by MzNicky
So many foul deeds and episodes of mass destruction, both foreign and domestic, occurred during Year V of King George II’s reign of terror that 2005 was a long, long year, indeed. The MSM and the blogosphere have been clogged with lists of “Top Wankers of the Year” and “Most Memorable (i.e., horrifying) Event of 2005,” déja-vuing some of us into such retroactive repulsion that a New Year’s Eve hangover wasn’t the only reason we could scarcely lift our heads the next morning.
As an antidote, and as a reminder that not all hope is lost, here is a list of some of the heroines and heroes of the year just past. Let’s recognize and remember those who have managed to keep their wits about them, maintain their integrity, and retain truly patriotic backbone while all about them were losing theirs.
1) Cindy Sheehan
Aghast at the supercilious treatment the President afforded her as he went through the motions of expressing sympathy over the death of her son, Casey, in the war in Iraq; enraged when the President subsequently called the war a “noble cause”; and determined to publicly denounce the wholesale slaughter of American troops (now 2,000-plus and counting) for the fiasco that it is, Sheehan nearly single-handedly jump-started the antiwar movement in the US in August 2005. By camping out near the “Western White House” in Crawford, Texas, during the President’s five-week vacation and refusing to budge, even as the usual suspects set about their tasks of defaming and ridiculing her and (of course) calling her a “traitor,” Sheehan drew hundreds of like-minded protesters to Crawford, tapped into a wellspring of resentment and silenced criticism of the Iraq debacle, and forced the fact of antiwar dissent into the public dialog.
2) Patrick Fitzgerald
Special Counsel Fitzgerald spent two long years meticulously piecing together the origins of the Valerie Plame scandal, despite executive-branch stonewalling and media-whore obfuscating. In October Fitzgerald indicted Scooter Libby, VP Cheney’s chief of staff, for, among other things, lying under oath and obstructing justice; at year’s end, he was still doggedly pursuing others instrumental in the outing of a CIA agent.
3) James Comey
Being the No.-2 guy in the Bush administration’s Justice Department finally proved too much for James Comey, who resigned his position in March 2005. But not before he 1) went to John Ashcroft in December of 2003 and told him he had to recuse himself from the CIA leak investigation; 2) refused, as acting AG, to sign off on key parts of the administration’s now-notorious warrantless wiretapping program, and 3) not only appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor in the Plamegate leak scandal, but also thwarted the Bush administration’s efforts to install one of their own as Fitzgerald’s overseer, choosing instead the apparently non-ethically-challenged David Margolis. (Source)
4) John Conyers
Despite widespread MSM indifference, Rep. Conyers picked up the ball and ran with it on the Downing Street Memo revelations by holding hearings on the subject. Relegated to a makeshift hearing room in the Capitol Hill basement, Conyers, undaunted as always by the sneers and jeers of colleagues and journalists who couldn’t care less about evidence that our government had “fixed intelligence” prior to leading us into war in Iraq, showed the same fierce devotion to finding out the truth that he has so often in his career.
5) Molly Ivins
Take Maureen Dowd (PLEASE!); I'll take the unsinkable Molly Ivins. She's covered GWB since his days as governor of Texas (in fact, it was she who dubbed him "Dubya"), and it was Ivins's lone voice crying in the wilderness in 2000, trying to warn us of what lay ahead if the man were actually put in charge of the country. Ivins continues to be a thorn in the administration's side with her witty, thorough columns, deconstructing for us in knowledgable, plain-spoken terms the labyrinthine underground of arrogance and corruption from which Bu$hCo operates. Yes, it's a dirty job, and thank God we've got Molly Ivins to do it.
Sheehan Fitzgerald Comey Conyers Ivins 2005 Bush
Posted by egalia for MzNicky
