Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, is no stranger to speaking out against the powers that be. Ellsberg wasted no time calling out the Bush administration during a lecture sponsored by the 
University of Iowa Lecture Committee in Iowa City. “I suspect no king since King John the First of England has had the powers Bush and Cheney have now,” Ellsberg told the 450 people gathered in Hancher Auditorium Monday night. “We are close to an absolute monarchy in the United States.”
Ellsberg argues the balance of power needs to be restored, and one way to accomplish this is by holding President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney accountable for their violation of the oath they took upon entering office. “They are bound by an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Ellsberg said. “The people in the executive branch who sincerely believe and act against this oath are domestic enemies of the Constitution.”
Ellsberg began his lecture by telling the audience that the Pentagon Papers introduced to the public the idea that presidents lie consistently and regularly. “Our Constitution is not based on trust,” Ellsberg said. “Our forefathers knew that power corrupts and had enough sense to include the idea of checks and balances and other accountability measures in the Constitution.”
Ellsberg made headlines around the world in 1971 when he risked a lifetime of imprisonment by releasing the Pentagon Papers through the New York Times and the Washington Post. While serving in the Pentagon under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1964, Ellsberg copied and safeguarded documents indicating that the plan for going to war in Vietnam had been in then works long before the Tonkin Resolution was passed in 1964. Ellsberg documents his experiences in his new book, “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.”
Drawing from his experiences in Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers, and the subsequent battles with President Richard Nixon, Ellsberg argued that the Bush administration has used 9/11 and the ensuing “War on Terror” as a means of eroding the Constitution, in particular the balance of powers protected by the system of checks and balances. “President Bush has used his commander-in-chief responsibilities to declare an endless war, thus granting him unchecked powers,” Ellsberg said. “The president is operating under the umbrella of a wartime Constitution and can no longer be constrained by Congress.”
The real tragedy is that these guys have done this with the full consent of the Congress, Ellsberg noted. “Congress has pretty much given President Bush everything he has asked for, including the Patriot Act, the authorization to go to war with Iraq,” Ellsberg said. “And now, Congress is on the verge of broadening the president’s authority to expand warrantless wiretapping and laying the groundwork for a war against Iran.”
Ellsberg admitted that he was perplexed as to why Congress has been so complicit in enabling the Bush administration and violating their oaths to defend the Constitution against its domestic enemies. “We have a president who thinks he is a king, acts like a king, and Congress has let him be the king,” Ellsberg said. “They have pretty much given him the green light to attack Iran, including the vote by Hillary Clinton, which she has been rightfully criticized for.”
Ellsberg points out that Congress is not solely to blame for this dramatic shift in power, citing the media’s role in the current erosion of the Constitution. To help illustrate this, Ellsberg cited the media’s complicit role regarding the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping. “The New York Times had access to information that revealed the NSA (National Security Agency) had been conducting warrantless wiretaps for over three years, even before 9/11, but chose to sit on it for an entire year,” Ellsberg said.
The big question is why they sat on it for a year, Ellsberg asked. “The answer is quite simple,” Ellsberg said. “The White House asked the New York Times not to print the story, claiming it was a threat to national security. Had the Times went to the press when they had the information in October 2004, this would have affected whether we would have elected the incumbent in to the White House.”
“The Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretaps and bypassing the FISA courts totally violated the Fourth Amendment,” Ellsberg added. “Going to print with this could have turned the election, and by sitting on this information, the New York Times essentially gave us four more years of Bush.”
The New York Times, along with 18 other newspapers, faced a similar threat in 1971 when they had to decide to go ahead and print portions of the Pentagon Papers. “In the face of injunctions and possible criminal prosecutions, 19 newspapers defied the Nixon administration’s warning that printing another page of the Pentagon Papers would cause irreparable damage to national security,” Ellsberg said. “Nineteen editors did not agree, and in a wave of civil disobedience printed the documents and set a precedent we have not seen since.”
Ellsberg entertains questions from the audience after the scheduled question-and-answer period
Despite the obstacles and power gap standing between the public and the executive branch, Ellsberg did provide the audience with some advice and possible avenues of recourse. If he could tell people working in the government now, who are privy to information that may inevitably protect the Constitution or save lives, Ellsberg would tell them: “Don’t wait. Don’t do what I did in 1964, when I failed to turn over the Pentagon Papers. Don’t wait until thousands of people die,” Ellsberg warned. “Thousands of people in the Pentagon and in the State Department have information about the steps leading up to the Iraq war. They need to go to the press and tell the truth, rather than going to Congress, where they’ll bottle the truth up for another 22 months.”
Ellsberg ended his lecture by making a pitch to the younger people in the audience, whom he encouraged not to remain complicit, but he said he understands why they may feel overwhelmed by the seemingly insurmountable task of reclaiming the Constitution.
Citing the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which literally ended the Cold War, Ellsberg pointed out that we now have a generation that has no memory of the Cold War. “Young people have never seen an immutable situation change by the action of ordinary people in front of their eyes,” Ellsberg said. “Nobody foresaw these things as possible beforehand. And then the impossible happened. Change can happen.”
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter