The $45 Instamatic

For some reason CNN, sponsored by Infiniti (the car made by people who don't know how to use a dictionary), is touting as a marvel of new design the "single-use videocamcorder."

Not a bad idea . . . at first blush. . . Except this "instamatic" of cam-corders retails for about $30 . . . . and you have to schlep it back to the store for "processing" if you want your video . . . for another $10 to $15.

Think about this for a second. At $40 - $45 a pop. If I use these things three times, I've already spent more than I would have spent to buy a regular cam-corder that does not require additional "processing" and which I can use over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

If you really think you absolutely have to have 24/7 access to a video-cam "just in case" you might see something worth filming, then you should be carrying it with you.

What a waste of money.

Civil Rights on the Ballot

I'm still considering my response to Tuesday's election. I am not ready to be prematurely joyful. But there is one piece of welcome news from Massachusetts that I do want to say a word about.

Yesterday, the Massachusetts legislature approved a nice little procedural maneuver that will (or should) put an end to efforts to hold a referendum to amend the State's Constitution and ban same-sex marriages. If it can't get through the Mass. legislature now, it's hardly likely to anytime soon considering the disarray in which Tuesday's election left the Republican party.

'Nuff said? Almost

Representative Michael A. Costello, a strong opponent of the amendment, had this to say: “It’s never been proper to put civil rights on the ballot. So we killed it through procedure, rather than on substance.”


I think he's exactly right. Civil Rights is not a ballot issue. There is a reason that this Country (and it's constituent States) adopted the doctrine of judicial review. Civil Rights are NOT popular. It took the bloodiest war in U.S. history to establish the principle that people should not be kept as slaves. It took almost another hundred years befor the principle "separate but equal" was discarded for the humbug it was. . . and that was by Court fiat. Not public referendum. The simple act of going to school by seven black students required their protection by the National Guard. Riots over school integration ripped this Country from Arkansas to Massachusetts.

In the 1960's (that's right, '60's) when the Supreme Court held that laws prohibiting blacks from marrying whites there were riots again. Mixed race couples required round the clock police protection. Polls showed that 70% of the Country opposed mixed-race marriage (in fact it was a crime in 37 states, and only one Court had declared such laws unconstitutional before the Supreme Court).

Would there be Miranda warnings if people had a chance to vote on them?

If the Supreme Court had not held there was an enforceable right to privacy, it might still be illegal to sell condoms in Connecticut, or for a gay couple (even an unmarried one) to engage in private sexual conduct in Texas.

etc. etc.

The point again is that Civil Rights are there to protect minorities from oppression by the majority. I keep harping on this point, but it is important. The German people elected to make Adolf Hitler their leader. They did it in full and fair elections and they voted overwhelmingly to make Hitler chancellor and his party the National Socialists (Nazi's) the majority party in the legislature. In other words, voting is not what makes a country democratic. Saddam Hussein held elections. He won 98% of the votes. That didn't make his country democratic.

What makes a country democratic is its ability to protect its minorities from being abused by the majority. This is the realm of the Courts. An independent judiciary is necessary because it is not beholden to party or dogma. An independent judiciary is necessary because only an independent judiciary, one that has no fear for it's own safety, can protect minority rights from the will of a determined majority. Put another way, if the majority was not capable of discriminating, we wouldn't need a judiciary to review the laws.

To quote M. Gandhi: "If you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." A right is a right, regardless of what the majority thinks. Or to quote Rep. Costello: "It has never been proper to put civil rights on the ballot."

Which is, of course, what has happened in State after State over the past few years. Goaded on by Pres. Bush and other fanatics, State after State has voted on referendums to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. We have been submitting questions of civil rights . . . that is the very basic freedoms we take for granted. . . to the vagaries of advertising campaigns, political sloganeering and ultimately, to a vote. We can just as easily vote to amend our constitutions to permit the creation of concentration camps for illegal aliens. That doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it just and it doesn't make it as good law.

Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court, maybe not the Roberts court, but eventually the Court will say that the U.S. Constitution requires that states not discriminate against same sex couples in marriage and all of the rights appurtenant to marriage.

