i have to say, no we do not live in a police state. we are well on the way, but not quite there yet. ask me again after 2 terms of rumsfeld/wolfowitz in the white house... if can still find me.

actually, the prospect of Hilary is kind of scaring me more than an impossible rummie/wolflowitz duo...

I just think it is important to realize that a police state in hi-tech 2007 USA will not be recognized by comparisons to earlier police states. It will have its own identity informed by the culture. It will not look like what the Spectacle tells you a police state looks like. You won't find monks dead in the jungle. They get rendered overseas. You won't see public executions. Car accidents just happen. They won't put you in jail. They just arrange for you to lose your job and housing. What! You smoked a cigarette in your apartment! EVICTED!!! Sir we had reports you were smoking cigarettes around children, thats why the SWAT Team just burst in here and shot your dog. You don't need jackboot thugs marching on the streets, you just show them endlessly on network TV.

Source: Cleveland Leader

We’ve all undoubtedly heard the warnings about being careful about the information we put online, as well as the stories of potential employers and college admissions and coaches checking up on people online through Google and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. But here’s a new one for you: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is also using this information to check up on individuals entering the country. “They” are watching you, and “they” know what you’ve been up to.

Andrew Feldman, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who’s currently a psychotherapist in Vancouver, was recently detained for four hours, fingerprinted, and then barred entry into the United States after Homeland Security googled him and found an article he wrote in a literary and scientific journal in which he talked about using LSD and various other drugs in the 1960’s. And even though he has no criminal record and says he hasn’t used drugs since the 1970’s, Feldmar must now get formal permission from the U.S. consul before entering the U.S.
Feldmar has been accustomed to visiting the U.S. about five or six times per year to visit his children, but last summer when he was pulled over for a random search, border patrol turned up online evidence that he had experimented with drugs for therapeutic research in the past.
Now nearly a year later, Feldmar has come to the conclusion that his banishment from the United States is permanent. He claims that the waiver process is exhausting, costly, and demeaning. His family and friends are devastated.
Feldmar’s daughter, Soma, said: “My father was doing nothing wrong, illegal, suspicious, or at all deviant in any way, when he was trying to visit the U.S. In terms of family it really sucks. ” What’s this mean for other people who’ve done questionable things in the past? Will an entire generation of hippies be barred from the U.S. for recreational drug use in 60’s? Will journalists who’ve written less than flattering articles concerning the U.S. be stopped too? It’s not clear where the line with be drawn, so take this advice: be careful what you share online.

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — Kennebunkport voters have tightened restrictions for issuing mass-gathering permits after three large peace demonstrations over the past two summers.
The revisions approved on Election Day shift responsibility for issuing permits from the police department to the Board of Selectmen. The rules require organizers of events with more than 500 participants to take out a surety bond as insurance against damage to private property.
Jamilla El-Shafei, organizer of the peace demonstrations, says the new rules could be used to discriminate against unwanted political demonstrations. And the Maine Civil Liberties Union says the rules might be unconstitutional because they could restrict free speech.
Town Manager Larry Mead says the ordinance was drawn up because of damage to private property by a traveling circus, not the political demonstrations.

worst thread ever

why?

Where you drunk when you posted this?

America is the home of the hypocrite!
America is the home of the hypocrite!

American Dreams are fu-fu-full of it!

bitch, no
i can't drink

thanks for reminding me

Sign Of Times: NJ School Cameras Fed Live To Cops

Demarest School District Installs Laptop Surveillance Videos Monitored, Operated By Local Police
Jay Dow
DEMAREST, N.J. (CBS) ― Surveillance cameras rolling inside our local schools is nothing new, but what's taking place inside Demarest's public schools is truly cutting edge: a live feed from more than two dozen cameras with a direct connection to the police.

It's an expensive, but effective tool that could be a sign of the times with an increase in school shootings over the years.

The system, which cost about $28,000, can even track movement in a crowded room.

"When they arrive, they can pull up the school's live feed and do a sweep instantly," Demarest Police Chief James Powderley tells CBS 2.

Patrolling officers have access to the video feed from headquarters and several laptops. To address privacy concerns, all of the cameras are installed in public areas and are not equipped to pick up audio.

