Show down in Crawford, Texas: When the Truth Triumphed

W. Leon Smith was a believer. When he started his newspaper The Lone Star Iconoclast in Crawford in 2000 he believed that George Bush would be an asset to the community and the country.

Time and events have changed that.

When Bush was inaugurated in 2001, America had a budget surplus. But by September of 2004, Americans faced the worst budget deficit in history, were mired in war, seeing its sons and daughters returned home maimed or in coffins, and facing a rapidly deteriorating economy.

With his co-editors, Smith sat down again to go over the issues. The paper always made endorsements. Their editorial policy was not focused on partisan politics but on simply doing the right thing. Ignoring party loyalty, . Smith declared that what really matter was character and keeping faith with those who elected them.

The three editors at The Iconoclast objectively considered the issues; they assessed George Bush and John Kerry as if they were prospective employees, acting for all Americans. They counted up the time George Bush spent on vacation, more time off than any other president in history.

They looked over the toll taken by the War in Iraq . Then they turned their attention to the emerging patterns of corruption that revealed an agenda having nothing to do with serving the American people. Billions were disappearing into the maw of such corporations as Halliburton through contracts that never went out to bid.

George Bush ' s popularity had waned in other parts of the country, but in Texas his approval rating still stood at over 80%. Smith knew the risks. He was cautioned that publishing an endorsement of John Kerry in 2004 could cost him his business.

On September 29, 2004 , the Iconoclast endorsed John Kerry with a half-page editorial that became the talk of the nation and the world. The passionately worded editorial was downloaded and reprinted millions of times over the next months.

Over and over again the Iconoclast ' s servers crashed because of the volume. The three phones in the Iconoclast ' s offices were not still for weeks. At first, most callers were angry, abusive, obscene with whoever answered the phone. Then, a change started to take place. The number of calls continued to keep the phones busy around the clock but the reason for the calls changed. People from Texas and across the country and then the world began to express their gratitude. The Iconoclast had spoken for them, outlining their concerns and issues succinctly and objectively, they said.

At first it had been difficult for the Iconoclast employees to endure. Employees were harassed and threatened as was Smith. Reporters were prevented from just doing their jobs. A campaign was mounted to boycott the paper, threatening advertisers with boycott of their businesses if they continued to advertise in The Iconoclast.

A group in Clifton , where the Iconoclast headquarters are located, began to call for Smith ' s removal as Mayor of the small town. A delegation of local people came en mass to the offices of the Iconoclast to tell Smith they intended to “run him out of town.”

Smith held his ground truth, and at no time did he choose to rescind the editorial.

Courage comes with the Smith heritage. The Smith family and Texas have a long history.

Erastus “Deaf” Smith, Leon Smith ' s great-great-great-great uncle, first came as to Texas from Mississippi Territory in 1817, having been born in New York and later living in North Carolina . Deaf had lost his hearing from a childhood disease. In 1822 he was married and living near San Antonio .

During the course of the Texas War of Independence Erastus Smith would earn the deep respect and gratitude of Stephen Austin and Sam Houston. His work as a spy for the Texans would provide the information that won Texas ' s independence.

Wounded in battle, he returned to duty in time for the crucial battle for independence, where he played a key role. It would be Deaf Smith who discovered the fate of those at the Alamo and who escorted Susanna W. and Angelina E. Dickinson, now widows, to safety. It was to Smith the phrase, “Remember the Alamo ,” would be ascribed.

On April 21, 1836 , Smith, under orders from Sam Houston, destroyed Vince ' s Bridge to prevent the retreat of the Mexican army. Smith always accomplished his mission. He died November 30, 1837 .

On September 29, 2004 , his great-great-great-great nephew also took action, born from a sense of honor and loyalty to the preservation of America’s true values and to Texas . As Mayor of Clifton, Texas he had done his duty to his community. Now he would do his duty to his fellow Americans.

The Editorial, as it came to be known, set the issues that would be raised during the Presidential debate then pending. That editorial began by pointing out that few Americans would have voted for Bush if they had realized he would:

• “Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.

• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.

• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.

• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.

• Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.

• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and

• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States , creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.

These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.”

The Editorial was reasoned, deeply researched and well documented. It had needed to be said; no one else had said it. Despite that or because of it Smith became the focus of media attention himself. Everyone from MSNBC to college newspapers throughout the country wanted an interview and many came to Clifton to get it.

Leon found himself working around the clock, even giving interviews at 4 in the morning. Work on the paper backed up but always, finally, went out. Smith found himself hammered; every statement made in the Editorial scrutinized and questioned in exhausting detail. But he knew that he needed to be available. To do otherwise could be deemed as backing away from the truth.

• On November 3rd, 2004 the Iconoclast ran a story on overcharging by Halliburton.

• On November 17th, the paper reported voting irregularities.

• On December 1^st it reported the Congressional investigation of voting irregularities.

• On December 12 the report of the offer off $100,000 from Jimmy Walters for proof that the World Trade Center had collapsed as reported by the governmental investigation was on the front page.

• January 5, 2005 Rep. Conyers Asking Senators To Object To Certification Of Election

• February 9, 2005 Unexpected Illness, Medical Bills Cause Half Of All Bankruptcies

• March 2, 2005 Lessons of My Lai :Army Whistleblower Urges Public To Do The Right Thing

• March 9, 2005 Underwater Noise Pollution Will Dolphins And Whales Go The Way Of The Dinosaur? - The Velvet Revolution: Divestiture For Democracy 87 Citizen Groups Launch Nationwide Campaign To End Secrecy In U.S. Voting Machine Companies

• March 23, 2005 Texas House Proposes Tax Cuts For The Wealthy With School Finance Plan

In the next months the readership of the Iconoclast would change. Few now subscribed from the local area, but the on-line edition was read across the country and internationally. As corporately owned media within the United States was stifled and issues that were public knowledge in Europe and elsewhere globally, Americans could find the truth reliably on the pages of the Iconoclast.

The Iconoclast became the newspaper for Americans who want the truth and for those in other countries who wanted a real American paper. Print copies began to be mailed out around the world.

The migration of Depleted Uranium came to the attention of Americans through the Iconoclast as did other issues that otherwise would have remained unknown to the general public.

While The Iconoclast had become a major source for the truth, this work carried out by a staff of three incredibly brave and intrepid people, Mr. Smith still felt as if major stories were slipping through his fingers because of the lack of staff, money and time.

Smith had also begun to receive e-mails and phone calls from people deep within the Bush Administration and in multinational corporations who had information they knew should be available to the public. They knew he could be trusted because of his unwavering bravery. Stretching his resources to the limit, Smith worked around the clock to make as many of these stories available as possible while still ensuring that the documenting research would be available to protect the paper ' s continued existence.

Over and over again it would be an article in the Iconoclast that would awaken Americans to issues that did not appear in the mainstream media. But Smith faced the frustration of limited resources. Not all of these invaluable leads could be followed up. Whistleblowers were equally stalwart, and unwilling to go elsewhere; they knew Smith was to be trusted and many were putting their lives and livelihoods on the line.

