Restoring the Constitution

My father forwarded me this from People For the American Way:

President-elect Obama is seeking a wide array of diverse opinions and views in the current transition process.  We must take it upon ourselves to make sure our voices are heard and our values are represented in the new administration.

In the last few days, there have been a few reports that the Obama administration may not significantly change Bush administration intelligence policies.  I take these reports with a grain of salt and I'm optimistic that President-elect Obama will deliver on his promises to restore the constitutional principles that have been trampled on these last eight years.  But I also acknowledge that certain people in the intelligence policy discussions do not have the same commitment to Americans' civil liberties.

We need to speak up!

They have a petition here urging Obama to restore constitutional rights and the rule of law.  I think it'd be a good idea for as many of us as possible to sign it.  Think of it as a tightly directed use of the soapbox.

The text of the petition is as follows:

Dear President-elect Obama:

I urge you to uphold your commitments to restore constitutional rights and the rule of law.  The Bush administration has run roughshod over Americans' civil liberties and its intelligence policies must be reversed, not continued.

The change you were elected to bring must include adherence to our core constitutional values: NO MORE torture... NO MORE domestic spying that violates Americans' rights... NO MORE excessive government secrecy... NO MORE gross violations of due process and habeas corpus.

Sincerely,

Monkeywrenching the political process

With the popular vote in the just-past election so close, one could be forgiven for wondering how much the election may have been influenced by what amounts to an elaborate practical joke.

Of course, the article points out that the perpetrators observed that the news media could easily have exposed their hoax had they put the least effort into checking their facts.  But in this last election, by all appearances the media didn't WANT to check their facts, as long as the report involved something damaging to the McCain-Palin campaign.  Can you imagine the witch-hunt had Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish chosen Barack Obama as their target?  Ah, but wait, we don't have to imagine — we have the persecution of Joe the Plumber as an example.

When I consider how one-sided the reporting of this past election campaign was, and yet how close the popular vote was, I find it hard to avoid speculating that in this Presidential election, the people of the United States did not elect Barack Obama; the news media did.