In the eyes of the state we are ... no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants

chris hedges...

The widening use of militarized police units effectively nullifies the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the armed forces for civilian policing. City police forces have in the last few decades amassed small strike forces that employ high-powered assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, elaborate command and control centers and attack helicopters. Poor urban neighborhoods, which bear the brunt of the estimated 40,000 SWAT team assaults that take place every year, have already learned what is only dimly being understood by the rest of us—in the eyes of the state we are increasingly no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants.

watch your step, fellow citizens...!

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Eugene Robinson on the desperate slowness of Obama's "change" "change

and i think the jury is still out on whether we're witnessing any real "change" at all or whether, in fact, we ever will...

Like many people who desperately want to see the country take a more progressive course, I quibble and quarrel with some of President Obama's actions. I wish he'd been tougher on Wall Street, quicker to close Guantanamo, more willing to investigate Bush-era excesses, bolder in seeking truly universal health care. I wish he could summon more of the rhetorical magic that spoke so compellingly to the better angels of our nature.

But he's a president, not a Hollywood action hero.

yeah, ok, eugene... i concede he's not a hollywood action hero, but.............. when our country has been brought as low as it has to the extent that people - and i'm one of them - have begun to despair of it's ever being made right, maybe an action hero is what we need...besides, when i see obama deliberately continuing some of the very worse abuses of the previous administration, it's very hard for me to hold on to any hope for this president...

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The Obama DOJ - contradictions blatant, transparent, and extreme

and incredibly scarey...

greenwald...

The Obama DOJ is now squarely to the Right of an extremely conservative, pro-executive-power, Bush 43-appointed judge on issues of executive power and due-process-less detentions. Leave aside for the moment the issue of whether you believe that the U.S. Government should have the right to abduct people anywhere in the world, ship them to faraway prisons and hold them there indefinitely without charges or any rights at all. The Bush DOJ -- and now the Obama DOJ -- maintain the President does and should have that right, and that's an issue that has been extensively debated. It was, after all, one of the centerpieces of the Bush regime of radicalism, lawlessness and extremism.

[...]

I'm not searching for ways to criticize Obama. I wish I could be writing paeans celebrating the restoration of the Constitution and the rule of law. But these actions -- these contradictions between what he said and what he is doing, the embrace of the very powers that caused so much anger towards Bush/Cheney -- are so blatant, so transparent, so extreme, that the only way to avoid noticing them is to purposely shut your eyes as tightly as possible and resolve that you don't want to see it, or that you're so convinced of his intrinsic Goodness that you'll just believe that even when it seems like he's doing bad things, he must really be doing them for the Good. If there was any unanimous progressive consensus over the last eight years, it was that the President does not have the power to kidnap people, ship them far away, and then imprison them indefinitely in a cage without due process. Has that progressive consensus changed as of January 20, 2009? I think we're going to find out.

it's very hard for me to square this with any hope i might have for a return to constitutional law, not when it's headed in the exact opposite direction...

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We're talking about the end of the Constitution and 225 years of constitutional history and Leahy's proposal is "extremely dangerous"

the release of the secret bush administration legal memos is stirring up a righteous storm...

raw story...

His presidency now a smoldering memory, Harper's contributing editor Scott Horton thinks that perhaps he wasn't kidding after all. In a March 3 column, Horton extrapolated on "George W. Bush's Disposable Constitution," expanding on his thoughts during a Thursday broadcast of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Since the Monday release of nine previously-secret Bush administration legal memos claiming that the president has the power to ignore the Constitution when fighting terrorism, experts have almost unanimously denounced both their legal reasoning and their conclusions.

"These memos provide the very definition of tyranny," Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Tuesday. "These memos include everything that a petty despot would want."

Olbermann's Thursday guest was just as strident as Turley in his view of the prior administration.

"We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship," wrote Horton in his Harper's article.

here's scott horton talking with keith olbermann...



and, in spite of my support for patrick leahy's "truth commission," i find the point that michael ratner makes in talking with amy goodman on democracy now, rather compelling...