And if anyone says that is against the will of the American people: that's precisely the point.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

In the early 1960's a gung-ho Congress enacted something called the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organization Act. It's usually referred to by the acronym "RICO".

The idea was to provide law enforcement with a tool against organized crime: the mob, mafia, the rackets, gangsters, drug runners, loan sharks, illegal betting operations etc.

Here's the way it's supposed to work, if two or more persons form an "enterprise" that commits two crimes in furtherance of a common scheme, then whatever their other crimes, those people will receive an enhanced sentence for violation of RICO. Of course, not every crime is subject to RICO, but wire fraud and mail fraud are (that is, if you make a telephone call, or send a letter in furtherance of the crime, you are subject to RICO).

Okay, not a bad idea at first right?

Okay, law enforcement do use it. They use it all the time. But here's the catch.

What is RICO used for most today? For suing banks, attorney, accountants and other people who plan and manage corporate financing transactions.

Today, hardly a single corporate lawsuit fails to include a RICO claim. Are banks, attorneys and accountants really gangsters? Okay, if you want to get all radical left or radical right on me, yes, otherwise, these are not the kind of "people" that the law was designed to prosecute. However, can you imagine a million dollar financing getting done without two phone calls being made? or two letters being sent?

It's a great deal for lawyers too. If you bring a RICO suit and win, you get whatever you win tripled (and the lawyers take a third).

Every time a company sells stock in the market, everytime a bank makes a loan, there is a risk that someone is going to yell fraud and file a RICO claim. If the stock doesn't go up in value (or goes down), if the loan isn't repaid, you can be sure a RICO claim will follow, it will name every lawyer, every accountant and everyone else in the deal: and most of them will settle out of court because (i) it's a safer bet than going to a jury, and (ii) the insurance company pays for it anyway, and (iii) the insurance company passes the cost back to you, the J.Q. American.

And in the last 40 years has Congress ever tried to stop this? No. Even though it was never supposed to happen.

What's my point? My point is the law of unintend consequences.

In the last session of Congress, actually over the last several sessions of Congress. America has become broken. Broken because the Congress, which is supposed to serve as a check on Presidential prerogatives, has instead expanded them beyond all measure.

Congress has refused to examine any all wrongdoing by the Bush administration. This Republican Congress spent more time investigating whether President Bush lied about getting a blowjob, than it spent investigating proven, undeniable allegations that the United States was torturning prisoners at Abu Ghraib (which, lest we forget is what we allegedly attacked Saddam Hussein for doing).

The President, with Congress' approval, has approved the torturing of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the laws of the United States. Undeniably a criminal offense. Congress passed a law, revising the Geneva Conventions and absolving anyone who has in the past, or will in the future, torture a United States prisoner.

The President, with Contress' approval, has done away with over two centuries of civil liberties, declaring that the President, in his sole discretion, can name people who, once named, would no longer be subject to trial by jury, the right to an attorney, the right to confront their accuser, the right to see the evidence against them, and, in some cases even to appear and defend themselves at their own trial.

The President, with Congressional approval, has invaded the privacy of miilions, if not tens of millions, of perfectly innocent people, reading their e-mails and listening to their phone calls with impunity. Without even the rubber stamp of a secret court that has almost never before turned down a request. What did Congress do? It passed a law allowing a secret court to hold a secret trial to consider whether the process was constitutional.

The President, with Congressional approval, has given himself the right to secretly arrest people with little or no reason, and to hold them in secret jails, without notice to anyone.

Two weeks ago, Congress did away with a law, over 100 years old, that prohibited the President from declaring Marshal Law, or using the state National Guard without gubernatorial consent.

Two weeks ago, Congress fired the entire agency that investigated charges of fraude waste and corruption by U.S. Government contractors in Iraq.

Two weeks ago, Congress, at the President's request, did away with the right of Habeas Corpus in any case the President declares it shouldn't apply. Habeas Corpus is the traditional right of a prisoner have a court determine whether he has been lawfully imprisoned. The President though, with Congressional approval, has appointed himself, Prosecutor, Judge, Jury, Jailer, and, of course, executioner.