The video capabilities are extremely impressive. Each of the laptops can pick up 16 different angles at one time, turning a single operator into a mobile surveillance team.

In an emergency situation, Powderley says the cameras -- complete with zoom and pan functions -- also cut down search and response times. "One officer has 17 eyes in multiple locations. It's amazing," he says.

Schools Superintendent Larry Hughes says if nothing else, the ability to digitally timestamp and archive the video should discourage bad, even criminal behavior.

"It doesn't hurt that people know and that if something is going to take place at your facility, if it does deter people from doing that, it's an added benefit," says Hughes.

Students seem pleased with the high-tech devices.

"I would want the police to be there right away if something happened to our school. Especially with all these bomb scares happening now, I know the high school had a couple," says one student.

Plans are already underway to install a more advanced system in Northern Valley High school, which can alert a patrolling officer when someone is in distress or suddenly falls down.

The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, M.D.By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Welcome to the jackboot state, not to mention the jackboot campus, anno domini 2007. A doctor gives verbal advice to protect the life of an unconscious man and she duly gets hit with attempted felonies by vindictive campus cops, with the connivance of the University of Michigan. Jury selection for her trial starts on Monday in a county courthouse in Ann Arbor.
This case began with an on-campus talk about Iran last November 30 by Raymond Tanter, a former Reagan administration foreign policy advisor and nutball cofounder of the Committee on the Present Danger. More recently he's co-founder of the Iran Policy Committee. Tanter has said publicly on more than one occasion that nuking Iran wouldn't be a bad idea.
The audience at November 30 event was lively and contentious. On the campus that Columbia's Lee Bollinger once ran there's an elaborate policy about free speech, but those precepts were promptly flouted. As is now the fashion at many universities, the U of M campus guards are gun-toting goons who decided to wade in aggressively at the behest of the event's organizers.
Here's how Wilkerson described what happened next, on this site on March 13 of this year.

I heard a commotion in the hall and stepped out of the room. In the hall I saw the same huge cop on top of the second protester who'd come to the first victim's aid. The cop had the man, a relatively small guy in his forties, pinned down, arms pulled behind his back, getting handcuffed. The cop used PPCT against this person also, not once but twice. The man writhed and cried out in pain.
The cop used his far-greater strength and body weight, along with the force of his knee on his victim's back to press his chest against the floor. It would be impossible for a person to inflate his lungs pressed against the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back like that. Asphyxiation being a well-known cause of death of people in custody, when the man started calling out that he couldn't breathe, I approached, identified myself as a doctor, and instructed the cop to turn him over immediately. The victim went limp. The cop turned him onto his back. I saw that the victim had a wound on his forehead and blood in his nostrils. He was unconscious. Reiterating numerous times that I was a doctor, I tried to move to where I could assess the victim for breathing and a pulse. The cop shoved me, until finally, after my imploring him to allow me to render medical care to the victim, he allowed me to determine that the victim was alive. But he refused to remove the cuffs despite my requests. A person lying with hands cuffed beneath his body risks nerve damage to the extremities and, moreover, cannot be resuscitated. I continually re-assessed the man, who had now become my patient, and who remained unconscious.
Eventually an ambulance arrived, along with the fire department and a contingent of Ann Arbor police officers. While the paramedics went about their business, the first thing being to have the cop un-cuff the patient, I tried to fulfill my obligation to my patient. I tried to oversee what the paramedics were doing, which, contrary to protocol and the normal relationship between physician and paramedic, was all that I was allowed to do. I was forced to stay away. What I witnessed in the course of their treatment appalled me. When the patient didn't respond to a sternal rub, one of the paramedics popped an ammonia inhalant and thrust it beneath the patient's nostrils. If you're interested in what's wrong with that, google Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, foremost authority on paramedicine, and read his article condemning this dangerous practice. That it's "just bad medicine" is sufficient to make the paramedic's actions unacceptable, but what happened next made my blood curdle. He popped a second inhalant and a third, then cupped his hands over the patient's nostrils to heighten the noxious effect. "You don't like that, do you?" he said.
At that point I issued a direct medical order for him to stop, but he ignored me. "What you're doing is punitive," I said, "and has no efficacy." Then as the patient retched, rather than rolling him onto his side to avoid the chance of his choking on his own vomit, a firefighter held his feet down and yelled, "don't spit." In thirty years of doctoring, I have never witnessed such egregious maltreatment of a patient. Again I spoke up, "this is punitive." I hoped to shame the paramedical into stopping his unethical behavior."

