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V: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
Welcome Back The Spotlight 'O Terror
Green - Low: This setting is here just as a reference point. DHS will never use it because it would mean we didn’t need them anymore.
Blue - Guarded: This rarely used setting on the Stoplight ‘O Terror could indicate things like an undocumented worker within 3 square miles of the president.
Yellow - Elevated: This is the standard level of fear. Don’t expect to see anything lower than this as long as the Regressives are in office. Be scared, but not too scared to vote Republican.
Orange - High: Chertoff heard that someone in the CIA’s brother’s boss’ nephew’s sister-in-law heard about a plan to blow up Amish Country Popcorn Factory in Berne Indiana. It’s ok to pee your pants at this level.
Red - Severe: A terror attack was recently narrowly averted. We can’t release any details but just be thankful we saved your asses. Used frequently before midterm elections. See October Surprise. (Oh My God, Take Away My Freedoms and Protect Me From Them There Terrorists, Like Osama Hussein!!!)
Welcome to my Blog, enjoy your stay!
Congressman Ron Paul, MD - We've Been NeoConned
1984 radio broadcast:
Sid Blumenthal this week describes how the President’s lust for executive force and fiat is being rebuffed and restrained. Rule of law may be said to matter still, albeit couched in the apologetic and obligatory language of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision concerning Al Marri vs Wright.
In correctly refusing the President’s desires to detain and hold indefinitely whomever he wishes, the Circuit Court also demurs, with "Of course, this does not mean that the President lacks power to protect our national interests and defend our people, only that in doing so he must abide by the Constitution. We understand and do not in any way minimize the grave threat international terrorism poses to our country and our national security."
Whatever.
Also this week, CNN White House Correspondent Ed Henry had a charming report:
Students press Bush about alleged torture of detainees
High school students urged the president in a letter to "stop violations of the human rights of detainees."
WASHINGTON (CNN) – President Bush got a little more than he bargained for when he invited high school students from the Presidential Scholars Class of 2007 to the White House for an event promoting reauthorization of his signature No Child Left Behind education reform law.
CNN has learned that a couple of the high school students privately gave the president a handwritten letter before the official event, signed by 50 teenagers, urging the commander-in-chief to "do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants."
The letter began, "We have been told that we represent the best and brightest of our nation. Therefore, we believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions. We do not want America to represent torture."
A senior administration official confirmed that the president received the letter from the students and responded that the U.S. does not torture terror detainees. "We respect human rights," the president told the students, according to the senior official.
The confrontation with the students occurred on the same day White House spokeswoman Dana Perino faced a barrage of questions from reporters about a Washington Post four-part series suggesting the vice president has pushed the envelope in the war on terror. "All that we have undertaken has been lawful," Perino said, insisting the U.S. has not tortured detainees.
Later, CNN TV interviewed three of the students, three articulate, serious and well-informed teenagers. The CNN newsreader asked what it was the President actually said to them in response to the letter – a valid question, given the "senior official" version above. None of them directly answered that question, but I’m sure they are thinking about it.
Then we had the June 25th White House press conference, mentioned at the end of the CNN blurb above. Willowy blond Presidential spokeswoman Perino exhibits a finely tuned sense of the absurd, something all Americans would do well to develop these days. But in repeating Presidential and Vice Presidential denials of state torture and sadism, and in trying to explain how Dick Cheney is both legislatively and executively endowed, as it suits His Highness, Perino seemed as surreal and irrelevant as the jailhouse saga of Paris Hilton.
At one point, a reporter commented, "We should get someone out here who can answer our questions."
Indeed. We should get someone out here who can answer our questions.
But that presumes that truth matters. It presumes the willing accountability of the President and the rest of the executive staff to the legislative and judicial branches, and at some level, to the people. The entire history of the twentieth century American presidency clearly opposes this line of thinking. All three of these stories, from three very different sources and perspectives, illustrate the modern American presidential paradigm as imperial, and happily, as dying.
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions explains paradigms in science. Kuhn’s key exploration is how paradigms shift and change. He writes,
At the start a new candidate for paradigm may have few supporters…. Nevertheless, if they are competent, they will improve it, explore its possibilities, and show what it would be like to belong to the community guided by it. And as that goes on, if the paradigm is one destined to win its fight, the number and strength of the persuasive arguments in its favor will increase…Gradually the number of experiments, instruments, articles and books based on the paradigm will multiply. Still more men, convinced of the new view’s fruitfulness, will adopt the new mode of practicing normal science, until at last only a few elderly hold-outs remain.
An American empire and an American king are both fundamentally unworkable ideas. They are unscientific, and unsustainable in the long term. Like a Rube Goldberg design, our empire and our kings consume far more energy, creativity and imagination to build and maintain than they produce or deliver. In fact, today the Bush-Cheney kingdom exists solely at the mercy of the energetic moral, ideological and semantic gyrations of its dwindling number of supporters and financiers.
