God Bless Al Gore

This is turning into Great Patriots day here at Enemy Of The People. First an encomium to that great patriot, The Rude Pundit. Then a paean to the rotund master of malice, Mr. Michael Moore.

And now, The Man Who Should Be President, Mr. Al Gore. Kerry's zombified, like the Manchurian Candidate, and Bubba's just starting to timidly nibble at the heels of the Deserter's criminal enterprise, ever so cautious lest he damage the political prospects of Lady MacBeth. Meanwhile, Al Gore is callin' out the evil bastards, speaking truth to power, and letting the political chips fall where they may. I know, Al's a political dead man, anyway (although I'd be the first to sign on to a draft Al Gore movement at this very moment), and so he can say what candidate Al would never say. So what. BFD. The truth is too goddamn precious today for supercilious dissections of the purity of a truthteller's motives. The republic is in grave danger, and Al Gore is manning the ramparts.

I'm attaching below the closing four paragraphs of Mr. Gore's speech yesterday at the American Constitution Society at Georgetown University. The whole text is here. Read it, and be reminded what's been lost and what's at stake.

In the end, for this administration, it is all about power. This lie about the invented connection between al-Qaida and Iraq was and is the key to justifying the current ongoing constitutional power grab by the president. So long as their big flamboyant lie remains an established fact in the public's mind, President Bush will be seen as justified in taking for himself the power to make war on his whim. He will be seen as justified in acting to selectively suspend civil liberties -- again on his personal discretion -- and he will continue to intimidate the press and thereby distort the political reality experienced by the American people during his bid for re-election.

War is lawful violence, but even in its midst we acknowledge the need for rules. We know that in our wars there have been descents from these standards, often the result of spontaneous anger arising out of the passion of battle. But we have never before, to my knowledge, had a situation in which the framework for this kind of violence has been created by the president, nor have we had a situation where these things were mandated by directives signed by the secretary of defense, as it is alleged, and supported by the national security advisor.

Always before, we could look to the chief executive as the point from which redress would come and law be upheld. That was one of the great prides of our country: humane leadership, faithful to the law. What we have now, however, is the result of decisions taken by a president and an administration for whom the best law is NO law, so long as law threatens to constrain their political will. And where the constraints of law cannot be prevented or eliminated, then they maneuver it to be weakened by evasion, by delay, by hair-splitting, by obstruction, and by failure to enforce on the part of those sworn to uphold the law.

In these circumstances, we need investigation of the facts under oath, and in the face of penalties for evasion and perjury. We need investigation by an aroused Congress whose bipartisan members know they stand before the judgment of history. We cannot depend upon a debased Department of Justice given over to the hands of zealots. "Congressional oversight" and "special prosecution" are words that should hang in the air. If our honor as a nation is to be restored, it is not by allowing the mighty to shield themselves by bringing the law to bear against their pawns: it is by bringing the law to bear against the mighty themselves. Our dignity and honor as a nation never came from our perfection as a society or as a people: it came from the belief that in the end, this was a country which would pursue justice as the compass pursues the pole: that although we might deviate, we would return and find our path. This is what we must now do.

Thanks, Al. I needed that.