The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
~United States Constitution, Amendment IV
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
“Big Brother is Watching You.”
~George Orwell’s 1984
POWER IS NOT A MEANS, IT IS AN END
Maxine Waters Confirms Big Brother Database 2013 Foretells NSA Phone & Internet Spying
Glenn Beck:Govt Storing Citizen Cellphone& Internet Activity
Digital Blackwater: How the NSA Gives Private Contractors Control of the Surveillance State
Glenn Greenwald on How NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Helped Expose a “Massive Surveillance Apparatus”
What You Should Know About The New NSA Utah Data Center
Is Edward Snowden a Hero? A Debate With Journalist Chris Hedges & Law Scholar Geoffrey Stone
Spying On Americans By NSA Prism Collection Details – Rand Paul On Hannity
NSA is Spying on EVERYTHING you do. Phone calls and internet activity is being stored and monitored.
PRISM: Why the NSA is Mining Internet Data
Total Surveillance : N.S.A. data mining all computers, phone calls, internet, emails
CNET Update – Uproar over PRISM government surveillance
NSA Caught Spying on Americans’ Internet Use
Columnist exposes Obama surveillance
Meet Edward Snowden: NSA PRISM Whistleblower
Sky News interview w/ Julian Assange and JP Barlow RE: Prism and Edward Snowden
Complete News – Snowden leaks show NSA ‘routinely lies’ to Congress
Judge Napolitano On NSA Spying: Most Extraordinarily Broad Search Warrant Ever Issued In US History
Rand Paul Discusses The NSA’s Violation Of The Bill Of Rights On Yahoo News (6-6-13)
Rand Paul On NSA Spying: ‘I’m Going To Challenge This At The Supreme Court’ -
Ron Paul: NSA Seizing Phone Records Symptom of Failure of The State
NSA Constitutional Violations? – Judge Andrew Napolitano – Geraldo
Clever Denials Surrounding the NSA PRISM Piracy Scandal
Peter Eckersley from the Electronic Frontier Foundation stopped by to explain why Silicon Vally’s top tech companies are dancing around PRISM allegations. Interview recorded Friday June 7, 2013
NSA Surveillance – Does Obama Have ANY Credibility Left?
“In his remarks today defending the NSA programs gathering telephone records and mining Internet companies, Obama sounded a familiar refrain, saying he welcomes the “debate” over the proper balance between civil liberties and national security.”*
Obama gave a speech in defense of recently uncovered secret programs to wiretap and data-mine U.S. citizens almost indiscriminately, and Congress agrees. Do you believe his remarks that we NEED these programs? Would Obama agree with himself campaigning about his stance on civil rights? Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz, and John Iadarola discuss.
How PRISM Easily Gives Your Private Data Over to Big Brother
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.”*
We’ve been assured by the president that the NSA’s PRISM program won’t affect “ordinary” U.S. citizens, but what is the criteria for deciding who gets their data mined and monitored? Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz, and John Iadarola (Host, TYT University) discuss the egregious reach of the Obama administration’s secret mass surveillance program.
The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed “Perfect Citizen” to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government’s chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn’t persistently monitor the whole system, these people said.
Defense contractor Raytheon Corp. recently won a classified contract for the initial phase of the surveillance effort valued at up to $100 million, said a person familiar with the project.
An NSA spokeswoman said the agency had no information to provide on the program. A Raytheon spokesman declined to comment.
Some industry and government officials familiar with the program see Perfect Citizen as an intrusion by the NSA into domestic affairs, while others say it is an important program to combat an emerging security threat that only the NSA is equipped to provide.
“The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government…feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security,” said one internal Raytheon email, the text of which was seen by The Wall Street Journal. “Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”
Glenn Becks “SURVEILLANCE STATE” (Must Viewing)
NSA spying on All Americans Part 1
NSA spying on All Americans Part 2
How to Protect Yourself from The NSA
NSA Whistleblower Seeks Asylum in Iceland
Former CIA Officer: Officials Considering NSA Whistleblower’s Case Potential Chinese Espionage
Judge Jeanine Slams IRS, NSA and Obama for Expanding Surveillance Program – Opening Statement
James Bamford: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center 1 of 2
James Bamford: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center 2 of 2
NSA Whistleblower: Everyone in US under virtual surveillance, all info stored, no matter the post
“The NSA Is Lying”: U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails Says NSA Whistleblower
NSA whistleblower William Binney Keynote at HOPE Number Nine
U.S. v. Whistleblower Tom Drake
Tom Drake, a former NSA senior executive indicted last year for espionage after leaking to the media allegations that the nation’s largest intelligence organization had committed fraud, waste and abuse will appear in his first television interview. Scott Pelley reports.
Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny
NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Prevails in Unprecedented Obama Admin Crackdown
NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake speaks at National Press Club – March 15, 2013
Part 2: Former NSA Employee Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack on Whistleblower Crackdown
The Police – Every Breath You Take
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. …”
Domestic Spying, Mainstream Source – NSA, Internet Spying, AT&T
Domestic Spying, Mainstream Source – NSA Copying Entire Internet
Glenn Becks “SURVEILLANCE STATE”
Barack Obama’s Surveillance Society
GLENN BECK ‘They Are Liars’
Glenn Greenwald: Challenging the US Surveillance State
2012.05.01 – GBTV – The Glenn Beck Radio Program – NSA Warning
Project Vigilant: Shadowy Spy Group Building Dossiers On Internet Users For Feds – Alex Jones Tv 3/3
Total Information Awareness – Social Networking Sites (mirror)
The Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to national security, by achieving Total Information Awareness (TIA). This would be achieved by creating enormous computer databases to gather and store the personal information of everyone in the United States, including personal e-mails, social networks, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, and numerous other sources including, without any requirement for a search warrant.[1] This information would then be analyzed to look for suspicious activities, connections between individuals, and “threats”.[2] Additionally, the program included funding for biometric surveillance technologies that could identify and track individuals using surveillance cameras, and other methods.[2]
Following public criticism that the development and deployment of these technologies could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by Congress in 2003. However, several IAO projects continued to be funded, and merely run under different names.
ThinThread
ThinThread is the name of a project that the United StatesNational Security Agency (NSA) pursued during the 1990s, according to a May 17, 2006 article in The Baltimore Sun.[1] The program involved wiretapping and sophisticated analysis of the resulting data, but according to the article, the program was discontinued after the September 11, 2001 attacks due to the changes in priorities and the consolidation of U.S. intelligence authority. The “change in priority” consisted of the decision made by the director of NSA General Michael V. Hayden to go with a concept called Trailblazer, despite the fact that ThinThread was a working prototype that protected the privacy of U.S. citizens.
Redacted version of the DoD Inspector General audit, obtained through FOIA[4][5]
A group of former NSA workers — Kirk Wiebe, William Binney, Ed Loomis, and Thomas A. Drake, along with House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark (an expert on the NSA budget[6]) — believed the operational prototype system called ThinThread was a better solution than Trailblazer, which was just a concept on paper at the time. They complained to the DoD Inspector General office in 2002 about mismanagement and the waste of taxpayer money at the NSA surrounding the Trailblazer program. In 2007 the FBI raided the homes of these people, an evolution of President Bush’s crackdown on whistleblowers and “leaks” after the New York Times disclosed a separate program (see NSA warrantless surveillance controversy). In 2010, one of the people who had helped the IG in the ensuing investigation, NSA official Thomas Andrews Drake, was charged with espionage,[6][7] part of the Obama administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers and “leaks”.[7][8][9] The original charges against him were later dropped and he pled to a misdemeanor.
The result of the DoD IG complaint was a 2004 audit report that was released under FOIA in 2011.[5] Although highly redacted, the report contained significant criticisms of Trailblazer, and included some relatively minor criticisms of ThinThread, for example, citing a low “quality of service and support” from the ThinThread program team, a lack of documentation, a lack of a configuration management system, and a lack of a trouble ticket system. However, “The findings that led to the recommendations would not have prevented the successful deployment of THINTHREAD … the recommendations were made to improve the operational efficiency of THINTHREAD after it was deployed …”[10]
Technical details
The program would have used a technique of encrypting sensitive privacy information in order to comply with legal concerns, and would have automatically identified potential threats. The sources of the data for this program would have included “massive phone and e-mail data,” but the extent of this information is not clear. Only once a threat was discovered, would the data be decrypted for analysis by agents.[11]
ThinThread would have bundled together four cutting-edge surveillance tools.:[citation needed]
Used more sophisticated methods of sorting through massive phone and e-mail data to identify suspect communications.
Identified U.S. phone numbers and other communications data and encrypted them to ensure caller privacy.
Employed an automated auditing system to monitor how analysts handled the information, in order to prevent misuse and improve efficiency.
Analyzed the data to identify relationships between callers and chronicle their contacts. Only when evidence of a potential threat had been developed would analysts be able to request decryption of the records.