The tentative court, the teenager’s letter personally handed to the President, and the visceral recognition of the indefensible and illogical language of diktat in Washington by its very own spokesperson – all point to ongoing paradigm change of American government.
In his book, Kuhn devotes a whole chapter to "The Invisibility of Revolutions." In science, the new paradigms emerge and grow invisibly, silently, ignored in many ways until they become universally obvious, and then they catastrophically supplant the old ways of thinking and perceiving.
In politics, ongoing paradigm shifts – and the identities of the remaining "elderly hold-outs" – are not so invisible, if you know where to look.
June 27, 2007
LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosted the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here.
Copyright © 2007 Karen Kwiatkowski
The figure of Franklin Roosevelt looms ever more imposing in the minds of Americans. In the two centuries or so of our history, it has happened that a few of our leaders – a very few – became symbols of some powerful idea, one that left a permanent imprint on the life of our country. Thomas Jefferson is one such symbol. With Jefferson, it is the idea of a free, self-governing people, dedicated to the enjoyment of their God-given natural rights, in their work, their communities, and the bosom of their families. Abraham Lincoln symbolizes a rather different idea – of America as a great centralized nation-state, supposedly dedicated to individual freedom, but founded on the unquestioned authority and power of the national government in Washington.
And now Franklin Roosevelt, too, has come to represent a certain conception of America, one that is worlds apart from Jefferson's vision, and different from anything that even Lincoln could have imagined. Roosevelt stands for the national government as we know it today, a vast, unfathomable bureaucratic apparatus that recognizes no limits whatsoever to its power, either at home or abroad. Internationally, it gives every evidence of intending to run the whole world, of extending its hegemony – now that the Soviet Union is no more – to every corner of the globe. Domestically, it undertakes, through an annual budget of close to $2 trillion, to assuage every real or invented social ill and thus enters into every aspect of the people's lives. In particular, it is engaged in what even a couple of decades ago would have seemed fantastic – a campaign to annihilate freedom of association, subjecting the American people to a program of radical social engineering, in order to transform their voluntarily held traditional beliefs and values and way of life.
More than anyone else, Franklin Roosevelt is responsible for creating the Leviathan State that confronts us today.
In his own time, FDR had many influential enemies in business, politics, and the press, men and women who recognized what he was doing to the Republic they loved and who fought him tenaciously. They were proud to be known as "Roosevelt-haters." Today, however, practically the whole of the political class in the United States has been converted into idolaters of Franklin Roosevelt.
This state of affairs was epitomized last May, when the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. Situated on a 7.5-acre site by the Tidal Basin, it includes an 800-foot wall, six waterfalls, outdoor galleries, and nine sculptures. Congress voted $42.5 million to fund the memorial, Republicans (those wild revolutionaries) joining Democrats with equal enthusiasm. No one breathed a word about Roosevelt's failure to end the Depression, his lying us into war, his warm friendship with Joseph Stalin, and similar milestones in his long career – the major controversy was over whether or not he should be shown with his signature jaunty cigarette-holder. (In deference to the forces of political correctness, he wasn't.)
Most revealing was that self-styled conservative organs such as National Review and the American Spectator joined in the hosannas. It is a sign of how far things have moved that abject adulation of Franklin Roosevelt is now the order of the day even at the Wall Street Journal. The Journal has long been supposed to be the voice of American business, a quality paper that stood for the market economy and limited government, and so was the counterpart to the New York Times in the American press. On the occasion of the dedication of the FDR memorial, the Journal expressed its opinion through an article by one of its editors, a certain Dorothy Rabinowitz (who used to review movies). Rabinowitz was outraged that Ed Crane, president of the Cato Institute, had dared to refer to her hero as "a lousy president." No, she insisted, Roosevelt was a great one. Why? Well, because of "the depth of his hold on minds and hearts," because in the midst of the Depression he gave the people hope, because he stood firm against Hitler, because when he died even Radio Tokyo called him a "great man." Roosevelt's many enemies, in his time and even now, never had any good reason to condemn this man who changed America so radically; they were merely "maddened by hatred of him." In all of Rabinowitz's effusion there were no hard facts, no analysis, no argument (and certainly no mention of FDR's great friend Joseph Stalin – a lot more about this later). It was all sentimental gush. And so the Wall Street Journal enters the age of Oprah Winfrey journalism.
Such productions by FDR's devotees are by no means mere exercises in historical myth-making. They perform a vital political function for the anti-freedom forces in contemporary America. Simply put: the glorification of Franklin Roosevelt means the validation of the Leviathan State. Thus it is of great importance to those on the freedom side to understand who this man really was, what he really stood for, and what, as a matter of historical truth, he inflicted on the American Republic.
