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Title: Has Bush been blackmailing congressional Democrats?
Source:
http://onlinejournal.com
URL Source: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2981.shtml
Published: Feb 22, 2008
Author: Paul Craig Roberts
Post Date: 2008-02-22 23:24:56 by robin
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Views: 239
Comments: 12
Commentary By Paul Craig Roberts President George W. Bush and his director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, are telling the American people that an unaccountable executive branch is necessary for their protection. Without the Protect America Act, Bush and McConnell claim, the executive branch will not be able to spy on terrorists, and we will all be blown up. Terrorists can only be stopped, Bush says, if Bush has the right to spy on everyone without any oversight by courts. The fight over the Protect America Act has everything to do with our safety, only not in the way that Bush and McConnell assert. Bush says the Democrats have put our country "more in danger of an attack" by letting the Protect America Act lapse. This claim is nonsense. The 30-year old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives the executive branch all the power it needs to spy on terrorists. The choice between FISA and the Protect America Act has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, at least not from foreign terrorists. Bush and his Brownshirts object to FISA, because the law requires Bush to obtain warrants from a FISA court. Warrants mean that Bush is accountable. Bush and his Brownshirts argue that accountability is an infringement on the power of the president. To escape accountability, the Brownshirt Party came up with the Protect America Act. This act eliminates Bush’s accountability to judges and gives the telecom companies immunity from the felonies they committed by acquiescing in Bush’s illegal spying. Bush began violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in October 2001 when he spied on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court. Bush pressured telecom companies to break the law in order to enable his illegal spying. In court documents, Joseph P. Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications International, states that his firm was approached more than six months before the September 11, 2001, attacks and asked to participate in a spying operation that Qwest believed to be illegal. When Qwest refused, the Bush administration withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nacchio himself was subsequently indicted for insider trading, sending the message to all telecom companies to cooperate with the Bush regime or else. Bush has not been held accountable for the felonies he committed and for leading telecom companies into a life of crime. As the lawmakers who gave us FISA understood, spying on people without warrants lets a political party collect dirt on its adversaries with which to blackmail them. As Bush illegally spied a long time before word of it got out, blackmail might be the reason the Democrats have ignored their congressional election mandate and have not put a stop to Bush’s illegal wars and unconstitutional police state measures. Perhaps the Democrats have finally caught on that they cannot function as a political party as long as they continue to permit Bush to spy on them. For one reason or another, they have let the Orwellian-named Protect America Act expire. With the Protect America Act, Bush and his Brownshirts are trying to establish the independence of the executive branch from statutory law and the Constitution. The FISA law means that the president is accountable to federal judges for warrants. Bush and the Brownshirt Republicans are striving to make the president independent of all accountability. The Brownshirts insist that the leader knows best and can tolerate no interference from the law, the judiciary, the Congress, or the Constitution, and certainly not from the American people who, the Brownshirts tell us, won’t be safe unless Bush is very powerful. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison saw it differently. The American people cannot be safe unless the president is accountable and under many restraints. Pray that the Democrats have caught on that they cannot give the executive branch unaccountable powers to spy and still have grounds on which to refuse the executive branch unaccountable powers elsewhere. Republicans have used the "war on terror" to create an unaccountable executive. To prevent the presidency from becoming a dictatorial office, it is crucial that Congress cease acquiescing in Bush’s grab for powers. As the Founding Fathers warned us, the terrorists we have to fear are the ones in power in Washington. The al Qaeda terrorists, with whom Bush has been frightening us, have no power to destroy our liberties. Compared to the loss of liberty, a terrorist attack is nothing. Meanwhile, Bush, the beneficiary of two stolen elections, has urged Zimbabwe to hold a fair election. America gets away with its hypocrisy because no one in our government has enough shame to blush.Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
Has Bush been blackmailing congressional Democrats?
Online Journal Guest Writer
Feb 22, 2008, 01:32
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#1. To: robin (#0)
Maybe this helps to explain why they won't impeach the Bush-Cheney machine, either.
Between blackmail and bribery we are no longer represented. It takes a lot of money to properly blackmail and bribe our representatives, that explains the need for all the wars.
'He will make Cheney look like Gandhi.' No one in DC makes it to a position of power unless they are completely blackmailable. junior and cheney included.
