Guess What BAR stands for in the lawyer's BAR Exam.
Give up? Try British Accredited Registry
Get it now?
(1)BAR-that’s an acronym for BRITISH ACCREDITED REGISTRY. The American BAR association is a branch of a British organization. The term “esquire” lawyers call themselves is a title of nobility.
There was a 13th Amendment, now lost, that banned titles of nobility to any office holder in America.www.apfn.org/APFN/13th.htm
The legal code the lawyers have written is secretly known in their circles as admiralty law or maritime law. That gold fringe on the American flags in government offices isn’t just flag bling-it’s the symbol that that office is operating under unconstitutional law. Admiralty law is a law of contracts that has replaced the old common law that ordinary could understand-and knew. Yes, once upon a time in America, average folks represented themselves in court-but with the little remembered bankruptcy declared by FDR during the depression that law was replaced.www.apfn.org/apfn/flag.htm
We are still unwittingly under bankruptcy administration.usa-the-republic.com/revenue/true_history/Chap8.html The uniform commercial code is maritime law, it is used to regulate us. No lawyer is going to tell you this, not just because he’ll get disbarred but because in his warped worldview it’s not in his interest to tell the sheep how they’re getting sheared.
(2)Had a college professor who taught political science 101. Charming man, had a gift for public speaking. His first day he stood with his lanky frame extended his arms and proclaimed to us snot nosed college students that “we are the intelligentsia, we are the elite”. The rest of his course he spent filling us with information about the origins of America that should’ve been taught in grade school. Last day of the class I go up to him and he complimented me(I spent most of my time doodling cartoons on the desks)and I ask him what “progressive” meant, since he proclaimed himself one. He said “socialism”.
Socialists are thieves that use state power to get what they want. Remember that.
(3)Go to any library with a law section. Takes up like a quarter of the books. And the beast expects us to know the law?
(4)You’re online reading this? Google up “police brutality”-there’s millions of hits. Go to www.officer.com go to their forum and read in shock and horror; today’s cop is a brutal, brainwashed, authoritarian robot just bright enough to try to entrap you in some lawyer’s law.
(5)And I suppose you’re saying its way passed time these bastards got clipped. That would be rather violent, I mean, do you know what that would take to pull such CRIMINAL ACTIVITY off? You’d have to:
from www.legitgov.org
Attorney: 'DC Madam' left instructions if 'ever found dead of apparent suicide' By Lori Price
Attorney: "Jeane was very clear with me that if she was ever found dead of an apparent suicide, I was to make sure that all the evidence was publicly disseminated so that it could be independently evaluated."
Exclusive: Citizens For Legitimate Government has learned that Deborah Jeane Palfrey's lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, has intervened to stop a lawsuit seeking to prevent the Tarpon Springs, Florida, Police Department from releasing information requested by Sibley pertaining to the investigation of Jeane's death.
On July 22, 2008, Sibley requested under the Florida Public Records Act, "copies of any and all records, including without limitation police reports and photographs, related to the investigation of the death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey on May 1, 2008, at [redacted] Tarpon Springs, Florida. This request includes copies of every document related to the matter, regardless of the format in which the information is stored. I note that information stored on a computer is as much a public record as a written page in a book or stored in a filing cabinet." read
Attorney: 'DC Madam' left instructions if 'ever found dead of apparent suicide' By Lori Price
Attorney: "Jeane was very clear with me that if she was ever found dead of an apparent suicide, I was to make sure that all the evidence was publicly disseminated so that it could be independently evaluated."
Exclusive: Citizens For Legitimate Government has learned that Deborah Jeane Palfrey's lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, has intervened to stop a lawsuit seeking to prevent the Tarpon Springs, Florida, Police Department from releasing information requested by Sibley pertaining to the investigation of Jeane's death.
On July 22, 2008, Sibley requested under the Florida Public Records Act, "copies of any and all records, including without limitation police reports and photographs, related to the investigation of the death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey on May 1, 2008, at [redacted] Tarpon Springs, Florida. This request includes copies of every document related to the matter, regardless of the format in which the information is stored. I note that information stored on a computer is as much a public record as a written page in a book or stored in a filing cabinet." read
from AmericanFreePress.net
Don’t Expect Bush to Pardon Traficant Before Leaving Office
By Michael Collins Piper
President George W. Bush has said repeatedly, privately, in the past, that a pardon for wrongfully imprisoned former Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio) is off the table. And it now appears that Bush intends to leave office with Traficant remaining in prison until his unusually long sentence (eight years) ends in August of 2009.
Former Youngstown Mayor George M. McKelvey—a Democrat—made national news in 2004 when he endorsed Bush. He has been urging Bush to grant Traficant either a presidential pardon or a commutation of his prison sentence.
McKelvey has been asking Bush, since 2004—two years after Traficant was sent to prison—to give Traficant his freedom, but the president refuses to act. For his own part, Traficant has refused a pardon, because to accept a pardon would require that he admit to committing crimes that he says he did not commit.
In a radio interview on December 1, McKelvey pointed out that Traficant is serving a longer sentence than most people convicted on second-degree murder charges, declaring the Traficant case “the greatest injustice in the history of this state.” read
Don’t Expect Bush to Pardon Traficant Before Leaving Office
By Michael Collins Piper
President George W. Bush has said repeatedly, privately, in the past, that a pardon for wrongfully imprisoned former Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio) is off the table. And it now appears that Bush intends to leave office with Traficant remaining in prison until his unusually long sentence (eight years) ends in August of 2009.
Former Youngstown Mayor George M. McKelvey—a Democrat—made national news in 2004 when he endorsed Bush. He has been urging Bush to grant Traficant either a presidential pardon or a commutation of his prison sentence.
McKelvey has been asking Bush, since 2004—two years after Traficant was sent to prison—to give Traficant his freedom, but the president refuses to act. For his own part, Traficant has refused a pardon, because to accept a pardon would require that he admit to committing crimes that he says he did not commit.
In a radio interview on December 1, McKelvey pointed out that Traficant is serving a longer sentence than most people convicted on second-degree murder charges, declaring the Traficant case “the greatest injustice in the history of this state.” read
from Yahoo News
FBI agents stage sting to snare corrupt Ill. cops
Sting
* BREAKING NEWS: FBI Raids Harvey Police Dept. Play Video Video: BREAKING NEWS: FBI Raids Harvey Police Dept. CBS 2 Chicago
CHICAGO – Duffel bags stuffed with cocaine were delivered by plane to an out-of-the-way suburban airport while two sheriff's officers provided security. A police officer stood by to guard the cash and keep out the riffraff at a poker game where $100,000 changed hands. And a drug dealer was told squad cars marked "sheriff" and "sheriff's police" might be available on a "freelance" basis to provide protection for his deliveries.
Such tales of law enforcement gone awry emerged in court papers Tuesday as federal prosecutors unveiled a series of elaborate sting operations aimed at officers who hired out to ride shotgun for drug deals and other criminal activities.
Fifteen officers and two other men who had pretended to be law enforcement officers were charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine or heroin or both.
But the most spectacular pretending was done by the federal agents themselves.
The pilots of the airplane were not drug runners but undercover agents. So were the gamblers who busily played hand after hand of high-stakes poker — all for show.
The drug broker who squired the officers to the airport to pick up the duffel bags was an agent. So was the drug dealer who stuffed the bags into his Mercedes-Benz.
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said he was dismayed to find that so many law enforcement officers had "sold out their badge."
"When drug dealers deal drugs, they ought to be afraid of the police — not turn to them for help," Fitzgerald said at a news conference.
Officials paid homage to an unnamed FBI agent who moved into a business in Harvey more than a year ago and set up shop as a drug broker. He soon attracted the attention of police and the corruption grew, authorities said.
They said the agent was sent in undercover because there had been reports of police corruption over the last several years in southern Cook County, including the Harvey police department. An investigation into allegations of robbery, extortion, narcotics offenses and weapons distribution is ongoing, officials said.
Those charged include 10 Cook County sheriff's correctional officers, four Harvey police officers and one Chicago police officer.
Of the 17 defendants, 14 were arrested or surrendered Tuesday and were being immediately brought before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Mason. Two sheriff's officers are on active duty with Army National Guard units in Afghanistan, and warrants were issued for their arrest.
If convicted of conspiracy to possess and distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine or one kilogram of heroin, the defendants would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life. The maximum fine would be $4 million.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart called the alleged behavior "absolutely reprehensible."
"The responsibility of watching over jail inmates is an important one and it's a shame these men didn't take that responsibility more seriously," he said in a statement.
Each of those charged has been suspended with pay pending a hearing next week, Dart said. "That step will then lead to a request for termination," he said.
FBI agents stage sting to snare corrupt Ill. cops
Sting
* BREAKING NEWS: FBI Raids Harvey Police Dept. Play Video Video: BREAKING NEWS: FBI Raids Harvey Police Dept. CBS 2 Chicago
CHICAGO – Duffel bags stuffed with cocaine were delivered by plane to an out-of-the-way suburban airport while two sheriff's officers provided security. A police officer stood by to guard the cash and keep out the riffraff at a poker game where $100,000 changed hands. And a drug dealer was told squad cars marked "sheriff" and "sheriff's police" might be available on a "freelance" basis to provide protection for his deliveries.
Such tales of law enforcement gone awry emerged in court papers Tuesday as federal prosecutors unveiled a series of elaborate sting operations aimed at officers who hired out to ride shotgun for drug deals and other criminal activities.
Fifteen officers and two other men who had pretended to be law enforcement officers were charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine or heroin or both.
But the most spectacular pretending was done by the federal agents themselves.
The pilots of the airplane were not drug runners but undercover agents. So were the gamblers who busily played hand after hand of high-stakes poker — all for show.
The drug broker who squired the officers to the airport to pick up the duffel bags was an agent. So was the drug dealer who stuffed the bags into his Mercedes-Benz.
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said he was dismayed to find that so many law enforcement officers had "sold out their badge."
"When drug dealers deal drugs, they ought to be afraid of the police — not turn to them for help," Fitzgerald said at a news conference.
Officials paid homage to an unnamed FBI agent who moved into a business in Harvey more than a year ago and set up shop as a drug broker. He soon attracted the attention of police and the corruption grew, authorities said.
They said the agent was sent in undercover because there had been reports of police corruption over the last several years in southern Cook County, including the Harvey police department. An investigation into allegations of robbery, extortion, narcotics offenses and weapons distribution is ongoing, officials said.
Those charged include 10 Cook County sheriff's correctional officers, four Harvey police officers and one Chicago police officer.
Of the 17 defendants, 14 were arrested or surrendered Tuesday and were being immediately brought before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Mason. Two sheriff's officers are on active duty with Army National Guard units in Afghanistan, and warrants were issued for their arrest.
If convicted of conspiracy to possess and distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine or one kilogram of heroin, the defendants would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life. The maximum fine would be $4 million.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart called the alleged behavior "absolutely reprehensible."
"The responsibility of watching over jail inmates is an important one and it's a shame these men didn't take that responsibility more seriously," he said in a statement.
Each of those charged has been suspended with pay pending a hearing next week, Dart said. "That step will then lead to a request for termination," he said.
Hague prosecutor says Bush-Blair could face war crimes charges: 1 million Iraqis killed
International Criminal Court prosecutor announced on Sunday that US President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair could face war crimes charges at the Hague, after it emerged that up to one million Iraqis have been killed since the illegal invasion. read
International Criminal Court prosecutor announced on Sunday that US President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair could face war crimes charges at the Hague, after it emerged that up to one million Iraqis have been killed since the illegal invasion. read
from GNN.Com
Discontinuity of Government
Do the Bush Administration's recent presidential directives portend the end of American democracy?
On May 9, 2007 the White House quietly issued a press release outlining a new National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive. Designated as both NSPD-51 and HSPD-20, the document details a revised strategy for the continuity of federal government in the event of a “catastrophic emergency,” dramatically restructuring the existing plan set forth by the Clinton administration. With a stroke of his pen, George W. Bush added his signature and thus empowered the Office of the President with autocratic authority over widespread aspects of American life, public and private.
As stated in the opening paragraph under the header “Purpose,” this directive lays down emergency operational requirements for all federal entities and outlines an administrative system that will offer “guidance for State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations in order to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program.” Precisely what manner of “guidance” will be provided is left unclear, except that all such prescriptions are to be consolidated and issued under the authority of a newly christened appointee called a National Continuity Coordinator. Upon the declaration of a national emergency (as observed and proclaimed by the President) this weighty position shall be filled by the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (APHS/CT) – a relatively obscure, unelected official.
Alongside the Coordinator, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA) will aid in the considerable task of organizing and directing the entirety of the nation’s functions; in addition, a Continuity Policy Coordination Committee (CPCC) will comprise the “day-to-day forum for such policy coordination.” This Committee is to be chaired (and presumably, staffed) from within the ranks of the Homeland Security Council, by persons chosen at the discretion of the Coordinator. Furthermore, the directive specifies the Secretary of Homeland Security (in a role that seems to overlap with the Coordinator’s) as the “lead agent for coordinating overall continuity operations and activities of executive departments and activities.” At the top of the provisional hierarchy sits the President, who shall ultimately “lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.”