Please note that at no point did Wilkerson do anything other than offer verbal advice.
The police--by now not just campus but also city cops were on the scene -- ordered her to leave. As she was doing so, a city cop seized her and put her under arrest. His superiors soon determined there were no grounds for arrest and she was released without having been handcuffed or requested to produce ID.
Wilkerson has made her career serving low-income patients. For the last 5 to 6 years she's worked at a community medical clinic. She takes the U.S. Constitution seriously and filed a complaint about the incident alleging police misconduct. It took seven weeks for the cops to answer the charges, which they did by the expedient of filing a report plump with mendacity about Wilkerson's conduct the night of the arrests. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor, Brian Mackie, at the apparent request of the UM police, charged her with two attempted felonies based on "attempted interference" with the police officer who had seized her.
Her attorney, civil rights lawyer Buck Davis, tells me that that county judge Elizabeth Pollard Hines recently threw out two subsequent charges, claiming that Wilkerson had tried to interfere with the campus police as well as the police officer.
This coming week Wilkerson faces jury trial at the 15th District Court in Ann Arbor. Wilkerson's lawyers will bring in eyewitnesses to the events on November 30, 2006, plus expert witnesses including Brian Bledsoe, a Texas attorney who has testified in cases across the country on the use of ammonia. (Ammonia was involved in the death of Martin Lee Anderson at a juvenile 'boot camp' detention facility in Florida.)
Buck Davis tells me that "ten or fifteen years ago this case would have been a slam dunk, on First Amendment and medical privilege arguments, with no physical contact with the cops, all in liberal Ann Arbor." Wilkerson would have been swiftly acquitted.
"But now people are scared to death. They know the social system is falling apart. They no longer have a generous spirit. I've learned that the erosion of the economic and social fabric means people want to believe the cops. They're frightened. So I'm not as arrogant about 'slam dunk' cases as I once was."
The case will probably run all week, except Thursday. If you can, show up in court to support Catherine Wilkerson.

Why are Secret Service engaged in this?

Members of We Are Change Ohio were threatened with arrest and questioned by members of the Secret Service before and after confronting CNN host Glenn Beck this past weekend about his efforts to link Ron Paul supporters with terrorists, during public appearances at which Beck was promoting his new book.

Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" is not written exactly like the Nazi 1933 Discriminatory Decrees that suspended the Reich Constitution, but it can bring America to the same place by trashing America’s civil liberties. Harman’s bill has the potential of driving lawful political and other activists underground into American cell groups. Perhaps expectantly creating the domestic terrorists the Bush Administration has said we need to be protected from.

The Nazis were dead serious when they outlawed specific types of dancing, singing, artwork; any act of expression the Government said "might" cause public unrest in the German State. German Citizens got arrested for dancing the Jitterbug. On February 28, 1933 Hitler signed the Discriminatory Decrees banning free association and speech that might cause public disturbance or adversely affect the peace and security of the German State—according to police. Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" when closely examined, defines "homegrown terrorism" as "any planned act" that might use force to coerce the U.S. Government or its people to promote or accomplish a "political or social objective." No actual force need occur. Government need only charge that an individual or group thought about doing it.

The Harman bill may extend to "planned acts" in America against foreign governments that are "U.S. alleys." See "planned acts" covered under Patriot Act. Under the Harman bill, environmental organizations in America are at risk when they coordinate activities with or support foreign activist groups in some countries. American environmental organizations can’t control what might happen overseas at a "planned" environmental demonstration or control the "planned acts" of foreign activists they network with.

Under the broad language of the Harman bill, anyone attending a "planned anti war rally" could be charged with trying to coerce a government and its people. Government need only charge that an individual in a group "thought about coercing a government or its people." Labor demonstrators that block or intimidate shoppers from entering a store could be charged with "coercing people" under Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act." The Nazi’s used similar provisions found in the Harman bill to charge labor leaders as communists.

