January 17, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

YOUR HOME IS YOUR CASTLE

The concept that your home is your castle goes back several hundred years. But the reactionary Bush administration doesn't care about things we've taken for granted for so long, things like privacy, not having our mail opened by the government, or having our phone calls kept private. The administration has made serious intrusions against another very old principle, the right of habeas corpus. We can deal with terrorists without giving up our freedoms. This column by Margie Burns is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

On July 25, 1973, Senator Sam Ervin, Democrat of North Carolina, returned to fundamentals and in the process summed up the legal argument against practically every action committed by the Nixon campaign in 1972. Here is part of Ervin’s statement, given during the televised Watergate committee hearings*:

“I do want to take this occasion to amplify the legal discussion and I want to mention a little of the Bible, a little of history and a little of law.
“The concept embodied in the phrase every man’s home is his castle represents the realization of one of the most ancient and universal hungers of the human heart. One of the prophets described the mountain of the Lord as being a place where every man might dwell under his own vine and fig tree with none to make him afraid.
“And then this morning, Senator Talmadge talked about one of the greatest statements ever made by any statesman, that was William Pitt the Elder, and before this country revolted against the King of England he said this:
“’The poorest man in his cottage may bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it, the storm may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England cannot enter. All his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenements.’
“And yet we are told today, and yesterday, that what the King of England cannot do, the President of the United States can.”