Impeach Newt Gingrich! And The Entire GOP!

I know, I know. Newt Gingrich does not have a job. Or, at least, one in the public sector where we could impeach him. I'm pretty sure, like most conservatives with possible presidential aspirations, he is drawing a paycheck from Fox News.

However, I wanted to point out an observation that specifically applies to Mr. Gingrich - but, in general, is probably applicable to most of the currently elected GOP politicians.

Undoubtedly, you have heard of Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks document dump. You may support his efforts or you may think he is a slimeball. Personally, I think that just because you can release leaked documents does not mean you should. I mean, if he were to gain access to truly newsworthy information that exposes lies and corruption (such as was released regarding the Iraq War), then I think there is a strong argument for releasing such information because the public has the right to know what their government is doing in their name. If what you're doing is essentially the equivalent of releasing private e-mails regarding the personal impressions of individual government bureaucrats - then you're going to lose me.

Anyway, my point is that I recently saw a clip of Mr. Gingrich saying that Mr. Assange was a terrorist and should be treated as an "enemy combatant".

Well, I hate to tell you, Mr. Gingrich, but there is no such thing in the United States Constitution as an "enemy combatant". Our judicial system is covered under Article III of the Constitution and IF Mr. Assange has violated any of the laws of the United States, he is certainly entitled to a day in court as prescribed by the Constitution, no?

And, in fact, it has been documented that your philosphy on judges is:

Impeach judges who don't abide by the Constituion.

No one likes a hypocrite, Newt.

Barack Obama & The Park 51 Community Center

Allow me to rant a bit:

Mitch McConnell (human/turtle hybrid?) was on Meet The Press this weekend and he said this in response to a question about the controversial community center/mosque:

Obviously, this is not about freedom of religion. Typically, these kinds of decisions have been made by local officials. What's been different about this one is that you have the President of the United States weighing in on this issue - actually on each side of the issue within 24 hours which has helped stimulate a great national debate - not about freedom of religion but about the appropriateness of the location.

Okay, so that is not THAT unreasonable (for a modern day Republican/conservative anyway). However, a couple things I will note for the record. As this article indicates, President Obama's comments were made at a Ramadan Iftar dinner on 8/13, so if that is not an appropriate venue to comment on an issue concerning Muslim-Americans, I don't know what could be. Moreover, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich had long since taken this out of being a strictly local issue. Here is a column commenting on Palin's opposition from 7/19 and here is a column that Gingrich published on 7/28. Now, I will grant you that they are nothing but citizens with an opinion, but you must grant me that these are not ordinary citizens.

Also, I was watching an episode of Charlie Rose last week as Mr. Rose was having a conversation with John Podesta (a former Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton) and Kenneth Duberstein (a former Chief of Staff for Ronald Reagan) regarding the first year and a half of the Obama presidency. Mr. Duberstein (more on him later) - though still very much the conservative - said this:

I think what (Obama) said Friday night on religous freedom and what America stands for was absolutely appropriate... the presidency should be on the high plain of talking about principles of America... he was absolutely right to talk about that but he should have said that the placement of a mosque is a local issue by New York City and New York state.

Okay, I don't necessarily agree with the need to comment on the jurisdiction of the zoning issues... but whatever... my point is that even rational conservatives recognize that the appropriateness of the POTUS addressing this issue.