Franklin Roosevelt was born in 1882, in the family mansion overlooking the Hudson River, on the 1300-acre estate that came to be known as Hyde Park. On his father, James's, side, Franklin could trace his ancestry back to the middle of the 17th century, when a forebear immigrated from Holland to what was then New Amsterdam. Part of the family settled in Oyster Bay, Long Island, eventually producing Franklin's distant cousin, Theodore. The Hudson Valley Roosevelts tended to marry well, mainly into affluent families of English descent – by the time Franklin came on the scene he was, despite his name, of nearly purely English heritage. His mother, Sara, was from an equally prominent family, the Delanos. Franklin was his doting parents' only child. While by no means fabulously rich, the family was of the sort that mingled freely with the Astors and the Vanderbilts and the rest of the high society of nearby New York City.
Until the age of 14, Franklin was tutored at home. Not at all a bookish boy, he loved nature and, above all, boating on the Hudson and at the family summer home in Campobello, Maine. He developed a passion for stamp-collecting, which he pursued all his life. His admirers later claimed that this hobby gave him great insight into the geography, resources, and character of all the world's nations – more pro-Roosevelt blather. He often visited New York and toured Europe every year with his parents. The inevitable word to describe the Roosevelts and their lifestyle is patrician.
Franklin's prep school was Groton, near New London, Massachusetts, as close to an English "public" (i.e., private) school as one could get on this side of the Atlantic. The whole ethos of the place was "Old English," an attempt to copy the educational experience of schools such as Eton and Harrow, whose job it was to shape the future ruling class of the great world empire. At Groton, Franklin lived and studied among the progeny of his own class, those who felt themselves to be the fated future leaders of American business, education, religion, and, above all, politics. Ironically, a fellow Grotonian in Franklin's day was the young Robert McCormick, whose father owned the Chicago Tribune – ironically, because Colonel McCormick, as he was known in later life (after his service in the First World War), went on to become the greatest and best-known "Roosevelt-hater" of them all.
Franklin was a mediocre student at Groton in every respect. His top grades were no better than B, he did not stand out in debating or sports, nor was he particularly popular with the other boys. In 1900, he went on to Harvard, where he showed as little interest in studies or ideas as he had at prep school. Franklin coasted through college with the traditional "gentleman's C" average that was perfectly acceptable in the sons of the elite at that time. His social life, however, improved dramatically. Franklin was already beginning to display the affability and charm that so bedazzled politicians and the press in the years ahead. Of course, his popularity was helped along by his family name. Cousin Theodore had been elected vice president, and then, in 1901, through the assassination of William McKinley, had become president of the United States.
It was only natural that Franklin, already toying with the idea of a career in politics, should pay close attention to the doings of his presidential relation. Theodore was the first president in the distinctively modern mold: he had a sense of drama and timing and a natural grasp of how to exploit the press to create a persona for himself in the eyes of the people. Beyond that, TR, as he was commonly known, had a rare ability to make personal use of popular causes and resentments. It was the age of "progressivism," a vague term, but one that connoted a new readiness to use the power of government for all sorts of grand things. H.L. Mencken, the great libertarian journalist and close observer and critic of presidents, compared him to the German kaiser, Wilhelm II, and shrewdly summed him up: "The America that [Theodore] Roosevelt dreamed of was always a sort of swollen Prussia, truculent without and regimented within."
Particularly fascinating to Franklin must have been the way TR was able to turn his patrician background to his advantage. After all, in the past, the Americans had shown themselves wary of upper-class leaders, who were suspected of being insufficiently "democratic" and not in tune with the people. What TR did brilliantly was to introduce caesarism into American politics. This term refers to the political strategy adopted by Julius Caesar to gain power. Although himself from a wealthy and high-born family, Caesar castigated his fellow patricians and appealed instead to the lower classes for support. They, in turn, loved the favors they received from on high, and, perhaps even more, the sight of Caesar trouncing and humbling his fellow blue bloods. Julius Caesar was thus one of history's great demagogues; and ever since his time the tactic of a politician from society's elite pandering to the "have-nots" against the upper classes has been known by his name. In fabricating his persona as the great "trustbuster," Theodore Roosevelt's form of American caesarism proved wildly successful.
While Franklin was learning from his cousin's political stratagems, he also entered into a closer personal relationship with the Oyster Bay branch of the family. Looking around for a bride, he had become acquainted with the daughter of one of TR's younger brothers, and after a whirlwind courtship won her hand. In 1905, in a suitably elaborate ceremony, Theodore Roosevelt gave away his niece, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, to Franklin in marriage. Eleanor proved herself to be an astonishing phenomenon and deserves our close scrutiny in her own right.
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Ralph Raico [send him mail] is a senior fellow of the Mises Institute. You can study the history of civilization under his guidance here: MP3-CD and Audio Tape.
