RICH STONESTREET'S BLOG

Scooter

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 11:57:21 GMT

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

Mr. President:

As a Democrat, I might be expected to denounce your commutation of “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence, but instead I applaud perhaps the only decent thing that you have done in more than six years as President. Commuting the prison sentence of one of your henchmen rather than permitting him to rot in prison for the crimes committed by you and the Vice President is a noble act.

Mr. President, let us be honest. The issue is not perjury, of which “Scooter” was found guilty and sentenced. The issue is not the “outing” of Valerie Plame. The issue is the circling of the wagons by you and your Administration when it began to become apparent to all thinking Americans that we were lied to about Iraq.

Mr. President, you, the Vice President and others in your Administration willfully and knowingly misrepresented the facts to engage the United States in a war against a nation that had nothing to do with the attacks of September 11th, 2001, resulting in the needless deaths of over 3,500 American servicemen and servicewomen and tens--perhaps hundreds--of thousands of Iraqis.

Mr. President, noble as was the commutation of Mr. Libby’s sentence, it is now time for you to take the next step. You and the Vice President should resign and surrender yourselves to the nearest federal marshal, with the expectation that you will receive the punishment commensurate with the crimes that you two have committed.

Mr. President, do the right thing. Throw yourself at the mercy of President Pelosi and the American people. Perhaps we will be as merciful toward you and Vice President Cheney as you were toward “Scooter.”

Richard H. Stonestreet

Charleston, WV

Independence Day

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 01:05:07 GMT

The beginning of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, signed 231 years ago, reads as follows:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with ~~inherent and~~ certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ….”

(Strikethrough [deletion] and underlining [addition] indicate changes made in Thomas Jefferson’s original draft by the Continental Congress.)

At a time when most governments derived their power from heredity or the “divine right” to rule, the ideas that “life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness” could not be bought or sold or transferred from one person to another, and that government should be the servant of the governed instead of their oppressor, seemed revolutionary indeed.

But was it really revolutionary? Jefferson didn’t think so.* In a May 8th, 1825, letter to Henry Lee, he argued that the principles set forth in the Declaration are simply a description of the natural order of things:

“This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.”

Although Jefferson was 82 when he wrote the letter to Lee, he remembered what he had attempted to express in the Declaration: that “life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness” are not only “inalienable,” but natural (“inherent”) as well. Jefferson, as a deist and a rationalist, would have believed in a creator who had placed everything in its right place, functioning properly.

That’s what we should celebrate every Independence Day: the beginning** of a return to a proper functioning government, a government as it was meant to be, not as it had beenperverted over the millennia. We should celebrate the beginning** of the restoration of rights that had been withdrawn (“alienated”) from humankind. We should resolve never to permit those inherent rights to be stolen again, either by a home-grown tyrant or a foreign one.

*Jefferson never claimed that what he wrote in the Declaration was original. His friend Filippo Mazzei, an Italian living in Virginia, wrote in The Virginia Gazette in 1774: “Tutti gli uomini sono per natura ugualmente liberi e indipendenti. Quest’uguaglianza è necessaria per costituire un governo libero. Bisogno che ognuno sia uguale all’altro nel diritto naturale.” (All men are by nature equally free and independent. This equality is necessary in order to create a free government. Everybody must be equal to another in natural law.)

**Slavery would not be abolished completely in the United States until almost 90 years had passed and a bloody rebellion by 11 southern states had been quelled.

West Virginia Day

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:05:15 GMT

Happy 144th Birthday, West Virginia! June 20th, 1863, the northwestern part of the Commonwealth of Virginia officially separated from the Old Dominion, which was then in rebellion against the United States of America.

It has long been my contention that no two peoples were ever meant to be separate more than those of West Virginia and Virginia. High mountains divide us. Eastern Virginia looked to the Chesapeake for commerce; Western Virginia, to the Ohio River. Much of Eastern Virginia was an aristocracy; few aristocrats lived west of the mountains.

