Today's Civics Lesson

Some of you will remember Cindy Sheehan, famous for camping out on the road to President George W. Bush's Crawford, Texas home and demanding he meet with her to tell her why her son died (her son, Casey, was killed in action in Iraq). What some people had forgotten by the time her campaign became famous was that the President had already met with her.

Some years have passed since then and I thought she had quietly gone away, having had her more than fifteen minutes of fame. But no. Cindy Sheehan has become a professional "progressive" gadfly. She's been seen protesting on Martha's Vineyard while the first family recently vacationed there. She has a website she calls her "Soapbox" from which platform she agitates for "revolution". But then there was the Russia Today interview.

Russia Today is one of those news programs you can find on your PBS station (that's where I see it) which specializes in the sensational, featuring interviews with the fringiest of the fringe of American progressive politics. In case you doubt that assessment, note that the banner on their website reads, "Any story can be another story altogether'. However, back to Cindy Sheehan and her interview on RT. You see, Sheehan thinks Obama is making mistakes in his political decisions. As you will discover in this bit of the interview, transcribed below, she is either serious about her advocacy of revolution or she is simply a product of government schools (as evidenced by her ignorance of Constitutional process and the way Congress works):

The administration made a bad mistake going after healthcare and staking the 2010 elections on that. Our Healthcare system in America doesn't need to be reformed, it needs to be overthrown and replaced with a single payor system. And not to let, this is the biggest, I don't know if this is a mistake, I don't know if this is on purpose, I don't know why this is happening? But why to the Republicans in the House of Representatives and in the Senate have any say in what is going on? They are a minority, they have no power. We have a democratic, a large democratic lead in the House and in the Senate and we have a democratic President. Every progressive agenda item should be able to be pushed through right now. As I see it with the, Obama is using the Republicans to say, "I can't do this, the Republicans say no, I can't do this." When, actually, it is the corporations, the insurance companies, big pharma, HMOs telling him "No, we can't have healthcare reform." And so they are going to lose seats in 2010.

Here endeth today's civics lesson.