"We Were Hosed"

Yellow Elephant, where were you? - Civilian Version

The cynical depths to which this postmodern presidency has descended has long ceased to shock or surprise me, but the extent to which pure propaganda has been it's first, second and third string option, and how well that has worked should probably trouble us a lot more than it does in our current depths of accommodation to the increasing awfulness of our current circumstances.

As it becomes clearer and clearer that every effort was indeed to reduce us - the American people - to a panicked dependency upon the good faith of our leaders, we are starting to realize that not only has our trust been abused, but the very institutions and mechanisms that ensure trust and our collective security have been deliberately subverted and those who dedicated their lives and honor to those institutions have themselves been duped and betrayed.

The shocking part of this story is not so much the manipulation of the media by the Pentagon, but the despicable and duplicitous use of it's own to manufacture trust out of the fabric of their own credibility and conviction. They spoke - in the main, I hope - sincerely enough. Retired military members remain in touch, but of course are not current and they can be reliably expected to assume conditions and assumptions about standard doctrines and procedure that clearly turned out to be incorrect.

The use of partisan hot-buttons and the peddling of panic over threats that are, objectively speaking, routinely and quietly managed by other nations without subverting their own internal stability tends to lead one to the more or less reluctant conclusion that the currently shrill and divisive partisan climate is exactly what our would-be lords and masters desire.

George Bush was quite correct when he stood on that aircraft carrier and stated "Mission Accomplished."

The misson was not Iraq, saddam, or "tur'ism."

The mission was to scare the smart out of the American people, and we have been stuck on stupid for some time now. In order to succeed in that effort they have managed to scare, stupify, co-opt or otherwise utilize a lot of people who - had they been a little more cynical, a little less trusting of Authority they had been trained to believe actually is acting in the interest of and within the boundaries of The Constitution - would have been less willing to collaborate.

But, then, they were trained to expect that trust in order to do a job that requires such a level of trust.

If a military man is given what is termed "Actionable Intelligence," they may or may not take it with a grain of salt, but they would never assume that the intelligence itself was selected, slanted, doctored or even completely fabricated.

Beginning with the buildup to the Iraq War, the Bush administration created this "media Trojan horse" to counter any and all criticism. At times, they manipulated the networks' own military experts, spoon-feeding them talking points on everything from Iraq to Rumsfeld's handling of the war to Guantanamo. Here's a quote from the Times:

"Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: 'I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.'"

Because of course it's not the body armor that matters - it's the PERCEPTION of body armor that's critical to administration planning.

As the video reveals, at least one former "military expert" is using blunt words indeed to describe the depth of betrayal that he feels.

Nor is he alone among current and former military personnel who are increasingly upset at the squandering of morale, military fitness and equipment for no obvious strategic or tactical gain.

It only really makes sense if the objective of "the mission" is to subvert the military itself and either turn it into the direct arm of an oppressive state, or render it unfit to oppose the emergent "private" military organizations. Groups such as Blackwater, with their ties both to powerful corporate energy interests and via those ties, the Bush Clan, have gained greatly in both funds and operational experience at taxpayer expense, without even having to pay lip-service to concepts such as "duty, honor or country," much less Geneva conventions, international law or that "Scrap of Paper," the Constitution.

I doubt that there has been any great outbreak of flaming liberalism within the military, so whatever the "official response is," one seriously doubts that military criticism of the emergent results of the "Project For a New American Century" is due to any wide indulgence in socialist thought, marijuana or even "squeamish" Liberal concern for the consequences of war upon the unfortunate. The military - and most properly so - is concerned with the integrity and survival of the Military itself, and struggling to come to terms with a situation in which the entire doctrine of civilian control of military force is - or should be - questioned.

That is to say, what is the proper response when the civilian leadership is clearly unfit, clearly corrupt, clearly incompetent or worse yet, hostile, and increasingly in direct command of alternate force options who are loyal to none but their paymasters? These are circumstances that try men's souls; that make them question the very foundations of their duty and their loyalties. If the military cannot trust the current leadership, to whom may it turn? This becomes even more complex when one realizes that the loyalties of ranking military leaders themselves may be open to substantial question under the circumstances.

Had I wished to create the circumstances, military, social and economic wherein I could declare a civil war and prosecute it against the elements of the Citizenry I considered "disloyal," "surplus" or "unreliable" - well, I'd have acted fairly much exactly as the Bush Administration has done. It generally takes the commitment of about 30 percent of a population to succeed in such an aim, given the current advantages the Bushistas have, and they may, I repeat, may, have achieved that state of affairs by polarizing the politics of the nation around the war and a number of other issues, to a state wherein the irrational hatreds of the fringes are no longer confined to the fringes.

If I'd wanted to commit an act of aggression in order to secure a reliable energy supply and control the crossroads of the middle east - I do believe that would have been possible, if prosecuted both ruthlessly and with the best military and civilian intelligence available, in both senses of the word. It would have been wrong, and it would have been the exact wrong the Left assumes that the Bushes intended - but I do not believe the failure is entirely due to mis-management. Rather, the placement of the mismanagers was as precise and deliberate as the seeding of landmines, or the spraying of chemical agents to degrade the effectiveness of "the enemy."

I do believe that if I'd wanted Bin Ladin hanging from a gibbet at Ground Zero as the proper result of a fair and public trial, I could have achieved that with the available might of the United States coupled with the enthusiastic co-operation of the world.

But despite the expenditure of irreplaceable faith, credit, blood, innocence, lives and the economic security of nearly every citizen of these united states, no such result is evident. This leads to the conclusion that such a result is a matter of policy - or at least, that it would be wise to operate under that assumption that Bin Ladin is either directly or effectively on the same side as Bush.

"Three times is enemy action."

If that is true, what does three to the power of three suggest to you? I don't doubt that the sheer number of deceptions, lies and subversions would be far from that particular mark.

They have met the enemy, and it is us. Your politics are irrelevant. Left, right or middle of the road, when was the last time anything happened that even resembled a result you could reasonably expect based on your understanding of the issues as they were represented to you?

The disconnection between words and deeds is stark and quite obviously independent of the stated politics and agendas of the majority of persons in Washington.

It may well be that your vote will be made irrelevant. It may well be that the existence of the United States as a Constitutional Republic as we have known it is in question. Strike that. It most certainly is in question - the only question is whether that question will be resolved by a peaceful and legitimate political process.

The other question, of course, is where you stand, where your real interests lie; Bush, or your family, friends and neighbors.

It all boils down to ethics, and each of us choosing to act from our most basic understanding of justice, duty, honor and, yes, righteousness.

Love it or Leave it Camo Tee

Clearly there is a God in Heaven - Because the Athiests Won

You know, I cannot think of a clearer example of the deliberate "establishment of religion" than the clear and obvious attempt to make public compliance with and participation in a Christian prayer a pre-condition of participation in school, school activities, or indeed, within the social matrix of the town itself, a small pimple on the panhandle of Oklahoma.

The behavior you clearly see in the video is of course, unconstitutional, prima facia, and I delight that the matter was taken to court - and on even better grounds than this rather old video clearly shows.

The Smalkowski case attracted national attention after Nicole Smalkowski was kicked off of the girls' basketball team after refusing to stand in a circle with her teammates on the gymnasium floor of the Hardesty public High School and recite the "Lord's Prayer." After school officials learned that she and her family were Atheists, lies were created about her as grounds to take her off of the team.

When her father Chuck discovered conclusively that public school and law enforcement officials had lied to him about his 15 year old daughter, he and Nicole and her mother Nadia went to the home of principal Lloyd Buckley to attempt to discuss the matter with him. Outside of his front fence, the principal struck Chuck, who blocked the blow. Both men fell to the ground and Buckley sustained minor injuries, the provable origins of which were strikingly contrary to his under oath trial testimony. Buckley then took out misdemeanor criminal assault charges against Chuck. After Smalkowski rejected the offer to drop the charges if he and his Atheist family left the state, the charges were raised to a felony. Chuck called American Atheists for help.