Intelligence experts describe as rigorous testing of ThinThread in 1998, the project succeeded at each task with high marks. For example, its ability to sort through massive amounts of data to find threat-related communications far surpassed the existing system. It also was able to rapidly separate and encrypt U.S.-related communications to ensure privacy.[1]
The Pentagon report concluded that ThinThread’s ability to sort through data in 2001 was far superior to that of another NSA system in place in 2004, and that the program should be launched and enhanced. ThinThread was designed to address two key challenges: One, the NSA had more information than it could digest, and, two, increasingly its targets were in contact with people in the United States whose calls the agency was prohibited from monitoring.[citation needed]
Trailblazer Project had more political support internally because it was initiated by Michael Hayden when he first arrived at the NSA.[citation needed]
NSA’s existing system for data-sorting has produced a database clogged with corrupted and useless information. The mass collection of relatively unsorted data, combined with system flaws erroneously flag people as suspect, has produced numerous false leads, draining analyst resources. NSA leads have resulted in numerous dead ends.[citation needed]
NSA dropped the component that monitored for abuse of records. It not only tracked the use of the database, but hunted for the most effective analysis techniques, and some analysts thought it would be used to judge their performance. Within the NSA, the primary advocate for the ThinThread program was Richard Taylor. Taylor has retired from the NSA. The strength of ThinThread’s approach is that by encrypting information on Americans, it is legal regardless of whether the country is at war.[citation needed]
ThinThread “was designed very carefully from a legal point of view, so that even in non-wartime, you could have done it legitimately.”[12]
End of the project
The project was ended after successful testing by General Michael Hayden, and while the privacy elements were not retained, the analysis technology is reported to be the underlying basis of current NSA analysis techniques.
“They basically just disabled the [privacy] safeguards.”[11] [That quote does not appear in the link]
Some anonymous NSA officials told Hosenball of Newsweek that the ThinThread program, like Trailblazer, was a “wasteful failure”.[6]
Drake was interviewed on The Daily Show on August 6, 2012 about his charges and the program with his lawyer.
Trailblazer was a United States National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks like the Internet. It was intended to track entities using communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.[1][2] It ran over budget, failed to accomplish critical goals, and was cancelled.
NSA whistleblowers J. Kirk Wiebe, William Binney, Ed Loomis, and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staffer Diane Roark complained to the Department of Defense’s Inspector General (IG) about waste, fraud, and abuse in the program, and the fact that a successful operating prototype existed, but was ignored when the Trailblazer program was launched. The complaint was accepted by the IG and an investigation began that lasted until mid-2005 when the final results were issued. The results were largely hidden, as the report given to the public was heavily (90%) redacted, while the original report was heavily classified, thus restricting the ability of most people to see it.
The people who filed the IG complaint were later raided by armed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. While the Government threatened to prosecute all who signed the IG report, it ultimately chose to pursue an NSA Senior Executive — Thomas Andrews Drake — who helped with the report internally to NSA and who had spoken with a reporter about the project. Drake was later charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. His defenders claimed this was retaliation.[3][4] The charges against him were later dropped, and he agreed to plead guilty to having committed a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something that Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project (which helped represent him) called an “act of civil disobedience“.[5]
In 2002 a consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was chosen by the NSA to produce a technology demonstration platform in a contract worth $280 million. Project participants included Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Booz Allen Hamilton. The project was overseen by NSA Deputy Director William B. Black, Jr., an NSA worker who had gone to SAIC, and then been re-hired back to NSA by NSA director Michael Hayden in 2000.[6][7][8] SAIC had also hired a former NSA director to its management; Bobby Inman.[9] SAIC also participated in the concept definition phase of Trailblazer.[10][11]
The NSA Inspector General issued a report on Trailblazer that “discussed improperly based contract cost increases, non-conformance in the management of the Statement of Work, and excessive labor rates for contractor personnel.” [13]
In 2004 the DoD IG report criticized the program (see the Whistleblowing section below). It said that the “NSA ‘disregarded solutions to urgent national security needs’” and “that TRAILBLAZER was poorly executed and overly expensive …” Several contractors for the project were worried about cooperating with DoD’s audit for fear of “management reprisal.”[5] The Director of NSA “nonconcurred” with several statements in the IG audit, and the report contains a discussion of those disagreements.[14]
In 2005, NSA director Michael Hayden told a Senate hearing that the Trailblazer program was several hundred million dollars over budget and years behind schedule.[15] In 2006 the program was shut down,[3] after having cost billions of US Dollars.[16] Several anonymous NSA sources told Hosenball of Newsweek later on that the project was a “wasteful failure”.[17]
The new project replacing Trailblazer is called Turbulence.[3]
Whistleblowing
According to a 2011 New Yorker article, in the early days of the project several NSA employees met with Diane S Roark, an NSA budget expert on the House Intelligence Committee. They aired their grievances about Trailblazer. In response, NSA director Michael Hayden sent out a memo saying that “individuals, in a session with our congressional overseers, took a position in direct opposition to one that we had corporately decided to follow … Actions contrary to our decisions will have a serious adverse effect on our efforts to transform N.S.A., and I cannot tolerate them.”[3]
In September 2002, several people filed a complaint with the Department of Defense IG’s office regarding problems with Trailblazer: they included Roark (aforementioned), ex-NSA senior analysts Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Senior Computer Systems Analyst Ed Loomis, who had quit the agency over concerns about its mismanagement of acquisition and allegedly illegal domestic spying.[3][18][19] A major source for the report was NSA senior officer Thomas Andrews Drake. Drake had been complaining to his superiors for some time about problems at the agency, and about the superiority of ThinThread over Trailblazer, for example, at protecting privacy.[19] Drake gave info to DoD during its investigation of the matter.[19] Roark also went to her boss at the House committee, Porter Goss, about problems, but was rebuffed.[20] She also attempted to contact William Renquist, the Supreme Court Chief Justice at the time.[19]
Drake’s own boss, Maureen Baginski, the third-highest officer at NSA, quit partly over concerns about the legality of its behavior.[3]
In 2003, the NSA IG (not the DoD IG)[19] had declared Trailblazer an expensive failure.[21] It had cost more than $1 billion.[8][22][23]
In 2005, the DoD IG produced a report on the result of its investigation of the complaint of Roark and the others in 2002. This report was not released to the public, but it has been described as very negative.[18] Mayer writes that it hastened the closure of Trailblazer, which was at the time in trouble from congress for being over budget.[3]
In November 2005, Drake contacted Siobhan Gorman, a reporter of The Baltimore Sun.[24][17][25] Gorman wrote several articles about problems at the NSA, including articles on Trailblazer. This series got her an award from the Society of Professional Journalists.[17]
In 2005, President George W. Bush ordered the FBI to find whoever had disclosed information about the NSA electronic surveillance program and its disclosure in the New York Times. Eventually, this investigation led to the people who had filed the 2002 DoD IG request, even though they had nothing to do with the New York Times disclosure. In 2007, the houses of Roark, Binney, and Wiebe were raided by armed FBI agents. According to Mayer, Binney claims the FBI pointed guns at his head and that of his wife. Wiebe said it reminded him of the Soviet Union.[3][18] None of these people were ever charged with any crime. Four months later, Drake was raided in November 2007 and his computers and documents were confiscated.
In 2010 Drake was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of obstructing justice, providing false information, and violating the Espionage Act of 1917,[17][26][27] part of President Barack Obama‘s crackdown on whistleblowers and “leakers”.[24][17][28][18] The government tried to get Roark to testify to a conspiracy, and made similar requests to Drake, offering him a plea bargain. They both refused.[3]
In June 2011, the ten original charges against Drake were dropped, instead he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.[5]
ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement[1] (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, referred to by a number of abbreviations, including AUSCANNZUKUS[1] and Five Eyes).[2][3] It has also been described as the only software system which controls the download and dissemination of the intercept of commercial satellite trunk communications.[4]
ECHELON, according to information in the European Parliament document, “On the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system)” was created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s.[5]
The system has been reported in a number of public sources.[6] Its capabilities and political implications were investigated by a committee of the European Parliament during 2000 and 2001 with a report published in 2001,[5] and by author James Bamford in his books on the National Security Agency of the United States.[4] The European Parliament stated in its report that the term ECHELON is used in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented indicates that it was the name for a signals intelligence collection system. The report concludes that, on the basis of information presented, ECHELON was capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally through the interception of communication bearers including satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once carried most Internet traffic) and microwave links.[5]
Bamford describes the system as the software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg.
