In Honor of Independence Day With quite minor alterations, I hereby re-submit my first ever entry to this Blog nearly 4 months and 800 plus posts ago. BLOG-ARATION OF INDEPENDUNCE (from George II) When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to dissolve the unpopular judicial fiat which has been forced upon them with another Bush, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men (and women) REALLY are created equal; that they are evolved to their station with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (not-their like minded JUDICIAL appointees); that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that legitimately elected governments three years and two months long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism -- or at least malevolent incompetence, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security, even if it must wait for the second November of every fourth year. Such has been the patient sufferance of these citizens; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their current administration. The history of the present President (or Preznit as the case may be) is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute hegemony over these states and this planet. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good -- Especially by allowing beatings, flogging, dog-biting and waterboardings. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people (like oh, I don't know -- Homosexuals?) unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in basic human rights, such as legalized affiliation, a right inestimable to them, and whose deprivation would be of interest to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and which are not affiliated with these United States, for the sole purpose of bullying and/or fatiguing them into compliance with his measures, or at least delaying the eventual outbreak of civil war. He has allowed the rise and rule of profiteering abuses among his friends and confederates and has peopled his administration with such individuals in matters of policy-making decisions. He has badgered our naval forces repeatedly, with the stated goal of demonstrating, his manly firmness, and declaring finished tasks which manifestly remained unaccomplished. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within. He has allowed his lieutenants and subordinates to engage in partisan acts of betrayal of those working for the safety and security of this nation to be exposed, ridiculed and endangered all for the sake of the aggrandizement of his power. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers, and declaring activist those judges who disagree with him -- unless that activism serves the purpose of establishing and enabling his exercise of power. He has made Congress dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries, and has to the indebtedness of our citizens engaged and encourages the willful deceit of such legislature with information necessary to the proper conduct of their duties. He has erected a multitude of new offices with disturbing authoritarian names, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance, while providing him with advice as to helpful propaganda opportunities with the purpose of manipulating our citizen. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power, except to the extent he allows the civilian power to tell the military how to do its business -- especially the torture. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: He has appointed investigating agencies, which he and his administration have no intention of cooperating with, and for which he refuses both time and the taking of testimony under oath, or which are populated with like-minded individuals determined to provide information which is both incorrect, and supportive of his abusive policies. For protecting those within his administration, by a mock trial, from punishment for any crimes which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, or using the institution of duties and taxes for the most craven of political purposes; For imposing deficits on us without our consent; For depriving thousands of individuals, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury without justification; For transporting them beyond their native lands, to be tried for pretended offenses; For taking away our charters, establishing most odious laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments; For deceiving our own legislatures, and declaring himself invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. For engaging in the abuse of language, and creating words which are illogical in use and form. For making strange faces, and possessing a smirking look that is both galling and disturbingly vague and formless. He has vitiated government here, by declaring our rights unnecessary for the purpose of our protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, negligently allowed the burning of our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He is supportive of tyrannies which are supportive of those who cast death and destruction upon us, through censorship or deceit, while casting aspersion upon our traditional friends and allies for their resistances to his schemes, usurpations and violations of international law. He has constrained our fellow-humans, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless terroristic savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our Republican brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our abuse, derision and neglect of allies long held. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our determination to defeat them peacefully, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We, therefore, the rational citizens of the United States of America, in no particular order assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United States are to be, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT OF GEORGE II; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the his crown and that all political connection between him and us is, and ought to be, totally dissolved [At least this November]; and that, as free and independent citizens, we have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, or at least the First Amendment, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. [Signed by] Attaturk [or Publius if you'd rather]