Rule by the People is the Only Option

"And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?"

-- Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Southey's Colloquies on Society"

Financial Meltdown: Middle Class Bailing Out the Rich... Again?

The following is reprinted from www.truthout.org. Please subscribe and support their reporting.

Financial Meltdown: Time for a Holiday From Progressive Politics?
By Dean Baker
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 24 March 2008

Progressives usually fight for the interests of those at the middle and bottom at the expense of those on top. However, during this period of unprecedented financial crisis, when the Wall Street rich are begging for the helping hand of the government, most progressives appear to be on the sidelines. Rather than taking advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to reduce inequality and educate the public about how the economy really works, progressive voices have been unusually quiet.

While the basic story on the economic crisis should be well known, it is nonetheless worth repeating. The Federal Reserve Board allowed the growth of an $8 trillion housing bubble ($110,000 of housing bubble wealth for every homeowner) in the years from 1996 to 2006. While this bubble was easily recognizable to competent economists, the entire political and financial establishments managed to ignore the housing bubble until it began to burst last year.

The collapse of the bubble is now pushing the economy into a recession. This is the result of both the direct effect of the collapse on the housing market and, more importantly, because of the indirect effect the loss of trillions of dollars of housing wealth has on consumption. Homeowners are rapidly scaling back their consumption after losing much of their life's savings in the last year.

The collapse of the housing bubble has inflicted enormous pain on tens of millions of people, but it is also inflicting pain on Wall Street and the financial sector. The honchos in this sector include many of the richest people in the country. With the collapse of the housing bubble, we are finding out they were far less financially sophisticated than any of us could have imagined. Many banks, brokerage houses and investment funds took highly leveraged bets that assumed the housing bubble would not burst. Now that it has burst, some of the richest people in the country face the risk of a middle-class lifestyle - unless the government comes to the rescue.

This is where things really get painful. Rather than taking this opportunity to tighten the screws, many progressives are standing by the sidelines or actually cheering on plans to bail out the ridiculously rich. The same people - who, on other days, are fighting to raise the income tax rate on the rich or for preserving the estate tax - are just watching as the Fed hands taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, and hoping Congress will come up with tens of billions for buying the bankers' bad mortgage debt.

There is, of course, a cover story - there always is. We have to let the Fed bail out the banks or the financial system would collapse. This would hurt everyone, especially ordinary workers. And the mortgage bailout is supposed to help low- and moderate-income homeowners.

But the cover stories don't hold water. We can keep the banks running without bailing out the incredibly rich people who drove them to ruin. England showed us the way earlier this year with its takeover of Northern Rock, a major bank that got itself in trouble with bad mortgage debt.

We can also help homeowners without bailing out the banks. The rescue proposals currently on the table would have the government buy or guarantee mortgages on homes that are still hugely overpriced. These proposals could give hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks, while providing little help to homeowners. Most would still be paying far more on their mortgage, property taxes and insurance than they would to rent a comparable home. Furthermore, the bailout conditions virtually guarantee they will never have a dime in equity.

As an alternative to bailing out the banks, we can temporarily change the rules on foreclosure to give homeowners the right to rent at the fair market rate. This would provide them with security in their home. More importantly, it would likely create a situation where most homeowners stay in their house as owners, since banks would rather renegotiate mortgage terms than end up as landlords.

The Wall Street boys got themselves in a huge mess through their own greed and stupidity. Now is the time to make sure they enjoy the fruits of their labor. These are the same people who don't think they should have to pay higher taxes so kids can get health care and childcare. There is no reason the rest of us should pay higher taxes so they can keep their mansions in the Hamptons, their private jets and retinue of personal services. Let's leave this one to the market.

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Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site.

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Government Lists Endanger Our Freedom & Rights

This item is reprinted from www.truthout.org. Please subscribe and support their reporting.

Papers Detail Complaints of Links to Treasury List
By Neil MacFarquhar
The New York Times

Wednesday 19 March 2008

A sheaf of documents that a federal court forced the Treasury Department to release indicate there have been repeated complaints from American consumers who have been falsely linked to terrorism or drug trafficking during routine credit checks, the organization that sought the documents in a lawsuit said Tuesday.

The more than 100 pages of documents released Monday to the organization, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, include a variety of complaints about the list maintained by the Office of Foreign Asset Control in the Treasury Department, said Philip Hwang, a lawyer for the group.

The documents include e-mail messages from a Navy veteran who had been unable to use the Internet service PayPal, and an 18-year-old who wrote to say that he was not a Libyan minister who was apparently on the list.

A client of a Maryland Toyota dealer reported being checked by a salesperson for tattoos because of a Treasury list match.

A Treasury Department official was baffled by the last claim, saying information on the list did not include physical characteristics.

The released documents include e-mail messages and letters from consumers who have been denied cars or home loans or faced difficulties with other financial transactions because their names allegedly appear on the list. Financial institutions are supposed to check clients' names against the list, which is known officially as the Specially Designated Nationals List.

A Federal District Court judge in San Francisco last month ordered the Treasury Department to release all the complaints after a Freedom of Information Act request, Mr. Hwang said. He said his organization believed that what they received was only a small fraction of the complaints filed. Among other indications, he said, was that Henry Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, said in Congressional testimony last year that his department fielded up to 90,000 telephone complaints about the list over one year.

