Torture is not a family value, but very recently our Republican-run Congress voted to allow President George W. Bush to order just that, on his own whim, secretly and with impunity

With that brazen move – one so stunning that most Americans still haven’t allowed it into their greater consciousness – they also did away with the time-honored writ of habeus corpus, a basic right of mankind since the Magna Carta in 1215. That’s a lot of regression in just a few disastrous years of Republican rule; just think what they could do with a few more.

Sen. Olympia Snowe co-authored the hideous “detainee” bill, and then, in a most deceitful and cynical move, was absent for the vote. Does she think the public just won’t notice that she chose to protect and further empower Bush instead of the Constitution and the people?

Snowe is not a “moderate,” despite all the Republican lucre she’ll spend trying to perpetuate that image. She voted with Bush’s destructive radical policies 82 percent of the time, and consistantly puts the interests of big corporations ahead of those of the people she is sworn to protect. Snowe must go. The guard must change.

Republicans have blown it on a global scale. The ship of state is listing so hard right, it’s going down in its own whirlpool, and still they want to “stay the course.”

Voters must take the country back before it’s too late.

Bia Winter, Mount Vernon