FIFTEENTH ADDRESS TO CITY COUNCIL (Re: A Resolution To Impeach)

May 20, 2008

My goal in this speech was to respond to the Mayor who had cut me off last week, admonishing me about attacking any members of the council. I felt certain that he was going to be "on point" this time, looking for an excuse to cut me off again.

Sure enough, Ben and I noticed that he switched my card with Diane's (though I knew I had signed up to speak before her) thus putting me last, which would make it easier to cut me short and end the session. We also noticed him conferring with the retired Air Force officer on the council prior to my going up, as if they were hatching some plan. Also, the bailiff who almost always sits down low on the first row in the chamber nearest the council members' dais moved to stand just behind me and Ben where we sat on the top row. Never seen him do that before.

I turned to Ben and said, "I think he's laying for me." Ben nodded: "I think you're right."

When the Mayor called my name, when I got to the lecturn, he started right in: "Now, Mr. Harper, remember what happened the last time you spoke. I will not tolerate attacks on this council--I don't want to hear how we're not following our oath of office, you understand? Nothing about that."

"May I respond?" I asked him. He nodded. I reminded him that the previous week I was responding to remarks by the retired Air Force council member, just as I had responded to remarks of the Mayor in other speeches. "So I don't know when it's okay to respond and when it's not."

"Well, I'm talking to you in advance of your speech and I'm warning you that if you say anything about our not following our oath of office, I will cut you off. Do you understand?"

I said I understood, but continued to insist that I had not been insulting to anyone.

The tension in the room was pretty thick as I read my speech, certain as I read every line that he was going to cut me off. In my remarks, I went over the freedom of speech clause in both the U.S. and Texas Constitutions, looking the mayor in the eye as I did so. He did not look happy.

Meanwhile, council member Hicks kept looking over at the mayor expectantly, as if she, too, were certain that he was going to pull the trigger at any moment. He never did. I think he was quite frustrated, actually. My speech was so carefully worded that he simply could not find a way to stop me; yet, I was able to get my points across.

Score one for me on this round. It will be interesting to see what happens next week. Diane says she's going to go after the mayor for conflicts of interest--his voting on gas drilling issues while invested in the gas industry.

Mayor, council members, good morning. I appear again to ask you to pass a resolution calling for the impeachment of the Pres. & V. P. of the United States.

People ask me why are you doing this? What do you hope to achieve? Often, I notice people in this chamber seem to look at me with expressions of disdain or even ridicule.

For me, the basis for this project has always been the Constitution, which, along with freedom of speech, gives citizens the right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. In fact, the first Amendment states that such rights cannot even be abridged. I take that to mean that, in the context of civil, reasoned discourse, these rights cannot be thwarted or silenced by anyone—certainly not by any elected official of this state or of this nation.

The Texas Constitution is, if anything, more blunt.

Section 8 of Article 1 of the Texas Bill of Rights says that “Every person shall be at liberty to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject. . .and no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press.”

So it was my thinking, however misguided, to come to this place, being the seat of law and government of this town, consisting of a mayor and council members who have sworn an oath to protect and defend this Constitution and laws.

I came because I saw there were members here who seem to think of the rules and the law as of paramount importance. Members like my own representative, Mr. Silcox, who I've seen time and again stand up for the rules, on such issues as the rule governing leaf blowers. Which I strongly agree with, by the way. I still rake and sweep up my grass just like I did before there were all these noisy polluting contraptions.

And Mr. Silcox has also stood for the rules on gas drilling. As Mr. Burns and Ms. Hicks have done—always considerate of the environment in which we must all live. The Mayor himself--Mr. Moncrief--has been a heroic advocate of the homeless.

So I came here believing that surely some members of this body would be in favor of standing up for the rules when they seem threatened by the national government.

Surely, I thought, someone here would be outraged that the rules had been broken by the needless invasion of another country; by those who have taken away the right of habeas corpus, who would actually legislate the torture of human beings.

I thought perhaps the outrage over homelessness might somehow translate to similar outrage over the fact that some 4 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes since we invaded their country. Or that increasing numbers of our veterans are homeless.

In closing, let me remind you that some sixty years ago, our boys in uniform defeated the Germans and the Japanese and were back home going to college on the G.I. Bill in less time than we have now spent in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's idea of honoring our soldiers killed in this war that he started was to give up playing golf.

Do you really believe that this man and his cohorts deserve a free pass?

Thank you.

FOURTEENTH ADDRESS TO CITY COUNCIL (Re: A Resolution To Impeach)

May 13th, 2008

My goal in this speech was to answer the statement of the previous week by a City Council member who referred to his Air Force career, noting that he "certainly knew what it meant to defend the Constitution."