The documents released Monday also included some half-dozen complaints from members of Congress on behalf of constituents, Mr. Hwang said.

The names and other personal information on the documents have been inked out, Mr. Hwang said, and the group is considering going back to the judge to force further compliance.

A Treasury Department spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity because a lawsuit was involved, said the Lawyers' Committee was asking for records that did not necessarily exist, as many of the complaints are handled by phone.

Another official said the department did not have numbers on how many people might have been falsely identified, since institutions can check their clients' identity against the list and ignore it if something like the date of birth obviously does not match the person in front of them.

Few people in the United States are actually on the Treasury list, which includes about 6,000 individuals or organizations, along with information like aliases, dates of birth and passport numbers. The 322-page list is on the Treasury Department's Web site (www.treasury.gov).

But given that many common Latino or Arab names are on the list, like "Carlos Sanchez" or "Mohamed Ali," the possibility for false matches is high. Mr. Hwang said most consumers discovered the problem only when they asked for a credit report and were shocked to find a notation on it associating them with terrorists or drug traffickers.

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Congress GOP Suppressing Citizens Right to Petition

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GOP Gags Witnesses on Credit Card Woes
By Mike Lillis
The Washington Independent

Friday 14 March 2008

Partisan maneuver blocked testimony on fee hikes.

They came to the nation’s capital this week from as far away as Denver, Chicago and Niagara Falls—five people who’d had tough experiences with their credit cards and were asked to share those tales with a House panel. Instead, they ran headfirst into the buzz-saw of Washington politics when the panel’s Republicans insisted the visitors allow their lenders to discuss their financial histories publicly—in any forum, at any time.

For four of the five, it was a deal-breaker. Instead of signing the waivers allowing them to testify Thursday, they all sat silently in the audience.

"I didn’t want all my … information out there for just anybody," said Denver’s Susan Wones, who saw the interest rate of her JP Morgan Chase card jump from 0 percent to 23 percent in one month last summer, without notification or explanation. "I’m extremely upset I can’t talk about this."

Marvin Weatherspoon, a grandfather from Chicago, echoed the tale. "The waiver was very vague," said Weatherspoon, who claims his card rate jumped from 4.25 percent to roughly 25 percent in the wake of one late payment to Bank of America. "It didn’t address the issues we were here to deal with."

The controversy came as members of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Consumer Credit met to discuss legislation that would add a number of consumer protections to current credit card policy. Among the changes, the bill would prevent card sponsors from applying interest rate hikes to existing balances. It would also require issuers to provide 45 days notice of such hikes, and increase the minimum advance billing requirement from 14 to 25 days.

Bill sponsor Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said her proposal will add balance to a market that has grown wildly off-kilter. "The credit card industry has been clear about the responsibility imposed on consumers: make your minimum payments on time and stay under your limit," Maloney said in a statement. "But what about the reciprocal responsibility of card companies?"

The proposal has met considerable opposition from banks and other credit card sponsors, who argue that it would steal their power to set interest rates based on the risk of the individual card holder. Without that option, companies say, rates for everyone would rise, while many borrowers would lose their cards altogether. Most House Republicans have sided with the industry.

"As with any government intervention in the free market," Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, said in a statement, "the bill presents a real danger of restricting the range of products and services that credit card issuers currently offer."

Republicans and card sponsors both want Congress to remain on the sidelines while the Federal Reserve applies reform through regulations. Oliver Ireland, a banking consultant with the Washington-based law firm Morrison & Foerster, told lawmakers that regulators will make more precise and appropriate changes than Congress ever could.

But supporters of congressional intervention say the Fed has a history of putting bankers’ interests above those of consumers. "The regulators have been lax in enacting consumer protections, except under the threat of legislation," said Lawrence Ausubel, an economics professor at the University of Maryland.

At Thursday’s hearing, the first panel was to consist of five card holders who had suffered interest rate hikes or unexplained user fees despite a claimed history of responsible borrowing. The GOP waiver requirement came as a surprise, the witnesses said, not least because it surfaced just one day before the hearing. "I didn’t have time to contact a lawyer or anything," Wones said.

In addition, witnesses said they were concerned with the vagueness of the one-sentence waiver language, which offered no limitations on where or when the lenders could discuss their credit histories.

"I think we would have ended up in a banking journal five years from now as a case study," said Steven Autry, of Fredericksburg, Va. "I don’t know."

In 1999, Autry said, he picked up a Capital One card because the 9.9 percent interest rate was advertised as "fixed for life." But last year, without indicating any problems with Autry’s credit, the company hiked his rate to 16.9 percent.

Both Autry and Wones said they were prepared to sign more detailed waivers that wouldn’t give the card companies so much freedom to discuss the witnesses’ finances outside of the hearing, but the committee’s Republican staff refused to compromise. Wones said one GOP staffer "got belligerent and wasn’t happy" with her suggestions to modify the waiver.

The committee’s minority office did not respond to several calls for comment.

The plight of the borrowers—combined with the GOP’s efforts to silence them—have riled a number of House Democrats, some of whom accused the Republicans of protecting the credit card industry at the expense of consumers. Colorado Rep. Mark Udall (D) called Thursday’s removal of the consumer panel "a form of intimidation."

