Not So Fast

The news has been saying that the presumptive speaker of the house has an action packed first 100 hours. I've heard tell they will be looking to raise the minimum wage, broaden federal funding for stem cell research, and implementing all of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission.

Laudable.

Slate magazine apparently ran a story that said the Dems should pile on the momentum and legislate single payer health care.

Excellent.

Many, many soon to be majority congress members are talking about changing the direction in Iraq, establishing a firm timetable.

Interesting.

But I think I have a better idea. Lets be reasonable here and think about what happened. Even though we've been told there was a Democratic landslide, the less than 55%/ more than 45% margins hardly constitute some kind of sweeping mandate. And while it is likely that many people who voted for Democrats do favor all of the items listed above I doubt that those are the reasons that many of the independents or Republicans decided to vote blue this time.

So how about this for a start - say no to something President Bush says he needs.

Then, before you trowel a layer of left wing crap on top of the previous neocon crap perhaps a little house keeping. Lets take just a moment to make sure that it is 100% unambiguous and not somehow smarmingly codified that torture - properly defined torture - is in fact illegal in the US, or performed by or at the behest of the US anywhere.

Which isn't to say it won't happen, just that doing so would be breaking the law (long topic for another day).

Once we've cleared the torture hurdle let's deal with "enemy combatant." Let's please have POW's or criminals and use the rules that are in place for them. We should not be a country where people can be held indefinitely without charges. This is something that needs fixing, right away.

And then, let's be sure that there is no such thing as a domestic wiretap without a warrant. Under the existing law they're allowed to go get the warrant after they've done the tap. Not getting a warrant is just about not knowing what people are doing. We don't have searches without warrants here in God's country, the fact that somehow now we do is a civic embarrassment.

Torture, Habeas Corpus, & Warantless Wiretaps - poof! Now that would be a good first 100 hours.