Looney Libs By: Mark W Adams

My good friend (we call him "Brain") is a full-time, bona fide scientist and admitted "loony liberal."  (I have pictures to prove it.)  Not content with his studies in meteorology, he became a climatologist.  He once told me he'd rather study what the weather was yesterday, instead of predicting what it's going to be tomorrow.  I suspect it was the easy way out -- but that's another story.

He wrote me today about wishing he lived in a more competitive congressional district, just to get in the trenches.  Dennis Kucinich represents "Brain," and like my Rep., Marcie Kaptur, our views couldn't be better represented in Congress.  I used to be represented by Stephanie Tubbs-Jones who was Stephen Colbert's first "Better Know A District" guest.  Great lady.

Nobody can ever beat these fine Congress Critters because they're that good, that committed, and that right on the issues that matter.  Take this news about the former Cleveland Mayor known as Dennis The Menace:

Joshua Scheer: Rep. Kucinich: America Needs Iraq War Hearings:... (more under the fold)

In an original Truthdig interview, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), the potential next chair of the Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations, calls for congressional hearings into how and why America invaded Iraq, and demands 'accountability' for those who led America into a 'war based on lies.'

[snip]

KUCINICH: I've had a plan to get us out of Iraq from the minute we got there. I've had it on my website for three years--elements of which are still very viable. It calls for the U.S. to give up its control of the oil assets to move towards soliciting U.N. involvement.

[snip]

And people have to be held accountable. You can't lead this country into a war that has lost thousands of U.S. troops and perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, [and that has] cost the American taxpayers $400 billion--and maybe up to $2 trillion--and leave it with some kind of blithe apology. There has to be accountability. When the people elected Democrats, they also voted for accountability.

[snip]

We'll never be able to bring closure to this Iraq matter unless we tell the truth about what happened. So America needs a new approach of truth and reconciliation. This isn't a Democratic or Republican matter. This is a matter that relates to the conscience of this country. This is a matter of the heart--the heart of democracy itself. This is a matter of whether we're going to a sober reflection about the events that have transpired since 9/11, with respect to Iraq. And until we do this, we will be trapped not only physically in Iraq, we'll be trapped emotionally and spiritually in Iraq. We may never get out of Iraq if we don't tell the truth.

There shouldn't be any partisan direction on this. We should all be together. America wants a new direction in Iraq; it stated it loud and clear. It wants a Congress that's going to question the president, not a rubber-stamp Congress. This is a time to tell the truth and to heal our nation. And the time for Congress to function as a co-equal branch of government and for the government to function as it was intended to function.

(And by the way, "Brain" sez it's getting hotter and we're all gonna die from global warming unless we legalize pot -- or something like that.)