Among the Western China-bashing bigots and zealots, none has stood out and demogouge the issue of human rights in China and demonize the Chinese government as U.S. Congress' Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
I call her the "Mama San" of the pimping and pandering coterie of CBs and CDs who have relentlessly and doggedly seize any and all attempt to "bad-mouth," hector, and demonize China, and to push the tribalist agenda of the Tibetan Dolly, His Holiness, the "political monk" camouflaged in a holy man's saffron robe, in the name of Team Tibet-Shangri-la.
Mama-San Pelosi is one of the most powerful pol in America, heading the dysfunctional and insular Congress most of whose members have never been outside of their own country, yet have the chutzpah to preach "Pax Americana" and America's "Manifest Destiny" as the global hegemon and world policeman on human rights.
Guess what ? It turns out that Madame Speaker, while preaching and hectoring China to loosen up and allow "political speech" in Tiananmen, and support human rights is herself not practicing what she promotes..... in her own house, i.e. the U.S. Congress.
Here she is, having the audacity to go to Tiananmen Square during the anniversary of June 4, 1989, and attempting to demogogue and grandstand the issue of human rights for China's dissidents, and when stopped, cried "foul !" "Free Speech" and "Human Rights."
In the following report and commentary, it turned out that Speaker Pelosi does not practice what she preaches in her own house, i.e. the U.S. Congress.
Read on by clicking what "Mama San" Pelosi did and why she is a hypocrite:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/22/EDCQ12GB1S.DTL
Here's the commentary in its full text. You be the judge.
Pelosi censors poster of troops
By Bruce Fein
Friday, August 22, 2008
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-S.F., has done something worse than commit a crime against the First Amendment. The speaker's censorship of nonobtrusive posters featuring men and women who gave that last full measure of devotion in service to their country is a blunder that could alienate 23 million veterans and their families from the Democratic Party. If she is endowed with a crumb of constitutional or political sense, she will reverse course.
The tale of Pelosi's folly begins with Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. He wished to pay tribute to the service members of Camp Lejeune who had been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Accordingly, Walter placed a poster flat against the wall in the corridor outside his office showing their names and pictures.
It was altogether fitting that Jones saluted the fallen soldiers on congressional premises. Congress authorized the wars that occasioned their tragic deaths. Congress appropriated the money that dispatched them to mortal danger. The posters communicated to congressional visitors that war is a combination of heroism and hell. Voters would leave with more informed judgments about the costs of the twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was no tension between Jones' wall poster and the ordinary use of the House Rayburn Office Building to host direct communications between Members of the House and the public. On one occasion, for instance, a mother from Minnesota entered Jones' office with tears in her eyes to thank him for displaying the picture of her son who had been killed while serving the nation.
Speaker Pelosi apparently took umbrage. Under federal law, she is empowered to issue and enforce rules and regulations governing the use of the House office buildings. A 1999 rule prohibits "displaying any flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice any person, party, organization or movement..." On April 17, Pelosi issued a sister hallway policy to improve compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act by restricting "the display of flags and the placing or storing of any items within a hallway exit access, exit or stairwell of the House Office Buildings."
On Aug. 2, the architect of the Capitol removed Jones' name and picture poster from the Rayburn Office Building wall. Borrowing a page from Humpty Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass," the removal notice insisted that the poster violated the hallway policy, although it was neither a flag nor a stored item within a hallway. The architect also hinted that the wall poster constituted a "flag, banner, or device" prohibited by the 1999 rule, although no one associates any of those nouns with a wall poster.
Displaying homage to fallen soldiers constitutes core political speech. The U.S. Supreme Court has routinely invalidated unreasonable restrictions on the use of government property for speech purposes. And as applied to the wall poster, the hallway policy amounts to censorship for the sake of censorship.
Irrespective of free speech, the prospect of losing the veterans' vote in November should concentrate Pelosi's mind on honoring the right of all members of Congress to display wall posters in House office buildings commemorating those who died in furthering wars that Pelosi has voted to fund.
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates and author of "Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for the Constitution and Democracy" (Palgrave Macmillan).
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/22/EDCQ12GB1S.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle
