DK says we did it (now let's keep it up .. )

We did it!

Last week, Congressman Dennis Kucinich delivered a petition bearing more than 100,000 names to the Speaker of the House urging that impeachment proceedings begin into the conduct of President Bush. In a special video message (click here), Dennis is asking for your help to deliver an even more powerful message to Congress when it reconvenes in September.

With new disclosures that the Administration tried to "cook the books at the CIA" by creating a phony, forged link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, "We cannot step back and let this President escape accountability."

If you have already signed the impeachment petition at www.kucinich.us, thank you. If you haven't, please do. And, in the next few weeks, please ask just one more person to sign so we can let the members of Congress hear our collective demand that they meet their obligation to uphold the Constitution.

Video by Chad Ely

Dear ACLU Supporter,

A few days ago, we alerted you to Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s demand that Congress issue a new declaration of war. This would make the entire globe -- including the United States itself -- a “battlefield” where the president gets to decide who is an “enemy combatant” and lock that person up forever.

The Bush/Mukasey plan also includes a congressionally-approved subversion of the Constitution and a cover-up of the Bush administration’s systemic torture and abuse of detainees.

At the same time, an ACLU lawsuit has uncovered new evidence that the torture and abuse Mukasey wants Congress to cover up was authorized by -- you guessed it -- the Justice Department. One of the documents obtained by the ACLU is a redacted version of a previously undisclosed 2002 Justice Department opinion that authorizes the CIA to use specific interrogation methods, including waterboarding.

Now, Mukasey -- as head of the Justice Department -- wants Congress to cover up torture committed under the watch of his predecessor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It’s outrageous!

Don’t let it happen. Read the alert I’ve attached below and take action now at: http://action.aclu.org/coverup


Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
ACLU

		Dear ACLU Supporter, Here they go again. On July 21st, Bush’s Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, called on Congress to take dramatic steps to subvert the Constitution. Mukasey is demanding that Congress issue a new declaration of war that would make the entire globe -- including the United States itself -- a “battlefield” where the president decides who will be locked up forever. Instead of ending the Bush system of injustice, he wants Congress to make it permanent. Tell Congress to reject the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the Constitution. Not only has Bush’s Attorney General called on Congress to issue a new declaration of war, but he is also asking Congress to: 1. Gut habeas corpus -- the freedom that protects people from being thrown in prison illegally -- with no help, no end in sight and no due process. 2. Cover up the Bush administration’s systemic torture and abuse of detainees. Judges would not be allowed to see evidence of torture and abuse and would instead simply have to trust that a president is holding the right people as ”enemy combatants.” With only five weeks left in the congressional schedule and only six months left in the Bush presidency, Mukasey’s power grab should be laughed out of town. But, given this Congress’ track record, the Mukasey proposal is no laughing matter. Tell Congress to reject the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the Constitution. Too many times, we’ve seen Congress cave in to the most outrageous Bush demands for out-of-control powers: The Patriot Act. National Security Letters. The Military Commissions Act. The Protect America Act. And, most recently, the congressional sell-out on FISA. Four times the Supreme Court has rejected the Bush administration’s efforts to design a war on terror system of injustice that defies the Constitution and mocks the rule of law. In the past, the administration has responded, not by respecting the Constitution, but by counting on Congress to legitimize its indefensible conduct. There is no way we can let that happen this time. Even as the House Judiciary Committee investigates whether high-level Bush White House officials may have committed crimes of torture and abuse, the Bush administration has the arrogance to ask Congress to give it the power to detain people without trial and hide torture and abuse from the courts. Tell Congress to reject the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the Constitution. We can’t take for granted that Congress will reject the Bush/Mukasey plan. We have to meet this outrageous proposal with an immediate wall of protest that says to Congress: “Don’t you dare.” I urge you to join defenders of freedom all across the country in raising your voice against Attorney General Mukasey’s dangerous proposal. Thanks for speaking out, Caroline Fredrickson, Director ACLU Washington Legislative Office P.S. You can read a blog post from Christopher Anders, ACLU Seinor Legislative Counsel, on the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the constitution here.

Top Neocon Calls For Destruction Of Constitution

04-16-2008
www.roguegovernment.com
Lee Rogers

n a recent edition of the Austin-American Statesman a book review of Phillip Bobbitt’s new book Terror and Consent goes into how the book calls for the shredding of the Constitution. The article written by James E. McWilliams features an image of the Constitution being torn with a big bold headline that states “Everything must go.” The words “How to Fight Terrorism”, are put in place of where the Constitution is torn. The article is blatant propaganda to make people think that the answer to fight terrorism is to destroy the Constitution. As disgusting as this is, the contents of Bobbitt’s book advocates exactly what the picture depicts. Bobbitt endorses using nongovernmental organizations and multinational corporations to take over the roles and functions of nation states. He also endorses giving the United Nations the authority to wage war without approval from the Security Council and the use of non-lethal chemical weapons to fight terrorism. If he really wanted to end terrorism using non-lethal chemical weapons, he should be endorsing the use of non-lethal chemical weapons on the headquarters of the CIA, British Intelligence and Mossad because that’s where the majority of terrorism comes from. Of course, Bobbitt won't mention that fact.

Let’s look at a blurb from the Austin-American Statesman article that gets into some of the things that Bobbitt endorses in his book.

Bobbitt’s previous book, "The Shield of Achilles," explored the grand themes of warfare and state development, marking his penchant for the magnum opus. At nearly 700 pages (including more than 100 pages of notes), "Terror and Consent" follows suit, taking on a similarly big picture. If "we want to defeat state-shattering terror in the twenty-first century," Bobbitt writes, we will have to "transform the emerging constitutional order of the twenty-first century State."

Specifically, we must stop thinking like a nation state and start thinking like the "market state" that we are inevitably becoming. The nation state — a constitutional order dedicated to protecting and improving the material welfare of its citizens — served the United States well from the mid-19th century to the end of the Cold War. But Bobbitt contends it’s vulnerable to a new battery of threats. The accessibility of weapons of mass destruction, the globalization of international capital and the "universalization of culture" have eroded the conventional borders that once legitimated national security.

What’s needed is a constitutional order that takes its structural cues from multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations, relying "less on law and regulation and more on market incentives" to expand people’s options. Such a market state keeps its finger on the pulse of consumer demand, advocates trade liberalization, is prone to the privatization of public works and "will outsource many functions." In the seminar rooms of political science departments this change is referred to as "neoliberalism" (on the streets, it is known as "globalization") — and Bobbitt, who is a geopolitical realist, believes we have no choice but to embrace it.

Simply put, Bobbitt is endorsing what the elites have long sought after and that’s a New World Order or a global government. Bobbitt advocates the destruction of the Constitution and the transfer of power to multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations. This man is a traitor. In the New World Order that the elites envision, people will only have the illusion of choice via phony democratic rule. Real decisions will be made by multinational corporations and nongovernmental organizations behind the scenes. Unfortunately, what Bobbitt advocates is already happening considering initiatives such as the Security and Prosperity Partnership which seeks to dissolve the national borders between the Canada, United States and Mexico.

Bobbitt also endorses preemptive use of force by the United Nations without a Security Council authorization as well as the use of non-lethal chemical weapons to prevent terrorism. This is confirmed from a blurb in the Austin-American Statesman.

Bobbitt believes that the UN Charter should be amended to allow the preemptive use of force without a Security Council authorization, that the Geneva Conventions should be changed to forbid the indefinite containment of terrorist prisoners without trial and that we must, in cases in which the use of non-lethal chemical weapons could be used to prevent terror, be able to redefine such methods as "counterforce measures."

What is not mentioned in the article is what sort of non-lethal weapons he would advocate using. Considering that the public is having pharmaceutical drugs and fluoride dumped in their water, mercury put in their vaccines, pesticides sprayed over populated areas and all sorts of other horrors one has to ask if Bobbitt would endorse these methods to fight terrorism?

The war on terror is a proven fraud which makes Bobbitt’s book entirely irrelevant. He bases all of his conclusions off of something that is a lie. Bobbitt also refuses to acknowledge mainstream history which shows that anytime power is concentrated in the hands of a few it always turns out badly. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the New World Order is seeking to gain absolute power. If they are successful in achieving this, we will see a tyranny like no other. The New World Order will be a global enslavement system in which advanced technology is used to dominate the people of the world. It is disgusting that Bobbitt prefers a system that concentrates power in the hands of the unelected few over the freedom and inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution. It is insane to say that the Constitution is outdated and a new form of governance is required in the 21st century. Free speech, the right to bear arms, the right not to have your home searched and personal belongings seized without a warrant are concepts that are just as applicable in the 21st century as they were in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Bobbitt is an elitist hack and a traitor for the statements he is making in his book. While he has every right to say these things under the First Amendment, his statements undermines everything that has made this country special. What he doesn’t realize is that the New World Order will dispose of him like they will everyone else when they see that he is of no further use to their insanely corrupt and tyrannical system. Bobbitt is nothing more than another useful idiot for the New World Order enslavement system and he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.

Below is Bobbitt’s contact information if you’d like to express your displeasure at his anti-American and pro-NWO statements.

Phone: (512) 232-1376
Fax: (512) 471-6988
E-mail: PBOBBITT@LAW.UTEXAS.EDU

Think you know the God Squad??

By William Fisher

OK, we liberals are spooked by ‘Jesus Freaks’. We don’t want them passing a Constitutional amendment telling us who we can marry. We don’t want them teaching our kids Creationism. We don’t want them mandating that we just have to have that baby.

In short, we don’t want to have anything to do with these fringy lunatics of the religious right.

Well, no so fast. Hang on a minute.

Would you be surprised to discover that you have a lot more samenesses than differences with Christian evangelicals?

Well, so was I. Until I covered a telephone news conference last week sponsored by an evangelist group called Faith in Public Life.

The purpose of the conference call was to challenge President Bush to use his State of the Union speech to salvage his legacy by “changing course on the most pressing moral issues of our time.”

They must be talking about abortion, stem cell research, school prayer, gay marriage – those so-called ‘values issues’, I thought.

Not so.

Here’s some of what we reporters heard:

First, the participants – some of the best-known names in the evangelical world – called George W. Bush “an explicitly evangelical president” with a “sadly truncated” moral vision.

Then these Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders challenged the president to use his speech to announce major changes in his administration’s policies on war, torture, climate change, and U.S. and international poverty.

They credited Bush for some of his efforts, including his programs to address the HIV-AIDS pandemic in Africa, increasing foreign aid, and his domestic Faith-based Initiative. But it was highly critical of many other Bush Administration policies, particularly the war in Iraq, providing insufficient resources to help millions of Iraqi refugees, seeming indifference to growing poverty in the U.S., the use of torture, and failure to take a leadership position on global climate change.

The group was particularly critical of the president and his team regarding the use of torture as a tool in the war on terrorism. Rev. David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights – did you know there was one? -- said, “In his well-intentioned efforts to protect national security, President Bush and his team over-reached by authorizing and employing torture that certainly qualify and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Noting that “these decisions were made in secret” following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., Gushee said that once abuses such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal were revealed, the courts, the media and public opinion forced Bush into “a kind of tactical retreat.” But, he added, Bush

“still reserves the right to authorize the CIA to employ a

range of secret ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques,

including waterboarding.”

He criticized the president for threatening to veto pending legislation that would make these practices illegal, and urged him to abandon his objections to using the Army Field Manual as the standard for all interrogations, including those carried out by the CIA.