America was experiencing another division; this one not on the ideological divide but based on Internet access and whether the Internet was used as the most reliable source of news. Americans were confused by the best way to get their news. In the blogosphere the state of affairs was clarifying. For the rest of the country it remained opaque. Attempts to limit Internet access were stepped up by the administration. At the same time, activist organizations, such as Velvet Revolution, Code Pink, and After Downing Street and a host of others began to step up organizing against the war and in opposition to the Bush Administration but no one could penetrate into the mainstream.

Then, in August of 2005 Cindy Sheehan went to Crawford , Texas to confront George Bush. Camp Casey sprang into being; the media arrived ready to shoot at their usual Bush clearing his boring brush story, but events would prove them wrong.

The Iconoclast had covered a Sheehan story recently, but now Smith and one of his fellow editors decided to follow the events in detail, through cell phones providing hour-by-hour or even minute-by-minute coverage of the drama playing out at Camp Casey and at the Crawford Peace House.

The action was reported on the Iconoclast pages online. As major mainstream media saw the Iconoclast following the action they ramped up their own coverage. Finally, the mainstream had competition, limited but on point.

Then, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and Americans received a closer look at the stunning lack of compassion of the Bush White House. The stories flowed out, directly through readership then through the blogging community.

The activist world had come to depend on the Iconoclast as someplace they could go for the truth and the Iconoclast intensified its mission to meet that demand.

In the following months the use of cell cameras and links to video and audio would flesh out the approach the Iconoclast had pioneered while the choke hold of corporate ownership continued its drive to cut activists off from the mainstream. The case of a student at UCLA, battered by campus police, would gain visibility through observers using their personal devices. In Iraq the use of camera cell phones was banned.

The race for the hearts and minds of Americans had become grim, the outcome depending on factors not yet in evidence. As the number of issues and activists increased so did the crying need to break through to America . Would it happen in time? The jury is still out.

A Tour of the Bush Library: BushLand

With a budget of half a billion dollars and little need to provide space for the perusal of documents the Bush Center has decided on a novel approach to ensure that the work of the Bush Junior Presidency takes its well-earned place in history while also guaranteeing that the public understands the President as a man and policy innovator. Also on the agenda; just a little bit of profit to offset those hefty salaries paid out to Karl Rove and other long time loyalists.

The facility, in partnership with Disney, will provide a walk and drive through environment that links together the high octane points of the Bush years, connecting these to how significant moments then provided the content for policies that make the Bush – Cheney Administration different from any other in American history.

Visitors will queue up for the tours in groups of not more than ten, to keep it personal. As they wait, the group will hear the historic words of the past president as he used a bull horn to address the media and onlookers at Ground Zero in New York. Then the doors, that are designed to look like the Twin Towers as they settle into a pile of dust, will open to reveal a long corridor and the visitor will be greeted by an android that looks exactly like George W. Bush dressed as he was when he landed his Air Force jet and announced the “mission accomplished” moment. The dying sound of the jet engine will fill the background.

The group will follow the President into the corridor, which will light up as the group advances. On both sides they will see jail cells that light up, revealing scenes now familiar to us through the Abu Ghraib photos. These will illustrate the deep trauma experienced by guards doing their duty to their President and their Country as they perform essential pre-interrogation routines. Sound effects are reported to be very realistic and exciting.

The Bush simulation will then wave and shake hands passing the group on to another figure that history will always associate with the Bush Presidency, Lynndie England. Here, the presentation grows more serious as Lynndie explains why Bush was driven to propose essential softening up routines as a means of ensuring that the suspected terrorists who were incarcerated at Abu Ghraib Prison and elsewhere provided information needed to save American lives.

As we now know, Lynndie, was actually a deep agent who was pardoned by Bush in the final moments of his presidency along with himself and his entire administration and some members of his family. The high volume Xerox machine used for this purpose sits in the small museum near the information desk along with other significant items, for instance, a small wooden box that Karl Rove hid in and around the Oval Office occasionally on which is carved, “Weapon of Mass Destruction.” Plans to substitute similar boxes for the traditional Easter Eggs for that Hunt were scotched by Laura Bush but are available in the gift shop at the end of the tour.

Visitors will be able to step across puddles of blood and see how the most ordinary of implements can be adapted to this purpose. This presentation is followed up with the handing out of CDs and DVDs wherein Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld explain the grave necessity that renewed the use of torture as a weapon essential for fighting terror. More such interesting and educational items can be purchased in the Library – Policy Center Store.

Visitors will then understand that this was necessary for the survival of America.

As the group proceeds down the corridor, now riding in golf carts that have been refitted from the Dallas Country Club, the group exchanges Lynndie for another android guide, Jeff Gannon. This portion of the tour will take our visitors to a news conference taking place in the media room of the White House. There, visitors will see another simulation of Gannon asking the hard questions that won him the respect of the President and drew him into a confidential relationship with the most powerful man in the world, George Bush.

This portion of the tour ends at the door of the Lincoln Bedroom, where the wall opens up and visitors find themselves in a room watching the high points from the movie DC 911, the movie produced by Lionel Chetwin in 2003 to show Americans the real story of how George Bush spent his time from the moment he came out of the slight fog in the school room in Florida, where he confronted subjects too esoteric for ordinary people to consider, until he addressed the American people. At some point in the future, perhaps five generations from now, the documents relating to this will be available.

Visitors will then sit through a presentation on American events by a real child who learned that history in a public school in Texas that ensure that no Child was Left Behind. The presentation will take the visitor through a recitation of how the Bush Walker family saved the United States by ensuring free trade with China during the Opium Wars, did behind the scenes work during the Nazi Regime in Germany, and then with the Soviet Union as they ensured that Americans would have a continuing supply of petroleum. Then, they will hear the story of how Bush Senior worked to make sure that America was not destroyed by women and environmentalists and helped Ronald Reagan end the Cold War. As proof, they will see Bush Senior and Junior hammering out pieces of the Berlin Wall. These can also be purchased in the Store. Visitors will then understand why and how a faltering Bush Senior handed off this heroic duty to his oldest, beloved, son, George Junior.

The seated visitors now exit the theatre, guided by the android of Karl Rove who leads them into the Bush vision of the future. Here they see a shiny super highway that knits together the whole of North America. The super highway, as wide as two football fields, is a hub of activity and commerce that allows for free and open access to American's heartland. The stream of vehicles are no longer using petroleum. Instead, they are using ethanol which is available at only $3.00 a gallon, far less than Americans paid for gasoline in 2008. They see happy people from all across the world working hard at jobs that used to be held by Americans who now have new opportunities for leisure and different job opportunities. They see smiling police and cameras on every corner, reminding them that now they are secured and the lovely rolling hills of the Dallas Country Club come alive as George Bush drives his own gold golf cart across the verdant scene and waves happily.