"Susan Wones is not going to put the credit card companies out of business," Udall said at an impromptu gathering after the hearing. "She just wants her story to be told."

Maloney has scheduled a second hearing on the topic for April 9. The New Yorker said she wants to work out a compromise allowing the same consumer witnesses to return.

Meanwhile, those would-be witnesses were openly frustrated with the odd experience surrounding their canceled testimonies—not to mention the partisan animosity that has come to define Washington politics.

"I couldn’t deal with this stress on a daily basis," Wones said. "I’m not sure how anyone does."

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Congress Must Defend the Constitution

“If we permit our constitutional rights to be watered down out of fear, we have given up our democracy. Congress must stand firm and defend the Constitution.”

-- Dennis Kucinich

The Great Money Fraud

"Practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people."

-- Friedrich von Hayek (Nobel Prize Winner in Economics)

On Government Double-speak

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

-- Aldous Huxley

Challenge Authority

"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press, and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent."

-- Charles Eliot Norton

Public Enemy #1

“As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government.”

-- Dave Barry, DownsizeDC.org

Knowledge & Power

Knowledge is power, and power determines freedom.
That is why Governments keep secrets.
That is why transparency of Government is essential to freedom.

Law-Abiding vs, Good Citizenship

"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless on eof the high virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation."

-- Thomas Jefferson

The War on Drugs Scam

The following is reproduced from www.newswithviews.com. Please subscribe and support Devvy Kidd and her colleagues in their work. You may find it noteworthy that Dr. Joseph McNamara, former San Jose Police Chief and NYC police officer often voiced the same views as Frosty Woolridge. If you're still not convinced, recall the failed effort to criminalize alcohol in the US (Prohibition), which only increased crime, mob violence and vastly increased the financial assets and power of organized crime.

MARIJUANA PROHIBITION AND PUBLIC SAFETY

By Frosty Wooldridge
March 17, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

After the first seven interviews with my brother Police Officer and Detective Howard Wooldridge of Lansing, Michigan (retired) concerning the “War on Drugs,” hundreds of readers responded. U.S. taxpayers do not understand the incredible deception perpetrated on them by the Drug War. You might even term it a “racket” by those who stand in the power corridors of Washington, DC.

Officer Wooldridge talked with Senator Biden (D-DE) last month. Senator Biden (D-DE) said at a hearing in February 2008 that drug prohibition touches 60 percent of all crime in America. Wooldridge advised to dramatically reduce crime, death, disease and drug use, the U.S. must end the prohibition approach on the 10 most used drugs.

“My experience agrees with the senator’s statement,” Officer Wooldridge said. “As a police officer, my goal was to keep my community safe, once they left their homes. What are the steps to ending this 94 year running failed policy of prohibition?

“Many experts agree that the first drug to become legal and regulated will be marijuana. As DEA law judge Francis Young concluded after an exhaustive study of cannabis: “Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” Its use has rarely been a public safety issue. One cannot overdose on it. Moreover, its legalization would be a tremendous boost to improve public safety. Why? Road officers spend million of hours searching cars for a baggie of pot. They could concentrate on the deadly DUI and reckless drivers. They would be re-directed to find and arrest the child predators on line looking for a 13 year old girl. Federal agents could completely focus on Al Qaeda and stop wasting time on medical marijuana gardens in California.”

National marijuana prohibition began in 1937. Since then, local and state police officers spent tens of millions of hours searching for and arresting users and sellers. Did this expenditure improve public safety? No! Has prohibition caused an increase or decrease in use? Can we name any positive returns on the investment of money, prison space and police time? These constitute important questions to ask in the century of 9/11 and a recession.

“Starting my police career in the ‘70s, I quickly learned that alcohol use caused the vast majority of calls for service,” Officer Wooldridge said. “More teens died from alcohol use than all the illegal drugs combined. DUIs causing injury and death, drunks shooting each other, assaults, spouse and child abuse cases, etc., constituted the majority of my police work after sunset. During my 18 years, the use of marijuana never once caused me to be dispatched to handle a problem. Alcohol use generated about 1200 police calls.”

Marijuana remains an intoxicating and potentially psychologically addictive drug. Millions use it to cop a buzz. Because it can be destructive, Officer Wooldridge supports it being regulated, controlled and taxed by the government. Currently, criminals control all aspects of production, distribution and use – not good! We must maintain the same restrictions and regulations as the two deadliest drugs in America: alcohol and tobacco.

“In a legal environment, marijuana would lose its glamour and rebellion elements,” Officer Wooldridge said. “According to doctors certified in addiction psychology, at least as many teens try marijuana because it is illegal as are deterred by its illegality. The Dutch demonstrated the validity of this expert opinion. Thirty-two years after they legalized and regulated sales to adults, their 15-29 year-olds smoke half as much as American youth. Even better, Dutch youth no longer come in contact with pot dealers who also offer heroin for sale. Thus, far fewer Dutch teens try heroin for the first time; a win-win situation.”

Will underage youth obtain legalized and regulated marijuana? Yes, the same as they now obtain alcohol and tobacco before they reach the legal age! No one expects perfection.

