may tell us, what is known as the Vietnam Syndrome — which refers to the feelings aroused in the American public as they witnessed the Vietnam War — is very much alive, and John Kerry is right to try and invoke that idea when he argues that Iraq is exactly like the Vietnam War. However, there’s no way of knowing whether Kerry does what he says he will or whether he is simply trying to appease a torn American public.

The big environmental news today (Mount St. Helens notwithstanding) is that Russia has decided to back the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which places specific caps on the amount of greenhouse gasses that countries can produce. This is good.

I did a whole bunch of work looking at global warming during Spring Quarter of my Freshman year at Evergreen, so I know quite a bit about Kyoto and the issues surrounding global warming. However, I’m a little too beat to actually dig up my notes on the subject just yet — probably in the near future, for those who care about background. Or you could just check out the Wikipedia entry, which gives you more than I could ever tell you.

Guess you shouldn’t expect an update regarding this

I saw a bumper sticker as I was wandering through the parking lot of the Yoga place next door on the way back from a day at the Writing Center retreat and stops at Safeway and Blockbuster:

Practice compassionate impeachment

Well, that’s a contradiction in terms. I realize that that’s usually the point of bumper stickers — to be a little flippant and completely contradictory — but it still got me thinking about the term “compassionate impeachment”. I decided to be literal in interpreting this phrase and looked up both “compassionate” and “impeachment” in the Oxford American Dictionary (Heald Colleges Edition, 1980):

compassionate (adj.): a feeling of pity that makes one want to help or show mercy

impeachment (n.): 1. to charge a public official with misconduct in office before an appropriate tribunal. 2. to call in question, to discredit.

Thus, the phrase “compassionate impeachment” refers to a case when, out of pity and a want to show mercy to a public official, that official is charged with misconduct in office before a tribunal. Well, given the liberal stance on the current Presidency (as well as my own stance on the current Presidency), it’s relatively safe to assume that this refers to Bush (it’s also rare to hear of impeachments that don’t involve the office of the President of the United States; this isn’t further corroborating evidence towards assuming it’s about Bush, simply an observation). Practicing compassionate impeachment is sort of a way of “saving grace” in the face of a public official whom the public feels has screwed up.

I would argue that this is exactly what we don’t want to do in Bush’s case. Yes, Bush has perpetuated lies upon the American people, the depths of which probably won’t be fully revealed, much less understood, for several years. Yes, we are in an unjust war against Iraq (and, to some extent, against Afghanistan and the entire Middle East). Yes, this is another Vietnam — I may not like the way John Kerry has been pushing this point lately, but he is dead on in this assessment. However, given that Bush has made these errors and omissions, there isn’t enough time left within his Presidency to justify impeachment proceedings against him, since the effect of such proceedings would be felt after he left office and the damage has been done. While I recognize that some charges are better than no charges and that consequences should be leveled, the timing is wrong.

In addition, the nature of the Bush presidency thus far suggests that there are lies that we haven’t even begun to uncover. Impeaching now — without allowing more facts to emerge — is to only impeach him on his known actions after 9/11 and to essentially absolve him of future prosecution due to the double jeopardy provisions of the Constitution. Perhaps this is a stretch of my legal understanding of the Constitution — since some people spend their whole lives trying to understand the intent and content of that document — but it seems to me a reasonable conclusion. Any facts or evidence uncovered after impeachment that are related to 9/11 cannot be used against him.

Thus, since impeachment refers to a public official and not a private citizen or war crimes tribunal, impeachment in Bush’s case was impractical. Clinton’s impeachment was politically viable merely because, number one, he had committed deeds that were fully known to the public, and number two, he had enough time left in office for impeachment proceedings to make sense. At least in terms of number two, there are only about three months left in the Bush presidency. Compassionate impeachment, in any form, against George W. Bush is impractical, though the need to make Bush accountable for his lies is copiously evident.

