Bush Ability to “Strike Fear” Trumps The Bill Of Rights

House Approves Wiretap Measure

White House Bill Boosts Warrantless Surveillance

By Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick Washington Post

The Democratic-controlled House last night approved and sent to President Bush for his signature legislation written by his intelligence advisers to enhance their ability to intercept the electronic communications of foreigners without a court order.

The 227 to 183 House vote capped a high-pressure campaign by the White House to change the nation’s wiretap law, in which the administration capitalized on Democrats’ fears of being branded weak on terrorism and on a general congressional desire to act on the measure before an August recess.

If BushCo can strike fear into the hearts of our elected representatives, forcing them to enable illegal and unconstitutional acts, then we have elected nothing! This is now a ghost democracy fraught with Black Ops and Shadow Government. Civil war or revolution is no longer an option … because every move we make is scrutinized. Americans are all suspects now. Americans are the enemy. Americans will become the zombies from George Orwell’s ’1984′ where hidden microphones and informers in order to catch potential “thoughtcriminals” who could endanger the security of the Dystopian GOP Party.

The original statute was enacted after the revelation of CIA abuses in the 1970s, and it required judicial oversight for most federal wiretapping conducted in the United States.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates, and many Democratic lawmakers, complained that the Bush administration’s revisions of the law could breach constitutional protections against government intrusion. But the administration, aided by Republican congressional leaders, suggested that a failure to approve what intelligence officials sought could expose the country to a greater risk of terrorist attacks.

Democrats facing reelection next year in conservative districts helped propel the bill to a quick approval. Adding to the pressures they felt were recent intelligence reports about threatening new al-Qaeda activity in Pakistan and the disclosure by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) of a secret court ruling earlier this year that complicated the wiretapping of purely foreign communications that happen to pass through a communications node on U.S. soil.

 

King George Wins Wiretapping For All Foreigners

Associated Press
House Approves Foreign Wiretap Bill

WASHINGTON –

The House handed President Bush a victory Saturday, voting to expand the government’s abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States.

The 227-183 vote, which followed the Senate’s approval Friday, sends the bill to Bush for his signature. He had urged Congress to approve it, saying Saturday, “Protecting America is our most solemn obligation.”

Oh well.  What did you really expect?  FISA  neutered,  the 4th Amendment a memory.

The administration said the measure is needed to speed the National Security Agency’s ability to intercept phone calls, e-mails and other communications involving foreign nationals “reasonably believed to be outside the United States.” Civil liberties groups and many Democrats said it goes too far, possibly enabling the government to wiretap U.S. residents communicating with overseas parties without adequate oversight from courts or Congress.

The 227-183 vote, which followed the Senate’s approval Friday, sends the bill to Bush for his signature.

10:38 P.M. –

On agreeing to the resolution Agreed to without objection.

10:37 P.M. –

Considered as privileged matter. On approving the Journal Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: 205 – 187 (Roll no. 837).

S. 1927:

to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to provide additional procedures for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence information and for other purposes

(Click here to see how everyone voted) 

Many congressional Democrats wanted tighter restrictions on government surveillance, but yielded in the face of Bush’s veto threats and the impending August recess.

“This bill would grant the attorney general the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review,  without any checks and balances,”  said Rep. Zoe Lofgren,  D-Calif.,  during the debate preceding the vote.   “I think this unwarranted, unprecedented measure would simply eviscerate the 4th Amendment,”  which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The House of Faux Representatives must have a VERY good reason to appease the King.  I am sure the Sunday morning talk shows will be filled with excuses and explanations.  This bill is a great tool not bound by accountability.  Gonzales  will be the decider when and where to use his expanded powers.  Woe, I mean Wow,  I feel safer already.  Time to learn sign language.  I think I’ll wear moccasins, too.  They make no sound as you tiptoe across the border into Canada.

The President We Were Warned About

There’s something to be said, maybe a lot, about the wisdom of our founding fathers. Maybe their wisdom came from their experience with King George (theirs not ours) or maybe it came from being caught up in the age of enlightenment, when people actually thought about events and consequences. Needless to say, in all the dust books that we don’t bother reading, we were clearly warned about our current day King George.