Chuck won his day in court - despite the room being packed by people literally praying for his conviction. I presume this is one case where the answer is "What part of 'I am a God of Justice' escaped you all these years?"

The school district will lose and I say that with the unstated but sincere underline - "if there is a God in heaven."

There is a specific reason I say that. And it is a reason that is absolutely critical to persons of all faiths - but most especially to Christians, inasmuch as these points were raised, exemplified and made to be conditions of faith by the example and words of Jesus. In other words, if you think as a Christian paster that what you see here is an example of what "good Christian kids do" than you are are in contention with the words in red and unqualified to lead a Christian church of ANY denomination.

You see, Christians may well dispute the positive meaning or the exact expression of those words in a positive sense - but when one is cheer-leading exactly the sort of thing that sent Jesus himself off on a snorting tirade of righteous indignation - that would be outside the bounds of sectarian variation, or even schism.

Indeed, in Christian theological definition that goes back to the earliest days of the church, one teaching in direct disputation of the direct words of Christ would be...

Oh, I'm sure you know this one. It's on the lips of every odious little thumper out there.

Yep. That's it: "ANTIChrist."

Now I state this, with absolute confidence that I can support it biblically, in depth - but all I really need to do is to point you to a decent concordance and council you to study the concepts of hospitality and to read what Jesus had to say about practitioners of public piety, such as the Pharisees.

But having said that, I'm going to further state that there is a much greater point at issue having nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not whether honest observers should quotes around the word Christian when referring to you.

The point is this - if you have to establish your religion by force and maintain it by indoctrination and immersion, if it cannot sustain itself in the face of one little teen-aged atheist who respects both her moral position and your own enough to not commit an act of dishonest piety for your town's comfort - you don't have a faith. Or rather more to the point, you clearly have no faith in your faith.

So, that would be a Vente Grande of What's the Point with whipped nonsense and bullshit, wouldn't it?

And since it is all that, and you are indeed using force to sustain it against utter collapse in the name of preserving social order and of course the social rank of it's most visibly pious practitioners, it really wouldn't actually be wrong for another church to come to town with a dutiful and militant congregation and practice exactly as you preach?

Would it?

Be careful how you argue against that, for that's pretty much exactly what has happened in many churches, due to leadership from various "Christian" organizations - the takeover of entire parishes by outsiders; takeovers that amount to theft on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, an honest person and a good Christian wouldn't want to be seen arguing in favor of theft or covetous behavior. Those things are generally considered to be, what's the word again?

Oh, yes. Sins.

If practiced by the smugly unrepentant, it's rather conventional theology to assume that would be pretty much "go to hell, go directly to hell; do not pass through Purgatory."

But again, compelling as that argument is for both it's instructive and entertainment values, it does not stand particularly well in the public square. Especially when this is not a question of what Christian doctrine one may believe to be superior, or convenient or publicly acceptable, but a far more fundamental one; one critical, as I said, to all our freedoms; the right to hold opinions that many may disagree with.

Including the opinion that there is no god, and your religion is a crock.

I happen to agree with the young lady on the latter point, and tend to assume on the first that whatever God there may be (and I happen to believe there is Someone,) you wouldn't recognize Them if they set your personal bush burning - even though that would be entirely within the realm of the sense of humor associated with the Divine.

Look up "emroods."

But nonetheless, no matter how little regard I hold for the evident quality of your faith, o Citizens of Hardesty, you have the right to it. So long as and only to the extent that you do not use tactics like this to enforce and defend it.

Speaking purely for myself, though, and based on my understanding of ethics and of the Ten Commandments, if I were a Fundamentalist Christian, I would find the fact that Hardesty, Oklahoma has apparently not yet evaporated under a hail of fire and brimstone to be a challenge to my faith.

Fortunately, I am not, and I do not bother my God with such stray thoughts. Though, in all honesty - I must say that it would be far beyond my capacity for charity or tolerance to show much compassion at all should any disaster happen - and as I am an experienced believer in Karma, I 'spect it will. And as tempting as the idea of being able to own such a spread as the Smalkowski's did; I consider living downwind of that much bad juju to be unwise.

Presumed Profitable - Private Justice a Public Scandal.

Viewing with alarm - ten years behind the curve.

America Behind Bars: Why Attempts at Prison Reform Keep Failing

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted March 5, 2008.

In its 2005 annual report, the Corrections Corporation of America laid out what's at stake for a prison industry facing reform:

Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities ... The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.

... Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some nonviolent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release ... Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation with electronic monitors who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.

The reforms described by the rather alarmed-sounding CCA mirror those that Pew and other advocates herald as a way to curb the growing prison crisis -- and it appears that lawmakers are finally willing to hear them. "What we're seeing is state leaders around the country starting to call time out," said Pew researcher Susan K. Urahn during the Post's online chat. "We are seeing activity in several states where legislators from both parties are saying, 'We aren't getting our money's worth out of prisons.'" So, for example, "for the same amount of money, you could keep one inmate behind bars for an additional year, or you could provide treatment and intensive supervision for several others -- and cut the recidivism rate considerably." But who will provide treatment -- and how about those electric monitors? Like prison construction itself, prison "reform" will largely amount to trading in one set of services for another.

There's more...

Others continue to defend the sweeping policies that got us here in the first place. "The fact that we have a large prison population by itself is not a central problem because it has contributed to the extraordinary increase in public safety we have had in this country," conservative sociologist James Q. Wilson told the Washington Post. Hardly unbiased criticism, given that Wilson was one of the intellectual engines behind the "broken windows" theory that helped get us into this mess. (And tell that to black or Latino families who experience the criminal justice system's harshest excesses -- from children growing up without their parents to parents paying crippling phone fees to reach their children. Or tell that to now-elderly prisoners living out their final days behind bars, whose threat to society is negligible and whose failing health makes them highly vulnerable -- and hugely expensive to care for.)

I often refer to the Republican theory of public policy as "The Bigger Hammer Approach." That is to say, if a problem exists, apply force until the problem is many thousands of finely distributed problems that must be dealt with by local authority or, of course provide an opportunity for "private enterprise."

Occasionally that may work, though I'll be damned if I can think of an example, but not when the problem is inherently toxic.

This approach, conflated with Regan Republican's mindless adoration of privatizing anything that isn't nailed down, and certainly anything that can be unbolted and shifted with a crane leads us to absurd situations, wherein reducing recidivism is the last thing on a prison administrator's mind.

We have to remember that while crime is harmful to individuals, it is also harmful to society as a whole. The peace and well-being of society is a Commons, one that it is, inarguably, the most fundamental duty of government to preserve - even at the expense of ideological purity.

We currently find ourselves with far too many people in jail, to the extent that it is symptomatic of a society at war with it's own people, rather than of any particular culture of meaningful lawlessness. The statistics speak for themselves; the overwhelming majority of persons in prison are there for non-violent drug offenses, often for life without parole.

On the other hand, kill someone and you might find yourself out on parole in as little as six years.
Especially if you happen to be white. Did I mention that the majority of persons in prison for all offenses are black or otherwise Non-White?

Well, such blatant contempt for the Equal Justice clause causes widespread disrespect for the law itself; it creates a situation where a large portion of the American people feel that the government is, in fact, at war with them. And with the rhetoric of The War on Drugs and the War on Crime, it's difficult to say "don't take it personally, it's just politics."

It is intensely personal and it's a particularly cynical and corrupt sort of political exploitation of people and their tolerance.

We have left the courts far to little discretion in sentencing and diversion, we treat drug addiction like a crime (and assume that everyone who uses opiates is a criminal unless they are writhing in agony at the moment of accusation ) and we are, bizarrely enough, willing to incarcerate someone for life at thirty grand per year, per bed, rather than five grand per bed per year for drug treatment. Even if they NEVER get clean and sober, even if they never leave, it's still a better deal for the taxpayers.