Under the Harman bill, should violence breakout at a "planned" demonstration, the government can charge that everyone attending was "ideologically based toward violence." The individual activists who set up web sites promoting their "planned activities", wrote, emailed or handed out "flyers" promoting "that planned" demonstration could also be charged with Violent Radicalization or Homegrown Terrorism, depending on the violence that occurred at the demonstration. It is foreseeable that "information flyers" not intended by the author to be distributed at a particular event but were somehow distributed, could under the Harman bill open the door for government to charge the author with promoting "Violent Radicalization and/or Homegrown Terrorism, if that subsequently results. Such concerns by writers will crush free speech and written dissent.

The broad language of the Harman bill gives the government the power to bully and charge Americans with terrorism when Citizens exercise their Constitutional Right to Association. Lawful Americans that attend public meetings, demonstrations and other group public events should not be charged with Violent Radicalization, Homegrown Terrorism, or labeled "ideologically based toward violence" because of what another person said or did at a "planned" meeting. Of course, under such circumstances millions of Americans would become afraid to support or attend political and other public meetings out of concern someone might do something that violates Rep. Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act." Attendance by an American at a "political or environmentalist' meeting" could put a U.S. Citizen on the government's "no fly list."

Should the current provisions in the Jane Harman bill HR 1955 or S. 1959 pass in its present form, the U.S. Government, federal and state police will have no difficulty legally terminating American Citizens and activist organizations that exercise their Constitutional Right to free association, free speech, expression, assembly and writings. Once the Harman bill passes, Police Provocateurs can easily destroy any anti-war group, person or organization that supports or attends a "planned" meeting or demonstration. Police Provocateurs need only join a crowd of protestors at a demonstration, then throw rocks toward uniformed police to criminalize an entire demonstration. Or covertly contact a group’s participants before, at or after a "planned" demonstration, then lie and claim the person(s) the Provocateur spoke with were ideologically bent toward violence; "Violent Radicalization; or Homegrown Terrorism.

Uneducated police provocateurs and informants, which there are many, are more apt to misinterpret intellectual discussion at a political meeting as being ideologically bent toward violence, "Violent Radicalization or Homegrown Terrorism.

At the time of the founding of the United States, the money controversy was, for many, a very important issue. Several of the
colonies had groused under the thumb of the king in the matter of issuing paper money. By reason of the Currency Act of 1764 and
otherwise, the colonies were restricted as to how much could be issued. Thus, upon declaring their independence, these colonies — now states — and the Continental Congress proceeded apace to issue paper money and, of course, engendered a hyperinflation. [Actually, the British in the Revolutionary War era were massively conunterfeiting the Colonial Currencies to cause this as well, it was a war financial terrorism attack, something little known...Reagan did it to the Russian ruble in the late 1980s by the way. Even Lenin said destroy their currency valuation and you will help usher in the totalitarin states and wealth consoliation they wanted in the state.]

this last sentence says more than I want to hear - the US dollar has been declining by a penny every three weeks...

Operation Lucky Bag, the NYPD program that threatened to ensnare good Samaritans along with subway thieves, is making a comeback after being effectively shut down earlier this year. Initially, the program involved cops leaving bags of merchandise, wallets, or purses on subway benches. When someone picked them up and didn't immediately turn them over to the police or subway personnel, he or she was arrested. According to the police, Operation Lucky Bag netted 101 arrests of people with 716 prior arrests on their records.Last week, the New York Times wrote there were actually 220 arrests, so 119 had no prior arrests to their names. One such person was Helen Calthorpe, who was arrested after picking up a bag with a phone in it while she was on her way to her job. And that gets to a serious flaw in OLB in our opinion - leaving decoy belongings on subway platforms, where people are usually hurried and an arriving train isn't going to wait for you to find a police officer or transit worker.
Judges eventually started throwing out OLB arrests, noting that people actually have ten days to turn in lost items. The NYPD is renewing the program, however, and rigging it for stiffer penalties. The dropped items now include legitimate credit cards (registered to cops' pseudonyms), the theft of which is a Class E felony and can result in four years in prison. And they've expanded the locales. According to the Times, cops have been leaving abandoned purses in stores such as Macy's.
Prosecutors say they'll focus on cases that involve sneaky behavior that indicates guilt, such as a man who found a purse in a store, removed the wallet and stuck it in his pocket, and then left the purse behind before attempting to leave. But that doesn't explain the police nabbing a guy who picked up at a wallet at the Grand Central Station. He told the Daily News he intended to return but rushed onto a train - only to be hauled out by the police, frisked, and questioned how many times he had been arrested.

but then when you actually need a cop and call them...