Copyright © 1998-2001 Future of Freedom Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
by Robert Higgs
by Robert Higgs
Dear Amity,
I read with interest your recent article in the WSJ, "The Real Deal." I am delighted that you are getting such exposure for the ideas developed in your new book, The Forgotten Man. Naturally, too, I appreciate your crediting me with having made an important contribution to this area of study.
By going beyond the conventional scholarship, you have come to understand how greatly the public's understanding of the New Deal and the Great Depression has suffered because of popular myths, ideological blindness, and dismissal of unpopular, revisionist views.
Yet, you write: "The incredible rightness of FDR's war policy obscures the flaws in his prior actions." I am convinced that if you were to invest the same effort in studying FDR's war policies that you have invested in studying his domestic policies, you would conclude that the public's understanding of FDR and World War II has suffered to an even greater extent because of popular myths, ideological blindness, and dismissal of unpopular, revisionist views.
I suspect, in fact, that reading a single book, though a long one, would change your view of FDR's war policies greatly. That book is Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, edited by Harry Elmer Barnes, which was originally published in 1953. Of course, a great deal of additional research has been done along similar lines since 1953, but the Barnes book alone is, I am convinced, sufficient to show you what is terribly wrong with the received wisdom about Roosevelt and the war.
Of course, I wish you every success with The Forgotten Man. By writing this book and then promoting it so astutely, you are doing a great service to the public's education.
Warm wishes,
Bob
July 2, 2007
Robert Higgs [send him mail] is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review. His most recent book is Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government. He is also the author of Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy, Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 and Against Leviathan Government Power and a Free Society.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
by Tom Chartier
Nope. This is not the title of a new Hollywood blockbuster, planned for Thanksgiving release, starring Robert DeNiro and Danny DeVito. Sorry to get your hopes up.
And no, it’s not the latest luxury offering from the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book: His and Hers Nazi Flag bath towels. That reminds me, only 175 shopping days until December 25th!
No! Attention shoppers! It’s Double Dictator Green Stamp Day.
How silly of me to take so long to figure this out.
Now, we all know what makes a right and proper dictator. But in case your memory needs jogged, a dictator is the Big Kahuna at the top of the government refuse heap to whom one may not utter discouraging words like: "no." He’s the smarmy fellow who signs his name at the bottom, and doodles along edges, of all laws that he deigns not to veto... and then proceeds to ignore those very same laws himself. You know, that old chestnut: "executive privilege." Additionally, he’s immune from SWAT teams storming his office to haul him off in shackles.
Well folks, here in America we order our burgers "BIG," with a healthy side order of chicken fried bacon. Super Size Me. We like our McMansions with twelve fake gables and dual spiral staircases leading nowhere… even though none of us can afford the mortgage anymore. Even as the foundation crumbles, Americans spend, spend, spend! And we like our cars to guzzle gas while we go cruisin’ down the highway to Vegas! Yeah baby! I’m feelin’ lucky!
So when it comes to prostrating ourselves before a power mad Supreme Beloved Decider in this Fundemento-Facist Corporatocracy, why piddle around with only one dictator? This is America! Bigger and better is the American way. Two cars in the garage and two dictators in the White House!
Hey, that’s innovative! I don’t recall any functional double dictatorships from my history classes.
I can tell by the look in your eye… well the one I imagine… you are confused. Time for the Modern American civics lesson.
You see about two hundred years ago, the Founding Fathers had this notion of the separation of Church and State. All fine and dandy back then but in the 21st century, it’s like so... iRetro.
Well, the great minds and the cracked staff... er, crack staff... of the Republican Party have solved the dilemma for us. Using deficit spending, we can have two dictators for the price of four... or eight... or sixteen! The possibilities are endless.
Which brings us to Cognitive Dissonance, a fancy term for "all messed up in the head." Those few with health insurance call up Dr. Gruber to get prescriptions for Happy Pills.
The 47 million Americans without health coverage deal with cognitive dissonance by acting out via their Second Life avatar or by selecting Fergie or 50 Cent at the local Karaoke Bar. Unfortunately, our "elected officials" in the highest levels of government rarely have such healthy outlets. This deprivation can throw a monkey wrench in the works of their "mental disfunctioning."
OK, mix two parts of cognitive dissonance with one jigger of inflated American delusions (shaken, not stirred), and what have you got? Dictator Numero Uno! In the lead role of "El Presidente" we have our raving Bible thumping lunatic, George W. Bush. Pishaw, who am I foolin’? All y’all knew that.
Of late... like the past six-and-a-half years, Little Bush has been a bit confusing. What do you make of it when he talks tough but then trips over Bandini mountains of rhetoric? "There's an old saying in Tennessee – I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once – shame on – shame on you. You fool me – you can't get fooled again" Such eloquence does not a strong leader make.
What is he? A man, a bird, a platinum-plated brat playing "war president"? A runaway spend-a-holic? A dry drunk? A complete idiot? He’s all this and more! And nobody can tell him "no." The only difference between Bush and Paris Hilton is that she waited until she went to jail to find religion.