Exactly how a common instrument of executive decree could seemingly grant such sweeping powers to a single person is an important question. Very little attention has been granted to this latest directive in the press, with only a handful of newspapers and firebrand blogs speculating on its possible implications. Were the story to break into the mainstream, it has the real potential to prove more incendiary than Abu Ghraib, GITMO, or Cheney’s shotgun snafu. Barack and Hillary would scramble to craft the catchiest talking points, descrying the despotic inclinations of the Bush regime, and the liberal punditry would surely choke on its own rage in bleating out polemics against this brazen bid for ultimate rule. What many Americans would be surprised to learn is that, contrary to various other Bush-era malfeasances, the extensive autonomous authority so casually bestowed by this directive is within the bounds of executive privilege, following a tradition of supremacy that has become intrinsic to the Office of the President.
A More Perfect Union?
The Constitution of the United States represents a crowning achievement in democratic governance and an organizational touchstone for modern republics around the world. America’s founding fathers displayed remarkable conscience and prescience in their framing of a new society, egalitarian in its ideals and balanced in structure, to deliver the promise of liberty and happiness for all mankind. (We’ll take the popular stance and not begrudge them their gender bias or slaveholding in this assessment.) Yet though they were revolutionaries, pitted against the British Crown, Jefferson and his cohorts remained smitten with a bit of Old World nostalgia as evinced in their insistence on a Chief Executive at the helm of the nation.
Their vision of representative democracy wasn’t entirely novel. In his excellent book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Thom Hartmann recounts how a delegation of Iroquois tribesmen were in attendance as guests of Benjamin Franklin during the Albany Plan of Union in 1754, where the early drafts of a constitutional framework were imagined. The colonists recognized the wisdom in the natives’ traditional ways of governing, and they adopted into their own design its self-regulating system of checks and balances achieved through a high court and dual legislature. Unable to shake the ghosts of their royal allegiance, however, they opted to deviate from the Iroquois Confederacy’s time-honored arrangement by adding an executive branch and its “surrogate king,” the President. Rather than conducting the affairs of the nation purely by majority rule, the final decisions of the American government would effectively rest in the hands of a single man.
As Hartmann notes: “[The founding fathers] also decided to ignore the Iroquois rule, which persists to this day, that all decisions of ‘importance’ (such as waging war, changing national boundaries, altering relationships with other tribes, etc.) must be submitted to the local electorate by the elected representatives for discussion, debate, and decision. Instead, they created the system we now have where such decisions are made daily without consulting the electorate.”
So it was from the very outset that the lofty pillars of the ultimate democracy were built upon the tenuous foundation of a centralized executive power. No sooner had the inaugural President taken oath than the implied privileges of the Chief Executive began to materialize and assert their dominance. George Washington was the first to employ presidential directives, signing pronouncements that set national policy or commanded certain actions within the nascent federal bureaucracy. His second such decree was a proclamation (one of the most common kinds of directives) heralding November 26th as “a day of public thanksgiving.” Successive Presidents issued similar edicts throughout the next century, but it wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln took office that any efforts were made to classify and record these instruments.
From 1862 onwards, all documents of Presidential decree identified as “executive orders” were sequentially numbered. Additionally, the passage of the Federal Records Act of 1935 required (with a few exceptions) the publication of all executive orders and proclamations in the Federal Register. Despite their transparency to the public, these tools of Presidential prerogative invest the Chief Executive with considerable clout over national affairs that can have far-reaching effects on the lives of American citizens. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report chronicling the history of presidential directives notes that, through these instruments, a President may wield “magisterial or executive power not unlike that of a monarch.”
This power isn’t always used subtly. It was through an executive order, for example, that Franklin Roosevelt commanded the removal of thousands of Japanese-Americans to internment camps in 1942, an act of racial discrimination that was later validated by the Supreme Court. More recently, George W. Bush revived an antiquated type of directive called a Military Order to authorize the use of military tribunals in the trying of “enemy combatants” who are sometimes held for years without charges. While these injunctions are subject to overrule by Congressional or judicial review, they nonetheless dictate immediate action and generally have “the force of law.”
A Frightened New World
The various forms and functions of presidential directives remained relatively static until the administration of Harry S. Truman, when the first paranoid waves of the Cold War began to ripple through the American psyche. With the formation of the National Security Council (NSC) in 1947, United States federal policy grew increasingly possessed by concerns of terrorism and espionage, and an escalating host of threats – foreign and domestic, proven and perceived – came to dominate the national attention. Fears of communist plots and imminent nuclear attack necessitated a new breed of executive controls. To combat the looming specter of Communist aggression, Security Council officials developed strategies of protection, preemption, and prosecution for every conceivable front. The NSC’s recommendations made their way to the President’s desk, were usually approved, and promptly implemented following the pattern of an executive order. These documents played a critical role in shaping US policies on such highly sensitive matters as nuclear proliferation, foreign arms deals, covert international ops, and psychological warfare. By the Kennedy Presidency, security decisions mandated through NSC policy papers had evolved into a new class of executive instrument: National Security Directives (NSD).
At the end of Lyndon Johnson’s tenure, around 370 NSDs had been filed and put into action under the label of National Security Action Memoranda. Nixon continued this technique of de facto lawmaking with his own designations of directives (National Security Study Memoranda and National Security Decision Memoranda), which were also employed by Gerald Ford. Each succeeding administration has followed this model with instruments of their own design, contriving new (usually ill-defined) rules of usage along with the personalized titles. Unlike earlier forms of executive devices which require publication, national security directives are often strictly classified government secrets and remain so unless, after much time has passed, an ex-President’s library deigns to release them to the public as a gesture of good faith. Indeed, even the official number of security directives is unknown for the Clinton and current Bush administrations. The unilateral and hidden nature of these instruments raises obvious concerns about their inherent lack of oversight. Efforts within Congress to mandate the publication of NSDs in the Federal Register have so far been unsuccessful; as it stands, national security directives operate entirely outside the scrutiny of legislators or the Supreme Court.
The historically sanctioned privilege enjoyed by the Chief Executive for nearly two centuries had shifted into a shadowy and uninhibited domain, borne out of the fearful, suspicious climate of the Cold War. While Red Scare-tactics and the menace of Soviet nukes surrendered to the triumphs of American consumer culture, the Office of the Presidency continued to rule by machinations, far outside the purview of Congress and the American constituency. Legal grounds for some of this executive license have been argued from the Commander-in-Chief and “faithful execution of the laws” clauses of the Constitution (often cited as justification for presidential directives), yet it is within the context of a national emergency that the autocracy of the Office can be fully realized.
As soon as a President proclaims a state of national emergency, a vast and nebulous arsenal of “emergency powers” comes instantly at his disposal. According to a CRS paper on the topic, a President officiating during this period “may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.” These impressive powers are derived in part from Article II of the Constitution and, to a greater extent, from scores of permissions mentioned in statutory law. Much is left open to executive interpretation, however; as has been the trend among Chief Executives, “the authority of a President is largely determined by the President himself.”
Throughout most of the twentieth century, Presidents used these powers with abandon as there was neither protocol in place for oversight, nor limits set on the duration of emergency status. By the time the National Emergency Act was passed in 1976, the United States was functioning in a “state of emergency” four times over. This had allowed sitting Presidents carte blanche over the country’s affairs for more than four decades, going back to the first extant declaration from Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Under the new restrictions, an emergency was set to expire automatically after one year unless explicitly renewed by the President. The act also gathered and codified 470 statutory references to exigency authority, prescribed the proper means of declaring emergencies, and established a procedure for Congress to annul emergency conditions. Despite these formalities, the broad swath of influence made available to a President during an emergency was left largely untouched.
Hiding in the Shadows
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 rekindled an inferno of domestic security concerns that had died to a smolder since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Within three days of the assault, George W. Bush declared a national emergency, denoting the “continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.” As the world looked on solemnly at images of Ground Zero rescue workers sifting the rubble for survivors, miles away and several feet underground a long-dormant vestige of Cold War protectionism was being brought back to life. Known as the “Continuity of Operations Plan” (or COG, for Continuity of Government), this covert stratagem is a cherished piece of conspiracy theorist lore. According to the Plan, in case of an incapacitating catastrophe in Washington, facilities at undisclosed subterranean locations on the East Coast are in place to allow for the remote performance of “National Essential Functions” (NEFs). As reported by the Washington Post, this moribund scheme went into effect for the very first time in the hours following the 9/11 attacks and has since continued in perpetuity, establishing a shadow government on retainer awaiting some impending disaster. The bunkers are being maintained in permanent “ready” mode, staffed by a rotating contingent of senior-level civilians from within the Bush administration.
Continuity of Government plans were conceived in an era of bomb shelters and air-raid drills; as these concerns died away, the once state-of-the-art bunkers built to defend the fate of America were also forgotten, abandoned to history as anachronistic curiosities. While a series of clandestine COG exercises continued throughout the Reagan years (involving Senator Dick Cheney and a civilian Donald Rumsfeld), the collapse of the Soviet Union obviated the need for these elaborate programs. It wasn’t until the millennial tensions of Y2K that contingencies for catastrophic events regained currency in the White House.
In a confidential security instrument labeled Presidential Decision Directive 67 (“Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations”), President Clinton revivified the Cold War program of COG relocation, expanding it drastically to include representatives from nearly every department and agency. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was charged with overseeing the ambitious repositioning plan, to be accomplished within twelve hours of an emergency dictum. 9/11 served as the Plan’s trial run, and the results were dreadful. While Vice President Cheney and a select group of officials choppered to safety in disaster-proof bunkers, the extensive network of federal representatives slated for evacuation were left behind. Those that did make it to the site discovered a largely inoperative system of outdated technology and long-neglected equipment. Were the conditions of the Washington attack more catastrophic, the federal government would have been in shambles.
The Bush administration responded to this failure with a renewed obsession in continuity planning. A massive overhaul of the program began, including the creation of an emergency broadcast system called COGCON to alert officials of COG initiation via Blackberries and mobile devices. The above-mentioned shadow government immediately took up permanent residence in the underground control centers, which were in turn updated to modern standards of computer technology and wireless communication. With the system and personnel brought up to speed, the government conducted a series of three colossal COG exercises (bearing the titles Pinnacle and Forward Challenge) to test the effectiveness of the revamped operation. Even orchestrated disasters, it seems, are beyond the management capabilities of FEMA. Marred by widespread confusion and disorder, these pre-planned drills have only served to underscore the near impossibility of relocating such a broad representation of ancillary federal offices.
Discontinuing Democracy
One of the most apparent post-9/11 transformations came with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. Created by act of Congress in 2002, this Cabinet-level organization boasts the third largest departmental staff (after the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs) and represents a monumental reallocation of responsibility within the federal government. Its chief duty – to ensure the protection of the “Homeland” of the United States from terrorist aggression – takes place within the domestic sphere of the nation, including such arenas as airport security and the integrity of the Post Office. Civil liberties defenders have raised concerns that Americans’ rights to privacy are jeopardized by the DHS, pointing to allegations of domestic surveillance under the new department. Such measures, the government counters, are unfortunately necessary within a new paradigm of constant terrorist threat. In order to facilitate policy decisions in this field, George W. Bush initiated a new classification of directives called Homeland Security Presidential Directives (HSPD). Much like NSPDs, these instruments are not obligated to public disclosure and imply a dramatic capacity for executive control over national affairs.
HSPD-20 (alternately known as NSPD-51) is the Bush administration’s latest documented use of this new executive tool. As stated earlier, it outlines an updated National Continuity Policy that differs markedly from the preexisting arrangement under Clinton’s PDD-67. For starters, the Bush plan follows a recent order removing FEMA from its administrative role in COG operations, to be supplanted by officials from the Homeland Security Department. Another dramatic revision introduces a National Continuity Coordinator to develop and oversee the Continuity of Operations (COOP) for all executive departments and agencies. Previously, these offices were obliged to formulate and enact their own contingency plans independently – a sensible approach when dealing with such a sprawling, complex bureaucracy. On top of her usual responsibilities as Counterterrorism advisor, Coordinator Frances Fragos Townsend must develop and submit a cohesive National Continuity Implementation Plan to the President before a deadline of August 10, 2007. In light of the recent botched COG exercises under the individuated Clinton scheme, it seems wholly unrealistic that a small cadre of security officials should be expected to successfully design, implement and supervise the emergency operations of every aspect of the United States government. Perhaps it isn’t meant to be feasible.