Public safety will be dramatically improved as law enforcement again concentrates on crimes involving victims. Detectives will spend more time arresting child predators on-line and rapists. Road officers will promptly answer your 911 calls, instead of spending an hour on a marijuana possession case. The courts will run smoother without the thousands of possession and sale cases clogging the docket. Prison space will not be wasted on someone selling pot to an adult.

“Marijuana users would like the government to tax them!” Officer Wooldridge said. “Dr. Miron of Harvard University studied the topic. Taxing pot like whiskey would generate some $6.4 billion: not chump change! Better, governments waste $10 billion chasing Willie Nelson and his friends and putting them in jail. As the US slides into a recession or worse, that money will become even more important.”

But what about the ‘Gateway’ theory? Don’t all heroin and meth users start with marijuana? Actually no, they don’t. Federal studies show tobacco as the first illegal drug teens use. Alcohol comes second with marijuana third! The Institute of Medicine in 1999 conducted that study. Less than two percent of marijuana users move on to an abusive relationship with hard drugs.

“After 37 years of ‘Drug War’ and the arrest of 38 million Americans, the majority for marijuana possession, we must accept the reality that the state, through its police department, cannot fix personal stupidity and personal self-destructive behavior,” Officer Wooldridge said. “Only family and friends can help in such a situation.”

Today, my brother Howard Wooldridge heads up a task force in Washington, DC to educate and enlighten congressmen at the highest levels. He works for a better future for all Americans. He can be reached at: Education Specialist, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, www.leap.cc, Washington, DC. He speaks at colleges, political clubs, Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions Clubs across America. LEAP speakers in 36 states address this issue to citizens around the country to bring an end to the Drug War. Check out the web site and join. Book a speaker in your state! Wooldridge also presents at political conferences in Washington. wooldridge@leap.cc

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

“Envision a country which employs the principles of personal responsibility, personal freedom and limited/effective government toward marijuana,” Officer Wooldridge said. “I see a growing respect for the police, as they stop intruding into the decisions of adults, made in the privacy of their castles. Teens find it as hard to buy pot as beer. Fewer teens use it because it lost its glamour. Imagine a land where the deadly DUI and reckless drivers kill far fewer, as officers focus on them, not the next pot bust. Envision detectives arresting more child predators as they abandon the time spent arresting someone selling pot to an adult. All this becomes possible, when America becomes wiser and abandons the prohibition approach to marijuana.”

Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Tuesdays and Thursdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show “Connecting the Dots” at republicbroadcasting.org at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.

© 2008 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved

Bubblegum Bobbleheads

Television is a chewing gum for the eyes.

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Government Crimes Do Not Make Justice

"To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means -- to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution."

-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1912)

Wiretapping & Privacy from Political Spying

The following is from www.truthout.org. Please subscribe and support their reporting.

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Wiretapping's True Danger
By Julian Sanchez
The Los Angeles Times

Sunday 16 March 2008

History says we should worry less about privacy and more about political spying.

As the battle over reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rages in Congress, civil libertarians warn that legislation sought by the White House could enable spying on "ordinary Americans." Others, like Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), counter that only those with an "irrational fear of government" believe that "our country's intelligence analysts are more concerned with random innocent Americans than foreign terrorists overseas."

But focusing on the privacy of the average Joe in this way obscures the deeper threat that warrantless wiretaps poses to a democratic society. Without meaningful oversight, presidents and intelligence agencies can - and repeatedly have - abused their surveillance authority to spy on political enemies and dissenters.

The original FISA law was passed in 1978 after a thorough congressional investigation headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) revealed that for decades, intelligence analysts - and the presidents they served - had spied on the letters and phone conversations of union chiefs, civil rights leaders, journalists, antiwar activists, lobbyists, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices - even Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Church Committee reports painstakingly documented how the information obtained was often "collected and disseminated in order to serve the purely political interests of an intelligence agency or the administration, and to influence social policy and political action."

Political abuse of electronic surveillance goes back at least as far as the Teapot Dome scandal that roiled the Warren G. Harding administration in the early 1920s. When Atty. Gen. Harry Daugherty stood accused of shielding corrupt Cabinet officials, his friend FBI Director William Burns went after Sen. Burton Wheeler, the fiery Montana progressive who helped spearhead the investigation of the scandal. FBI agents tapped Wheeler's phone, read his mail and broke into his office. Wheeler was indicted on trumped-up charges by a Montana grand jury, and though he was ultimately cleared, the FBI became more adept in later years at exploiting private information to blackmail or ruin troublesome public figures. (As New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer can attest, a single wiretap is all it takes to torpedo a political career.)

In 1945, Harry Truman had the FBI wiretap Thomas Corcoran, a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "brain trust" whom Truman despised and whose influence he resented. Following the death of Chief Justice Harlan Stone the next year, the taps picked up Corcoran's conversations about succession with Justice William O. Douglas. Six weeks later, having reviewed the FBI's transcripts, Truman passed over Douglas and the other sitting justices to select Secretary of the Treasury (and poker buddy) Fred Vinson for the court's top spot.