Mayor, Council members, I come before you again to ask you to consider passing a resolution calling for the impeachment of the President and Vice President of the United States.

Last week, one Council member suggested that his service in the Air Force made him an expert at standing by his oath to defend the Constitution.

And I believe with all my heart that that's true. Therefore, I would simply ask him: Then, why aren't you doing it?

(At this point in my speech, the Mayor stopped me. "Mr. Harper," he said, "I've been very patient with you. But I've told you before that I will not tolerate personal attacks on anyone on this council. Now, I will stop you from speaking if you continue in that vein, do hear me?" To which I responded that I was not aware that I had attacked anyone or that I was rude to anyone on the council. "Did you hear what I said?" he asked again. "I will end this meeting and close this chamber if you continue in this vein." "That's your prerogative," I replied, and repeated again that I did not believe I had spoken offensively. He continued to repeat: "Did you hear what I said?" "Yes, I hear you," I said. And he allowed me to go on.)

We have mountains of evidence that laws have been broken, the Constitution violated.

We have a President who lied to Congress and the American people. We have a war based on those lies. We have very young servicemen and women killed, maimed and psychologically damaged, perhaps beyond repair. We have hundreds of thousands killed on the other side and millions driven from their homes. Because of lies.

We have the suspension of habeas corpus for non-citizens, whom our military has detained for months and years without lawyers or trials.

One was just released from Guantanamo after being held in a cage for six years. He was never charged, no evidence was ever presented against him.

We have others, many others, who are not so lucky. Such as Dilawar, an Afghan taxi driver who was beaten to death by our military at Bagram air base. Shackled, terrified, and screaming for Allah's mercy, he was repeatedly beaten by as many as four guards at once. His wrists were chained above his head. His legs had been reduced to pulp. He was just 22 years old, barely a man. He weighed 122 pounds. It took five days to kill him. He was found innocent of any crime.

We have mountains of evidence that torture techniques came from the top down, from the Vice President to Donald Rumsfeld and on down the chain of command.

We have mountains of evidence that the most basic principles of American law and American policy for 200 years have been thrown overboard by the Bush Administration. Principles that my father certainly believed in and fought for, when, as a captain, he flew the China-Burma hump in World War II.

The America my father defended stood by the Geneva Conventions; it stood by long established military tradition that forbade the inhumane treatment of prisoners, and was a model to the world.

In my father's America, we prosecuted Japanese soldiers for the crime of water-boarding, and our leaders condemned and punished the torture even of proven Nazis, on the principle that we must uphold our own humanity, and not descend to the brutish level of the most degraded among us.

And if he could, I'm quite certain my father would be standing here, now, calling on each of you to honor your oath of office, to stand for the rule of law and the
Constitution.

Thank you.

copeland morris DESIGN

An angel parts the curtain and leaves the door
Ajar. And under the moon the winter passes.
We understand but little of things which freeze,
Which still search for design. The unseen
Have deeper translations. Breakfast is early.
The lights are switched off. We are careful
Not to give away our movements. The luggage
Slow dances around us. I think of white feathers
Under a dove's wing, and empty seats on a train.

THIRTEENTH ADDRESS TO CITY COUNCIL (Re: A Resolution To Impeach)

May 6, '08
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Mayor, Council members, the America I believe in does not torture.

The mayor insists that you are all people of conscience. I take that to mean that noone on this council would stand by and watch another human being tortured without trying to stop it. Is that wishful thinking?

Time after time, Condoleezza Rice has denied that the U.S. tortures detainees in its custody.

In 2005, she said, “The United States does not condone, permit or tolerate torture under any circumstances.”

She also said, “Torture and conspiracy to commit torture are crimes under U.S. Law wherever they may occur in the world.”

“Crimes. . . .”

Now, thanks to recent revelations and by the President's own admission, we know that the U.S. not only condones torture, but the current program was authorized by Bush's most senior advisors. Rice herself chaired the secret meetings that included John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and Dick Cheney.

So while Miss Rice was telling Congress and the American people that “torture and conspiracy to commit torture are crimes under U.S. Law,” she was telling the C.I.A., “It's your baby, go do it.”

In open defiance of all ethical, moral and legal precedents, George W. Bush flatly admits that he was aware of these meetings, that he approves of torture.

This is just one snapshot in a catalog of lies, abuses of power, and violations of law by this administration.

As I said in my last appearance, virtually every legal organization in the land has urged not only Congress but all members of the legal community to speak up in defense of the rule of law.

Countless other individuals and groups that advocate in behalf of our Constitution and civil rights are doing the same. Over a million signatures have gone to Congress urging them to begin impeachment proceedings.

86 cities and towns have passed resolutions calling for impeachment. The Vermont senate has passed such a resolution.

These are not wild-eyed fanatics and neither am I.

