Sunday Late Nite: Emergency

Watching Bill Moyers interview Keith Olbermann on "The Journal" on Friday evening, I was struck, as was Mr Moyers, by Mr Olbermann’s use of the word "emergency" to describe the current American circumstance. The word came up in the context of Walter Cronkite’s report to the nation after his trip to South Viet Nam:

BILL MOYERS: –when he came back from Vietnam and said– the war has been lost. And Lyndon Johnson said, "If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America."

KEITH OLBERMANN: But the point being that there was– there were emergency circumstances that he saw, too.

BILL MOYERS: Emergency?

KEITH OLBERMANN: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: You keep using that word. Are we in an emergency?

KEITH OLBERMANN: Well, we’re being– what– here– this is one thing with which I agree with George Bush. We’re in an emergency. He and I could just sit there– we just talked about what an emergency we were in and never went into details, we’d have a great time.

BILL MOYERS: What is it, as you see it?

KEITH OLBERMANN: Well, it is the question of the future of the nation. It’s one of those pivotal times in our history. And I don’t know that necessarily everybody sees it in those terms because it is, once again, an opportunity not merely for any external threat but for internal threat. Governments exist based on power that is taken from people. It is– they are necessary. I’m not an anarchist. I believe in government. But there is– there’s no– no possible interpretation other than to say that this administration and the Republican Party, to some degree the Democratic Party, have taken advantage of fear, of the unprecedented, nearly unprecedented attack that we saw in 2001, to expand their powers on the premise always of security, which is, you know, the famous Franklin, Jefferson warning about that is it’s never been more applicable. So it is, yeah, it is emergency circumstances as Walter Cronkite saw it. I mean, here– objective Uncle Walter, most trusted man in America. When I have an opinion on the most important political issue of the day, I’m gonna sink a president and maybe throw the election to the other guy right now. And he said, well, you know, the chips have to fall in this direction because people are dying and our country is, to some degree, wounded and bleeding. And our country is wounded and bleeding now if we don’t know whether or not habeas corpus exists.

The thought of Keith Olbermann agreeing with President Bush about anything, especially that we are in an emergency, struck me as particularly elegant. Because of that symmetry, I also realized that all of BushCheneyCo’s hollering about emergency needs for emergency powers to combat a newly emerging enemy is simply another example of Rovian projection. They aren’t responding to an emergency; they were all on vacation during the real emergency, in the summer of 2001 when Richard Clarke and even George Tenet were trying to get their attention, finally flying someone to Crawford only to be told "All right. You’ve covered your ass now."

The emergency, as Keith Olbermann quite rightly pointed out to Bill Moyers, is "the question of the future of our nation." With an idiot-tyrant who lied America into war continuing his Oedipal sandbox exercise so costly in blood and treasure; a war-profiteer Vice-President operating secretly in the shadows, pulling unknown levers of government to benefit his fellow oligarchs and spying on all his fellow Americans; and a Congress almost entirely in the thrall of The Corporations that write huge checks to ensure its continued incumbency — "It’s one of those pivotal times in our history."

I ask you — could an external enemy have done the damage we have suffered the last seven years? Would Americans have permitted the destruction of their Constitution from without, the shredding of habeas corpus by an invader, the surveillance of all of us by an outside force? Why, then, have we allowed BushCheneyCo to murder children, to steal our freedoms, to poison our air and water, to borrow from our children’s and grandchildren’s future, and to sully our good name among the people of our planet?

And now, finally, a horrible, un-American indignity: without even knowing, without even inquiring, without even understanding the scope, frequency, targets, purpose, duration, timing, or methods, without testimony from the affected companies or explanations to the American people — the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body (with a Democratic majority!) is poised to immunize some of the largest of The Corporations for illegal acts committed because BushCheneyCo asked them politely, but without the requisite warrant, long before America was attacked, to SPY on Americans. Such action will, of course, shut down the only arena of inquiry currently underway — in the courts, where judges, regardless of their appointive President or putative party, have ruled against the telecoms again and again. And, with no courtroom leverage against the well-paid executives atop the telecoms, Americans will never know by whom, how, where, when, and why spying on them was ordered.

We will never know.

Many years from now, a young person may have occasion to inquire of you, "What did you do during The Emergency?" This is that Emergency — this week, tomorrow, NOW. The Emergency that Keith Olbermann, Chris Dodd, and Russ Feingold have warned us about may be stoppable tomorrow. But this may be our last chance.

Call or email your Senators:
FAX your Senators(pdf):

NO AMNESTY FOR TELECOMS; NO BASKET WARRANTS

Stand up with Chris Dodd.

America needs all of us, right now.

UPDATE: These are the United States Senators who pledged to back the Judiciary Committee FISA bill that includes oversight and excludes telecom immunity: Russ Feingold (D-WI), Chris Dodd (D-CT), Barack Obama (D-IL), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Joe Biden (D-DE), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Jim Webb (D-VA), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

Please ask these Senators to keep their word and join Chris Dodd’s filibuster for America tomorrow.

NAME FAX PHONE

Feingold 202 224 2725 202 224 5323
Dodd 202 224 1083 202 224 2823
Obama 202 228 4260 202 224 2854
Sanders 202 228 0776 202 224 5141
Menendez 202 228 2197 202 224 4744
Biden 202 224 0139 202 224 5042
Brown 202 228 6321 202 224 2315
Harkin 202 224 9369 202 224 3254
Cardin 202 224 1651 202 224 4524
Clinton 202 228 0282 202 224 4451
Akaka 202 224 2126 202 224 6361
Webb 202 228 6363 202 224 4024
Kennedy 202 224 2417 202 224 4543
Boxer 415 956 6701 202 224 3553

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4. Sunday Late Night: Your NN2010 Host, Harry Reid
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