Pass Climate Change Legislation NOW!

Usually, I try to stay fairly professional with my blog posts, but today I am feeling so angry about something that I feel the need to just let loose. The topic is one that is near and dear to my heart - climate change, and our alternative energy future. Here's what's happening this summer: while the concentration of Carbon Dioxide increases, extreme weather events rage across the country. Congress, finally seeing the need to pass aggressive climate change legislation, began with an inspiring bill that was deformed by compromises and special interest pandering - but at least it passed cap and trade. To its credit, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, could make America more energy-efficient, boost investments in clean energy solutions and dramatically cut global warming pollution -- by an amount in 2020 equivalent to taking 500 million cars and SUVs off the road. It may not go as far as needed, but at least its a start. Now, as the bill makes it ways through the Senate, the radical right is apoplectic. To hear them, you would think that liberals are out to destroy the American economy with new taxes designed to enrich government coffers, when in actuality, the goal of cap and trade legislation is to cut global warming in a way that spurs industry and innovation to devise new ways of providing energy to America. In the long term, aside from education, creating a path to a sustainable energy future is the most important way of securing America's economy and national security. Fossil fuels are dirty, extracted in destructive ways, and are largely owned by America's enemies. Scientists and industry leaders are both coming to the realization that we are nearing, or have even passed the point of peak oil, at which point we will see diminishing returns from existing wells and skyrocketing prices for all types of fuel. The way to beat the odds is to make the necessary adjustments now, for the benefit not only of our economy, but for the health and safety of ourselves, our country and our children. Reducing the discussion about cap-and-trade to a stale old argument about government taxation is just another example of short sighted, lazy thinking on the part of conservative dinosaurs who fail to open their eyes to the realities of our changing world.

Please, take a moment to call or write your Senator today and ask them to support the American Clean Energy and Security Act. This August recess is a crucial time to make your voice heard on this important issue.

Water Boarding IS Torture, and Real Change Demands Accountability for Outrageous Crimes

During the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding, or simulated drowning, was first used as a torture tactic to elicit confessions. As far back as the Spanish-American war, American law has condemned soldiers who use waterboarding to stiff sentences. American soldiers were prosecuted in 1968 for waterboarding prisoners of war in Vietnam. After World War II, America tried and sentenced Japanese officers who used waterboarding on American soldiers for war crimes. According to John McCain, some Japanese were tried and hanged for using this technique on Americans. The American case law is clear: waterboarding is torture, and it is a war crime. International Law condemns it as well.

Yet just yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney gave an interview where, when asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, he said: "I do." Not only did he support the use of this illegal torture, Cheney signed off on the use. In that same interview, he said that the CIA "in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."

Read that again. When a United States federal agency, charged with defending our country in accordance with its laws, asked the vice-president if they could use torture, he said yes. He said, "do it."

In effect, the vice-president has just admitted, blithely and on national television, that he personally approved of war crimes perpetrated by this administration. Make no mistake about it: the use of torture is a war crime and is punishable by law. And Dick Cheney is responsible.

Cheney's comments comes only a few days after disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture.

Change in America will not just come by stimulating the economy and providing better health care. Change must also have a moral component. For America to lead once again, and regain its moral stature, it must show that it is a true democracy that respects the rule of law, and allows no one, not even the most powerful of its officials, get away with crimes that must shame every citizen proud to call themselves a member of this great nation.

The next president must launch a full investigation into these crimes, and people must be held accountable for their abuses of the law. This is not a mere political stunt. More even than a legal necessity, it is a moral duty.