Reporter Jerome Corsi voiced one of the first objections to the new plan in a May 23 column on the traditionalist-conservative website WorldNetDaily. According to Corsi, this directive appears to “supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of National Continuity Coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position.” Corsi goes on to suggest, “The language of the May 9 directive appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists, suggesting instead that the powers of the executive order can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.” As we have seen, however, the powers of executive decree are ultimately unrestricted in this regard; as long as Bush formally declares the existence of an emergency by proclamation, he remains within the legal bounds of his Office. Congress or the courts may, of course, attempt to countermand the directive, but this is not likely to be successful (or even possible) during a time of serious crisis. Unless these moves are made now, before such an event occurs, HSPD-20 remains the law of the land.
While Corsi’s fears of an ineffectual Congress are reasonable, a Washington Post piece by Spencer S. Hsu (published the day after the directive was announced) intuits a different transfer of power in the new continuity plan. Paraphrasing sources from within the Bush administration, Hsu notes, “the directive formalizes a shift of authority away from the Department of Homeland Security to the White House.” This is clearly discernable in the explicit mention of the Chief Executive leading the provisional government. Furthermore, the person currently slated to fill the position of National Continuity Coordinator is Frances Townsend – an exceptionally close advisor to the President who shares his philosophy intimately. But greater than any organizational or semantic scheming, it is within the very context of Continuity of Government operations that the Chief Executive derives his ultimate supremacy – that is, a national emergency and its concomitant Presidential powers.
***
How might these powers be used to subvert the aims of democracy? Some critics have suggested that, reluctant to relinquish control in 2008, the Bush administration may proclaim a national emergency to annul the approaching Presidential election. Perhaps, others have speculated, the White House is preparing for some upcoming “terrorist” event in the near future as a pretext to declare martial law and launch further military campaigns in the Middle East. And, of course, a combination of the two scenarios seems equally plausible.
Consider this: Prior to the May 9 directive, President Clinton’s PDD-67 was the operative continuity arrangement throughout the entire campaign of the War on Terror. For an administration so concerned with protecting the Homeland and securing our national interests against attack, it seems a peculiarly belated move to attempt such a dramatic overhaul of the Continuity of Government plan now, with just over a year left in this second term of office. If such adjustments were truly necessary for the safety of the federal government, surely they would have been undertaken before the end of 2001, along with the drafting of the Patriot Act and the formation of the DHS. Why would President Bush wait until this late hour – during the final possible months of his tenure – to make these seemingly important changes?
And now, consider this: Clinton’s PDD-67 was, and still remains, a strictly classified document. Our only glimpse into the structure of his Continuity of Government scheme comes from a memorandum circulated among federal officials that explains the requirements for compliance according to the revised Plan. Labeled “Federal Preparedness Circular” (FPC-65), the memo announces as its Purpose, to provide “guidance to Federal Executive Branch departments and agencies for use in developing viable and executable contingency plans for the continuity of operations (COOP).” While this document serves as a tiny window into the covert activities of an increasingly secretive federal government, it also underscores an important point: Continuity of Government planning, along with untold other executive branch intrigues, are almost uniformly “Top Secret” initiatives. It does not behoove the White House to make such things publicly known – unless there is some certain benefit in doing so.
The Bush directive, however, is quite _un_classified, albeit strangely unnoticed in the Press. Its ominous implications and portentous language make no mistake about what scope of influence the President is entitled to encompass in a time of emergency. For the first time in an authoritative document, the vast body of dictatorial powers tacitly held by a Chief Executive is laid out in clear, unbending words. He is authorized to exert control over “State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations.”
He is granted the exclusive right to determine when a crisis constitutes a “catastrophic emergency,” following broad guidelines that include “any event, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.” This could be a flooded city in Louisiana or an atomic blast in Israel.
Furthermore, within the COG arrangement, the President is beholden to no other authority and is only obliged to cooperate with the rest of the government “as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers among the branches.” In this context, comity means “courtesy,” to be understood in the same way that the U.S. extends comity towards the policies of foreign governments – that is to say, according to its whims. There is something profoundly unsettling about the candor and transparency present here.
If President Clinton, and all previous administrations, saw the need to keep these continuity documents confidential, why has this latest security directive been made public? And why is it suddenly appearing now, five years after the 9/11 attacks? If we must speculate, maybe there is indeed some imminent catastrophe approaching, known in advance by the administration. And perhaps it might fall, quite opportunely, around November of 2008, thus instituting the COG plan and precluding the ability to hold Presidential elections.
By disclosing the drastic measures that would take effect under the new continuity plan, the Bush administration effectively exonerates itself from any future claims of subterfuge or accusations of ruling by junta. All has been performed according to the traditional functioning of the executive branch, and the fateful directive itself has been made available for scrutiny prior to its activation. If Congress or the courts deem it unconstitutional, they are free to dispute it according to the law. Yet as soon as it is in play, all power rests with the President.
Discontinuity of Government
Do the Bush Administration's recent presidential directives portend the end of American democracy?
On May 9, 2007 the White House quietly issued a press release outlining a new National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive. Designated as both NSPD-51 and HSPD-20, the document details a revised strategy for the continuity of federal government in the event of a “catastrophic emergency,” dramatically restructuring the existing plan set forth by the Clinton administration. With a stroke of his pen, George W. Bush added his signature and thus empowered the Office of the President with autocratic authority over widespread aspects of American life, public and private.
As stated in the opening paragraph under the header “Purpose,” this directive lays down emergency operational requirements for all federal entities and outlines an administrative system that will offer “guidance for State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations in order to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program.” Precisely what manner of “guidance” will be provided is left unclear, except that all such prescriptions are to be consolidated and issued under the authority of a newly christened appointee called a National Continuity Coordinator. Upon the declaration of a national emergency (as observed and proclaimed by the President) this weighty position shall be filled by the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (APHS/CT) – a relatively obscure, unelected official.
Alongside the Coordinator, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA) will aid in the considerable task of organizing and directing the entirety of the nation’s functions; in addition, a Continuity Policy Coordination Committee (CPCC) will comprise the “day-to-day forum for such policy coordination.” This Committee is to be chaired (and presumably, staffed) from within the ranks of the Homeland Security Council, by persons chosen at the discretion of the Coordinator. Furthermore, the directive specifies the Secretary of Homeland Security (in a role that seems to overlap with the Coordinator’s) as the “lead agent for coordinating overall continuity operations and activities of executive departments and activities.” At the top of the provisional hierarchy sits the President, who shall ultimately “lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.”
Exactly how a common instrument of executive decree could seemingly grant such sweeping powers to a single person is an important question. Very little attention has been granted to this latest directive in the press, with only a handful of newspapers and firebrand blogs speculating on its possible implications. Were the story to break into the mainstream, it has the real potential to prove more incendiary than Abu Ghraib, GITMO, or Cheney’s shotgun snafu. Barack and Hillary would scramble to craft the catchiest talking points, descrying the despotic inclinations of the Bush regime, and the liberal punditry would surely choke on its own rage in bleating out polemics against this brazen bid for ultimate rule. What many Americans would be surprised to learn is that, contrary to various other Bush-era malfeasances, the extensive autonomous authority so casually bestowed by this directive is within the bounds of executive privilege, following a tradition of supremacy that has become intrinsic to the Office of the President.
A More Perfect Union?
The Constitution of the United States represents a crowning achievement in democratic governance and an organizational touchstone for modern republics around the world. America’s founding fathers displayed remarkable conscience and prescience in their framing of a new society, egalitarian in its ideals and balanced in structure, to deliver the promise of liberty and happiness for all mankind. (We’ll take the popular stance and not begrudge them their gender bias or slaveholding in this assessment.) Yet though they were revolutionaries, pitted against the British Crown, Jefferson and his cohorts remained smitten with a bit of Old World nostalgia as evinced in their insistence on a Chief Executive at the helm of the nation.
Their vision of representative democracy wasn’t entirely novel. In his excellent book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Thom Hartmann recounts how a delegation of Iroquois tribesmen were in attendance as guests of Benjamin Franklin during the Albany Plan of Union in 1754, where the early drafts of a constitutional framework were imagined. The colonists recognized the wisdom in the natives’ traditional ways of governing, and they adopted into their own design its self-regulating system of checks and balances achieved through a high court and dual legislature. Unable to shake the ghosts of their royal allegiance, however, they opted to deviate from the Iroquois Confederacy’s time-honored arrangement by adding an executive branch and its “surrogate king,” the President. Rather than conducting the affairs of the nation purely by majority rule, the final decisions of the American government would effectively rest in the hands of a single man.
As Hartmann notes: “[The founding fathers] also decided to ignore the Iroquois rule, which persists to this day, that all decisions of ‘importance’ (such as waging war, changing national boundaries, altering relationships with other tribes, etc.) must be submitted to the local electorate by the elected representatives for discussion, debate, and decision. Instead, they created the system we now have where such decisions are made daily without consulting the electorate.”
So it was from the very outset that the lofty pillars of the ultimate democracy were built upon the tenuous foundation of a centralized executive power. No sooner had the inaugural President taken oath than the implied privileges of the Chief Executive began to materialize and assert their dominance. George Washington was the first to employ presidential directives, signing pronouncements that set national policy or commanded certain actions within the nascent federal bureaucracy. His second such decree was a proclamation (one of the most common kinds of directives) heralding November 26th as “a day of public thanksgiving.” Successive Presidents issued similar edicts throughout the next century, but it wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln took office that any efforts were made to classify and record these instruments.
From 1862 onwards, all documents of Presidential decree identified as “executive orders” were sequentially numbered. Additionally, the passage of the Federal Records Act of 1935 required (with a few exceptions) the publication of all executive orders and proclamations in the Federal Register. Despite their transparency to the public, these tools of Presidential prerogative invest the Chief Executive with considerable clout over national affairs that can have far-reaching effects on the lives of American citizens. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report chronicling the history of presidential directives notes that, through these instruments, a President may wield “magisterial or executive power not unlike that of a monarch.”
This power isn’t always used subtly. It was through an executive order, for example, that Franklin Roosevelt commanded the removal of thousands of Japanese-Americans to internment camps in 1942, an act of racial discrimination that was later validated by the Supreme Court. More recently, George W. Bush revived an antiquated type of directive called a Military Order to authorize the use of military tribunals in the trying of “enemy combatants” who are sometimes held for years without charges. While these injunctions are subject to overrule by Congressional or judicial review, they nonetheless dictate immediate action and generally have “the force of law.”
A Frightened New World
The various forms and functions of presidential directives remained relatively static until the administration of Harry S. Truman, when the first paranoid waves of the Cold War began to ripple through the American psyche. With the formation of the National Security Council (NSC) in 1947, United States federal policy grew increasingly possessed by concerns of terrorism and espionage, and an escalating host of threats – foreign and domestic, proven and perceived – came to dominate the national attention. Fears of communist plots and imminent nuclear attack necessitated a new breed of executive controls. To combat the looming specter of Communist aggression, Security Council officials developed strategies of protection, preemption, and prosecution for every conceivable front. The NSC’s recommendations made their way to the President’s desk, were usually approved, and promptly implemented following the pattern of an executive order. These documents played a critical role in shaping US policies on such highly sensitive matters as nuclear proliferation, foreign arms deals, covert international ops, and psychological warfare. By the Kennedy Presidency, security decisions mandated through NSC policy papers had evolved into a new class of executive instrument: National Security Directives (NSD).
At the end of Lyndon Johnson’s tenure, around 370 NSDs had been filed and put into action under the label of National Security Action Memoranda. Nixon continued this technique of de facto lawmaking with his own designations of directives (National Security Study Memoranda and National Security Decision Memoranda), which were also employed by Gerald Ford. Each succeeding administration has followed this model with instruments of their own design, contriving new (usually ill-defined) rules of usage along with the personalized titles. Unlike earlier forms of executive devices which require publication, national security directives are often strictly classified government secrets and remain so unless, after much time has passed, an ex-President’s library deigns to release them to the public as a gesture of good faith. Indeed, even the official number of security directives is unknown for the Clinton and current Bush administrations. The unilateral and hidden nature of these instruments raises obvious concerns about their inherent lack of oversight. Efforts within Congress to mandate the publication of NSDs in the Federal Register have so far been unsuccessful; as it stands, national security directives operate entirely outside the scrutiny of legislators or the Supreme Court.
The historically sanctioned privilege enjoyed by the Chief Executive for nearly two centuries had shifted into a shadowy and uninhibited domain, borne out of the fearful, suspicious climate of the Cold War. While Red Scare-tactics and the menace of Soviet nukes surrendered to the triumphs of American consumer culture, the Office of the Presidency continued to rule by machinations, far outside the purview of Congress and the American constituency. Legal grounds for some of this executive license have been argued from the Commander-in-Chief and “faithful execution of the laws” clauses of the Constitution (often cited as justification for presidential directives), yet it is within the context of a national emergency that the autocracy of the Office can be fully realized.
