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Latest Articles: Dead Constitution
Republic versus Democracy
Post Date: 2006-09-27 16:44:27 by richard9151
6 Comments
Republic versus Democracy http://www.hisholychurch.net/study/gods/rvd.asp When you read the following, please remember that this subject may explain at least a part of why things are going wrong in America. And, it may begin to explain to you WHAT IS THE UNITED STATES, because I assure you, most Americans do not have a clue. This is an interesting read, but, it is only a beginning to understanding. Enjoy. "Throughout history, rulers and court intellectuals have aspired to use the educational system to shape their nations, The model was set out by Plato in The Republic and was constructed most faithfully in Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany.... One can see how ...
Torture's Defender: Buckley
Post Date: 2006-09-27 11:19:12 by bluedogtxn
13 Comments
Barbaric Buckley by Becky Akers by Becky Akers DIGG THIS Just as we know night is descending when darkness devours the sunset’s last colors, so we know barbarity is ascending when so-called gentlemen defend torture. Shamelessly. In a vicious column published last week and picked up by the New York Sun (among others), William "Effete Snob" Buckley sneers at those who would allow mere morality to keep the Bush Administration from abusing prisoners. Buckley has never screamed under the torturer’s ministrations. But that doesn’t stop him from mocking Sen. John McCain’s torment as a POW ("...McCain – miraculously still alive, given what he was made to ...
Bizarro Conservatism And its discontents
Post Date: 2006-09-27 08:07:15 by Zoroaster
1 Comments
Bizarro Conservatism
And its discontents
by Justin Raimondo
Our parent organization, the
Randolph Bourne Institute, is named after an early 20th-century liberal
famous for, among other
things, his trenchant observation that "war
is the health of the State" – a phrase that takes on quite a different connotation
in our degraded era. In these dark
times, Bourne's statement might be taken as meaning approval of war: after
all, the State, in ...
FBI Expands Fingerprint Database to Misdemeanors, Juvenile Offenders
Post Date: 2006-09-26 21:34:54 by IndieTX
5 Comments
WASHINGTON — The FBI is bolstering its database of fingerprints to include those from misdemeanor and juvenile offenses, but some state government officials are suggesting they won't go along with the change. FBI officials said the new record-collecting policy, which relies heavily on states to volunteer records of "nonserious" offenses, will help track down criminals and expand employee screening. But privacy advocates argue that enlarging the FBI's Fingerprint Identification Records System will bedevil job applicants with minor offenses on their records, and that the tide of data could lead to the misidentification of suspects. Previously, the FBI only admitted the ...
Part of Bush's Anti-Terror Plan Stalled; GOP give up trying to legalize warrantless wiretapping program
Post Date: 2006-09-26 20:09:01 by Brian S
1 Comments
(09-26) 15:59 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Half of President Bush's anti-terrorism legislative agenda stalled Tuesday when discord among Republicans forced GOP leaders to give up on trying to legalize his warrantless wiretapping program before the Nov. 7 election. Republican lawmakers instead turned their attention to the other half — establishing a legal framework for detaining, interrogating and trying terrorism suspects before military commissions. The House and the Senate were set to consider the detainee bill on Wednesday. Bush kept up his call for Congress to pass both measures. "If al-Qaida or al-Qaida affiliates are calling somebody in the country, we need to know why. ...
Congress unlikely to pass wiretapping
Post Date: 2006-09-26 15:51:01 by aristeides
7 Comments
Congress unlikely to pass wiretapping By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 43 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Congress is unlikely to approve a bill giving President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program legal status and new restrictions before the November midterm elections, dealing a significant blow to one of the White House's top wartime priorities. House and Senate versions of the legislation differ too much to bridge the gap by week's end, when Congress recesses until after the Nov. 7 elections, according to two GOP leadership aides who demanded anonymity because the decision had not yet been announced. House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters Tuesday ...
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF AMERICAN CONSERVATISM [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2006-09-26 03:43:40 by Uncle Bill
73 Comments
The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism C. Bradley Thompson Fall, 2006 Vol. 1, No.3 In 1994, American voters elected Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in forty years. This ascent to power gave Newt Gingrich and his colleagues the opportunity to launch their “Republican Revolution” with its signature “Contract with America” platform. The election was said to mark the end of an era—the era of big government liberalism that had dominated American political life since the New Deal. After struggling for almost half a century to gain political power, the conservative movement finally seemed to have ...
UN investigators: Torture in Iraq 'worse than under Saddam'
Post Date: 2006-09-25 19:49:45 by leveller
2 Comments
Torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under the regime of Saddam Hussein and "is totally out of hand", according to a United Nations investigator. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein," said Manfred Nowak, a UN special investigator on torture, at a press conference in Geneva. He said government forces, private militia and terrorist groups were all involved. "You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," said Mr Nowak, an Austrian law professor. ...
ONLY 25% IN NEW POLL APPROVE OF REPUBLICAN CONTROLLED CONGRESS - "Bush’s job approval rating was 37 percent"
Post Date: 2006-09-25 17:47:57 by Uncle Bill
5 Comments
Only 25% in Poll Approve of the Congress The New York Times By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER Published: September 21, 2006 With barely seven weeks until the midterm elections, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve re-election, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The disdain for Congress is as intense as it has been since 1994, when Republicans captured 52 seats to end 40 years of Democratic control of the House and retook the Senate as well. It underlines the challenge the Republican Party faces in trying to ...
