Where were (are) we?

Thanks to K-Cali, for telling me about this fantastic editorial. She found it in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, written by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald.

"Every generation blames the one before."

Late last year, John Conyers, Democratic congressman from Michigan, proposed impeaching the president of the United States. The proposal received scant attention in the media mainstream, which might be attributed to the fact that the proposal's chances of passage were roughly akin to those of an ice cube's of surviving a steam bath. Surely Conyers knew that going in, so one wonders why he put the measure forth in the first place. He gives his answer in the current issue of Harper's. He did it, he said, because when future generations ask where he was while the president subverted the Constitution, he wants to have an answer.

And what will our answer be?

Most of us don't want to believe that our President could have so desperately broken the law by eavesdropping, we have federal laws that prohibit such actions, right? Most of us don't want to believe that the man charged with protecting and upholding the land we so honor would abandon our mores and standards. I don't want to believe it.

I've avoided reading articles about it. I'm turned off the radio when I've heard reporters talk about; I try not to enter into conversations when it is the topic.

It's time though - and I completely agree with Pitts - it's time to stand up and shout from rooftops that this President has broken the law and the trust of the American people.

Was the whole country napping when Joseph McCarthy's bullying and lies made a mockery of the Constitution? Didn't anybody speak out when Franklin Roosevelt sent Americans to concentration camps? Where were the good people when Americans of African descent were being lynched and the president and the Congress stood by and did nothing?

Never one to sit idly by - I am shocked by my past behavior. I don't want to have to answer to the erosion of American ideals by this President. It's time, folks. Time to stand up. Time to protest. We deserve answers to what has really been happening... And we want them now.