This is not and should not be treated as a petty or partisan issue. I believe it is our civic duty to use the power vested in us as Americans to impeach a president and vice president who commit crimes.

To that end, citizens of this town have presented you with the most obvious means for you to act in behalf of the oath you took to defend the Constitution and the rule of law, an oath you swore to the people and to God.

The Mayor has staunchly argued that he and you take your oath seriously, without explaining why he or you can see no reason to act on it.

Thus, in the face of overwhelming evidence that something is seriously amiss, we have no more than your word.

Thank you.

The Mayor talked and laughed quite a bit with the City Attorney during my talk--they're such cut-ups! Then, he called on one of the older council members to offer a defense, of sorts. The man fell back on his service in the Air Force to say that he knew what it really meant to defend the Constitution and that it gave him the right to disagree with people like me, and so on. For the life of me, and those with me, we could not discern what that had to do with honoring his obligation to his oath of office in the current circumstance. Just another case of using one's military service to intimidate and show some kind of superiority, I suppose.

I will address his remarks in my next talk.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

ANOTHER SWIFT BOATED

Ever the cockeyed optimist, I had almost begun to think perhaps we were on the threshhold of a new and brighter America with our Democratic candidates competing to replace the outlaw regime in Washington. Then came the madcap blowup over Obama's pastor, with Hillary gutter-sniping alongside the scumbags at Fox News and all the other quacks posing as journalists, from George Stephanopoulos to Tim Russert.

It must have slipped Hillary's mind that the same Reverend Wright she was now piously condemning had been summoned to council the Clintons at the White House during the Monica scandal. At some point, the girl came up for air, noticed a familiar taste in her mouth--blood. Feeling thus invigorated, she beat her chest and threatened to obliterate Iran, thus signaling her full-throated embrace of the thug mentality of John McCain and the Bush Administration.

So now that Barack is getting his craw full of what it really means to run for President of America, the question is whether it is already proving too much for him. Based on his lackluster responses to Chris Mathews' inane questions on Fox News, it almost looks like he's down for the count.

The real shame and disgrace is the spectacle of our man withering like a frail violet amid the swarming flies. So this is how he faces down Hillary? What will he do when it's McCain, who hasn't even started in on him, yet? I'm expecting at least an apology per week. Suddenly, we're back in the John Kerry campaign, swift boated to smithereens.

The hatchet job on Kerry's stellar war record was so thoroughly done that he seemed to go into a kind of paralysis that prevented him from offering a proper and righteous response. There he was in a nationally televised debate with W.--the real shirker and fraud--yes, had him in his sights!--and let slip the golden opportunity of asking the cud-chewing frat boy point blank where he was when he apparently went AWOL during his Air National Guard service.

This caving in that "liberals" seem to have developed into a fine art--I almost wonder if at the bottom of it lies some deep-seated self-loathing, a desperate need to lose, peculiar only to Democrats.

I watched Reverend Wright's sermons, the ones in question, and his subsequent performance at the National Press Club. Apart from having an ego the size of Montana and seeming to positively relish the sudden notoriety heaped upon him, I am struggling to figure out what in blazes all the noise is about. As far as I can tell, here is a man who is telling the history of his people, a man who has been to school, whose intelligence is far-ranging and deep, who also has the temerity to speak the truth about why this country is so reviled in the world that it might cause someone to want to fly planes into our buildings.

Instead of distancing himself and repudiating his pastor Barack should have come out swinging as Kerry should have done: "Yes, my pastor is irreverent. He says controversial things--which is his right to do! Get over it, America. Grow up! My pastor is not me. I am not him. Sometimes I agree with him and sometimes I don't. Now, let's talk about health care. Let's talk about ending this illegal war."

But no, we liberals are just too nice for that.

ON MICHAEL MOORE'S FILM, SICKO

The film exposes the brutality of this country. Ambulances cruising seedy neighborhoods in search of places to dump the uninsureds like so much garbage. It's amazing. You can drive around any modern city and see huge medical complexes, hospitals, clinics of every size and specialty; and I always think to myself, "Now, there's everything you need right there if ever you're sick or injured. . .if. . . .IF--you can pay for it."

In this country, those fine shining citadels are off-limits to around fifty-million Americans. And really more than that, probably far more, if you count the numbers who naively think that just because they're "insured," that their policies will actually cover them for any procedure, when, in reality, they may not be covered at all. The whole insurance industry is a flim-flam.

Europeans would not put up with this insanity for five minutes. The only reason we do so here is because the majority of the population appear to be rather easy pickins for just about every charlatan and scam artist on the planet, beginning with our own government, which, starting with Ronald Reagan (himself an overgrown child), and continuing right through the current regime, quickly caught on to the extent to which the average American is the most simple-minded gullible pushover imaginable. You can tell them just about anything and they will buy it hook, line and sinker. Behold how easy it was to sell them the Iraq War.