I think essentially that the Leahy commission is an excuse for non-prosecution. It’s essentially saying, “Let’s put some stuff on the public record. Let’s immunize people. And then,” as he even said, “let’s turn the page and go forward.” That’s really an excuse for non-prosecution. And in the face of what we’ve seen in this country, which is essentially a coup d’etat, a presidential dictatorship and torture, it’s essentially a mouse-like reaction to what we’ve seen. And it’s being set up really by a liberal establishment that is really, in some ways, in many ways, on the same page as the establishment that actually carried out these laws. And it’s saying, “OK, let’s expose it, and then let’s move on.”

[...]

[T]here’s a lot of pressure in this country right now for prosecutions. I mean, the polls indicate that people want to see a criminal investigation. We’ve had open—open and notorious admissions of waterboarding by people like Cheney. And we know that waterboarding is torture, even according to Obama.

So, how do you diffuse that pressure? And one way you diffuse it is you set up a, quote, “truth commission” that’s going to give immunity to people. And then, as Leahy himself says—the word he used, I think, is that he objects to those “fixated” on prosecution. Well, you know, it’s a legal requirement that you prosecute torturers in your country. And yet, he calls us “fixated” on it and wants to make this excuse.

[...]

This is not about mistakes. This is about fundamental lawbreaking, about the disposal of the Constitution, and about the end of treaties. So I think, actually, that Leahy’s current proposal is extremely dangerous.

ratner goes on to spell out in detail the horrifying extent of what had been put in place under the bush administration...

[W]hat we see in these memos—and I recommend them to everybody, because you read these, you are seeing essentially the legal underpinnings of a police state or a dictatorship of the president. There’s no doubt about it. That’s what it is, and it’s not theoretical. ... [W]hat happened here was one of these memos said the military could operate in the United States, and operate in the United States despite the Posse Comitatus law, which prohibits the military from operating in the United States. And when it operates—this is really extraordinary—they can arrest and detain—“arrest” is not the right word—kidnap anyone they want and send them to a detention place anywhere in the world without any kind of law.

And then, on top of that, they can disregard the First Amendment. So this conversation we’re having right now, they could say, “Well, this is harmful to the national security of the United States”—that’s what these memos say—“this type of conversation is harmful, and we can ban this conversation.” And then they could put the military at the door to the firehouse and come in and say the Fourth Amendment, the one that protects us against unlawful searches, that the military could walk in here, search all of us and see if we have anything they don’t like on us. So, no First Amendment, no Fourth Amendment, no Fifth Amendment—essentially, the end of the Constitution and 225 years of constitutional history.

yes, it's hair-raising stuff, but nothing that folks like me and and number of others have been saying all along... something else that many of us have been saying is that we simply MUST have accountability for these shocking abuses... nothing else than facing facts square in the face is going to put this behind us...

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Naomi Wolf interprets the "secret memos"

and, yes, all of the fears of those of us who were talking about a quiet, hidden "coup," were not only justified, but were much worse than we imagined...

If history gets this recent era right, future textbooks will have to show that the US narrowly averted a carefully planned but thorough and unmistakable conspiracy to subvert the rule of law and the process of democracy from 2001-2008. For three years, since writing End of America, I have been arguing that the Bush team sought irretrievably to subvert our liberty. Fortunately, this appalling and conceivably irrevocable subversion of the tenets of freedom was narrowly averted by citizens at every level -- from the grassroots to the courts -- resisting in time. But the release this week by the Justice Department of the "secret memos" sought valiantly by the ACLU confirms that Bush's legal architects were building up the framework for something even scarier than our most anguished projections.

[...]

The Washington Post called these memos "legal errors." We need to stare them in the face and understand them: they are evidence that the groundwork was laid out that gave the president the legal power effectively subvert the Republic. We need to understand the full darkness of what we narrowly escaped -- for now, our work is hardly begun. We need to build these lessons into our history and to use the terror they represent to dismantle the last of Bush's evil legacy -- a legacy that could have been activated by any US president in the future, including Obama or McCain -- and see these memos for what they are: the revealed architecture of an intended edifice of what amounts to treason again our republic and against all of us, regardless of belief, station of life, or political party.

i would add one very serious caution to what ms. wolf is saying here and that is we are not out of the woods yet by any means...

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Oil Corruption, Who Knew?

More shocking than gov't/coprorate corruption:it cost 5.3 million to prove it.
Imagine what we don't know.