SF Chronicle: Robert Scheer

GEORGE W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the “foreign entanglements” that George Washington feared would destroy our experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

With the “war on terror,” Bush has asserted the right of the president to wage war anywhere and for any length of time, at his whim, because the “terrorists” will always provide a convenient shadowy target. Just the “continual warfare” that Madison warned of in justifying the primary role of Congress in initiating and continuing to finance a war — the very issue now at stake in Bush’s battle with Congress.

In his “Political Observations,” written years after he had served as fourth president of the United States, Madison went on to underscore the dangers of an imperial presidency bloated by war fever. “In war,” Madison wrote in 1795, at a time when the young republic still faced its share of dangerous enemies, “the discretionary power of the executive is extended … and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.”

How remarkably prescient of Madison to anticipate the specter of our current King George, who imperiously is undermining Congress’ attempts to end the Iraq war. When the prime author of the U.S. Constitution explained why that document grants Congress — not the president — the exclusive power to declare and fund wars, Madison wrote that “The delegation of such powers [to the president] would have struck, not only at the fabric of our Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments.”

Because “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” Madison urged that the constitutional separation of powers he had codified be respected. “The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war … the power of raising armies,” he wrote. “The separation of the power of raising armies from the power of commanding them is intended to prevent the raising of armies for the sake of commanding them.”

That last sentence perfectly describes the threat of what President Dwight Eisenhower would describe 165 years later as the “military-industrial complex,” a permanent war economy feeding off a permanent state of insecurity. The collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the military profiteers and their cheerleaders in the government of a raison d’être for the enormous war economy supposedly created in response to it.

Fortunately for them, Bush found in the 9/11 attack an excuse to make war even more profitable and longer lasting. The Iraq war, which the president’s 9/11 commission concluded never had anything to do with the terrorist assault, nonetheless has transferred many hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars into the military economy. And when Congress seeks to exercise its power to control the budget, this president asserts that this will not govern his conduct of the war.

There never was a congressional declaration of war to cover the invasion of Iraq. Instead, President Bush acted under his claimed power as commander in chief, which the Supreme Court has held does allow him to respond to a “state of war” against the United States. That proviso was clearly a reference to surprise attacks or sudden emergencies.

The problem is that the “state of war” in question here was an al Qaeda attack on the United States that had nothing whatsoever to do with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Perhaps, to spare Congress the embarrassment of formally declaring war against a nation that had not attacked America, Bush settled for a loosely worded resolution supporting his use of military power, if Iraq failed to comply with U.N. mandates. This was justified by the White House as a means of strengthening the United Nations in holding Iraq accountable for its weapons of mass destruction arsenal, but as most of the world looked on in dismay, Bush invaded Iraq after U.N. inspectors on the ground discovered that Iraq had no WMD.

Bush betrayed Congress, which in turn betrayed the American people — just as Madison feared when he wrote: “Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

Today’s 4th of July – More Patience More Casualties

Bush makes plea for patience on Iraq

Bush: Patience Is Key In Iraq Surge

Bush visit not for the public

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. – The public is not invited to attend President Bush’s Fourth of July visit to Martinsburg, W.Va.

The president will focus on mingling with members of the 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard and their families, said Blair Jones, a White House spokesman. Bush plans to speak about the War on Terror and recognize the Guard members for their military service.

You know Bush thinks this will be the safest place for him to show his face on the 4th of July.   Bet they will be screening the soldiers for signs of PTSD! Enjoy the beautiful Op Ed from today’s Charleston Gazette.

Iraq’s fighting a matter to be worked out by Iraqis ·

Nick Casey: Charleston Gazette

Welcome to West Virginia, President Bush. We hope that you enjoy your brief stay in Berkeley County on this July Fourth.

Mr. President, West Virginians are a proud people. We are proud of our state and our nation. And we are extremely proud of our sons and daughters who valiantly heeded the call of service to this nation.

Our country has undergone great loss during these last four years as you have waged a war in Iraq. More than 3,500 brave men and women have perished. More than 25,000 have suffered injuries. Here in West Virginia, we have lost loved ones in Iraq — 19 to be exact. In addition to the precious lives lost, our nation and state have paid a great price. The war has sent federal spending to unprecedented levels, thereby creating increased debt and a deficit for generations to come.

Independence Day is about having the courage to oppose what is wrong and unjust. There is nothing courageous about staying the course in a war fought for uncertain objectives and for questionable reasons.