As soon as a President proclaims a state of national emergency, a vast and nebulous arsenal of “emergency powers” comes instantly at his disposal. According to a CRS paper on the topic, a President officiating during this period “may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.” These impressive powers are derived in part from Article II of the Constitution and, to a greater extent, from scores of permissions mentioned in statutory law. Much is left open to executive interpretation, however; as has been the trend among Chief Executives, “the authority of a President is largely determined by the President himself.”
Throughout most of the twentieth century, Presidents used these powers with abandon as there was neither protocol in place for oversight, nor limits set on the duration of emergency status. By the time the National Emergency Act was passed in 1976, the United States was functioning in a “state of emergency” four times over. This had allowed sitting Presidents carte blanche over the country’s affairs for more than four decades, going back to the first extant declaration from Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Under the new restrictions, an emergency was set to expire automatically after one year unless explicitly renewed by the President. The act also gathered and codified 470 statutory references to exigency authority, prescribed the proper means of declaring emergencies, and established a procedure for Congress to annul emergency conditions. Despite these formalities, the broad swath of influence made available to a President during an emergency was left largely untouched.
Hiding in the Shadows
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 rekindled an inferno of domestic security concerns that had died to a smolder since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Within three days of the assault, George W. Bush declared a national emergency, denoting the “continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.” As the world looked on solemnly at images of Ground Zero rescue workers sifting the rubble for survivors, miles away and several feet underground a long-dormant vestige of Cold War protectionism was being brought back to life. Known as the “Continuity of Operations Plan” (or COG, for Continuity of Government), this covert stratagem is a cherished piece of conspiracy theorist lore. According to the Plan, in case of an incapacitating catastrophe in Washington, facilities at undisclosed subterranean locations on the East Coast are in place to allow for the remote performance of “National Essential Functions” (NEFs). As reported by the Washington Post, this moribund scheme went into effect for the very first time in the hours following the 9/11 attacks and has since continued in perpetuity, establishing a shadow government on retainer awaiting some impending disaster. The bunkers are being maintained in permanent “ready” mode, staffed by a rotating contingent of senior-level civilians from within the Bush administration.
Continuity of Government plans were conceived in an era of bomb shelters and air-raid drills; as these concerns died away, the once state-of-the-art bunkers built to defend the fate of America were also forgotten, abandoned to history as anachronistic curiosities. While a series of clandestine COG exercises continued throughout the Reagan years (involving Senator Dick Cheney and a civilian Donald Rumsfeld), the collapse of the Soviet Union obviated the need for these elaborate programs. It wasn’t until the millennial tensions of Y2K that contingencies for catastrophic events regained currency in the White House.
In a confidential security instrument labeled Presidential Decision Directive 67 (“Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations”), President Clinton revivified the Cold War program of COG relocation, expanding it drastically to include representatives from nearly every department and agency. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was charged with overseeing the ambitious repositioning plan, to be accomplished within twelve hours of an emergency dictum. 9/11 served as the Plan’s trial run, and the results were dreadful. While Vice President Cheney and a select group of officials choppered to safety in disaster-proof bunkers, the extensive network of federal representatives slated for evacuation were left behind. Those that did make it to the site discovered a largely inoperative system of outdated technology and long-neglected equipment. Were the conditions of the Washington attack more catastrophic, the federal government would have been in shambles.
The Bush administration responded to this failure with a renewed obsession in continuity planning. A massive overhaul of the program began, including the creation of an emergency broadcast system called COGCON to alert officials of COG initiation via Blackberries and mobile devices. The above-mentioned shadow government immediately took up permanent residence in the underground control centers, which were in turn updated to modern standards of computer technology and wireless communication. With the system and personnel brought up to speed, the government conducted a series of three colossal COG exercises (bearing the titles Pinnacle and Forward Challenge) to test the effectiveness of the revamped operation. Even orchestrated disasters, it seems, are beyond the management capabilities of FEMA. Marred by widespread confusion and disorder, these pre-planned drills have only served to underscore the near impossibility of relocating such a broad representation of ancillary federal offices.
Discontinuing Democracy
One of the most apparent post-9/11 transformations came with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. Created by act of Congress in 2002, this Cabinet-level organization boasts the third largest departmental staff (after the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs) and represents a monumental reallocation of responsibility within the federal government. Its chief duty – to ensure the protection of the “Homeland” of the United States from terrorist aggression – takes place within the domestic sphere of the nation, including such arenas as airport security and the integrity of the Post Office. Civil liberties defenders have raised concerns that Americans’ rights to privacy are jeopardized by the DHS, pointing to allegations of domestic surveillance under the new department. Such measures, the government counters, are unfortunately necessary within a new paradigm of constant terrorist threat. In order to facilitate policy decisions in this field, George W. Bush initiated a new classification of directives called Homeland Security Presidential Directives (HSPD). Much like NSPDs, these instruments are not obligated to public disclosure and imply a dramatic capacity for executive control over national affairs.
HSPD-20 (alternately known as NSPD-51) is the Bush administration’s latest documented use of this new executive tool. As stated earlier, it outlines an updated National Continuity Policy that differs markedly from the preexisting arrangement under Clinton’s PDD-67. For starters, the Bush plan follows a recent order removing FEMA from its administrative role in COG operations, to be supplanted by officials from the Homeland Security Department. Another dramatic revision introduces a National Continuity Coordinator to develop and oversee the Continuity of Operations (COOP) for all executive departments and agencies. Previously, these offices were obliged to formulate and enact their own contingency plans independently – a sensible approach when dealing with such a sprawling, complex bureaucracy. On top of her usual responsibilities as Counterterrorism advisor, Coordinator Frances Fragos Townsend must develop and submit a cohesive National Continuity Implementation Plan to the President before a deadline of August 10, 2007. In light of the recent botched COG exercises under the individuated Clinton scheme, it seems wholly unrealistic that a small cadre of security officials should be expected to successfully design, implement and supervise the emergency operations of every aspect of the United States government. Perhaps it isn’t meant to be feasible.
Reporter Jerome Corsi voiced one of the first objections to the new plan in a May 23 column on the traditionalist-conservative website WorldNetDaily. According to Corsi, this directive appears to “supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of National Continuity Coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position.” Corsi goes on to suggest, “The language of the May 9 directive appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists, suggesting instead that the powers of the executive order can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.” As we have seen, however, the powers of executive decree are ultimately unrestricted in this regard; as long as Bush formally declares the existence of an emergency by proclamation, he remains within the legal bounds of his Office. Congress or the courts may, of course, attempt to countermand the directive, but this is not likely to be successful (or even possible) during a time of serious crisis. Unless these moves are made now, before such an event occurs, HSPD-20 remains the law of the land.
While Corsi’s fears of an ineffectual Congress are reasonable, a Washington Post piece by Spencer S. Hsu (published the day after the directive was announced) intuits a different transfer of power in the new continuity plan. Paraphrasing sources from within the Bush administration, Hsu notes, “the directive formalizes a shift of authority away from the Department of Homeland Security to the White House.” This is clearly discernable in the explicit mention of the Chief Executive leading the provisional government. Furthermore, the person currently slated to fill the position of National Continuity Coordinator is Frances Townsend – an exceptionally close advisor to the President who shares his philosophy intimately. But greater than any organizational or semantic scheming, it is within the very context of Continuity of Government operations that the Chief Executive derives his ultimate supremacy – that is, a national emergency and its concomitant Presidential powers.
***
How might these powers be used to subvert the aims of democracy? Some critics have suggested that, reluctant to relinquish control in 2008, the Bush administration may proclaim a national emergency to annul the approaching Presidential election. Perhaps, others have speculated, the White House is preparing for some upcoming “terrorist” event in the near future as a pretext to declare martial law and launch further military campaigns in the Middle East. And, of course, a combination of the two scenarios seems equally plausible.
Consider this: Prior to the May 9 directive, President Clinton’s PDD-67 was the operative continuity arrangement throughout the entire campaign of the War on Terror. For an administration so concerned with protecting the Homeland and securing our national interests against attack, it seems a peculiarly belated move to attempt such a dramatic overhaul of the Continuity of Government plan now, with just over a year left in this second term of office. If such adjustments were truly necessary for the safety of the federal government, surely they would have been undertaken before the end of 2001, along with the drafting of the Patriot Act and the formation of the DHS. Why would President Bush wait until this late hour – during the final possible months of his tenure – to make these seemingly important changes?
And now, consider this: Clinton’s PDD-67 was, and still remains, a strictly classified document. Our only glimpse into the structure of his Continuity of Government scheme comes from a memorandum circulated among federal officials that explains the requirements for compliance according to the revised Plan. Labeled “Federal Preparedness Circular” (FPC-65), the memo announces as its Purpose, to provide “guidance to Federal Executive Branch departments and agencies for use in developing viable and executable contingency plans for the continuity of operations (COOP).” While this document serves as a tiny window into the covert activities of an increasingly secretive federal government, it also underscores an important point: Continuity of Government planning, along with untold other executive branch intrigues, are almost uniformly “Top Secret” initiatives. It does not behoove the White House to make such things publicly known – unless there is some certain benefit in doing so.
The Bush directive, however, is quite _un_classified, albeit strangely unnoticed in the Press. Its ominous implications and portentous language make no mistake about what scope of influence the President is entitled to encompass in a time of emergency. For the first time in an authoritative document, the vast body of dictatorial powers tacitly held by a Chief Executive is laid out in clear, unbending words. He is authorized to exert control over “State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations.”
He is granted the exclusive right to determine when a crisis constitutes a “catastrophic emergency,” following broad guidelines that include “any event, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.” This could be a flooded city in Louisiana or an atomic blast in Israel.
Furthermore, within the COG arrangement, the President is beholden to no other authority and is only obliged to cooperate with the rest of the government “as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers among the branches.” In this context, comity means “courtesy,” to be understood in the same way that the U.S. extends comity towards the policies of foreign governments – that is to say, according to its whims. There is something profoundly unsettling about the candor and transparency present here.
If President Clinton, and all previous administrations, saw the need to keep these continuity documents confidential, why has this latest security directive been made public? And why is it suddenly appearing now, five years after the 9/11 attacks? If we must speculate, maybe there is indeed some imminent catastrophe approaching, known in advance by the administration. And perhaps it might fall, quite opportunely, around November of 2008, thus instituting the COG plan and precluding the ability to hold Presidential elections.
By disclosing the drastic measures that would take effect under the new continuity plan, the Bush administration effectively exonerates itself from any future claims of subterfuge or accusations of ruling by junta. All has been performed according to the traditional functioning of the executive branch, and the fateful directive itself has been made available for scrutiny prior to its activation. If Congress or the courts deem it unconstitutional, they are free to dispute it according to the law. Yet as soon as it is in play, all power rests with the President.
from American Free Press.com
War Crimes Conference Seeks Ways to Prosecute Bush
Over the weekend of Sept. 13-14, AFP's corresponding editor Mark Anderson attended the conference on war crimes which focused on ways to hold George W. Bush and his underlings accountable for the deaths of U.S. soldiers.
By Mark Anderson
ANDOVER, Mass.—Author Vincent Bugliosi made it achingly clear at a special war crimes conference that President George W. Bush should—and can—be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Bugliosi, the well-known former Los Angeles district attorney who, some 38 years ago, put Charles Manson and his band of killers in prison for the Tate-LaBianca murders, made no overtures for trying the president in foreign tribunals. Rather, he said that Title 18 of the United States Code provides the essential legal framework for trying and convicting this president for what Bugliosi describes as nothing short of murder for pushing the nation into a war under false pretenses, thereby bringing about what he sees as the needless deaths of more than 4,000 soldiers killed in action and at least 100,000 innocent Iraqis who died “horrible, violent deaths,” as his book notes.
Bugliosi was the keynote speaker at the Sept. 13-14 Robert Jackson Conference for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals, organized by Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law.
Bugliosi’s comments on the event’s first day lent an air of clarity and gravity to a conference that brought together various activist groups, attorneys, scholars, journalists and others with divergent views that did not always harmonize. But when all was said and done, everyone understood one another fairly well. Velvel planned to boil down all the input to specific goals to pursue the objective that coincides with the title of Bugliosi’s hard-hitting book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Charges against Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice likely will be on the table. Other high administration officials may be included as well.
“I realize the title of my book is a little ambiguous,” Bugliosi mused. “I’ve been chided by some people for not being more clear about my intentions. Credibility has always meant everything to me, therefore, my only mistress and my only master are facts and objectivity. If a Democratic president had done the same thing that I strongly believe George Bush has done, I would have pursued the same course.”
He added: “This is not my war or your war, but George Bush’s war,” while noting that his fatality numbers are conservative. He acknowledged that Iraqi deaths could be as high as 1 million, and later in a video interview with AFP, he conceded that America’s real war dead from all causes—mainly war-related illnesses and injuries—could be much higher in the current conflicts—perhaps 100,000 or more. But he wants to keep the matter relatively simple so that tangible charges which will hold up in court can be brought forth. This is why he leaves suicides out of the equation, since it could be argued that other factors beyond the war may contribute to soldiers’ suicides.