The UKUSA intelligence community was assessed by the European Parliament (EP) in 2000 to include the signals intelligence agencies of each of the member states:
The EP report concluded that it seemed likely that ECHELON is a method of sorting captured signal traffic, rather than a comprehensive analysis tool.[5]
Capabilities
The ability to intercept communications depends on the medium used, be it radio, satellite, microwave, cellular or fiber-optic.[5] During World War II and through the 1950s, high frequency (“short wave”) radio was widely used for military and diplomatic communication,[7] and could be intercepted at great distances.[5] The rise of geostationary communications satellites in the 1960s presented new possibilities for intercepting international communications. The report to the European Parliament of 2001 states: “If UKUSA states operate listening stations in the relevant regions of the earth, in principle they can intercept all telephone, fax and data traffic transmitted via such satellites.”[5]
The role of satellites in point-to-point voice and data communications has largely been supplanted by fiber optics; in 2006, 99% of the world’s long-distance voice and data traffic was carried over optical-fiber.[8] The proportion of international communications accounted for by satellite links is said to have decreased substantially over the past few years[when?] in Central Europe to an amount between 0.4% and 5%.[5] Even in less-developed parts of the world, communications satellites are used largely for point-to-multipoint applications, such as video.[9] Thus, the majority of communications can no longer be intercepted by earth stations; they can only be collected by tapping cables and intercepting line-of-sight microwave signals, which is possible only to a limited extent.[5]
One method of interception is to place equipment at locations where fiber optic communications are switched. For the Internet, much of the switching occurs at relatively few sites. There have been reports of one such intercept site, Room 641A, in the United States. In the past[when?] much Internet traffic was routed through the U.S. and the UK, but this has changed; for example, in 2000, 95% of intra-German Internet communications was routed via the DE-CIXInternet exchange point in Frankfurt.[5] A comprehensive worldwide surveillance network is possible only if clandestine intercept sites are installed in the territory of friendly nations, and/or if local authorities cooperate. The report to the European Parliament points out that interception of private communications by foreign intelligence services is not necessarily limited to the U.S. or British foreign intelligence services.[5]
Most reports on ECHELON focus on satellite interception; testimony before the European Parliament indicated that separate but similar UK-US systems are in place to monitor communication through undersea cables, microwave transmissions and other lines.[10]
Controversy
Intelligence monitoring of citizens, and their communications, in the area covered by the AUSCANNZUKUS security agreement has caused concern. British journalist Duncan Campbell and New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager asserted in the 1990s that the United States was exploiting ECHELON traffic for industrial espionage, rather than military and diplomatic purposes.[10] Examples alleged by the journalists include the gear-less wind turbine technology designed by the German firm Enercon[5][11] and the speech technology developed by the Belgian firm Lernout & Hauspie.[12] An article in the US newspaper Baltimore Sun reported in 1995 that European aerospace company Airbus lost a $6 billion contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994 after the US National Security Agency reported that Airbus officials had been bribing Saudi officials to secure the contract.[13][14]
In 2001, the Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System recommended to the European Parliament that citizens of member states routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy, because economic espionage with ECHELON has been conducted by the US intelligence agencies.[5]
Bamford provides an alternative view, highlighting that legislation prohibits the use of intercepted communications for commercial purposes, although he does not elaborate on how intercepted communications are used as part of an all-source intelligence process.
Hardware
According to its website, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is “a high technology organization … on the frontiers of communications and data processing”. In 1999 the Australian Senate Joint Standing Committee on Treaties was told by Professor Desmond Ball that the Pine Gap facility was used as a ground station for a satellite-based interception network. The satellites were said to be large radio dishes between 20 and 100 meters in diameter in geostationary orbits.[citation needed] The original purpose of the network was to monitor the telemetry from 1970s Soviet weapons, air defence radar, communications satellites and ground based microwave communications.[15]
Name
The European Parliament’s Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System stated: “It seems likely, in view of the evidence and the consistent pattern of statements from a very wide range of individuals and organisations, including American sources, that its name is in fact ECHELON, although this is a relatively minor detail.”[5] The U.S. intelligence community uses many code names (see, for example, CIA cryptonym).
Former NSA employee Margaret Newsham claims that she worked on the configuration and installation of software that makes up the ECHELON system while employed at Lockheed Martin, for whom she worked from 1974 to 1984 in Sunnyvale, California, US, and in Menwith Hill, England, UK.[16] At that time, according to Newsham, the code name ECHELON was NSA’s term for the computer network itself. Lockheed called it P415. The software programs were called SILKWORTH and SIRE. A satellite named VORTEX intercepted communications. An image available on the internet of a fragment apparently torn from a job description shows Echelon listed along with several other code names.[17]
Ground stations
The 2001 European Parliamentary (EP) report[5] lists several ground stations as possibly belonging to, or participating in, the ECHELON network. These include:
Likely satellite intercept stations
The following stations are listed in the EP report (p. 54 ff) as likely to have, or to have had, a role in intercepting transmissions from telecommunications satellites:
Baby Taken From Parents Parents Says They Were Seeking 2nd Opinion – Megyn Kelly
CPS breakes into Nikolayev’s home – full version HD
CPS Takes Baby Away After Mom seeks 2nd opinion for her baby at a different hospital. The doctor in the first hospital wanted urgently to do questionable surgery and treatment on the baby.
Anna and Alex Nikolayev, a married couple, just had their child cruelly ripped from them all because of the fact that they were trying to find the best possible health treatments for their child.
If you had similar CPS situation like the Nikolayev’s with Sammy, or you’re just a supporter, you need to write to your legislative representative through the link below. Committee on Legislative Audit in California State Assembly will be voting on the CPS audit on June 5th. Let your voices heard. They need your stories, as many as possible. Write them, e-mail them: http://legaudit.assembly.ca.gov/membe…
2013-04-30, Tues Glenn Beck Show, The Blaze TV
Update on Sacramento CPS Malpractice Case
Russian Parents Fight CPS For Their Child
California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly speaks on CPS and Baby Sammy
Assemblyman Tim Donnelly on Fox News – Baby Sammy and Auditing CPS
California Cops Take Baby From Parents Because They Wanted A 2nd Medical Opinion
CPS Takes Baby After Mom Asks For 2nd Opinion From Doctor part.1
CPS Takes Baby Away 5- end of court interview
CPS Takes Baby Away 2 – joy video, out of court
I’m Going to Grab Your Baby, and Don’t Resist:Cops Barge Into Cali.Parents Home,
Take Their Baby After They Seek 2nd Medical Opinion
A California couple had their five-month-old baby “snatched” by police after they took the infant to get a second opinion on a medical procedure, they claim.
Anna and Alex Nikolayev are described as loving parents who took their baby, who has a heart murmur, to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento when he started exhibiting flu-like symptoms. The family has undergone plenty of doctor visits in the last five months for the their son’s heart, and were unsettled by the treatment he was receiving.
At one point, Anna says, a nurse came in and started giving the baby, named Sammy, medicine. When she asked what it was the nurse allegedly replied, “I don’t know.”
“I’m like, you’re working as a nurse, and you don’t even know what to give to my baby…?” Anna said in an interview with ABC’s local affiliate, News10/KXTV.
They later found out that medicine was antibiotics, which Anna claims the doctor told her Sammy shouldn’t have received.
After doctors started discussing heart surgery, the Nikolayevs decided they wanted a second opinion. They weren’t categorically opposed to the procedure, but they wanted a different doctor.
“If we got the one mistake after another, I don’t want to have my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel safe,” Anna explained.
A number of news agencies have reached out to police, the hospital, and child protective services, but none has spoken out on the issue. News10, which has worked on the story at length, says police and the hospital both referred questions to Child Protective Services, which said it can’t comment on specific cases because of privacy laws. Anna says she was told by a CPS worker that her baby was taken because of “severe neglect.The couple can’t believe the rationale, saying: “We did everything…We went from one hospital to another. We just wanted to be safe, that he is in good hands.”
“It seems like parents have no rights whatsoever,” Alex said. Originally from Russia, he said the situation reminds him of a “communist regime.”
The couple’s attorney, Joe Weinberger, remarked: “It’s absolutely amazing to me how a government can reach out and snatch a child after a doctor said there’s not an issue…As we’ve seen, there is no emergency situation in this case…I can’t imagine having my baby ripped from my arms.”
He acknowledges that the couple erred in taking their baby from Sutter Memorial without a proper discharge, but it has now been roughly two weeks since the situation began. Anna says she was able to visit her baby for an hour last Thursday.
A court date has been scheduled for today, Monday April 29. TheBlaze will keep you posted as the story develops.
Baby Sammy taken by CPS: transfer to Stanford
A California couple had their five-month-old baby “snatched” by police after they took the infant to get a second opinion on a medical procedure, they claim.
Anna and Alex Nikolayev are described as loving parents who took their baby, who has a heart murmur, to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento when he started exhibiting flu-like symptoms. The family has undergone plenty of doctor visits in the last five months for the their son’s heart, and were unsettled by the treatment he was receiving.
At one point, Anna says, a nurse came in and started giving the baby, named Sammy, medicine. When she asked what it was the nurse allegedly replied, “I don’t know.”
“I’m like, you’re working as a nurse, and you don’t even know what to give to my baby…?” Anna said in an interview with ABC’s local affiliate, News10/KXTV.
They later found out that medicine was antibiotics, which Anna claims the doctor told her Sammy shouldn’t have received.
After doctors started discussing heart surgery, the Nikolayevs decided they wanted a second opinion. They weren’t categorically opposed to the procedure, but they wanted a different doctor.
“If we got the one mistake after another, I don’t want to have my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel safe,” Anna explained.
The doctors at Sutter Memorial allegedly argued against consulting other health experts, pressuring her to stay put. Anna remained firm. She took her baby from the hospital without a proper discharge, and went straight to Kaiser Permanente Hospital.
Doctors there said the baby was safe to go home with his parents, one writing in the paperwork: “I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents.”
But while they were at the hospital, police showed up.
“They told us that Sutter was telling them so much bad stuff that they thought that this baby is dying on our arms,” Anna recalled. But when police saw the doctor’s evaluation, Anna says they said, “Okay guys, you have a good day,” and left.
But the family wasn’t at peace for long.
The next day police showed up at the Nikolayev’s home with representatives from Child Protective Services (CPS). Alex went outside to meet them, where he says he was “pushed against the building.” When he asked if he was being placed under arrest, he said they “smacked me down onto the ground [and] yelled out, ‘I think I got the keys to the house.’”
Seeing the scene outside, Anna set up a camera in front of her door.
Video shows police letting themselves in without a warrant, and taking the baby.
“I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me okay?” one officer can be heard telling the mother in the video.
Anna described it with tears in her eyes: “He’s like, ‘okay let your son go,’ so I had to let him go, and he grabbed my arm, so I couldn’t take Sammy. And they took Sammy, and they just walked away.”
The doctors at Sutter Memorial allegedly argued against consulting other health experts, pressuring her to stay put. Anna remained firm. She took her baby from the hospital without a proper discharge, and went straight to Kaiser Permanente Hospital.