Gov't officials probed about illicit sex, gifts
By DINA CAPPIELLO, AP

WASHINGTON -Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties partied, had sex with and accepted golf and ski outings from employees of energy companies they were dealing with, federal investigators said Wednesday.
The alleged transgressions involve 13 former and current Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.

[...]

The reports describe a fraternity house atmosphere (emphasis added, for Jolly Roger)inside the Denver Minerals Management Service office responsible for marketing oil and natural gas that energy companies barter to the government in lieu of cash royalty payments for drilling on federal lands. The government received $4.3 billion in such royalty-in-kind payments last year. The oil and gas is then resold to energy companies or put in the nation's emergency stockpile.

Fraternity House Atmosphere. Makes sense if you have an ex-frat boy at the helm.

"During the course of our investigation, we learned that some RIK employees frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives," the report said. Two government employees who had to spend the night after a daytime industry function because they were too intoxicated to drive home were commonly referred to by energy traders as the "MMS Chicks."
Between 2002 and 2006, nearly a third of the 55-person staff in the Denver office received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, including Chevron Corp., Shell, Hess Corp. and Denver-based Gary-Williams Energy Corp., the investigators found. Two oil marketers received gifts and gratuities on at least 135 occasions. One admitted having a one-night-stand with a Shell employee. That same individual allegedly passed out business cards for her sex toy business at work, bragging that her income from that business exceeded her salary at the Interior Department.
Devaney said the investigations took so long because Chevron refused to cooperate. An Interior Department official said Chevron would not allow investigators to interview its employees.

I haven't posted for a while because of all the election irritation. It's depressing. Both candidates are corporate flunkies, but McCain's record is a rap sheet that certainly is yards longer than Obama.
I still can't bring myself to vote for either of them.
So, I decided to at least contribute to the overall cause of spreading information on the overall corruption of our Federal Constitutional Republic.
This article is just another in a long series of Republican perversion and corruption, while they are actively campaigning to their social conservative base.
It would be funny, if it was unique.
It's not, and it's one reason why I left the Repub. party years ago.
And by the way, my friends overseas really think the gun-toting tart in the flag bikini is not the image you want for a V.P.
I agree, but the picture is hot. I guess I'm still partly a Republican. My apologies.

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We have little to celebrate tomorrow

for all the good people and good fortune we are blessed to have in this country, it seems the height of denial to be celebrating the fact that all of it is poised on the brink of disaster... unless there's a rabbit ready to pop out of a hat somewhere, tomorrow can only serve as an occasion to grieve over all we've lost (and are continuing to lose, even as i write this)...

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4th Amendment...? We don't need no ste-e-e-een-kin' 4th Amendment...

it's coming up on the second anniversary of the time i had my laptop, camera, memory stick, flash drives, dvd's and cd's seized in san francisco as i was returning to the u.s. from overseas and not returned to me for three weeks... i will be entering the u.s. again early the morning of june 7 at jfk... i must have stumbled across this article as a reminder...