“That would dilute the case,” he told the audience.
Bugliosi said that he has established domestic jurisdiction to try Bush for the deaths of the soldiers, but has not been able, at least so far, to do so for the Iraqis’ deaths.
When his overall quest began some years ago, he thought long and hard on the question of whether he could apply “conventional principles of criminal law” to a sitting president for taking the nation into a war under false pretenses.
“The resolution of this question initially seemed daunting to me,” he said, but “in the criminal law . . . the answer to that question had to be in the affirmative.”
He said that he eventually determined that Bush’s actions “fell within the legal architecture” of criminal law. He made that determination by focusing on a primary reality: “No man is so high that he is above the law, and that includes the president of the United States” He continued: “Bush can find no comfort in federal or state law.”
Bugliosi said that Bush should have been, or perhaps still should be, impeached. But impeachment and conviction would only remove Bush from office, allowing him to live out his retirement years without long-term punishment. Bugliosi is looking for justice beyond Bush's presidency; numerous impeachment backers in the audience agreed with him, but they still want impeachment to uncover facts, preserve the integrity of the presidency and send a warning to future presidents who would abuse their powers.
“No one has done anything at all to Bush—no impeachment . . . not even an investigation—nothing!” Bugliosi declared, stressing what he sees as the extreme severity of Bush’s war-related crimes and the moral bankruptcy of a nation whose government will not enforce checks and balances and somehow probe or punish an imperial president who seems to answer to no one.
Bugliosi also said he has established that the White House ordered the CIA to falsify reports linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda (the terrorist network allegedly responsible for the 9-11 attacks that sparked early calls for “retaliatory” war), among other major revelations found in his book.
“These revelations do not mean anything at all unless we do something about them,” he said, adding that his book “sets forth the case, the legal architecture and evidence of his guilt and the jurisdiction to prosecute him.” As a “legal blueprint,” the book could lead to the prosecution of Bush “in an American courtroom.”
A particularly interesting twist is that the Manson case, Bugliosi believes, provides a guidepost, of sorts, for the Bush case—in that both involve a leader who brought about the conditions for murder, in Bugliosi’s view. “I was able to convict Manson by the vicarious liability rule,” he explained, saying that Manson’s actions deliberately set in motion a chain of events that resulted in murders even though Manson did not personally kill anyone and was not even at the crime scene. Still, he got life in prison, due to this legal principle.
This vicarious liability rule, Bugliosi said, “provides that each member of a conspiracy is criminally responsible for all crimes committed by his co-conspirators.” Even on a distant battlefield, the rule still applies. “If the conspirator(s) deliberately sets in motion a chain of events that he knows will cause a third party or an innocent agent to commit a criminal act, the conspirator is criminally responsible for that act . . . that’s the law of the land.” This even applies if “innocent [unwitting] agents of the conspirators further the objective of the conspiracy.”
Therefore, “it does not have to be shown that the principal (Bush, for example) wanted the innocent agent (Iraqis shooting and killing U.S. soldiers) to commit the act, only that he [Bush] caused them to do so.”
Bugliosi stressed that “caused” is the operative word, in that he believes that by sending troops into war on the basis of lies, such causation appears to have taken place, since doing so caused Iraqis to shoot U.S. troops in self-defense or to “repel an invader.”
Bugliosi dismissed the mere suggestion that Bush could have sent soldiers into war thinking that no one would die among them.
The overall conference dealt with a host of matters to be covered in future AFP editions as organizers work out the details with which to proceed.
War Crimes Conference Seeks Ways to Prosecute Bush
Over the weekend of Sept. 13-14, AFP's corresponding editor Mark Anderson attended the conference on war crimes which focused on ways to hold George W. Bush and his underlings accountable for the deaths of U.S. soldiers.
By Mark Anderson
ANDOVER, Mass.—Author Vincent Bugliosi made it achingly clear at a special war crimes conference that President George W. Bush should—and can—be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Bugliosi, the well-known former Los Angeles district attorney who, some 38 years ago, put Charles Manson and his band of killers in prison for the Tate-LaBianca murders, made no overtures for trying the president in foreign tribunals. Rather, he said that Title 18 of the United States Code provides the essential legal framework for trying and convicting this president for what Bugliosi describes as nothing short of murder for pushing the nation into a war under false pretenses, thereby bringing about what he sees as the needless deaths of more than 4,000 soldiers killed in action and at least 100,000 innocent Iraqis who died “horrible, violent deaths,” as his book notes.
Bugliosi was the keynote speaker at the Sept. 13-14 Robert Jackson Conference for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals, organized by Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law.
Bugliosi’s comments on the event’s first day lent an air of clarity and gravity to a conference that brought together various activist groups, attorneys, scholars, journalists and others with divergent views that did not always harmonize. But when all was said and done, everyone understood one another fairly well. Velvel planned to boil down all the input to specific goals to pursue the objective that coincides with the title of Bugliosi’s hard-hitting book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Charges against Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice likely will be on the table. Other high administration officials may be included as well.
“I realize the title of my book is a little ambiguous,” Bugliosi mused. “I’ve been chided by some people for not being more clear about my intentions. Credibility has always meant everything to me, therefore, my only mistress and my only master are facts and objectivity. If a Democratic president had done the same thing that I strongly believe George Bush has done, I would have pursued the same course.”
He added: “This is not my war or your war, but George Bush’s war,” while noting that his fatality numbers are conservative. He acknowledged that Iraqi deaths could be as high as 1 million, and later in a video interview with AFP, he conceded that America’s real war dead from all causes—mainly war-related illnesses and injuries—could be much higher in the current conflicts—perhaps 100,000 or more. But he wants to keep the matter relatively simple so that tangible charges which will hold up in court can be brought forth. This is why he leaves suicides out of the equation, since it could be argued that other factors beyond the war may contribute to soldiers’ suicides.
“That would dilute the case,” he told the audience.
Bugliosi said that he has established domestic jurisdiction to try Bush for the deaths of the soldiers, but has not been able, at least so far, to do so for the Iraqis’ deaths.
When his overall quest began some years ago, he thought long and hard on the question of whether he could apply “conventional principles of criminal law” to a sitting president for taking the nation into a war under false pretenses.
“The resolution of this question initially seemed daunting to me,” he said, but “in the criminal law . . . the answer to that question had to be in the affirmative.”
He said that he eventually determined that Bush’s actions “fell within the legal architecture” of criminal law. He made that determination by focusing on a primary reality: “No man is so high that he is above the law, and that includes the president of the United States” He continued: “Bush can find no comfort in federal or state law.”
Bugliosi said that Bush should have been, or perhaps still should be, impeached. But impeachment and conviction would only remove Bush from office, allowing him to live out his retirement years without long-term punishment. Bugliosi is looking for justice beyond Bush's presidency; numerous impeachment backers in the audience agreed with him, but they still want impeachment to uncover facts, preserve the integrity of the presidency and send a warning to future presidents who would abuse their powers.
“No one has done anything at all to Bush—no impeachment . . . not even an investigation—nothing!” Bugliosi declared, stressing what he sees as the extreme severity of Bush’s war-related crimes and the moral bankruptcy of a nation whose government will not enforce checks and balances and somehow probe or punish an imperial president who seems to answer to no one.
Bugliosi also said he has established that the White House ordered the CIA to falsify reports linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda (the terrorist network allegedly responsible for the 9-11 attacks that sparked early calls for “retaliatory” war), among other major revelations found in his book.
“These revelations do not mean anything at all unless we do something about them,” he said, adding that his book “sets forth the case, the legal architecture and evidence of his guilt and the jurisdiction to prosecute him.” As a “legal blueprint,” the book could lead to the prosecution of Bush “in an American courtroom.”
A particularly interesting twist is that the Manson case, Bugliosi believes, provides a guidepost, of sorts, for the Bush case—in that both involve a leader who brought about the conditions for murder, in Bugliosi’s view. “I was able to convict Manson by the vicarious liability rule,” he explained, saying that Manson’s actions deliberately set in motion a chain of events that resulted in murders even though Manson did not personally kill anyone and was not even at the crime scene. Still, he got life in prison, due to this legal principle.
This vicarious liability rule, Bugliosi said, “provides that each member of a conspiracy is criminally responsible for all crimes committed by his co-conspirators.” Even on a distant battlefield, the rule still applies. “If the conspirator(s) deliberately sets in motion a chain of events that he knows will cause a third party or an innocent agent to commit a criminal act, the conspirator is criminally responsible for that act . . . that’s the law of the land.” This even applies if “innocent [unwitting] agents of the conspirators further the objective of the conspiracy.”
Therefore, “it does not have to be shown that the principal (Bush, for example) wanted the innocent agent (Iraqis shooting and killing U.S. soldiers) to commit the act, only that he [Bush] caused them to do so.”
Bugliosi stressed that “caused” is the operative word, in that he believes that by sending troops into war on the basis of lies, such causation appears to have taken place, since doing so caused Iraqis to shoot U.S. troops in self-defense or to “repel an invader.”
Bugliosi dismissed the mere suggestion that Bush could have sent soldiers into war thinking that no one would die among them.
The overall conference dealt with a host of matters to be covered in future AFP editions as organizers work out the details with which to proceed.
New guidelines would give FBI broader powers
RAW STORY Published: Thursday August 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.
The plan, which could be made public next month, has already generated intense interest and speculation. Little is known about its precise language, but civil liberties advocates say they fear it could give the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations.
Congressional staff members got a glimpse of some of the details in closed briefings this month, and four Democratic senators told Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey in a letter on Wednesday that they were troubled by what they heard.
RAW STORY Published: Thursday August 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.
The plan, which could be made public next month, has already generated intense interest and speculation. Little is known about its precise language, but civil liberties advocates say they fear it could give the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations.
Congressional staff members got a glimpse of some of the details in closed briefings this month, and four Democratic senators told Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey in a letter on Wednesday that they were troubled by what they heard.
CRS Report:
94% of Senate Bills Passed in Secret
CRS REPORT
July 23, 2008 - Washington D.C. - Today, U.S. Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) released a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) finding that 94 percent of bills the Senate has passed in the 110th Congress have been without a vote, debate or a single amendment. The 855 bills that have been secretly passed spend more than $9 billion, though a final total is not available because many of the bills were rushed through before a cost analysis could be performed.
Senator DeMint: “It would surprise many Americans to learn that the ‘World’s Greatest Deliberative Body’ passes the overwhelming majority of legislation without any debate at all. Democrats think they are entitled to pass bills without debate or votes, and they’ve tried to ram them through right before recess to pressure us to give up. But, Senators shouldn’t fear debate on these important bills. It’s in the best traditions of our republic to demand the Senate actually do its job and have a public debate on bills that expand government and increase the burden on taxpayers. Senator Reid can complain all he wants, but Republicans represent millions of Americans whose voices are being silenced by Democrat strong-arm tactics.”
Dr. Coburn: “The U.S. Senate has a nine percent approval rating because the American people believe that much of our work is done in secret with no debate, no transparency and no accountability. This report shows that the reality is worse than the public’s fears. Instead of encouraging open debate, I’m disappointed that Majority Leader Reid often chooses secrecy or demagoguery. For instance, he has depicted my effort to reduce the number of bills that pass the Senate in secret by ten percent as ‘unprecedented obstruction.’ What is unprecedented and ahistorical, however, is the Majority Leader’s view that Senators should have a king-like right to pass massive spending bills in secret with no debate, no amendments and no recorded vote.”
The CRS report states, “[T]he vast majority of measures passed or agreed to by the Senate so far in the 110th Congress have not received formal parliamentary debate on the floor of the Senate.” This practice, known as “hotlining,” has traditionally been reserved for noncontroversial bills with little to no cost to the taxpayer, like the naming of post offices. However, the practice has been abused to sneak through large bills that cost the taxpayers billions of dollars and have significant policy implications.
On March 3, 2008, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin stated on the Senate Floor:
“My good friend, the late Congressman from Oklahoma, Mike Synar, used to say: If you don’t want to fight fires, don’t be a firefighter. If you don’t want to stop crime, don’t be a policeman, and if you don’t want to vote on tough issues, don’t run for Congress.”
“I agree with him. I don’t like facing tough votes, but it is a part of the job. You ought to at least have enough confidence in your beliefs to cast that vote and go home and explain it.”
Highlights from the Congressional Research Service Memorandum – “The Clearance Process in the Senate and Measures Approved in the 110th Congress through June 30, 2008”:
“Nearly every day the Senate is in session, the majority and minority leaders consult to identify bills and resolutions that have been “cleared” by the Senators in both parties. A measure is considered cleared if no Senator has informed party leadership … that he or she is opposed to passage of the measure without debate.”