Doctors there said the baby was safe to go home with his parents, one writing in the paperwork: “I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents.”
But while they were at the hospital, police showed up.
“They told us that Sutter was telling them so much bad stuff that they thought that this baby is dying on our arms,” Anna recalled. But when police saw the doctor’s evaluation, Anna says they said, “Okay guys, you have a good day,” and left.
But the family wasn’t at peace for long.
The next day police showed up at the Nikolayev’s home with representatives from Child Protective Services (CPS). Alex went outside to meet them, where he says he was “pushed against the building.” When he asked if he was being placed under arrest, he said they “smacked me down onto the ground [and] yelled out, ‘I think I got the keys to the house.’”
Seeing the scene outside, Anna set up a camera in front of her door.
Video shows police letting themselves in without a warrant, and taking the baby.
“I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me okay?” one officer can be heard telling the mother in the video.
Anna described it with tears in her eyes: “He’s like, ‘okay let your son go,’ so I had to let him go, and he grabbed my arm, so I couldn’t take Sammy. And they took Sammy, and they just walked away.”
MSNBC Host Melissa Harris-Perry » All Your Kids Belong To Us
MSNBC Lib Host Has Hysterical On-Air Meltdown
MSNBC Has Declared War on America! – The Five Team Goes Nuclear Over Harris-Perry’s Promo
Melissa Harris-Perry Responds to Criticism: What About My Ad Would ‘Distress People So Much?’
Sister Citizen: Shame Stereotypes and Black Women in America
Melissa Harris-Perry: Your Children Are Not Yours
Melissa Harris-Perry
Melissa Victoria Harris-Perry (born October 2, 1973; formerly known as Melissa Victoria Harris-Lacewell)[1] is an American author, political scientist, television host and liberal political commentator with a focus on African-American politics. Harris-Perry hosts the Melissa Harris-Perry weekend news and opinion television show on MSNBC.
She is a professor of political science at Tulane University. Prior to that, she was an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University from 2006 to 2010 and taught political science at the University of Chicago from 1999 to 2005.[2][3][4]
Life and career
Melissa Victoria Harris was born in Seattle and grew up in the Virginia cities of Charlottesville and Chester, where she attended Thomas Dale High School. She is the youngest of five children. Her black father, William M. Harris Sr., was dean of Afro-American affairs at the University of Virginia, and her white mother, Diana Gray, taught at a community college and worked for nonprofits that helped poor communities.[3][4] Her mother was raised in a Mormon working-class family in a racially homogeneous neighborhood and went to college at Brigham Young University. After a failed first marriage, her mother left the LDS Church and was a single mother before she met Melissa’s father.[5] “I’ve never thought of myself as biracial,” Harris-Perry says. “I’m black.”[6] Harris-Perry’s family later became Unitarian Universalists.[7]
She received a bachelor of arts in English from Wake Forest University in 1994 and a Ph.D. in political science from Duke University in 1999. She also received an honorary doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School.[2][3] Motivated to better understand the role of the black church in political movements, she was a Master of Divinity student at Union Theological Seminary of New York City.[8] Harris-Perry considers her Wake Forest mentor, Maya Angelou, to be her most important inspiration for becoming a professor. “As her student I watched as she influenced public discourse, taught students, and shared ideas in a way that seemed to truly matter for people’s lives.”[9]
Harris-Perry is the author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought[10] on the methods African Americans use to develop political ideas through ordinary conversations in places like barbershops, churches, and popular culture. The work won the 2005 W.E.B. DuBois Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and the 2005 Best Book Award from the Race and Ethnic Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Her interests include the study of African-American political thought, black religious ideas and practice, and social and clinical psychology. Harris-Perry is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. In 2009, she was the key note speaker for the Unitarian Universalist Association on “Faith and Reason: Race, Justice, and American Political Life”.[11]
Harris-Perry was Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University from 2006 to 2010, leaving after being denied a full professorship.[12] Currently she is Professor of Political Science at Tulane University.[13]
She was married to Dennis Lacewell from 1999 to 2005, with whom she has a daughter.[13] She currently lives in New Orleans and is married to James Perry,[2] who was a 2010 candidate for mayor in New Orleans.[4] In 2012, two days after the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Harris-Perry tweeted that the abandoned home in the 7th ward that she and her husband had bought and were restoring was destroyed during Hurricane Isaac.[14]
MSNBC announced on January 5, 2012 that Harris-Perry would host her own weekend show, which began airing on February 18, 2012 at 10 a.m. EST. The show follows Up with Steve Kornacki and leads into Weekends with Alex Witt.[15] According to The New York Times, Perry’s schedule of commuting from New Orleans to New York City for each broadcast will be similar to, but less frequent than, fellow MSNBC personality Lawrence O’Donnell’s weekly commute from Los Angeles to New York City for daily broadcasts of The Last Word.[16]
Memorable quotes
In a 2013 MSNBC promo, Harris-Perry is quoted as saying:
“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children: Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.”[17]
In a discussion regarding the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Harris-Perry is quoted as saying:
“I also appreciate that the hunger strikers are not trying to die. They’re trying to generate autonomy in the context of something that strips their humanity — something we certainly know about from the experience of American slavery, and that the language of ‘before I be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free’ — just that idea of creating human freedom within the context of horrible human conditions.”[18]
Bibliography
Harris-Lacewell, Melissa Victoria (2004). Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (First ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-11405-7.
Harris-Perry, Melissa V. (2011). Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-16541-8.
Read the 10 Planks of The Communist Manifesto to discover the truth and learn how to know your enemy…Karl Marx describes in his communist manifesto, the ten steps necessary to destroy a free enterprise system and replace it with a system of omnipotent government power, so as to effect a communist socialist state. Those ten steps are known as the Ten Planks of The Communist Manifesto… The following brief presents the original ten planks within the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx in 1848, along with the American adopted counterpart for each of the planks. From comparison it’s clear MOST Americans have by myths, fraud and deception under the color of law by their own politicians in both the Republican and Democratic and parties, been transformed into Communists.Another thing to remember, Karl Marx in creating the Communist Manifesto designed these planks AS A TEST to determine whether a society has become communist or not. If they are all in effect and in force, then the people ARE practicing communists.Communism, by any other name is still communism, and is VERY VERY destructive to the individual and to the society!!The 10 PLANKS stated in the Communist Manifesto and some of their American counterparts are…1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes. Americans do these with actions such as the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868), and various zoning, school & property taxes. Also the Bureau of Land Management (Zoning laws are the first step to government property ownership)
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Americans know this as misapplication of the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, 1913, The Social Security Act of 1936.; Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933; and various State “income” taxes. We call it “paying your fair share”.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. Americans call it Federal & State estate Tax (1916); or reformed Probate Laws, and limited inheritance via arbitrary inheritance tax statutes.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. Americans call it government seizures, tax liens, Public “law” 99-570 (1986); Executive order 11490, sections 1205, 2002 which gives private land to the Department of Urban Development; the imprisonment of “terrorists” and those who speak out or write against the “government” (1997 Crime/Terrorist Bill); or the IRS confiscation of property without due process. Asset forfeiture laws are used by DEA, IRS, ATF etc…).
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. Americans call it the Federal Reserve which is a privately-owned credit/debt system allowed by the Federal Reserve act of 1913. All local banks are members of the Fed system, and are regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) another privately-owned corporation. The Federal Reserve Banks issue Fiat Paper Money and practice economically destructive fractional reserve banking.
6. Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State. Americans call it the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Transportation (DOT) mandated through the ICC act of 1887, the Commissions Act of 1934, The Interstate Commerce Commission established in 1938, The Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Executive orders 11490, 10999, as well as State mandated driver’s licenses and Department of Transportation regulations.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. Americans call it corporate capacity, The Desert Entry Act and The Department of Agriculture… Thus read “controlled or subsidized” rather than “owned”… This is easily seen in these as well as the Department of Commerce and Labor, Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, and the IRS control of business through corporate regulations.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.Americans call it Minimum Wage and slave labor like dealing with our Most Favored Nation trade partner; i.e. Communist China. We see it in practice via the Social Security Administration and The Department of Labor. The National debt and inflation caused by the communal bank has caused the need for a two “income” family. Woman in the workplace since the 1920′s, the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, assorted Socialist Unions, affirmative action, the Federal Public Works Program and of course Executive order 11000.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country. Americans call it the Planning Reorganization act of 1949 , zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public “law” 89-136. These provide for forced relocations and forced sterilization programs, like in China.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production. Americans are being taxed to support what we call ‘public’ schools, but are actually “government force-tax-funded schools ” Even private schools are government regulated. The purpose is to train the young to work for the communal debt system. We also call it the Department of Education, the NEA and Outcome Based “Education” . These are used so that all children can be indoctrinated and inculcated with the government propaganda, like “majority rules”, and “pay your fair share”. WHERE are the words “fair share” in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26)?? NO WHERE is “fair share” even suggested !! The philosophical concept of “fair share” comes from the Communist maxim, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need! This concept is pure socialism. … America was made the greatest society by its private initiative WORK ETHIC … Teaching ourselves and others how to “fish” to be self sufficient and produce plenty of EXTRA commodities to if so desired could be shared with others who might be “needy”… Americans have always voluntarily been the MOST generous and charitable society on the planet.
Do changing words, change the end result? … By using different words, is it all of a sudden OK to ignore or violate the provisions or intent of the Constitution of the united States of America?????