"Foreign intelligence" was often used as a pretext for gathering political intelligence. John F. Kennedy's attorney general, brother Bobby, authorized wiretaps on lobbyists, Agriculture Department officials and even a congressman's secretary in hopes of discovering whether the Dominican Republic was paying bribes to influence U.S. sugar policy. The nine-week investigation didn't turn up evidence of money changing hands, but it did turn up plenty of useful information about the wrangling over the sugar quota in Congress - information that an FBI memo concluded "contributed heavily to the administration's success" in passing its own preferred legislation.

In the FISA debate, Bush administration officials oppose any explicit rules against "reverse targeting" Americans in conversations with noncitizens, though they say they'd never do it.

But Lyndon Johnson found the tactic useful when he wanted to know what promises then-candidate Richard Nixon might be making to our allies in South Vietnam through confidant Anna Chenault. FBI officials worried that directly tapping Chenault would put the bureau "in a most untenable and embarrassing position," so they recorded her conversations with her Vietnamese contacts.

Johnson famously heard recordings of King's conversations and personal liaisons with various women. Less well known is that he received wiretap reports on King's strategy conferences with other civil rights leaders, hoping to use the information to block their efforts to seat several Mississippi delegates at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Johnson even complained that it was taking him "hours each night" to read the reports.

Few presidents were quite as brazen as Nixon, whom the Church Committee found had "authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security." They didn't need to be, perhaps. Through programs such as the National Security Agency's Operation Shamrock (1947 to 1975), which swept up international telegrams en masse, the government already had a vast store of data, and presidents could easily run "name checks" on opponents using these existing databases.

It's probably true that ordinary citizens uninvolved in political activism have little reason to fear being spied on, just as most Americans seldom need to invoke their 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech. But we understand that the 1st Amendment serves a dual role: It protects the private right to speak your mind, but it serves an even more important structural function, ensuring open debate about matters of public importance. You might not care about that first function if you don't plan to say anything controversial. But anyone who lives in a democracy, who is subject to its laws and affected by its policies, ought to care about the second.

Harvard University legal scholar William Stuntz has argued that the framers of the Constitution viewed the 4th Amendment as a mechanism for protecting political dissent. In England, agents of the crown had ransacked the homes of pamphleteers critical of the king - something the founders resolved that the American system would not countenance.

In that light, the security-versus-privacy framing of the contemporary FISA debate seems oddly incomplete. Your personal phone calls and e-mails may be of limited interest to the spymasters of Langley and Ft. Meade. But if you think an executive branch unchecked by courts won't turn its "national security" surveillance powers to political ends - well, it would be a first.

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Julian Sanchez is a Washington writer who studies privacy and surveillance.

Why Transparency in Government is Essential - A Case Study

The following is from www.truthout.org. Please subscribe and support their work.

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Pentagon Report on Saddam's Iraq Censored?
ABC News

Tuesday 12 March 2008

ABC News' Jonathan Karl Reports: The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S. military study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to get any attention. This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release and will no longer make the report available online.

The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online.

Asked why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."

Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive."

ABC News obtained the comprehensive military study of Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism on Tuesday. Read the report's executive summary HERE.

The study, which was due to be released Wednesday, found no "smoking gun" or any evidence of a direct connection between Saddam's Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist organization.

The report is based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion. It is also based on thousands of hours of interrogations of former top officials in Saddam's government who are now in U.S. custody.

Others have reached the same conclusion, but no previous study has had access to so much information. Further, this is the first official acknowledgement from the U.S. military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda.

The study does, however, show that Saddam Hussein did much to support terrorism in the Middle East and used terrorism "as a routine tool of state power." Saddam's government, for example, had a program for the "development, construction, certification and training for car bombs and suicide vests in 1999 and 2000." The U.S. military is still dealing with the fall-out from this particular program.

The report says Saddam's bureaucrats carefully recorded the regime's connections to Palestinian terrorists groups and its financial support for the families of suicide bombers.

The primary target, however, of Saddam's terror activities was not the United States, and not Israel. "The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq." Saddam's primary aim was self preservation and the elimination of potential internal threats to his power.

Bush administration officials have made numerous attempts to link Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terror group in their justification for waging war against Iraq.

"What I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network," former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations February 5, 2003.

On June 18, 2004 the Washington Post quoted President George W. Bush as saying: "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," Bush said.

"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda," The Washington Post quoted Bush as saying. "We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda."

"We know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization," Vice President Dick Cheney said on NBC's Meet The Press March 16, 2003.

"But the cost is far less than it will be if we get hit, for example, with a weapon that Saddam Hussein might provide to al-Qaeda, the cost to the United States of what happened on 9/11 with billions and billions of dollars and 3,000 lives. And the cost will be much greater in a future attack if the terrorists have access to the kinds of capabilities that Saddam Hussein has developed," Cheney said.

"There is no question but that there have been interactions between the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives. They have occurred over a span of some 8 or 10 years to our knowledge. There are currently Al Qaeda in Iraq," former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a interview with Infinity CBS Radio, Nov. 14, 2002.

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US Military Concludes No Saddam Link to Al Qaeda
ABC News

Tuesday 11 March 2008

ABC News' Jonathan Karl Reports: ABC News has obtained a comprehensive military study of Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism. The study, which is due to be released Wednesday, is based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion. It is also based on thousands of hours of interrogations of former top officials in Saddam's government who are now in U.S. custody.

The headline: "This study found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda."

