Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Friday, December 1, 2006 4 pm PDT
This Week's Show
Our Guest: John Connolly
Impeachment: Congress has the responsibility to police the President in our balance of powers. If they all fail can the people do it themselves? Hear what John Connolly has to say on the issue that is moving Americans to action.
Americans are asking Congress to take action, and the action they want are bills of impeachment sent to George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. The responsibilities invested in Congress include the obligation to oversee the executive branch, ensuring that there is balance. This is in effect a mandate to police the activities of the President of the United States, yet Nancy Pelosi has said that despite the egregious behavior of this administration she will not take the issue of impeachment off the table.
Americans sweated blood this past year to change the make up of Congress because it is Congress that is empowered to take action. 51% of Americans want Bush impeached.
On December 10th many Americans will participate in Impeachment Day, with events taking place across the country to discuss the causes for impeachment and plan further action. Those causes include the War in Iraq, lying to get us into that war, using terrorism to start a war that enriched those closely connected to the Bush Administration, including Richard Cheney, violating the Constitution, attempting to alter the Constitution, which sets forth the inherent rights of Americans, using the political process to first covertly engage in torture and then to cover it up. The list goes on, covering activities that include the political manipulation of America's court system and systemic violations of the rights of Americans using the Patriot Act to enable spying on all Americans.
David Swanson, Michael Hersh, and others have come together to take the issue of Impeachment off the table and consider what the people must do to clean America's house.
On this week's Spiritual Politician, the show that exposes the nastiness in every part of our lives, John Connolly, long time investigative journalist and commentator, will discuss those options and the role of Congress as a policeman for the presidency.
John Connolly has done stories on Arnold Schwarzenegger,”Arnold the Barbarian,” during the sexual harassment scandal that erupted in Schwarzenegger's successful 2004 campaign for governor of California, on Donald Trump, revealing that the flamboyant figure was not a billionaire but broke. In August 1991 Connolly wrote an article for Spy that exposed the illegal transfer of the MacMillan employee pension funds by then owner Robert Maxwell. Upon publication, Maxwell returned the funds.
Connolly's reporting was praised in the Columbia School of Journalism Review. Connolly has since been nominated for four national magazine awards for investigative journalism, including one for the July 1993 US magazine cover story Hollywood Madam, which was the first major magazine article to break the Heidi Fleiss story.
Can the people do it themselves? What obstacles to they face? John Connolly, the long time investigator of wrongs that evade retribution has insights Americans need to hear.
December 10th is Impeachment Day. What will it take to return justice to America? All of us need answers.
What the Show is about and being a Spiritual Politician
Bringing government into alignment with the Lessons of Jesus:
The focus of our show is how to bring government into alignment with truth of our spiritual nature. So America started with the idea we are all, inherently free. We are free to choose, free to live, to breath, and to live our lives as we see fit. Government does not own us; government is just a contractor, providing service.
That framework is in alignment with the spiritual truth that each of us connects to God directly, needing no agency as an intermediary. To be free is to be free in the spirit ans so in the flesh that temporarily holds the spirit.
When Thomas Jefferson said we were all possessed of inherent rights, existing before government he was extending a spiritual truth into a civic form. It is that Mission Statement from the Declaration of Independence we need to keep in mind.
Because we are free and reject, as did Christ, the use of deceit, manipulation or violence we need to be conscious about our relationships with others and find ways to grow into the sense of connection and community that makes us One in Him.
This is especially true for Christians but it is true for everyone else as well.
Nearly every major spiritual viewpoint enunciates the idea that we are connected to each other and should be good to each other. Christians just have an even more exacting mission. Christians are to love every one, treating them as they would Jesus.
Jesus was very clear about how we were to treat others. He did not say that it was alright to be abusive, deceitful, and violent if we used government as our tool and agent. There was no exception, He wanted all of our hearts, minds and souls. Christ did not lay out any plan of government, but left it to the conscience of the individual, the same way He connects to each of us.
We are Americans but we are also members of a human family that connects us to something truly wonderful and immense.
So our job here at the Spiritual Politician is to look at Government as a human tool we use every day. We need to consider if government is working in a way that speaks that common understanding about our connections to each other and, if it is not, we need to change it.
Americans have had many successes over the last 231 years since our founding and, learning from both mistakes and successes we can consider that question. So here at the Spiritual Politician we look at the truth behind of rhetoric.
Given what is going on today in Government what we may decide to do it reboot the whole system.
To provide the examples of what has gone right and what has gone very wrong we here at the Spiritual Politician have put together several different kinds of segments you will hear on our show from time to time.
Founder and president of the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation
Books by Melinda: Links to Melinda's sites:
How the NeoCons Stole Freedom
Shards of Verse Melinda's Poetry
Greed: The NeoConning of America