It is definitely fascism when it happens to you by Wayne Madsen May 14, 2008, 00:20 WMR -- In Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's world of an "Israelized" America, the terms SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) and BDO (Behavior Detection Officer) are the new acronyms of Stasi-like control of the American citizenry by a government that treats anyone as a suspicious person in the same manner that Israel mistreats its own Arab citizens and Palestinians. Sunday, this editor and his colleague faced the Chertoffian menace at Washington's Reagan National Airport while heading to the gate to board a flight to Houston. It is now clear from a review of the events that unfolded that I was pre-selected for an intensive search and battery of questions even before arriving in line for the security screening. A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screener was overheard saying, "the guy with the beard." Since I was the only person in line who also had a beard, it was evident that a red flag had earlier been raised. What followed, was worse than anything I had previously encountered while leaving Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, itself a revolting display of ingratitude to citizens of the country that bankrolls Israel, or the Israeli-run screening process at Amsterdam's Schipol Airport. First, I was instructed to enter a glass isolation chamber and point out my belongings that were exiting the X-ray machine. Anyone with claustrophobia would really enjoy being placed in such a chamber and have to speak to the screener through small holes in the glass. I was then led to an area where all my carry-on bags were emptied. I was also forced to empty my pockets of everything. A bevy of screeners then proceeded to go through my wallet examining everything: cash, credit cards, VA medical benefits card, National Press Club card, voter's registration card, and driver's license. Then came an examination of my press credentials and related IDs: Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) card, Society of Professional Journalists card, National Archives research card, Library of Congress card, three press credentials, and membership card in Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO). In a blatant violation of the First and Fourth Amendments, my reporter's notebooks, containing names of contacts in Houston and around the world were paged through by the screeners. Another screener asked if I minded being probed in "certain private areas." He then asked if I'd like the examination to be conducted in private. I replied, "No, let everyone see this." He then proceeded to examine my groin area. Then came the battery of questions. 1. Are you feeling okay? 2. Where are you going today? 3. How long will you be there? 4. Why are you going there? 5. What story are you covering/ 6. Who do you write for? 7. When did you move to Washington? 8. Where did you live before that? 9. What did you do for a living before? 10. Who was the most famous person you ever met? 11. What was the most famous event you ever covered? 12. What type of things do you write about? 13. What type of politics do you cover? 14. What is your place of birth? My colleague, who had successfully passed through screening and was waiting for me, was then asked to step into the holding area so she "could see and hear what was going on." It was a ruse. She was also subjected to a full carry-on bag examination, frisking, and a series of personal questions: 1, Are you with him? 2. Where are you going? 3. What is the purpose of your visit? 4. What story are you investigating? 5. How long were you in the US Air Force? 6. Where were you stationed overseas? 7. Why were you not overseas in the military? 8. When are you returning? 9. Who do you work for? 10. What is an independent journalist? 11. How long have you been working with him? 12. Do you find your job fulfilling? 13. What is your place of birth? After this Gestapo-like of questioning, I was told that a TSA screener was writing details in a notebook for the "paperwork." My colleague was told TSA was going to file an "incident report." The nature of WMR's coverage is that our sources are our lifeblood and anything done to compromise them is a direct attack on the freedom of the press and our rights as journalists. The notion of press freedom does not exist in Chertoff's worldview of police state tactics and total surveillance but his worldview is a distinctly un-American one, something that is more properly relegated to the history books of his ancestral Czarist Russia. When our investigations take us beyond the Washington Beltway, it is not within Chertoff's purview to find out details about the purpose of the trip, even though it may shed an unwelcome light on his network of Mossad operatives and Russian-Israeli gangsters and scam artists who are now running rampant in these United States of America. The antics at Washington Reagan National are not unique. Foreign journalists have been subjected to similar invasive screening either at US embassies when applying for the required journalist visas to visit the United States or at immigration screening at US entry points. The corporate media will not report on these cases as they are part of the problem in allowing Chertoff and his American Gestapo to continue to turn the United States into one big West Bank-style checkpoint. One other note. This editor visited the USSR and draconian nations such as Paul Kagame's Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni's Uganda, Hun Sen's Cambodia, the former military junta's Thailand, surveillance society Singapore, and Muslim monarchy Brunei Darussalam. Nothing compares to what occurred at Washington National Airport. It is yet another sign of the fact that the United States has entered a phase of fascist control. There's only one question that remains: Is the slide reversible? Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report. Copyright © 2008 WayneMadsenReport.com

i've kept the receipt for my things that i was issued in san francisco on that unnerving occasion handy in my briefcase... if the same situation should arise, my plan is to produce it with a flourish and ask if they really want to put me through this again...

an additional twist to my plan evolved when i was visiting the family of friends in northern argentina in november 2006... one of the family's cats got into my briefcase and peed all over the briefcase and the receipt... i had to dispose of the briefcase and get a new one, but i kept the receipt and i still carry it with me in a zip-lock bag to avoid it smelling up my new briefcase... if i do end up producing that receipt at customs, you can better believe that i will be removing it from the bag and waving it right under the nose of whatever ice official has decided to abridge my rights...

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George Bush...? Contempt for the law...? NO-O-O-O-OOO...! Say it isn't so...!

at 1:05, it's a bit longish, but damn well worthwhile...

Bush has a sneering contempt for the law

He says that on his say so alone he can identify anyone in the United States as creating a "significant risk of undermining reconstruction program in Iraq, or political reform by creating a risk that an act of violence might be committed." And when he identifies you, he doesn't inform you. But you are instantly subjected to a financial death penalty. All your assets are frozen; no one then can do any business with you.