Is George a good Christian? Well… would Jesus lie to the world to start a war that, by now, has killed hundreds of thousands of people?
Whatever, George insists that he is on a mission from God. I simply can’t wait for Armageddon in the shape of not one but several mushroom clouds. Hallelujah! Won’t that be fun! "Lawdy Miss Scarlett! We’ all gwine to die!" Oh the Rapture! I get all tingly just thinking about it.
So! George is our Theological Dictator. It sure does help that he’s totally insane. I mean, sane dictators are so dull.
OK, that’s one Dictator, where’s Numero Dos?
Aha! He’s hiding out in the "fourth" branch of government? We all know what, or who that is. Why it’s our beloved VP "acting president" Dead-Eye Dick Cheney. He’s got the State locked down. No voices speaking to him while he sits on the commode praying everything comes out in a global fireball.
"Cheney thrives in darkness." You think he needs the soil of his native land to sleep? Hey, maybe when he wants to go to a "secure, undisclosed location," he just digs into that Transylvanian dirt stashed inside those man-sized Mosler safes at his office.
With a snarl that only a mother with cataracts could love, Cheney’s the neocon poster boy. It’s a simple agenda for him. Total nuclear annihilation of the Middle East: Then he can send in some lead-suited human sacrifices to pump out the oil. Possibly all that radioactive gasoline from the wasteland will improve gas mileage.
And you can’t tell Dick "no" either. That means Cheney is our Official State Dictator. Doesn’t that make you go all wobbly in the knees?
Just think, Church and State separated by two dictators! I’ll bet old Thomas Jefferson never expected that scuffed and tarred curve ball.
And you know what? I’m not worried about the future… stop laughing! Some of us will survive to buy snap-crackle and pop petrol at the Crystal Chapel of Enraptured Delusions, Bait Shop and Fillin’ Station. Put a prayer in your tank!
What’s more, dictators tend to have big egos. And big egos don’t know how to work and play well with others. See, I’m not sure everything is all lovey-dovey between Dubya and Dick. Sooner or later it’s gonna be, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly... without The Good, on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Oh boy oh boy, a swell shoot ’em up! Can’t you just see Dubya screaming: "Onward Christian Soldiers!" while Dead-Eye chugs down a Lone Star beer and takes aim? Hey, maybe this Two Dictator Solution will work!
Elizabeth Gyllensvard contributed to and edited this story.
July 2, 2007
Tom Chartier [send him mail] played lead guitar in legendary Los Angeles punk band The Rotters for 26 years until their final appearance in January of 2004. He has lived in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Currently he resides somewhere in the Caribbean.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
Raw Story June 28, 2007
Josh Catone
Bruce Fein, who served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, in a scathing editorial today called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
"Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III," he writes.
This is not the first time that Fein has taken on the Bush administration. In March 2006, Fein appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on Senate Resolution 398, which called for the censure of George Bush over the warrantless wiretap program.
Fein said in his 2006 testimony that by authorizing the domestic spying program, President Bush sought to "cripple the Constitution's checks and balances and political accountability."
In October 2006, Fein ripped into Bush for his "alarming usurpations of legislative prerogatives," and into the then-Republican controlled Congress for sitting idly by and "placing party loyalty above institutional loyalty, contrary to the expectations of the Founding Fathers."
With the wiretap program back in the news following this week's congressional subpoenas of the White House and the office of the Vice President, and a subsequent refusal to cooperate , Fein unleashed his highly critical philippic.
Fein details "multiple crimes against the Constitution" committed by Cheney, including the creation of military commissions, the "kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists," the advocation of "signing statements" to ignore pieces of legislation, and the encouragement of the use of torture.
"The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield," writes Fein, saying the vice president has used the bugaboo of terrorism to justify a shoot first, ask questions later approach to dealing with suspected terrorists, even when that includes American citizens.
Fein also touches on the hot-button warrantless wiretapping program, over which he has butted heads with the administration in the past. He argues that Cheney engineered the program and has "orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege" to conceal information about it from Congress.
In the end, Fein makes the case that "Bush has ceded vast domains of his powers to Vice President Cheney," in violation of the US Constitution.
"President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president," he concludes. "Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law."
 Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., right, accompanied by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., discusses the committee's issuance of subpoenas for the legal basis of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program, June 27, 2007, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)Quote  "Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law. In America, no one is above law." Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. WHAT DO YOU THINK? |
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Legal expert White House stonewalling may force Congress to charge president with criminal offenses
Schwarzenegger Wants Entire World Bound Under One Environmental Treaty
Suggests Blair Would Make a Good Envoy for Environment
Arnold Schwarzenegger was the high-profile 'last guest' to Tony Blair on his way out the door to his newly named post as envoy to the Middle East quartet.