As they exit the theater they enter the gift shop that sells Bush Golf Clubs with the Presidential Seal, pens, photos of the Greatest President, simulated exact reproductions of Barbara Bush's two strand pearl neckless and other memorabilia. Also included are DVDs and CDs that teach eager tourists how to train their dogs to intimidate suspected terrorists and special implements to be used only when following the instructions included. They see an American flag that has the names of various corporations printed on the stripes. They can buy one of those, too.

Tickets are only $200.00. Call the White House to pre-order today.

This is your opportunity to imagine. Imagine a world where the policies of George Bush receive the respect they deserve.

SMU Petitions: A referendum on the Bush Presidency?

Signatures Supporting Bush Library

February 2 - 98
February 6 - 9:30am EST 107 10:49am EST 107 11:09am EST 107

Signatures Opposing Bush Library

February 2 - 9,965
February 6 - 9:30am EST 10,185 10:49am EST 10,198 11:09am EST 10,201

If the debate on whether or not the Bush Library and Policy Center will be housed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas were a sports event the outcome would already have been decided. Last night the number of signatures on the petition opposing the Library stood at 10,101; this morning it is 10,124, most of whom identify their denomination as Methodist and include their church. The on line petition supporting the inclusion of the Library and Policy Center on the SMU campus stood last night at 107. This morning it is 106, the last two entries had been removed and one more added.

Last night the last two entries were from Dr. Susanne Johnson, the faculty member from the Perkins School of Theology on Campus who cosigned the letter that resulted in the demand from the faculty that the project be subject to a referendum by the same faculty. The two letters were written on the issues that have appeared elsewhere in the media of late. They included,among others, the unwillingness of Bush to meet with the Bishops of the Methodist Church for the last six years and the use of torture, a practice that violates the tenets and values of Methodism, according to those same Bishops.

The petitions are different in every imaginable way. The url for the petition opposed is titled, “Protect SMU.” The petition supporting the Bush Project is titled, “Protect SMU From The "Leftist Bush-Hate Kooks Opposing The Bush Presidential Library Being @ SMU!” thus setting the tone for those signing.

The use of vilifying rhetoric is mostly absent on the Protect SMU petition; vitriol is a standard practice on the other. Since it is well known to political activists that NeoCons routinely employ a cadre of mostly young men to surf the web and plant disinformation the similarity in wording and grammatical errors is understandable. They are fed their scripts through the network of political operatives that includes John Fund, Matt Drudge, and David Horowitz.

The Protect SMU Petition focuses on the same issues; the violation of the tenets of Methodism by the Bush Presidency. The other ignores the issues raised, points to the potential for profit, and chooses to characterize those in opposition as, 'effete snobs,” “a few looney lefti-wing creeps ,” and “left wing, radical socialists.” Phrases are slavishly reused.

No one on the Pro Bush Project Petition addressed the concerns of those opposing the Bush Project or commented on Bush's continued unwillingness to meet with the Bishops of his own church or expressed an opinion on the use of torture by Americans.

The issues raised on the petition supporting the Bush Project go to the potential of the facility to generate income for the area and its utility as a research facility. In the majority of cases the signers ignore the issues, instead demanding unquestioning loyalty either to US policy or to Bush, either personally or as president. Far fewer identity themselves by a church affiliation.

The benefit of the Bush Project for Dallas as a tourist destination is doubtful. Crawford Texas opened shops featuring novelties and collectibles in the belief tourism would bring in bucks but their income from these has fallen off significantly as the Bush Presidency used up the good will it stole from the tragedy of September 11th. According to the Office of the Controller of Texas. There is an upward swing in sales when Cindy Sheehan or other protesters are there, though it is not clear that it is pro-Bush memorabilia that is driving that blip on the local economy.

Since Bush has signed an executive order allowing him and his heirs to block access to documents in virtual perpetuity the usefulness of the Project for research is probably nil. Already funded to the tune of a half a billion dollars, mostly by the Bush core constituency of oil companies and other multinationals who are profiting mightily in Iraq, the Policy Center is expected to justify and promote the policies that Bush has himself followed. Would that mean that techniques in torture would become a subject for research as a useful and approved 'policy tool?' One can imagine the kind of research carried out in the back behind the sound proofed doors. But we are lead to that conclusion and to contemplating the idea that how to lie more effectively and manufacture the needed justifications would also be included. Perhaps that is to be Karl Rove's job as he retires to a prosperous old age?

Presumably, SMU will be offered an endowed Chair dedicated to the work of Leo Strauss.

The problem is, perhaps, trying to view the Bush Library and Policy Center through the lens of what we have always understood as acceptable. By refusing to be governed by SMU and by massive funding, this facility will be different than any presidential library ever built. Bush is planning to take the power of the presidency with him when he leaves office.

When something is so monumentally outrageous we try to find a way to look at it that makes it comprehensible. It is like America has been invaded by blood sucking aliens dressed with the smiling faces of ordinary humanity but it is not polite to mention it.

Ordinary people continue to sign petitions.

While most of those signing the Protect SMU Petition are still Methodists as of now, both Doctors Susanne Johnson and Andrew Weaver, the Methodist Minister from Brooklyn, a graduate of SMU, are well aware that the petition may well become a national referendum on the Bush Presidency. When asked, each admitted that possibility. Dr. Johnson said that the possibility that the dialog would extend beyond the boundaries of the University and of Methodism had recently occurred to her as she saw the media interest increase. She said she and Dr. Maclvaney, the other faculty member who signed the original letter, have been interviewed by a steady stream of media from various parts of the country and overseas.

Dr. Weaver commented that while it had not been his intention to elicit a broader dialog he hoped that the petition and the questions it raised could focus Americans on a consideration of morals, values, and a renewal of faith. Faith, and courage are values much needed by Americans today.

A group on the SMU Campus is also collecting signatures in support of the Bush Project. That group, SMU Young Conservatives of Texas, has been active on the Dallas campus of the University since 2002. Members participated in the Affirmative Action Cookie Sale in 2003, where members sold cookies with different prices listed for men and women and for Black, White and Native American individuals, the order of cost being $1.00 per cookie for white men, $.75 for white women, $.50 for Hispanics of both genders, and $.25 for Blacks of both genders. The event was closed down by the administration as disruptive of peace after the sale of $1.50 worth of cookies. Evidently, none of those offended thought of having a friendly Hispanic buy the supply of cookies at that lowest price and setting up a table to resell these for more money. Developing a sense of humor as we act locally would be a good idea.

There was no report on who had baked the cookies, but I would bet it was a white woman who then had to pay to eat them. Since I am a member of the National Federation of Republican Women I know how it all works.

The NeoCons have done an artful job of positioning themselves and creating icons that attracted young people into the Republican Party who came with far different motivations than was once the case. The idealists who read and believed the words of Barry Goldwater are few now. Goldwater wrote in his book, Conscience of a Conservative,

“Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty. Government represents power in the hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men. And power, as Lord Acton said, corrupts men. “Absolute power,” he added, “corrupts absolutely.”