“It is hard to overstate the devastating effect of this policy on the moral standing of the U.S.,” Gushee said. He added that

“euphemizing torture as something else does not make it any less torture.”

He urged the president to tell the American people Monday evening, “On behalf of the U.S., I personally apologize for the use of torture by this nation.”

Fat chance!

The came Sister Anne Curtis of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy, who recently returned from Iraq. She focused on the plight of the estimated four million Iraqis who have either fled to neighboring countries or who have been internally displaced by the war. She told us U.S. efforts to assist these refugees – many of whom have become targets for insurgents because they worked for American authorities – are under-funded and under-resourced.

Talking with refugee families, she said,

“I felt a great sense of shame and deep sorrow as a citizen of the U.S.,”

she told us reporters.

“President Bush needs to understand the reality”

of the refugee situation. He has

“a responsibility, a moral obligation, to end the war in Iraq, aid the refugee applicants, and provide for the necessary funding of refugee assistance,”

she said.

But aren’t these the same folks who have been so tight with Dubya, Cheney, and Karl Rove? Sure didn’t sound that way. One of the speakers, Dr. Ron Sider, opined that

“The evangelical world has been hurt by its identification with President Bush’s immoral choices.”

Sider is president of Evangelicals for Social Action – another outfit most of us have never heard of.

But how about former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to bring it more in line with scripture? Sider said,

“I would not state it that way. This is not a Christian nation. We should not talk about making the Constitution in line with any religious text.”

In fact, the group had some harsh words for the religious right. “It’s just not enough to articulate opposition to abortion, gay marriage and judicial decisions we may not like,” said Rev. Gushee.

“I think we have yet to sort out the legacy of an explicitly evangelical president who sadly has had such a truncated vision of what moral leadership looks like. The limits of that vision have been painfully apparent over the last seven years,”

he declared.

While the group appeared to favor President Bush’s Faith-based Initiative, they criticized him for failing to adequately fund the program. One member noted that Bush mentioned it in his first year and last year, but between these two points has been silent on the subject.

Poverty in the U.S. was also high on the group’s agenda. Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, noted that in 2002 his organization provided 43 per cent of its services to the working poor; by 2006, the number had risen to 52 per cent.

“More than 36 million people living in poverty in the U.S. is simply unacceptable.

It is a moral and social crisis, because as a country we have the knowledge and the resources to significantly reduce this number,” he said. He criticized congress as well as the president for failing to pass legislation to address the long-term health care needs of poor children.

Global Warming was another major concern for the group. Rev. Paul deVries, a board member of the National Evangelical Association (NEA) and an original signer of an “Evangelical Climate Initiative” statement, urged Bush to use his Monday night speech to lay out his commitment to “take care of God’s creation.” He should

“praise the scientists, praise the congress, and lay out a program to set an example for the rest of the world.”

That puts Rev. deVries on a collision course with the likes of right-wingers like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, and Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention.

But he’s been there before. These were the folks who led the NEA’s successful fight against any kind of statement supporting action to address climate change. They said it was not a “consensus” position.

The group also expressed concern about the current economic downturn triggered by the sub-prime mortgage market meltdown. Rev. deVries called attention to “the extraordinary levels of deceit” by banks and mortgage companies, and charged that “no one seems to have the guts to say so and conduct a thorough investigation.”

He added,

“The bank robbers have taken over the banks.”

On achieving a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, Rev. Sider said President Bush could have a “huge impact” on current negotiations. But he added, “This is not going to happen unless he invests himself and his credibility” in the effort.

The moral of this story is:

All evangelicals aren’t loyal Bushies.

They aren’t even all Republicans. And they’re certainly not homogenous. On many, many issues, they’re pretty much like most of those who are reading this column.

Those readers won’t agree with a lot of their beliefs and positions. But there’s a lot more common ground than most of us would have guessed.

See also:

The World According to Bill Fisher
Frequent columns and reports on issues in public diplomacy.

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