A Must Watch - Video Discussion -

Chairman of the American Freedom Agenda
Bruce Fein and former United States
Congressman Bob Barr

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An open letter to the Obama campaign

Dear Colleagues,

I am currently working on a USAID-funded project in Kabul, Afghanistan, but I am closely following the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in the U.S.

For a number of years, I have become increasingly distressed over the actions of the Bush administration, a distress that has grown enormously since the 2006 elections after watching the Democrats both in Congress and the Senate abdicate their responsibilities and make a mockery of their oath of office. Our Constitution has been systematically shredded, and not one of our elected leaders, with the possible exceptions of Senator Dodd and Representative Kucinich, has addressed that issue with anywhere near the forceful response it deserves.

I have given Senator Obama's campaign ever-closer scrutiny over the past few months, and have actually begun to shed some of the entrenched cynicism over my country's "American Idol" election process, at least where Senator Obama is concerned. I appreciate more than I can say being spoken to like an adult with good sense, and to see the Senator not only rise above, but positively leverage the repeated and, in my opinion, well-coordinated attacks from the media, republicans, the corporate and business elites, and members of his own political party, gives me a sense of hope I haven't felt in a long, long time.

I have two thoughts to offer to Senator Obama.

One is that I would greatly appreciate it if the Senator would directly address the abuses of executive power and, arguably, the unconstitutional actions engaged in repeatedly over the seven years of the Bush administration, from approval of torture, to initiating a war in Iraq based on lies, to the manipulations of executive signing statements, to a refusal to respond to Congressional subpoenas, to the politicization of the Justice Department, etc., etc. By "addressing" I mean "renouncing" and, moreover, pledging to roll back those levers of unfettered executive power as part of the Senator's agenda for his first days in office. They must not be allowed to stand.

Second, on a slightly different subject, since Senator Clinton seems bound and determined to destroy Senator Obama's credibility, his campaign, his chances to win the Democratic nomination and any hope he has of being elected President, I would like to suggest that Senator Obama's response should simply be to ignore her and to begin campaigning against Senator McCain. By constantly responding to Senator Clinton's allegations, innuendos and accusations, the Senator, although I admire greatly the quality of his responses, only serves to reinforce her power over him. Reinforcement is reinforcement, be it positive or negative, and Senator Clinton does not deserve to be reinforced. Yes, I fully realize that there WILL be those occasions where responses are required, but, as a general strategy, I think it would serve the Senator and all of us who support him much better if, as much as is practical, he could just let her attacks roll off his back and go on with his campaign.

Best regards,

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De facto suspension of the Constitution - Bush pronounces a detainee "an unlawful enemy combatant" and the person loses all human rights

robert parry posting on consortium news via alternet...

Under the Bush-Yoo theories, all Bush has to do is pronounce a detainee "an unlawful enemy combatant" -- whether a U.S. citizen or not, whether there is any credible evidence or not -- and the person loses all human rights.

As radical -- and as shocking -- as these theories may seem to many Americans, Bush is within one vote on the U.S. Supreme Court of having his vision enshrined as

If one more vacancy occurs among the five "non-imperial" justices -- and the replacement is in line with Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-and-Alito -- the U.S. Constitution could be effectively altered to eliminate key individual liberties -- from habeas corpus and other fair-trial rights to bans on "cruel and unusual" punishment to protections against self-incrimination and "unreasonable searches and seizures."

Though civics books tell us that the Constitution can only be amended by two-thirds votes of the House and Senate and approval by three-quarters of the states, the reality is that five ideologues on the U.S. Supreme Court can alter the nation's founding document by simply voting as a bloc.

And since the "war on terror" is unlike other wars -- in that the enemy is vaguely defined, the duration could be forever and the war's location can be anywhere -- the Bush-Yoo logic suggests that the de facto suspension of the American constitutional Republic is not just a short-term emergency measure.

Instead, the shift from a Republic, with legal protections of individual rights, to an Empire, led by an Executive who can operate without any constraints, would be permanent. As long as the President says some danger lurks out there, he or she could assert "plenary" -- or total -- powers as commander in chief.