And you see, here's the thing people don't seem to understand: if I pay taxes to fund an institution, it's not entirely a private institution, is it? Indeed, it's doing what a public institution would. Perhaps it's cheaper, but unless Joe Taxpayer can look at the books, we don't know how they manage that, and we do know that the results are contrary to promise.

There's another point as well. Whether or not a fee for service goes to a government or private agency, if it's effectively mandatory, in order to do personal or public business, it is a tax. And as taxpayers, we have the right to expect a reasonable return on investment. When 1 in a hundred citizens are in jail - well, that's a huge blow, in lost earnings, in lost revenue and in human life. It's appalling. And appallingly stupid.

I think it no coincidice that it's a plan much loved by socially conservatives, who are willing to pay any price ( while, of course, not touching personal capital ) to ensure that their lifestyle and their comforts and their secure enclaves remain unbesmirched by productive citizens of middle to lower classes and, of course, of dusky hues and questionable politics.

But such arrogance and misrule on behalf of very few at the expense of the great majority and at the expense of the ruin of ten percent of the entire population causes anyone who cannot casually afford a cigarette boat out of pocket change to contemplate a brutal political calculus.

The wealthy argue that no progress would be possible without concentrations of capital - and indeed, that's an arguemnt with great and obvious merit. But the same concentrations of capital may be used as brutal weapons against progress. And for every Burt Rutan, for every Richard Branson, for every Dyson and Dean Kamen, there is at least one Peter Coors or Paris Hilton.

Capital concentrations are only one aspect of progress, and the web has proven it possible via the Dean and Paul Campaigns and in many other ways, to get individuals to pool small sums and make large, targeted impacts. It's also possible for the web to serve the same infrastructural and organizing purpose as large companies, governments and foundations, with greater efficiency, transparently and security.

The thing to remember here is that - and I pause at this leftist-sounding rhetoric, but it's obviously true in this case - the rich are indeed exploiting the working classes in order to create wealth. Which, historically, is ok, as long as it's done with some sense of reciprocity.

But it's clear they feel their grip slipping. Over the last two or three decades, even as the worship of wealth and greed and the lifestyles of the rich and famous has become an industry in itself, simple tools have expanded the ability for individuals of no particular means to build their own enterprises - everything from dotcoms to fast food chains to publishing empires. The actual cost of doing business has plummeted - and by the by, that's true both for "legitimate" and "criminal" enterprises alike.

It would behoove us, then, to concentrate on realigning our idea of "legitimate" and "criminal" with basic moral, constitutional and libertarian ideas of "right and wrong," the ones that relate to actual harm done to actual persons.

Or in other words, it's utterly bizarre that trafficking in pot is illegal when trafficking in oxycontin is not, if you have a patent or a license. Furthermore, even if pot WERE legal, it would be absurd to expect congress to create a protected market with price supports, so that medical marijuana users had to pay a premium for something they could grow in their back yard.

There are clear and obvious ethical problems with our drug and crime policies, and the thing about ethical problems is that "whatcha gonna do about it" is not a viable approach to dealing with it. Certainly, government has the power to enact laws, and people to enforce them - but in order to achieve any meaningful end that seems just to the majority of the citizenry, laws must have ethical intents and outcomes and they must be respected by the citizenry as being useful as well as well-intentioned.

Otherwise, the law will be recognized only in the breech, and if respected to any extent, via lip service at parole hearings.

And that, I would submit to you, is the present case - and a case that exactly to the taste of the prison industry.

Dear Mike - your right to make a moral fist ends at the tip of my concientius nose.

I support Ron Paul for the Republican nomination, and whatever the outcome of the nomination process , I will be voting for Ron Paul in November, 2008 unless some better choice comes along.

But having said that, I must say that Mike Huckabee is a surprisingly appealing candidate. He says many of the right things in an unassuming and safe-seeming way... But unfortunately he fails a major ethical smoke test. You see, he's running to be President for those who agree with him - with the explicit promise of imposing a price on those who do not.

I cannot support or abide any such thing. It's not due to him supporting an anti-choice constitutional amendment - though that is the superficial case. Rather, it's because he is in favor of making ANY particular moral choice over the objections of any individual without the willingness to compensate the individual for that lost of liberty or any costs that may be imposed.

Like Ron Paul, he believes in the sanctity of life and isn't hypocritical about it; after all, if abortion is bad, so is capital punishment and malnutrition. This isn't a position I disagree with. Further, I cannot and will not ever say that an abortion -taken in isolation - is ever a good choice.

However, by it's very nature, the choice to have an abortion is not and can never be taken in isolation, nor is it ever likely to be all that clearly a defined choice from an position other than the uncomplicated moral high ground of those who will pay no price for the choice made or imposed.

I genuinely appreciate and applaud his choice to stand for something, even if it's something that I must take issue with. It is, unfortunately, made utterly moot by the fact that he is standing for imposing a moral choice that he has no right to make, no matter how compelling the arguments he may make in favor of it.

I agree that human life is sacrosanct in my own way, but I do not happen to believe that life without choice is meaningful. That's not my politics, per se, that's a fundamental tenant of my own first-amendment ensured faith.

The problem with the issue of abortion has always been that it places the rights of one person in tension with another person without admitting that there is such a legitimate tension.

And in supporting a Constitutional "right to life" amendment, Mike is, unavoidably choosing on behalf of others which is more important - the innocent pre-born over the person who, in getting pregnant, "ought to have known better."

I imagine that in a large percentage of cases where abortion happens, that probably someone - possibly even the female - did know better. But having been wrong on one thing does not mean she's wrong on another thing - nor does the one thing either relieve her of the responsibility of dealing with her own situation, or permit anyone the right to dismiss her capacity to decide.

And that is the problem here. In supporting an amendment that forestalls such a choice, it presumes that consideration of one's own life, and one's current responsibilities to unambiguously living individuals is so immoral that it should be forbidden, but it does not carry with it any admission that the state, in forbidding that choice, takes on the responsibilities FOR that choice.

No tolerable government is in any position to ensure that all outcomes other than abortion are better, assuming we could agree what "better" was for every possible combination of individual and circumstance. Even if it were, I question whether those who most vehemently agree with Mike on this matter would be willing to tolerate the expenditures required to make this invasion of privacy and restriction of choice even arguable from a "balance of harm" perspective.

You see, Mike, this is my problem with all anti-choice activists, in all areas of life. It presumes that a group viewpoint, a blanket moral or cultural prescription is by definition better than the informed conscience of the actual individual in the actual circumstances.

Either of us could point to all kinds of testimonial examples to support the superficial case, pro and con, but all such all such arguments are moot. Of course some subset of individuals will make bad decisions. Some groups may well make better ones on average. The question is, does that give us the right to impose or forbid? I assert that it does not.

Further, I state and assert that some unpredictable number of individuals WILL make poor moral and ethical choices, they will suffer the direct moral, ethical and (arguably) spiritual consequences, even if there is no legal penalty or even publicly apparent costs.

On the other hand, should government decide, against all the very persuasive evidence to the contrary, that it can productively substitute it's judgment in a wholesale manner for that of every individual in a given situation without regard to individual circumstances? But wait, there's a greater fundamental issue here.

NO person can be held accountable for consequences - in either a legal, moral or ethical sense - when they have no ultimate choice.

We do not consider a person guilty of murder if they are forced to kill at gunpoint. We admire them if they choose to die rather than be killed, but we don't penalize them for choosing to live at the expense of another.

Well, in some irreducible and unpredictable number of cases, the individual in question will literally be in that situation. They must choose between their own survival, and that of another.

Furthermore, this is an absolutely subjective and situational judgment and as visceral as that of any cop trying to decide wither to risk the assumption that the object in someone's hand is a cell phone or a gun.

So, Mr. Huckabee, does you amendment come with the stipulation that society will absolutely and without question accept all the costs to the individual (and all future costs of that putative life) when society guesses wrong?

Because, well, it will. It is an inevitability - one I imagine will bear long and short term fruit on a very regular basis, and it is absolutely immoral to offload the costs of a moral choice on those who may or may not agree - or be able to pay the price for your preferred outcome.

