Witness The Uprising

In These Times Senior Editor David Sirota's new book is a bestseller. Entitled "The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington," it's about "the re-emergence of populist politics on both the Right and Left in America." Sirota reports on groups as disparate as the Minutemen and progressives in Montana, groups who have been left behind by Washington and our political and media elite, groups who are organizing to take power back into their own hands, to remind our "leaders" just who it is they report to. It's a great read. Today, Glenn Greenwald reports on a consortium of civil-liberties-minded political groups - on the Right and the Left - who are organizing to beat back efforts to immunize telecos from prosecution. This is precisely what David's book is about: where the Democratic-led Congress has fallen down and capitulated on telecom immunity, thus, bafflingly, handing Bush and Cheney precisely what they desire at the very end of their term - immunity from prosecution for flagrant law-breaking, (isn't "bi-partisanship beautiful?) - ordinary, galvanized citizens who respect our country's Constitution, our country's former rule of law, are collectively taking action against this abysmal state of affairs. The political class has made as clear as can be that it is intent on supporting a limitless erosion of core constitutional liberties and the creation of a two-tiered justice system that exempts the political elite from the rule of law. Neither the "opposition party" nor the establishment media are the slightest bit interested in, or capable of, stopping any of that. Battling against that is the responsibility of citizens who find these political trends dangerous and intolerable. Join up. And don't let charges of "fringe" and "radical" (because you value our nation's 4th amendment) slow you down.