The people (politicians) who believe in the SOCIALISTIC and COMMUNISTIC concepts, especially those who pass more and more laws implementing these slavery ideas, are traitors to their oath of office and to the Constitution of the united States of America… KNOW YOUR ENEMY …Remove the enemy from within and from among us.
VOTE LIBERTARIAN, the only political party in America that still firmly supports and diligently abides by the Constitution of the united States of America.
None are more hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free….
Segment 4: No Such Agency — NSA — National Security Agency — Threat To The Liberty and Privacy of The American People — None Of Their Damn Business — Still Trust The Federal Government? — Videos
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
~ Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
National Security Agency
Obama the Hypocrite on NSA, FISA, Patriot Act
Pres. Obama’s response to the 2013 NSA PRISM spying scandal
Do Politicians All Agree Wiretapping Is In the Peoples Interest?
Glenn Becks “SURVEILLANCE STATE” (Must Viewing)
Glenn Greenwald Details ‘Menacing’ Reach Of NSA’s Invasion Of Google, Facebook, Apple Servers
6/6/13 Krauthammer on the NSA-Verizon scandal
NSA tracking Verizon phone calls
Reporter who broke the story tells CNN’s Jake Tapper the government is engaged in ‘unthinkable types of surveillance.’
A Massive Surveillance State: Glenn Greenwald Exposes Massive NSA Program Collecting Calls, Emails
Judge Napolitano On NSA Spying: Most Extraordinarily Broad Search Warrant Ever Issued In US History
US admits monitoring internet firms’ servers [1]
US admits monitoring internet firms’ servers [2]
NSA Admits Tapping Google And Facebook Servers
Ted Cruz Fires At Obama Administration ‘They View Constitution As A Pesky Obstruction’
NSA Spying on All Americans Part 1
NSA spying on All Americans Part 2
Dershowitz: Don’t overreact to NSA acts
NSA Secretly Collected Millions of Phone Records
he National Security Agency has secretly collected data about millions of domestic and international calls by Verizon customers. Jeffrey Brown gets debate on the privacy and civil liberty concerns from Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies and former NSA official Col. Cedric Leighton.
NSA Whistleblowers: “All U.S. Citizens” Targeted By Surveillance Program, Not Just Verizon Customers
Chocking Revelation!!! – Chaos In The Federal Government – NSA, Can You Hear Me Now? – O’Reilly
Government Data Mining: Impossible to Escape?
Big Brother & Your Money – Obama Admin Plans To Give Full Access To Intel, To American’s Finance
NSA Secretly Storing Verizon Calls: Report – White House Calls Program ‘Critcal’
Complete News – NSA Collects Phone Records on Millions
NSA Spying: Sweeping US data-mining program revealed
NSA Spying On Americans Verizon – Obama House Scandals- Newt Gingrich – Hannity
Shep Smith And Judge Napolitano Rail Against NSA Abuse: ‘We’re Not Letting This Go.’
Obama Orders Verizon to Spy on Americans
BREAKING! Obama’s NSA Collecting Phone Records Of Millions Of Americans Daily
“The NSA Is Lying”: U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails Says NSA Whistleblower
Inside NSA – The National Security Agency – Documentary
James Bamford: Inside the NSA’s Largest Secret Domestic Spy Center
Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny
NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake speaks at National Press Club – March 15, 2013
Jon Stewart Tears Apart Obama, DOJ For Prosecuting Whistleblowers And Potheads But Not Bankers
National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance
NSA whistleblower William Binney Keynote at HOPE Number Nine
NSA whistleblower exposes Obama’s secrets
NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Prevails in Unprecedented Obama Admin Crackdown
Obama’s NSA: Close to Knowing All About Us
What You Should Know About The New NSA Utah Data Center
The Utah Data Center
NSA Building Colossal New Data Center: Spying on Americans
NSA Utah Data Spy Center Revealed
DEA pushes for warrantless access to your medical records.
Glenn Greenwald on the High Cost of Government Secrecy
Glenn Greenwald on Domestic Surveillance: NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Controversy (2006)
Glenn Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American political journalist, lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author. In August 2012, he left Salon.com, where he was a columnist, to become a columnist at the US edition of The Guardian newspaper, to which he has contributed since June 2011. Politically, Greenwald described himself as independent when he first began writing about politics in 2005,[6] though others now see him as a liberal or progressive.
Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator before becoming a contributor (columnist and blogger) to Salon.com, where he focused on political and legal topics.[12] He has also contributed to other newspapers and political news magazines, including The New York Times,[13][14][15] the Los Angeles Times,[16] The American Conservative,[17] The National Interest,[18] and In These Times.[19][20]
Greenwald has written four books, three of which have been New York Times bestsellers: How Would a Patriot Act? (2006); A Tragic Legacy (2007), and With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, released in October 2011. He also wrote Great American Hypocrites (2008).
Greenwald has received awards including the first Izzy Award for independent journalism, in 2009,[21] and the 2010 Online Journalism Award for Best Commentary.[22] Greenwald is a frequent speaker on college campuses, including Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, UCLA School of Law, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Maryland and others. He also appears on various radio and television programs as a guest political pundit.
Challenging the Surveillance State – Glenn Greenwald
122712 – Sen. Rand Paul Discusses FISA Amendment
Rand Paul: ‘Appalled’ At NSA’s Violation Of The Bill Of Rights – Yahoo News 6/6/2013
NSA taps in to internet giants’ systems to mine user data, secret files reveal
• Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Facebook and Apple
• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007
Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.
Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.
In a statement, Google said: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.”
Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. “If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge,” one said.
An Apple spokesman said it had “never heard” of PRISM.
The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.
The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.
It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.
Disclosure of the PRISM program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.
The participation of the internet companies in PRISM will add to the debate, ignited by the Verizon revelation, about the scale of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.
Some of the world’s largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in 2007. Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan “Your privacy is our priority” – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007.
It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.
Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications networks.
The extent and nature of the data collected from each company varies.
Companies are legally obliged to comply with requests for users’ communications under US law, but the PRISM program allows the intelligence services direct access to the companies’ servers. The NSA document notes the operations have “assistance of communications providers in the US”.
The revelation also supports concerns raised by several US senators during the renewal of the Fisa Amendments Act in December 2012, who warned about the scale of surveillance the law might enable, and shortcomings in the safeguards it introduces.
When the FAA was first enacted, defenders of the statute argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA’s inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the PRISM program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies’ servers.
A chart prepared by the NSA, contained within the top-secret document obtained by the Guardian, underscores the breadth of the data it is able to obtain: email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details, and more.
The document is recent, dating to April 2013. Such a leak is extremely rare in the history of the NSA, which prides itself on maintaining a high level of secrecy.
The PRISM program allows the NSA, the world’s largest surveillance organisation, to obtain targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without having to obtain individual court orders.
With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on targeted users.
The presentation claims PRISM was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a “home-field advantage” due to housing much of the internet’s architecture. But the presentation claimed “Fisa constraints restricted our home-field advantage” because Fisa required individual warrants and confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US.
“Fisa was broken because it provided privacy protections to people who were not entitled to them,” the presentation claimed. “It took a Fisa court order to collect on foreigners overseas who were communicating with other foreigners overseas simply because the government was collecting off a wire in the United States. There were too many email accounts to be practical to seek Fisas for all.”
The new measures introduced in the FAA redefines “electronic surveillance” to exclude anyone “reasonably believed” to be outside the USA – a technical change which reduces the bar to initiating surveillance.
The act also gives the director of national intelligence and the attorney general power to permit obtaining intelligence information, and indemnifies internet companies against any actions arising as a result of co-operating with authorities’ requests.
In short, where previously the NSA needed individual authorisations, and confirmation that all parties were outside the USA, they now need only reasonable suspicion that one of the parties was outside the country at the time of the records were collected by the NSA.
The document also shows the FBI acts as an intermediary between other agencies and the tech companies, and stresses its reliance on the participation of US internet firms, claiming “access is 100% dependent on ISP provisioning”.
In the document, the NSA hails the PRISM program as “one of the most valuable, unique and productive accesses for NSA”.
It boasts of what it calls “strong growth” in its use of the PRISM program to obtain communications. The document highlights the number of obtained communications increased in 2012 by 248% for Skype – leading the notes to remark there was “exponential growth in Skype reporting; looks like the word is getting out about our capability against Skype”. There was also a 131% increase in requests for Facebook data, and 63% for Google.
The NSA document indicates that it is planning to add Dropbox as a PRISM provider. The agency also seeks, in its words, to “expand collection services from existing providers”.
The revelations echo fears raised on the Senate floor last year during the expedited debate on the renewal of the FAA powers which underpin the PRISM program, which occurred just days before the act expired.
Senator Christopher Coons of Delaware specifically warned that the secrecy surrounding the various surveillance programs meant there was no way to know if safeguards within the act were working.
“The problem is: we here in the Senate and the citizens we represent don’t know how well any of these safeguards actually work,” he said.
“The law doesn’t forbid purely domestic information from being collected. We know that at least one Fisa court has ruled that the surveillance program violated the law. Why? Those who know can’t say and average Americans can’t know.”
Other senators also raised concerns. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon attempted, without success, to find out any information on how many phone calls or emails had been intercepted under the program.
When the law was enacted, defenders of the FAA argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA’s inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the PRISM program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies’ servers.
When the NSA reviews a communication it believes merits further investigation, it issues what it calls a “report”. According to the NSA, “over 2,000 PRISM-based reports” are now issued every month. There were 24,005 in 2012, a 27% increase on the previous year.
