Aristotle's Definition Of Tyranny & What BUSHCO Is Busily Constructing (Scott Horton)

[kpete]

The Justice Department’s On-Going ‘State Secrets’ Charade
DEPARTMENT No Comment
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED December 2, 2007

When is information a “state secret” and thus completely exempt from disclosure in legal process, even if its exclusion will produce a manifest injustice? In previous episodes, we have gotten an array of different answers. For instance, we learned that when the Government engages in criminal violations of the FISA statute conspiring with telecommunications companies in the process, with the result that the communications of American citizens are subject to unlawful warrantless surveillance—this is a “state secret.” And likewise, when the Government picks up an innocent man, wrongfully confines him and deprives him of access to counsel and due process, then transports him overseas for the purposes of having him tortured—again a series of criminal acts—this is also a “state secret.” And today we get yet a further installment in what the Bush Justice Department considers to be a “state secret.” It appears that when a convicted felon at the heart of what Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann have labeled the “biggest corruption scandal in American history” pays hundreds of visits to the White House, meeting with the President, the Vice President, and the President’s senior political advisor, and potentially involving them directly or indirectly in his criminal schemes, this, too, is a “state secret” and thus cannot be divulged.

.........

The trail of the Abramoff investigation led several times directly into the White House, but Bush Administration Justice Department investigators, headed by Public Integrity head, Noel Hillman, consistently refused to follow any leads. Hillman was rewarded for keeping things on the right track. He’s now a federal judge.

One likely trail led straight to Alabama and the current controversy surrounding the politically motivated prosecution of former Governor Don E. Siegelman. Abramoff and his sidekick Michael Scanlon, a former assistant to current governor Bob Riley, were deeply involved in advising and representing gambling interests in the Southeast. They turned their clients to support Riley in his campaign against Siegelman, and are linked to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars which flowed into the Riley campaign coffers. It seems likely that Rove knew of or perhaps even had some marginal involvement in these funding and campaign efforts, which sit firmly in the background of the efforts to remove Siegelman from the political process through a corrupt prosecution.


One of Aristotle’s key tests in the definition of forms of government is recited in the Politics: What do you call a state whose ruler, in his conduct of the affairs of state, is enshrouded in secrecy, particularly when the facts, if disclosed, would alert the people to his lawlessness or criminality, but conversely, the same ruler spies constantly upon his people giving them no repose in the conduct of their own personal affairs? Such a ruler, says Aristotle, is called a tyrant, and the quality of his rule is called tyranny. So let’s be clear what the Bush Justice Department is busily constructing. The standards for a democracy are something altogether different.

more at:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001814

[Octafish]

1. Bush is a Tyrant.

He thinks he's a dictator:

"I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush joked.

-- CNN.com, December 18, 2000

SOURCE with two more examples:

http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/2002/10/29_Dictator.html

The crazy monkey is, at heart, a NAZI dictator.