"When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."
- Thomas Paine

(and thus ends this week's quote frenzy - back to normal quote quotas next week)

- rob 5:04 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Krugman: The Treason Card

Over the last few months a series of revelations have confirmed what should have been obvious a long time ago: the Bush administration and the movement it leads have been engaged in an authoritarian project, an effort to remove all the checks and balances that have heretofore constrained the executive branch.

Much of this project involves the assertion of unprecedented executive authority — the right to imprison people indefinitely without charges (and torture them if the administration feels like it), the right to wiretap American citizens without court authorization, the right to declare, when signing laws passed by Congress, that the laws don't really mean what they say.

But an almost equally important aspect of the project has been the attempt to create a political environment in which nobody dares to criticize the administration or reveal inconvenient facts about its actions. And that attempt has relied, from the beginning, on ascribing treasonous motives to those who refuse to toe the line. As far back as 2002, Rush Limbaugh, in words very close to those used by The Wall Street Journal last week, accused Tom Daschle, then the Senate majority leader, of a partisan "attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism."

Those of us who tried to call attention to this authoritarian project years ago have long marveled over the reluctance of many of our colleagues to acknowledge what was going on.
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But the administration and its supporters still believe that they can win political battles by impugning the patriotism of those who won't go along.

For the sake of our country, let's hope that they're wrong.

- rob 4:43 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
- John Adams

- rob 4:39 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush's Baghdad Palace

Among the many secrets the American government cannot keep, one of its biggest (104 acres) and most expensive ($592 million) is the American Embassy being built in Baghdad. Surrounded by fifteen-foot-thick walls, almost as large as the Vatican on a scale comparable to the Mall of America, to which it seems to have a certain spiritual affinity, this is no simple object to hide.

So you think the Bush Administration is planning on leaving Iraq?
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It will come as less than a surprise to learn that this project was subbed out to an outfit in Kuwait. The Tribune says that "for security reasons, the new embassy is being built entirely by imported labor. The contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co., which was linked to human-trafficking allegations by a Chicago Tribune investigation last year, has hired a workforce of 900 mostly Asian workers who live on the site." In a land where half the population is out of work the United States ought to win countless native hearts and minds with this labor policy.
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Photographers attempting to get pictures of what the locals call "George W's Palace" are confined to using telephoto lenses on this, the largest construction project undertaken by Iraq's American visitors.

Nonetheless, we know much of what is going on in the place, where there will soon be twenty-one buildings, 619 apartments with very fancy digs for the big shots, restaurants, shops, gym facilities, a swimming pool, a food court, a beauty salon, a movie theater (we can't say if it's a multiplex) and, as the Times of London reports, "a swish club for evening functions."

Your tax dollars at work.

- rob 4:04 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
- James Madison

- rob 4:00 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush wanted him dead or alive, but he'd rather spend the money on swimming pools and movie theaters for American big wigs in Iraq.

C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden

WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.

The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.

The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."

So the unit was formed back in the Clinton days - I thought he didn't do anything to fight terrorism - please don't tell me Fox News lied again.

Maybe Bush doesn't want Osama caught - Osama isn't very operationally effective anymore and he makes such a great campaign prop for Rove to use. Sure that sounds cynical but reality seems to be pretty damn cynical so far this century, doesn't it?

- rob 3:49 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil."
- Thomas Jefferson

- rob 3:42 PM - [PermaLink] -

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What Bush Told Fitzgerald

According to Waas's sources, Bush told Fitzgerald that he had directed Vice President Cheney in the summer of 2003 to counter damaging allegations being made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and gave Cheney permission to disclose highly classified intelligence information to do so.

Bush did not admit any connection to the act at the center of the criminal investigation. "Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife," Waas writes. "Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame's identity or directed anyone else to do so."

Publicly, Bush has consistently portrayed himself as not only uninvolved with the leak of Plame's identity, but utterly in the dark about it -- and determined to punish any wrongdoers
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Isn't it about time Bush stopped pretending ignorance about this story -- and came clean on his own role? Why should that information only be shared with criminal prosecutors?

Is it approved White House procedure to distribute misinformation? Is it okay to out a covert CIA operative? If it's not okay was he disappointed in how top deputies like Cheney and Rove -- both still very much at work at the White House -- carried out his orders?