For four long years, Mr. President, you and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito have overseen and pushed policies to continue a war with no end in sight. Mr. President, you have incited and provoked our enemies with careless and irresponsible rhetoric. You have turned a blind eye to the needs of the men and women returning from service — many with visible physical wounds and many more with less visible, mental ailments.

Americans and West Virginians are ready for a new direction in Iraq. This conversation is not about the past. It is about the future. How is America going to build upon its greatness that started 231 years ago with the signing of the Declaration of Independence? How is America going to reclaim its greatness in the world? Will America treat its returning service men and women with the dignity they have earned and deserve?

Already, people in your own Republican Party, such as Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., are calling for a change in strategy and policy in Iraq. In recent days, even more congressional Republicans have sided with him. I call on Rep. Capito to look at the facts, not the spin, and follow Sen. Lugar’s lead.

There is nothing shameful or embarrassing about changing course in Iraq. The American people want it; retired military commanders advise it; the Iraqis want it; and the world wants it. The current increase in violence is spiraling out of control among the different Iraqi factions. It is an internal battle left to be worked out by the Iraqis, not by American troops.

Our troops have completed their mission. They have successfully deposed Saddam Hussein, overseen elections, and armed and trained the Iraqi security forces. America’s military mission is complete — anything more in Iraq must be spearheaded by the Iraqis.

Mr. President, July Fourth marks the birthday of the Declaration of Independence, the precious document that sets forth the ideals of the Constitution that have time and again been ignored by you and your administration in the war on terror and the war in Iraq.

The principles of the Constitution are rooted in our freedoms that allow us to wave the American flag freely and to mark our homes with yellow ribbons to remember our loved ones serving in the military. And, as the yellow ribbons line the trees and mailboxes across the nation and American flags wave proudly this July Fourth, a nation awaits a new direction in Iraq.

Casey is the chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party.

What more can be said?  What are we doing about this!

Our Founding Fathers Would Be In Guantanamo

Op-Ed: Our Founding Fathers were Freedom Fighters …

My ancestors are traced back to the 1600′s, immigrating to this continent on boats from England and Ireland. Several of them fought in the American Revolution – I have documents and letters from one who was injured, became ill and had to return home to recover before returning to his unit to finish the fight. I have the letters and documents his daughter wrote to the fledgling government about his ‘veteran’s’ benefits in the late 1790s. The United States Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787. The final branch of government was not installed until February 2, 1790.

In today’s America, my ancestors would be labeled as a ‘home grown terrorists’ and ‘enemy combatants’. They would end up in Guantanamo indefinitely!

My other ancestors, Presidents Polk and Monroe, are rolling in their graves to witness this country return to Monarchy. They would climb out of their graves in protest to see a Theocracy in bloom.

Where is spirit that drove these people? Where are the descendants of the Minutemen who risked everything for a grand idea? Where are the descendants of the signers of the Declaration, Bill of Rights and Constitution?

Hear ye, hear ye, calling all people who call themselves AMERICANS, duty calls you to step up to the responsibility to carry the banner of freedom handed to you by your Founding Fathers and Mothers. REVOLT! That’s what my ancestors did.

Rally! Speak out! Pressure the people you elected to represent you! This is supposed to be a Representative Government ruled by Law as directed by our Founding Fathers.

End Of The Grand Experiment

Remember when this meant something!

 

 

 

Bush Administration Last Days – Are We Scared Yet?

Bush administration wants us to be scared of:

• AlQaeda,
• Other un-named terrorists,
• Gays,
• anyone who is not a radical Christian, anyone who is not with his agenda,

• Inclusive health care
• People who think

This administration wants his population to be white or act white, buy in to the Armageddon concept to justify:

• atrocities against other cultures (anything outside of his world is PAGAN)
• completely destroy other civilizations (because they are PAGAN)

• grab oil resources wherever we can (so his greasy buddies can profit)
• allow genocide to grow exponentially long enough so that if we DO step up to responsibility thousands or millions have already died,

End Time Christian’s wars against PAGANS are equal to Islam’s war against INFIDELS. Euphemisms abound to cloak atrocities against other populations to justify world domination. The Political Islamists have used terror against innocent Americans, OK, so have Political Christians:

• 1. First of all crimes against Americans are results of economic suppression and interference in local politics with extortion and bribery.
  2. American businesses use underhanded tactics to secure advantageous pricing and cheap labor from disadvantaged and desperate.
  3. Americans or their Proxy Mercenary Armies have injured, threatened or killed opposition to their agendas throughout history – don’t get me started on the American Indians.