Let's go back a minute to the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration gave, among other reasons for the American Revolution the following, that King George III had "affected to render the Military independent of and subordinate to the Civil Power"; protected troops from punishment, even for murder, with mock trials; and for depriving people of the right to trial by jury. The United States Constitution also provides that "[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Article I. Sec. 9, cl. 2. The U.S. has not been invaded and there is no rebellion in the U.S.

This new regime has given itself dictatorial powers: the right to secretly spy on you, the right to secretly arrest you, to secretly imprison you, secretly torture you, secretly send you out of the country to be tortured, and, if it feels like it, to secretly try you without an attorney, to hide evidence that might be in your favor, and to prevent you from seeing (and thereby perhaps discrediting) evidence against you. That's if you get a trial. The new law says the President never even has to bring you to trial. He can just lock you away, on only his say so. Oh, and they've made it a crime to insult their flag.

Do you really think these powers are not going to be used? Maybe you don't think of George Bush and the Republican Party as National Socialists or Soviet Communists, but you can not deny that these are the kinds of things that the U.S. has always claimed to fight against. These are the powers of the KGB and the Gestapo. They are not intended to sit on the shelf.

And if our experience with the RICO law is any indicator, they will not sit on the shelf.

Oh, I'm not saying George Bush is Stalin and Hitler and Mao combined. Of course he isn't (even if his family fortune does come from the slave mines of Auschwitz). I think he does believe that what he's doing is right, and that he cares about America and all that.

But who is going to come after George Bush? What will that person do with such power? Or the one who comes after?

And let's not forget who is mostly to blame for this. It is not the venal villains hiding behind the Oval Office. It is not George Bush or Karl Rove or Dick Cheney. It is not Tom Delay or Bill Frist. It is not the News Media.

All of America is to blame for this crisis in our Democracy. We went along with the Bush Republicans. We didn't ask the questions, and we didn't want to hear the questions asked. We fell for it hook line and sinker - because falling for it was a lot easier than thinking about whether it was right or humane. Some of us are still falling for it. Just as once upon a time a majority accepted slavery.

Hitler was elected democratically. He was overwhelmingly popular with his people and look what he did when he had total control over the Executive, Legislative and Judicial functions of the German government.

George Bush has that kind of control now. His legislature has passed the same kind of laws, for similarly false reasons. Who is to say what tyranny his successor will commit? But Bush did not do this alone, just as the Germans elected Hitler and filled the Reichstag with National Socialist party members, we have elected George Bush and filled the benches of Congress with Republicans willing to give Bush whatever he wants. The result is the most savage attack on freedom that America has faced since the Civil War.

There is a reason that America's Founding Fathers created three separate branches of Government. There is a reason they erected a structure of checks and balances. They knew that the concentration of too much power in one individualy, unchecked, was the recipe for despotism. This is why we venerate them. Not because they are useful for selling cars on President's day, but because they tried to prevent what is happening today.

It was easier for the Founding Fathers. For them the United States was a federation of former colonies. A Republic of independent States, each pursuing its own interests within the framework of their confederation. The Founding Fathers never conceived that a situation could occur in which a single block could so control all three branches of government. They imagined they had done their job by setting three seperate branches and bifurcating Congress as an extra precaution. They ensured one house would represent the population, and one would represent the States.

The idea that Congress, the President and Judiciary, could all be so beholden to one single point of view that that point of view could run roughshod over the rights of others is as Un-American as anything that has ever been preached in 200 plus years of American history.

The Republican leadership is leading this Country towards tyranny. It is time for that to stop. It is time for a Congress of true representatives of the American People. It is time for a Congress that is going to ask what happened and why? Not a Congress that is going to seek retribution, but a Congress that will not be shy about punishing the guilty. We need a Congress that is not going to impede progress in Iraq, but that is willing to ask the hard questions about what went wrong and how do we fix it? We need a Congress that will work with the President, but not a Congress that will hand up his wish list on a silver platter.

We need a Congress accountable to the American people.

The law of unintended consequences assures us that the dictatorial powers given to this President are going to be used. If not by this President, than maybe by the next one, or the next. Maybe even by a Democrat.