Brooklyn resident Christina Copeman became a recluse after the death of her husband 17 years ago, more so as she began to succumb to Alzheimer's disease. She wouldn't answer greetings from neighbors and eventually refused to come to the door when people knocked.
The full consequences of her isolation weren't realized until this week, when police broke down the door to her apartment and found her skeletal remains dressed, and wearing a coat and hat as if she were about to go out. She was curled in a fetal position and a medical exam determined that she succumbed to heart disease.
She had lain there for two years, slowly decomposing as friends and neighbors made occasional inquiries into her whereabouts. Neighbors called the police to report bad smells coming from Copeman's apartment, but when cops arrived they said they couldn't detect anything.
The grandmother's mail stacked up--eventually piling four feet high--but the block's mail carrier didn't make special note of it because he only delivered her a few letters a month. A building inspector came to investigate a report that her dwelling wasn't being properly maintained, but didn't bother to gain entry to the apartment before filing a report on a faulty roof as the source of a leak. Family members' calls to 311 were shunted off to different agencies, but never the right one that could have led to her discovery.
Copeman's nephew Peter Bishop says he knocked on his aunt's door 15 times over the last two years and called the cops repeatedly. This weekend he reported her missing and the police knocked down the woman's apartment door to find her fully clothed skeleton. An employee with the city's medical examiner's office said the scene wasn't gruesome, just sad.

this thread just needs to die.

worst. thread. ever.

!!!!!!!

Recording Nets Charges for NY Detective

 

Email this Story

Dec 6, 10:46 PM (ET)

By TOM HAYS

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NEW YORK (AP) - A teenage suspect who secretly recorded his interrogation on an MP3 player has landed a veteran detective in the middle of perjury charges, authorities said Thursday.
Unaware of the recording, Detective Christopher Perino testified in April that the suspect "wasn't questioned" about a shooting in the Bronx, a criminal complaint said. But then the defense confronted the detective with a transcript it said proved he had spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to persuade Erik Crespo to confess - at times with vulgar tactics.
Once the transcript was revealed in court, prosecutors asked for a recess, defense attorney Mark DeMarco said. The detective was pulled from the witness stand and advised to get a lawyer.
Perino, 42, was arraigned Thursday on 12 counts of first-degree perjury and faces as many as seven years on each count, prosecutors said. He was released on $15,000 bail.
His attorney did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment Thursday. A New York Police Department spokesman declined to comment.
The allegations "put the safety of all law-abiding citizens at risk because they undermine the integrity and foundation of the entire criminal justice system," District Attorney Robert Johnson said in a statement.
Perino had arrested Crespo on New Year's Eve 2005 while investigating the shooting of a man in an elevator. While in an interrogation room at a station house, Crespo, then 17, stealthily pressed the record button on the MP3 player, a Christmas gift, DeMarco said.
After Crespo was charged with attempted murder, his family surprised DeMarco by playing him the recording.
"I couldn't believe my ears," said the lawyer, who decided to keep the recording under wraps until he cross-examined Perino at the trial. Prosecutors then offered Crespo, who had faced as many as 25 years if convicted, seven years if he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. He accepted.

Senator Dodd plans to Filibuster a FISA bill that will give “Retroactive Immunity” to Telecoms that helped NSA spy on Americans’ phone calls, faxes and emails? If the government provides the Telecoms “Retroactive Immunity” at least forty lawsuits filed against those companies will be trashed. Not so obvious is what will happen to NSA’s millions of illegally collected emails, faxes and personal phone call information that belong to U.S. Citizens? Will that information be deleted or copied?

Depending on the legal method U.S. Government devises to let the phone companies off the hook for spying on Americans, could set NSA free—to share its “illegally collected wiretap information” with local, state and federal police to initiate ordinary domestic criminal investigations.

Determining what NSA electronic surveillance can be used by police or introduced into court by Government, may be the next battle Americans have to fight. Previously prosecutors were not allowed access to the Justice Department’s intelligence files for domestic criminal prosecutions. In 2003 a court ruling lowered that barrier, allowing prosecutors to review old surveillance. In 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft asked government prosecutors to review thousands of old intelligence files including wiretaps to retrieve information prosecutors could use in “ordinary criminal prosecutions.”