[...]

Though Bush may not get another chance to further shape the Supreme Court with the appointment of another Roberts or Alito, his successor likely will. For some Americans angered by Bush's assault on the Constitution, John McCain's past support for Bush's judicial appointments may represent one of the strongest reasons to vote against him.

The future of the American Republic may be at stake.

"may" be at stake is a serious understatement... the future of the american republic HAS BEEN AT STAKE for a number of years now and WILL CONTINUE TO BE AT STAKE even after the inauguration of a (presumably) democratic president on 20 january 2009, if the current mechanisms of unfettered executive power are not both ROLLED BACK and FORMALLY REPUDIATED prior to that time... i don't want those mechanisms in the hands of ANY president... not mccain, not hillary, not obama...

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Keep Focus, Stop The War

We can't fight on all fronts at once.
The Economy is a runaway train.
Corruption is commonplace.
Religious zealots threaten us with Theocracy.
Racial tensions are being fueled from every direction.
And through it all we are pissing in the only place we can all call home, our planet.
Hmmm, I guess I've grown up a little since leaving the Republican party? It certainly isn't because I became a Democrat. I haven't.
We can't fight all of these battles at the same time. There is one battle we can fight, ending the war.
Why pick the war? After all, a lot of folks are facing the loss of their home or job.
We need to end the war to save our homes, jobs, security, economy and last but most important, our Constitution.
I've been away for a while, so you may be in need of some of my favorite soul food.
Once again from the past, the wisdom of the Founders speaks to us today.

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

- James Madison, April 20, 1795

Just think, the Three Stooges buying the presidency think the Founders couldn't have foreseen the problems we face today.
Forcing the crooks in DC to end the war will be a major step in getting our Republic back. It hits the Corrupt where it hurts most, their wallets.
And by the way, ending the war is the right thing to do, in case we forgot.

Fighting evil is a moral obligation. Fighting Corruption is a civil obligation. Fighting tyranny is a political obligation. Fighting all three is the war to save Humanity.

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Scott Horton: "The curtain continues to fall over American democracy"

i notice that even i, as one who has ranted and raved for nearly three years about the shredding of our constitution, have fallen into a mild torpor over the continuing abuse of our fundamental constitutional principles by the bush administration... maybe i'm just tired of repeating myself... maybe i'm just tired... am i still deeply disturbed over what's happening...? yes, more than i can possibly express, but perhaps most of all by our national denial that a crisis even exists, overlain by our childlike belief that the november election will be our salvation...

scott horton...

[T]he darkness continues to descend in Washington, the powers of the state continue to grow and the mechanisms of accountability rot away unused. Americans are focused on the selection of a new president. Many of them share the naïve assumption that on January 20, 2009, when a new leader takes the oath of office from the south steps of the Capitol Building, the Founders’ constitutional order will once more be set aright and the extra-constitutional excesses of the Bush years will be but a bad memory. But whoever is installed as the new guardian of presidential power will not likely part with many of the rights that Bush claimed and was allowed to use, unchallenged.

[...]

The curtain continues to fall over American democracy. Americans understandably are sickened by the tragi-comedy that spreads itself across this stage. But their faith in another presidential election and another leader is misplaced. They need to reserve their faith not for the new, but for the old: for the constitutional model that the Founders left. It needs to be forced to work. And all those who undermine it must be held to account. That includes the should-be watchdogs, who slobbering at the prospect of a few drug-drenched sirloins hurled their way, are failing in their duty to protect their true masters: the American people.

We live in the age of the Great Betrayal, in an age in which too few are willing to state the obvious. There is still time to check the progress of tyrannical power, but the hour grows late, and the sounds of alarm no longer seem to register with a somnolent populace.

all i can do is keep pounding the drum even when it takes every ounce of strength i have left to keep doing it...

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REAL U.S. citizens know and support the U.S. CONSTITUTION

yeah, i know... a radical concept...

scott ritter speaks in new orleans, via brasscheck tv...



it's all about CITIZENSHIP, people...!

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The REAL reason why the telcos don't care about immunity and Bush DOES...?

kevin drum offers up blogger bmaz' thoughts about why...

