Repeat After Me: "I am not alone, we are not alone . . . ."

After the Senate disgraced us all and passed the Torture Bill (and don't dare let anybody get away with calling it `The Military Commissions Act of 2006'), I took a busman's holiday and wandered the net. Looking for the comfort of community, I found many of like-mind, but nothing that inspired a new approach to fighting the fascists who have taken over my country. That was until I paid a visit to Bookrate - "Christian Suicide Bomber - Possible?":

A ‘Christian suicide bomber’ attempted to blow up his car at an alleged abortion clinic on Tuesday by ramming his vehicle through the doors of the buidling and soaking it in gasoline. At the last moment, he decided not to light himself or his car on fire. Second degree arson is the charge.


David Robert McMenemy, 45, of Sterling Heights, Mich., is charged with second-degree arson. He's accused of driving his car into the Edgerton Women's Health Center about 4:30 a.m. on Monday.

Let’s conduct a thought experiment: A ‘Muslim suicide bomber’ attempted to blow up his car at a church on Tuesday by ramming his car through the doors and soaking it in gasoline. At the last moment, he decided not to light himself or his car on fire.

What do you expect the charge would be in that case? Still second degree arson? Or would Homeland Security have ushered him off in secrecy to a black site somewhere? Would he be in Cuba, in Eastern Europe, in Turkey? Would he have the right to counsel? Almost certainly not. We must ask ourselves why this man is not being classified as a terrorist — what specifically about his actions or his religion are excusing him from the horrid death sentence label of Terrorist?

Is it because he failed to light himself on fire or blow up his car? Certainly he had still done material damage to the façade of the building. Additionally, the administration glories in telling us of terrorist plots it disrupts when they are still in the planning stage, long before the perpetrators could have dreamt of driving a car into a building.

Is it because this is an alleged abortion clinic (in truth, it did not perform abortions)? Is it because this man is a Christian, or an American citizen? No sensible person would excuse him from the Label simply because he is a Christian, that’s simply prejudice. And American citizens have been held and extradited in the aforementioned fashion, as well as stripped of their Constitutional guarantees with the execution of a simple rubber stamp.

Or is it some other reason? Perhaps it is because he is a Christian, and perhaps this nation is so black-and-white, so prejudiced and so consumed of the “Us versus Them” mentality that they refuse to believe that one of their own could possibly be a Terrorist. A good chunk of the American populace, as well as the District Attorney responsible for charging this man, should rethink their arguments.

I've been trying to remember how Joe McCarthy was finally vanquished, and the short version is that the people of the United States got to hear him long enough and often enough to realize what a deranged petty tyrant he was.

And that's what has to happen with Bush-Cheney. They must be challenged at every turn, forced to defend themselves and their ideas over and over.

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