Those same activists, once committed to seeing the Republican Party deliver on the promises of small government, local control, individual rights for all, and simple kindness were displaced by a new breed; young men and women who idolize Anne Coulter because she has glamorized political deception and become wealthy so doing. The young people who flock to see such as Coulter seek icons that say, “wealth and power are the only justifications you need.”

Today, America is confronted with a State far more dangerous to us and confiscatory on every level than any imagined by our founders. Today, we see a State that is the property, not of Americans, but of the same corporations who will build the Bush Library.

Southern Methodist University is about to be consumed because it is convenient for Bush to claim membership as a Methodist and he will be able to have a lavish home near his buddies. To that end he is more than willing to sacrifice all the unearned money he can lay hands on. In this we are witnessing the plans he and his buddies have for America. We will not be able to say we were not warned.

Get off the Grids, Organize Locally, Build Coalition.

Civility is for the civil, not for criminals: No question is out of line for Dick Cheney

Babies are a good thing; they are the hope of the world, the perpetuation of the human adventure; the soul healing delight that transforms girls into mothers.

And while we cannot fault Dick and Lynn Cheney for their expressed delighted that their daughter is about to give birth to a child their own movement would characterize as an abomination the recent exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Dick Cheney does point to the contradictory practices and standards of those we know as NeoCons. Their actions send a message about their real agenda; that is what has been operating under the cover of rhetoric since Dick Cheney was a high school cheerleader, courting his far more political girl friend, Lyn.

Why should Blitzer have allowed Dick Cheney to determine what questions Cheney, a public employee, should have to answer? Cheney and Bush are not our employers, nor does their behavior give them a right to deference.

The assertion that Cheney or Bush or any of those who we know as NeoCons should be accorded respect continues a mistake Americans have been making for a long time. It is time to change that. According respect to individuals who occupy positions of power through deceit empowers deceitful behavior. Instead of respect they should be shunned. The mistake of according such deference itself is a continuation of the mistake we made in extending the trappings of 'aristocracy' to such as Bush.

Bush is no Aristocrat; he is the offspring of generations that made their living from sucking the tit of government.

America is a nation established to refute the idea of elitism; the Revolution was in large part capitalized by people who rejected the idea of a 'natural aristocracy' or one established through the acquisition of wealth when that wealth was not viewed through a lens that judged how it was accumulated. We are not British. America's mission statement affirms the absolute ideal of equality.

Americans do not bow or curtsy to kings. Each of us is in our own right sovereign, holding that standing not by government but as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson in America's Mission Statement, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —“

Americans should accord respect only to those whose actions affirm accomplishment by means that extend the cultural capital of cooperation through doing the right thing. No Robber Baron deserves our respect; no PR agents for Robber Barons do either.

The slow, steady displacement of respect accorded to those who accomplished financial well being and social justice through going right, replaced with just how high the dollar signs are piled, has taken its toll of American culture. Today, behavior that would make barnyard animals blush is excused in celebrities of all kinds. Today, wealthy Mafiosi are accorded respect; money in large amounts is all that matters. Bill Gates is courted to donate to charities although most of us know that his wealth came from the worst kind of predatory behavior, carried out by skirting the law and ignoring simple decency.

The same pattern played out in the aftermath of those earlier generations of Robber Barons. Taking money and favors from the Federal government, these opportunists risked not their own wealth but the wealth entrusted to government by the people. The tendency to see wealth entrusted to government as up for grabs has been going on for a long time. The Big Four, and their Eastern cronies, including Rockefeller, were despised by people whose own values reflected a belief that wealth earned by deceit, corruption, and violence carried with it no social credit. When met with social ostracism they bought their way in. That was not their mistake, it was the mistake of those who let it happen. That the names of Stanford, Doheney, Mulholland, Carnegie, and others carry a patina of aristocracy is a mistake that has proven to be more expensive than we could have imagined.

Today both Left and Right in America cozy up to those holding ill-gotten gains, in obvious hopes that the ooze of stolen money will rub off on them. It is a sad sight and continues the deterioration of real American values.

Cheney's wealth is the accumulation of money 'earned' through carrying out the agenda of large corporations, whose income stream depends of limiting the market choices of Americans, keeping them on the grid of dependency. The correct way to treat him is to turn your back and ignore his presence. Treating him with deference is itself despicable and offensive. Cheney is an employee of the American people. He deserves no more respect than an auto mechanic who does phony repairs on your car. In justice, the auto mechanic is less toxic and does not usually expect us to bow or curtsy.

This Cheney grandchild is being born within a lesbian relationship and outside of marriage. Personally, I would not judge mother or child. It is Mary Cheney's life and choice. But Lynn Cheney raised her children in a home environment where she wrote about lesbian sexual behavior while emoting the rhetoric of living a very different life. This positioning profited Cheney and his fellow NeoCons to the tune of billions, if not trillions of unearned dollars. Those dollars were not created, they were stolen from real people, many of who will die as a result.

Mary Cheney's baby will live a life of comfort and privilege while Iraqi children die horribly, their deaths an adjunct to the lies told by this baby's grandfather.

"BAGHDAD, 29 Jan 2007 (IRIN) - The Iraqi government, the United Nations and NGOs have condemned an attack against a girls’ school in Baghdad that left five students dead and more than 20 injured on Sunday. Parents, students and teachers were left horror-struck after the incident."

An eleven year old boy in Baghdad would doubtless have something to say to Dick Cheney about his life.

“BAGHDAD, 29 Jan 2007 (IRIN) - "I’m 11 years old and an only son. I’m a pupil at Mansour Primary School in Baghdad. Lately, I have been feeling very lonely in my class. This week, I was the only student in class because all my classmates didn’t come to school for various reasons.

“Since last September, three of my classmates have been kidnapped and two have been killed. One was murdered with his family at home and the other was a victim of a bomb explosion a month ago.”

This is one of the things Cheney and Bush have bought with the money stolen from Americans.

The Cheney baby is not the issue; long life and health to the unborn child, no matter what its gender and despite the deceitful and disgraceful behavior of its grandparents.

The only mistake Blitzer made was to accord Dick Cheney a respect he does not deserve. Americans need to examine how wealth is accumulated; that is what matters. It is past time for Americans to reassess and take action.

The State of the Union, Precarious: What matters and what doesn't.

Get the tee-shirt on our cafepress site!

(A little bird in Karl Rove's Office might have heard this)

Mr. President, have you read over the speech? (pause) I know. It doesn't matter if Congress believes it. (pause) Of course the public will swallow it. (pause) Your friends will understand that you have to say you support alternative energy. Anyway, you already have the donations in for the Library. (pause) Health care is an issue, try to read those briefing papers. (pause) I do think it is a nice piece of work, yeah, I like the new typeface. Just make sure you don't say her name that way Tuesday night. (pause) Keep working at it. If you find any other words you don't understand just call back.

Tuesday night a man got up and gave a speech. The focus of the world was on every word he uttered even though they knew what he was going to say. Today a rally is taking place in Arkansas. One event matters, the other does not in the long run.