Like any reporter would ask Bush those questions... they just want to know if he had a good birthday or not.

- rob 1:45 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."
- James Madison

- rob 1:41 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Poor little Randy "Duke" Cunningham (and Randy he was it seems) he was as corrupted and Abramoff's Washington contacts, be rarely gets as much press. That may change.

Washington BabylonCalifornia Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham traded military contracts for $2.4 million in antiques, cash, and other booty. He is now in jail, but his case exposed a world of bribery, booze, and broads that reaches into the Pentagon, the C.I.A., and Congress. Washington is wondering: Who's next?

The corruption of Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a powerful California Republican, was, as the U.S. Attorney's Office maintains, historically "unparalleled"—an astonishing statement coming in the wake of the Abramoff scandal.
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In March, Cunningham was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison—the harshest sentence ever received by an ex-congressman for corruption. But the investigations are far from over, and allegations continue to surface implicating other legislators and government officials. California Republican congressman Jerry Lewis, head of the House committee on appropriations, is currently being investigated. So is Wilkes's best friend from high-school days, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who was until recently No. 3 at the C.I.A., and who is alleged to have accepted lavish favors from Wilkes—a trip to a Honolulu estate, for instance, renting for $50,000 per week—in exchange for arranging lucrative C.I.A. contracts for his friend. (Wilkes, Lewis, and Foggo have denied any wrongdoing.) Republican congresswoman and senatorial candidate Katherine Harris, of Florida, a source familiar with her activities tells me, is also being scrutinized for her dealings with Wade—in particular, for receiving $32,000 in illegal campaign donations, and for a lavish dinner she enjoyed last year for which he paid more than $3,300. (Harris says that she did not know the donations were illegal and has since given the money to charity.) In addition, Wade, who is cooperating with the authorities, has told the F.B.I. that Wilkes kept hospitality suites in the Watergate Hotel and Westin Grand in order to entertain legislators and government officials with evenings of poker, cigars, and, on occasion, for Cunningham, prostitutes.

Tens of thousands of pages of congressional documents going as far back as 1997 have been demanded by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. The C.I.A., Pentagon, I.R.S., and F.B.I. are conducting investigations, and at least three congressional committees are cooperating in hopelessly tardy fashion. "We are scrubbing" is how a staffer on the intelligence committee puts it. Washington is unraveling.

"What these revelations provide is a window into Babylon or the last stages of Rome," explains a source with knowledge of the multiple ongoing investigations.

Read it all.

- rob 1:35 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your
freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that ever I
took half the pains to preserve it."
- John Adams

- rob 12:59 PM - [PermaLink] -

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As GOP Presidential hopefuls (like McCain) are traveling to Jerry Falwell's school to make speeches and to get the reverend's seal of approval perhaps it is good to understand that Jerry Falwell does not believe in what the founding fathers set forth to do.

He actually thinks much of the philosophy and thought that went into the founding of the nation was the work of the devil.

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."
- Rev. Jerry Falwell

Yep, regulars of this site know where this is going - for the nth time we repeat a treaty written during the George Washington administration and ratified by the Senate and signed by President John Adams:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Deviltry!

For a copy of the treaty go to: The Barbary Treaties 1786-1816 - Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796

- rob 11:55 AM - [PermaLink] -

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"The number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, & the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State."
- James Madison

- rob 10:28 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Freedom on the March?

Maybe its a bit much to say Freedom seems to be on the retreat - but it certainly seems to be backing away slowly in some places in the world.

Russia's Signal to Stations Is Clear: Cut U.S. Radio

MOSCOW, July 6 -- Russian regulators have forced more than 60 radio stations to stop broadcasting news reports produced by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, according to radio managers and Russian officials.
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The two services' straight-up reporting, often by journalists on the ground in Russian communities, has at times challenged the political establishment here. In a country where the news media increasingly avoid controversial subjects, millions of Russians had made the broadcasts a listening staple.

But remember, Bush saw into Putin's heart and declared it good - some I'm sure it is all for the best.

- rob 9:44 AM - [PermaLink] -

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I wrote this for my blog, Office of the Independent Blogger," but wanted to share the wealth. I am not, after all, a Republican, and I do not lust and greed for every dollar.