The California governor also took the occassion to point out that he would like to bring all the countries of the world together under a 'Kyoto' like treaty, suggesting that Blair would make a good envoy to such a pervasive treaty, as This is London reported, all in the name of reducing greenhouse gases.
Mr Schwarzenegger said he would back Mr Blair's appointment as envoy for the quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia which is leading the international drive for Middle East peace.
But the governor, who has made the battle against climate change a personal crusade, added: " Out of selfish reasons I hope that he becomes the envoy for the environment and brings all the countries of the world together to join some kind of treaty - a Kyoto kind of treaty - that everyone can join and we can all together reduce greenhouse gases.
Read the full story on Blair and Schwarzenegger here .
June 7, 2007
World Net Daily
By Sandy Froman
Philosopher George Santayana said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It's true. One of the reasons to study history is to avoid repeating past mistakes. When it comes to freedom, we cannot afford to forget the lessons of the past. So you and I need to know the history of gun control, because history teaches us there is a terrible price to pay when we lose our right to keep and bear arms.
Over 200 years ago, when the Founding Fathers drafted the Second Amendment, no one questioned the need for private gun ownership. The Framers considered private firearms to be essential to protecting personal liberty, both as a means of opposing foreign threats and also as a check against excessive government power. The Framers were passionately devoted to the idea that a self-sufficient armed citizenry is the best means of preserving liberty.
But many on the left do not want you to know this. They keep the truth from being taught in public schools, and they even write books laden with falsehoods in a dishonest attempt to rewrite history.
Click here to read the entire article from WorldNetDaily.com.
New gun control : Shut down shops
Gun Advocates Seek Restrictions on Anti-Gun Protests
Recent News:
Prison Planet July 2, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson
On the back of a hysterical response to attempted car bombings in the UK last week, a leaked secret U.S. law enforcement report warns of "spectacular" summer attacks while emergency alert drills spill over onto live TV and radio, as traveling Brits and Americans are served up the usual dose of fear at the height of the holiday season.
Following the discovery of two car bombs in London that would have done little more than wreck a couple of Mercedes and a bizarre incident in which a Jeep was rammed into a Glasgow Airport terminal, the UK and U.S. governments have seized upon the non-events to feed the military-industrial complex beast with the terror and fear that its survival depends on.
As ever, the media has dutifully amplified the propaganda, doing the terrorist's bidding by striking dread into the population and magnifying the severity of three dud attacks that failed to even kill the suicide bombers, never mind anyone else, and promising with an almost fevered glee that more horror is on the way.
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Prison Planet July 2, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson
On the back of a hysterical response to attempted car bombings in the UK last week, a leaked secret U.S. law enforcement report warns of "spectacular" summer attacks while emergency alert drills spill over onto live TV and radio, as traveling Brits and Americans are served up the usual dose of fear at the height of the holiday season.
Following the discovery of two car bombs in London that would have done little more than wreck a couple of Mercedes and a bizarre incident in which a Jeep was rammed into a Glasgow Airport terminal, the UK and U.S. governments have seized upon the non-events to feed the military-industrial complex beast with the terror and fear that its survival depends on.
As ever, the media has dutifully amplified the propaganda, doing the terrorist's bidding by striking dread into the population and magnifying the severity of three dud attacks that failed to even kill the suicide bombers, never mind anyone else, and promising with an almost fevered glee that more horror is on the way.
"A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror "spectacular" this summer, according to a senior official with access to the document."
"This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com ."
And so this year's traveling circus of summer fearmongering sets off again, perfectly coordinated to terrorize the most amount of journey bound citizens with dark nightmares of their imminent fiery death save they prostrate themselves in obedience to the stifling security checks and flagrant abuse of any civil rights they imagined might remain as the martial law vice is tightened a little more.
Meanwhile in Illinois, citizens panic after an emergency alert signal, issued to denote a federal emergency, cuts into live programming on television and radio. A drill for what is being planned, a mandate to grease the skids for the coming terror, or just an "accident" as officials claimed?
If nothing else, a reminder that in times of a declared emergency, the feds can take over all forms of communication within an instant.
 Beavis gets hosed down as he begins to realize he'll have to wait a little longer for the 72 virgins. |
Was this a preparation for the inevitable attacks that we are assured are coming over the next few months?
A new wave of terror is apparently upon us we are told, all sparked by the actions of Al-Qaeda's kindergarten bomb squad, who couldn't even manage to use Google to find out that propane cylinders aren't going to produce anything other than a pretty fireball, and not an explosion, absent a decent oxidizer.
But don't concern yourself with the details, just blindly trust the authorities when they tell you that Beavis and Butthead's Cherokee airport rage heralded the 7th seal of the apocalypse and ignore the fact that these retards couldn't even manage to kill themselves.
The Register's Thomas Greene encapsulates it perfectly.