Americans so believe the myths of their country that they can brook no criticism or even the suggestion that something sinister and rotten might underlie the shiny exterior; hence, we have three weeks of near-hysteria, verging on foaming at the mouth, over Obama's learned pastor, instead of reasoned discourse about education or health care or how to get us out of this insane war.

The real malady, I fear, is bone-deep and probably can't be repaired by normal, rational means. Reason and facts have been thrown overboard, replaced with fables and magical thinking. The economy, the country itself, will collapse. It is already in a free-fall. The oil companies--mega-flim-flam war profiteers--are reporting record high profits. Bear-Stearns gets bailed out while hundreds of thousands lose their homes; the people, having bought into their own bullshit, have been duped and fleeced as predictably as a yokel in a game of three-card monte. By the time they figure out what hit them, the rats will have stuffed their carpetbags full of boodle and moved on to the next place.

But no, they won't figure it out, after all. What is more apt is they will stand there with their twittering cellphones, jaws flapping in surprise, while the apes at Fox News pin it all on Tom Hayden and the Sixties; and the wars for freedom will grind on because that's the way we drink our health and good order. . . .

And after noon the well-dressed creatures come
To sniff among the dead
And have their lunch

And all the many well-dressed creatures pluck
The swollen avocados from the dust
And stir the minestrone with stray bones

And after lunch
They loll and lounge about
Decanting claret in convenient skulls*

*After Lunch, by Harold Pinter

ADMONITIONS AND WARNINGS

Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things within. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost necessities of our being, these still drive us on.

--Herman Melville, Moby Dick, p.163

Ahab is Ahab; and we have not tried hard enough to throw off the fate that is ready to meet us. How many admonitions and warnings have the people received? At Tholos of Athena, we have tried to put all these cautions into perspective, since we began writing about this war, five years ago. If Melville was right in thinking that “depths outlast heights”; he surely must have meant that the depths of the moral life outlast human prowess. The examined life is superior to the obsession that robs us of our humanity. The idea that God will no longer bless a country that repeats its crimes and abuses, is not a new concept. In only seven years, we have begun to follow Ahab onto the high seas of paranoia. The end is fast approaching in the frenzy of Wall Street, in the criminal complicity of Congress, in the outright criminality of the current president. How many people have to be enslaved, occupied, dispossessed, orphaned, widowed, killed and maimed, before the Empire's House of Cards comes crashing down?

We should remember the admonitions and warnings of Martin Luther King Jr. that are found in his famous speech, Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break Silence:

...There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor--both black and white--through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. [...]

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. [...]

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged , cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [...]

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

Americans have been admonished and warned for years now, about the losing position the US military is in, as its forces continue the occupation and brutalization of Iraq. In 1966, the Israeli general, Moshe Dayan, was given permission to tour the American frontlines in Vietnam, and his memoirs serve as springboard for the military historian, Martin Van Creveld. And Creveld sums up the US dilemma well, in a 2004 article, Why Iraq Will End as Vietnam Did.

The...most important reason why I think Vietnam is relevant to the situation in Iraq is because the Americans found themselves in the unfortunate position where they were beating down on the weak. To quote Dayan: "any comparison between the two armies...was astonishing. On the one hand there was the American Army, complete with helicopters, an air force, armor, electronic communications, artillery, and mind-boggling riches; to say nothing of ammunition, fuel, spare parts, and equipment of all kinds. On the other there were the [North Vietnamese troops] who had been walking on foot for four months, carrying some artillery rounds on their backs and using a tin spoon to eat a little ground rice from a tin plate."

That, of course, was precisely the problem. In private life, an adult who keeps beating down on a five year old--even such a one as originally attacked him with a knife--will be perceived as committing a crime; therefore he will lose the support of bystanders and end up being arrested, tried and convicted. In international life, an armed force that keeps beating down on a weaker opponent will be seen as committing a series of crimes; therefore it will end up losing the support of its allies, its own people, and its own troops. Depending on the quality of the forces--whether they are draftees or professionals, the effectiveness of the propaganda machine, the nature of the political process, and so on--things may happen quickly or take a long time to mature. However, the outcome is always the same. He (or she) who does not understand this does not understand anything about war; or, indeed, human nature.

The spread of abnormal American aggression is treated as if it were nothing out of the ordinary in the debate of our presidential candidates. Political Kingmakers in the two parties don't hesitate to bring along another Commander-in-Chief who is willing to "obliterate" smaller countries; while we cross our fingers and hope the new president isn't another psychologically damaged individual. "Talk not to me of blasphemy, man;" says Ahab, "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." This is exactly the America that the rest of the world dreads.