Bluntly, sir, in choosing one side over the other, you are making a statistical choice that some sorts of persons are more worthy of life than others. No amount of emotion or reason can avoid that reality. This is why think of no better illustration of the precept that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" than the whole 'right to life," debate.

And yet, sir, I see no evidence that you acknowledge this absolute moral and ethical obligation to pay for the consequences of your choices. THAT is why I support Ron Paul and not you.

I respect your beliefs, just as I respect Paul's - since they are the same. The difference is, Paul is NOT willing to force his equally strong beliefs on me, OR expect me to subsidize HIS personal faith with part of my personal freedom of choice.

Further, Mike, whatever you views (and I do not presume to know them fully) on the intricate, individual ethics of sexuality, morality, faith, belief and such, I do know that some fairly large percentage of people support your position because they see pregnancy as the just due for fornication - a social consequence that should be made as unbearable and insupportable as possible. So remember, in this you are actually gaining the support of people who in fact have less respect for the fetus than abortionists do - for they are perfectly willing to compel a person to live a short, brutal, horrifyingly scarred life in order to punish an act of fornication on the part of the parents.

I, personally, happen to think there ARE fates worse than death - and not just the one, either. When we expect people to not die or not kill as an alternative to facing them, we have the obligation to do whatever that individual sees as being a viable alternative to abortion, death or mayhem.

Now, Mr. Huckabee; draft for me any policy by a government that is superior to the judgments of those individuals in the situation acting to the best of their own moral and ethical understanding and I will be astonished and respectful of your wisdom.

But in fact, I strongly doubt that you can draft any policy that is superior to simply letting individuals choose as best as they can. So long as you are against individual choice, and against the principle of the right to make private decisions in this most ultimately personal decision, you are unfortunately and inarguably stating that your morality, your faith and your religion privileges you to intrude into the homes and private lives of others and make choices on behalf in order to satisfy YOUR moral vision. And that offends me viscerally, sir.

These are truths that you or I have no right to even know. Understand that even as I may object to the public portion of a moral choice - I must also allow the fact that personal and private considerations also affect individual moral choices, and the fact that I do not know them does not mean I'm owed an explanation if the choices do not involve me or mine.

Let us consider one moralistic exception to forbidding abortion (and in some cases emergency contraception); rape or incest. In making this grudging exception, we also demand that the person wronged elaborate for our edification why she should not be forced to endure a penalty for her moral failure - and the only reason acceptable is if it can be proven, in time, that there is a greater moral failure on behalf of the others. To many, a more politely stated version of that exception is considered a reasonable "compromise," but in some ways, the exception makes things worse.

How then is a fetus less deserving of life if it is the result of incest or rape? That's an absurd and appalling argument. But then, the converse is no better; How is a fetus MORE deserving of life if it is conceived under morally acceptable consequences?

The fact that these questions confound most pro-life activists shows that there are some rather ugly assumptions hovering in their hind brains, assumptions about the motives and morals of others that should obviously affect their ability to form a sound moral and ethical judgment.

To me, life IS choice. To the extent that you choose to preclude my choices to your economic benefit or spiritual comfort, you are saying that your life, your lifestyle, and your personal moral comfort is more important that mine.

And herein lies the inherent moral flaw to the Pro-life movement in practice - you cannot be "pro-life" when you are "anti-my-life."

To the extent that you arrogate unto yourself to make critical life-choices on my behalf (or unto others at my expense), you have chosen to take part of my life.

Now, I'm an ethicist, not a moralist and therefore I am in fact perfectly well aware that such compromises are part of life. But since I AM an ethicist, not a moralist, I do not pretend or excuse the cost. If you take something from me, or at least try to, you create an action that will cause a reaction. This is a fact, not a belief or an opinion; it is a matter of cause and effect.

And, Mr. Huckabee, you do not have the right (much less the practical ability) to ensure a particular outcome at my expense, nor the wisdom to claim the ability to predict blowback to the extent that you can honestly claim that the choice that you impose on all is less costly than that of permitting some "bad" outcomes.

I cannot and will never support a constitutional amendment that requires any donation of liberty without just compensation.

And sir, your position does not even recognize that there is, in fact, a large and perhaps even ultimate price being asked.

That is my moral and ethical argument against your "Right to Life" stance.

But I have a second string to my bow, one that should be ultimately even more persuasive for being pragmatic.

NO law and no order should ever be given by anyone in authority in the full and certain knowledge that it will be widely evaded and disobeyed.

Why? Because all such laws, no matter how well-intentioned, can only be imposed and consequences extracted when the breech is noticed.

This situation means that the moral and ethical authority of that authority is eroded in the name of some unattainable moral "good."

Those who are clever, those who are well prepared, those who can leave your jurisdiction for a critical period can evade having such goodnesses done unto them - meaning that, aside from any other consideration, it fails the "equal protection" test.

In point of fact, the fetus of a wealthy woman can never be as well protected by government as that of a poor woman, for the wealthy can always more easily evade restrictions on their choices. And yet, of course, a poor child is also never so well advantaged as that of the child of a rich parent - because poor people have fewer choices.

That, ultimately, is why I am pro-choice; if I wish you to make any particular choice, as a Libertarian, I feel that I should either PAY you to make the choice I wish you to make - or shut the hell up.

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - and there sure as HELL is no such thing as a free child. They cost a bunch to raise, and it costs about as much to do it badly as to do it well - admitting that the cost is often in different coin, of course.

Imposing parenthood upon those who might have considered another course bears a price - and that price will be extracted whether or not you willingly and officially recognize that obligation.

Even more fundamentally, I argue that the provision of more and better choices is a far better model for any government that wishes to maintain it's mandate than the restriction of individual choices.

No authority can be or should be expected to be wise enough to make profoundly personal value judgments on the behalf of millions of individuals.

Of course, we may and should have high expectations. I note that most people do actually live up to the expectations of those they respect, most of the time.

Therefore, it's unwise, unfair and unreasonable to presume that in cases when that does not happen, it's due to malicious, willful perversity. It's far more likely to be circumstantial incapacity - something that it far easier and far cheaper to address than willful contempt.

Government that chooses to support collective moral consensus over conscience has
have removed the need for the informed and deliberate conscience in many cases - leaving it unavailable in those cases where the collective judgment and the power of the state are either unavailable or unpersuasive. Aside from that, it's lost the right to complain when it's moral and ethical assumptions and excuses turns out to have unforeseen, practical consequences.

Allow me to illustrate with a bit of recent history.

One of the inarguable factors in 9/ll and indeed previous terrorist actions against us was in fact our government's choice to ignore (on our behalf) the moral and religious sensibilities of conservative Islam.

Now, I would not go so far (or even NEAR) the idiot presumption that we somehow 'deserved' 9/ll due to our 'cultural insensitivity."

I absolutely applaud many forms of "cultural insensitivity," and one of the best forms in my mind is unveiled and heavily armed women within a stone's throw of the K'aaba. It is Samuel Johnson's refutation of "Bishop" Berkley re- chambered in 7.62 NATO.

Any religion or culture that gets homicidal in the face of real people who persist in solving their social and ethical dilemmas in ways that seem better to them deserves a bad outcome - and I'd be the first to utter a horselaugh at the thought that Islam or any other religion has the right to demand concessions from society in order to make living within the confines of their own superstitions more bearable.

Nonetheless, life is rarely as black and white as all that, sometimes folks are offended by things that must nonetheless be done. In those cases, recognition that a cause for offense existed is a reasonable expectation.

But there's a huge difference between observing an obvious karmic debt and presuming the right to state that the debt has come due with explosives.

If you think it a good thing to impose the discipline of humility on another - you had best be aware that there will be a price to pay - and have arranged that payment in advance. And note that this paragraph can and should be taken to apply to Al-Queda, the Taliban AND the Bush Administration with equal force.

Let's say (for the sake of argument) that our armed reprisals upon Iraq and Afganastan should be taken by the medieval minded middle east that it's about time they grew the fuck up, developed as sense of humor and accepted that their women and children have the right to exist independently of their own manliness. Is teaching such a lesson worth the price?