Then, there’s the little matter of slavery. Data from the 1860 U. S. Census show that, in the counties that became West Virginia, a population of 376,688 included 18,371 slaves, or 4.88 percent. Only Jefferson County had a slave population of 20 percent or more. However, in the counties that remained in Virginia after June 20th, 1863, a population of 1,219,630 included 472,494 slaves, or 38.74 percent. In 32 of the (then) 98 counties the slave population was 50 percent or more, and in 77 of the 98 counties the slave population was 20 percent or more.

Eastern Virginia operated primarily on slave labor. In Western Virginia, most folks did their own work. A January 1861 editorial in the Morgantown Star (edited by Marshall Mortimer Dent, a cousin of my great-great-grandfather Dudley Evans Dent Jr.) said it well:

“The people of West Virginia have borne the burden just about as long as we can stand it. We have been hewers of wood and drawers of water for Eastern Virginia long enough, and it is time that section understood it; and it is time that our would-be leaders in our own section understood it.”

Every year, though, it seems that somebody questions the legality of West Virginia’s separation from Virginia, citing Article IV, Section 3 of the U. S. Constitution (“… no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State,… without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned….”). Just a week or so ago, I had somebody tell me that a “Constitutional scholar” had opined that the creation of West Virginia and its admission to the Union were clearly unconstitutional. Really? Let’s look at the facts.

Following Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860, several southern states “seceded,” that is, they nullified their previous ratifications of the U. S. Constitution. Virginia hesitated at first, but then, April 17th, 1861, delegates to the Richmond Convention voted 89 to 55 (with 8 not voting) to adopt an “Ordinance of Secession.” Delegates representing what is now West Virginia voted almost 3-to-1 against the ordinance. (Marshall Mortimer Dent was one of the “no” votes.)

That ordinance read as follows:

“Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain that the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in convention on the 25th day of June, 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying and adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong to a free and independent State. And they do further declare that the said Constitution of the United States is no longer binding on any citizen of this State.”

Now, I ask you a simple question. If the East Virginians believed--and apparently they did--that, because they had voluntarily ratified the U. S. Constitution, it was lawful for them to nullify that ratification, how could they then also argue that the separation of West Virginia from Virginia violated a Constitution that they claimed was “no longer binding on any citizen of this State”?

West Virginia and (East) Virginia. All we have in common is our last name.

It's his story...

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:08:25 GMT

… and he’s sticking to it!

In December 1961, Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote the following words in a letter to Ethel Kennedy:

I think it is going to be of greatest importance, in the next few months and years, if Americans can regain their healthy respect for reason, for the light of intellect, and get rid of this shallow contempt for “eggheads.” They must learn to respect thought and stop idolizing psychopathic goofs. God knows, this is going to take a miracle. There are plenty of wise and sane men in the country, and they are able to be articulate. They can do a tremendous amount.

Unfortunately, Fr. Merton’s words are as true today as they were over 45 years ago. The psychopathic goofs are still with us. One such goof, Rush Limbaugh, interviewed Vice President Dick “Five Deferments” Cheney last week. During the interview, Cheney attempted to justify his war on the Iraqi people by saying one more time that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida were working together before the September 11th, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

The remarks of quail hunter par excellence Cheney came during the same week that a declassified Pentagon report was released. That report, based on reason, intellect and thought, which Fr. Merton called for in 1961, concluded that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida did not collaborate; that al-Qaida was not present in Iraq until after the American Axis of Evil (Bush-Cheney-Rove) invaded Iraq.

Cheney told Limbaugh (one goof to another) that “[a]s I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.” It’s Cheney’s story, and, notwithstanding all evidence to the contrary, he’s sticking to it.

Not as easy as it looks

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:13:25 GMT

It was over 20 years ago that a friend of a friend let me use his box-seat ticket at Memorial Stadium for a game between the Orioles and the hated Yankees. Off to my left, also occupying one of the prime-location seats behind the Orioles’ dugout, was a loudmouth who continually yelled critical comments at Baltimore batters as they trudged back to the dugout after having harmlessly grounded another sinker ball to a New York infielder.