No sooner had General Petraeus told us that recent security gains were fragile and reversible, than there was a reversal. US collaborator, Prime Minister al Maliki, tried to send Iraq's military to disarm part of the militia of nationalist leader, Muqtada al Sadr. The government soldiers (many of them Shia) tore off their uniforms in Sadr City, and ran, and bugged out of their units when they were sent into Basra.

Leila Fadel of McClatchy Newspapers reports from Sadr City, the Shia enclave in Baghdad, where part of Muqtada al Sadr's nationalist militia is faced off against American troops.

"[Abu Youssef] returned one more time [to his little store] and asked to take the cigarettes to sell and support his family until he could come home.

"Tell him to stop coming here," Bowen said.

Bowen said he didn't feel bad for seizing Youssef's home. "They have the power to stop this shit and no one does. The power is in the people: it's always been with the people, but no one wants to stand up."

Spc. Brodie Berkenbile, 20, of Athens, Tenn., said he'd fire a sniper rifle from his rooftop if a foreign army took over. But this is different.

"We're trying to help them," he said.

US forces have now pulled into the outskirts of Sadr City, where they exchange sniper and small arms fire with Muqtada's Shia militia. American troops have been forbidden, for political reasons, to describe the enemy as al Sadr's people. Higher authority insists that they describe the enemy as "insurgents" or "special groups."

Brian Cloughley, a former UK army intelligence officer, writes about an Egyptian peddler whose boat pulled up "too close" to a [US] Navy contracted ship on the Suez Canal, and was clumsily killed--according to the AP report--"by one of the warning shots".

It doesn't matter that some poor Egyptian, trying to make a few cents by selling trinkets to people on passing ships in his country's Canal (a trade that has existed for over 130 years), is murdered by trigger-happy mercenaries. It's all part of the great con-trick, the idiot "war on terror". And it shows that the Bush-Cheney mentality is alive and thriving throughout the armed forces and intelligence agencies and among those responsible for anonymous brutal attacks which take place in Africa, the Middle East and, especially Pakistan. Members of the special forces are accountable to nobody for what they do.

Have we reached that fateful point where we are saturated with admonitions and warnings? What have we done for our soldiers, who are caught by stop-loss in Iraq and Afghanistan? Some of our professional soldiers and National Guard are on their 4th tour. They have once more been shipped back to this war, to meet occupation duties and demoralizing urban combat. If they could put the bad memories and losses behind them; they would. Where then, is the evidence that Americans support their troops?

The gist of it, is that Ahab is not interested in the petty battles of life, but rather in the grand confrontation, in pursuit of the Leviathan; certainly the wars that have come thus far do not meet his criteria of striking at the embodiment of evil, laying hands at last, on the wholeness of revenge, as the rolling sea subsides and the darkness of blood spreads over it.

But whose blood?--whose lungs washed with salt water?

STEERING now south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, and her progress solely determined by Ahab's level log and line; the Pequod held on her path toward the Equator. Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.

At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the Equatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch--then headed by Flask--was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly--like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod's murdered Innocents--that one and all, they started from their reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all transfixed by listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild cry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooners remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman--the oldest mariner of all--declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the voices of newly drowned men at sea.

(Melville, p. 514)

TWELFTH ADDRESS TO CITY COUNCIL (Re: A Resolution To Impeach)

April 15, 2008


Mayor, Council-members, I always thought there was a difference between saying and doing. . . .

I have come in these past weeks and tried to point out what seem to be outrages committed against the Constitution and the rule of law, by the Bush Administration.

Thus far, neither the mayor nor anyone on the council has challenged me on the facts I've brought before you, other than to express no interest in doing anything about it.

Suppose I'm right, and the Bush Administration has indeed violated laws or otherwise posed a threat to the Constitution? Wouldn't you be obligated to act according to your sworn oath to speak up in defense of the Constitution and the rule of law?

By not acting, by not speaking out, all of you, each of you, appear to say that you can find no violations of law, no usurpation of power by the Bush Administration, no threat or even the appearance of a threat, to the Constitution. Nothing's wrong. Everything's fine.

And you have strenuously argued that you are all people of conscience and that you take your oath to defend the Constitution seriously. . . .

Recently, the National Lawyers Guild voted unanimously calling for impeachment of the President and Vice President, citing the oath they took to defend the Constitution.

"It is time," they said, "for the legal community to rise up in defense of the rule of law."

The American Bar Association, the largest and most conservative legal arm in America, has stated that the Bush Administration has violated the FISA law in its warrantless wiretapping program.

They also called on Congress to override Bush's claim to the right to torture prisoners in U.S. custody.

The American Association of Jurists has said that the war in Iraq is not a war in self-defense, but a war of aggression, thus a violation of the U.N. Charter--which makes it a war crime. Past president of the U.N. Koffi Annan agrees.