Wording of the Equal Rights Amendment
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Today all of the Constitutional officers for the State of Arkansas, mostly in office for the first time, attended a rally held at the State Capitol along with two hundred enthusiastic supporters for the ERA. Mike Beebe, the new governor, stepped up to the podium to announce his support of a measure that, pro and con, was one of the dividing points in the gubernatorial election last November, according to Zack Wright, Communications Coordinator for the Governor. Wright added that Beebe's position is that ratification is long overdue.

A few months ago the widower and children of Marjorie Rudolph called Lindsley Smith, Representative for the 92^nd District of Arkansas, at her office and put into her hands the ERA bracelet their wife and mother had cherished since 1972. Marjorie, they said, had always hoped the ERA would be ratified. They asked Ms. Smith if she would accept the bracelet since she had introduced the ERA for ratification in their home state of Arkansas. Ms. Smith accepted; she told them she would be wearing the bracelet when she dropped the bill in the box and when it is passed. Ms. Smith expects this will happen very soon, perhaps in just a matter of days.

After the rally Ms Smith said, “It was wonderful; people were crowded into the Rotunda and hallways. I knew that we were taking a stand; doing the right thing – acting on principle. Knowing that was happening here, in Arkansas, made me proud.”

America's women have waited since July 1788. When the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to those assembled in July of 1776 it said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In this way the mission statement for America was established. All are equal; the rights exercised come not from government, but from God. Women believed and labored mightily in the cause of freedom, as they would in all the wars that followed.

Women poured their lives into activism. Generations of women have died waiting to know that their rights were affirmed under the Constitution. As women talk today they share the stories of mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers, who fought for their freedom and died knowing they had failed. It is a sad heritage for a country founded on the idea of individual freedom.

In 2000, 212 years after the Constitution was ratified and women were excluded as people, a retired executive, Dr. Jennifer Macleod, gave a presentation to a group of Girl Scouts on the Equal Rights Amendment. The excited girls asked if Dr. Macleod could help them do a project on the ERA. The Doctor, an expert in survey research, prepared a simple poll and showed the girls how to conduct it. Later, Macleod would admit that she expected that the poll would reflect mixed opinions to the idea of equality for women. She was wrong.

There were three questions. Jennifer expected the Girl Scouts, polling their classmates, teachers, and parents, to find a range of opinions on equality for women. Instead, they found close to unanimous support for the idea that all of us are born possessed of inherent rights, as recognized in the Declaration of Independence. Dumbfounded, Jennifer Macleod arranged for a national survey professionally conducted in July 2001, among American adults all across the country. The findings? 96% answered "yes" to the question, "In your opinion, should male and female citizens of the United States have equal rights?"; 88% answered "yes" to the question, "In your opinion, should the Constitution make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?"; and, demonstrating a public lack of knowledge, 72% mistakenly answered "yes" to the question, "As far as you know, does the Constitution of the United States make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?" The results were similar for both men and women, and in all age groups, educational levels, regions of the country, racial categories, and household composition. The results were the same. While the legislatures of 15 states had refused to ratify the ERA Americans had done so in their hearts and minds.

In this way a new wave of activism for ratification began, erasing the sense of hopelessness left in the wake of the failure of the 70s. In Arkansas today women wept tears of joy. At this moment Representative Smith says that the measure has 67 co-sponsors in the House, including the Speaker, Benny C. Petrus.

When the newly passed ERA was sent to the states from Congress in 1972 everyone believed that it would be ratified by the required 38 states quickly but instead it became a political football linked to issues that have nothing to do with simple equality. Women like Phyllis Schlafly have made careers of opposing the equality that was promised to all Americans in 1776. The final blow to the effort came when Ronald Reagan took the ERA out of the Republican Platform, despite the pleas of scores of Republican Women, including his own daughter, Maureen. For women, the promise of equality receded into the distance.

Instead women were forced to rely on a series of laws that assert 'fairness', many passed on the state level. Such laws can be rescinded by simple legislation.

Today women still hang their trust that their rights are protected by privileges conferred by legislators . Without the clear and specific backing of the federal Constitution all laws improving women's rights and opportunities can be overturned. For women in America freedom is provisional. If you ever doubted the need for ratification the crew just booted from Congress should have demonstrated to you just how fragile these rights can be. Consider the present make up of the Supreme Court; Consider the moral fiber demonstrated by an Administration that rescinded the 4^th Amendment and used torture and deceit. Simple justice long overdue is also desperately needed. Securing it need not be difficult.

Three State Strategy

The Constitution, in setting forth how amendments can be made, said NOTHING about any time limits on ratification by the states -- although, as was the case for several amendments, a time limit can if desired be included in the body of a proposed amendment. The 1972 Congress, in passing the ERA -- which, fully intentionally, contains no mention of any time limit -- chose to attach a 7-year ratification time limit separate from the amendment itself. Then, when the 1978 Congress extended the time limit by 3 years, that set the precedent such that any Congress can legitimately vote to change such a time limit.

How could equality ever fail to be relevant? In an era when women are serving in the military in roles that expose them to combat, the arguments that they are frail and must be protected fail to persuade Americans. It was not women's weaknesses that moved men to deny them their inherent rights, it was the habit of control.

In addition to Arkansas, vigorous ratification drives are well underway in Illinois (which came very close to ratification in 2004), Florida and Missouri, while many of the other not-yet-ratified states, including Arizona, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, and Georgia are building support for their own ratification drives. Perhaps the legislators in three of these states now understand just how important our rights are. Now that we have seen a Congress and President commit the treason of negating the 4th Amendment the time to be patient is over. Now we can demand action from Democrats and the Republicans who are now distancing themselves from the corrupt Bush Administration.

The states that are not yet ratified are:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

By the time you read this Arkansas may proudly be the 36^th State to ratify.

Two events took place this week. One man talked; a coalition of women and men, united in defense of real freedom, took action. It is doing the right thing that matters, no matter how long it takes.

Nix On Bush - Republicans must take back their Party

Get the Tee-shirt at our Cafepress store!

http://lonestaricon.com/

The time has come in the Bush Administration when George W. has begun to think about his legacy. Murmurs of that have begun to percolate out through various avenues; the latest Surge of rhetoric from the White House was doubtless energized by what that legacy will be. If Bush were an honorable man that legacy would give him the same nightmares that wake so many of us up at those wee, dark hours, worrying about the future that awaits our children.

All Republicans should be thinking about the Bush Legacy; then they need to confront how Bush and his NeoCon administration has converted the legacy of the Republican Party, the party that championed freedom for Blacks and the vote for women into something closer to fascism.

When I first read, "Conscience of a Conservative," in 1962, being a Republican meant you believed in the right of the people to order their own lives and govern their own communities. Government was to be small; the inherent rights of individuals were sacrosanct, chiseled in stone through the Declaration of Independence. It was not government who was sovereign but each individual living American. My Goldwater button maintained a place of honor at my desk. In losing, Goldwater had still awakened a generation to the ideas of individual rights and freedom.