[T]he reason the telcos don't care all that much about the lawsuits being pursued against them is because they almost certainly signed indemnification agreements with the feds back in 2001. Such agreements would force the federal government to pay any legal judgments awarded in suits against the telcos:

It is my contention that the telcos have just such indemnification agreements with the Administration/government, that we do not know about because they are classified and hidden, that so protect them for any liability and losses resulting from the litigation they are faced with; thus they do not need immunity to protect them from potential liability verdicts, they are already covered....As someone that has had dealings with such entities regarding bad/illegal wiretaps, I can attest that they always protect themselves vis a vis the governmental entity they are working for and are not shy about the use of indemnity provisions.

In email, bmaz put it to me even more strongly: "The general counsels and legal departments of telcos are extremely accomplished and always protect their company's interests meticulously. They have been dealing with wiretapping and surveillance agreements with the government and law enforcement for over seven decades, this was not a matter of first impression to them; and in difficult and unique cases, I have never seen them not insist on indemnification. Never."

In the Washington Post today, Dan Eggen and Ellen Nakashima talk to some of the people behind the telco suits, and they don't seem to think that potential payouts are the issue either — which is why the telcos are remaining fairly low key about the whole thing. Rather, it's the Bush administration that wants immunity, and they want it because they're trying to keep the scope of their wiretapping programs secret:

"I think the administration would be very loath for folks to realize that ordinary people were being surveilled," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the lead lawsuit, against AT&T.

....Peter Eliasberg, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney involved in cases against AT&T and Verizon, said that if the cases proceed, the plaintiffs could submit an interrogatory to the carriers seeking answers to the questions: Did you turn over customer phone records en masse to the government? Did you receive a warrant or a subpoena?

Answers to those questions, he said, might reveal that "everybody in the country" has had their phone calls "combed through, and lots of people will be outraged."

Obviously some of this stuff is guesswork, though pretty well-founded guesswork, and bmaz suggests that the press ought to show some interest in the possible existence of indemnification agreements. I agree. If they exist, it would mean the telcos have never been exposed in any way, and immunity would have no effect on their willingness to cooperate with the government in the future. It would also explain why the Bush administration was able to keep the telcos on board so easily even after the Protect America Act expired three weeks ago. Indemnification might be a good subject for some enterprising national security journalist to start prying into.

fits nicely, doesn't it...? maybe we could get some in-depth info on this before congress takes another shit on the constitution...?

(thanks to smithintheus at daily kos...)

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"The US Congress cannot conspire in Bush's destruction of US civil liberty and expect a future restoration of civil liberty"

paul craig roberts articulates the precise issue that bothers me the most about the serial capitulation of our congress, unfolding once again as we watch, aghast...

No matter who is the next president, the Bush Regime has established that the executive branch is no longer a co-equal branch of government. It is the primary branch, armed with unaccountability and the discretion to consult with other branches of government if it so wishes. The US Congress cannot give up the powers it has given up during the Bush years and ever expect to get them back.

The US Congress cannot conspire in Bush's destruction of US civil liberty and expect a future restoration of civil liberty.

Republican federal judges who have aided and abetted the rise of an executive branch dictatorship cannot expect the judiciary to continue as a check on the unconstitutional and illegal behavior of the executive branch.

The Bush Regime, with the complicity of Congress and the judiciary, has destroyed the American constitutional system.

[...]

In the November 2006 congressional elections, voters gave Democrats control of Congress in order to rein in the Republican administration, but by then Congress had been reduced to an impotent branch of government and has proven to be incapable of reining in even an unpopular president with a 19% approval rating.

If a Regime that has come to be despised and deplored by a majority of Americans and the world can ride roughshod over law and the Constitution, constitutional government obviously has no future in America.

[...]

The only power the House has left is impeachment, and Pelosi is too frightened to use it. Why is the Speaker of the House afraid to use the power the Constitution gives her to remove from office a president who deceived Congress and the American people, who violated US and international law, and who is a clear and present danger to American liberty, to the US Constitution, and to peace and stability in the world?

good question... i'm torn between two possible answers... one is, yes, congress is frightened because something big enough and dark enough is being held over their heads that effectively prevents them from fulfilling their oath of office... the other is simply that they are co-conspirators, that they are getting something for themselves out of this horrible, country-destroying charade...