In total, more than 77,000 intelligence reports have cited the PRISM program.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, that it was astonishing the NSA would even ask technology companies to grant direct access to user data.
“It’s shocking enough just that the NSA is asking companies to do this,” he said. “The NSA is part of the military. The military has been granted unprecedented access to civilian communications.
“This is unprecedented militarisation of domestic communications infrastructure. That’s profoundly troubling to anyone who is concerned about that separation.”
A senior administration official said in a statement: “The Guardian and Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen or of any person located within the United States.
“The program is subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and Congress. It involves extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-US persons outside the US are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about US persons.
“This program was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate.
“Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.
“The Government may only use Section 702 to acquire foreign intelligence information, which is specifically, and narrowly, defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This requirement applies across the board, regardless of the nationality of the target.”
Additional reporting by James Ball and Dominic Rushe
NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
Glenn Greenwald
Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government’s domestic spying powers.
Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.
The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.
The Guardian approached the National Security Agency, the White House and the Department of Justice for comment in advance of publication on Wednesday. All declined. The agencies were also offered the opportunity to raise specific security concerns regarding the publication of the court order.
The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI’s request for its customers’ records, or the court order itself.
“We decline comment,” said Ed McFadden, a Washington-based Verizon spokesman.
The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compels Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls”.
The order directs Verizon to “continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this order”. It specifies that the records to be produced include “session identifying information”, such as “originating and terminating number”, the duration of each call, telephone calling card numbers, trunk identifiers, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, and “comprehensive communication routing information”.
The information is classed as “metadata”, or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access. The document also specifies that such “metadata” is not limited to the aforementioned items. A 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order.
While the order itself does not include either the contents of messages or the personal information of the subscriber of any particular cell number, its collection would allow the NSA to build easily a comprehensive picture of who any individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively.
It is not known whether Verizon is the only cell-phone provider to be targeted with such an order, although previous reporting has suggested the NSA has collected cell records from all major mobile networks. It is also unclear from the leaked document whether the three-month order was a one-off, or the latest in a series of similar orders.
The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration’s surveillance activities.
For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on “secret legal interpretations” to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be “stunned” to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.
Because those activities are classified, the senators, both members of the Senate intelligence committee, have been prevented from specifying which domestic surveillance programs they find so alarming. But the information they have been able to disclose in their public warnings perfectly tracks both the specific law cited by the April 25 court order as well as the vast scope of record-gathering it authorized.
Julian Sanchez, a surveillance expert with the Cato Institute, explained: “We’ve certainly seen the government increasingly strain the bounds of ‘relevance’ to collect large numbers of records at once — everyone at one or two degrees of separation from a target — but vacuuming all metadata up indiscriminately would be an extraordinary repudiation of any pretence of constraint or particularized suspicion.” The April order requested by the FBI and NSA does precisely that.
The law on which the order explicitly relies is the so-called “business records” provision of the Patriot Act, 50 USC section 1861. That is the provision which Wyden and Udall have repeatedly cited when warning the public of what they believe is the Obama administration’s extreme interpretation of the law to engage in excessive domestic surveillance.
In a letter to attorney general Eric Holder last year, they argued that “there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.”
“We believe,” they wrote, “that most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted” the “business records” provision of the Patriot Act.
Privacy advocates have long warned that allowing the government to collect and store unlimited “metadata” is a highly invasive form of surveillance of citizens’ communications activities. Those records enable the government to know the identity of every person with whom an individual communicates electronically, how long they spoke, and their location at the time of the communication.
Such metadata is what the US government has long attempted to obtain in order to discover an individual’s network of associations and communication patterns. The request for the bulk collection of all Verizon domestic telephone records indicates that the agency is continuing some version of the data-mining program begun by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack.
The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by President Bush on 4 October 2001, implemented a bulk collection program of domestic telephone, internet and email records. A furore erupted in 2006 when USA Today reported that the NSA had “been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth” and was “using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity.” Until now, there has been no indication that the Obama administration implemented a similar program.
These recent events reflect how profoundly the NSA’s mission has transformed from an agency exclusively devoted to foreign intelligence gathering, into one that focuses increasingly on domestic communications. A 30-year employee of the NSA, William Binney, resigned from the agency shortly after 9/11 in protest at the agency’s focus on domestic activities.
In the mid-1970s, Congress, for the first time, investigated the surveillance activities of the US government. Back then, the mandate of the NSA was that it would never direct its surveillance apparatus domestically.
At the conclusion of that investigation, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho who chaired the investigative committee, warned: “The NSA’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter.”
Additional reporting by Ewen MacAskill and Spencer Ackerman
Verizon forced to hand over telephone data – full court ruling
The US government is collecting the phone records of millions of US customers of Verizon under a top secret court order. Read the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order
DNI Statement on Recent Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information
Thursday, June 06, 2013
June 6, 2013
DNI Statement on Recent Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information
The highest priority of the Intelligence Community is to work within the constraints of law to collect, analyze and understand information related to potential threats to our national security.
The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation.
The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties.
I believe it is important for the American people to understand the limits of this targeted counterterrorism program and the principles that govern its use. In order to provide a more thorough understanding of the program, I have directed that certain information related to the “business records” provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act be declassified and immediately released to the public.
The following important facts explain the purpose and limitations of the program:
The judicial order that was disclosed in the press is used to support a sensitive intelligence collection operation, on which members of Congress have been fully and repeatedly briefed. The classified program has been authorized by all three branches of the Government.
Although this program has been properly classified, the leak of one order, without any context, has created a misleading impression of how it operates. Accordingly, we have determined to declassify certain limited information about this program.
The program does not allow the Government to listen in on anyone’s phone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the identity of any subscriber. The only type of information acquired under the Court’s order is telephony metadata, such as telephone numbers dialed and length of calls.
The collection is broad in scope because more narrow collection would limit our ability to screen for and identify terrorism-related communications. Acquiring this information allows us to make connections related to terrorist activities over time. The FISA Court specifically approved this method of collection as lawful, subject to stringent restrictions.
The information acquired has been part of an overall strategy to protect the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it may assist counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities.
There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which ensures that those activities comply with the Constitution and laws and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties. The program at issue here is conducted under authority granted by Congress and is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). By statute, the Court is empowered to determine the legality of the program.
By order of the FISC, the Government is prohibited from indiscriminately sifting through the telephony metadata acquired under the program. All information that is acquired under this program is subject to strict, court-imposed restrictions on review and handling. The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. Only specially cleared counterterrorism personnel specifically trained in the Court-approved procedures may even access the records.
All information that is acquired under this order is subject to strict restrictions on handling and is overseen by the Department of Justice and the FISA Court. Only a very small fraction of the records are ever reviewed because the vast majority of the data is not responsive to any terrorism-related query.
The Court reviews the program approximately every 90 days. DOJ conducts rigorous oversight of the handling of the data received to ensure the applicable restrictions are followed. In addition, DOJ and ODNI regularly review the program implementation to ensure it continues to comply with the law.
The Patriot Act was signed into law in October 2001 and included authority to compel production of business records and other tangible things relevant to an authorized national security investigation with the approval of the FISC. This provision has subsequently been reauthorized over the course of two Administrations – in 2006 and in 2011. It has been an important investigative tool that has been used over the course of two Administrations, with the authorization and oversight of the FISC and the Congress.
Discussing programs like this publicly will have an impact on the behavior of our adversaries and make it more difficult for us to understand their intentions. Surveillance programs like this one are consistently subject to safeguards that are designed to strike the appropriate balance between national security interests and civil liberties and privacy concerns. I believe it is important to address the misleading impression left by the article and to reassure the American people that the Intelligence Community is committed to respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all American citizens.
James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence
US intelligence chief denounces release of information
Spencer Ackerman
Revealing huge surveillance programme risks damaging US national security, James Clapper says
Disclosure of the massive surveillance of phone records and internet communications risks “long-lasting and irreversible harm” to US national security, the director of national intelligence says.
Late on Thursday night US time James Clapper issued a bullet-point defence of the surveillance programs disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post, saying they contained “numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties”. To correct the “misleading impression left in the article” – apparently a reference to the Guardian’s original story – Clapper said he approved the declassification of his defence of the National Security Agency’s collection of every phone record from millions of Verizon customers.
“There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” Clapper wrote, “which ensures that those activities comply with the Constitution and laws and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties. The program at issue here is conducted under authority granted by Congress and is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). By statute, the Court is empowered to determine the legality of the program.”
Clapper attacked the disclosures by the Guardian and the Washington Post as “reprehensible” for risking “important protections for the security of Americans”.
A judge for Fisa Court, as the surveillance body is known, reviewed and approved the surveillance. But critics have pointed out that the Fisa Court has almost never, in its 35-year history, rejected a US surveillance request – a perception of docility that prompted its presiding judge, Reggie Walton, to defend the court’s integrity in a statement to the Guardian on Thursday.
Clapper said the Fisa Court had established procedures preventing the government “indiscriminately sifting” through the collected phone records. “The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organisation,” Clapper said. “Only a small fraction of the records are ever reviewed” by “specifically cleared counterterrorism personnel”.
At the same time, Clapper said national security required the NSA to collect all the Verizon subscriber data, even if not all the data would be analysed, and regardless of any evidence to link the phone records to crime, foreign espionage or terrorism. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that other telecoms received similar orders from the government for the subscriber data.
“The collection is broad in scope,” Clapper wrote, “because more narrow collection would limit our ability to protect the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it may assist counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities.”
