Congress.Org -- Guide to Elected and Appointed Officials
The links above will bring you to the Congress.org website, where you can find addresses and e-mail addresses of your Senators.
The issue at hand is whether we will replace a man, John Ashcroft, who was more concerned with prosecuting immorality before 9/11 than he was in investigating and prosecuting terrorism, and who was more than happy to increase government's powers to curtail individual American civil rights via the USA PATRIOT Act, with a man who scoffs at the rights of prisoners as defined by the Geneva Conventions as "quaint" and "obsolete" notions; denies due process of law to suspects by imprisoning them outside of US territory; encourages "rendition" of prisoners to "outsourced interrogators in places like Saudi Arabia; and condones treatment of unconvicted, unindicted suspects in a manner that most authorities (including the United States) consider to be torture.
Last week on a straight party-line vote (10 Republicans for, 8 Democrats against), the Senate Judiciary committee approved Alberto Gonzales's nomination for Attorney General of the United States. He must still be approved by the entire Senate. A vote may come this week. The time for action is now.
If you think the United States of America must never be known as "the home of torture," PLEASE write your Senators TODAY and tell them to VOTE NO on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.
The USA deserves better.
2 comments:
I agree with you. The time has come for progressives in this country to take a stand.....and the Gonzalez nomination is as good place as any to start. I seriously doubt, however, that Democrats in Congress have the collective will to stand up to the fascists currently occupying the White House.
"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." (source unknown)
I'm not sure that the most important thing right now is that we actually defeat Gonzales. Don't get me wrong: he is BAD NEWS and SHOULD NOT be Attorney General of the United States. And, as you say, it seems unlikely that the full Democratic contingent will rise to the challenge. But Congress--Democrats included--approved Rumsfeld. They approved Ashcroft. They approved all of this President's appointees (judicial appointees excluded) without so much as a whimper of protest.
If even thirty Democratic Senators stand and say "NO" to Gonzales, will it be a defeat? Could it not embolden Democrats to do what they were elected to do: be a party in OPPOSITION to the party in power, who call themselves "Republicans," but are Republicans unlike any I remember in my fifty years on Earth?
And who knows; perhaps it may embolden a few real Republicans to stand and vote their consciences rather than the party line.
Just a thought.
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