Kenneth Lay has died. Lay, for those of you living in the White House, is the man who claimed that the frauds he was accused of in the Enron Scandal and Trial were the result of neglect and bumbling accounting instead of unmeasurable dishonesty and active, monstrous greed. Nobody really believes that he was innocent and merely negligent, and most people know that he was a money-loving crook who scammed the public for as long as he could before getting caught. When he did, he took to going on vacations and enjoying old gay outings with his male golfer buddies. An OJ Simpson of the Wallet he was, but nobody on Earth could've called him an innocent. There is no Mark Fuhrman in the case of Lay; there is just unequivocal dishonor, and shame.

I'm sad to see that he died before he could be brought to justice for his monstrous actions as the head of Enron. From the White House perspective, it's a shame that he denied the President the chance to pardon him next year like his father did for Weinberger, Clinton for the Rich, and Reagan for the Watergate burgulars. If you expected Bush to, at a bare minimum, honor Kenny-Boy's legacy, you're mistaken, as it's denying its relationship with the Hussler of Houston. Funny, I thought he was a man who admired loyalty?

I don't like to talk like this about anyone, but this short-sighted and power hungry man has played a role in the oppression of the impoverished for all of his life, and he helped kick even more people to the financial curb by the time he was done. He was a pervert, and a brutal one, at that. He was the President's friend, too, and while this White House pretends that he wasn't, remember that it was his jets flying people into Florida to mob the recount boards, his money that funded Bush's first campaigns for office, and his lobbying that killed Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's attempts to really, truly, make corporations and CEOs accountable for their financial records and the products they put onto the market. The wallop of his wallet destroyed the lives of millions, and that's really all there is to it.

Browsing about the Internet, I came across this article about English-only laws, and I thought I'd weigh in on the issue. I am a believer that these types of laws should be allowed up to each state. If Pennsylvania wants to make its state English-only, then let them; likewise, I'm proud to see that my state is more lenient toward other languages, primarily Spanish, and is so kind as to provide translators for those that need assistance. It's a matter of being respectful to others and treating them with dignity. There's no need for any such law, and it'll be terrible for something so reactionary and unneeded passes.

It reminds me of the story from Philadelphia a while back, where a sign was put up in a famous restaurant saying, "This is America: when ordering, speaking English!" and warning that management "reserves the right to refuse service." You know how comically absurd that is? I can imagine a man coming to the counter, looking at the sign, and because he doesn't speak English continue with his order. "Unas papas fritas con una nievesita y hamburgesa, por favor!" And, maybe I'm just a big old softie, but I can't imagine it's very good business to turn away a paying customer over something minor. I don't think it's good morality, either, to push a hungry person away when they are hungry and merely trying to get through their day.

- ThePoliticalPenguin 6:42 PM - [PermaLink] -

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

(yes I cheated and posted this on the 5th - like I'm going to get in front of a computer on the 4th of July)

- rob 11:45 AM - [PermaLink] -

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"The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

- rob 4:53 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Media Matters - Most major American newspaper editorial boards have remained silent on NY Times bank record story

As numerous Bush administration officials, congressional Republicans, and conservative media figures continue to attack The New York Times and other newspapers for their decision to publicly disclose the Treasury Department bank-tracking program, major U.S. newspapers' editorial boards have largely remained silent on the issue. According to a Media Matters for America review, 15 newspapers -- not including The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which also initially reported the program -- have so far editorialized either in support of the papers' decision to run the story or against the criticism they received for doing so.

Fighting for freedom doesn't only mean fighting dangers abroad - it means being constantly vigilant of an over reaching government.

The founders were more concerned about the danger the new government they were forming deminishing personal liberty then they were of a foreign power - the writings and the bill of rights prove that point.

Pro-Bush pundits ahve often accused those who do not support Bush and his policies of beign weak and timid and not wanting freedom to when - when in truth speaking out against Bush's policies is a strength.

If people are scared to speak out against Bush and his policies America's freedom is at risk. No President can be trusted with dictatorial powers.

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree. - James Madison

- rob 4:51 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

- rob 4:43 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Who educates politicians? Lobbyists.

That is why our politicians are often so often stupid as to how the real world works - lobbyists have an agenda, truthful education is not one of them.

Net neutrality is being fought by senators who get their knowledge of how the "internets" work by Big Telco companies.