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"Because executive privilege is also a law, it's sometimes necessary to violate the law in order to uphold the law"

jonathan turley describes the catch-22 of the bush administration, perfected by its newest criminal cabinet member, michael mukasey...

In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.

[...]

Mukasey's Paradox appears designed to play tricks with Congress. Its origins date back to Mukasey's confirmation hearings, when he first denied knowing what waterboarding was and then (when it was defined for him) refused to recognize it as torture. In fact, it is not only a crime under U.S. law, it is a well-defined war crime under international law.

The problem for Mukasey was that if he admitted waterboarding was a crime, then it was a crime that had been authorized by the president of the United States -- an admission that would trigger calls for both a criminal investigation and impeachment. Mukasey's confirmation was facing imminent defeat over his refusal to answer the question when Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suddenly rescued him, guaranteeing that he would not have to answer it.

Once in office, Mukasey still had the nasty problem of a secret torture program that was now hiding in plain view. Asked to order a criminal investigation of the program, Mukasey refused. His rationale left many lawyers gasping: Any torture that occurred was done on the advice of counsel and therefore, while they may have been wrong, it could not have been a crime for CIA interrogators or, presumably, the president. If this sounds ludicrous, it is. Under that logic, any president can simply surround himself with extremist or collusive lawyers and instantly decriminalize any crime.

[...]

When reduced to its purest form, Mukasey's Paradox is that government officials cannot violate the law -- but that because executive privilege is also a law, it's sometimes necessary to violate the law in order to uphold the law.

[...]

Consider that Mukasey took an oath under which he swore to uphold the laws of this country -- even if the violator is the president of the United States or his aides. That oath means that all laws must be upheld without exception. Except, according to his interpretation, that executive power is a form of constitutional law that creates exceptions to the enforcement of laws.

all of which only serves to tell us what we already knew, that, for george bush and his merry band of outlaws, the rule of law is only a subject for the history books...

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"Tens of millions of workers in America go to work every day [where] they could be swept up in a massive raid conducted by armed government agents"

are you an american citizen...? do you believe you have constitutional rights...? do you believe those rights should be extended to everyone, no matter what their status, who is on american soil...? so do i, but we are a friggin' long way from that these days...

At the gathering at the Hay-Adams hotel in the District, witnesses and members of the 10-person panel accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials of using arrest warrants for a limited number of illegal immigrants who work at a given company as a pretext to detain the entire workforce, including many U.S. citizens, while agents determine whether there are additional illegal immigrants among them.

"Tens of millions of workers in America go to work every day without . . . an awareness that at their workplaces, without any warning, they could be swept up in a massive raid conducted by heavily armed government agents," said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and chairman of the National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of 4th Amendment Rights. "Workers are not aware that they could be detained at gunpoint. That they could be handcuffed. . . . That they could be denied any contact with family members or legal counsel."

The commission heard testimony from two workers who are U.S. citizens who said they were detained for several hours during an ICE raid of six Swift meatpacking plants in December 2006. The union has filed a class action on their behalf.

Afterward, Pat Reilly, an ICE spokeswoman who attended the hearing as an observer, said the agency's procedures for questioning workers during raids at businesses are fair and humane and have been routinely upheld by courts.

"I would imagine that some people may be detained beyond what they feel is reasonable. But it's subjective," she said. "What we're trying to do is get to the bottom of who has the right to be here and who might be posing as a U.S. citizen."

there is a deeper, darker, underlying purpose of these raids, and that is to produce fear and get us accustomed to seeing heavily armed federal agents sweeping through places that we once felt safe, and to instill the belief that, "wow, that could be ME they're hauling away..." and if you think that isn't part of the plan, i've got a private island off the coast of belize i want you to consider purchasing...

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In the endless distraction of the 2008 campaign, let's not forget what's REALLY going on

most of us are well aware of naomi wolf and her book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, but this 38-minute youtube interview of naomi by mark molaro bears watching, if for nothing else than to remind ourselves of what is REALLY happening out there... as much as we yearn for the full dawning of the light and as much as we are all working to that end, we cannot afford to be blind to the plans the dark has for us...

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Upholding the U.S. Constitution - what a concept!

(thanks to mcjoan at daily kos...)

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