Many of us still kept the tradition of reading the Declaration in its entirely aloud to our families on the 4th of July. Each of my own children read out those words, standing tall and proud, knowing that the Revolution was fought for them. We knew that understanding the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was the foundation that allowed future generations to keep faith with the past while building a better future for everyone. Our children could recite the Amendments and explain what they meant.

By hard work, honest dealing, and creative insights, we believed we would, together, realize the American dream. It was not making money that mattered but doing right. Integrity came first.

To lie was an act of personal dishonor for any reason. If your child lied any parent taught him that this was unacceptable. If you are a Republican today you know that the sense of honor, personally or in government, has no meaning. To the NeoCons only winning matters, and winning so you can steal became acceptable.

The NeoCons did this to us. If the Republican Party had closed up shop it could not have been used to against its own values. There can be honor in death. There is no honor in the actions taken under color of the Republican Party today.

The NeoCons now in control have been living out their inner most fantasies the last six years at our expense. It is tough to drive a country once as prosperous as America into bankruptcy, but they have managed that, too. Most of us now understand that those in power, the NeoCons, are not Republicans. They are a cadre of greedy who saw the opportunity to use the rhetoric of honor and our vision to steal for themselves and for their corporate employers. While rhetorically cloaking their actions in words like, "Freedom," "America," "Honor," and "Terrorism" Bush, Cheney and their cohort have been busily shoveling the wealth of America into the coffers of such as Halliburton and placing various petroleum companies to convert the reservoirs under Iraq into an asset line for their client companies, all at great cost all Americans and the world at large. Now, they are poised to do it again in Iran. After that, who knows; they may decide to hit Venezuela.

At the same time they have revoked parts of the Constitution in attempts to evade accountability; they have illegally used the force of government to invade our privacy. The information was gathered not to ensure our security but to stifle dissent.

That is where we are today. It is ugly to consider how many Americans and Iraqis have died while the rhetoric of honor still lingered in our hearts and minds, layered in like a cover to arsenic in speeches built to deceive us by prostituting our highest values. But that is what happened. Slowly, as Americans and Iraqis died horribly and our nation hemorrhaged money the stark horror began to sink in. Then, last November America delivered a mandate. That mandate was to get us out of Iraq and to return to the American values that evoke a true loyalty.

For those elected the message has also been delivered. Deescalate, investigate; end the war, bring our troops home. After the Shout Down that sent the newly elected Democratic Congress scampering like mice for cover we can hope the message has sunk in. Democratic activists are also challenging their leadership, having found them wanting.

We Republicans are not alone. All Americans have been through the same process of belief, doubt, and concern. We have all been paralyzed by fear as all we thought was true turned upside down. But it is the legacy of honor, conserved in the Republican Party, that was used as a weapon against the freedom of all Americans. As Bush considers his legacy, one of deception, greed, and violence, it is our own legacy we must renew.

As Republicans we need to take back our party, thus denying the NeoCons a conduit to power and allowing us to begin the work of rebuilding what was. Communities where people live, deciding for themselves, working at jobs, starting businesses, raising children whose education they control, worshiping and prospering by doing right, these were the goals that made us Republicans.

Barry Goldwater, the grandson of a peddler, understood hard work and doing the right thing. He understood accountability.

Barry Goldwater was a man who understood the need to take action. Never a fence sitter, Barry would have understood the specter we confront today; he would have delivered the word to the White House, Resign. Failing that, he would have himself written the Bill of Impeachment. He knew that the gravest danger to America came from within.

"Our tendency to concentrate power in the hands of a few men deeply concerns me. We can be conquered by bombs or by subversion; but we can also be conquered by neglect—by ignoring the Constitution and disregarding the principles of limited government. Our defenses against the accumulation of unlimited power in Washington are in poorer shape, I fear, than our defenses against the aggressive designs of Moscow. Like so many other nations before us, we may succumb through internal weakness rather than fall before a foreign foe."

As a Republican, I demand Bush and Cheney resign. I think now is a good time for that.

Republicans and other Americans can register their wishes by writing him letters to be delivered to the White House. If you like, you may send them first to The Iconoclast, where they will be counted, and then forwarded. Just send to Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, c/o The Lone Star Iconoclast, P.O. Box 569, Crawford, TX 76638. Then we can demand Congress pass a Bill of Impeachment NOW. Since Congress has been confused about what they are supposed to do, we can go to our state legislatures and demand they pass a Bill of Impeachment to be delivered to the Clerk of Congress. With 50 states to work with surely one can be persuaded to do the job.

Since Bush and Cheney have already admitted enough wrong-doing we can skip the investigations and move to the vote right away.

This generation of Republicans can do the job and the right man to sit in the Oval Office is a Republican all Americans can trust and respect. Replace Bush with a Republican Barry Goldwater would have respected, too. I think that individual is Congressman Ron Paul. It is our party, let’s do the right thing.

Gerald Ford: The man who gave America the NeoCons

It contradicts the Rules of common usage to point out the failings of those who have taken that last step from human society into death but reading the many articles on the life of Gerald Ford brought for me, at least, the consciousness of how much he and those in politics have cost all of us; seeing him characterized as 'a man of character,' slapped me into awareness. The rules are wrong when they benefit deceit and injustice, so I am going to ignore them.

As Republican woman and an American I have something to say about Ford, and politics today. The legacy of Gerald Ford is the destruction the vision of America as a place where our inherent, individual rights, were protected and affirmed through a government which remained in the hands of the people. Those rights depend on justice. Ford destroyed the integrity of our political system. He made a choice and it was wrong.

In saying this I do nor forget that he championed the passage of the Alice Paul Amendment to affirm to women their equal rights. He spoke the words, introduced the bill, and failed to see it passed. At death we remember the whole of the life of the deceased, not just those parts that are useful to us politically. All of the acts of Ford's life, the good and the bad together, should be assessed. Death is a summing up of life; a summing up that ignores that whole does a disservice to the deceased and to us as well.

The choice Ford made to pardon Richard M. Nixon set the stage for the excruciating events that put Bush in the White House and have gone so far down the road to destroying America, no matter how affable he was, this cannot be overlooked.

Nixon should have been tried. He was guilty and Americans needed to see their system work as intended. Instead, we have learned not to expect honesty or decency; our system has devolved into a morass that nurtures thieves and scoundrels. We today contend with a political reality that has served to elevate those in positions of 'public service' into a class apart, guaranteeing membership in a club of privilege, an aristocracy without accountability. With those in politics accountability is anathema. Watch how they vote and for whom, it is your rights they are selling piecemeal.

Because of Gerald Ford justice was not done. Everyone in politics, a young Rove, an older Bush Senior, the clueless W, all who were then moving themselves up in government learned the lesson by example. Bush and the NeoConservatives who have been living out their fantasies at our expense saw the opportunity created by the misuse of presidential power by Gerald Ford. They are relying on that power today. They have enough money stolen from us to buy anyone they make president, with few exceptions. Bush expects to cut a deal, walking away with his profits intact.

