After reading about Congressman Foley's disgusting e-mails yesterday, I donated to the man who will take his seat, Tim Mahoney.
After reading the rest of the headlines this morning, I wrote this to all my local (Central California) papers:
Why You Should Vote Democratic in November
Dear Editor:
As I was perusing my morning paper today, I read about Representative Foley, the Florida Republican who suddenly resigned because his e-mails to teen boys were made public...one year after Republican leaders were aware of his predatory behavior. In fact, this sexual predator was put in charge of a committee dealing with online predators! Congressional pages were warned about Foley, yet he remained in office until there was no way to keep his behavior secret any longer.
Then today we have further confirmation (in Woodward's new book) that Condi Rice ignored frantic warnings from her security advisors that an attack by Al Qaida was imminent in the weeks before the 9/11 attacks. Also, that Colin Powell and Andy Card were urging Don Rumsfeld's removal a couple of years ago; they're both gone, Rummy is still in charge of the debacle in Iraq.
Congress rubber-stamped the Bush torture and civilian surveillance programs this week. The courts will surely invalidate these stunts, but Republicans somehow think we the people are in favor of unfocused domestic spying and throwing habeas corpus away in the name of non-specific terror threats. Every poll I've seen says they're wrong about that.
We have the ongoing revelations in the Abramoff case, with more and more Republican lawmakers falling away as their pay-for-play ethics are exposed.
President Bush is getting shriller and angrier as he continues to defend his boneheaded policies in Iraq and the war on terror. Now Bush is on his way to California to support two of the most partisan and doctrinaire congressman we have, Pombo and Dolittle, who are both in real danger of losing their seats. Pombo won't be happy until all of California is paved, armed and privatized, and Dolittle is deeply implicated in the Abramoff affair.
Bush insists everything is fine in Iraq. When he doesn't agree with Congress, he issues secret signing statements. He doesn't negotiate, he bullies. Have we ever had a worse chief executive?
Mr. Bush's intransigence tells us that the only way to stop his disastrous Iraq policies is to vote for Democrats in the November elections. We must put a Democratic majority in place in both houses of Congress in order to reassert the system of checks and balances the framers of the Constitution designed. We need to clean out the culture of corruption in the House of Representatives as the Foley scandal again shows.
There are many moderate Democrats running this year. Please listen to their messages and give them a chance, even if you usually vote Republican down the line. It is not hyperbole to say that this is one of the most important elections in history. Our freedoms, your children's lives, and the international standing of this country are truly at stake on November 7.