When Al Bumbry, the Orioles’ centerfielder, once more beat a pitch into the infield dirt and was thrown out at first, he headed back to the dugout. Mr. Loudmouth screamed at him, “What’s the matter with you, Bumbry?” Hands atop the dugout, smiling, a few feet away from the loudmouth, the longtime major-leaguer looked him in the eye and said, “You ought to try it sometime; it’s not as easy as it looks!” He then disappeared into the dugout. We heard not a peep from the loudmouth for the rest of the game.

Today’s loudmouths have a different target: public-school teachers. Radio talk shows here in West Virginia are flooded with loudmouths who opine that teachers should “stop whining and be happy” with the raise that Governor Manchin has proposed. Like the loudmouth in Baltimore, who had never tried to hit major-league pitching, these loudmouths have never tried to teach.

Public-school teachers are faced with elected officials of both political parties who apparently believe that there is no such thing as a failing student, only a failing teacher; state department of education bureaucrats who insist that teachers “teach to the test” instead of educating students; invidious comparisons with the non-public schools, which, unlike the public schools, get to pick which students they will admit, educate and retain. Public-school teachers are told that, if students with learning disabilities can’t learn, it’s the teachers’ fault; if students aren’t motivated to learn, it’s the teachers’ fault; if students misbehave, it’s the teachers’ fault.

Most of us have jobs whose success or failure depends on our abilities and how hard we work. If we are talented and industrious, we can almost ensure our success. However, an able, hard-working public-school teacher can still “fail” (by loudmouth standards) because of factors beyond his or her control: poorly motivated students, uncooperative parents, a weak principal; students whose home environments are not conducive to learning.

Yet, despite all this abuse and criticism, somehow the overwhelming majority of the teachers do their jobs and do them well: public-school students receive a quality education from caring, compassionate and knowledgeable professionals. Someday, somewhere, the public-school teachers are going to rise up with one voice and say to the loudmouths, “You ought to try it sometime; it’s not as easy as it looks!”

Rogue Nations

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:26:25 GMT

In 1979 the United Nations adopted a “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.” Of the 192 member nations of the UN, 184 have ratified that convention, signifying their commitment to the following measures:

to incorporate the principle of equality of men and women in their legal system, abolish all discriminatory laws and adopt appropriate ones prohibiting discrimination against women;

to establish tribunals and other public institutions to ensure the effective protection of women against discrimination; and

to ensure elimination of all acts of discrimination against women by persons, organizations or enterprises.

What are the eight “rogue nations” that have failed and refused to accept the principles of that convention? Afghanistan? No. China? No. Libya? No. North Korea? No. Russia? No. Saudi Arabia? No. Syria? No. Vietnam? No.

Here are the eight holdouts against equal rights for women: the Islamic Republic of Iran; the Republic of Nauru; the Republic of Palau; the State of Qatar (which has served as a command center for the U. S. invasion of Iraq); Somalia; the Republic of the Sudan (anybody heard of Darfur?); the Kingdom of Tonga; and the United States of America.

Charlie Daniels, Rush Limbaugh, et al. are proud, I’m sure, that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is right there with Iran, Qatar, Somalia and Sudan in refusing to agree that women should have equal rights with men.

As for me, I’m ashamed. I hope that you are too.

Groundhog Day

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 14:58:21 GMT

It’s Groundhog Day, so most of us will be waiting to hear whether “Punxsutawney Phil” and various others of his ilk will see their shadows today. However, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) probably won’t notice because he’ll be too busy talking. Having watched the U.S. Senate on C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 for several years, I’ve formed my own opinion about which Senators are bright, which are not so bright and which are just plain windbags. Biden, who seems to love the sound of his own voice is clearly among the last named.