• Only 56 bills (6%) were passed by vote (53 by roll call vote, 3 by voice vote)
• 855 bills (94%) were passed by Unanimous Consent (no debate, no vote)
o 388 were passed by UC on the same day they were introduced
o 381 were passed by UC without debate
o 88 were passed by UC with some debate
o 9 were passed by UC without debate after debate on a Senate companion bill
• 35% of the bills passed by UC were agreed to in the week before a recess
• 52% of the bills passed by UC were agreed to during the two weeks before a recess
94% of Senate Bills Passed in Secret
CRS REPORT
July 23, 2008 - Washington D.C. - Today, U.S. Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) released a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) finding that 94 percent of bills the Senate has passed in the 110th Congress have been without a vote, debate or a single amendment. The 855 bills that have been secretly passed spend more than $9 billion, though a final total is not available because many of the bills were rushed through before a cost analysis could be performed.
Senator DeMint: “It would surprise many Americans to learn that the ‘World’s Greatest Deliberative Body’ passes the overwhelming majority of legislation without any debate at all. Democrats think they are entitled to pass bills without debate or votes, and they’ve tried to ram them through right before recess to pressure us to give up. But, Senators shouldn’t fear debate on these important bills. It’s in the best traditions of our republic to demand the Senate actually do its job and have a public debate on bills that expand government and increase the burden on taxpayers. Senator Reid can complain all he wants, but Republicans represent millions of Americans whose voices are being silenced by Democrat strong-arm tactics.”
Dr. Coburn: “The U.S. Senate has a nine percent approval rating because the American people believe that much of our work is done in secret with no debate, no transparency and no accountability. This report shows that the reality is worse than the public’s fears. Instead of encouraging open debate, I’m disappointed that Majority Leader Reid often chooses secrecy or demagoguery. For instance, he has depicted my effort to reduce the number of bills that pass the Senate in secret by ten percent as ‘unprecedented obstruction.’ What is unprecedented and ahistorical, however, is the Majority Leader’s view that Senators should have a king-like right to pass massive spending bills in secret with no debate, no amendments and no recorded vote.”
The CRS report states, “[T]he vast majority of measures passed or agreed to by the Senate so far in the 110th Congress have not received formal parliamentary debate on the floor of the Senate.” This practice, known as “hotlining,” has traditionally been reserved for noncontroversial bills with little to no cost to the taxpayer, like the naming of post offices. However, the practice has been abused to sneak through large bills that cost the taxpayers billions of dollars and have significant policy implications.
On March 3, 2008, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin stated on the Senate Floor:
“My good friend, the late Congressman from Oklahoma, Mike Synar, used to say: If you don’t want to fight fires, don’t be a firefighter. If you don’t want to stop crime, don’t be a policeman, and if you don’t want to vote on tough issues, don’t run for Congress.”
“I agree with him. I don’t like facing tough votes, but it is a part of the job. You ought to at least have enough confidence in your beliefs to cast that vote and go home and explain it.”
Highlights from the Congressional Research Service Memorandum – “The Clearance Process in the Senate and Measures Approved in the 110th Congress through June 30, 2008”:
“Nearly every day the Senate is in session, the majority and minority leaders consult to identify bills and resolutions that have been “cleared” by the Senators in both parties. A measure is considered cleared if no Senator has informed party leadership … that he or she is opposed to passage of the measure without debate.”
• Only 56 bills (6%) were passed by vote (53 by roll call vote, 3 by voice vote)
• 855 bills (94%) were passed by Unanimous Consent (no debate, no vote)
o 388 were passed by UC on the same day they were introduced
o 381 were passed by UC without debate
o 88 were passed by UC with some debate
o 9 were passed by UC without debate after debate on a Senate companion bill
• 35% of the bills passed by UC were agreed to in the week before a recess
• 52% of the bills passed by UC were agreed to during the two weeks before a recess
From Consortium.Com
Bush's Mass Pardons Predicted
By Brent Budowsky
July 26, 2008
Editor’s Note: As his presidency nears its end, George W. Bush will be faced with a tough choice: either run the risk, along with many of his top aides, of future prosecution for a variety of crimes from the “war on terror” -- or fashion a mass pardon for all those involved.
In this guest essay, former Democratic congressional aide Brent Budowsky predicts that Bush will take the latter course, even outdoing his father's lame-duck Iran-Contra pardons in 1992:
Before leaving office George W. Bush will issue a mass pardon, the largest collection of presidential pardons in American history.
Share this article
Bush will pardon himself, Vice President Cheney, and a long list of officials involved in torture, eavesdropping, destruction of evidence, the CIA leak case, and a range of other potential crimes.
As George Bush signs the pardons and boards the helicopter to depart Washington as his presidency finally ends, even then he and those pardoned will worry about the statute of limitations.
There is an important point to this, often not recognized in official Washington during the Bush years: When the unthinkable became a way of life, acts were committed that defied constitutional and legal principles in ways never done by an American president.
Torture alone violates international law, domestic law, criminal statutes, and American principles that date back to George Washington.
Eavesdropping without court order violates a statute, FISA, that includes severe criminal penalties. If the courts ultimately conclude that these laws were broken, as I predict they ultimately will, considering the number of individual violations, and the penalties for each violation, the potential sentencing liability for anyone convicted would be huge.
On the destruction of evidence, disappearing e-mails, claims of executive privilege that I predict will be clearly rejected by the Supreme Court after Bush has departed, arguably false testimony to Congress, attempts to cover up actions that violate the law, the list, again, goes on.
There will be a huge legal debate about the right of a President to issue pardons so sweeping in their language that they cover all these potential areas of legal liability, and very possibly, it cannot be done.
Congress should pursue every pending and possible legal challenge to claims of executive privilege so completely untenable under the law that even some conservative Supreme Court justices will refuse to uphold them, as conservative justices joined liberals ruling against Richard M. Nixon.
I predict a series of historic Supreme Court cases that will defeat most of the Bush executive privilege claims and permanently end attempts for royalist interpretations of the law that the Bush years embody.
The fact that Bush attempted to seize power in ways that negate the legislative and judicial branches of government, and the fact that Congress was not heroic in defending its rightful place in the separation of powers, do not change the fact that what is illegal is illegal.
But this is not merely a liberal issue.
There are many authentic conservatives, true Barry Goldwater Republicans, genuine libertarians, honorable strict constructionist conservative jurists and legal scholars who agree entirely that on occasions George Bush has attempted and at times executed seizures of executive power that violate the American Constitution and American statutes.
So, get ready for mass pardons.
Get ready for the long-held precedents of American law to be ultimately if belatedly upheld and spurious claims of executive privilege to be rejected.
Get ready for a long-overdue debate that has barely begun and will be triggered by the mass pardons that will be the last sorry act of the presidency of George W. Bush.
Brent Budowsky was an aide to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and to Rep. Bill Alexander, then the chief deputy whip of the House. A contributing editor to Fighting Dems News Service, he can be read on The Hill newspaper where this essay first appeared. He can be reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.
To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.
Bush's Mass Pardons Predicted
By Brent Budowsky
July 26, 2008
Editor’s Note: As his presidency nears its end, George W. Bush will be faced with a tough choice: either run the risk, along with many of his top aides, of future prosecution for a variety of crimes from the “war on terror” -- or fashion a mass pardon for all those involved.
In this guest essay, former Democratic congressional aide Brent Budowsky predicts that Bush will take the latter course, even outdoing his father's lame-duck Iran-Contra pardons in 1992:
Before leaving office George W. Bush will issue a mass pardon, the largest collection of presidential pardons in American history.
Share this article
Bush will pardon himself, Vice President Cheney, and a long list of officials involved in torture, eavesdropping, destruction of evidence, the CIA leak case, and a range of other potential crimes.
As George Bush signs the pardons and boards the helicopter to depart Washington as his presidency finally ends, even then he and those pardoned will worry about the statute of limitations.
There is an important point to this, often not recognized in official Washington during the Bush years: When the unthinkable became a way of life, acts were committed that defied constitutional and legal principles in ways never done by an American president.
Torture alone violates international law, domestic law, criminal statutes, and American principles that date back to George Washington.
Eavesdropping without court order violates a statute, FISA, that includes severe criminal penalties. If the courts ultimately conclude that these laws were broken, as I predict they ultimately will, considering the number of individual violations, and the penalties for each violation, the potential sentencing liability for anyone convicted would be huge.
On the destruction of evidence, disappearing e-mails, claims of executive privilege that I predict will be clearly rejected by the Supreme Court after Bush has departed, arguably false testimony to Congress, attempts to cover up actions that violate the law, the list, again, goes on.
There will be a huge legal debate about the right of a President to issue pardons so sweeping in their language that they cover all these potential areas of legal liability, and very possibly, it cannot be done.
Congress should pursue every pending and possible legal challenge to claims of executive privilege so completely untenable under the law that even some conservative Supreme Court justices will refuse to uphold them, as conservative justices joined liberals ruling against Richard M. Nixon.
I predict a series of historic Supreme Court cases that will defeat most of the Bush executive privilege claims and permanently end attempts for royalist interpretations of the law that the Bush years embody.
The fact that Bush attempted to seize power in ways that negate the legislative and judicial branches of government, and the fact that Congress was not heroic in defending its rightful place in the separation of powers, do not change the fact that what is illegal is illegal.
But this is not merely a liberal issue.
There are many authentic conservatives, true Barry Goldwater Republicans, genuine libertarians, honorable strict constructionist conservative jurists and legal scholars who agree entirely that on occasions George Bush has attempted and at times executed seizures of executive power that violate the American Constitution and American statutes.
So, get ready for mass pardons.
Get ready for the long-held precedents of American law to be ultimately if belatedly upheld and spurious claims of executive privilege to be rejected.
Get ready for a long-overdue debate that has barely begun and will be triggered by the mass pardons that will be the last sorry act of the presidency of George W. Bush.
Brent Budowsky was an aide to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and to Rep. Bill Alexander, then the chief deputy whip of the House. A contributing editor to Fighting Dems News Service, he can be read on The Hill newspaper where this essay first appeared. He can be reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.
To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.
From Unknown News.com
Court says Bush can order indefinite military detentions of US civilians
Excerpt: President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-4 decision.
But a second, overlapping 5-4 majority of the court, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there.
Comment: Someone explain to me why these alleged judges shouldn't be promptly impeached and disbarred. Angry Annie PERMANENT LINK
Have a little think about it, and you'll see that the
Fourth Circuit judges have just endorsed dictatorial powers
Excerpt: Wake up, America! On July 15, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled by 5 votes to 4 in the case of Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli [pdf] that the president can arrest US citizens and legal residents inside the United States and imprison them indefinitely, without charge or trial, based solely on his assertion that they are "enemy combatants."
Court says Bush can order indefinite military detentions of US civilians
Excerpt: President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-4 decision.
But a second, overlapping 5-4 majority of the court, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there.
Comment: Someone explain to me why these alleged judges shouldn't be promptly impeached and disbarred. Angry Annie PERMANENT LINK
Have a little think about it, and you'll see that the
Fourth Circuit judges have just endorsed dictatorial powers
Excerpt: Wake up, America! On July 15, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled by 5 votes to 4 in the case of Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli [pdf] that the president can arrest US citizens and legal residents inside the United States and imprison them indefinitely, without charge or trial, based solely on his assertion that they are "enemy combatants."
From www.roguegovernment.com
There Is No Fourth Amendment
07-11-2008 Lee Rogers
Skull and Bones member, war criminal and traitor George W. Bush recently signed HR 6304 or the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 into law that effectively makes the Fourth Amendment null and void. The new law disregards the protections guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment and allows the government to spy on people without a warrant so long as the government reasonably believes that they are gathering information on somebody from a foreign country. The government can reasonably believe whatever they want and not have to provide probable cause supported by an oath or affirmation to obtain a warrant before they engage in spying activities. It gives them a blank check to spy on whoever they please. It also eliminates any sort of oversight in the intelligence gathering process, and this is a dangerous proposition. The law also gives immunity to telecommunication companies from lawsuits pertaining to their prior cooperation in the unlawful spying programs implemented by the government. As expected, Bush and the supporters of this newly passed law are using the bogus excuse of the war on terror to undermine civil liberties. The terror war as has been documented time and time again is a fraud designed to setup a police state, justify illegal foreign wars and destroy the rule of law. The only reason there has been such a hurry to get this legislation passed into law is so Bush’s buddies in these Fortune 100 companies won’t get sued over their felonious activity.
The ACLU is already planning to challenge the legality of this new law. Here’s what the lead attorney from the ACLU had to say about this new law.
The law lets government "conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to surveil, what phone lines and e-mail addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, or why it's conducting the surveillance," said ACLU national security director Jameel Jaffer, the lead attorney in the suit.
Let’s take a look at the text of the Fourth Amendment.
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 Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Fourth Amendment requires that a warrant be issued only upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation. This law gives the federal government power to conduct surveillance without a warrant which means that it is unconstitutional and should be immediately thrown out by the judiciary. Amazingly the law itself references the Fourth Amendment several times even though it contains language that directly contradicts it. It essentially says that the government can spy on people without a warrant so long as it is reasonably believed you aren’t spying on an American citizen. It also states that this sort of spying activity should be conducted in a manner consistent with the Fourth Amendment. This is ridiculous as the government cannot conduct the type of spying that is authorized in this law while conducting it in a manner consistent with the Fourth Amendment. It is a total contradiction.
