Tammy Baldwin: US Representative for WI in the Madison area
"In the coming year, I have no higher priorities than bringing our troops home from Iraq and holding the Administration accountable for its actions, domestically and abroad. In my committees and others, we will continue investigating the use or misuse of more than 1,000 presidential signing statements indicating that the Administration will simply ignore U.S. law, the manipulation of intelligence data which led us into the war in Iraq and threatens to do the same in Iran, the contempt for Congress and the law shown by senior members of the Administration, and broad allegations of abuse of power. These investigations ensure that Congress fulfills its duty to serve as a check and balance to the other branches of government. "
-From her year in review newsletter on her website: (http://www.tammybaldwin.house.gov)
-------------------------------------------------------
She's free to her opinion on bringing the troops home, but I was surprised to see the rest of it. It's hard to even get a decent laugh out of this because it's a US representative that said it, which just makes it sad.
Shawn is currently a student at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and majoring in electrical engineering. He has served three combat tours in Iraq with the Marine Corps.
"In the coming year, I have no higher priorities than bringing our troops home from Iraq and holding the Administration accountable for its actions, domestically and abroad. In my committees and others, we will continue investigating the use or misuse of more than 1,000 presidential signing statements indicating that the Administration will simply ignore U.S. law, the manipulation of intelligence data which led us into the war in Iraq and threatens to do the same in Iran, the contempt for Congress and the law shown by senior members of the Administration, and broad allegations of abuse of power. These investigations ensure that Congress fulfills its duty to serve as a check and balance to the other branches of government. "
-From her year in review newsletter on her website: (http://www.tammybaldwin.house.gov)
-------------------------------------------------------
She's free to her opinion on bringing the troops home, but I was surprised to see the rest of it. It's hard to even get a decent laugh out of this because it's a US representative that said it, which just makes it sad.
Shawn is currently a student at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and majoring in electrical engineering. He has served three combat tours in Iraq with the Marine Corps.
7 Comments:
They seem to always ignore the whole Commander-in-Chief thing and the fact that it was stamped with Congress and Senate approval... oh and U.N. too. (Not that the U.N. matters)
Regardless of if the war was approved by congress that has nothing to do with the legality of the actions described in that quote.
It questions the legality of signing statements, in which Bush signed a law approved by congress and then added a signing statement that boils down to basically "But this doesn't apply to anything I've done, am currently doing, or plan on doing".
Also, as far as I'm aware there's no "Haha! We tricked you!" clause in the constitution. If Bush or the administration purposefully lied and falsified evidence in order to get congress to approve the war, that's still HIGHLY illegal (note: I was polite and used an *if* here).
How about this whole Iran thing? Doesn't this even piss you guys off a little? Bush is out there the whole time saber rattling about Iran and starting to build up a case for war primarily around nuclear weapons, when in fact intelligence was reported LONG before that Iran had stopped their nuclear weapons program? As Joe Scarbough said, either the President heard the intelligence was acting criminally and immorally, or he was offered the intelligence, but didn't care enough to hear it, which makes him dangerously incompetent.
"So there were W.M.D.'s in Iraq?"
No... there wasn't. The point is the accusation that the administration fixed the intelligence in order to make the case for war
Oh Jesus.
"Oh Jesus."
I didn't say thats what I thought, but that is what some think (personally I'm torn between willfully fixing the intelligence, or just plain incompetence... it's hard to tell with this administration).
However, thats NOT even most of what Tammy Baldwin is talking about. She mentions that, quite plainly "the manipulation of intelligence data which led us into the war in Iraq and threatens to do the same in Iran", but there are equally strong allegations of general abuse of power. Including using presidential signing statements in an almost entirely new and unique way.
But if the "Oh, Jesus" comment was in regards to a belief that there wasn't WMDs in Iraq... there wasn't... that's a fact that even the administration has owned up to.
I amazed at how much you can reply to from two words...
One thing to note here is that she's taking the small minority side of the issue in a traditionally conservative state, which is a bold move I think people here would make a bigger deal about if they knew.
I agree that if there was abuse of power or manipulation that it's highly illegal and should be investigated. The problem here is that most people base their belief on conspiracy simply because they don't like Bush versus there being a enough propensity to investigate it seriously and waste valuable legislating time.
Post a Comment
<< Home