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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

6/28/2007

A Day for Celebration

celebration.jpg

A cloture vote on the mis-named Bill to Provide for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (a long but must read for every modern American patriot) went down to resounding defeat on the senate floor this morning. God bless those Americans who believe that representative government still takes precedence over bread and circuses (Paris Hilton is unveiling a new clothing line, don’tcha know?). Those modern American patriots who expended the time and effort to let their views be known have succeeded in derailing a bill that would have eventually spelled the death of our beloved republic, and dealt a major blow to the foundations upon which western civilization rests.

Make no mistake about it. One of the countless reasons that this bill was being pushed so feverishly (and sometimes unconstitutionally) through legislative channels is that our fearless ‘leaders’ (our own president among them) believed that the American citizens’ attention span is short – and that, a year and a half from now, when the teeth of this bill had begun to suck the life blood out of our republic, and a third of the senate is up for re-election, the voters would have by then forgotten who supported this travesty.

We cannot forget. Treason is a high crime. And betrayal leaves a deep, permanent, psychologically disfiguring scar.

The U.S. senatorial oath reads:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Below is a listing of those forty-six American senators who voted for cloture in order to shut off debate on a bill that placed the amassing of political power and the interests of business above the U.S. Constitution, and the safety and sovereignty of the United States. Those names written in bold type represent senators who will be running for re-election in 2008.

Make no mistake. Some version of this bill will be re-introduced – if not during this congressional session, then during the next. Every American voter needs to make it his priority to see to it that those senators written in bold below are no longer occupying seats in the senate when that happens.

Bennett (R-UT)
Craig (R-ID)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)


Akaka (D-HI)
Biden (D-DE)
Boxer (D-CA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Clinton (D-NY)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Schumer (D-NY)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)


Recent polls revealed that as many as eighty percent of the American electorate disapproved of S.1639. November 2008 will tell us how many of those eighty percent were weak in their disapproval or have attention spans calibrated in nano-seconds. But, for the time being, today should be a day of celebration. Although the scoundrels will not rest until our republic is unraveled, they have been at least temporarily corralled.

Between now and November 2008, it has become even more imperative for every informed American to educate those in our families, neighborhoods, and workplaces who are still not aware of what this bill entailed, and its abominable far-reaching anti-liberty, anti-American, anti-representative-government ramifications for us all.

~ joanie

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

El Presidente's comments this morning:

I thank the members of the Senate and members of my administration who worked so hard on the border security and immigration reform bill. I'm sorry the Senate was unable to reach agreement on the bill this morning.

Legal immigration is one of the top concerns of the American people, and Congress's failure to act on it is a disappointment. The American people understand the status quo is unacceptable when it comes to our immigration laws. A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn't find common ground. It -- it didn't work. ...


This bill was about legal immigration????? Give me a break!

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile our BORDERS ARE UNSECURED, our IMMIGRATION LAWS ARE UNENFORCED, and millions of illegal aliens will continue to cross our borders, steal our jobs, steal federal benefits, commit horrific crimes, and on and on.

Anonymous said...

Every American voter needs to make it his priority to see to it that those senators written in bold below are no longer occupying seats in the senate when that happens.

You can say that again!

P.S. The traitors didn't even get a simple majority! LOL!

Good post as always, CW.

Anonymous said...

They say a picture is worth a thousand words:

http://www.drudgereport.com/bk.jpg

Anonymous said...

Even though they were defeated today, they'll move on to something else tomorrow. I predict that it will be the "Fairness Doctrine" that gets the next big push. They need to make that law so they can try to push this through again.

Anonymous said...

Hannity is discussing the immigration bill with some lady from California. Apparently she heard on one of the Hispanic oriented radio stations that the illegals are infuriated at the vote and are planning a march - and they are warning that violence could ensue.

Anonymous said...

Newt's take on today's cloture vote:

What's telling about today's vote is that Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) both continued to vote for the Washington establishment and against the American people. Their support for the unworkable and impossible-to-implement Bush-Kennedy-McCain immigration bill marks a very distinct divide between their views and those of the major Republican presidential candidates. The vast majority of the "yes" votes today were Democrats and the vast majority of the "no" votes -- the winning votes -- were Republicans. This is a major step toward defining what 2008 will really be about.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21348

Anonymous said...

Another handful of former conservatives on my permanent blackball list. That list gets longer by the day.

Good post Joanie. This is a good day indeed, but we can't sit on our laurels. The liberals are already planning their next assualt, probably the unfairness doctrine.

Anonymous said...

