Spying

"Steven R. Shapiro, the ACLU’s legal director, has said his group is in a "Catch-22" because the government says the identities of people whose communications have been intercepted is secret. But only people who know they have been wiretapped can sue over the program"

from Associated Press: High court turns away challenge to domestic-spying program

Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing a comprehensive piece of legislation to restore the American Constitution and to restore the liberties that have been sadly eroded over the past several years.

This legislation seeks to restore the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution by our Founding Fathers to prevent abuse of Americans by their government. This proposed legislation would repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and re-establish the traditional practice that military commissions may be used to try war crimes in places of active hostility where a rapid trial is necessary to preserve evidence or prevent chaos.

Well it seems the Bush supporters at SMU follow in the footsteps of Bush himself. There are confirmations that signers who support the Presidential Library at SMU, but who merely ask that the records stored there be open to the public, are having their signatures and comments repeatedly deleted.

Truly, why hasn't this war criminal been impeached yet?

MJ

- Current Article: -
Poisoned Spies and Conspiracy Theories, by Garry Reed
www.reasontofreedom.com/poisoned_spies_and_conspiracy_theories.html
The ongoing saga of the former KGB operative offed by a radioactive substance continues to titillate conspiracy connoisseurs. It's the greatest undercover caper since the Twin Towers were secretly booby trapped by government boobies and imploded in league with Islamo-zealot suicide pilots, and reportedly has Kennedy Assassination Plot investigators crawling out from behind their grassy knolls with wild-eyed theories of magic polonium bullets.

While many ridicule conspiracy theories, people worldwide have good reason
to eagerly embrace both conspiracy theories and cover-ups. Two good reasons,
in fact. The first reason is that conspiracies happen. Like the multi-member
plot to perforate original Czarcrat Julius Caesar to death on the steps of
the Roman Senate, at which time, according to Shakespeare, he uttered the
famous phrase 'et tu, Brute' and not 'etouffee,' the latter being a word
closely associated with the 'planet-like body' of Cajun Chef Paul Prudhomme.
... A second reason to believe conspiracy theories is offered by
libertarians who point out simply that politicians lie. It's their job. It's
what they do. It's their own fault the world sees them as crooks and
cover-up cons.

We've received a few complaints that our newsletter hasn't been including "all" the entries from the prior week. Which following our 'rule' set it did (e.g. include everything only from the last Thur. - Wed., which is the pool the next front page article comes from). But according to expectations (e.g. include everything prior to when the newsletter is actually sent) it didn't. So, simplifying the entire problem, the newsletter will now follow expectations for inclusion. And, selection of the next front page will still from the Thur. - Wed. pool, to allow time for selecting (and I'm sure I'll break that 'rule' too sometimes). Now that the water is probably muddier than it started out to be, have a great weekend! ;)

In other news:
Our newsletter system has been repaired. A corrupt file was found and replaced and everything is working properly. But, if you have any problems, just send me a note. (Finding a replacement became more effort than fixing it, but that's usually how it goes. . .)

In today's Peeping Tom Dystopia, government datacrats at all levels are fixated on finding out everything about us. They track us with spycams and RFID chips and warrantless wiretaps and computer stealthbugs and black boxes in our autos and covert email intercepts and mandatory snitching from our bankers and doctors and telephone firms and credit card companies. They need this massive database of birthdays and divorces and pay raises and colonoscopies and vaginal wart prescriptions because they are from the government and they are here to protect us.

But protect us how? And from what?

Welcome to the Grave, as this place is known to the inmates of a global network of prisons.

The Grave received its name because the cells are little larger than coffins. Pay close attention, because this is a key destination in the war on terror. Admittedly, it is not where President George W. Bush would take visitors on a showpiece tour, and yet here in this dungeon, on this day, December 17, 2002, are at least seven prisoners who claim to have arrived courtesy of the United States.

In charge of the center is a man named George Salloum, an officer of the Syrian military intelligence, dressed in a pair of pressed pants, a golf shirt, and a pair of fine leather shoes. He might seem an unlikely ally for the United States. By profession he is the head of interrogation of suspected terrorists at the Palestine Branch. In short, a torturer. The vice or virtue of his methods, and whether, in the war on terror, such methods may regrettably be necessary, will be examined later. But suffice for now to say Salloum extracts information, or at least confessions, by extreme force, both physical and psychological. The Palestine Branch is a house of confession.

