Vacation time is over, it's time to get our rage on, while it's still legal to do so...

There was a time when the President of the United States would say things like "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Nowadays it seems the only message coming out of the White House is all fear, all the time. Granted the above quote was from a Democrat so I suppose that might have something to do with it, but still I feel we've gotten into a very timid, cowed place as a nation. And despite what some would have us believe, I don't blame America first. I blame the Republican extremists in power. Now it would seem they want to stay in power.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are considering a plan "that could allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the event of such an attack," according to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. The Department of Homeland Security asked the Justice Department to examine what legal steps it would need to take to delay the Nov. 2 presidential election in case of a terrorist attack on the United States.

Now let me get this straight. In order to make sure a terrorist attack does not upset our democratic process, we are going to suspend the very procedure that makes us a democracy in the first place? This is the kind of logic espoused only in dictatorships and Abbott and Costello routines.

Not only does the administration get to use the fear of another attack (how many of these warnings have we had in the last 3 years?), but they also imply that the terrorists are for John Kerry. I find it hard to believe that Osama bin Laden reads the New York Times, or even knows who John Kerry is. If I were bin Laden I would want to keep Bush in power. He gave me Iraq to breed brand new terrorists, I got to fly planes into American buildings, I was able to blow up various smaller targets in other countries from time to time, and the only response was a half-assed "I'm gonna get you, sucker" backed up by very little force. Not a bad deal for a hateful little Saudi at odds with the leader of the free world. Still I'm thinking they would write in Allah. I don't know, just a hunch.

Regardless of the terrorists' presidential preferences, Bush's flunkies have all mentioned how we can't let what happened in Spain happen here. I am so sick of this line, because it gives very little agency to the Spanish people by pretending they are like non-thinking animals ("Fire bad, food good, me scared, and invasion of a harmless country based on false assumptions should seriously be reconsidered). The notion that the tragedy on that Spanish train completely altered the result of the election denies all context of what was going on in Spain to begin with. The country was overwhelmingly against Spanish involvement in Iraq. The party at odds with the incumbent promised well before any explosions to bring the troops home. If anything, the train bomb only helped to bring out the vote. And mobilizing anyone who isn't a religious fanatic has never been in the interest of republicans. Historically, their strategy has been to suppress the vote of any ethnic minority they can.

But all this politicking and fear-mongering is moot. The Constitution gives Congress, not the executive branch, the power to set election dates. Not that the current administration has shown much respect for that document lately. Short of a nationwide catastrophe, Congress shouldn't tamper with the voting date, and Homeland Security shouldn't either. This nation has conducted elections under the current system for over 200 years. Despite all the conflicts the United States has endured - when states battled each other during the Civil War; when the Allies battled totalitarianism in World War II; when under the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War - it has never postponed the presidential election. That's more of a, oh I don't know, let's say, uh... Nazi Germany thing to do!

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said it best earlier this week: "The Department of Homeland Security should not instill fear or inject uncertainty into the election. If Bush Administration officials have any evidence that would warrant considering postponing the election, they should immediately share it with the Congress. Otherwise, they should disavow this fear-mongering."

Instead of focusing on changing the date of the election, the Department of Homeland Security should focus on reducing the risk of an attack and stop trying to scare us.