Even though the ACLU is far from a perfect group, they do have the Constitution on their side. This new law is entirely unconstitutional and it should be thrown out. Hopefully the ACLU will succeed in accomplishing this. One thing is for sure, Bush and the gaggle of traitors in Congress that supported the passage of this bill into law should be thrown out of office immediately. If the war on terror is real, how come the nation’s borders are wide open and Bush does nothing about the terrorist attacks currently taking place on the U.S.-Mexico border? Why does the Bush administration need to spy on people without a warrant, when they are not concerned with dangerous activity taking place in our own backyard? It is entirely hypocritical for Bush to use the phony terror war to justify the passage of this unlawful legislation. If he really wanted to stop terrorism a good first step would be for him to order the CIA otherwise known as the Cocaine Importing Agency to stop staging terrorist attacks. This new law is a bunch of garbage. It does not help fight terrorism and it does not protect civil liberties as Bush claims. Quite frankly, this new law sucks.
There Is No Fourth Amendment
07-11-2008 Lee Rogers
Skull and Bones member, war criminal and traitor George W. Bush recently signed HR 6304 or the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 into law that effectively makes the Fourth Amendment null and void. The new law disregards the protections guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment and allows the government to spy on people without a warrant so long as the government reasonably believes that they are gathering information on somebody from a foreign country. The government can reasonably believe whatever they want and not have to provide probable cause supported by an oath or affirmation to obtain a warrant before they engage in spying activities. It gives them a blank check to spy on whoever they please. It also eliminates any sort of oversight in the intelligence gathering process, and this is a dangerous proposition. The law also gives immunity to telecommunication companies from lawsuits pertaining to their prior cooperation in the unlawful spying programs implemented by the government. As expected, Bush and the supporters of this newly passed law are using the bogus excuse of the war on terror to undermine civil liberties. The terror war as has been documented time and time again is a fraud designed to setup a police state, justify illegal foreign wars and destroy the rule of law. The only reason there has been such a hurry to get this legislation passed into law is so Bush’s buddies in these Fortune 100 companies won’t get sued over their felonious activity.
The ACLU is already planning to challenge the legality of this new law. Here’s what the lead attorney from the ACLU had to say about this new law.
The law lets government "conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to surveil, what phone lines and e-mail addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, or why it's conducting the surveillance," said ACLU national security director Jameel Jaffer, the lead attorney in the suit.
Let’s take a look at the text of the Fourth Amendment.
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 Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Fourth Amendment requires that a warrant be issued only upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation. This law gives the federal government power to conduct surveillance without a warrant which means that it is unconstitutional and should be immediately thrown out by the judiciary. Amazingly the law itself references the Fourth Amendment several times even though it contains language that directly contradicts it. It essentially says that the government can spy on people without a warrant so long as it is reasonably believed you aren’t spying on an American citizen. It also states that this sort of spying activity should be conducted in a manner consistent with the Fourth Amendment. This is ridiculous as the government cannot conduct the type of spying that is authorized in this law while conducting it in a manner consistent with the Fourth Amendment. It is a total contradiction.
Even though the ACLU is far from a perfect group, they do have the Constitution on their side. This new law is entirely unconstitutional and it should be thrown out. Hopefully the ACLU will succeed in accomplishing this. One thing is for sure, Bush and the gaggle of traitors in Congress that supported the passage of this bill into law should be thrown out of office immediately. If the war on terror is real, how come the nation’s borders are wide open and Bush does nothing about the terrorist attacks currently taking place on the U.S.-Mexico border? Why does the Bush administration need to spy on people without a warrant, when they are not concerned with dangerous activity taking place in our own backyard? It is entirely hypocritical for Bush to use the phony terror war to justify the passage of this unlawful legislation. If he really wanted to stop terrorism a good first step would be for him to order the CIA otherwise known as the Cocaine Importing Agency to stop staging terrorist attacks. This new law is a bunch of garbage. It does not help fight terrorism and it does not protect civil liberties as Bush claims. Quite frankly, this new law sucks.
Kucinich Demands Congress Issue Subpoenas for Continuity of Government Plans
Published on 13-07-2008
Source: George Washington's Blog
Congressman Kucinich - who is leading the charge for impeachment - says that the American people must pressure Congress every day to get to find out about continuity of government (COG). If you don't know what COG is, read this.
Kucinich said Congress has tried to find out whether COG plans implemented on 9/11 are still in effect, and what those plans are, but the White House has stonewalled. He suggests that Americans demand that congress issue subpoenas to determine whether COG plans are currently in effect, and to find out what's in the documents. This is the only way we'll find out.
John Conyers has been issuing subpoenas on other issues, which may be important. However, what could be more important for Congress than determining whether or not the Constitution is still the controlling document for our country? What could be more important for Congress than determining whether COG planning documents strip Congress of its power, and give sole power to the executive branch?
Demand that congress issue subpoenas and -- more importantly -- hold everyone subpoenaed person -- including Buch, Cheney, Mukasey, Chertoff, etc. -- in contempt (and throw them in jail!) if they don't respond.
Published on 13-07-2008
Source: George Washington's Blog
Congressman Kucinich - who is leading the charge for impeachment - says that the American people must pressure Congress every day to get to find out about continuity of government (COG). If you don't know what COG is, read this.
Kucinich said Congress has tried to find out whether COG plans implemented on 9/11 are still in effect, and what those plans are, but the White House has stonewalled. He suggests that Americans demand that congress issue subpoenas to determine whether COG plans are currently in effect, and to find out what's in the documents. This is the only way we'll find out.
John Conyers has been issuing subpoenas on other issues, which may be important. However, what could be more important for Congress than determining whether or not the Constitution is still the controlling document for our country? What could be more important for Congress than determining whether COG planning documents strip Congress of its power, and give sole power to the executive branch?
Demand that congress issue subpoenas and -- more importantly -- hold everyone subpoenaed person -- including Buch, Cheney, Mukasey, Chertoff, etc. -- in contempt (and throw them in jail!) if they don't respond.
From Daily KOS
Cleaning Up After the Worst Presidency in History
by mcjoan Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 07:00:45 AM PDT
If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means 'to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal' would bring terrible retribution.
[From dissenting opinion in Olmstead vs. United States, in which the court upheld the use of wiretaps in a case involving an investigation of bootlegging. Brandeis strongly defended the individual right to privacy from government intrusion.]
-Louis D. Brandeis, 1928
That's what Congress is poised to do, "to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal" with passage of the FISA Amendments Act. Except, of course, that they haven't even secured any convictions through the warrantless surveillance, at least not that they've made public--and believe me, if they had any convictions to justify the program, we'd have heard about it.
The Congress is about to severely expand the already too-extensive authority of the president in surveilling the citizens of this nation. In doing so, it is ignoring the fact that the government has become a law breaker and made the telcos accessories to the crimes.
Which brings us to the next words of wisdom from Justice Brandeis:
Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.
-Louis D. Brandeis, quoted in Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (What Publicity Can Do, Ch 5, p. 92) (Frederick A. Stokes Co. ed.)
For the nation to regain any trust in government and respect for the rule of law, we have to know what happened. We need to know what the administration was asking Qwest to do in February of 2001, well before 9/11. We need to know who was targeted in the illegal surveillance program, and we need to know why. "National security" is not an adequate excuse. If it were, the administration and so many in Congress would not be fighting so hard for immunity for the telcos. For one thing, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already protects private parties who get a certification from the government that their actions are lawful. This provision is utterly unnecessary, unless the information about Americans intercepted, stored, and turned over to the government doesn't fall under the provisions set out in the existing FISA statute.
It's hard to believe that Congress could actually be less curious and more secretive than than the Bush/Cheney administration in trying to keep this information from ever seeing the light of day. Can it really be that they're quaking in their shoes that the Republicans will call them names in the fall so they have no choice but to capitulate? Don't they get that they're going to be attacked anyway, and gutting the Constitution isn't going to be a preventive for that. That seems to be a lesson that they are just not catching on to, despite Democratic wins in 2006 and in special elections this year. If it hasn't occurred to Barack Obama, who's made it as far as securing the nomination for presidency, then I have little hope for the rest of the current crew.
However, there's a tiny glimmer of hope in the fact that not all--and in fact a majority--of Democratic representatives in Congress have opposed retroactive amnesty. Because of that opposition, a real compromise has arisen: Sen. Bingaman has one of the three amendments that will be considered on July 8 when the Senate brings this back up. EFF, who along with the ACLU is representing plaintiffs in these wiretapping cases, has endorsed the amendment:
The Bingaman amendment would prevent Congress from granting immunity in the dark, as described in the press yesterday, by "stay[ing] pending cases against the telecoms and delay[ing] the effective date of any immunity provisions until 90 days after Congress received a report from the inspectors general of the intelligence agencies on the warrantless surveillance program". By placing a temporary hold on immunity and on the litigation until 90 days after the IG Report is submitted to Congress, the simple amendment would give Congress and the American people an opportunity to revisit the issue of telco immunity next year, in light of the audit's findings.
The likelihood of an IG investigation or report by the Bush administration is so minimal as to mean that the decision on immunity would have to happen next year, under a new administration and Congress. It's a good idea. The bad part here is that this amendment has to meet a 60 vote threshold to pass. That threshold is going to be as hard to meet as the simple majority the amnesty stripping amendment will have to achieve. But it does hold out the possibility that these crimes will be examined, and that it can happen with a new president, a new Congress. It's the kind of amendment that could garner support from moderate and conservative Dems and those few moderate Republicans who are really hoping to hold onto their jobs this cycle.
Which is, of course, where we come in.
Again, Justice Brandeis:
The most important political office is that of private citizen.
-Louis D. Brandeis
That means us. Our job here is be the citizens that our elected representatives all too often fail to be. That means holding our representatives, and our nominee, to do their damn job of supporting and defending the Constitution.
One option for fulfilling your duty as a private citizen is Ben Masel's Operation Read the Bill. Print a copy of the bill, find your Senators while they are home during this recess--the 4th of July recess, no less--and ask them if they've done their duty of reading the bill. Ask them if they know that they're about to redefine the term "WMD" to possibly include many weapons that the U.S. military uses. Ask them if they know they are about to cede even more of their power--the power of protecting us, their constituents, from unlawful surveillance--to the executive.
When you're done quizzing them on the bill, ask them to support the Feingold/Dodd amendment to strip immunity from the bill and to support the Bingaman amendment. Ask them to do their job.
Cleaning Up After the Worst Presidency in History
by mcjoan Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 07:00:45 AM PDT
If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means 'to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal' would bring terrible retribution.
[From dissenting opinion in Olmstead vs. United States, in which the court upheld the use of wiretaps in a case involving an investigation of bootlegging. Brandeis strongly defended the individual right to privacy from government intrusion.]
-Louis D. Brandeis, 1928
That's what Congress is poised to do, "to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal" with passage of the FISA Amendments Act. Except, of course, that they haven't even secured any convictions through the warrantless surveillance, at least not that they've made public--and believe me, if they had any convictions to justify the program, we'd have heard about it.
The Congress is about to severely expand the already too-extensive authority of the president in surveilling the citizens of this nation. In doing so, it is ignoring the fact that the government has become a law breaker and made the telcos accessories to the crimes.
Which brings us to the next words of wisdom from Justice Brandeis:
Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.
-Louis D. Brandeis, quoted in Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (What Publicity Can Do, Ch 5, p. 92) (Frederick A. Stokes Co. ed.)
For the nation to regain any trust in government and respect for the rule of law, we have to know what happened. We need to know what the administration was asking Qwest to do in February of 2001, well before 9/11. We need to know who was targeted in the illegal surveillance program, and we need to know why. "National security" is not an adequate excuse. If it were, the administration and so many in Congress would not be fighting so hard for immunity for the telcos. For one thing, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already protects private parties who get a certification from the government that their actions are lawful. This provision is utterly unnecessary, unless the information about Americans intercepted, stored, and turned over to the government doesn't fall under the provisions set out in the existing FISA statute.
It's hard to believe that Congress could actually be less curious and more secretive than than the Bush/Cheney administration in trying to keep this information from ever seeing the light of day. Can it really be that they're quaking in their shoes that the Republicans will call them names in the fall so they have no choice but to capitulate? Don't they get that they're going to be attacked anyway, and gutting the Constitution isn't going to be a preventive for that. That seems to be a lesson that they are just not catching on to, despite Democratic wins in 2006 and in special elections this year. If it hasn't occurred to Barack Obama, who's made it as far as securing the nomination for presidency, then I have little hope for the rest of the current crew.