Others have reached the same conclusion, but no previous study has had access to so much information. Further, this is the first official acknowledgement from the U.S. military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda.

The study does, however, show that Saddam Hussein did much to support terrorism in the Middle East and used terrorism "as a routine tool of state power." Saddam's government, for example, had a program for the "development, construction, certification and training for car bombs and suicide vests in 1999 and 2000." The U.S. military is still dealing with the fall-out from this particular program.

The report says Saddam's bureaucrats carefully recorded the regime's connections to Palestinian terrorists groups and its financial support for the families of suicide bombers.

The primary target, however, of Saddam's terror activities was not the United States, and not Israel. "The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq." Saddam's primary aim was self preservation and the elimination of potential internal threats to his power.

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Illegal Paperwork Coverups of Illegal Paperwork Screwups

The following is from www.truthout.org. Please subscribe and support their work.

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FBI Made "Blanket" Demands for Phone Records
By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times

Thursday 13 March 2008

Washington - Senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly approved the use of "blanket" records demands to justify the improper collection of thousands of phone records, according to officials briefed on the practice.

The bureau appears to have used the blanket records demands at least 11 times in 2006 alone as a quick way to clean up mistakes made over several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a letter provided to Congress by a lawyer for an F.B.I. agent who witnessed the missteps.

The F.B.I. has come under fire for its use of so-called national security letters to inappropriately gather records on Americans in terrorism investigations, but details have not previously been disclosed about its use of "blanket" warrants, a one-step operation used to justify the collection of hundreds of phone and e-mail records at a time.

Under the USA Patriot Act, the F.B.I. received broadened authority to issue the national security letters on its own authority - without the approval of a judge - to gather records like phone bills or e-mail transactions that might be considered relevant to a particular terrorism investigation. The Justice Department inspector general found in March 2007 that the F.B.I. had routinely violated the standards for using the letters and that officials often cited "exigent" or emergency situations that did not really exist in issuing them to phone providers and other private companies.

In an updated report due out on Thursday, the inspector general is expected to report that the violations continued through 2006, when the F.B.I. instituted new internal procedures.

The inspector general's ongoing investigation is also said to be focusing on the F.B.I.'s use of the blanket letters as a way of justifying the collection of large amounts of records at one time. F.B.I. officials acknowledged the problem Wednesday, calling it inadvertent, and said officials had been instructed that they could no longer issue blanket orders. Instead, officials have to determine why particular records are considered relevant.

A letter sent last week to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, provides new details on the F.B.I.'s use of the national security letters, including the practice of issuing the blanket demands.

A copy of the letter was provided to The Times. It was written by Stephen M. Kohn, a Washington lawyer representing Bassem Youssef, an F.B.I. agent who reported what he thought were abuses in the use of national security letters and was interviewed for three days by the inspector general. In a separate matter, Mr. Youssef is suing the F.B.I. in a discrimination claim.

Mr. Grassley said Wednesday that he was concerned by the issues raised in Mr. Kohn's letter.

"In the past, the F.B.I. has shown a propensity to act as if it were above the law," he said. "That attitude clearly needs to stop. Part of the way we can help the F.B.I. clean up its act is to pay close attention to information from whistle-blowers like Bassem Youssef. We need aggressive follow-up from the inspector general to ensure accountability and reform."

By 2006, F.B.I. officials began learning that the bureau had issued thousands of "exigent" or emergency records demands to phone providers in situations where no life-threatening emergency existed, according to the account of Mr. Youssef, who worked with the phone companies in collecting records in terrorism investigations. In these situations, the F.B.I. had promised the private companies that the emergency records demands would be followed up with formal subpoenas or properly processed letters, but often, the follow-up material never came.

This created a backlog of records that the F.B.I. had obtained without going through proper procedures. In response, the letter said, the F.B.I. devised a plan: rather than issuing national security letters retroactively for each individual investigation, it would issue the blanket letters to cover all the records obtained from a particular phone company.

"When Mr. Youssef was first informed of this concept, he was very uncomfortable with it," his lawyer, Mr. Kohn, said in his letter to Senator Grassley. But the plan was ultimately approved in 2006 by three senior officials at highest levels of the F.B.I., and in the process, Mr. Kohn maintains, the solution may have worsened the problem.

"They made a mistake in cleaning up a mistake," Mr. Kohn said, "because they didn't know the law."

An F.B.I. official who asked for anonymity because the inspector general is still examining the blanket warrant issue said the practice was "an attempt to fix a problem."

"This was ham-handed but pure of heart," the official said. "This was nothing evil, but it was not the right way to do it."

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Action or Inaction: Our Choice

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil in America is for good men to do nothing."

- Edmund Burke

Revolution is Change of Mind

"The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution."

-- John Adams, February 13, 1818

"Voluntary" Gun Searches in DC

This from NRA-ILA. Please join and support their work.

