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Amazing things happened yesterday in the polls. Most of all, and I hope I’m not being naive, some hope has been restored in me. After the 2004 election I lost all faith in the American voter. The idea that Bush could be re-elected after all the havoc he caused (not even including the Iraq war) was unfathomable to me. The day after election day 2004 was the most depressing day of my life.

Today, the Democrats took back the House (they may take the Senate too). I know the polls predicted they might, but I had no hope. Plus I had lingering suspicions about the legitimacy of our election system. Election Day morning I was sickened to find that my polling place had switch to Diebold Touchscreen machines. I asked for an alternative and used a paper ballot.

The amazement does not stop at the Democrats getting their balls back:

  • Joe Lieberman won his Senate race! After losing the primary election to Ned Lamont, it looked like the Democrat-light was going to bid adieu to his political career. When he promised to run independently, I assumed he had no chance and that he was just being hard-headed. Surely he would just split the democratic vote and let the Republican win. I was so wrong. Joe Lieberman is so loved by Connecticut Republicans that the Republican candidate only got 10% of the votes! Ned Lamont finished with ~40%. Lieberman: 50%.
  • Rick Santorum lost his Senate seat. Awww, isn’t that sad. Who knew that being a homophobic, creationist, arrogant douchebag would finally kick him in the ass? Or maybe enough Pennsylvanians just figured out what his name means.
  • Arizona passed a strange mix of conservative and progressive propositions:
    • English is now the official language
    • The minimum wage was raised
    • Parental notification for abortions for minors looks like it won’t pass
    • A ban on same-sex marriage looks like it won’t pass
  • Nancy Pelosi is the first female speaker of the House. I think she’s really a stand-up woman with solid values, and that she honestly cares about people. That’s hard to find in politicians these days.
  • Missouri passed a law to allow stem-cell research. Now I don’t really understand this one since it’s my understanding that stem cell research is legal everywhere. The federal government will just not fund your research if you do research on stem cells. Also, this law bans human cloning. I wonder if this was just really an intentionally mislabeled law to ban human cloning?
  • Several more states banned same-sex marriage: South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin. I feel like I’m living in the pre Civil War United States, screaming that slavery should be illegal. Can’t these people see that they are clearly violating people’s human and civil rights?

 

If the Democrats take back Congress - it becomes possible to impeach Bush. Although to actually kick him out of office we’d need 66% of the votes.. I cannot think of a President who deserves impeachment more. In addition to lying and being incredibly shady (see 2000, 2004 elections, Vallerie Plame, Katrina, Paying reporters to write good articles about No Child Left Behind - just to name a few), Bush has violated US Law!:

  1. First and foremost he violated the FISA act which says that the NSA must get a warrant from a judge before wire tapping people. Bush blatantly broke this law, wiretapping American citizens (the scale of this program still has not been disclosed).
  2. He has done away with habeus corpus - welcome to the middle ages folks. For you non-law students, habeus corpus means that if you are arrested you have the right to trial. Bush can have you arrested, never charge you with a crime, never try you - and he doesn’t even have to tell you why he arrested you. Also if you are arrested by Bush, (even if you’re an American Citizen) you can be tortured. Funny enough, in this same legislation BushCo wrote themselves a get out of jail free card. They cannot be charged with war crimes. Believe it or not, the Geneva Convention prohibits such legislation, so once again we see how much Bush cares about International obligations. side note: this is an often sited conservative argument for why invading iraq was important (Bush was obligated to enforce UN resolutions!) Hahahah, yeah right.
  3. Lastly Bush misled us into Iraq - stating that WMD was the reason when it obviously was not. I don’t know what law that breaks exactly, but I think it’s something like “defrauding the public”.

Realistically, we probably couldn’t convict Bush without a greater majority of Dems in the Senate. And sadly I have a feeling an impeachment trial would raise public support for Bush. How Americans can be so blind is something I have a hard time understanding. Finally, I doubt that even after yesterday’s boost to their self-confidence Democrats will have enough cojones to stand up for their supposed values.

 


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