Letters to the Editor
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For the House Majority Leader
To take bribes to redistrict congressional districts in clear violation of the constitution, the Hatch Act, the FEC and the law is very close to treason.
So, I guess he'd be an expert, wouldn't he?
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And I just looked up
the definition of "total dick-head."
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According To Merriam Webster
Treason has two definitions:
1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY
2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family.
Neither of which applies to Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, but definition number one applies to the Bush administration and most of the Republican members of Congress.
The American people trusted them to defend the Constitution, so far there is no evidence that they have done so, but quite a bit that shows they have made an active effort to ignore the Constitution and destroy the Bill of Rights.
Or are they preparing to state that bringing articles of impeachment is trying to overthrow the government of the state? Timing is everything.
Moral of the story? People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
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Oh dear
What constitutes "treason" is specifically spelled out in the US Constitution (it's the ONLY crime defined in the document because the framers intended it to be extremely difficult to convict a person of treason in this country).
The US Constitution says:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."
(Article III, Section 3)
I suppose DeLay may have an extremely skewed idea of what "aid and comfort" means. But we know that his interpretation of the phrase, whatever it is, is wrong because we can read and understand the English language.
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And let's go to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary
Delay can't really have looked up the definition. (If he did, was he driving himself? Let's hope he was being chauffeured!) Webster defines treason thusly:
1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY
2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family
Nope, Congressional leaders are definitely not guilty of treason, using either definition. I suppose, to be more generous than anyone should be, DeLay is probably invoking definition number 1, but if anyone is guilty of betraying a trust, it AIN'T Congress -- it's this President, who has been entrusted with the executive powers of the Federal government. It's hard to point out any area in which he and his administration have NOT been guilty of misfeasance, malfeasance, ineptitude, general corruption, and outright lying.
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DeLay is at it again
Methinks old Hammer has been sniffin that bug spray again
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Can you say felony influence peddling? I knew ya could....
I think Mr. Delay's time will be probably better spent preparing for his defense. Looking up the definition of "felony" and the law would have served the American people better than the Napoleon complex and fascist state he was nursing as Whip.
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Treason? Bring It On
It occurs to me that the proper response, when right-wingers start throwing accusations of treason at those of us on the left, is "Bring it on." If DeLay and other wingers (Ann Coulter springs to mind) think that some action on the part of some American citizen constitutes treason, they should go to their friends in Congress and bring a treason prosecution against the person committing that action. Otherwise they should shut the hell up about it.
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We're all treasonous!
Oh, RichEmery and a high-falutin' lawyer, you beat me to both definitions of treason. The Merriam-Webster definition is clearly ludicrous as applied to Reid and Pelosi. The “Constitutional” definition takes broad latitude with the words “giving aid and comfort.”
Someone more Constitutionally savvy than me makes some nice and brief points here:
http://law.jrank.org/pages/2196/Treason-Application-law-in-United-States.html
and writes, in part “established doctrine forbids Congress to enlarge beyond the constitutional definition the kinds of conduct that may be punished as treason” and “the limits set by the constitutional definition have curbed resort to treason prosecutions to suppress or harass peaceful, legitimate political competition”
Also, if Reid and Pelosi are getting “very, very close to treason,” does that mean that anyone who voted for them--or voted Democratic at all in the mid-term elections—is also semi-treasonous? The mid-term elections were widely viewed as a referendum on the Iraq War with the Democratic Congress tasked to do the will of people and end this war as quickly and as safely as possible.
With Bush's approval ratings hovering around 30%, does that mean that 70% of the country is treasonous, too?
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High Crimes
If you see President Bush as the embodiment of the country, perhaps Delay's statement makes a kind of sense, but whatever else the US was founded on, it was founded on the notion that the nation is the people within that nation, not the man or woman heading it.
What Reid and Pelosi are doing is making the very necessary case that not only is our President not the country, but our president is very likely a megalomaniac or other form of mental disorder which prevents him from assessing situations accurately and making good decisions.
What's left is the question of when we decide to take the reins back from Mr. Bush. Some of us feel he's already driven us off the cliff.
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Petard Hoisting
This particular quotation has made the rounds of the left blogosphere many times, but it bears repeating here:
"For us to call this a victory and to commend the President of the United States as the Commander in Chief showing great leadership in Operation Allied Force is a farce." --Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
Sounds dangerously close to saying it's not a victory, which is dangerously close to saying it's a loss, which is dangerously close to treason.
I'm dangerously close to thinking Delay is full of crap.
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Definition of treason
A couple of people have offered dictionary definitions of treason in response to DeLay's accusation. The definition that matters is the definition in the Constitution. The one that talks about "aid and comfort" to enemies.
By the defintion of "aid and comfort" that DeLay appears to be using, the only acceptable reaction to the Iraq folly is mindless cheerleading. It seems that reality has no merit.