In my personal opinion, it would have been a cheap lesson at twice the price. Had it been learned. And had it been a price my government had the right to pay.

Nether is in fact true.

This brings us back to you, Mike. Because these are NOT separate issues. They are in fact the exact same issue.

This is all about the individual right to life - and the individual right to choose. Without the second, the first is meaningless. And the only way to legitimately establish this point, as a government, a people, or even as a religious movement worthy of distant respect is to honor choice as a validation of life - even when you would choose otherwise.

We cannot "kill" wahabist idiocies as a moral, ethical and social choice when our own society is arguably no better, with no greater respect for individual liberty and choice.

Alas, liberty is a messy concept, and a decent and honorable respect for individual choice means that in many cases we will - both as individuals and as a society, be forced to witness various dramas and train-wrecks. Many will argue that a decent respect for a greater moral authority or fear of certain retribution would have obviously prevented such outcomes.

It is a compelling argument by virtue of being obviously true, in the short term. But it's only true because society has chosen to remove a choice and (whether or not it admits it) accepting the price of having removed that choice. Because, whether or not we admit the price or pretend otherwise, the price will always be paid.

That price is often far greater (for being both unadmitted and deferred) than simply accepting that free individuals must pay the price of their own choices.

You see, Mike, I can agree with you that, on balance, as a general statement, that life is better than death. I think that men and women of honor might also agree that any religion that, as a major tenant, places a greater cost upon one group of persons for the support of a particular of social order should practically and honorably understand that there is a debt owed there that if unadmitted will accrue nonetheless.

And if we can see the reality of this in the dusty desolation of our religious cousins, the Saudi Wahabist and Afgani Taliban in their choice to remove choice and clitoris from women in order to improve their virtue; if it is obvious to us that their justice is unjust and their assumptions about women false, immoral, insupportable and of arguably dubious moral and social virtue, how is it that we can in the same breath spout the same sort of pious bullshit catering to our own cultural and moralistic prejudices?

Any time that you decide that it's of overriding importance to impose an outcome on another, you have in fact chosen force over morality.

So, in the words of Jesus, from a spiritual standpoint "Behold, you have your reward."

Don't even presume to lecture me on "establishing a more Christian Nation" when you are engaging in the precise opposite of that. You have chosen the comfort of forcing a comfortable conformity over the promise of spiritual benefit your faith states would accrue to those who do the right thing, when they have the ability to choose otherwise.

I cannot and will never validate the confusion of social and cultural custom and preference with moral truth. It's lovely when they agree, and on occasion they do, but it is not to be taken for granted, and of course, from a spiritual and moral viewpoint, faith untested by circumstance and unsupported by personal reason and choice is either bigotry, conformity, or some measure of both.

Neither much impressed Jesus nor any prophet of any religion I'm aware of.

I think of all the bad reasons to follow any person, prophet, guru, movement, or philosophy, the single least excusable and most common is the fear that one will be noticed if one does not conform. And since it IS so common, it also leads me to treat those who bleat in herds about the moral failings of individuals with all the respect it deserves.

At the end, there can be no moral outcome and no moral profit unless it's possible to make a different choice with no worse outcome than that which might be naturally expected from the mistake itself.

Here is another choice-based example. "Illegal drugs are bad for you." Why? Well, most usual argument is that, since they are illegal and that you will be punished, it's bad. The circularity of this argument is perceptible to a mildly retarded five year old, to the point that the injustice overshadows any conceivable moral, ethical or reasonable argument that using drugs is probably a bad idea.

The second most common argument is nearly as bad: "Because they are illegal, you don't know what's in them."

True enough - so obviously true, in fact, that it leads directly to the obvious response: "Well, why not legalize and regulate them, so that we DO know?"

An excellent question - which of course also assumes that legalizing and regulating would in fact ensure we knew for sure what was in them and and what the effects are better than, say, the credibility of a dealer who'd like your business next weekend.

But that, of course, is a question our general social indoctrination teaches us to never ask - even when we really, really should insist on asking it a lot more and expecting far better answers than we are given.

Immoral, unethical behaviors have their own, inherent consequences, just as merely inadvisable and stupid choices. But in the case of drug laws, these become all but invisible compared to the arbitrary moralistic temper-tantrum that is "the war on drugs."

And here we come back to choices, Mike. A war, ultimately, means the moral decision to say "you are either for me or against me." It is a war that accepts no neutral party or permits rational examination of circumstances or cases. It's a war in which it's considered immoral to even consider the question of "if we win the war on drugs, WHO wins, and what do they win?" For a very, very graphic example of the misbehavior of the FDA in the war on drugs, consider the malicious prosecution of Dr. James Forsythe of Reno.

It's rather gutless, actually. You preclude discussion of the underlying individual choices - and therefore you pretty much abandon the ability to influence most people, even when fact, common sense and personal experience support your argument.

For instance, the use of marijuana among "our youth" has been rampant since I was a youth, and for sometime before that. But before The Demon Weed was ... demonized... ah, go look it up yourself. Some people used it as a recreational drug, but most preferred a good whiskey, and there was no cultural divide over what almost everyone would have considered a triviality.

Either way, If you drink too much, or smoke too much, you tend to do stupid things, and most people figure out pretty quickly what the cost-benefit ratio is for them. There are consequences to one's health to both to those who use heavily - consequences that are well known, easily avoidable if moderation is possible and medically treatable if not.

Nope. I am addicted to nicotine - but I can and have kicked that. (C affine would be a LOT harder) I am dependent on components in tobacco that are currently outside of socially-approved science, apparently so far outside that it's been frustrating for me in finding confirmation other than experiential evidence from people like me.

The people like me were "addicted" on the first puff. I put it more profoundly. Imagine taking a substance that magically and instantaneously reveals to you that you have been dangerously insane for your entire life up to that point.

That is literally my experience, and I don't exaggerate the drama of it. Nor is it entirely a subjective insight. for those who smoke for the reasons I apparently smoke, it seems to be true of most of us to one degree or another. Oh, and I've actually confirmed this by having quit successfully for two years, until I "slipped." One single puff and - I realized that I had been, quite literally, frighteningly insane - and without the slightest idea that I was, even though that insanity had cost me far more than I'm comfortable thinking about.

Now, imagine being told that most profound experience being dismissed as "the addiction talking" and that my choice is "antisocial."

Yeah, "fuck you" is pretty much the minimum level of contempt compatible with a decent sense of self-esteem when confronted with such poorly founded self-righteousness, even when you have reason to think that there is a distinct possibility that the self-righteous, authoritarian dismissal might just be their own unmedicated insanity talking.

And this brings us right back to your right to life amendment. Because, in imposing this choice you are in the same position of dismissing or demonizing all choices you disagree with as being the result of immorality, demon possession or other such excuses that, frankly, permit you to act against the interests of others without admitting to a debt.

How can you honorably advocate for human life when your entire position dehumanizes those you disagree with?

I'll answer for you. You can't. It's dishonorable. It's also unethical and wrong.

Worse than that, it sucks the life out of any efforts to achieve the end of reducing abortion to the absolute minimum possible by giving women more and better choices.

That's why I'm voting for Ron. He's not willing to charge me for his faith. And you are.

tag: mike huckabee, ron paul, abortion rights, abortion amendment

Are we ruled by the Pod People?

Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine speaks the unspeakable, that unregulated Capitalism demonstrably does not produce the results it promises.

AlterNet: WorkPlace: Can Radical Capitalism Survive the Disasters It Creates?: "As Klein sees it, free market shock therapy may actually have succeeded in achieving its true objectives. Post-invasion Iraq may be 'a ghoulish dystopia where going to a simple business meeting could get you lynched, burned alive or beheaded.' Even so, Klein points out, Halliburton is making handsome profits -- it has built the green zone as a corporate city-state, and taken on many of the traditional functions of the armed forces in Iraq. An entire society has been destroyed, but the corporations that operate in the ruins are doing rather well. Klein's message, then, seems to be that -- at least in its own, profit-centred terms -- disaster capitalism works."

