The Workday Liberal

So Senator Patrick Leahy is threatening to slap contempt charges on the administration if they do not come across with documentation of their legal reasoning over the warrantless wiretapping program. In fact Leahy took a flight to Washington, during the middle of the August recess, to wait in the hearing room for the administrations response to the subpoena.

I can just picture Leahy sitting alone in this rather expansive room, an impatient look on his face... no audience, no cameras, no witness or other senators... just Leahy narrowly watching the door to the room from his chairman's perch. Eventually the door opens and in walks a sheepish looking administration flunky bearing a sealed envelope. They hand the envelope to Leahy and scurry off. Leahy opens the envelope and reads the following one page response...

Dear Senator Leahy
Go F*** Yourself
Sincerely
Dick Cheney

What is my point here? Of course this administration is in contempt of Congress! They have been since the very beginning. It's just that now that Democrats are in power they have the ability, if not the will, to legally hold the administration to account for this behavior.

In fact the administration is in contempt of the entire nation, except for a very small segment of the population... the neocons or extremely wealthy who are not concerned about society as a whole as long as their oceans of cash are fed with more and more wealth. It doesn't matter what the populace thinks. The truth is that this administration is actually proud of that. How many times do they tell us that the President doesn't pay attention to the polls? This is a Republic, if we can keep it, but what the nation wants doesn't really matter to the President and his backers. The Adminsitration has treated the entire population with contempt for years, holding town meetings with handpicked audiences and arresting dissenters, ignoring growing public dissatisfaction, treating the federal government like a cash tree for their own interests and the benefit of their rich buddies. The entire Iraq boondoggle is a resounding lesson in contemptuousness, which the President refuses to learn. It doesn't matter what we the people think about this war, the President knows whats best, even though there is an unbroken chain of wrong headed policy since before the war.

Contempt breeds contempt in return and this is the reason that such a wide margin of the American people dislike this President. It's because he doesn't care for them despite his folksy attitude. If we the people are regaled by administration flunkies telling us to, in effect, go f*** ourselves, are we really surprised that the President is held in such low regard?