What we see today is not the vision of America for which patriots have laid down their lives over the last two centuries. It is a congame with us, the American people, cast as the patsies.

Today, the American people hunger for justice and the likelihood they will get that, accountability from those entrusted with power, recedes into the distant haze because of the actions of Gerald Ford, whose death comes like manna from heaven for the Bush Administration at this point in time.

“CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush on Wednesday remembered former President Gerald Ford as a "man of complete integrity who led our country with common sense and kind instincts" and helped restore faith in the presidency after the Watergate scandal.”

It is easy to see why someone like George W. Bush would carefully laud the life of a man who took from Americans what was so desperately needed; accountability for the crimes of Richard Nixon translates into accountability for him.

There is no integrity there. No one should have had faith in anyone occupying an office where accountability was sacrificed, thus establishing the precedent that no matter what the president does he will be forgiven. As our children must learn that actions have consequences so must those who offer themselves for public service learn they will be accountable, liable, and that there are teeth in the oaths they take.

America needs honesty; Americans should demand accountability now as it should have been exacted in 1974. The example that any crime could be overlooked, swept under the carpet, has gone a long ways towards destroying what remained as the integrity of American government and ethics.

George W. Bush is guilty of collusion in deceiving the American people for the purpose of carrying out a war in Iraq and on Americans here at home. He carried out these crimes, for they are felonies, to profit those who put him in office, the major corporations who are profiting every day from the life's blood of honest Americans.

An Eagle Scout, Ford dishonored several oaths by failing to do the right thing. They should rescind his membership in that honorable body. That failure on Ford's part is a wrong that opened the flood gates of deception in politics because those in power know that accountability will not be exacted.

Americans must change their national direction. The first step in that direction is to demand and exact accountability from those in public office. Dishonesty must always result in removal and prosecution; justice must be swift, sure and exacting. The means are at our disposal. All professionals are licensed and most must be bonded. Begin demanding that only bonded candidates be elected. Don't wait for politicians to act; it will never happen. We, the people, can do it ourselves. The Honesty Bond Committee is now organizing.

The legacy of Gerald Ford was to compromise the foundations of American justice; we need to rebuild those foundations, placing them on the firm ground of accountability that ignores considerations of party and profit if America is to recover.

When you see the flag at half mast it is America for which you should grieve today.

What James Dean taught me about Christmas

I last saw Jimmy though the front window of our home in West Los Angeles in September of 1955. He looked up and smiled at me, my nose pressed to the glass. In just a few days he would be dead but the ideas and conversations we had lived on in my memory. Eventually, those memories became a family tradition we call The Star for Christmas. It is a tradition that involves finding our way through life and doing the right thing as individuals. Jimmy was someone who thought intensely about who he was and what he should do.

All of my children grew to adulthood stuffing tiny folded and spindled letters of intention and wishes for the year to come into the musty interior of the Star that tops our Christmas Tree. Their tiny fingers were eager and trusting. Every Christmas Eve we gathered to read the last years letters and write anew. A generation of their wishes stretched both the Star’s stitches and the faded yellow felt I had cut it from so many years before. At the end of three decades the Star had become an object notable mostly for its ugliness but remained the most cherished decoration on our tree.

Now all the children have grown up, found their own homes and carried the tradition with them into new families and a new century. As their mother I was glad for that. But over the Thanksgiving table one year, lingering over seconds on everything, my youngest daughter asked me how the custom had begun. Was it a New England custom? Had I filled my own small white paper with intentions and wishes when I was little? Had I folded the paper up small and stuffed it into another older Star, perhaps made by my own mother? None of her friends followed the custom, she knew. No, I told her, I had not. The custom was my own, begun before she was born in honor of a friend who had died when I was just six years old. Then I told them about Jimmy and our conversations.

James Dean has been in his grave for nearly fifty years at that moment but I have never forgotten the many gifts he gave me. Christmas is about gifts of unexpected grace that make us stronger. Jimmy had shared his own wishes and intentions with me in those conversations; each insight was a gift I cherished. Since Christmas is about gifts I came to associate the holiday with him. The gifts that stay with us are not the kind normally found under any evergreen. But they were the kind of gifts that last long after toys are lost and forgotten.

Jimmy gave me gifts of insight; he shared his own confrontations with life. He told me once that in celebrating Christmas we need to remember that Christ was born to live a life that was itself a message. Reverence your life, Jimmy said, by living it honestly, with understanding, and courage.

Truth is where you find it.

Kneeling over the desiccated carcass of a tortoise that I discovered behind a bush in the backyard one golden afternoon Jimmy had explained to me about dying. I was only three then but I can hear his words as clearly as if he was standing here now. Jimmy’s voice told me he did not fear death. He explained that the essence of Tortoise did not die with its body but moved on to someplace else. Nothing really dies, he said. Jimmy accepted mortality as a part of life, believing that spirit would endure. This lesson was also taught by the Man whose birth we celebrate on December 25^th.

That was the first lesson Jimmy taught me. Others followed.

Jimmy visited us sometimes in the afternoon, usually around lunchtime. This began, I think, when he was a student at UCLA. He wore thick glasses, just like me. He hunched his shoulders, just a little. He was quiet, sometimes pensive, and sometimes a little crazy. But he talked to me as if I were a grownup who could understand anything.

This taught me that I could do anything.

Over the next three years Jimmy taught me many more things. He taught me to listen to my heart beating as we sat quietly in the back yard. He said that I could hear my heartbeat and my breath as it moved through my throat and into my lungs if I listened and stilled the sounds outside myself. There was much in me to understand, he said. He had heard his own heart and breath and it taught him about himself; Listen to your self always, he said. Know yourself because you are here for a purpose and by listening you will learn that purpose. Jimmy believed he had a purpose and that his life’s work would have meaning. He would do wonderful things, he told me.

Jimmy did amazing things in a life that was far too short.

When I was much older I began attending Quaker Meeting; Jimmy had learned to hear the silence in a Quaker Meeting in Fairmount, Indiana. There, he had found what he needed to fill the emptiness left in the wake of his mother’s death. In the deep silence that healed grief, he had said to me, you touch your own soul and find your truth.

Jimmy taught me both to know myself and to trust myself.

I still have the old stuffed horse that Jimmy gave me when I broke both my arms. It is as dusty and as old as his memory is new. I have a tiny car, smaller than my then five-year-old finger that he flicked across the floor to me one afternoon just after he dropped by. He made the sound of a car, crying, Vroooom, vroooom, as it traveled like a shot into my hands. I carried it around in the pocket of my corduroy jumper for two weeks.

Insignificant material things may carry memories that can be far more precious than diamonds.

To the small child I was then the lessons of Jimmy were magic, magic that the older woman remembered when she placed a Star at the top of a Christmas Tree to carry the intentions of one year into the reality of the next. The ceremony, I told my children, was about gifts that do not fit under the tree, but that have great value.

