Condoleezza Rice: Hypocrit of the Year!

Condoleezza Rice has recently made several statements to the press about the state of affairs in Russia that I find quite offensive. Rice said she hoped the efforts of rights activists (in Russia) would promote universal values of "the rights of individuals to liberty and freedom, the right to worship as you please, and the right to assembly, the right to not have to deal with the arbitrary power of the state."

I'm sorry, but she must live in a United States of America that I don't anymore. Since 9/11, any person in the U.S. wishing to protest President Bush at one of his public speaking events, have been rounded up by the Secret Service and placed two or three miles away in what they term "Free Speech Zones". Usually a parking lot of an abandoned building surrounded by a chain-link fence. The protestors are told they can have their "freedom of speech" there. The media aren't allowed to film or talk to these people, and of course all you see on TV are people waving "Support Our Troops" signs and signs showing pro-Bush slogans.

Ms. Rice is worried about Russians possibly not having the right to assembly or free speech, yet she hasn't seemed concerned for quite some time about U.S. citizens apparently no longer having those rights!

She also seems to think that the Russian government may be becoming one-sided with all the power being held by one faction of it. Damn! I guess she hasn't been hearing all the talk around this country about how the Executive branch of our government has become too powerful, overshadowing, and even bullying the other two branches of our government (the legislative and judicial branches) into getting what they want. Gee, doesn't Ms. Rice work for the Executive branch of the government? I think she does, and apparently as long as you're the one in charge, it doesn't seem so bad a thing!

I think it's time that our government, and it's representatives like Ms. Rice, start looking at what they themselves are up to and clean house here in the U.S. before worrying about what others' are doing in their own back yards!