I'm a Libertarian and my faith in any particular socio-economic system is tied directly to my own Libertarian litmus test. "What's in it for me?"

This undoubtedly sounds selfish and anti-social, but both ethically and economically, if I do not first consider my own interests, any concern I have about the interests of others will be purely theoretical. I will have no money and no power and therefore my concerns about others will be utterly irrelevant.

Furthermore, any rational system of economics or government first presumes that whatever you do, people will act according to their own perceived self-interest, whether or not you think they should from ANY given social, moral, economic or philosophical viewpoint. You may persuade a great many, perhaps, you can coerce many more, but the proportion that cannot be so influenced will rise with the degree of restriction and the amount of force expended until at some point it all ends with a whimper or a bang.

This is why "The government that governs least, governs best." That government generally avoids setting up positive feedback loops that destroy the whole system in the name of maintaining it.

But it's a publish or perish world and there is no idea so obviously and inherently stupid that you cannot find some very well-credentialed idiot proclaiming it as the new gospel.

Economic and social policies that are presented as "Free Market Capitalism," that have the obviously predictable effect of restricting market access to the powerful, the well-connected and the heavily armed is anything but a Free Market, and perhaps something other than Capitalism.

After all, the objective of Capitalism is to make money by addressing problems to the benefit of all concerned. While there are great sums (and great power) for a few in dealing with disasters in the manner discussed by Klien, the net result is always a measurable loss for most and a severe reduction on the total possible amount of profit - as well as a sharp restriction on the total number of profitable enterprises. The Capitalism she speaks of is the "Capitalism" of vultures and junk-bond financiers.

Now, when the response of our government to a nationwide credit crisis is to facilitate publicity for government auctions, it's time for the great majority of people to realize that we are governed by those with the same ethics and economic foresight as "Make Money Fast" spammers.

It's clear to me - even if it's an observation that seems obscure to most other Libertarians - that whether it's a Government or a "Military-Industrial Complex" that sees my petty concerns about life and liberty as irrelevant in The Greater Scheme Of Things - I have no obligation to respect, much less comply with their idiot diktats.

This is especially true when said idiot diktats are so very obviously stupid with a long track-record of unintended consequences. I merely need to add the risk of being caught to the rest of my risk/reward calculation and compare that to the cost of compliance. If the metrics of the first are more attractive than those of the second - I know what I will do. And, whatever you may protest, I know, in a statistical sense, what YOU will do, too.

The NeoCons have made it clear that their vision does not include any common interests - public infrastructure - like, say, levees, earthquake-upgrades for interstate overpasses and aging bridges - are "a problem for the free market." But of course, a free market that is underwater is not a market at all nor is a market you cannot get to because the roads are impassible. Perhaps mentioning a market that has just been truck bombed or smart-bombed would be bloody redundant, but it's also bloody common in our foreign bastion of the "unfettered free market."

Likewise, any common concern about public health is dismissed as being "inappropriate," a sort of Socially Darwinistic view that if you get sick and cannot afford health care, your fate is of no concern to society - as if that lack of concern forestalled any individual, entrepreneurial efforts founded upon the realization that the constitution and social contract had been "retasked" to toilet paper.

Well, my dear plutocrat, there are a lot of folks who, faced with the dilemma of paying their bills or taking care of themselves, will have no ethical concerns about the impropriety of sneezing into your Cobb Salad, or for that matter, robbing your house. Perhaps that's a fate you seek to forestall by living in gated communities with high overheads for security - which leads to fairly much the same economic outcome as having been mugged repeatedly.

I am, myself, an absolute supporter of the RIGHT to bear arms. I have very, very different feelings about a society where there is an obvious NEED to bear arms. Indeed, that's one aspect the establishment of the right was intended to forestall - the rise of lawless powers that, by dint of force would naturally arise if the people themselves did not have the inherent right to answer force with force.

Which they do. And are doing. It's an inalienable right, after all. Whether or not you define the exercise of that right as a "crime," it is the right of all people to survive, to make a living, to feed their families and to move about freely, whatever your objections to the consequences of their actions may be. Any law that has the direct and predictable effect of interfering with that is unethical. (Never mind whether or not it's immoral - ethics are not so much about right and wrong as they are about cause and effect.)

This is the direct consequence of the manifest contempt with which "the people who matter" treat "the people who don't matter," the people who, having gained power and influence, see no obligation to do more with it than gain more money and power at the expense of those not YET willing to shoot them down like dogs.

The obvious "whatcha gonna do about it" attitude of the wealthy - is tellingly and naively portrayed by our dear Blonde, Paris Hilton. Hilton's obvious contempt for expectations of some minimum level of social accountability - or indeed, some evidence of consciousness that there are standards being violated - is an illustration of a very real mindset that most of the very rich are a little more careful about keeping within their own circles, lest those not so privileged realize that in a very large number of cases those "rules" were put in palace to enforce behavior that people like the Hiltons found profitable and to punish behavior they did not find profitable. From their viewpoint, there's no earthly reason why they should have to comply with them and broadly, they do not comply when there are no cameras around.

So we can thank Paris for being so very "blonde" about the fact that her "privilege" is not based in right, but in fact based upon not being caught in such a way that bribery and influence cannot alter the outcome.

(And frankly, despite her flaws which are the result of growing up in a community and context as isolated from normal society as a "holler" in Appalachia with no road leading to it, she does seem determined to make an effort to become a useful and creative human being, beset with the usual deficits and handicaps those who are destined to become useful and creative look back to in regretful thanksgiving for the wisdom provided by mistakes well made.)

So, as she painfully learns her lessons, let us at least not ignore the implication that she has lessons to learn, realities that she doesn't understand. This is true of the majority of her social class, people who have become so alienated from our culture that they may as well be pod people from Mars, as this now-classic AlterNet article about a cruise sponsored by The National Review so wittily demonstrates.

"I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

Oh, indeed they would, my dear. But possibly not in ways the National Review is likely to advise you of beforehand.

By the way, I happen to be a fan of the National Review - I grew up reading it, along with The New Republic. An informed citizen cannot ignore viewpoints they disagree with. Indeed, they need to seek them out and challenge their own preconceptions on a daily basis. I've gotten to the point when, if someone seems to be reinforcing my world view far too consistently, I start to wonder if they are simply appealing to my prejudices instead of my intellect. But when I find myself in agreement on an issue with ... picking at random - Lenin, Milton Friedman, the Holy Bible and Whoopi Goldberg, I start to think I might be on to something.

I have arrived at my own worldview by that process, by virtue of being largely unprotected from the consequences of my own actions, and with the blessing of being kept outside of a social circle that may otherwise have maintained my innocence of certain unpalatable, but very consequential realities.

One of these things that is true - and unpalatable - is that the "side" you are on by virtue of birth, social class, race, national origin or religion is not correct by definition, nor is it's world-view the only valid one. Even more importantly, the fact that you are on a "side" does not mean that the side is on YOURS. Indeed, that is almost never the case, and inevitably the case if you do not understand that all such social circles and arrangements involve an exchange of power for protection and security - and that unless you demand a due return, it's not at all predictable that you will get anything in return but smoke blown up your butt.

It's apparently also quite unpalatable, frightening and incomprehensible to most people that rights of people OUTSIDE of their circle matter, if for no other reason than the fact that they will defend them against your trespasses, evade your attempted restrictions or, if left no other resort, piss in your coffee as you discuss the difficulty of "finding good help these days."

People who wish to have Authority without any understanding of the need to be an actual, informed, competent authority on the domain they have authority over and are accountable for are really quite pathetic poseurs, and history will be filled with snide footnotes regarding their amazing capacity for arrogance and self-delusion in the face of utter catastrophe if the grownups do not do something.

tag: cultural warfare, oligarchy, tyrrany, opression, Neocons, xenophobia, Stupidity, Greed, Scams

If the US is a battlefield in the War on Terror, Who are "The Terrorists?" You, that's who.