You Might Be a Statist If ...
Post Date: 2006-09-25 04:08:58 by hammerdown
5 Comments
your notion of justice forces victims to provide, in part, the criminal's room, food, and entertainment. you believe that those in government employ have never lied; or if they did it was for our own good. you confuse the proper role of society (provide needs) and government (enforce rights). you assume legislation can successfully and/or permanently change the laws of supply and demand. you loan your money (at 0%) to the government all year and happily anticipate a tax refund. you assert guns cause crime, foods cause obesity, schools cause education, or states create wealth. your answer to "love thy neighbor" is to force taxpayers to be the good Samaritan. you want to constrain ...
U.S. gets ‘Sovietized’
Post Date: 2006-09-24 20:00:54 by Zipporah
13 Comments
In the late 1980s, I was the first western journalist allowed into the world’s most dreaded prison, Moscow’s sinister Lubyanka. Muscovites dared not even utter the name of KGB’s headquarters, calling it instead after a nearby toy store, “Detsky Mir.” I still shudder recalling Lubyanka’s underground cells, grim interrogation rooms, and execution cellars where tens of thousands were tortured and shot. I sat at the desk from which the monsters who ran Cheka (Soviet secret police) — Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria — ordered 30 million victims to their deaths. Prisoners taken in the dead of night to Lubyanka were systematically beaten for days with ...
Specter Objects to Part of Detainee Bill; "vigorously" disagrees with the habeas corpus provision...
Post Date: 2006-09-24 16:53:13 by Brian S
7 Comments
(09-24) 13:36 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday he has a problem with the Republican agreement on rules for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror. President Bush is pushing Congress to put the agreement into law before adjourning for the midterm elections, but Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Sunday he "vigorously" disagrees with the habeas corpus provision of the bill. The provision would allow legal counsel and a day in court to only those detainees selected by the Pentagon for prosecution. Other terror suspects could be held indefinitely without a hearing. "The courts have traditionally been open ...
Groups Denounce Deal on Detainee Rights
Post Date: 2006-09-24 12:04:37 by Zoroaster
1 Comments
Published on Saturday, September 23, 2006 by Inter Press Service Groups Denounce Deal on Detainee Rights by Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - Human and civil rights groups have broadly denounced a compromise deal on the application of the Geneva Conventions to detainees in the "global war on terror" worked out between the White House and a group of rebellious Republican senators whose efforts have been backed until now by their Democratic colleagues. This 'deal' still wipes out habeas corpus. (Its) abolishment is the equivalent of the authorization of executive detention -- one of the hallmarks of a police state. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights While ...
The US vs John Lennon: John Lennon and the Politics of Deportation
Post Date: 2006-09-24 04:14:36 by Zipporah
0 Comments
The new documentary "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" tells the story of Lennon's transformation from loveable moptop to antiwar activist, and recounts the facts about Richard Nixon's campaign to deport him in 1972 in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement. The filmmakers got lots of people to talk about Nixon and Lennon on camera, including Walter Cronkite, Gore Vidal, Mario Cuomo, George McGovern, Angela Davis and Bobby Seale, with G. Gordon Liddy representing the other side; the film also includes archival footage of Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover, and stars John Lennon and his biting wit and great music. It opens Sept. 15 in Los Angeles and New York City, and ...
Secret CIA Prisons in Your Backyard (Dedham, Mass.?)
Post Date: 2006-09-23 14:20:27 by Mekons4
9 Comments
The largest covert CIA operation since the Cold War is run not only by shadowy government contractors in the darkest corners of Afghanistan, but also by unassuming Americans in places like Dedham, Mass. Who's in Charge? When U.S. civilian airplanes were spotted in late 2002 taking trips to and from Andrews Air Force Base, and making stops in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, journalists and plane-spotters wondered what was going on. It soon became clear that these planes were part of the largest covert operation since the Cold War era. Called extraordinary rendition, the practice involves CIA officials or contractors kidnapping people and sending them to secret prisons around the world ...
Limbaugh Admits to Republican Voter Deception, Blames Democrats
Post Date: 2006-09-23 13:42:46 by innieway
17 Comments
On his radio show yesterday, comedian Rush Limbaugh encouraged Republican efforts to deliberately disenfranchise voters. I mean, you take a look at the average Democrat voter registration drive, you can take for every hundred thousand voters they register, the cumulative IQ would probably be less than a pencil eraser. So when it comes time for the election, half of them can be fooled in saying, "No, it's not Election Day. It's tomorrow, Wednesday." And they show up on Wednesday to vote when the polls are closed, and the Democrats claim a trick has been played on them. That's how stupid some of their voters are. Limbaugh then pointed out a specific example of a ...
