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September 15, 2007

Principle sometimes pays

Via Firedoglake, this is the YouTube video of Barbara Lee's speech to the US Congress in which she registered her dissent against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Afghanistan on September 14, 2001 (so yesterday was its anniversary).  This AUMF is where it all spiralled out of control and ended up where we are now.


Lee is the representative from Oakland, California and the sole vote against the AUMF, and while she had to weather attacks from the usual suspects for her vote, she's still survived, oh, three congressional elections since then.

Posted by on September 15, 2007 at 01:45 PM |

Comments

skdadl

Great speech. And that would have been brave in Canada at the time. In Washington, it was heroic.

Posted by: skdadl | September 15, 2007 at 02:04 PM

Beijing York

"...so this does not spiral out of control..."
Almost clairvoyant given what has happened in intervening years. She has been consistently just and in this case, truly heroic.

Posted by: Beijing York | September 15, 2007 at 06:11 PM

Kathleen

word. We love our Rep. Lee out here.

Posted by: Kathleen | September 16, 2007 at 05:43 PM

Lexecon

Wow, thank you for actually leaving an intelligent response over at Sadly, No on the Chomsky issue (I now use my real name online, Lex, not this one, but it's TypePad so hey). Responses like that are rare, and I'm sure that my friend will appreciate the response.

And also, yes, agreed, way too far out of control. How do we get it back?

Posted by: Lexecon | September 17, 2007 at 08:52 PM

Mandos

How indeed. As far as I can tell, writing and talking about it is the only viable option for most of us.

Posted by: Mandos | September 18, 2007 at 01:39 AM

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