Missing the Bus: When�Conscience Bows to Calculation

CLICK TO READ: Missing the Bus: When Conscience Bows to Calculation - By Niranjan Ramakrishnan, Common Dreams News Center:

Ramakrishnan: "John Kerry said: 'the bus still comes by, again and again, and each time we have to decide whether to go quietly to the back, or by simple acts of courage and conviction, change the direction of our own country's journey...The life of Rosa Parks demands deeds, not epitaphs.'

Beautiful words. Though not applicable, evidently, to the Iraq War Resolution.
...

As Congressman John Conyers of Michigan exulted at the memorial, two full planeloads of the US Congress had come to Detroit to pay tribute to Rosa Parks. Buses were missed, but planes were caught.

Imagine if two planeloads of the US Congress, containing the same worthies who descended on Detroit with such alacrity, had gone to Texas this summer and camped out in the ditch outside Bush's Ranch...

But Cindy Sheehan is alive and troublesome. Rosa Parks is dead and safe. Therein lies the difference."

THE UNKNOWN CANDIDATE: The author gets at the heart of photo-op-see-me-appeal-to-voters-to-get-reelected, listen-to-what-I-say-forget-what-I-do mentality of so many of our politicians. They say the right things. And that's where it ends. They refuse to give up their seat (pun intended) and until they do, business as usual will go on and on in Washington.