First, a little history lesson on the justification for the Iraq war by means of deceit, deception and demagoguery.



As a result, even deeply conservative Republicans are troubled; Bruce Fein, for example, is speaking out against Bush and his badly-hidden agendas. What agendas? Well, with all the utter bullshit flying about, it's difficult to say for sure, but a few truths are emerging. Alternet is bold enough to baldly come to this conclusion about the Administration's domestic spying agenda.

The extraordinary secrecy surrounding the spying operations revealed in Alberto Gonzales' Senate testimony is not aimed at al-Qaeda, but at the American people.

They proceed to back it up with both reason and evidence, evidence based primarily on Gonzalez's awkward and obvious perjuries.

Sorry, Perjury is a legal term. Let me restate it; his lies.

Anyway, here's some reason to seriously doubt assertions that a total cloak of secrecy on the matter of the extent of domestic surveillance is vital to national security.

[T]here's no reason to think terrorists would change their behavior significantly if they knew that the U.S. government was engaged in massive data-mining operations, poring through electronic records of citizens and non-citizens alike.

The 9/11 attackers mostly stayed off the grid and many of their transactions, such as renting housing, would not alone have raised suspicions. Indeed, the patterns that deserved more attention, such as enrollment in flight-training classes and the arrival of known al-Qaeda operatives, were detected by alert FBI agents in the field but ignored by FBI officials in Washington -- and by Bush while on a month-long vacation in Texas.

Bruce Fein is far more troubled by the threat the President poses to the future of this nation than any number of Al-Queda attacks.

Via Raw story, a dry, but thorough excerpt from his statement before Congress regarding legal and constitutional issues surrounding the President's willful misinterpretation of the AUMF as justification for domestic surveillance in violation of FISA.

President Bush’s intent was to keep the program secret from Congress and to avoid political or legal accountability indefinitely. Secrecy of that sort makes checks and balances a farce. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Popular government without popular information is impossible. Neither Congress nor the American people can question or evaluate a program that is entirely unknown. Mr. Bush could have informed Congress that he was acting outside FISA without disclosing intelligence sources or methods or otherwise alerting terrorists to the need for evasive action.

Since 1978, FISA has informed the world that the United States spies on its enemies, and disclosing the fact of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program would not have added to the enemy’s knowledge on that score. That explains why the Bush administration continued the program after The New York Times’ publication. Second, President Bush’s refusal to disclose the number of Americans that have been targeted under the surveillance program and the success rate in gathering intelligence useful in thwarting terrorism from Americans targeted makes a congressional assessment of its constitutionality or wisdom impossible. Fourth Amendment reasonableness pivots in part on whether the government is on a fishing expedition hoping that something will turn up based on statistical probabilities, like breaking and entering every home in the United States because a handful of emails might be discovered showing a communication with an Al Qaeda member. Without knowing the general nature and success of the surveillance program, Congress is handicapped in fashioning new legislation or undertaking other appropriate responses.

Third, President Bush’s interpretation of the AUMF is preposterous, not simply wrong. FISA is clearly a constitutional exercise of congressional power both to protect the Bill of Rights and to regulate the power of the President to gather foreign intelligence through either electronic surveillance or physical searches during both war and peace. The necessary and proper clause in Article I authorizes Congress to legislate with regard to all powers of the United States, not simply those of the legislative branch. Congress was emphatic that FISA was intended as the exclusive method of gathering foreign intelligence through electronic surveillance or physical searches. And FISA was enacted when the United States confronted a greater danger to its existence from Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles than it does today from Al Qaeda. The argument that the AUMF was intended an exception to FISA is discredited by the following. Neither any Member of Congress not President Bush even hinted at such an interpretation in the course of its enactment, including a presidential signing statement. The interpretation would inescapably mean that the AUMF also was intended to authorize President Bush to break and enter homes, open mail, torture detainees, or even open internment camps for American citizens in violation of federal statutes in order to gather foreign intelligence. To think Congress would have intended to inflict such a gaping wound on the Bill of Rights by silence is thoroughly implausible. The AUMF argument was concocted years after its enactment. It does not represent a contemporaneous interpretation entitled to deference. Further, numerous provisions of THE PATRIOT ACT would have been superfluous if the AUMF means what President Bush now says it means. Finally, FISA is a specific statute prohibiting the gathering of foreign intelligence in both war and peace except within its terms, whereas the AUMF is silent on the issue of foreign intelligence. The specific customarily trumps the general as a matter of statutory interpretation. FISA is more definitive against the President than the failure of Congress to enact legislation in Youngstown because the former tells the Commander-in-Chief “you cannot act” whereas the latter simply said “we are not conferring this power to seize private businesses.” Fourth, President Bush has evaded judicial review of the legality of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program by refusing to use its fruits in seeking FISA warrants or in criminal prosecutions. Pending private suits are problematic because of difficult standing questions. The President’s evasion of the courts makes it proper for Congress to step into the breach to express its on view on the legality of the spying program. Fifth, President Bush’s theory of inherent prerogatives under Article II to justify warping a natural interpretation of the AUMF would reduce Congress to an ink blot in the permanent conflict with international terrorism. The President could pick and choose which statutes to obey in gathering foreign intelligence and employing battlefield tactics on the sidewalks of the United States, akin to exercising a line-item veto over FISA and its amendments.

Of course, the question to all of the above is why. What possible motive would the President have for taking these and many other steps that have alarmed a growing proportion of the informed public? Dave Lindorff, writing at Counterpunch.org, suggests that a declaration of martial law is the next step in the evolution of the President's ambitions and notes that everything is in place save an appropriate pretext.

From the looks of things, the Bush/Cheney regime has been working assiduously to pave the way for a declaration of military rule, such that at this point it really lacks only the pretext to trigger a suspension of Constitutional government. They have done this with the active support of Democrats in Congress, though most of the heavy lifting was done by the last, Republican-led Congress. [Emphasis Mine]

The first step, or course, was the first Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed in September 2001, which the president has subsequently used to claim-improperly, but so what? -that the whole world, including the US, is a battlefield in a so-called "War" on Terror, and that he has extra-Constitutional unitary executive powers to ignore laws passed by Congress. As constitutional scholar and former Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein observes, that one claim, that the US is itself a battlefield, is enough to allow this or some future president to declare martial law, "since you can always declare martial law on a battlefield. All he'd need would be a pretext, like another terrorist attack inside the U.S."

The 2001 AUMF was followed by the PATRIOT Act, passed in October 2001, which undermined much of the Bill of Rights. Around the same time, the president began a campaign of massive spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, conducted without any warrants or other judicial review. It was and remains a program that is clearly aimed at American dissidents and at the administration's political opponents, since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would never have raised no objections to spying on potential terrorists. (And it, and other government spying programs, have resulted in the government's having a list now of some 325,000 "suspected terrorists"!)

The other thing we saw early on was the establishment of an underground government-within-a-government, though the activation, following 9-11, of the so-called "Continuity of Government" protocol, which saw heads of federal agencies moved secretly to an underground bunker where, working under the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, the "government" functioned out of sight of Congress and the public for critical months.

It was also during the first year following 9-11 that the Bush/Cheney regime began its programs of arrest and detention without charge-mostly of resident aliens, but also of American citizens-and of kidnapping and torture in a chain of gulag prisons overseas and at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.

The following year, Attorney General John Ashcroft began his program to develop a mass network of tens of millions of citizen spies-Operation TIPS. That program, which had considerable support from key Democrats (notably Sen. Joe Lieberman), was curtailed by Congress when key conservatives got wind of the scale of the thing, but the concept survives without a name, and is reportedly being expanded today.

The only problem with the declaration of martial law, aside from the fairly straightforward matter of generating a suitable pretext, is the question of "you and what army." Lindorff continues:

Bruce Fein isn't an alarmist. He says he doesn't see martial law coming tomorrow. But he is also realistic. "Really, by declaring the US to be a battlefield, Bush already made it possible for himself to declare martial law, because you can always declare martial law on a battlefield," he says. "All he would need would be a pretext, like another terrorist attack on the U.S."