George W. Bush himself has claimed, in written documents and public statements, that his administration need not obey the laws passed by Congress, nor be subject to judicial oversight.

But here in Fort Worth, we see no threat to the Constitution, no violations of the law.

In Fort Worth, we believe the National Lawyers Guild is wrong. The American Bar Association is wrong. The Center for Constitutional Rights is wrong. Human Rights Watch is wrong. Koffi Annan is wrong. And Britain's third most senior judge, who called Guantanamo a "monstrous failure of justice". . .is wrong.

And surely no one here would stand by and watch another human being tortured without trying to stop it. Because we're all people of conscience here.

Thank you.

The mayor was absent this day, so I mailed him a copy of the speech with this note attached:

Dear Mr. Mayor,

Sorry not to see you at Tuesday morning's meeting. I knew how sorely disappointed you would be to miss the latest chapter in my project to get you and the Council to do the right thing. So I thought I'd drop it in the mail in the off-chance that you might actually have three spare minutes to read it.

Very best wishes and regards,

etc.

ELEVENTH ADDRESS TO CITY COUNCIL (Re: A Resolution To Impeach)

April 7, 2008


Diane spoke, as well, on both the impeachment issue and on gas drilling. She addressed the safety and environmental threat posed by all the urban drillers, high pressure used in the wells and the very real threat posed by the massive tons of toxic waste pumped into injection wells.

She got the Mayor defensive on gas and I guess I made him pretty defensive by questioning whether the Council has a conscience, since they refuse to move on our proposed resolution.

During the early part of the meeting, Councilman Espino referred to an event celebrating Cesar Chavez, which took place at an elementary school by the same name. I quickly inserted a phrase related to that at the end of my speech, which elicited a smile from Espino.
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Mayor, Council members, good evening. Allow me, if you will, to recite the names of towns where conscience still resides:

Amherst, Massachusetts
Santa Rosa, California
Binghamton, New York
Detroit, Michigan
Bristol, Vermont

Oberlin, Ohio
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Tacoma Park,
Maryland
and Stockbridge, Massachusetts—Norman Rockwell's hometown.

These are just a few of the 86 towns in the country that have passed resolutions calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney.

Why? Why did they do it? In almost every instance where these resolutions passed, some by unanimous vote, the reason most often put forward was simply this: Because all those council members felt that in good conscience, they could not ignore the oath they took, similar to yours, to protect and defend the Constitution.

Your collective indifference on this matter must therefore be viewed alongside those city councils whose members have followed the dictates of conscience—men and women, brave and true, who did not want history to record that they were silent on an issue of such magnitude.

The argument that this is not a local matter is simply wrong. This is a local issue. Citizens from this city may be sent or have been sent to Iraq to fight in an illegal and unjustified war. Some of our people have been killed. Others perhaps will be.

This is a local issue.

More than half our taxes--54%--now go to pay for war and military. Tax funds from this city that we could have spent here have been squandered in Iraq. Money that could have gone for low income housing, for teachers, for universal health insurance—or just to fix all the roads—a huge problem around here.

This is a local issue.

Warrantless wiretapping is happening in every city and town, including ours. A local issue.

When the President vetoes a bill that would have prevented torture, he does so in our name. So torture is a local issue.

And now, they are enlisting the same arguments and lies used to start a war in Iraq to persuade us to attack Iran. If that comes to pass, believe me, that, too, will be a local issue.

You are our most direct body to give credence to the voice of conscience. The fact that Congress has failed to defend the rule of law, the fact that other Texas towns cower in silence, does not absolve you of responsibility. If anything, it places the greater burden on you to step forward and let right be done.

In the name of our mutual hero, Cesar Chavez, I ask you to please let history show that the people of Fort Worth do have a conscience and were not silent during this profound moral crisis.

Thank you.

TENTH ADDRESS TO CITY COUNCIL (Re: A Resolution To Impeach)

April 1, 2008

Mayor, Council members, I appear for the tenth time asking you to pass a simple resolution calling for the impeachment of the President and Vice President of the United States.

In my remarks awhile back, I raised the question of whether you take seriously your oath to defend the Constitution. At which you seemed to take offence. The Mayor spoke for you, so I assume you were all equally offended.

We're all familiar with the husband who loudly protests his allegiance to his wife and children, but then fails to show up when those who depend on him need him most.

And it seems to me that now is one of those times in the life of our Constitution. . . when those who have sworn to defend her can show how seriously they take that oath. Or not.

I think it's safe to say that we are in the midst of a Constitutional crisis. That's how the Watergate era is typically described, and there is no question that the abuses of power of the current regime far surpass those for which Nixon was impeached.