Yet the collection does not need to be tied to terrorism to occur – something that alarmed one Democrat senator, Jeff Merkley. He told the Guardian on Thursday that the sweeping “barn-door” collection appeared to violate the provision of the Patriot Act purportedly authorising it.
“We can’t really propose changes to the law unless we know what the words mean as interpreted by the court,” Merkley said.
Clapper reiterated a point the Obama administration made on Thursday in its response to the Guardian’s story: the NSA’s dragnet of Verizon phone records, which the Fisa Court authorised until 19 July, does not include the “content of any communications or the identity of any subscriber”. Yet the so-called “metadata” – phone numbers, duration of calls – can be combined with publicly available information to easily determine subscriber identity. And a second NSA surveillance effort, disclosed by the Guardian on Thursday and codenamed PRISM, collects the content of communications provided through Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and five other large internet companies.
Clapper came under criticism on Thursday for statements to Democrat senator Ron Wyden that appeared to be contradicted by the revelations of the surveillance programs. Asked in March whether “millions” of Americans had “any kind of [their] data” collected by the US government, Clapper replied: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”
He has denied misleading Congress, but Clapper’s statement on Thursday suggested the collection of Americans’ phone records was deliberate, methodical and institutionalised.
“Discussing programs like this publicly,” Clapper concluded, “will have an impact on the behavior of our adversaries and make it more difficult for us to understand their intentions.”
Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.
The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.
Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system. We know that this particular order was a routine extension of surveillance that has been going on for years, and it seems very likely that it extends beyond Verizon’s business division. There is every reason to believe the federal government has been collecting every bit of information about every American’s phone calls except the words actually exchanged in those calls.
Articles in The Washington Post and The Guardian described a process by which the N.S.A. is also able to capture Internet communications directly from the servers of nine leading American companies. The articles raised questions about whether the N.S.A. separated foreign communications from domestic ones.
A senior administration official quoted in The Times online Thursday afternoon about the Verizon order offered the lame observation that the information does not include the name of any caller, as though there would be the slightest difficulty in matching numbers to names. He said the information “has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats,” because it allows the government “to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.”
That is a vital goal, but how is it served by collecting everyone’s call data? The government can easily collect phone records (including the actual content of those calls) on “known or suspected terrorists” without logging every call made. In fact, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was expanded in 2008 for that very purpose.
Essentially, the administration is saying that without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know whom Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where.
This sort of tracking can reveal a lot of personal and intimate information about an individual. To casually permit this surveillance — with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power — fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and it repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy.
The defense of this practice offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching, was absurd. She said on Thursday that the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the vice chairman of the committee, said the surveillance has “proved meritorious, because we have gathered significant information on bad guys and only on bad guys over the years.”But what assurance do we have of that, especially since Ms. Feinstein went on to say that she actually did not know how the data being collected was used?
The senior administration official quoted in The Times said the executive branch internally reviews surveillance programs to ensure that they “comply with the Constitution and laws of the United States and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties.”
That’s no longer good enough. Mr. Obama clearly had no intention of revealing this eavesdropping, just as he would not have acknowledged the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, had it not been reported in the press. Even then, it took him more than a year and a half to acknowledge the killing, and he is still keeping secret the protocol by which he makes such decisions.
We are not questioning the legality under the Patriot Act of the court order disclosed by The Guardian. But we strongly object to using that power in this manner. It is the very sort of thing against which Mr. Obama once railed, when he said in 2007 that the surveillance policy of the George W. Bush administration “puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.”
Two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have raised warnings about the government’s overbroad interpretation of its surveillance powers. “We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”
On Thursday, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, who introduced the Patriot Act in 2001, said that the National Security Agency overstepped its bounds by obtaining a secret order to collect phone log records from millions of Americans.
“As the author of the Patriot Act, I am extremely troubled by the F.B.I.’s interpretation of this legislation,” he said in a statement. “While I believe the Patriot Act appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights, I have always worried about potential abuses.” He added: “Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.”
Stunning use of the act shows, once again, why it needs to be sharply curtailed if not repealed.
To find the legal authority underpinning the top-secret Prism surveillance program, we once again turn to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Law Blog on Thursday wrote about the statute allowing the government to compel the production of “business records” relevant to a foreign intelligence probe.
Another statute, Section 702 of FISA, provides procedures for spying on the online communication of foreigners or groups located outside our borders.
In a statement Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said Section 702 “cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States.”
But the statute passed by Congress in 2008 leaves quite a bit of wiggle room, according to legal experts. Here are some potential loopholes:
‘Reasonably believed’: The Attorney General and the intelligence director must certify to a special surveillance judge that targets are “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.” How certain is that? According to the Washington Post, that means a 51% confidence, similar to the preponderance of evidence standard.
“Given the scale of collection here, even if [the error rate] were only a few percent, we’d still be talking about a huge number of American communications,” Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, told Law Blog.
Also, the government doesn’t have to be 51% sure that the target isn’t an American citizen nor a legal resident. The government just has to assert that it’s not intentionally targeting a citizen or legal resident.
Who’s the target? There’s another ambiguity around the notion of a target. It’s unclear whether NSA interprets the law to allow the government to tap into accounts belonging to Americans as long as the surveillance is broadly directed at a foreign group, like Al Qaeda, according to Mr. Sanchez.
Optional verifying: The targeting procedures are subject to judicial review by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, but “the court is not required to look behind the assertions made in the certifications” submitted by the attorney and the national intelligence director, according to an analysis of the law prepared by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan and independent group that advises Congress on legal matters.
Exigent circumstances: In the absence of a court order, the attorney general and intelligence director may also authorize targeting if they determine that “exigent circumstances exist which would cause the loss or delay of important national security intelligence, according to the Congressional Research Service. The government has seven days to submit the “certification” paperwork to the court, but it can move forward with the spying during that week.
“They’re assuring us that there are secret procedures in place to protect privacy, but there’s never been a public evaluation of them,” Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office, told Law Blog. “We’re disinclined to take their word for it knowing that they are doing things like collecting everybody’s telephone records.”
Mr. Clapper in his statement said that information collected under Prism “is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.”
Mr. Clapper also said in his statement that “activities authorized” by the law “involve extensive procedures . . . to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted . . . ”
A spokesperson for Mr. Clapper’s office did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (“FISA” Pub.L. 95–511, 92 Stat. 1783, 50 U.S.C.ch. 36) is a United States law which prescribes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of “foreign intelligence information” between “foreign powers” and “agents of foreign powers” (which may include American citizens and permanent residents suspected of espionage or terrorism).[1] The law does not apply outside the United States. The law has been repeatedly amended since the September 11 attacks.
Subsequent amendments
The Act was amended in 2001 by the USA PATRIOT Act, primarily to include terrorism on behalf of groups that are not specifically backed by a foreign government.
An overhaul of the bill, the Protect America Act of 2007 was signed into law on August 5, 2007.[2] It expired on February 17, 2008.
The FISA resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities. These investigations were led separately by Sam Ervin and Frank Church in 1978 as a response to President Richard Nixon’s usage of federal resources to spy on political and activist groups, which violates the Fourth Amendment.[4] The act was created to provide Judicial and congressional oversight of the government’s covert surveillance activities of foreign entities and individuals in the United States, while maintaining the secrecy needed to protect national security. It allowed surveillance, without court order, within the United States for up to one year unless the “surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party”. If a United States person is involved, judicial authorization was required within 72 hours after surveillance begins.
Bush administration warrantless domestic wiretapping program
The Act came into public prominence in December 2005 following publication by the New York Times of an article[5] that described a program of warrantless domestic wiretapping ordered by the Bush administration and carried out by the National Security Agency since 2002; a subsequent Bloomberg article[6] suggested that this may have already begun by June 2000.
Scope and limits
For most purposes, including electronic surveillance and physical searches, “foreign powers” means a foreign government, any faction(s) or foreign governments not substantially composed of U.S. persons, and any entity directed or controlled by a foreign government. §§1801(a)(1)-(3) The definition also includes groups engaged in international terrorism and foreign political organizations. §§1801(a)(4) and (5). The sections of FISA authorizing electronic surveillance and physical searches without a court order specifically exclude their application to groups engaged in international terrorism. See §1802(a)(1) (referring specifically to §1801(a)(1), (2), and (3)).
The statute includes limits on how it may be applied to U.S. persons. A “U.S. person” includes citizens, lawfully admitted permanent resident aliens, and corporations incorporated in the United States.
The code defines “foreign intelligence information” to mean information necessary to protect the United States against actual or potential grave attack, sabotage or international terrorism.[7]
In sum, a significant purpose of the electronic surveillance must be to obtain intelligence in the United States on foreign powers (such as enemy agents or spies) or individuals connected to international terrorist groups. To use FISA, the government must show probable cause that the “target of the surveillance is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power.”[4][8]
The act created a court which meets in secret, and approves or denies requests for search warrants. Only the number of warrants applied for, issued and denied, is reported. In 1980 (the first full year after its inception), it approved 322 warrants.[9] This number has steadily grown to 2,224 warrants in 2006.[10] In the period 1979-2006 a total of 22,990 applications for warrants were made to the Court of which 22,985 were approved (sometimes with modifications; or with the splitting up, or combining together, of warrants for legal purposes), and only 5 were definitively rejected.[11]
Electronic surveillance
Generally, the statute permits electronic surveillance in two scenarios.
