January 5, 2006
Some remarks by Robert Senator Byrd :
Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.
We have been stunned to hear reports about the Pentagon gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. Those Americans who choose to question the Administration's flawed policy in Iraq are labeled by this Administration as "domestic terrorists."
Isn't this an indication of the state of exception? One that has become the normal paradigm of government? One indicated by President Bush's claim to sovereign powers in emergency situations. Isn't President Bush attempting to produce a situation in which the emergency becomes the rule and the very definition of the difference between peace and war is blurred.
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