"Police and securocrats know that there aren't enough real terrorists in the world, which is why they have to keep manufacturing them. This is because citizens tire of being watched by cameras, frisked and x-rayed, having their belongings searched, giving fingerprints to so-called friendly nations on entry, contemplating the myriad government databases where their details and activities are preserved, and wondering if some dour little bureaucrat is reading their email or listening to them on the phone."
"This should have been dismissed for what it is: an event on the level of some teenagers getting a tremendously foolish notion, and being drunk enough for it to appeal to them. But we're hearing whispers of terrorism instead - much as we heard from the Americans when they foiled a "terrorist plot" to blow up fuel storage tanks at Kennedy International. It would have been devastating, prosecutors told us. Only that "plot" had the same hole in it: air makes a lousy oxidiser. If it had been carried out, it would certainly have made a bigger fireball than the one in London would have made. But that's about it."
"So why is this such big news? Because clowns have got to be passed off as terrorists. Because a vast industry depends on terrorists, real and imagined, to justify its existence. We live now in the grip of the security-industrial complex, and that hungry beast demands to be fed. We feed it money hand over fist, and in return, it feeds us fear biscuits, which we are expected to accept with gratitude."
The reverse lionization and exaltation of Beavis and Butthead's private jihad on behalf of Gordon Brown and the rabid British and American media will achieve the goal of what they all crave - more terrorists, more copycats - when in reality these morons should be laughed at, ignored and locked up.
 Butthead's demand for an attorney falls on deaf ears. |
Terrorism only succeeds if the importance that is attached to it generates enough fear to fundamentally change open societies and strip them of the freedom that we are told the terrorists hate.
The definition of terrorism is, "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments , often for ideological or political reasons .
By this very definition, the hysterical frothing reaction to last week's non-events again underscores the painful truth that the government are the terrorists .
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3) Gang members are eligible for amnesty if they renounce their gang
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THE DEATH OF FREEDOM
PART 1
Joe American
July 2, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
Preamble:
"Any society that would give up a little liberty, to gain a little security, will deserve neither, and will lose both" --Benjamin Franklin
Introduction: This is the first of a series of articles I intend to write in what may very well be a fools errand. I say that because I love my country. I love the noble ideals of the Republic our flag represents, but I'm not sure many of my fellow Americans still feel the same way.
What I see around me is a nation of people who don't seem to have a clue about what is going on around them. For some, the reason for their distraction or disinterest is "they're too busy," for others "life's too complicated." Then again, I hear people say "I don't care" or "let someone else worry about those things."
What those attitudes represent is an aversion for personal responsibility. The reasons for avoiding personal responsibility don't really matter. Whatever the reason, the the result is the same. When the people of a free country disconnect themselves from their government by apathy, distraction or in any other manner, they are responsible for killing their nation.
Sometimes that death is slow, sometime it's fast, but dead is dead just the same.
How about you? Do you share any of the attitudes I mentioned above? If so, you are guilty of killing your country. You read that right. If that accusation upsets you, too bad. It does not matter if you like me or what I write. What does matter is that you read this series of articles and then do something to change your attitude. No matter who you are, where you live or, when you were born, it is long passed the time for you to begin acting like a responsible citizen.
Whether you realize it or not, the remnant of the formerly great Republic we all live in does not have much time left. Oh, I know you have a job, maybe even a career. You might be married with children. Perhaps you're rich and famous. None of that matters in the slightest, if your country perishes. If you do nothing you will have quite literally thrown away your birthright because it held no apparent value for you.
But there is still time. Turn off the television, pick up a nonfiction meaningful book, visit a reputable online news service and find out what is happening around you. Care enough to become a responsible person who will actually make a difference in this world. Discover what it means to be an American while that term still means something. Do it now, this vary moment. Read the rest of this article and the articles that follow in this series.
No, I don't make a penny for writing this, so take back that little curse word you just said about me. This isn't about me, It's about you. I'm doing something to try and save what is left of the legacy of freedom this country once exemplified. Join me and the other people just like us, before it's too late. Read on.
THE DEATH OF FREEDOM
America, circa 2007, is being deconstructed right before our eyes. It no longer matters if the effort is intentional, deliberate treason, or just complete incompetence. It is happening and the effects are building to a crescendo that will shatter the lives of every American and perhaps everyone else on earth.
America, the light of the world, the hope for the future, is dying. The disease is terminal and we have done it to ourselves. We have become a greedy, selfish and intellectually lazy people who cannot even bring themselves to vote most of the time and certainly cannot be bothered to pay attention to what our elected leaders are doing.
We seem to believe that elections occur so we can elect people to office to think for us. The problem is, 95 out of every 100 people we elect are just like us, also greedy, selfish and intellectually lazy. Once elected, they in-turn hire someone else to think for them. Those hired thinkers are called bureaucrats, who aren't quite as lazy as the rest of us. But they are still greedy and selfish. They serve themselves first and the electorate second, if at all.