Pagan can be defined broadly:

Wikipedia – the faith traditions outside the Abrahamic monotheistic group of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This includes the Dharmic religions (such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism), Native American religions and mythologies and Shinto as well as non-Abrahamic ethnic religions in general. More narrow definitions will not include any of the world religions and restrict the term to local or rural currents not organized as civil religions.

Both “Pagan” and “heathen” have historically been used as a pejorative by adherents of monotheistic religions (such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam) to indicate a disbeliever in their religion.

Religious Extremism: Answers.com, Wikipedia, BBS News

Wikpedia – Dominionist , Islam

Answers – Dominionism, Islam

Religious Tolerance – Dominionism, Islam

Disbelievers – United States Government – Islam – Christianity

 

 

Bush’s conversations with GOD have allowed Counterfeit Religion to be used as an excuse to conquer for OIL!

 

 

Manufactured Rapture – Armaggedon Equals Corruption

 Bush, Mideast Wars and End-Time Prophecy
By JP Briggs II, Ph.D., and Thomas D. Williams
t r u t h o u t | Special Report    Friday 29 June 2007

“Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.”
– Former US President Thomas Jefferson

   President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God’s end-of-days plan, according to close observers.    Historians and investigative journalists following the “end-time Christian” movement have grown alarmed at the impact it may be having on Bush’s Middle East policies, including the current war in Iraq, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the strife in Lebanon and the administration’s repeated attempts to find a cause for war against Iran.

    Many people are aware that Bush is “the most aggressively religious president in American History,” as eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described him, (Schlesinger, “War and the Presidency,” 143) but most remain without a clue to what this actually means.

Crosshairs Iran – an Illustration

Divine Mission

The Israel Connection

Neocons and End-Timers

End Game

Hats off to Truthout for a supurbly researched article that scares the HELL out of me! 

King George and Lord Cheney Must Go!

IT TOOK A REVOLUTION for this country to shed itself of a corrupt monarchy totally disconnected from it’s colonial subjects.

IT WILL TAKE A REVOLUTION to save the country our Founding Fathers died for.

 

Beware Christian Dominionists – God Tells Them To Kill

Beware the Dominionist “love bomb” By Kerry Tomasi Online Journal Contributing Writer

During a recent address to the Good Shepherd Baptists in Terre Haute Indiana, Col. J. Tyler Ryberg had this to say about our “war on terror”, and its current focal point, Iraq: ” . . . it’s an act of love to kill evil people who seek to kill Americans, it’s an act of love for our nation”. And with regards to those “Islamic jihadists” in Iraq seeking to kill us: “Peace is not an option.”

In light of the half million innocent (i.e. – not “Islamic jihadists”) Iraqi men, women, and children who may have been killed (thus far) as a result of our invasion, many have questioned where Col. Ryberg gets his reasoning (not to mention his definition of “love”).

But I’m not one of them. I know where he gets his reasoning. He gets it from what he deems the “supreme law of the land” – the Bible, and specifically the Old Testament.

Consider the biblical account of God’s ‘chosen ones’ (the first ones, not us) and their foray into the land of Canaan. Recall that God instructed Moses and Joshua to invade the “promised land” and kill everything and everyone they could get their hands on. They were to ” . . . save alive nothing that breatheth”. (Deut 20:16-17, 7:1-2, Josh 10:40)

When you combine this myopic “we’re special” conditioning with the reasoning espoused by Ryberg and others within the Dominionist movement (Google or Mash it), you create an extremely volatile and dangerous situation. And it’s all the more dangerous because these folks have infiltrated and/or control much of the Republican Party.

They want an authoritarian theocracy similar in design and kind to that in the days of Moses and Joshua.

A theocracy that believes it has a god-given right to exercise dominion over the entire earth, including other people and their property.

A theocracy that views billions of others not quite like themselves as evil.

A theocracy with enough nuclear firepower to destroy the planet.

So much for the Constitution …