It is not enough if we elect a Democratic Congress on Tuesday. These laws must be abolished. The obscenity that is the Patriot Act must go. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 must be repealed. The laws authorizing presidential wiretaps, torture and other such follies must be undone.

These laws must be repealed for the sake of America. For the sake of our future. For our children's future and for the world's future.

America used to be the land of the free and home of the brave. Today we are neither. Over the last six years we have capitulated to a regime which has given itself the right to deprive us of every one of the freedoms that Americans have died to defend for generations. It is time that we take back what is our birthright.

Any further capitulation is submission to tyranny.

What to do, what to do.

Rev. Ted Haggard, leader of the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals, close, personal advisor to President Bush, leader of the fight against same-sex marriage is now an outed, shamed, confessed, hypocrite. Frequenter of a male prostitute and user of methamphetamines.

The Catholic Church admits to tens of thousands of incidents of child molestation committed by priests, bishops, and even Cardinals are accused. . . and that's just within America.

Then there is the Rev. James Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and all of the other lesser known priests of countless churches (and, I presume, mosques and synagogues as well).

The of course there is James Foley: fighting same-sex marriage, fighting porn on the internet, all the while sexually harassing Congressional pages - that is to say, underage boys.

Now, exactly how many crimes have actually been related to rock & roll, violent cartoons.

If you ask me, every copy of the Bible ought to carry a warning label on its cover (in big red letters) stating

"The contents of this book may be harmful to minors and other easily impressed simpletons and should not be read by anyone except in the company of a mature adult."

Don't Look Now but. . . .

From one height of stupidity to the next. Just wait for the talking heads to howl tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning's New York Times reports that since April the bumbling bumblers in the bumbling Bush administration have been posting on the internet highly detailed, sensitive, classified information on how to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Here are a few exerpts:

In September, the Web site began posting documents about Iraq’s nuclear program. On Sept. 12, it posted a document it called “Progress of Iraqi nuclear program circa 1995.” That description is potentially misleading since the research occurred years earlier.

The Iraqi document is marked “Draft FFCD Version 3 (20.12.95),” meaning it was preparatory for the “Full, Final, Complete Disclosure” that Iraq made to United Nations inspectors in March 1996. The document carries three diagrams showing cross sections of bomb cores, and their diameters.

On Sept. 20, the site posted a much larger document, “Summary of technical achievements of Iraq’s former nuclear program.” It runs to 51 pages, 18 focusing on the development of Iraq’s bomb design. Topics include physical theory, the atomic core and high-explosive experiments.

* * * *

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

* * * *

A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues said the documents showed “where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures.” The documents, he added, could perhaps help Iran or other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but probably not terrorists or poorly equipped states. The official, who requested anonymity because of his agency’s rules against public comment, called the papers “a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car.”

U.S. Web Archive is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Guide, NY Times (Nov. 3, 2006)

The basic concepts for triggering a nuclear explosion are really not that complex: (i) take a ball of plutonium about the size of a grape fruit, (ii) surround it with explosives, and (iii) set the explosives off as nearly simultaneously as possible to compress the ball in on itself. We've all seen enough ridiculous action movies to know that much. The trick is the engineering. That kind of information should not be publicly available.

“It’s a cookbook,” said one senior European diplomat. “If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.” European atomic experts who have studied these documents "judged their public release as potentially dangerous."

“For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible,” said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear arms program. “There’s a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so.”

* * * *

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.

* * * *

Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former United States government arms scientist now at the war studies department of King’s College, London, called the posted material “very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data.”

Ray E. Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, an arms design center, said “some things in these documents would be helpful” to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and should have remained secret.

This is not the only sensitive information that has been posted on the internet by the Bush administration.

Some of the first posted documents dealt with Iraq’s program to make germ weapons, followed by a wave of papers on chemical arms.

In April, Demetrius Perricos, acting chief weapons inspector of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission filed a formal objection with the United States mission to the UN asking that the administration remove from the web sensitive information on making the highly toxic nerve gasses tabun and sarin. The report was removed from the web site shortly after the objection was filed.