D.C.’s "Voluntary" Gun Search Program Raises Concerns

Friday, March 14, 2008

It’s quite a quandary for the leaders of our nation’s capitol. They govern a city that has had an outright ban on handguns for more than three decades, yet they’re constantly looking for panaceas for the District’s high rate of gun crime. How ironic it is that a city that should be an anti-gunner’s utopia is constantly plagued with “gun violence.” While dismissing logic and burying their heads in the sand, these leaders continue to try to avoid the unavoidable conclusion: Criminals don’t obey the law and have been ignoring the gun ban since its inception. Only the law-abiding obey the law. Enter their latest attempt at a remedy—the so-called “Safe Homes Initiative.” Last November, we reported on a similar sham-program being considered in Boston. As with that program, D.C. police will soon begin asking parents and guardians to allow “voluntary” searches of their homes and children’s (or other relative’s) bedrooms for firearms—without notice or warrants. While parents and guardians have the right to refuse the search, questions of constitutionality, intimidation, and civil liberties have rightly been raised. There is also a fear that people may be too intimidated to deny police access to their homes, or may not understand the legal implications of their compliance with the search, which, despite assurances of amnesty, could include arrest and prosecution. As reported on Washingtonpost.com, Arthur B. Spitzer, legal director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the program is “a very bad idea.” Spitzer said that officers might act so aggressively that residents feel coerced into letting them in. “It sends the message to the public that the police ought to be able to search your house anytime for any reason. People will be intimidated. That cheapens civil liberties and privacy for everyone.” The program is scheduled to start on March 24.

Unaccountable Power Begets Abuse of Power

This item republished from www.truthout.org. Please subscribe and support their honest reporting.

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FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters
By Dan Eggen
The Washington Post

Friday 14 March 2008

2003-06 audit cites probes of citizens.

The FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of U.S. citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or counterintelligence investigations, and at least once it relied on such orders to obtain records that a special intelligence-gathering court had deemed protected by the First Amendment, according to two government audits released yesterday.

The episode was outlined in a Justice Department report that concluded the FBI had abused its intelligence-gathering privileges by issuing inadequately documented "national security letters" from 2003 to 2006, after which changes were put in place that the report called sound.

A report a year ago by the Justice Department's inspector general disclosed that abuses involving national security letters had occurred from 2003 through 2005 and helped provoke the changes. But the report makes it clear that the abuses persisted in 2006 and disclosed that 60 percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI targeted Americans.

Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval; they routinely demand certain types of personal data, such as telephone, e-mail and financial records, while barring the recipient from disclosing that the information was requested or supplied.

According to the findings by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, the FBI tried to work around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees clandestine spying in the United States, after it twice rejected an FBI request in 2006 to obtain certain records. The court had concluded "the 'facts' were too thin" and the "request implicated the target's First Amendment rights," the report said.

But the FBI went ahead and got the records anyway by using a national security letter. The FBI's general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, told investigators it was appropriate to issue the letters in such cases because she disagreed with the court's conclusions.

In total, Fine said, the FBI issued almost 200,000 national security letters from 2003 through 2006, and they were used in a third of all FBI national security and computer probes during that time. Fine said his investigators have identified hundreds of possible violations of laws or internal guidelines in the use of the letters, including cases in which FBI agents made improper requests, collected more data than they were allowed to, or did not have proper authorization to proceed with the case.

Fine also pointed to the FBI's "troubling" use of the letters to obtain vast quantities of telephone numbers or other records with a single request. Investigators identified 11 such cases, involving information related to about 4,000 phone numbers, that did not comply with USA Patriot Act requirements or that violated FBI guidelines.

The latest findings reignited long-standing criticism from Democrats and civil liberties groups, who said the FBI's repeated misuse of its information-gathering powers underscores the need for greater oversight by Congress and the courts.

"The fact that these are being used against U.S. citizens, and being used so aggressively, should call into question the claim that these powers are about terrorists and not just about collecting information on all kinds of people," said Jameel Jaffer, national security director at the American Civil Liberties Union. "They're basically using national security letters to evade legal requirements that would be enforced if there were judicial oversight."

Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement that Fine's report "should come as no surprise" because the survey ended in 2006, before the FBI introduced procedural changes to better control and keep track of requests for the security letters.

FBI Assistant Director John Miller said a new automated system will keep better tabs on the letters, and they are now reviewed by a lawyer before they are sent to a telephone company, Internet service provider or other target. "We are committed to using them in ways that maximize their national security value while providing the highest level of privacy and protection of the civil liberties of those we are sworn to protect," Miller said.

Fine said that FBI employees "self-reported" 84 possible violations of laws or guidelines in the use of the letters, in 2006, which "was significantly higher than the number of reported violations in prior years." But he noted that his office already had begun its initial investigation into the letters by then, which might have contributed to the increase.

About a quarter of the reported incidents were because of mistakes made by telephone or Internet providers, including some in which they provided either the wrong information or disclosed more than the FBI requested. But many of those cases should have been caught by the FBI earlier, Fine said.

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Creeping Faschism: Government Tracking from Youth

Put young children on DNA list, urge police

· 'We must target potential offenders'
· Teachers' fury over 'dangerous' plan

• Mark Townsend and Anushka Asthana
• The Observer,
• Sunday March 16 2008
• Article history

About this article

This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday March 16 2008 on p1 of the News section. It was last updated at 00:08 on March 16 2008.

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.

'If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,' said Pugh. 'You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won't. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.'