It is problematic Law enforcement agencies will want to use NSA’s old illegal wiretap evidence and other surveillance to go back decades to arrest Americans and/or civilly forfeit citizens’ homes, inheritances and business using a mere "preponderance of evidence" under Title 18 of the United States Code. The Patriot Act specifically mentions the provisions passed in Rep. Henry Hyde’s bill HR 1658 "The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000." HR 1658 contained a "retroactive asset forfeiture provision" that was made retroactive for assets already subject to government forfeiture, "property already tainted by crime" providing that “the property” was part of or later connected to a criminal investigation that was in progress" when HR.1658 passed. In 2000 after HR1658 passed the old statute of limitations that gave government five years to seize property involved in crime died. Police now have five-years to seize property from “whenever they claim” they learned an asset was made subject to civil asset forfeiture. There are now over 200 U.S. laws that can subject property to civil asset forfeiture.

Imagine NSA sharing its illegal-domestic surveillance information with countless police agencies dependent on forfeiting Citizens’ property to pay their department operating costs. Police too easily can take an innocent person’s phone call or hastily written email out of context to allege a crime was committed. Imagine Police using the Patriot Act’s low standard of proof "a preponderance of evidence” to judge NSA illegal domestic wiretap information, perhaps to go back before 2000 to civilly seize a Citizen's home, business or other property. No conviction is required for the U.S. Government to civilly forfeit a Citizen’s home or business. Under the Patriot Act, witnesses can be kept secret while being paid part of the assets they cause to be forfeited.

Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
What was the greatest failure of 2007? President Bush's "surge" in Iraq? The decline in the value of the US dollar? Subprime mortgages? No. The greatest failure of 2007 was the newly sworn in Democratic Congress.
The American people's attempt in November 2006 to rein in a rogue government, which has committed the US to costly military adventures while running roughshod over the US Constitution, failed. Replacing Republicans with Democrats in the House and Senate has made no difference.
The assault on the US Constitution by the Democratic Party is as determined as the assault by the Republicans. On October 23, 2007, the House passed a bill sponsored by California Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman, chairwoman of a Homeland Security subcommittee, that overturns the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression, association, and assembly.
The bill passed the House on a vote of 404-6. In the Senate the bill is sponsored by Maine Republican Susan Collins and apparently faces no meaningful opposition.
Harman's bill is called the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act."When HR 1955 becomes law, it will create a commission tasked with identifying extremist people, groups, and ideas. The commission will hold hearings around the country, taking testimony and compiling a list of dangerous people and beliefs. The bill will, in short, create massive terrorism in the United States. But the perpetrators of terrorism will not be Muslim terrorists; they will be government agents and fellow citizens.
We are beginning to see who will be the inmates of the detention centers being built in the US by Halliburton under government contract.
Who will be on the "extremist beliefs" list? The answer is: civil libertarians, critics of Israel, 9/11 skeptics, critics of the administration's wars and foreign policies, critics of the administration's use of kidnapping, rendition, torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions, and critics of the administration's spying on Americans. Anyone in the way of a powerful interest group--such as environmentalists opposing politically connected developers--is also a candidate for the list.
The "Extremist Beliefs Commission" is the mechanism for identifying Americans who pose "a threat to domestic security" and a threat of "homegrown terrorism" that "cannot be easily prevented through traditional federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts."
This bill is a boon for nasty people. That SOB who stole your girlfriend, that hussy who stole your boyfriend, the gun owner next door--just report them to Homeland Security as holders of extreme beliefs. Homeland Security needs suspects, so they are not going to check. Under the new regime, accusation is evidence. Moreover, "our" elected representatives will never admit that they voted for a bill and created an "Extremist Belief Commission" for which there is neither need nor constitutional basis.
That boss who harasses you for coming late to work--he's a good candidate to be reported; so is that minority employee that you can't fire for any normal reason. So is the husband of that good-looking woman you have been unable to seduce. Every kind of quarrel and jealousy can now be settled with a phone call to Homeland Security.
Soon Halliburton will be building more detention centers.
Americans are so far removed from the roots of their liberty that they just don't get it. Most Americans don't know what habeas corpus is or why it is important to them. But they know what they want, and Jane Harman has given them a new way to settle scores and to advance their own interests.
Even educated liberals believe that the US Constitution is a "living document" that can be changed to mean whatever it needs to mean in order to accommodate some new important cause, such as abortion and legal privileges for minorities and the handicapped. Today it is the "war on terror" that the Constitution must accommodate. Tomorrow it can be the war on whomever or whatever.
Think about it. More than six years ago the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. The US government blamed it on al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission Report has been subjected to criticism by a large number of qualified people--including the commission's chairman and co-chairman.
Since 9/11 there have been no terrorist attacks in the US. The FBI has tried to orchestrate a few, but the "terrorist plots" never got beyond talk organized and led by FBI agents. There are no visible extremist groups other than the neoconservatives that control the government in Washington. But somehow the House of Representatives overwhelmingly sees a need to create a commission to take testimony and search out extremist views (outside of Washington, of course).
This search for extremist views comes after President Bush and the Justice (sic) Department declared that the President can ignore habeas corpus, ignore the Geneva Conventions, seize people without evidence, hold them indefinitely without presenting charges, torture them until they confess to some made up crime, and take over the government by declaring an emergency. Of course, none of these "patriotic" views are extremist.
The search for extremist views follows also the granting of contracts to Halliburton to build detention centers in the US. No member of Congress or the executive branch ever explained the need for the detention centers or who the detainees would be. Of course, there is nothing extremist about building detention centers in the US for undisclosed inmates.
Clearly the detention centers are not meant to just stand there empty. Thanks to 2007's greatest failure--the Democratic Congress--there is to be an "Extremist Beliefs Commission" to secure inmates for Bush's detention centers.
President Bush promises us that the wars he has launched will cause the "untamed fire of freedom" to "reach the darkest corners of our world." Meanwhile in America the fire of freedom has not only been tamed but also is being extinguished.
The light of liberty has gone out in the United States.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.

