When our local county Democratic party tried to march with Senator Ben Nelson's (D-NE) campaign in a rural parade in the summer of 2004, we were asked by his aides not to. In fact, they insisted that we separate our group from theirs by at least two parade entries, so nobody would confuse him as a Democrat.
As if anyone would.
Things are pretty bad when you live in a state so red that the most liberal politician is Ben Nelson. Even our retired Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to vote to the left of Nelson.
Things are even worse when you get a new Republican senator that makes you miss the old Republican senator.
Nebraska congress creatures must know how unimportant they really are on the national scene. So, like the dysfunctional self-important demagogues they are, they create problems just to get attention.
Recently local news reported that Senator "Cornhusker Kickback" Nelson was booed out of an Omaha pizza parlor for his vote on health care. I'm willing to bet the boos were based on the fact that he finally decided to vote for it at all.
Not to be outdone in the game of being an idiot just to get attention, Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) was just in the news complaining that he didn't get enough support for his recent bill to bring it to the floor. His bill would have prohibited funding appropriations for trials of accused terrorists in federal courts.
Johanns' position on this issue flies directly in the face of the position taken by September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows (www.peacefultomorrows.org), an international peace organization for which I serve as Program Director.
The trouble is, most newspapers in Nebraska regularly give incumbents free print space to spout their views. This is especially true of weeklies here in rural areas like mine, which sadly never carry any national news or views whatsoever, except the incumbents' columns.
So what chance do rural red staters have to get the facts on national issues? Fox News? They can't rely on their TVs, their newspapers or their elected officials.
Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns continuously abuses this privilege to misrepresent issues just to smear President Obama, regardless of the facts. Twice in the last two issues of the two small-town weeklies I receive he has used his bully pulpit to make blatantly false statements about the legal processing of Abdulmutallab and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to support his view that Obama is soft on national security.
Johanns loves to play on the fear factor, which, although we were miles from ground zero on September 11 and would be one of the least desirable targets for terrorists, continues to be a supremely easy sell here in rural Nebraska.
I sent the following letter to the editor to five newspapers in the state, two of which are in towns where I work and serve on a school board. Around here, making statements like this will silence a room the next time you walk in. Having a political opinion that goes against the mainstream local comfort zone is like wearing a "Jesus was a Radical" t-shirt: true or not, it sounds bad so no one wants to hear it, and no one wants to be seen with you afterwards.
But I've had enough.
If we can ever get through to main street America on what it means to be safe and American, then peace and justice has a real chance. In the meantime, people deep in red states will continue to vote idiots like Johanns into office, and these "public servants" will continue to reinforce the sanctity of their sanctimonious lies by abusing the authority of their office to brainwash the electorate.
Some one has to say it.
My fellow Nebraskans: the friggin' emperor isn't just nekkid, he's stone cold stupid.
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Dear Sir,
Senator Johanns has stated that it is wrong for our government to treat foreigners accused of terrorism the same way we treat all accused persons in US custody. He said they should not be read Miranda rights, and thereby "treated like common criminals" and that "they should not have Constitutional rights".
Mr. Johanns, read the US Constitution: they DO have those rights, whether you like it or not.
The US Constitution requires that all persons accused of crimes on US soil be afforded the same rights. These rights hold regardless of the types of crimes involved or the citizenship of the accused.
This is the American system of justice, and it applies to everyone whose alleged crime occurs on American soil, not just to Americans.
Mr. Johanns worries that following US Constitutional law allows the accused to "escape into the protected maze of the American court system". Well, take it up with the framers of the Constitution, Senator. They believed in the efficacy of the US court system, and maybe you should too.
I fully understand the desire to bring terrorists to justice; I lost a family member on September 11th. But I, unlike Senator Johanns, want to see our Constitution upheld and believe that the American justice system should be trusted to work for us.
Rather than using the privilege of free newspaper space to complain that the current administration follows the Constitution, Johanns should sit down and actually READ the Constitution. If he doesn't agree with what it says, he can propose a Constitutional amendment. But until then, he should uphold the oath of office he took to defend it.
That would be time better spent than misleading his constituents. That type of knowledge and behavior is what we expect from a US representative who is, after all, being paid by us to show leadership, not whine that federal law shouldn't be followed merely because he doesn't like it.
Nancy Meyer
Cedar Bluffs