The result is a theatrical farce we have come to know as government. But it is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people. Today, the national government and to lesser extents, State governments, are of the bureaucracy, for the special interests, and by the privileged. It has become what it is because of what we have become. Reread the second paragraph above.
Our 177 6 Declaration of Independence from Great Britain included a reference to a "long train of abuses" as being among the reasons for people to "set up new guardians" to protect their God given rights.
I submit to you dear reader that the train of abuses {of power}, inflicted by the British Crown on our founding fathers and which caused them to take up arms to throw off that abusive power, was but a pittance compared to the abuses our current government has and is inflicting on Americans today.
The actions of the current presidential administration are clear examples. Soon after the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the President declared that we are now "at war with terror". Putting aside the legal fact that the President is not vested with the authority to declare war (that authority is vested with Congress), have you ever thought about what that means?
We are at war with terror? Terror is a concept, and idea. How can we be at war with an idea, a concept? How do you defeat it? Whom do you kill? How do you win? Yet, this concept of being "at war with an idea" has lead to some of the most egregious abuses of governmental power any American has ever witnessed. The most far-reaching example is the reverse named "USA Patriot Act", passed shortly after the destruction of the World Trade Center.
No true patriot of this nation would propose, let alone sign such a foul Act of Congress. This "Act" is so blatantly unconstitutional, anti-freedom and illegal, that average Americans should have already been in the streets demanding it's repeal along with either the resignation, recall or impeachment of any elected office holder that either voted for or otherwise facilitated it's passage into Law.
The "USA" Patriot Act" is a "how to" rule book for instituting a dictatorship in these United States. I suggest that the deliberately misnamed "War on Terror" is in fact a war on freedom. On your freedom.
The fact is, I no longer believe its safe for me to write these very words, in this once free country. That is the reason I use the pseudonym "Joe American." The realization that some low or mid-level bureaucrat in the new Department of Homeland Security could decide my words are seditious (anti-government) and order a secret "review" of my telephone records, e-mail history, library use history, banking, tax and/or health records, etc., etc., until they found something to use to silence me, with or without my consent, scares the hell out of me. So much for the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
I you are one of those non-thinkers who say, "Well, if you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?", I say this: Let me have access to your private information and I'll find enough information about your personal activities to make a claim that you are guilty of any number of crimes. You don't need to do something wrong, I just need enough information to claim you could have. Under these new "laws" that's enough to make the accusation and force you to prove that I'm wrong.
And that is the point. If the government can secretly look into your private records and then develop and keep databases about you from what it finds, that information can be used without your knowledge or consent, to build a false charge against you, at any time. You will then be placed into a position of being forced to prove you are not guilty. Ever try to prove you didn't do something? Besides, that is also contrary to the very premise of our legal system. Remember innocent until proven guilty? Do you really want to live in a country that follows the legal path of claiming you are guilty until you can prove you are innocent?
The difference in these two concepts is the difference between being a free person and being a subject, which is just a politically correct way of saying slave. I don't know about you, but that sure matters to me. Put another way, it is the difference of living in a nation where citizens are voluntarily governed (a nation of laws), or involuntarily ruled by the whim of a dictator. I hope you can tell the difference between the two and also care about which one you want to live under.
You are probably saying to yourself right about now that I'm a fringe-group, black helicopter fearing weirdo/whacko.
Wrong.
In fact, I am a former soldier, law enforcement officer, and current elected official. I have sworn many oaths to protect this nation from enemies, both foreign and domestic. If I am a whacky, then so were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and all of our founding fathers. Remember, King George lll thought these men were seditious when they spoke out with the truth about what was happening 230 years ago.
It can't happen here, in America, you say? We are the home of the free, this is the land of the brave! We would never put up with a dictatorship here!!
Wrong again.
You are letting it happen this very second! It is happening because you believe it can not happen and those interests who want this country to be ruled "more efficiently" know they can pull it off because you and people like you will do nothing to stop them.
Unless you wake-up , right now, they're right.
Enough for now. You are probable getting the first twinges of a headache anyway. You can either go take a painkiller and go back to sleep or you can bear the pain for a little while as you think about what you've just read. To allow you to digest the words from this first half of Article One, I'll bid you adieu for now.
Part Two of "The Death of Freedom" is coming soon. While you are waiting with baited breath, try reading something worth while, like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. You just might learn something important. You'll probably realize how much you don't know, and that is a crucial step in the process of waking up. Along with a good cup of coffee. Go read.
Noblesse oblige; Veritas vos liberabit
© 2007 J.O.E. American Foundation - All Rights Reserved
These series of articles by J.O.E. American are written by a current elected official in a fairly high position. Person's name and state in which this person is currently serving is withheld for fear of retribution. Joe American was honorably discharged from the US armed forces, and served as a law enforcement officer.
Anyone wishing to send Joe American a letter may send it to the following address, and if possible, we will try to forward those letters.
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c/o JOE American
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