http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles...on/031008a.txt
Crime-busters turned snoopers
A team of research analysts at Syracuse University has been tracking the FBI's activity in domestic crime investigations. The results are revealing.
For example, in 2007, the FBI made 2,300 referrals of cases to be prosecuted to the U.S. Justice Department. In 1993, the FBI made 20,900 such referrals.
Two decades ago, FBI investigations contributed 36 percent of the total cases prosecuted by the Justice Department. Last year, the FBI referrals were down to 16 percent.
So, if FBI agents aren't investigating crime in the United States, what are they doing? Ferreting out terrorists, apparently, and invading your privacy in the process.
Internal audits indicate the FBI has continued, and even expanded, its pursuit of information on American citizens - made possible by the Patriot Act - although it was ordered by a federal judge last year to cease and desist.
The judge's ruling came after testimony that the FBI had issued more than 140,000 “national security letters” in the period from the beginning of 2003 through 2005. In his ruling, the federal judge called such snooping the “legislative equivalent of breaking and entering.”
So, in the opinion of at least one judge, instead of solving crime and helping to put criminals behind bars, the FBI has instead focused its energies on violating the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.
Those national security letters allow the FBI to comb through phone, Internet and bank records in an effort to thwart terrorism. It seems highly unlikely that there are many terrorists, or U.S. citizens with connections to terrorist groups, among the hundreds of thousands of citizens whose lives have now been pried into by the FBI.
FBI officials admitted last week that the federal judge's order to stop snooping, or at least slow the pace, had basically been ignored. The bureau apparently continues to eavesdrop.
The mental image is inescapable

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.
Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.
A CNET News.com review of legal documents shows that courts have approved of this technique, even though it raises questions about entrapment, the problems of identifying who's using an open wireless connection--and whether anyone who clicks on a FBI link that contains no child pornography should be automatically subject to a dawn raid by federal police.
Roderick Vosburgh, a doctoral student at Temple University who also taught history at La Salle University, was raided at home in February 2007 after he allegedly clicked on the FBI's hyperlink. Federal agents knocked on the door around 7 a.m., falsely claiming they wanted to talk to Vosburgh about his car. Once he opened the door, they threw him to the ground outside his house and handcuffed him.