So you get Senators (such as Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)) who say things like this (from Your Own Personal Internet):

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Wow - maybe the email (I assume that is what he means) took so long to get through because it was a gagillion gigabytes - How do you attach the internet to an email? Also his grammar is so screwed up he could write for this site.

Actually the delay of that particular email was probably due to the servers that Congress uses being slow - for whatever reason, maybe because there is the delay created by the NSA reading them before allowing them to be delivered.

Right there you begin to realize that the Senator has no idea what he is talking about. Maybe like people having their own personal Jesus - they like to have their own empty personal internet. But there isn't such a thing as a personal internet - though maybe they have their own network.

But Stevens is going to school us on the internet - despite the fact that he has no idea what he is talking about.

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

I guess he's a surfer and natually thought "surfing the net" was like actual surfing and you try to get in the tube.

Senator Stevens seems to be a bit confused in that there aren't a million internets - there is just one. And it is made up of millions of networks (some big some small).

Each of those individual networks are connected to others via routers.

The routers determine where to send information from one computer to another. Routers are specialized computers that send your messages and those of every other Internet user speeding to their destinations along thousands of pathways. A router has two separate, but related, jobs:

• It ensures that information doesn't go where it's not needed. This is crucial for keeping large volumes of data from clogging the connections of "innocent bystanders."
• It makes sure that information does make it to the intended destination.

In performing these two jobs, a router is extremely useful in dealing with two separate computer networks. It joins the two networks, passing information from one to the other. It also protects the networks from one another, preventing the traffic on one from unnecessarily spilling over to the other.

via How Internet Infrastructure Works.

So basically if Senator Stevens is hogging up his network by having an assistant attaching a billion files to an email - other routers will reroute other folks email so it gets where it is supposed to go quickly. Now if you are on Senator Stevens's network I guess you are out of luck.

The Internet was basically created by the Defense Department to have a network that is so interconnected that even if huge portions of it were blown away by nuclear war it would still work, the routers would just reroute to the networks that were still there.

With mass media becoming less and less of an independent voice the need for an internet that is "neutral" is all the more important: Save the Internet

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the Internet's First Amendment -- a principle called Network Neutrality that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you -- based on what site pays them the most. If the public doesn't speak up now, our elected officials will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign.

- rob 4:40 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose."
- C. Wright Mills

- rob 2:40 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say

June 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.
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``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.''

I have nothing to add, save maybe that some in our government really need to read some of the "freedom" quotes that are going to be cluttering up this site this week.

- rob 2:25 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression."
- Gerard K. O'Neill

- rob 1:21 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Cheney and company had a vision:
- a President of almost unlimited power.
- a President unencombered by Congressional oversight.
- a President as king.

THE HIDDEN POWER
The legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror.

During the game, between the Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys, Powell spoke of a recent report in the Times which revealed that President Bush, in his pursuit of terrorists, had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens without first obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by federal law.
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According to someone who knows Powell, his comment about the article was terse. “It’s Addington,” he said. “He doesn’t care about the Constitution.” Powell was referring to David S. Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and his longtime principal legal adviser.
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For years, Addington has carried a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket; taped onto the back are photocopies of extra statutes that detail the legal procedures for Presidential succession in times of national emergency. Many constitutional experts, however, question his interpretation of the document, especially his views on Presidential power.
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Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, who voted for Bush in both Presidential elections, and who served as associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, said that Addington and other Presidential legal advisers had “staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other Administration. This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He’s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President’s reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world’s a battlefield—according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It’s got the sense of Louis XIV: ‘I am the State.’ ”
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It seems clear that Addington was able to promote vast executive powers after September 11th in part because he and Cheney had been laying the political groundwork for years. “This preceded 9/11,” Fein, who has known both men professionally for decades, said. “I’m not saying that warrantless surveillance did. But the idea of reducing Congress to a cipher was already in play. It was Cheney and Addington’s political agenda.”

Please do read the whole article (leave a bit of time open for it - it is long).

To them 9/11 was not a tragedy - not an attack against America and Americans. It was an opportunity - a opening for their long desired power grab.

- rob 12:30 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better."
- Albert Camus

- rob 10:53 AM - [PermaLink] -

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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt



"Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make fitting response."
 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt



"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson



"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
- James Madison



"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves."
- John F. Kennedy



"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.