As promised (Letter to the editor)

[bigmacbear]

Haven't heard back from the folks at the Seattle Times yet, so it's doubtful they're going to print the letter I sent them. As promised, here it is:

To The Editor:

I read with some interest your endorsement of Dave Reichert (Sunday, 10/15) for the Eighth Congressional District. However, to say that I strongly disagree with it is an understatement.

Dave Reichert has, along with virtually the whole of the Republican Party, indelibly stained this Congress by voting for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an act which it can be argued is not only unconstitutional but actively anti-constitutional, rising to the level of a direct violation of his oath of office.

In voting for the provisions of this act which allow the President to re-interpret the settled international law of the Geneva Convention, and which allow the ranking members of the military under his command to violate it with impunity, Rep. Reichert has spit in the face of every American prisoner of war who will now be subject to maltreatment because turnabout is fair play. In voting for the provisions which effectively destroy habeas corpus, and arguably take this government across the line into a police state, he has desecrated the graves of our Founding Fathers.

It is time we the voters put a stop to this madness, and the only way we have available to us is to give control of the Congress to people who know the value of the Constitution.

Shame on you, Rep. Reichert. The citizens of Washington deserve better.

Sincerely, etc.

Comments

[theevilnub.livejournal.com]

I say we play a little joke on every Rep who voted for this. Let's organize a sizeable militia & go to each & every one of their houses & kidnap them in the night in their sleep. They will be taken, blindfolded & earplugged, into an indisclosed & desolate location & sheltered in an underground bunker where there's no light. Keep them there for 30 days (or more) & give them a modicum of nourishment but not tell them what's going to happen other than they are prisoners of war. Threaten to torture &/or kill repeatedly. Refuse all requests to contact their families & their govt. Then when this period ends whisk them away in the cloak of darkness back to a remote rural road in the desert & let them try to find their way back home on their own. Then once they do, force them (somehow) to rescind this Act. Perhaps with this little perspective in mind, they might think again about turing the Constitution on its ear because of some bully President & his Administration. Perhaps only the simulated experience of being a POW might be the only way to jar these people.

Then again, John McCain was a POW... I'm not sure how he voted on this. Given his penchant for party loyalty above all else, the cynic in me is inclined to say that he's in full support.

[teddyb.livejournal.com]

That's a great letter. Let me know if they publish it or not. I really think they should. You've written a very clear, concise letter, and stated your viewpoint well. Most newspapers really don't get many letters like that, so unless the editors only want to present one point of view, I think they'd be happy to have an opposing view so well expressed.