Pugh admitted that the deeply controversial suggestion raised issues of parental consent, potential stigmatisation and the role of teachers in identifying future offenders, but said society needed an open, mature discussion on how best to tackle crime before it took place. There are currently 4.5 million genetic samples on the UK database - the largest in Europe - but police believe more are required to reduce crime further. 'The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,' Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling - everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database - is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.

Civil liberty groups condemned his comments last night by likening them to an excerpt from a 'science fiction novel'. One teaching union warned that it was a step towards a 'police state'.

Pugh's call for the government to consider options such as placing primary school children who have not been arrested on the database is supported by elements of criminological theory. A well-established pattern of offending involves relatively trivial offences escalating to more serious crimes. Senior Scotland Yard criminologists are understood to be confident that techniques are able to identify future offenders.

A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12 with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author of the report, entitled 'Make me a Criminal', said: 'You can carry out a risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely that they would become an offender.' However, she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a 'negative' way.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, denounced any plan to target youngsters. 'Whichever bright spark at Acpo thought this one up should go back to the business of policing or the pastime of science fiction novels,' she said. 'The British public is highly respectful of the police and open even to eccentric debate, but playing politics with our innocent kids is a step too far.'

Chris Davis, of the National Primary Headteachers' Association, said most teachers and parents would find the suggestion an 'anathema' and potentially very dangerous. 'It could be seen as a step towards a police state,' he said. 'It is condemning them at a very young age to something they have not yet done. They may have the potential to do something, but we all have the potential to do things. To label children at that stage and put them on a register is going too far.'

Davis admitted that most teachers could identify children who 'had the potential to have a more challenging adult life', but said it was the job of teachers to support them.

Pugh, though, believes that measures to identify criminals early would save the economy huge sums - violent crime alone costs the UK £13bn a year - and significantly reduce the number of offences committed. However, he said the British public needed to move away from regarding anyone on the DNA database as a criminal and accepted it was an emotional issue.

'Fingerprints, somehow, are far less contentious,' he said. 'We have children giving their fingerprints when they are borrowing books from a library.'

Last week it emerged that the number of 10 to 18-year-olds placed on the DNA database after being arrested will have reached around 1.5 million this time next year. Since 2004 police have had the power to take DNA samples from anyone over the age of 10 who is arrested, regardless of whether they are later charged, convicted, or found to be innocent.

Concern over the issue of civil liberties will be further amplified by news yesterday that commuters using Oyster smart cards could have their movements around cities secretly monitored under new counter-terrorism powers being sought by the security services.

Thomas Jefferson was right when he said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be."

We the People are the rightful masters, both of Congress and the Courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

- Abraham Lincoln

Tyrany of the IRS

But with the adoption of the income tax, we lost something more precious than uniformity and apportionment among the States. Let us go back to our Fourth and Fifth Amendments: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated…” and “…no person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

These two Amendments insured to the citizens of the United States the right of privacy. It was ours in every sense, until the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, but with the income tax, we lost this precious right. If I say, “No,” you cannot come into my house without a search warrant, and before you can secure such a warrant, you must advance good and sufficient cause for searching my house. But the Income Tax Inspector can come into my home or yours. In the name of the Income Tax, the Federal Government can search and seize every paper you own, it can force you into court, to be a witness against yourself, and if you are not able to pay the tax, it can sell you out, lock, stock and barrel. The Income Tax is the strongest weapon ever placed in the hands of an unscrupulous government, and as long as that Amendment is a part of our Constitution, our freedom is in jeopardy. Our right to privacy, so carefully insured to us by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, has vanished.

— Vivien Kellems, Toil, Taxes and Trouble.

On Patriotism, Taxes & Tyrany

“Many people lack an understanding of the real meaning of patriotism. They confuse love of government with love of country. The true patriot may love his country and utterly despise his government. The men who founded this country were true patriots. They loved this country, its very soil, but they hated the despotic tyranny of George III and his Parliament which clamped one oppressive law after another down upon them.

“Today millions of Americans love their country but hate the rotten, deceitful Government which maintains itself in power by confiscating the wealth and earnings of the American people, and uses this vast treasure to buy votes with promises of false security to people who do not understand that their Government cannot promise security as it has no security to give. The only security in this world is the security which each person has within himself, the ability to cope with the problems of life as they are presented. The only security our country possesses is a strong, virile, self-reliant people, and as a matter of fact, that is the only real security for the whole world, since we are trying to carry most of the world on our backs. Let us note well and preserve our greatest asset — the character of the American people.”

— Vivien Kellems, Chapter 6, Toil, Taxes and Trouble, 1952

Are We Free?

“We don't need to go to Russia for slavery, we've got it right here.”

Vivien Kellems — Toil, Taxes and Trouble, 1952

Immigration

America was founded, shaped, and built in large measure by immigrants
seeking freedom and opportunity. Since 1820, more than 70 million immigrants
have entered the United States legally, and each new wave stirred
controversy in its day... but current critics of immigration are as wrong as
their counterparts were in previous eras.

Immigration is not undermining the American experiment; it is an
integral part of it. We are a nation of immigrants. Successive waves of
immigrants have kept our country demographically young, enriched our
culture, and added to our productive capacity as a nation, enhancing our
influence in the world.

- CATO Institute, CATO Handbook on Policy, 2005, pg 649

The Tyrant's Great Excuse

"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience."

- Albert Camus