My father always taught me that it’s better to remain silent and be thought dumb than to speak and remove all doubt. Unfortunately, I haven’t always heeded that advice. When I haven’t, it’s got me in trouble, but my verbal missteps pale in comparison with those of Biden. His latest came in an interview with the New York Observer, when he commented on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois), a fellow candidate for President in 2008: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

I’m old enough (and so is Sen. Biden) to remember the first African American to run for President: Democrat Shirley Chisholm in 1972. Rep. Chisholm represented the people of New York’s 12th Congressional District for seven terms (1969-1983). Now, Rep. Chisholm wasn’t “mainstream,” but, of course, most African Americans aren’t. That’s not necessarily of their own choosing, but it results from American institutional racism, which systematically excludes them from the mainstream. “Articulate” and “bright”? Anybody who heard Rep. Chisholm speak knows that she was both. “Clean”? I’m not sure whether Sen. Biden was referring to bodily cleanliness or political cleanliness, but, in any event, I have no knowledge of Rep. Chisholm’s being dirty in either way. “Nice-looking guy”? Because Rep. Chisholm wasn’t a guy, that doesn’t apply to her, but, presumably, Sen. Biden believes that a nice-looking African American man is so rare as to constitute a “storybook.”

I’m also old enough (and so is Sen. Biden) to remember African American Sen. Edward William Brooke III (R-Massachusetts), who served two terms in the U.S. Senate (1967-1979). Sen. Brooke was articulate, bright, and a nice-looking guy. As far as I know, he was clean. As a second-generation lawyer--his father was an attorney for the Veterans Administration--he was not mainstream, but he was close. The first African American U.S. Senator, Hiram Revels (R-Mississippi), who served from 1870 to 1871, was an articulate African Methodist Episcopal Church minister who was not mainstream but was certainly bright. However, I don’t know what he looked like, and I don’t know whether he was clean.

The American Taliban

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 19:16:32 GMT

The American Taliban, despite having taken a licking at the polls November 7th, unfortunately is still alive and well. Newly elected Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U. S. House of Representatives, is under fire from those self-appointed guardians of an America that exists only in their perverted, warped minds: Minnesota Democrat Ellison has decided to take the oath of office with his hand on a Qur’an instead of a Bible.

Critics of Ellison accuse him of “undermining American culture,” of not being willing to place his hand on the book “our country was founded on.” They’re wrong; indeed, they are the ones who are undermining American culture: nothing could be more un-American than forcing a particular religion or, indeed, any religion at all, on any person, elected official or otherwise.

His supporters invoke the First Amendment but they need not because Ellison’s right to place his hand on any book he wishes (or no book at all) derives from an American document that’s even older than the Bill of Rights. The third paragraph of Article VI of the U. S. Constitution, a paragraph that was in the original Constitution, reads as follows:

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” (Emphasis mine.)

Mr. Ellison made no secret of his religious beliefs, and the good people of his district elected him to represent them in Congress. Why can’t some people accept that?

Cheney and waterboarding

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 18:07:54 GMT

Down through the centuries, man’s inhumanity to man has included torture. Those who have ordered and performed the torturing have always attempted to justify their barbarity by stating or implying that their victims deserved what they were getting. The torturers of the Spanish Inquisition really believed that those whom they tortured (and, at times, put to death) were a threat to Christian civilization.

One especially cruel form of torture is waterboarding, which simulates drowning, the obvious objective being to force the person being tortured to give his torturers information to avoid death by drowning. The United States has a long history of rejecting waterboarding as inhumane and degrading. In 1901, an American soldier was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for waterboarding a suspected Filipino insurgent. After World War II, we treated as war criminals Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners. We court-martialed an American soldier who had aided in the waterboarding of a prisoner in the Vietnam War. The Field Manual of the U.S. Army bans waterboarding. Two prominent sponsors of the recently enacted Military Commissions Act, Republican Senators John McCain (Arizona) and John Warner (Virginia), believe that the act bans waterboarding.