However, there's a tiny glimmer of hope in the fact that not all--and in fact a majority--of Democratic representatives in Congress have opposed retroactive amnesty. Because of that opposition, a real compromise has arisen: Sen. Bingaman has one of the three amendments that will be considered on July 8 when the Senate brings this back up. EFF, who along with the ACLU is representing plaintiffs in these wiretapping cases, has endorsed the amendment:
The Bingaman amendment would prevent Congress from granting immunity in the dark, as described in the press yesterday, by "stay[ing] pending cases against the telecoms and delay[ing] the effective date of any immunity provisions until 90 days after Congress received a report from the inspectors general of the intelligence agencies on the warrantless surveillance program". By placing a temporary hold on immunity and on the litigation until 90 days after the IG Report is submitted to Congress, the simple amendment would give Congress and the American people an opportunity to revisit the issue of telco immunity next year, in light of the audit's findings.
The likelihood of an IG investigation or report by the Bush administration is so minimal as to mean that the decision on immunity would have to happen next year, under a new administration and Congress. It's a good idea. The bad part here is that this amendment has to meet a 60 vote threshold to pass. That threshold is going to be as hard to meet as the simple majority the amnesty stripping amendment will have to achieve. But it does hold out the possibility that these crimes will be examined, and that it can happen with a new president, a new Congress. It's the kind of amendment that could garner support from moderate and conservative Dems and those few moderate Republicans who are really hoping to hold onto their jobs this cycle.
Which is, of course, where we come in.
Again, Justice Brandeis:
The most important political office is that of private citizen.
-Louis D. Brandeis
That means us. Our job here is be the citizens that our elected representatives all too often fail to be. That means holding our representatives, and our nominee, to do their damn job of supporting and defending the Constitution.
One option for fulfilling your duty as a private citizen is Ben Masel's Operation Read the Bill. Print a copy of the bill, find your Senators while they are home during this recess--the 4th of July recess, no less--and ask them if they've done their duty of reading the bill. Ask them if they know that they're about to redefine the term "WMD" to possibly include many weapons that the U.S. military uses. Ask them if they know they are about to cede even more of their power--the power of protecting us, their constituents, from unlawful surveillance--to the executive.
When you're done quizzing them on the bill, ask them to support the Feingold/Dodd amendment to strip immunity from the bill and to support the Bingaman amendment. Ask them to do their job.
from Telegraph.Co - Amazing!!!
Hats banned from Yorkshire pubs over CCTV fears!
Pubs in Yorkshire have been ordered to ban people from wearing flat caps or other hats so troublemakers can be more easily recognised.
The Park Hotel in Wadsley, Sheffield, is the latest to be asked to impose the rule by senior police officers.
Mark Kelly, the landlord said: "Police asked us to ensure that everyone removes headgear.
"With pensioners, by the time they sit down their hats always come off anyway because they were brought up with manners so usually take their hats off indoors." read
Hats banned from Yorkshire pubs over CCTV fears!
Pubs in Yorkshire have been ordered to ban people from wearing flat caps or other hats so troublemakers can be more easily recognised.
The Park Hotel in Wadsley, Sheffield, is the latest to be asked to impose the rule by senior police officers.
Mark Kelly, the landlord said: "Police asked us to ensure that everyone removes headgear.
"With pensioners, by the time they sit down their hats always come off anyway because they were brought up with manners so usually take their hats off indoors." read
From information Clearing House
Law School to Plan Bush War Crimes Prosecution
Press Release: Massachusetts School Of Law
17/06/08 "ICH" -- - A conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes will be held September 13-14 at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .
"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."
"We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice," Velvel said. "And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s."
Velvel said past practice has been to allow U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Viet Nam and elsewhere to enjoy immunity from prosecution upon leaving office. "President Johnson retired to his Texas ranch and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was named to head the World Bank; Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was allowed to grow richer and richer," Velvel said.
He noted in the years since the prosecution and punishment of German and Japanese leaders after World War Two those nation's leaders changed their countries' aggressor cultures. One cannot discount contributory cause and effect here, he said.
"For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said.
The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, among others.
The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover was established in 1988 to provide an affordable, quality legal education to minorities, immigrants and students from low-income households that might otherwise be denied the opportunity to obtain a legal education and practice law. Its founder, Dean Velvel, has been honored by the National Law Journal and cited in various publications for his contributions to the reform of legal education.
Law School to Plan Bush War Crimes Prosecution
Press Release: Massachusetts School Of Law
17/06/08 "ICH" -- - A conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes will be held September 13-14 at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .
"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."
"We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice," Velvel said. "And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s."
Velvel said past practice has been to allow U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Viet Nam and elsewhere to enjoy immunity from prosecution upon leaving office. "President Johnson retired to his Texas ranch and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was named to head the World Bank; Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was allowed to grow richer and richer," Velvel said.
He noted in the years since the prosecution and punishment of German and Japanese leaders after World War Two those nation's leaders changed their countries' aggressor cultures. One cannot discount contributory cause and effect here, he said.
"For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said.
The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, among others.
The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover was established in 1988 to provide an affordable, quality legal education to minorities, immigrants and students from low-income households that might otherwise be denied the opportunity to obtain a legal education and practice law. Its founder, Dean Velvel, has been honored by the National Law Journal and cited in various publications for his contributions to the reform of legal education.
Supreme Court backs rights for Guantanamo detainees
Supreme Court says foreigners at Guantanamo have constitutional right to challenge detention
Staff AP News - Jun 12, 2008 09:18 EST
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
The justices handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The vote was 5-4, with the court's liberal justices in the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some who have been held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison, classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The administration opened the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to hold enemy combatants, people suspected of ties to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
The Guantanamo prison has been harshly criticized at home and abroad for the detentions themselves and the aggressive interrogations that were conducted there.
The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.
The administration had argued first that the detainees have no rights. But it also contended that the classification and review process was a sufficient substitute for the civilian court hearings that the detainees seek.
In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants."
Supreme Court says foreigners at Guantanamo have constitutional right to challenge detention
Staff AP News - Jun 12, 2008 09:18 EST
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
The justices handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The vote was 5-4, with the court's liberal justices in the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some who have been held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison, classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
The administration opened the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to hold enemy combatants, people suspected of ties to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
The Guantanamo prison has been harshly criticized at home and abroad for the detentions themselves and the aggressive interrogations that were conducted there.
The court said not only that the detainees have rights under the Constitution, but that the system the administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.
The administration had argued first that the detainees have no rights. But it also contended that the classification and review process was a sufficient substitute for the civilian court hearings that the detainees seek.
In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants."
From Huffington Post
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
The Legal Framework for the Prosecution
That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. -Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765
No living Homo sapiens is above the law. -(Notwithstanding our good friends and legal ancestors across the water, this is a fact that requires no citation.)
With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I've been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for "the little guy"), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain's run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I'm giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, the reader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read. read more..
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
The Legal Framework for the Prosecution
That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. -Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765
No living Homo sapiens is above the law. -(Notwithstanding our good friends and legal ancestors across the water, this is a fact that requires no citation.)
With respect to the position I take about the crimes of George Bush, I want to state at the outset that my motivation is not political. Although I've been a longtime Democrat (primarily because, unless there is some very compelling reason to be otherwise, I am always for "the little guy"), my political orientation is not rigid. For instance, I supported John McCain's run for the presidency in 2000. More to the point, whether I'm giving a final summation to the jury or writing one of my true crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. Therefore, my only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others. This is why I can give you, the reader, a 100 percent guarantee that if a Democratic president had done what Bush did, I would be writing the same, identical piece you are about to read. read more..
From WRH: Another convenient hanging
"I am going to be suicided"
Sadly, I was not shocked to hear Thursday's news that former DC madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey -recently convicted on prostitution charges - was found dead, at the end of a nylon rope, in a shed on her mother's property down in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Florida. Man, what a state. From the Pensacola to the Keys - corruption to the "nth" degree. Need to fix elections? Go to Florida. Need to train CIA operatives to fly
suicide missions? Go to Florida. Need to use an international airport as a drop-off point for your multi-million dollar drug shipments? Go to Florida. Need to conveniently murder a woman connected to a case involving high-profile government officials who like it kinky? Go to Florida. It's no surprise that a Bush was recently a governor of the Sunshine State. more
"I am going to be suicided"
Sadly, I was not shocked to hear Thursday's news that former DC madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey -recently convicted on prostitution charges - was found dead, at the end of a nylon rope, in a shed on her mother's property down in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Florida. Man, what a state. From the Pensacola to the Keys - corruption to the "nth" degree. Need to fix elections? Go to Florida. Need to train CIA operatives to fly
suicide missions? Go to Florida. Need to use an international airport as a drop-off point for your multi-million dollar drug shipments? Go to Florida. Need to conveniently murder a woman connected to a case involving high-profile government officials who like it kinky? Go to Florida. It's no surprise that a Bush was recently a governor of the Sunshine State. more
Secret DOJ Memo Says Fourth Amendment Has "No Application" After 9/11
For those of you who don't know, the 4th Amendment prohibits police and government from performing illegal searches to incriminate you against charges. For instance, they can't just search your car or home for no reason. read
For those of you who don't know, the 4th Amendment prohibits police and government from performing illegal searches to incriminate you against charges. For instance, they can't just search your car or home for no reason. read
Stacking the deck
An agent provocateur is someone who joins a protest, incites violence so the police can have an excuse to beat up the protesters. Here's what they do. read
An agent provocateur is someone who joins a protest, incites violence so the police can have an excuse to beat up the protesters. Here's what they do. read
The Taser Wrist Band.
Things are getting simply more and more insane on the fabricated security front. First the guvment invents "terrerrrr", then it invents homeland security, then it invents a one MILLION person terrorist LIST, and now it seeks to make each one of us guilty before proven innocent. If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. I hope everyone now sees why the faked 911 attacks MEAN something.
Things are getting simply more and more insane on the fabricated security front. First the guvment invents "terrerrrr", then it invents homeland security, then it invents a one MILLION person terrorist LIST, and now it seeks to make each one of us guilty before proven innocent. If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. I hope everyone now sees why the faked 911 attacks MEAN something.
What really happened:
Feds Are Seizing Phones, Computers U.S. Agents Seize Travelers' Devices
Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.
A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.
Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said.
The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.
Posted Mar 24, 2008 09:37 AM PST
Category: COMPUTERS/INTERNET/SECURITY
, Category: DICTATORSHIP
This is the prudent thing to do. Far from combating terror or crime, Federal agents have a long history (at least as far back as the Seattle APEC scandal) of looting business secrets from Americans to give to cronies or to personally profit from them.
Of course in my own case the bozo with the badge didn't get any business secrets because he dropped my laptop and wrecked it.
Feds Are Seizing Phones, Computers U.S. Agents Seize Travelers' Devices
Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.
A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.
Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said.
The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.
Posted Mar 24, 2008 09:37 AM PST
Category: COMPUTERS/INTERNET/SECURITY
, Category: DICTATORSHIP
This is the prudent thing to do. Far from combating terror or crime, Federal agents have a long history (at least as far back as the Seattle APEC scandal) of looting business secrets from Americans to give to cronies or to personally profit from them.
Of course in my own case the bozo with the badge didn't get any business secrets because he dropped my laptop and wrecked it.
Going somewhere?
WRH: Safety proposal: shock-bracelets controlled by flight attendants.
Lamperd, a "firearm training system" company, has patented a bracelet that delivers debilitating shocks when remotely triggered. Their killer app for this is aviation safety: they're proposing that the TSA could force everyone who flies to wear one of these and then flight-attendants could zap us into a stupor if we turn out to be Al Quaeda.
Tourism to the US is already in the trash because of the abusive practices of TSA, the fondled wives and daughters, the strip searches, the busted laptops...
And now this bozo wants to tell visitors to our nation they have to wear a portable taser which, if triggered, might kill them? Oh yeah, I can see the tourists lining up to visit us NOW!
Aloha Airlines just declared bankruptcy. Who will be next? full article
WRH: Safety proposal: shock-bracelets controlled by flight attendants.
Lamperd, a "firearm training system" company, has patented a bracelet that delivers debilitating shocks when remotely triggered. Their killer app for this is aviation safety: they're proposing that the TSA could force everyone who flies to wear one of these and then flight-attendants could zap us into a stupor if we turn out to be Al Quaeda.
Tourism to the US is already in the trash because of the abusive practices of TSA, the fondled wives and daughters, the strip searches, the busted laptops...
And now this bozo wants to tell visitors to our nation they have to wear a portable taser which, if triggered, might kill them? Oh yeah, I can see the tourists lining up to visit us NOW!
Aloha Airlines just declared bankruptcy. Who will be next? full article
Nader: Bush a recidivist war criminal
Raw Story: Ralph Nader Tells it like it is in this article.
Elections are rigged, Bush skates through his crimnal actions without any effective resistance, and the American people are impotent, well trained nationalists. read
Elections are rigged, Bush skates through his crimnal actions without any effective resistance, and the American people are impotent, well trained nationalists. read
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