Do you know why the president has a 30% job approval rating and congress is in the teens? Because the children are trying to lead the adults instead of the other way around.

Anonymous said...

Today, for the first time since the Clinton years, Americans reminded Washington that it’s our country---that doesn't belong to the well-connected or well-financed special interests.

It feels good, doesn't it?

joanie said...

Thank you all for your excellent comments.

It certainly does feel good to enjoy this all-too-infrequent temporary reprieve. But that is all it is – a reprieve.

I posted this essay on another website, and one of the commenters stated that I ought to be more grateful for all the good things President Bush has done (followed by a list of several dozen of his ‘accomplishments’).

I have often written that the factor that is most contributing to our republic’s demise is fact that the majority of Americans simply don’t care. The sense of responsibility (the responsibility to see that we are informed about our roots, to see that we understand the integral part that each of us needs to play in maintaining our liberties and our national sovereignty … and the responsibility to pass those qualities on to our children) that was once an innate and irrevocable part of citizenship has eroded beyond the ability to identify it.

And then there are those who are educated, but non-discriminating. They see what Bush has ‘accomplished’, but do not recognize that the large majority of those ‘accomplishments’ are either borderline unconstitutional, or toothless.

Such was the case with the poster I referenced above. He cannot see the forest for the trees. He does not recognize that his list of the president’s ‘accomplishments’ is dwarfed, if not negated, by his all-out support of this sovereignty- and economy-undermining 'immigration legislation'.

Without a sense of citizen responsibility, a free society’s days are numbered. And, once it is lost, I don’t know how it can be reclaimed.

Post-9/11, there was a flicker of reclamation, but it was never fanned into a flame. Too many diversionary tactics continually mounted by the mainstream media, Hollywood, and academia. And we allowed ourselves to slip back into our apathetic stupor once again before the year was out.

While driving to an out-of-state appointment the other day, my husband and I were listening to what passes for the on-the-hour five minute ‘news’ report on one of the major (ABC?) affiliates. On that particular day, two sentences were devoted to the fact that the last remaining survivor of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima had passed away. I was so stunned by the brevity and flippant nature of the report that I literally counted the number of sentences devoted to the next ‘story’. It was the ‘story’ of the imminent release of Paris Hilton from jail. And it merited eight full sentences of coverage – four times more than the death of an esteemed member of our ‘greatest generation’.

My husband and I looked at each other, and, without a word being said, simply shook our heads in unspoken agreement that the contents of that five-minute ‘news’ segment represented a microcosm of the ‘bread and circuses’ death knell that the mainstream media is foisting upon the citizenry, each succeeding generation of which knows and appreciates the ‘real America’ less and less than the one that went before.

None of what ails us – from the threat of international terrorism, to the nightmare of illegal immigration, to the unprecedented power of the unelected, unaccountable mainstream media, to the Marxist influence in public education, to the corrupting power of special interest groups, to the purposeful, premeditated destruction of the best healthcare system the world has ever known … -- none of those gargantuan problems could continue to exist if we as a people began to re-value the attendant individual responsibilities that come with being a citizen of a free country: namely being educated and informed, seeking and respecting truth, and demanding accountability from our leadership.

As a nation of free men, we are choosing to die by suicide, because no malevolent force, from within or outside of our borders, can do us as much harm as our own indifference.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

CW, you need to post your comment above as an essay of its own so more people will read it.

I'm still basking in the glow of yesterday's victory, but like you I know we can't do that for too long. The "enemy" is already planning its next move.

Anonymous said...

Joanie, are you aware that a handful of "Republicans" including Brownback from Kansas voted yes yesterday until it looked like the cloture vote wasn't going to go through, and then they changed their votes to no?

That's not the mark of a conservative and I hope every last one of them gets booted out next time they run for re-election.

Anonymous said...

The slime that is the US Congress must be shaken by what happened.

Their only purpose is to get reelected

and they must have a strong inkling now that they were on the WRONG track.

The phone lines were so overwhelmed yesterday that they were turned off.

They thought they were untouchable.

They must be sweating now.

Lefties like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are good for spouting out sound bites blackening their opposition,

but they aren't competent enough as politicians to control the branches of Congress they "lead."

As for Bush, between his pandering to islam and to the "immigrants,"

I think it is a toss up whether he will move to Mexico City

or convert to islam.

Anonymous said...

I think it is a toss up whether he will move to Mexico City or convert to islam.

Neither. He wields more power right where he is championing both causes. Wolves in sheep's clothing can get a lot more done than wolves can.