Black Helicopters Everywhere
New York Times -
Bush's Speech to U.N. on Iraq 
- thursday morning. Ho hum.
Delegates to the General Assembly, we have been more than patient. We've tried sanctions. We've tried the carrot of oil for food and the stick of coalition military strikes.
But Saddam Hussein has defied all these efforts and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction. The first time we may be completely certain he has nuclear weapons is when, God forbid, he uses one.
We owe it to all our citizens to do everything in our power to prevent that day from coming.
The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations and a threat to peace.
Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance.
Alisa Solomon at The Village Voice - Things We Lost in the Fire - They've come for the immigrants. Do you think it will be long before they take the rest of us away? [villagechoice]
"Liberty is the most precious gift we offer our citizens."
Could Tom Ridge have said anything scarier or more telling as he accepted the post of homeland security czar? Trying to strike the bell of liberty, he sounds its death knell, depicting government not as the agent of the people's will, but as an imperious power with the authority to give us our democratic freedoms. Which means, of course, that it can also take them away.
That's exactly what Ashcroft, Bush, Cheney & co. have been up to all year as, in the attorney general's words, the government has marshaled the might of "every available statute" to root out "the terrorists among us." Wrapping themselves in the flag, they have shredded the Constitution. They have sneered at, ignored, or defied the courts and legislatures that are designed to provide checks and balances on uninhibited executive power. They have eroded the precious Bill of Rights protections of free speech, assembly, and association and its assurances of privacy, due process, equal protection, legal counsel, and a fair trial--practically everything but the right to bear arms.
Thanks to these maneuvers in the name of combating terrorism, the government can now freeze the release of public records, monitor political and religious gatherings, and jail Americans indefinitely without trial and without legal representation. As Bush and Cheney ready the country for war against Iraq, they have established a climate that stifles dissent--and put laws in place enabling them to clamp down on those who ask too many questions.
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Civil libertarians, immigrant advocates, and human rights activists frantically sent up warning flares, highlighting various ways the new laws, regulations, and acts of fiat threatened various constitutional protections. "There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state it would be easier to catch terrorists," said Russell Feingold, who braved the only nay vote on the USA Patriot Act in the Senate. "That would not be America."
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Our attorney general's name doesn't lend itself as readily as Joe McCarthy's to the mellifluous abstract noun that came to define the witch-hunts, loyalty oaths, and blacklisting of the '50s: "Ashcroftism" is not likely to enter American parlance. But if it did, the term would describe not only the climate of enforced conformity, but the administration's high-handed disregard for the most fundamental of constitutional protections: First Amendment rights to free association and free speech and the Fifth Amendment right to due process.
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After nearly a year of unbridled expansion of executive powers, some checks and balances are finally beginning to kick in. In recent weeks, a series of heartening court decisions has slammed the Ashcroft strategy of surveillance overkill and unwarranted secrecy. Ruling late last month that the government could not close deportation hearings against Rabih Haddad, a Muslim community leader in Michigan, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asserted, "The executive branch seeks to uproot people's lives, outside the public eye and behind a closed door." But, wrote Judge Damon Keith, "when government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information that rightly belongs to the people. Selective information is misinformation."
George F. Smith at Laissez Faire Electronic Times - A 9-11 Report Card - F minus. If only we could throw the government out.
Following the horror of 9-11, government moved in to instill order and begin its mission for justice. What has it accomplished?
Has it made airline travel safer? Has it caught the organizers of the attack? Has it taken measures that will lessen the likelihood of a similar strike? Has it managed its activities within the domain of the Constitution, the document politicians pledge to uphold?
You know the answers. No, no, no, and hell, no. The Constitution, government reminds us, is not a suicide pact.
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China is not part of the administration's famous axis, yet they are reportedly within a year of having the Dong Feng 31 ICBM operational. DF-31 missiles can deliver a 3-megaton H-bomb to your doorstep. The Chinese navy will soon be able to launch Julang 2 missiles from some of its submarines. JL-2 missiles can hit just as hard as DF-31s and can be launched undersea. [2]
A recent congressional brief states that China is still active in proliferating Weapons of Mass Destruction to regimes openly hostile to the United States. The brief notes that, in spite of frequent promises to behave, China "remains a 'key supplier' of technology inconsistent with nonproliferation goals -- particularly missile or chemical technology transfers" to countries like Pakistan, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and Iran. [3]
Sherman H. Skolnick at Rense.com - The Overthrow Of The American: Republic - Part 15, Supplement and Update - More (fiction?) on GW's male sexual partner and hints of the real reason George is so set on killing Hussein. [grabbe]
Sherman H. Skolnick at Rense.com - The Overthrow Of The American: Republic - Part 17, FBI Sought Clamp on Bush Stories - Part 16 wasn't very interesting.
The Bush reputed male sex-mate details have enabled Red China, perceived by some as a sworn enemy of the U.S., and others reportedly to blackmail or otherwise unlawfully compromise the current occupant and resident of the White House, causing the disclosure of U.S. industrial, financial, and military secrets. Various reporters, including those of British Broadcasting Company, BBC, and Canadian Broadcasting Company, CBC, have, on their own, verified and corroborated the exclusive stories by this reporter as to the Bush relationship causing a breach itself by Bush of national security.
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Who says there is no secret political police, no Gestapo, in the United States?
Carl Bussjaeger at Sierra Times - Nathan Barton's Free Political Speech Case - remember the guy who was arrested at the South Dakota fair for protesting not being allowed in the debate? They're prosecuting him. Possibly because of Mr. Bussjaeger's awarding the cop the Jack-Booted Thug of the month award. [sierra]
The Hunter at Sierra Times - Trial by Internet - more on Mr. Barton's predicament. At least he's getting lots of press from it. Maybe it will even damage some of the local tyrants. [sierra]
Carl Bussjaeger - Jackbooted Thug of the Month: Captain Mark Aguirre of the Houston Police Department - for September of 2002 for arresting 425 peaceful Houston citizens.
Jo Ann Zuniga at The Houston Chronicle - Kmart raid's captain under virtual house arrest - Mr. Aguirre is not allowed to leave his house during working hours without the permission of his supervisor. So why isn't he learning the efficacy of Crisco in the state penn?
Laura Ingraham at Jewish World Review - The Today Show v. guns - commentary and the text of an interview with Charles Heston. He did marvelously. Wish I'd seen it. [kaba]
Jon Dougherty at World Net Daily - Firearms and freedom will protect homeland - with terrorists planning attacks on individual Americans, laws forbidding carry are even more criminal than before. [geneice]
If civilians are being targeted by terrorist operatives, isn't it criminal -- in a supposedly "free society" -- to arrest and prosecute people who would simply find the means to defend themselves? Yet that's what will happen if Jack and Jane Smith shove a clip into the family AR- 15 and tote it with them when they and the kids go shopping in just about any city in America.
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Our government has yet to realize that the ever- present threat of terrorism overrides dangerous gun-control claptrap. How many more deaths will it take before they understand that regardless of how large the state's security apparatus, law enforcement and military personnel cannot be everywhere to protect everyone all the time?
MalcontentX - Sept 11: Unanswered Questions - Another in-depth questioning of the official story of the atrocities of September 11, 2001. [cures-not-wars]
