Cheney comes calling

04/13/08 Sacramento Bee

Re “Cheney coming here on Friday,” April 8: Vice President Dick Cheney, that sinister and secretive architect of seven years of catastrophic policy, was among us again, this time on behalf of his clone in Congress, Rep. Dan Lungren, D-Gold River. The favor is not unearned. Lungren has unswervingly supported Cheney’s neocon agenda – the invasion and unending occupation of Iraq, the advancement of certain powerful corporate interests to the detriment of the American people, and the step-by-step dismantling of our democracy: torture, warrantless spying, secret prisons, denial of habeas corpus and due process, even the use of the Department of Justice as a political cudgel.

There was a fine appropriateness in our lawbreaker-in-chief coming to aid our former California attorney general, who – despite his study of law – has shown himself contemptuous not just of international law but of domestic laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and especially of that great instrument that is the law of the land, the Constitution.

In the past, Cheney similarly came to help Republican Rep. John Doolittle (now fallen into disgrace) of Roseville and Richard Pombo (dispatched by voters in the last elections) of Tracy. There would be a sweet justice and symmetry in seeing Lungren removed from Congress in the fall by an awakened and justifiably enraged electorate.

- Jane O’Donnell, Orangevale