Gimme Some Truth

It's official. Running, zen and yoga don't matter. At all.

How can they matter when the freedom to practice these things has begun to erode away - when we lose the power to challenge being incarcerated by the government, we have lost the very heart of our freedoms. It's called habeas corpus folks, and as it goes so goes the country... read about it, and think about it: "Habeas corpus is the name of a legal instrument or writ by means of which detainees can seek release from unlawful imprisonment."

The US government is now run by fiat, by royal decree, by a Star Chamber. The Senate, by passing the detainee bill, has just given the "President the power to order anyone -- U.S. citizen, resident alien or foreign national -- detained indefinitely in a military prison regardless of where they are -- U.S. soil or outside of the country. American detainees are cut off from any meaningful judicial review and everyone else is cut off completely. They can be subject to torture with no recourse, and all of this happens on the unchecked say-so of the administration. Really, what could be more significant than this?"

In Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 533 (1953) Justice Allen wrote: "Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from ... [the executive]"

Habeas corpus is gone. When do you suppose it will become illegal to criticize the government...it's policies...the politicians?

We have begun the march to tyranny in this country; a march into darkness that is all the more frightening for the apparent utter indifference of the American people to their eroding freedoms.


Somehow John Lennon's thirty plus year old lyrics are too appropriate at the moment:

I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope

I'm sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mamas little chauvinists
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now

I've had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth

Might be a good time to go see the new, and rather ironically timed, film "The United States vs. John Lennon"


Namaste.

John+Lennon, lennon, habeas+corpus,