In the New York Times today, the opening of the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. was covered. This article contains the following quotes:

On Monday, hundreds of people already were milling about the museum to get an early peek. “At last we’re getting some kind of recognition as Indian people,” said Lawrence Orcutt, from the Yurok tribe in northern California.

Dave Anderson, who heads the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the museum will allow Indians to open a new chapter in the United States.

“I look at this whole museum opening as an opportunity for healing, for optimism,” he said.

It’s correct that the Museum reflects a new recognition of Native Americans and that it celebrates the life and culture of many native tribes. However, the idea that this museum opening somehow heralds a “new chapter in the United States” for Native Americans is, to put it bluntly, historically impossible and preposterous. While I, for one, would certainly embrace such a change wholeheartedly, presenting this event as a cataclysm for future changes is stretching the idea of presenting the history of Native American tribes.

Quoting Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States:

In 1969, November 9, there took place a dramatic event which focused attention on Indian grievances as nothing else had. It burst through the invisibility of previous local Indian protests and declared to the entire world that the Indians still lived and would fight for their rights. On that day, before dawn, seventy-eight Indians landed on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and occupied the island . . . They said:

We feel that this so-called Alcatraz Island is more than suitable for an Indian reservation, as determined by the white man’s own standards. By this we mean that this place resembles most Indian reservations in that:

1. It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of transportation.
2. It has no fresh running water.
3. It has inadequate sanitation facilities.
4. There are no oil or mineral rights.
5. There is no industry and so unemployment is very great.
6. There are no health care facilities.
7. The soil is rocky and non-productive; and the land does not support game.
8. There are no educational facilities.
9. The population has always exceeded the land base.
10. The population has always been held as prisoners and dependent upon others.

— page 529-530

The United States has continued to deny the rights of Native American tribes in the practice of tribal and religious ceremonies, and has shoehorned them onto reservations and off of what whites consider “our land” since colonial times. This shoehorning has led to a massive loss of rights for Native Americans; in addition to the grievances listed above from the occupation of Alcatraz, the white man has made attempts (admittedly much earlier in history, but it continues today) to re-educate Native Americans into our own way of life.

We cannot declare a new age for Native Americans until we abolish reservations, allow Native Americans as much freedom as whites have continually been entitled to, and issue some form of apology on behalf of the United States for the oppression and subjugation of an entire way of life. Coincidentally, the same probably holds for blacks, and possibly Americans of Japanese descent who were put into concentration camps during World War II.

To quote Mr. William Falk’s article in the New York Times today, “That Wasn’t the Week That Was“:

IN DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE, PART II Representative Edward Schrock, Republican of Virginia, abandoned his bid for re-election, after a Web log claimed he had sought sex with other men through a phone service. Mr. Schrock, who is married, has co-sponsored a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and has advocated barring homosexuals from military service. (Mr. Schrock is a retired Navy officer.) The Web log, Blogactive.com, has vowed to reveal the identities of lawmakers who are gay and support anti-homosexual legislation. An aide said Mr. Schrock was not gay, but that he wouldn’t run because the accusations had called into question his ability to represent his constituents.

While I may not agree with what Mr. Schrock supports, this is downright disappointing when people take it upon themselves to upend the private lives of politicians in order to reveal something as inconsequential as whether they’re gay or straight. Albeit that this would reveal a very basic contradiction in Mr. Schrock’s policies, the mere accusation alone is obviously enough to cripple a political career. If those types of accusations call into question anyone’s ability to represent their constituents, what would happen if the same site started indicting other heterosexual politicians? For that matter, what would happen if politicians were found to be bisexual? Is that somehow less repulsive than homosexuality?

As for the issues that Mr. Schrock supports, I have already stated my opposition to a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. I have not, however, stated my opposition to banning homosexuals from military service. Liking your own gender in no way affects your ability to follow orders. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy seems to be working just fine, and rules against dating people within your own unit to prevent any potentially disastrous relationships from forming would make a little more sense to me than banning the presence of gays in the military outright. We can support gays in the military without risking possibly dangerous outcomes that sprout from relationships inside a soldier’s own unit.