"The U.S. Department of Media
by David Swanson
Last Friday one of two things indisputably happened. Either a dozen senior Congress members and several well-known expert witnesses went certifiably and collectively insane, or charges of the most extreme executive abuses of power ever heard in the history of this nation were backed up by overwhelming evidence during a six-hour hearing of the House Judiciary Committee focused on the possible need to impeach the President and the Vice President. Either way, a nation with a public communications system worthy of a democracy would have learned the news.
What we actually have in this country is a news media conglomerate that functions as a part of the executive branch of the federal government. Call it the United States Department of Media. But "branch" is not the right word, since the executive branch is all that remains of our government (aside from whatever Dick Cheney is). The legislative and judicial branches have been eliminated. Or, rather, they are constantly and effectively being shut out of the government, in no small part by the Media Department. But "department," too, is not the right word if one imagines any degree of independent decision making. None of the so-called departments and agencies in the executive government are any longer empowered to make significant decisions independent of the president (and whatever Dick Cheney is). And the Media Department is no exception.
One project of the U.S. Department of Media is the Cover Nothing Network (CNN) on which associate deputy undersecretaries of Media Campbell Brown and Erica Hill reported on Friday that there is not enough time for impeachment and that if the Democrats led the way to impeachment voters would punish them, and that therefore the hearing was a waste of money that could have been better spent publicizing the president kissing babies. I'm not making any of this up. Here's video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bzx6ttmbTbs
Now, you'd think the Democrats would get credit for successfully violating the laws of physics by impeaching Bush and Cheney after CNN reported that there was not sufficient time to do so. Instead, CNN preemptively reports that instead of a Nobel prize in physics, Democrats would receive opposition from voters if they were to impeach Bush or Cheney, quite regardless of the supposed fact that there is not time to do so. Presumably it is part of CNN's passion for saving money that allows it to employ public officials too stupid to even realize they've done no research whatsoever that might provide them with the slightest clue as to whether or not what they are saying is complete horseshit.
Yet, most of the other state broadcast and cable and print outlets did even better at avoiding the news by reporting nothing at all. That fine performance didn't cost us a dime, and was worth every penny. But what did we miss?
Well, we missed the fact that the president now violates numerous laws and announces his intention to do so with "signing statements." This is absolutely unprecedented and indisputably a major violation of the basic outline of the U.S. Constitution. We missed that the current president has violated numerous requests, subpoenas, and contempt citations, effectively shutting down the Congress as a body with any right to control our government or even to know what our government is doing. We missed that this is completely unprecedented and a major violation of the basic system established by the Constitution, and that when Richard Nixon moved in the direction that this president has gone so far in, the Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon. We missed that the current president has openly confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and that in this and numerous other cases impeachments of Bush and Cheney could be accomplished in under an hour, all the necessary information already being in the public domain.
That is to say, either we missed THAT and much more, or we missed witnessing the mass hypnosis of John Conyers, Hank Johnson, Bruce Fein, Tammy Baldwin, Vincent Bugliosi, Maurice Hinchey, Dennis Kucinich, Robert Wexler, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Liz Holtzman, Rocky Anderson, Elliott Adams, Bob Barr, Bobby Scott, Zoe Lofgren, Jerrold Nadler, and several other individuals, together with dozens of members of the public in the same room and hundreds more outside. Don't we have a right to know what happened? Who hypnotized them and why? How was it done? Who funded it? And is it possible that what actually occurred on Friday was a long-standing hypnosis wearing off momentarily? How will we ever know? And if we ourselves look at the White House website and appear to see numerous signing statements declaring the right to violate laws, and numerous public refusals to comply with subpoenas, are we going insane too? Are we falling into some sort of delusion? Are we secretly exploding with repressed anger and hatred for bibles, guns, and flags? And why do we hate our country so much?
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