We Need Barbara Jordan...NOW!

If you haven't been paying attention, well, listen up....
The Constitution of the United States is in jeopardy, peril, danger. Fill in the blank. Our democracy (the very same one that the president seems to think that all the other countries want) itself is endangered.
Which leads me to ask.... Where is our Barbara Jordan?

On July 25, 1974, this powerful thinker and member of the House Judiciary Committee took her turn to speak during the Nixon impeachment inquiry.

"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total," she declared in her thundering voice. "And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."

I ask now, and fear the answer.... Is there anyone is this Congress that will stand up and speak for the Constitution?
While the Bush regime continues to establish a supreme, arrogant, autocratic presidency in flagrant violation of the Constitution, members of Congress largely sit there as idle spectators -- or worse, as abettors of Bush's usurpation of their own congressional authority. And they continue to sit. Certainly every now and again,noises are made...Patriot Act this, illegal wiretapping that, but, alas, nothing happens.
There is supposed to be a separation of powers, checks and balances. These are not merely phrases of constitutional law, bu the very basis of our democracy, essential to sustaining our ideal of being a self-governing people, free of tyrants who would govern us on their own whim. King George III routinely denied colonists basic liberties, spied on them and entered their homes at will, seized their property, jailed anyone he wanted without charges, rounded up and killed dissidents, and generally ruled with an iron fist. Beginning to sound familiar?
We can talk about the Republican Congress, which rubber stamped anything and everything Bush put out there, but I want to talk about this Democratic led Congress. Yes, yes I know the majority is slim. But,jeez, they won't even try. For example, the party now in charge did indeed cave in to Bush's summer demand that it legalize his warrantless spying on Americans. A fight? Not really.
It's important to note that Congress is not a weak institution. It has powerful muscles to flex, including control of the purse, which Congress used in 1973 to tell Nixon, "No, we will not provide money for you to extend the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia." Nixon had to back off. Legislators also have clear constitutional mandates to oversee, probe, and expose presidential actions.
Members of Congress have wide-ranging subpoena power, as well as something called "inherent contempt" power to make their own charges against outlaw executive officials and to hold their own trials. And, of course, they have impeachment power -- which the founders saw not only as a way to remove an outlaw president (or veep or cabinet officer), but also as a means to compel a recidivist constitutional violator to come before the bar of Congress and to be held accountable.
Let it be noted that there are some members of Congress trying to fight the good fight. Such Democrats as John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, and Dennis Kucinich are all over Bush and Cheney with investigations, subpoenas, censure motions, impeachment bills, and exposes -- not only on the war, but most emphatically on constitutional abuses. Thank them, find out what you can do to help them, demand that your own Congressperson join them.

Good luck on that, I suppose.


Oh, if you don't know who Barbara Jordan is, well, shame on you. Now, go to Wikipedia and be amazed.