There's a new film now called Taxi To The Dark Side, about an Afghan taxi driver tortured to death by our military. The film has won numerous awards, including an Oscar for best documentary film. This man, this taxi driver, it turns out, was probably innocent of any crime.

The film also shows that this was no isolated incident. Over one hundred prisoners have died in suspicious circumstances while in U.S. custody during the war on terror. We know people have been tortured at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other places around the world.

Meanwhile, on March 8, George W. Bush became the first American President to use the veto power to preserve the right to torture. And that is just one item on a list that includes warrantless wiretapping of citizens, lying to Congress and the American people, invading a sovereign country for no apparent reason.

You say you take seriously your oath to protect the Constitution, and, again, all I can say is I can't imagine a better opportunity to demonstrate the truth of that statement.

It's easy to get mad at me. The question is why you should find it so difficult to be outraged at those in high places who threaten our Constitution and subvert the rule of law.

Having said that, I wish to add that I have only the utmost respect for all of you and the work that you perform here. It's only because I happen to hold in such high regard your sense of morality and integrity that I bother to come down here at all, and why, even now, I find it so difficult to accept that this cause is hopeless.

Thank you.

copeland morris SONNET (for Becky)

Fog still holds the haunted. The dull telephone
Wires didn't help us much when we tried to speak,
Years after we parted. And still, sometimes, a phrase
Begins to meet new ink; as if the Muse heard
A trumpet lower its voice to murmur your name.
The cat puts down her chin. The frost gathers
A winter, so long, since I heard your music.

Sweet Valentine, it's been so long since I froze.
A man stopped me, "Could you help me get a little
Food or coffee?" the formal bumps into the informal,
The rave, and the trumpet solo. This silence cries
For jazz in blue's city in blue's land. It needs
A message suddenly from two seagulls out of the fog,
So close you could touch them, and white, like alabaster.

BE HAPPY IN YOUR THOUGHTS

My cousin, Jasper, is always sending me these diatribes based on religion. I won't say what his religion is; it's more or less liberal, I guess, but trying to have a normal discussion with him is like pulling teeth. As far as I can tell, he virtually has no opinions of his own. No kidding. He truly doesn't appear to know what to think about anything. He won't vote or participate in politics in any way. His religion forbids it, he says. It's almost like his beliefs and delusions have so clouded his mind over the years that he's finally turned into a zombie.

And this has happened to literally millions of people around the world. Millions of people, it seems, have had their brains snatched out of their noggins by the hocus-pocus of religion.

As I see it, the idea of Jesus being martyred on a cross so the rest of us can be “forgiven our sins” is simply ridiculous. Of what possible use is that to anyone? What is the point of a religion that doesn't move one to try to make the world a better place? I think of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose religion caused him to be an activist for civil rights; and the actor Martin Sheen's Catholicism, which compels him to work for peace.

I saw Sheen at a peace conference in Crawford, Texas awhile back. When he was introduced, he stood up and said, “You all know what I do for a living. This is what I do to live.” Then, he and Cindy Sheehan proceeded to hold a requiem mass for the dead in Iraq--the first real religious moment I've experienced in a long time.

Weren't the disciples proactive in trying to make things better? Wasn't their leader an activist, himself? So much is made of Jesus' birth and death, yet nobody talks much about what he did between the time he was a helpless baby and when he became helpless again as a condemned criminal on the cross. But didn't he, in fact, spend the best part of his short life advocating for the poor, the downtrodden, the hungry, for those in prison? Didn't he plea for peace instead of war in the Sermon On The Mount? And wasn't he finally put to death for challenging the ethics of the state? Isn't that the real message of his life? What other lesson is relevant for us, if not that one?

EASTER

Jasper recently dropped me a line citing, in his opinion, a certain discrepancy concerning Easter. Some 2,000 years ago, according to my cousin, the day began at sunset rather than midnight. “So if Christ was crucified on Friday evening,” he asked, “how could he have arisen on the third day?”

“Beats me,” I replied.

Curious, I did a little research and found that there is rather an intricate method for “calculating” the exact day when Jesus rose from the dead. It goes like this. First you determine when the Vernal Equinox occurs, or the first day of Spring (Between March 21st and 22nd). Then look for the next full moon. Resurrection Sunday falls on the following Sunday. Simple.

The writer on this site happily notes that this was rather inconvenient for merchants doing their annual planning for sales. But, as he says, the resurrection is one thing not determined by commerce, but by the movements of the sun and moon. So it agrees with the “divinely ordained purpose of heavenly lights as markers for times and seasons.”

Well, that sounds pretty good, but somehow, I have a feeling the merchants are doing just fine on Easter.

