Seven Days in November?

You connect the dots:

From the St. Petersburg Times - The doomsday scenario was laid out by Gen. Tommy Franks, the recently retired head of CentCom, in of all places the December edition of Cigar Aficionado magazine.

"What is the worst thing that can happen in our country?" Franks asked rhetorically. "Two steps. The first step would be a nexus between weapons of mass destruction . . . and terrorism." The second step would be "the western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy."

Franks suggested that a "massive casualty-producing event" might cause "our population to question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country."

From the Associated Press - The government needs to establish guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections if terrorists strike the United States again, says the chairman of a new federal voting commission.

Such guidelines do not currently exist, said DeForest B. Soaries, head of the voting panel.

From today's CNN - A plot to carry out a large-scale terror attack against the United States in the near future is being directed by Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda members, senior intelligence officials said Thursday.

...

The planned attack is "an effort to disrupt the democratic process" before November's elections, Ridge said.

...

"We know they have the capability to succeed and they also hold the mistaken belief that their attacks will have an impact on America's resolve," Ridge said.

This year's Presidential election is the most important in our history as a Republic. The confidence that was lost in the disputed counties of Florida and the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court back in 2000 must be restored with a free and fair election that happens when it's supposed to happen, terrorists or no terrorists. If those in power are truly preparing to postpone or cancel elections in November, it will only confirm what I have suspected all along - that our democracy died three years ago, and we have been merely keeping up appearances since that awful day in December when Rehnquist and Company (in the words of the immortal Charlie Pierce) "threw the Constituion under a bus" in order to bring their party's candidate to power.

We cannot allow fear to undermine our way of life. We cannot allow these bastards who have hijacked our country to destroy our Constitutional government once and for all. I'd like to think that like the last Soviet putsch against Boris Yeltsin, such an obvious grab for power would backfire and millions of Americans - Democrats, Republicans, and Naderites alike - would take to the streets in protest. But I don't know. Are we still so frightened by the spectre of terrorism that we would allow two hundred years of participatory democracy to go down the drain? And even if terrorists do strike America again, shouldn't those in power be held accountable for allowing such an act to happen on their watch during their self-proclaimed "War on Terror"?

If the Bushies are so confident of their cause, then they should allow the citizens of the United States either to give them their blessing or give them the boot in a legitimate election on the first Tuesday in November. Anything less is unacceptable and downright un-American.