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June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
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Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
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Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
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CounterPunch
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Maria
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Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
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Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
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Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
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Small Destructions Add Up
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Wire
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Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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June
28, 2003
Tom Delay's New World
Order
"I
Am the Government"
By
JON BROWN
The story I heard goes like this: Tom DeLay lights
up a stogie in a restaurant, and a waiter comes over and says,
"I'm sorry, sir, but this is a government building, and
no smoking is permitted." To which Mr. DeLay, House majority
leader extraordinaire, if I may resort to Freedom English in
honor of Tom's until now secret admiration of Gustave Flaubert,
barks, "I am the government."
That got me thinking. It's interesting
to learn that Tom DeLay is the government. I didn't know that.
So I looked in the Constitution and didn't find any mention of
him. It must be an outdated edition. All it talked about was
a government of we, the people.
Now some say the Constitution has always
been sort of sly about what it means by "people." Used
to be "people" meant no women, coloreds, or white guys
without property need apply. But people has always been, as far
as I can tell, you know, plural? So I looked that up too, and
the dictionary said "people" still means no less than
two persons. Like I said, it must be an old edition I'm using.
But then, I'm always mixing up kinds
of words. For instance, take when people say life is unfair.
Usually they say that when they want to explain why the deal
they got is so much better than somebody else's. "Can I
have some?" "No." "How come?" "Because."
"But that's not fair?" "Who said life is fair?"
Or sometimes it's because it just looks like too much work to
do anything about it, especially when the guys with the remote
have guns or worse, like Fox News. It's hard to argue with that.
Now when I hear "life's unfair,"
I get a funny look on my face, like I don't understand, but it's
not because I disagree. Yeah, life's unfair, yessir, I'm with
you on that. But I get that look because the way I see it, so
what? Life's about adverbs, not adjectives. (Footnote: For those
of you who sleeped through English, "unfair" is an
adjective. I know that because I looked it up. But then, maybe
the book I used was an outdated edition.) Okay, so life's unfair.
How unfair is it? That's where adverbs come in. It's not about
what kind; it's about how much.
So since I'm people, as far as I know,
I can see why Tom DeLay might think fair is he gets everything,
because legally, as the only guy mentioned in the Constitution,
he's entitled to it, and everybody else gets secondhand smoke.
That's only fair. It's democratic too. After all, as the entire
government, he does represent a majority. Since democracy's what
makes us free, it's our civic duty to uphold it against foes
foreign and domestic by letting old Tom flick his cigar ash in
our ears.
We've just got to trust him to do the
right thing. When he came to this job of being the whole government
and all he brought along years of on-the-job experience as a
pest control technician to help with his work. What that taught
him is the most reliable way to exterminate is to burn the house
down. It's simple: no house, no problem. That's the sort of common
sense Tom brings to Washington.
And now he's taking it to Iraq too. Take
looting. That's how a country ought to run. You blow up and burn
down and strip away what other folks took decades and centuries
to build up and take it home with ya, first come, first served.
That's what makes people productive. They've gotta be, because
there's nothing left. Once they've got their values set right,
they can come by and friends of Tom's can sell them back the
stuff they took from them. That's free enterprise, which I thought
must be in the Constitution, the way Tom's friends talk about
it so highly, but I couldn't find it there. But again, it must
be that old edition of mine.
Looks like I'm gonna have to invest in
some up-to-date reading material, which I will do, once I find
a job again. I'd borrow what I need from the library except it
closed. The city hasn't got any money, so it asked the state,
but the state has no money, so it asked Tom DeLay, but he's got
no money either. He gave it all back to the taxpayers, he said.
But since I'm not making any money I got none back. So I asked
if maybe he could lend me some on account, but he said no, it's
against his principles to support loafers, and besides, he's
already borrowed all he can to pay his friends to bring democracy
to Iraq, so how could I be so selfish to ask for some for myself?
I felt pretty bad about that, but he
said that's okay. Just have faith in Jesus and everything'll
work out fine. He sounded kind of choked up when he said that,
because I could hear a sort of snorting every couple of words,
and I would've asked him if he was all right if he hadn't hung
up so quick. He is the government, after all, so I wouldn't want
to cause him any troubles. He's depending on us to give him our
support by minding our own business. So maybe I won't need to
put out for that new Constitution anyway. Since it's about Tom
DeLay, it's not really any of my business.
Jon Brown
can be reached at: dogen@mindspring.com
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
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