This past Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney, being interviewed by a Fargo, North Dakota, talk radio show host, agreed with the host’s characterization of waterboarding as a “dunk in the water” that can “save lives.” (No doubt the Inquisitors and the Japanese soldiers also believed that they were “saving lives.”)

Unlike Senator McCain, Cheney doesn’t know what it’s like to serve in the military, to be captured by the enemy and to be tortured. Cheney, by his own admission, sought and received five deferments during the Vietnam War because he had, in his words, “other priorities.” He passed on the opportunity to fight for his country, but he doesn’t hesitate to send the children of others to fight and die.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.” A heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States is a man who believes in torture. Never were Jefferson’s words more apt than they are today.

Don Blankenship

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:17:49 GMT

How should we deal with Massey CEO Don Blankenship, who is trying to buy the West Virginia Legislature? In my opinion, nobody has done it better than a Wayne County legislator who responded to Blankenship's candidate questionnaire with a letter. Here is that letter, reproduced with the permission of the author:

Mr. Don Blankenship

PO Box 11226

Charleston, WV 25339

Dear Mr. Blankenship:

I’m not sure how to begin, but I guess the first thing I should iterate is that I have no intention whatever of answering the questionnaire you have had so painstakingly prepared and, now, sent TWICE to my home (the last time via registered mail).

Not that it isn’t well done, it is. Very professional and honed, like a fine carving knife, to a sharpness only the most discerning of political assassins could appreciate. My hat’s off to your Man. If I ever have need of pulling someone’s pants off in Public, I’ll give him a call.

And...its not that some of the questions aren’t interesting (Number 10; where you ask whether I believe West Virginia will have to raise taxes or reduce the cost of state government to avoid budget deficits in the next few years, is a real raspberry. What with the massive federal deficits we are running and the extraordinary increases in energy costs we now see, the best answer would likely be “yes” to both. Your guy didn’t give me that choice.).

In fact, I was particularly taken by the veiled blast leveled at universal healthcare in question number 15. I mean, do you really believe West Virginia (or America for that matter) can hope to compete on a global level when as much as 20% of our workforce doesn’t have access to meaningful healthcare? And what about their kids?

Nope. The reason I will not respond is simply that the “organization” you purportedly represent has, as nearly as I can tell, only one member. You.

Now, apart from the fact that, as nearly as I can tell, you would never vote for me anyway ( I am, after all, a Democrat)...I don’t think you can. I know you don’t live in my District, I’m not sure you even live in West Virginia. All those jokes about our elections aside, I just don’t believe Mrs. Ireland would find it funny at all were your name to show up in a tally in Wayne county come election night.

So tell me, why is your opinion of me so important that it requires reinforcement or revocation? What purpose, granting the fact that your “organization” has only a head and a wallet and no “body” of members, would offering either really have?

Forgive me. That was unfair. You didn’t ask me to be funny or trite when you wrote. You asked me what I thought. It was done in a particularly stilted and slanted way, but it was nonetheless a question anyone who wishes to serve the public ought to be prepared to answer. Here goes.

I believe teaching a man to fish can provide a lifetime of sustenance, but it’s government’s job to protect him from the bait sellers.

I believe a living wage trumps every other aspect of the economic landscape. Absent that, no one is ever truly successful.

I believe there are no good taxes or bad taxes, only poorly managed ones.

I believe children have a right to a safe environment at school, at home and anywhere in between, and that Right cannot be secured by the enactment of laws, but by the action of men and women.

I believe every child should have access to health care. Every child. Everywhere.

I don’t believe you can kill your way to Peace any more than you can kneel your way to Freedom. Embracing this duality is the only way to find either.

I believe substance abuse is the fastest growing problem we have and that we can’t solve it in prison.

I don’t believe in silver bullets or werewolves. Both are myths. One is mired in forlorn hope and the other in unreasoning fear. Problems are worked out, not shot out or wished out.

Maybe these platitudes will give you some insight. I hope so. After all you have gone through, it’s the least I could do.

Sincerely,

Don Perdue

Delegate, 17th WV House of Delegates