Indeed, the revised Insurrection Act (10. USC 331-335) approved by Congress and signed into law by Bush last October, specifically says that the president can federalize the National Guard to "suppress public disorder" in the event of "national disorder, epidemic, other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident." That determination, the act states, is solely the president's to make. Congress is not involved.

Fein says, "This is all sitting around like a loaded gun waiting to go off. I think the risk of martial law is trivial right now, but the minute there is a terrorist attack, then it is real. And it stays with us after Bush and Cheney are gone, because terrorism stays with us forever." (It may be significant that Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate for president, has called for the revocation of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq, but not of the earlier 2001 AUMF which Bush claims makes him commander in chief of a borderless, endless war on terror.

I've devoted extensive thought to the imposition of Martial Law and the resulting Civil War that I strongly believe it would provoke. The key to my understanding has always been the lack of available boots on the ground and the very important question as to the percentage of US forces who are willing to fire upon fellow citizens. I've mentioned this as an imponderable, simply because there is no real way to know until it happens, but I'm quite certain that obedience to presidential orders cannot be taken for granted. Lindorff concludes with the observation that, due to overuse of the existing military and an increasing resistance to continued service on the part of vital mid-level officers who would be vital to such an enterprise, it's increasingly unlikely that the president could impose martial law - at least, not upon the United States as a whole. I and many others publicy doubt the ability of the current available forces to pacify California, or even Greater Los Angeles.

But then, the Administration must be aware of that. So expect a continuation and escalation of covert actions against the American People, particularly those that present either symbolic or direct threats to the President, or to his network of backers and advocates. I particularly expect the administration to use "The Financial Death Penalty" against a number of carefully selected targets, along with an effort to keep those actions secret for as long as possible, while the Pentagon - through it's contractors, such as Blackwater - attempts to develop an "off the books" force of mercenaries that could be relied on.

I must rely on others better positioned than I am to discern how well-advanced such efforts are, if they exist, and to what degree they are feasible. But there are hints and rumors out there that covert activity is not the sole province of the President's Men. There are a lot of former military people with quite current skills who are disaffected and determined to do something.

My conclusion is that the Administration wold be well advised to put off it's apparent plans for world domination at least another generation.

But then again, when has the Administration ever profited from being well-advised?

Update: CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS: This Can't Be Happening!

Dave Lindorff wrote:

To readers of the This Can't Be Happening! website:

In a curious coincidence, the day that this site published an article on the string of steps that this government has taken to put in place the legal niceties to Prepare for a Potential Declaration of Martial Law, including a sidebar on the possibility of an assassination of Pat Tillman,
my site suddenly ceased allowing me to access it for any further editorial changes.

I have been in repeated contact with the help desk (sic) at Earthlink, and have been informed that the site's pages have been "Fatally Corrupted."They advised me that I might have to rebuild the site and start over.

When I pointed out that the site itself is still up and available to readers, and so should be recoverable on the server, they said that they would attempt to fix it, making it a "priority" item.

That was yesterday.

It has now been locked down for a total of 4 days.

Not sure what to make of the whole thing at this point, though it could all just be coincidence
and innocent ineptness at Earthlink.

Dave Lindorff
dlindorff@mindspring.com

Interesting, don't you think?

tag: War on Terror, Civil War, Domestic Unrest, pretext, pretexts, Martial Law, Financial Death Penalty, domestic spying, secrecy, Bush Administration, lies, Iraq War, Military readiness, Bruce Fein,

Congressman Ron Paul is right...

It's not just "Godless Liberals" and "Surrender Monkeys" who oppose the war and demand the return of our Civil Liberties. Real Conservatives want an end to this long national nightmare.

Jim Babka, writing in Free Market News

• President of the Downsize DC Foundation and DownsizeDC.org, Inc
• Former President of RealCampaignReform.org, Inc.

Please share with concerned friends . . .

Subject: Habeas corpus, military tribunals, Iran

Congressman Ron Paul is right. The terrorist threat is primarily blowback from decades of bad foreign policy in the Middle East, much of it hidden from the American people. As Congressman Paul has noted, this is the conclusion of studies by both the CIA and the Defense Department.

Sadly, U.S. foreign policy has only gotten worse since 9-11. Nearly everything our politicians have done has only served to further radicalize the Islamic world.

Yes, we know, the reasons for Islamic extremism have now moved beyond U.S. foreign policy, to include cultural issues. This is a cancerous development. But this tumor was first created by our foreign policy, and that is also where the cure must begin.

We can start by restoring our own values.

The use of torture, the repeal of habeas corpus, and the creation of Kangaroo Court military tribunals, has made us look like hypocrites, creating anger and distrust around the world. But it isn't too late to turn the tide back in our favor.

The effort in the Senate to pull-back in Iraq is going to fail. That's okay. It was a weak proposal anyway. But the possibility of victory in restoring habeas corpus and ending the military tribunals remains strong. A vote on these issues could happen today, as soon as the debate over the Iraq proposal ends.

Passing these measures would send a strong message to the world -- the United States may sometimes go astray, but eventually we return to our principles.

We cannot predict when the Senate will vote on these measures. Not even the Senate leaders know: We called and asked the Senate Majority Leader's office. But it will happen soon, and probably without warning. One of these measures isn't even available for review on the Internet. But thanks to our coalition involvement with other organizations who have staff working the halls of Congress, we know it exists, we know what it does, and we know it is about to come to a vote.

We must maintain our pressure on the Senate to pass . . .

* S. 576 to dismantle the military tribunals

* S. 185 to restore habeas corpus

Please keep sending messages and making phone calls on these two bills. Tell your representatives what these amendments would do. Believe it or not, they may not know. I mean, it's not like they actually read this stuff before they vote on it!

It is especially important for you to take action if you have a Republican Senator, or Senator on this list: Alexander, Coburn, Coleman, Collins, Crapo, Domenici, Hagel, Lugar, Martinez, Murkowski, Snowe, Sununu, Shelby

You can send your message here. http://action.downsizedc.org/wyc.php?cid=58

Also, please keep sending messages asking Congress to take action to stop an attack on Iran. We will have more to say on this issue once the votes on S. 576 and S. 185 have passed. But it should be obvious, without further analysis from us, what a disaster it would for the United States to attack Iran.

Congress is asleep at the switch on this issue. We must wake them up. Tell them you have heard disturbing reports that President Bush may be planning to attack Iran. Tell them to wake up and take steps to prevent this.

You can send your message here. http://action.downsizedc.org/wyc.php?cid=54

Ok, don't just sit there, CLICK something!

Cafepress T-shirt sale reminds me, I need at least 4 new shirts!

The timing on this sale could not be better - I've worn my favorite designs to death. My "No Whining" shirts are especially threadbare and stained, and I really want to get one of my cool new metallic versions on black or dark colors.

Now, you might think of this as a commercial post. I'll admit, there's an overlap, but this post is what I am gonna buy. This is actually sparked by something Randi Rhodes said some months back, talking to people who felt that they "couldn't do anything" about the way things are going in this country. They either couldn't afford to donate to a cause, or didn't have the time to get involved, or really didn't see how either thing could make a difference.

She said, at the very least, you can wear a t-shirt! If you are a social sort of person, if you like shopping, if you go to the mall or the movies, put on a shirt that takes a stand and wear it. Yes, it takes some guts. You might endure some rude stares, maybe even rude questions about your patriotism. But that's the whole idea. Have some answers ready to go. Remember, if you are wearing your message to a mall during peak hours, it could be seen by hundreds, even thousands of people. That, folks, is something. It's something very important, because it said you, personally find this message important enough to be seen in public.

This design is one that I have had some real success with: On the back, it says "surefire exit strategy: send chickenhawks, not body armor."

This speaks to my strongest reason to not support the war; the loudest supporters are the farthest behind the lines.

I'm absolutely sick of the obvious fact that those who s