After our family placed its new intentions in the Star the tradition was to light a candle for remembering and say a prayer. The small folded papers that the children filled up with words remained in the Star from one Christmas Eve until the next when they were taken out and read aloud, each by their author. Confronting yourself can also be a gift of unexpected value because in that you find new direction.

Saving those papers was part of the magic.

1979 Dawn (then four) - “I want to be an angel so I can turn Carolyn into a pumpkin.”

1984 Ayn (then eight) - “I wish that when I grow up I become a witch like Sam on Bewitched.”

1985 Dawn (then ten) - “I wish the Ethiopians stop starving by next year and it’s God damed pres. is assassinated.”

1985 Arthur (then six) - I want every single Transformer in the world.

1988 Dawn - I wish for the advancement of the human race through my genius. I also wish for the dissolution of all governments.

1992 Ayn (then sixteen)

1. To be brave enough to read this in front of the whole family.

2. to be a strong Christian.

3. to be happy at whichever school I go to.

4. that the family will be living anywhere but Burnet.

5. World Peace (Somalia) NOT!

1993 Dawn (then eighteen) - I wish for whirled pease, Clinton to have been impeached for his various crimes, Hillary to be in prison - nah, she’d enjoy it too much ala “caged fury”

Because I was always involved in politics, first as a Republican, then a Libertarian, and then again as a Republican, what was happening in politics became part of our family culture, working its way into the Intentions we placed in the Star on Christmas Eve. Jimmy would have approved, he always said if you want it to happen you need to start walking in that direction; he was not happy with the direction politics was taking even then. Jimmy believed each of us have inherent freedoms government cannot touch and that the job of government was to protect those rights, not cancel them.

This Christmas Eve we will again gather around the Tree to read wishes and place next year's intentions in the Star. We will light the candle; we will pray for justice and a new direction for America. This year the wishes that go into the Star from our house will be for Impeachment. Doing the right thing matters; Jimmy would agree.

Republicans must speak out for Impeachment: Ron Paul for President

Buy Christmas Cards and gifts at our cafepress site!

The murmurs began in the halls of Congress even before legislators and their staffs packed up and left, marking the end of this Congress and the beginning of the holiday season. Those offices will be quiet for the moment; politicians considering how they can benefit from coming out on impeachment or confronting their now receding fears have time to caucus their home districts. The murmurs come in many different cadences and tones. They are marked with anger and elation, ambition and calculation.

Democrats are beginning to listen to the tenor of the country, slowly letting themselves realize just how many Americans view this administration, perhaps more than they did themselves, as a criminal enterprise. Impeachment is becoming a word that speaks not of sleaze and cigars but the promise of a new beginning and, perhaps more important to many of them, political positioning that could take a career all the way to the White House.

Real Republicans, those who watched the NeoCon Nazis smash every tenet on which the Republican Party was founded, also have time to think. Those invested in career quests for power will consider first how they are now viewed. Those Republicans who believe in the principles that made them Republicans must confront another issue. Their party was hijacked, its moral capital used to accrue profits for Bush and his corporate sponsors. In so doing, all Americans lost, some, their lives, others our wealth, and all of as us a sense of trust. Rhetoric replaced truth as the principles long associated with being a Republican were smashed beyond recognition. Small government, individual rights, Constitutional integrity, low taxes, local control, the principles of the Republican Party that those of us who believed the message of Barry Goldwater, stand in stark contrast to how this administration eviscerated the rights and honor with which it was entrusted.

Torture, deceit, spying on Americans, lies told to profit megacorporations and oil interests; before this Congress decamped, they took time to vote in ten billion in incentives for oil companies; nothing for veterans. There was seemingly no limit to what Bush and company would do to line their pockets and live out their fantasies. Sometimes doing the right thing forces us to confront our own souls. It should never have happened. It did. Now America needs justice so that healing can begin. You can bank of the fact that the NeoCons rely on spinning this as a partisan battle. That, Republicans must not allow.

This Republican says that time is now. While the murmurs continue advising that the now ham stringed administration be allowed to sputter into history this Republican says impeach and then indict.

America needs justice like a drowning man needs air. For that justice to be real we need to send a message to anyone who comes after that even for the president there will be absolute accountability. Without that there may be a pause in the growth of power that has taken America into the chilling realm of fascism but it will continue.

Republicans who care about the principles that made them Republicans need to shoot their own dog. That is what real men do. Rumor has it that mixed in with those murmurs in the halls of Congress were the voices of Republican Senators and Congressmen who are considering how the public now views the Republican Party. That this has been a public relations disaster is true; but that is a minor issue. Real men and women do the right thing even when it does not provide better political positioning. In the last two years the Republican Party has lost registrants, respect, credibility, and now teeters on the edge of oblivion. That was just, people were speaking with their hearts and feet. It would be better that the Republican Party cease to exist than that it remain the tool it became. Political parties are the tools we use to move our country towards freedom and justice. They should not be used to steal. Political parties are just tools.

The point of the American Experiment is that people, understanding that their rights come not from government but from God, come together to govern themselves from their own communities.

Republicans must therefore shoot their own dog. It was not a Democrat who delivered the message to Richard Nixon, it was the man that both sides of the Aisle knew would tell the truth. That man was Barry Goldwater. But what Nixon did was a cigar to what Bush has done. This message must come with the hard truth that resigning is not enough. This time we need real, systemic change so that never again will the simple tools of government be used to anoint would-be dictators.

That process must begin with unified efforts from both sides of the aisle.

This impeachment must not be tainted with politics. It is about the survival of America and the vision of possibility that summoned a nation of free people into being.

Cheney must be impeached and replaced with a man of unquestionable integrity, respected by both Republicans and Democrats. That man is Congressman Ron Paul.

Congressman Paul is a man who had the moral integrity to do the right thing when the days were darkest. Paul has withstood the attempts by NeoCons to unseat him many times by redistricting, through Tom Delay, and by funding his opposition. But his constituents know he is to be trusted and have returned the family doctor to office over and over again. He refused to be silenced.

Democrats who have followed the machinations of the NeoCons know Ron Paul is a man who stood up against the War in Iraq, against the Patriot Act, and against torture.

The names championed by the Democrats speak partisanship; none of them spoke out in those darkest days. Paul has demonstrated an ability to work with anyone who is working for the rights of Americans. He understands the Constitution and no one deceived him when the cries of necessity went up after 9/11.

The present sentiment for impeachment could tear America apart – or it could bring us together to start again. America's President is both the CEO of the executive branch and a symbol of forward direction. Ron Paul as President sends a message no one will misunderstand. When he is in office, let Paul choose Dennis Kucinich as his Vice-President.

Impeach Cheney and then Bush and then let Congress put a man in the Oval Office who said yes to honor and truth when doing so made him so often stand alone. It is alone we enter life and alone we die. Those who stand alone when others are silent through fear have passed through a tempering that burns out doubt. We need an individual who has passed through that fire.

Send a message America, and the world, will really hear.