I signed two oaths this past Thursday while filing my
Declaration of Candidacy to run for Congress. The first is the
Oath of Office. It's probably not well known that this oath is signed by all candidates for public office in California, at the time they file to run for office, whether or not they are elected. It reads:
"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter."
So, as a candidate, I am now bound to the same oath as I will be when elected, to defend the U.S. and California Constitutions.
The second promise is a voluntary form called
Code of Fair Campaign Practices that is part of the California Elections Code. I challenge my opponent to make this promise too, to run a campaign following the basic principles of decency, honesty and fair play. The first of the seven agreements included in this pledge reads:
"I shall conduct my campaign openly and publicly, discussing the issues as I see them, presenting my record and policies with sincerity and frankness, and criticizing without fear or favor the record and policies of my opponents or political parties which merit such criticism."
These commitments embrace the heart of why I chose to run for office. I believe that those of us who have enjoyed the richness of the life that our Constitution made possible, have an obligation to stand up and defend the spirit and intent of that Constitution for our own future and generations to come.
Like most of us, I once believed that the people we elected to office were working on our behalf. I wasn't naïve enough to expect that the motives of every person in Congress and the White House were pure, but I had confidence that there were sufficient checks and balances in place to curtail and weed out corruption. Now I know how pervasive and unchecked corruption, fueled by an unbridled lust for wealth and power, is in our government. It has wheedled its way into every nook and cranny of our government, hidden under a finely woven cloak of fear and lies.
But just like the blue tarps that cover the homes devastated by Katrina, their cover is beginning to rot and gaping holes are appearing in their stories. They can cry "conspiracy nut" and "unpatriotic" until their voices grow hoarse, but the people of America are finally seeing that something isn't making sense. The lies to cover the lies are starting to sound like... lies!
On Friday, Wolf Blitzer and Lou Dobbs (two TV personalities that have been consistently supportive of the Republican agenda) confronted my opponent, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa on the Dubai Ports World deal that even many Republicans think is outrageous. After years of being told we have to allow our government to take away our freedoms in the interest of protecting us from terrorists, George W. Bush promises to use his power of veto for the first time if Congress tries to block a firm owned by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, a country known to support terrorists, from taking over terminal management in six major U.S. ports. Blitzer noted that "...a lot of the critics say it is simply not in America's best national security interest to let this United Arab Emirates country operate these ports in the United States."
Darrell Issa failed to see the irony, and instead happily offered up the latest White House strategy designed to demolish any objections to this outrageous deal - he claimed that objections were based on the fact that this is an Arab country, since there are ports in this country that are already operated by foreign countries such as China.
The fact that most citizens didn't know that we have ports operated by China doesn't mean that it's OK! I think we should object to that too. The same administration that has been telling us to be afraid, be very afraid, has turned on a dime when it came to money for a key business partner of the Bush family.
Why wasn't Issa raisng objections to China operating U.S. ports instead of using this as a precedent for the Dubai deal? Shouldn't it have been our Congressman, who swore to serve us, and not Lou Dobbs, who pointed out the fact that, "This administration violated the law when it failed to honor the investigation requirement for a 45-day period following the initial review"?
In response to Issa, Wolf Blitzer played a clip of New York Republican Congressman Peter King, saying, "This has nothing to do with it being an Arab nation. It has to do with a country which has really -- has had unusually close ties to terrorism, and it's a risk we just can't take."
Issa's defense was that we should be doing looking at the deal as if it involved France. What does France have to do with this? Frankly, I don't want ANY foreign country controlling our ports, and I think that our Representatives ought to be expressing their outrage that this has been permitted and passing legislation to prevent it from ever happening again!
Consider this my first official act of "criticizing without fear or favor the record and policies of my opponents or political parties which merit such criticism," as I swore to do last week.