They Get Letters

I'm still pissed at Arlen Specter.

I'm sure I'm wasting my time, but if there is anything remotely human left inside that degraded husk, I would be remiss not to attempt to reach it. So...

Dear Senator Specter,

I read with interest your question, or perhaps lament, asking why it takes a newspaper investigation to get the Bush administration to comply with the law, and I have an answer for you.The answer is you, Senator Specter. You are the reason that this administration flouts the law on a regular, ongoing basis.

Every time the NSA or the CIA or any other government agency, or President Bush himself, is exposed as doing something illegal, you make a big show of questioning it, or saying that it is “troubling”, or even holding hearings to get to the bottom of it. And then you fold. You always fold. Instead of holding the administration accountable for the illegal actions you decry, in the end you seek ways to whitewash them, or even to make them legal. What incentive does the administration have to abide by the Constitution and the laws of the land if they know that the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to give them a free pass every time?

You do not get to throw up your hands and ask why this is happening. It is happening because you, the Constitution’s principal guardian in the Senate, allow it to happen. For the sake of all of us, for the sake of your own self-respect, for the sake of this country of ours and the Constitution that makes it great, I beg you to please take a good, long, hard look in the mirror. Run your fingers along your back and get reacquainted with your spine. For if you do not start to take your responsibilities seriously, you will go down in history as the man who let the rule of law slip away, the man who allowed America to devolve from a great democracy into a third-rate dictatorship. Is that really what you want as your legacy? To be remembered as the man who betrayed American democracy?

I understand that you have an obligation to your party. But your obligation to your country must come first.

Sincerely,

Eli

I'll probably tinker with it a bit more before I send it, but that's the general gist of it. I just had to get it out of my system.

UPDATE: I have swapped in the final post-tinkering version.