Magna Carta Revisited
This coming June 15th will mark the eight hundredth anniversary of what was to become the first attempt by the English to evoke the concept of equal justice under law. On the fields and plains of Runnymede, near Windsor, England, Magna Carta came into being when the Archbishop of Canterbury attempted to make peace with the vastly unpopular King John, and a small group of rebel barons, who opposed the monarch for what they saw as an infringement of their rights. It also marked the first attempt to subject the English crown to English law. Though later nullified by Pope Innocent III, it was reinstated by King John’s heir, Henry III, the following year and its eventual progeny was the Constitution of the United States, which assured the young nation that no man nor woman was above the law- no one.
It is indeed ironic that, eight hundred years later, we are still struggling with the concept of who is, and who isn’t, subject to the laws of the United States. It seems that certain politicians of a certain political party manage to skate above the law, time and time again.
In the summer of our youth, twice-elected President Richard Nixon was forced to resign his office, because he lied about having knowledge, AFTER THE FACT, of the Watergate break-in. It is a matter of historical record that a young lawyer investigating the Nixon Administration for the Watergate Select Committee was summarily discharged from her duties, due to ethics violations on her own part. Her name? …Hillary Rodham Clinton- the same Hillary Rodham Clinton who later became the First Lady of Arkansas, the First Lady of the United States, a Senator from New York, and, under President Barack Obama, Secretary of State.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, and her husband, the former President William Jefferson Clinton, have amassed such a dubious record of achievement, and such a lengthy list of crimes and ethical violations as to make William Marcy Tweed of Tammany Hall , President Warren Harding of the Teapot Dome Scandal and Richard Milhous Nixon look like comparative angels…and yet, they have managed to effectively lie and dance their way out of legal jeopardy through means that have, at times, even become violent, but nevertheless very much aided and abetted by a complicit mainstream media. President Barack Obama, no REAL friend of the Clintons by the way, has taken a page from their own playbook, and has managed to remain in office, despite having presided over, far and away, the most corrupt and criminal presidential administration in U.S. History. Obama has managed to do this through threats, intimidation, use of governmental agencies like the IRS and the Justice Department, again with the unabridged assistance from an all-admiring mainstream media. His administration’s list of scandals, some of which also touch the Clintons, is indeed mind boggling- and yet….there he sits.
The list of crimes perpetrated by both the Clintons and the Obamas have, and would, fill volumes but somehow they manage to escape intact, due largely to the political party of which they are a part- had they been Republicans they would have summarily been impeached and imprisoned for high crimes and misdemeanors, but instead, they manage to benefit from a double standard that sows the seeds of our own undoing, and one that places the concepts of representative government, individual liberty, constitutional freedom and equal justice under law in grave peril.
So it comes down to one thing…do we as a nation, give a damn?
-Drew Nickell, 11 March 2015
© 2015, by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved