Keith Olberman - Profile in Courage

Finally, someone with the courage to speak out against the tyranny and timidity that has gripped our country by the throat. In his commentary regarding the bold-faced lies told by our President, Keith Olberman has put a chink in the armor of the secrecy, deception and venomous personal attacks of the Bush administration. Perhaps now the rest of the professional media (excluding by definition, of course, Fox News) will summon the nerve required to report the truth.

For the past six years the American people have been fed lies upon lies while the media has, for the most part, stood idly by and watched our great nation sink deeper into authoritarianism. This final piece of legislation has given the President the right to decide which parts of the Geneva Convention apply in any given situation and to detain "enemy combatants" without charge and without due process for as long as he desires. There is no oversight. No recourse. No way to find out who is held, where they are held, or what they are supposed to have done. As a nation we have given up that which we are supposedly fighting for to an internal enemy. Our freedoms are in dire peril.

It is sad indeed, as one who has held the freedoms of the Constitution more dearly than I do any other aspect of this great nation, to realize that we are now competing at the level of our enemies. We decry the lack of freedom in Iraq and Iran even as we give up our own. We decry the human rights violations of China and North Korea even as we torture and unlawfully hold those we hate. We rush to prevent the proliferation of weapons we invented and manufacture. No wonder the rest of the world sits stunned and afraid. We have become the enemy. We are the rogue nation. We can only hope it's not too late.

My hat's off to Mr. Olberman and to all those who will, I hope, follow his lead and speak the truth to the American People. Now, that's patriotic.