To me, the notion of dryly debating on which day somebody “rose from the dead” in the same way that historians might argue over, say, a timetable for the life of Shakespeare, or the last words of Robert E. Lee, seems completely removed from reality. If we accept as fact (beyond what is proven historical record) some particular detail of the Biblical epic, then, it seems to me we are in the impossible position (in which so many evangelicals and the like have placed themselves) of accepting as literal truth all the phantasmagoria, the allegories and myths of the Bible, or whatever “holy” book or prophet's version of things you've settled on as your basis.

And if we are to believe the Bible is the literal “word of God,” then surely we must accept that God really is the deranged, homicidal maniac presented to us in countless passages, from Genesis to the book of Revelations. This is a God whose ego-driven flights of anger could spell the doom of men, women, children, newborn babies, birds, cattle, koala bears, you name it. This God would put witches and homosexuals to death, approves of slavery, made a willing accomplice of Abraham in the murder of his son. He kills with plagues, boils, disease, hailstones, fire, drowning, turns people to salt—in short, uses every means at his disposal. Might as well say you believe the coldly psychotic fiend going around punching out people's brains with a pneumatic cow killer in the film No Country For Old Men is none other than God himself.

THE DEBATER

I recall my own father debating the Jehovah's Witnesses who came to his door, happily in his element, I imagine. He, too, fancied himself something of a Bible scholar, and I suppose he was. And that's good. I think it's a fine thing to know the Bible, undoubtedly a majestic and poetic book. But I don't think one should necessarily know it any more than one should perhaps know the Quran or the Upanishads or the Bhagavad Gita . In fact, I would hope one would be just as familiar, if not more so, with such books as All Quiet On The Western Front, Slaughterhouse Five and A People's History Of The United States. Surely, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn qualifies as one of the most religious books I've ever read.

I think my old Dad, bless his soul, was as “right”--and as mistaken--as the humble Jehovah's Witnesses at the door. What we have is simply millions upon millions of magical thinkers all equally convinced that they are right. . .pitted against each other. My father, getting himself up in the armor of his voodoo to do battle with the charlatans on the porch, clutching their magical book and their leaflets—what do they call them? “Tracts.” Periodically, the disagreements and bickering between this group of magical thinkers and that one breaks out into real actual war that destroys cities and maims and kills hundreds of thousands of people.

And that's what we have now in the Middle East. We have the Christian magical thinkers making war on all the Muslim magical thinkers. So, too, with Israel's nonstop aggression and slaughter of Palestinians—the basis for which may well be that passage in the “Good Book” where God hands over the land of Canaan forever to Abraham and his descendants.

And, as it happens, we just posted our four-thousandth American death in Iraq. On Easter Sunday! Imagine that. The Iraqis have lost over a million, the highest percentage of which happen to be women and children. I wonder how many of the survivors woke up Easter morning wondering which day precisely Jesus popped up out of his tomb and walked around. . . .

Happy Easter, all you Iraqi children!

THE WITNESSES

Speaking of Jehovah's Witnesses, I always enjoy talking to them, myself, as a matter of fact. I tend to get the same two black ladies appearing at my door--about three times a year. I think I've become their special project. I like them not so much for the foolishness they've stoked away in their heads, but mainly because they're so sweetly well-intentioned about the make-believe they're so determined to perform. Never intrusive, always acting with the utmost decorum and kindness. And always dressed in their Sunday best—which, for most of the people on my street would be sad weeds, indeed. And I love them for that, too.

And it's rather comforting, I must say, to have a couple of grandmothers showing up at my door who so ardently yearn to save me, even though I'm quite sure in the end, it would have to be on their terms rather than mine. And if saving me meant counting on either of them for a blood transfusion, say, then I imagine the odds of my survival in that moment would go right in the crapper.

But they're so childlike, they can't help it, I guess. It's what often happens to people who completely surrender to their delusions. They're just not as deceitful or as cunning as the rightwing Evangelicals.

Another reason I like them is because I happen to know a little about their history. The Witnesses historically have suffered terrible abuse at the hands of mainstream religions in this country, including mob violence and lynchings. So I can't help having a special sympathy for them, as I tend to have for the underdogs.

Thus, have they come by their belief in church/state separation by hard experience, which deserves high praise in this day when it seems like all the religious nuts are doing their best to infiltrate our schools and our government. Just recently, we were treated to the spectacle of a presidential candidate suggesting we should change the Constitution to bring it more into line with “God's standards.”

God's standards. . . .

* * *

I always smile brightly at the two ladies and welcome them to my door. I usually offer tea. I reflect back to them all the love they seem to be beaming at me. And they always look a little sheepish when I smilingly remind them how important it is to get out and vote in the next election, and that I still believe in science and Darwin's Theory, rather than the goofy pseudo-science of “Creationism.”

Only, I leave that last phrase unstated, of course.