Thom Hartmann

It’s difficult to watch Democrats play checkers while Republicans playChess with Iraq. It’s particularly difficult on Memorial Day as moreAmericans and Iraqis die. But the Republican Party has been playingpolitics with Iraq since the day after the Supreme Court installedGeorge W. Bush in office in 2001, and they have no intention ofstopping now. They may have borrowed some techniques from RichardNixon, but they have no intention of repeating his mistakes.

According to James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” if aPresident were to order or allow the “wanton removal of meritoriousofficers” such as US attorneys, such an action “would subject thePresident to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.”

The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking civilization is the right to challenge governmental power of arrest and detention through the use of habeas corpus laws. Habeas corpus is roughly Latin for "hold the body," and is used in law to mean that a government must either charge a person with a crime and allow them due process, or let them go free.

This weekend I was in Washington, DC. Prior to the antiwar protest, I went to interfaith service Saturday morning at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation and heard breathtaking sermons from Rev. Robert Hardies, Sister Carol Miller, Ms. Khalila Sabra, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Rev. Graylan Hagler, and Bhante Suhita Dharma.

Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham were presented with an opportunity to uphold the fundamental human right known as habeas corpus, or flinch and write a law that would retroactively make sure that George W. Bush could not be prosecuted for violations of habeas corpus in our overseas concentration camps and prisons.

The Republicans are trying to keep George W. Bush out of jail. So far, the media and the Democrats haven't done much to stop them.

Recently declassified files show that in addition to protecting Almeida, agencies from the CIA to the FBI to Naval Intelligence also withheld information to hide their own intelligence failures and domestic surveillance operations, as well as to protect the reputations of their own agencies and key officials.

In the years since George W. Bush first used 9/11 as his own "Reichstag fire" to gut the Constitution and enhance the power and wealth of his corporate cronies, many across the political spectrum have accused him and his Republican support group of being fascists.

I was on the air doing my radio program two weeks ago when the story came down the wire that the killer of JonBenét Ramsey had been captured in Thailand just hours earlier.

Every time Democrats and progressives speak out about George W. Bush's spying on Americans without mentioning that he may also be spying on Democrats, they're playing into Karl Rove's "National Security Frame" and actually strengthening Republican electoral chances in November. To short-circuit this, Democrats need to invoke the ghost of Richard Nixon.