None Dare Call It Treason
The minority leader and the speaker have done their best to prevent the president from presiding, and they have done even more to prevent the Congress from legislating or fulfilling most of its other constitutional duties.
WASHINGTON — Hooray! Hooray! The wicked Congress has gone home. So to speak, since most of the members actually live right here in the capital city and environs.
But at least they are not in session. I am reminded of something said in early 1866 by Gideon John Tucker, a surrogate judge in New York, who wrote: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the (state) legislature is in session.”In this case, all these years later, the government of the republic is safe for at least another month. I say that because the Republicans in Congress will be taking a break from their determination to overthrow the sovereign, the president of the United States. As we know, the senior leader of that party, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is on record as saying in 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”In fairness, McConnell later added, “I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change.” Didn’t happen. The president hasn’t changed. So the only option left for Sen. McConnell and his sidekick, House Speaker John Boehner, is presidential failure, failure of the sovereign.Under our system of government, the president is that sovereign. And the classic definition of treason, going back to 12th-century England, is: “The offense of acting to overthrow one’s government or to harm or kill its sovereign.”“None Dare Call It Treason,” to quote the title of a popular right-wing tract of the 1960s, but the effect of Republican “governance” these last few years is a pretty fair modern equivalent. Back in the day, the ‘Sixties, a right-wing polemicist named John Stormer wrote that enormously popular book — it sold more than 5 million copies — which began by accusing the Congress of the United States, with help from the United Nations, of secretly and directly funding communist militaries dedicated to the overthrow of the United States government.Those were the days when the founder of the John Birch Society, of which Stormer was a member in very good standing, said in a letter that President Dwight Eisenhower was probably “a conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy.” In his book “The Politician,” founder Robert Welch, the creator of caramel popsicles called Sugar Daddies, added: “With regard to Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason.”History has shown that these guys were just rich nuts. McConnell and Boehner, on the other hand, are public officials sworn to uphold the Constitution and sovereignty of the United States.© 2014 UNIVERSAL UCLICK
WAIT BEFORE YOU GO...This year, the ground feels uncertain — facts are buried and those in power are working to keep them hidden. Now more than ever, independent journalism must go beneath the surface.
At Truthdig, we don’t just report what's happening — we investigate how and why. We follow the threads others leave behind and uncover the forces shaping our future.
Your tax-deductible donation fuels journalism that asks harder questions and digs where others won’t.
Don’t settle for surface-level coverage.
Unearth what matters. Help dig deeper.
Donate now.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.