Note: Due to a glitch this did not go out on Friday as planned. -MJT

- Current Article: -
All's fair in love and counterterrorism
http://www.reasontofreedom.com/America_Freedom_to_Fascism.html
The New York Times created a firestorm when it outed the Bush administration for secretly spying on Americans' financial transactions under the now infamous headline splashed across Fairly Unbalanced FoxNews, CNN Commie News Narrators and moribund over-the-air alphabet news network program TV screens: "Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror."

The Prezidat of the USSA has piously declared his Self-given right to spy on anyone anywhere anytime and for any reason that can even vaguely be associated with the vaguely defined War on Some Terrorists. (Definitions: If freedom fighters are somewhere opposing the oppressive yoke of an American-friendly, i.e., American-bought, government, they're terrorists. If terrorists are attacking an anti-American regime, they're freedom fighters.)

Scooter Libby has been indicted for lying. Many suspect Libby, and perhaps others, deliberately outed Joe Wilson’s wife as a covert CIA agent. This was done to punish and discredit Wilson for bringing attention to the false information regarding Iraq’s supposed efforts to build a nuclear weapon-- information made public in President Bush’s State of the Union message in January 2003. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was chosen to determine if this revelation regarding Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife, violated the Intelligence Identification Protection Act. The actual indictment of Libby did not claim such a violation occurred. Instead, he has been charged with lying and participating in a cover-up during the two-year investigation. I believe this is a serious matter that should not be ignored, but it is not an earth-shattering event.

This case, like almost everything in Washington, has been driven by politics-- not truth, justice, or the Constitution. It’s about seeking political power, pure and simple, not unlike the impeachment process during the last administration.

Proving that all bureaucracies, wherever they breed and multiply, inevitably expand beyond their initial mission statements, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps announced its intention to begin patrolling the 4,000-mile US-Canadian border in an attempt to stop illegal immigration from that northern neighborhood.

Minutemen volunteers, according to news reports, "park themselves in lawn chairs on the US side of the border, with binoculars and cell phones, ready to report illegal entrants."

Congressman Sensenbrenner knows how to win the Drug War. He wants to forcibly turn us all into Deputy Dawgs. His bill, introduced last May, would require every person in the USSA to rat out everyone who has ever so much as copped a contact high from a wayward puff of pot.

Anyone who fails to fink on family or friends lands in lockup. If Men won't inform on their Moms, if Dads don't denounce their daughters, if Lilo flinches at snitching on Stitch -- and then won't help convict them -- they become prison fodder themselves.

Freedom's latest foe is the two-headed snake-in-the-grass Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. These cyberserpents are collaborating to create the hardware/software mission of turning us all into walking talking Real ID card chattel. (Quickie definition of Real ID: a thin slice of plastic containing our digitized biological and biographical persona so BigGov can steal our identities whenever it wishes.)

I was already soured on Hewlett-Packard. Two years back a pack of powercrats came up with a concept called the Continuity of Government Commission. Terrified that all of their kind could be killed in a single blow (a hand grenade tossed from a two-seater Cessna, perhaps) and we lackeys might learn to like life without our liege lords, the COG wanted to empower state Governors to cherry-pick replacement masters, not via special elections (Constitutional) but from their own personal wish lists (unconstitutional).

States set to fight, defy driver's license rules

"Aha, what have we here?" I enthused, polishing my palms anticipatorily after reading the AP headline above. "Politicians with principles? Bureaucrats with backbones? Public servants with juice in their jockey shorts?

Mr. Speaker:

I rise in strong opposition to HR 418, the REAL ID Act. This bill purports to make us safer from terrorists who may sneak into the United States, and from other illegal immigrants. While I agree that these issues are of vital importance, this bill will do very little to make us more secure. It will not address our real vulnerabilities. It will, however, make us much less free. In reality, this bill is a Trojan horse. It pretends to offer desperately needed border control in order to stampede Americans into sacrificing what is uniquely American: our constitutionally protected liberty.