This Polk Award --honoring a unique and very strong journalistic effort-- will once again strongly illuminate, for many more millions, what has been going on for many years.
(BEND, Ore.) - A Web blogger who followed George W. Bush’s distinctly revenge-oriented retaliation-firings of several U.S. District Attorneys across the nation --the leaders in essential functions of our Judicial System-- has just won a famed Polk Award for news coverage. The work by Joshua Marshal led to the recent resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gomez.
Through their ethical and professional responsibilities, these District Attorneys General represent the heart-and-soul of the Constitutional provisions protecting the human rights of every American citizen, set forth in the Bill of Rights.
The award, for a publication series in TalkingPoints Memo on the Internet, is the first such prestigious professional prize for a Website news-blogger.
That in itself is a significant turning point from the mainstream media's pattern of shaping communications for every citizen on issues, problems and pending actions directly affecting our lives.
But it also represents a new high point in Internet news-coverage since that action by Bush II is --by any evaluation whatsoever-- surely the kind and level of offense demanding the impeachment of any President allowing it to happen in his time in office.
Further, it represents a striking retaliation, in and of its own right as a pattern for our American news-coverage, against the ongoing strengths and malign consequences of the right-wing noise machine, which has dominated the entire media-communications spectrum of channels for more than thirty years.
Print-side mainstream units and both radio and tv-news units, too, have been heavily influenced, if not fully overwhelmed, by a manipulative and dollar-shaped politically-driven group.
This group is under direct control of corporate business interests, with overriding impacts clearly evident from advertising revenues, also controlled by still further corporate and business interests.
That news-coverage success-by-Internet demonstrates once again that Yes -- there was AND IS STILL a right-wing noise machine.
It has long been and remains, so well funded it can operate to cause events leading to the removal of professionally ethical lead U.S. Attorneys, long universally recognized as the very foundations of our national Justice Department.
As reported and fully documented, this still highly active noise machine contributed in depth and detail to the distressing, demeaning, and highly damaging distorted 'news' and perverted propaganda and rumors widely circulated, to justify and manipulate the key situations involved. This was later reported in detail by Marshall via the TalkingPoint Memo website.
Those removed or forced to resign, failed to satisfy demands for support for clearly politically-motivated actions by the Bush cabal.
They were ordered to manipulate key events. Those who failed to respond as ordered, in direct defiance of their professional obligations and/or ethical considerations, were summarily punished by various forms of retaliation, including removal from their significant posts.
This Polk Award --honoring a unique and very strong journalistic effort-- will once again strongly illuminate, for many more millions, what has been going on for many years.
The 'no holds barred, use any weapon, any way you can' assault on our democracy --set up by Far Right billionaire sponsors-- began as part of the Reagan era and is now well-documented by many exploring books and other publications firmly ensconced in the public record.
For full and excruciating detail of what, when, why, and how this was accomplished, very quietly, for decades of deep damage and very desperate consequences to our government systems and our whole democracy, see my two Op Eds published here last August 20th and August 30th. They are easily accessed using the Written by...-line in my STAFF section.
An extremely revealing article in Harper’s Magazine (March 2008) covers the damaging and Constitutionally distorting initiation, accomplishment and dire consequences of what is now clearly still another strong charge for inclusion in the fast-growing list leading us ever closer to impeachment of Bush.
See also VOTE MACHINE: How Republicans Hacked the Justice Department, pp. 37-46; by Scott Horton, noted attorney and Harper’s contributing editor.
To allow these multiple offenses to go unpunished --even at the end of the Bush II destructive "worst administration in our history" -- sets a very dangerous precedent for any President following him.
The 'imperial Presidency' has long been maligned by nearly every qualified authority on democratic governance as defying and defeating the purpose of the original design chosen by the Founders.
They provided three components --Legislative, Executive and Judiciary-- each providing checks and balances for the other two, very clearly designed precisely to prevent what has been perpetrated on us all by the Bush cabal.
Now it is termed by neo-con cabal leaders to be the inherent right of the President stemming from his role as Commander in Chief of the national armed forces in wartime.
But the Constitution clearly assigns the role and responsibilities to declare war and to manage any conflict to our elected representatives, acting as our Congress --with the decisive control remaining via the huge funding demanded still firmly in Congressional hands --if they have the courage to use it.
Nowhere is there any Constitutional hint that even a wartime President is Commander in Chief of the entire nation, as these newly-snatched --and clearly dictatorial-- powers would make him.
The concept --carried over from origination by some of these same cabal members during the Reagan era -- is now sometimes termed the unitary Presidency' --but, however wrapped, it still irrevocably smacks of one-man/rule altogether too reflective of the fascist pattern we all long ago learned to deplore and defeat whenever it appears.
This latest incident involving political manipulation of the Justice system thus simply adds more demonstrated malign intent and action to the long list already at hand, leading to the necessity for impeachment now to reverse and return the power given them by the people to Congress --where it truly belongs.
The vote-power you still hold, ready as a strong weapon, is the very best answer to any-and-all attempts to create a new and overwhelming fascism in our nation --NOW.
That’s why impeachment --on extremely solid and extensive charges-- is the next weapon we should demand from our elected representatives --the Congress of the United States.
Never, ever, forget what it was the Founders fought-and-bled to leave to us: "...OF the People, BY the People, FOR the People."
Op Ed: U.S. Attorney Firings Prove Bush's Political RetaliationsSalem-News.com