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price." Vir Cotto, Babylon 5
AWWWW what did they know? Robin and I have (I think) been in long agreement that the primary job of the FBI is to collect dirt on representatives to allow the shadow keep them in line. It certainly fits the nature of what we have over the years. The system has no problem with a dirty candidate, IF thay get to hold the dirt. Look A Gary Conduit, he obviously killed the girl, and skated. If you or I look sideways at a police officer, you may well get Tazed, bro.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" so some are more blackmailable than others? is that what forms a power structure? pretty sick
I'm glad I pay Qwest 24.95 every month for my long distance service. :)
Rebates for Ron - Ron Paul For Dummies - New R3volution
Absolutely. Pelosi's husband has mob connections and a little judicious blackmail suggesting that 10 to 30 in the Federal Pen is a definite conclusion is a powerful incentive for a corrupt politician to knuckle under. Look at the pressure that has been applied against Kucinich to force him to withdraw his Bill of Impeachment. What Bush wants the Spy powers for is not for American Security but for political control and to try keep himself out of Jail - which is where he belongs.
"The difference between an honorable man and a moral man is that an honorable man regrets a discreditable act even when it has worked and he is in no danger of being caught." ~ H. L. Mencken
Actually I don't think Condit personally killed her. I think she was likely working the "Mata Hari" game on Condit and she was whacked for working for a foreign intelligence agency - likely Mossad. My guess would be that she got hold of something that was so hot that it could not be allowed to go public. Condit was probably used to set her up so that the the hit team could get at her easily, but likely he was told to shut up and if he talked he would be whacked.
"The difference between an honorable man and a moral man is that an honorable man regrets a discreditable act even when it has worked and he is in no danger of being caught." ~ H. L. Mencken
I agree with your basic conclusion. I think "purim" and "The Book of Esther" are celebratory outlines for bringing down "kings" ... Jewish women are conveniently involved in this aspect of intel ops. ALL OF THE WOMEN IN CLINTON'S BLUE DRESS debacle were Jewish (Tripp, Lewinsky, Goldberg ... McCains Iseman/Jew York Times exposure etc., ... proveable ??? Determining the reasons for these scandals is impossible but noticing the potential for altering the perceptions of the masses is relevant and the MOSSAD are very well practiced and often caught even going so far as dressing like arabs and blowing shit up to have others blamed. This should be kept in mind. Personally I believe nothing is at it appears on the surface and all intel agencies work for international bankers/global rulers utilizing the various nation state networks as paymasters. The masses are given a show/soap opera trial, a suicide or some distraction to satisfy their curiosity, but the whole truth is seldom shared with them, at least for 100 years.
"If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer." John Maynard Keynes
Title: What Really happened To Chandra Levy? URL Source: www.geocities.com/norths tarzone/LEVY.html
"Tune in next week to see if doing nothing helps." -Deek Jackson
I sure got my eyes opened this past year in the fall when some rogue pubs started to drift away from surge and "winning". A well respected (not by me) pub congressman, Paul Gillmor OH said publicly that he favored troop withdrawl now (that is, in the fall when he was speaking in a town hall teleconference). Up to that point, he had been a die hard Bush / war supporter. The next week he died. "The Virginia state medical examiner's office said in a report that Gillmor died from blunt head and neck trauma consistent with a fall down the stairs. (in his DC condo.)Police assessed the scene and ruled out foul play. Gillmor's death was ruled an accident. (Sept 5, 2007) He was 68. So was Wellstone's death ruled an accident. It sends a powerful messgae, don't you think?
"Tune in next week to see if doing nothing helps." -Deek Jackson
you betcha it does !
#2. To: buckeye (#1)
U.S. conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, imagining presidential hopeful John McCain in the White House.
#3. To: buckeye (#1)
Maybe this helps to explain why they won't impeach the Bush-Cheney machine, either.
#4. To: robin (#0)
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison saw it differently. The American people cannot be safe unless the president is accountable and under many restraints.
#5. To: orangedog (#3)
No one in DC makes it to a position of power unless they are completely blackmailable. junior and cheney included.
#6. To: robin (#0)
#7. To: buckeye, robin (#1)
Maybe this helps to explain why they won't impeach the Bush-Cheney machine, either.
#8. To: tom007 (#4)
#9. To: Original_Intent (#8)
I think she was likely working the "Mata Hari" game on Condit and she was whacked for working for a foreign intelligence agency - likely Mossad.
#10. To: tom007 (#4)
Look A Gary Conduit
#11. To: noone222 (#9)
#12. To: angle (#11)
It sends a powerful messgae, don't you think?
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