That's what the administration has been giving away free to al-Qaeda, Hamas and any other terrorist (or 12 year old kid) with an internet connection.

The web site, “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” is supposedly an archive of captured Iraqi documents (more on that "supposedly" later). It was created in April at the urging of conservative publications and Republican leaders:

who argued that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees told the administration that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for evidence that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion.

In other words, they put all this stuff on-line, hoping that someone would find a smoking gun where they couldn't.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R.-Mich.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R.-Ks.), and "some figures in the Bush administration . . . clung to the belief that close examination of the captured documents would show that Mr. Hussein’s government had clandestinely reconstituted an unconventional arms programs."

Some figures in the Bush administration? Clung to the belief? That couldn't mean Dick Cheney could it?

Apparently, keeping this sensitive material from al-Qaeda, Hamas, North Korea, is not as important to them as finding evidence to support the lies they told before the war. (By the way, this material is not the smoking gun they were hoping for. This material is from Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. It's evidence that Iraqi scientists knew how to build a bomb, not evidence that they were building one.)

Of course, not every member of the administration supported this proposal:

The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence officials felt implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of government analysts. But President Bush approved the site’s creation after Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents’ release.

In other words, DNI Negroponte opposed the proposal because he was insulted. He wasn't concerned that this might be a bad idea. He was worrying about turf. President Bush went along with the politicos who were convinced they could somehow still salvage the fraud that led us into Iraq.

Curiously, though the nuclear information posted may not even have been captured in Iraq after the war.

European diplomats said this week that some of those nuclear documents on the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the United Nations Security Council in late 2002, as America got ready to invade Iraq. But unlike those on the Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been extensively edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms.

This leads me to three conclusions (i) that this material was posted on the internet even though it is so sensitive, we refused to share it with the UN Security Counsel, (ii) we had obtained this material BEFORE the war (i.e. during the administration of Bush I or Clinton), and (iii) the administration may have been deliberately "salting" the archive to make it appear that there was new evidence to be found.

Don't bother looking for it now:

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials.

Yes, public safety be damned, who cares what arms-control officials have to say, never-mind the risk to the country or the danger of this act of complete idiocy - - at least not until the liberal media catches on.

Thank god for the liberal media.

The people who were demanding an apology yesterday, owe us a big one today.

John Kerry - A little context goes a long way

A little context goes a long way. For all of the complaints concerning the Pope's comments on Islam about a month ago, the truth is that the Pope was condemning the very words that were than repeated out of context as though they represented his own thinking

John Kerry's gaffe two nights ago is much the same.

This is what Kerry had scripted to say:

“I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.”

It's not a good joke, but he's told it on several occassions. Unfortunately, he blew it. This is what Kerry actually said:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Okay, he said it, but everyone knows (if they want to) that it wasn't what he meant to say.

Question:
If they know that's not what he meant, and they portray it as though it were anyway, is that really any different from just forging a speech by taking random words from old videotape and stringing them together into completely new sentences?

Martial Law?

I don't agree with some of the hyperbole in this article, but I think the author raises a very important issue which I have not seen discusse anywhere else, so here is the entire article from Uruknet.info: Information from Occupied Iraq.

Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
Frank Morales

October 26, 2006

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."

Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."

For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.

An article on "recent contract awards" in a recent issue of the slick, insider "Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International" reported that "global engineering and technical services powerhouse KBR [Kellog, Brown & Root] announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency." "With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five year term," the report notes, "the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," "for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) - in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." The report points out that "KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton." (3) So, in addition to authorizing another $532.8 billion for the Pentagon, including a $70-billion "supplemental provision" which covers the cost of the ongoing, mad military maneuvers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, the new law, signed by the president in a private White House ceremony, further collapses the historic divide between the police and the military: a tell-tale sign of a rapidly consolidating police state in America, all accomplished amidst ongoing U.S. imperial pretensions of global domination, sold to an "emergency managed" and seemingly willfully gullible public as a "global war on terrorism."