Three New Deals: Why the Nazis and Fascists Loved FDR
Post Date: 2006-09-23 13:25:58 by DeaconBenjamin
6 Comments
Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939. By Wolfgang Schivelbusch. Metropolitan Books, 2006. 242 pgs. Critics of Roosevelt's New Deal often liken it to fascism. Roosevelt's numerous defenders dismiss this charge as reactionary propaganda; but as Wolfgang Schivelbusch makes clear, it is perfectly true. Moreover, it was recognized to be true during the 1930s, by the New Deal's supporters as well as its opponents. When Roosevelt took office in March 1933, he received from Congress an extraordinary delegation of powers to cope with the Depression. The broad-ranging powers granted to Roosevelt by Congress, before that body went ...
He Wrote the Book on Torture (REVIEW OF NEW YOO BOOK)
Post Date: 2006-09-23 10:58:32 by aristeides
14 Comments
He Wrote the Book on Torture War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror, John Yoo, Atlantic Monthly Press, 224 pages by James Bovard George W. Bush has made absolutism respectable among American conservatives. And no one has done more pimping for president-as-Supreme-Leader than John Yoo, the former Justice Department official who helped create the “commander-in-chief override” doctrine, unleashing presidents from the confines of the law. At a time when Bush is pushing Congress to approve the use in military tribunals of confessions that resulted from torture, it is vital to understand the thinking of the Bush administration’s most visible advocate ...
Torture, the Law of the Land - and The Torture Mastermind Reviewed
Post Date: 2006-09-23 06:32:08 by hammerdown
10 Comments
The key players in the U.S. Senate have agreed with the Bush administration to retroactively legalize torture by U.S. government agents. The compromise deal struck yesterday will block prosecution for CIA officials who tortured detainees since 9/11. I would expect that, in the name of “fair play,” someone will begin pushing similar legislation to give immunity to U.S. military officials who tortured detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. The legislative “compromise” blocks detainees from suing in federal court after they have been tortured. Game, set, match. And it is worse than naive for Americans to comfort themselves with the notion that the U.S. government will only ...
More Bush Diplomacy
Post Date: 2006-09-23 05:21:00 by hammerdown
0 Comments
Is it true that President Bush’s recent speech to the UN General Assembly means he no longer intends to use Iran’s "defiance" of a resolution by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a resolution by the UN Security Council – which violate the IAEA Statute, the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the UN Charter, itself – as an excuse to do unto Iran what Israel recently did unto Lebanon? Well, shortly after Bush appointed Condi Rice Secretary of State, she informed the conferees at the 2005 NPT Review Conference that. "Britain, France and Germany, with our support, are seeking to reach a diplomatic solution ...
Torture's Long Shadow
Post Date: 2006-09-22 18:30:56 by aristeides
3 Comments
Torture's Long Shadow By Vladimir Bukovsky Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page B01 CAMBRIDGE, England One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in his desk and called off the search. "But, Comrade Stalin," stammered Beria, "five suspects have already confessed to stealing it." This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture and inhumane treatment ...
Andrew Sullivan: The Torture "Compromise"
Post Date: 2006-09-22 18:19:37 by aristeides
1 Comments
The Torture "Compromise" 22 Sep 2006 04:24 pm Who can speak more persuasively than Vladimir Bukovsky? Money quote: I have seen what happens to a society that becomes enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse. This is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject. Indeed, with the exception of the Black Death, torture is the oldest scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it). Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and ...
The "scenic route" to torture
Post Date: 2006-09-22 13:36:55 by Peetie Wheatstraw
9 Comments
Despite all the legalistic obscurities surrounding the torture "compromise" between President Bush and Republican senators there is one critical fact of overarching significance that is now crystal clear. This entire controversy arose because the U.S. has been using "interrogation techniques" -- such as induced hypothermia, "long standing," threats directed at detainees' families and waterboarding -- that are widely considered to be torture, and therefore in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The only thing the president wanted was to ensure that the CIA could continue to use these techniques, and that, unquestionably, is precisely the outcome of this ...
BREAKING NEWS on torture/detainee bill
Post Date: 2006-09-21 20:34:25 by Zipporah
1 Comments
There are some who act as if torture and habeas corpus are serious matters. Fortunately, your representatives in Congress aren't the sort of milquetoast bleeding-hearts to believe that old malarky! The fun was most intense yesterday in the House Judiciary Committee (chaired by old man Sensenbrenner). Working off inadequate information last night, I was so unwise as to conclude on one of Bowers' threads that passage of the administration bill HR 6054 was some kind of masterstroke by the S-Man. Today, Milbank puts me right. (My earlier pieceson the topic.)skeptic06's diary :: :: Bear in mind first of all that there was no compulsion for the bill to go to Judiciary. It had already been ...
Court: Sen. Graham cannot serve as judge
Post Date: 2006-09-21 17:02:40 by aristeides
2 Comments
Court: Sen. Graham cannot serve as judge WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington has ruled that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham cannot concurrently serve as a senator and a military judge. The court said Wednesday the South Carolina Republican's position in Congress excluded him from serving in a judiciary capacity on the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals due to the Constitution's Incompatibility Clause, USA Today reported Thursday. The court said in its ruling that a member of Congress "performing independent judicial functions runs afoul of the fundamental constitutional principle of separation of powers." Eugene Fidell, president of ...
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