Make no mistake about it: the de-facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) is an ominous assault on American democratic tradition and jurisprudence. The 1878 Act, which reads, "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both," is the only U.S. criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people under the cover of 'law enforcement.' As such, it has been the best protection we've had against the power-hungry intentions of an unscrupulous and reckless executive, an executive intent on using force to enforce its will.

Unfortunately, this past week, the president dealt posse comitatus, along with American democracy, a near fatal blow. Consequently, it will take an aroused citizenry to undo the damage wrought by this horrendous act, part and parcel, as we have seen, of a long train of abuses and outrages perpetrated by this authoritarian administration.

Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007's Defense Authorization Act contained a "widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation's governors."

Senator Leahy went on to stress that, "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law. Invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military for law enforcement activities goes against some of the central tenets of our democracy. One can easily envision governors and mayors in charge of an emergency having to constantly look over their shoulders while someone who has never visited their communities gives the orders."

A few weeks later, on the 29th of September, Leahy entered into the Congressional Record that he had "grave reservations about certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill Conference Report," the language of which, he said, "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law." This had been "slipped in," Leahy said, "as a rider with little study," while "other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."

In a telling bit of understatement, the Senator from Vermont noted that "the implications of changing the (Posse Comitatus) Act are enormous". "There is good reason," he said, "for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we make it easier for the President to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."

Senator Leahy's final ruminations: "Since hearing word a couple of weeks ago that this outcome was likely, I have wondered how Congress could have gotten to this point. It seems the changes to the Insurrection Act have survived the Conference because the Pentagon and the White House want it."

The historic and ominous re-writing of the Insurrection Act, accomplished in the dead of night, which gives Bush the legal authority to declare martial law, is now an accomplished fact.

The Pentagon, as one might expect, plays an even more direct role in martial law operations. Title XIV of the new law, entitled, "Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Legislative Provisions," authorizes "the Secretary of Defense to create a Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Consortium to improve the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DOD) processes for identifying and deploying relevant DOD technology to federal, State, and local first responders."

In other words, the law facilitates the "transfer" of the newest in so-called "crowd control" technology and other weaponry designed to suppress dissent from the Pentagon to local militarized police units. The new law builds on and further codifies earlier "technology transfer" agreements, specifically the 1995 DOD-Justice Department memorandum of agreement achieved back during the Clinton-Reno regime.(4)

It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president's polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes. And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.

Source:

(1) http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/091906a.html and http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/092906b.html See also, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, "The Use of Federal Troops for Disaster Assistance: Legal Issues," by Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, August 14, 2006

(2) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill+h109-5122

(3) Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, "Recent Contract Awards", Summer 2006, Vol.12, No.2, pg.8; See also, Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," New American Media, January 31, 2006.

(4) "Technology Transfer from defense: Concealed Weapons Detection", National Institute of Justice Journal, No 229, August, 1995, pp.42-43.

Quotes Which Did Irreparable and Tangible Harm to Our Troops

Quotes Which Did Irreparable and Tangible Harm to Our Troops

"Bring 'em on."
-President George Bush [source: CNN]

"...weeks rather than months."
-Vice President Dick Cheney [source: Washington Post]

"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."
-Vice President Dick Cheney [source: Washington Post]

"They want to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."
-Vice President Dick Cheney [source: Washington Post]

"The campaign will be unlike any we have ever seen in the history of warfare, with breathtaking precision, almost eye-watering speed, persistence, agility and lethality."
-Vice Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf [source: Washington Post]

"It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld [source: Washington Post]

"Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder."
-Former Pentagon Chairman Richard Perle [source: Washington Post]

"I don't know anyone who thought this would be a war without resistance."
- Former Pentagon Chairman Richard Perle (after the war began) [source: Washington Post]

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
-President George Bush [source: Whitehouse.gov]

"I have a special word for Secretary Rumsfeld, for General Franks, and for all the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States: America is grateful for a job well done."
-President George Bush (being careful to use the troops as shields in this praise of Rumsfeld and Franks) [source: Whitehouse.gov]

"It's very important for us to stay the course, and we will stay the course."
-President George Bush [source: US Department of Defense]

Quotations compiled and sourced by Hoffmania.com: The Chronicle of the Human Condition