Without a court order
The President may authorize, through the Attorney General, electronic surveillance without a court order for the period of one year provided it is only for foreign intelligence information;[7] targeting foreign powers as defined by 50 U.S.C.§ 1801(a)(1),(2),(3)[12] or their agents; and there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party.[13]
Since 50 U.S.C.§ 1802(a)(1)(A) of this act specifically limits warrantless surveillance to foreign powers as defined by 50 U.S.C. §1801(a) (1),(2), (3) and omits the definitions contained in 50 U.S.C. §1801(a) (4),(5),(6) the act does not authorize the use of warrantless surveillance on: groups engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefore; foreign-based political organizations, not substantially composed of United States persons; or entities that are directed and controlled by a foreign government or governments.[16] Under the FISA act, anyone who engages in electronic surveillance except as authorized by statute is subject to both criminal penalties[17] and civil liabilities.[18]
Under 50 U.S.C. § 1811, the President may also authorize warrantless surveillance at the beginning of a war. Specifically, he may authorize such surveillance “for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress”.[19]
With a court order
Alternatively, the government may seek a court order permitting the surveillance using the FISA court.[20] Approval of a FISA application requires the court find probable cause that the target of the surveillance be a “foreign power” or an “agent of a foreign power”, and that the places at which surveillance is requested is used or will be used by that foreign power or its agent. In addition, the court must find that the proposed surveillance meet certain “minimization requirements” for information pertaining to U.S. persons.[21]
Physical searches
In addition to electronic surveillance, FISA permits the “physical search” of the “premises, information, material, or property used exclusively by” a foreign power. The requirements and procedures are nearly identical to those for electronic surveillance.
The Act created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and enabled it to oversee requests for surveillance warrants by federal police agencies (primarily the F.B.I.) against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the U.S. The court is located within the Department of Justice headquarters building. The court is staffed by eleven judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States to serve seven year terms.
Proceedings before the FISA court are ex parte and non-adversarial. The court hears evidence presented solely by the Department of Justice. There is no provision for a release of information regarding such hearings, or for the record of information actually collected.
Denials of FISA applications by the FISC may be appealed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. The Court of Review is a three judge panel. Since its creation, the court has come into session twice: in 2002 and 2008.
Remedies for violations
Both the subchapters covering physical searches and electronic surveillance provide for criminal and civil liability for violations of FISA.
Criminal sanctions follows violations of electronic surveillance by intentionally engaging in electronic surveillance under the color of law or through disclosing information known to have been obtained through unauthorized surveillance. The penalties for either act are fines up to $10,000, up to five years in jail, or both.[17]
In addition, the statute creates a cause of action for private individuals whose communications were unlawfully monitored. The statute permits actual damages of not less than $1,000 or $100 per day. In addition, that statute authorizes punitive damages and an award of attorney’s fees.[18] Similar liability is found under the subchapter pertaining to physical searches. In both cases, the statute creates an affirmative defense for a law enforcement agent acting within their official duties and pursuant to a valid court order. Presumably, such a defense is not available to those operating exclusively under presidential authorization.
Lone wolf amendment
In 2004 FISA was amended to include a “lone wolf” provision. 50 U.S.C.§ 1801(b)(1)(C). A “lone wolf” is a non-U.S. person who engages in or prepares for international terrorism. The provision amended the definition of “foreign power” to permit the FISA courts to issue surveillance and physical search orders without having to find a connection between the “lone wolf” and a foreign government or terrorist group. However, “if the court authorizes such a surveillance or physical search using this new definition of ‘agent of a foreign power’, the FISC judge has to find, in pertinent part, that, based upon the information provided by the applicant for the order, the target had engaged in or was engaging in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor”.[22]
Constitutionality
Before FISA
In 1967 the Supreme Court of the United States held that the requirements of the Fourth Amendment applied equally to electronic surveillance and to physical searches. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). The Court did not address whether such requirements apply to issues of national security. Shortly after, in 1972, the Court took up the issue again in United States v. United States District Court, Plamondon, where the court held that court approval was required in order for the domestic surveillance to satisfy the Fourth Amendment. 407 U.S. 297 (1972). Justice Powell wrote that the decision did not address this issue that “may be involved with respect to activities of foreign powers or their agents”.
In the time immediately preceding FISA, a number of courts squarely addressed the issue of “warrantless wiretaps”. In both United States v. Brown, 484 F.2d 418 (5th Cir. 1973), and United States v. Butenko, 494 F.2d 593 (3rd Cir. 1974), the courts upheld warrantless wiretaps. In Brown, a U.S. citizen’s conversation was captured by a wiretap authorized by the Attorney General for foreign intelligence purposes. In Butenko, the court held a wiretap valid if the primary purpose was for gathering foreign intelligence information.
A plurality opinion in Zweibon v. Mitchell, 516 F.2d 594 (D.C. Cir. 1975), held that a warrant was required for the domestic surveillance of a domestic organization. In this case, the court found that the domestic organization was not a “foreign power or their agent”, and “absent exigent circumstances, all warrantless electronic surveillance is unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional.”
Post-FISA
There have been very few cases involving the constitutionality of FISA. In two lower court decisions, the courts found FISA constitutional. In the United States v. Duggan, the defendants were members of the Irish Republican Army. 743 F.2d 59 (2nd Cir., 1984). They were convicted for various violations regarding the shipment of explosives and firearms. The court held that there were compelling considerations of national security in the distinction between the treatment of U.S. citizens and non-resident aliens.
However, in a third case, the special review court for FISA, the equivalent of a Circuit Court Of Appeals, opined differently should FISA limit the President’s inherent authority for warrantless searches in the foreign intelligence area. In In re Sealed Case, 310 F.3d 717, 742 (Foreign Intel. Surv. Ct. of Rev. 2002) the special court stated “[A]ll the other courts to have decided the issue [have] held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information . . . . We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.”
Criticisms
K. A. Taipale of the World Policy Institute, James Jay Carafano of the Heritage Foundation,[23] and Philip Bobbitt of Columbia Law School,[24] among others,[25] have argued that FISA may need to be amended (to include, among other things, procedures for programmatic approvals) as it may no longer be adequate to address certain foreign intelligence needs and technology developments, including: the transition from circuit-based communications to packet-based communications; the globalization of communications infrastructure; and the development of automated monitoring techniques, including data mining and traffic analysis.[26]
The need for programmatic approval of technology-enabled surveillance programs is particularly crucial in foreign intelligence. See, for example, John R. Schmidt, the associate attorney general (1994–1997) in the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton,[27] recalling early arguments made by then-Attorney General Edward Levi to the Church Committee that foreign intelligence surveillance legislation should include provisions for programmatically authorizing surveillance programs because of the particular needs of foreign intelligence where “virtually continuous surveillance, which by its nature does not have specifically predetermined targets” may be required. In these situations, “the efficiency of a warrant requirement would be minimal.”
And, in a recent essay, Judge Richard A. Posner opined that FISA “retains value as a framework for monitoring the communications of known terrorists, but it is hopeless as a framework for detecting terrorists. [FISA] requires that surveillance be conducted pursuant to warrants based on probable cause to believe that the target of surveillance is a terrorist, when the desperate need is to find out who is a terrorist.”[28]
Amendments
Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006
On March 16, 2006, Senators Mike DeWine (R-OH), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 (S.2455),[29][30] under which the President would be given certain additional limited statutory authority to conduct electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States subject to enhanced Congressional oversight. Also on March 16, 2006, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 (S. 2453),[31][32] which would amend FISA to grant retroactive amnesty[33] for warrantless surveillance conducted under presidential authority and provide FISA court (FISC) jurisdiction to review, authorize, and oversight “electronic surveillance programs”. On May 24, 2006, Senator Specter and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Improvement and Enhancement Act of 2006 (S. 3001) asserting FISA as the exclusive means to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance.
All three competing bills were the subject of Judiciary Committee hearings throughout the summer.[34] On September 13, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve all three mutually exclusive bills, thus, leaving it to the full Senate to resolve.[35]
On July 18, 2006, U.S. Representative Heather Wilson (R-NM) introduced the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act (H.R. 5825). Wilson’s bill would give the President the authority to authorize electronic surveillance of international phone calls and e-mail linked specifically to identified terrorist groups immediately following or in anticipation of an armed or terrorist attack on the United States. Surveillance beyond the initial authorized period would require a FISA warrant or a presidential certification to Congress. On September 28, 2006 the House of Representatives passed Wilson’s bill and it was referred to the Senate.[36]
Protect America Act of 2007
On July 28, 2007, President Bush called on Congress to pass legislation to reform the FISA in order to ease restrictions on surveillance of terrorist suspects where one party (or both parties) to the communication are located overseas. He asked that Congress pass the legislation before its August 2007 recess. On August 3, 2007, the Senate passed a Republican-sponsored version of FISA (S. 1927) in a vote of 60 to 28. The House followed by passing the bill, 227–183. The Protect America Act of 2007 (Pub.L. 110–55, S. 1927) was then signed into law by George W. Bush on 2007-08-05.[37]
Under the Protect America Act of 2007, communications that begin or end in a foreign country may be wiretapped by the U.S. government without supervision by the FISA Court. The Act removes from the definition of “electronic surveillance” in FISA any surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. As such, surveillance of these communications no longer requires a government application to, and order issuing from, the FISA Court.
The Act provides procedures for the government to “certify” the legality of an acquisition program, for the government to issue directives to providers to provide data or assistance under a particular program, and for the government and recipient of a directive to seek from the FISA Court, respectively, an order to compel provider compliance or relief from an unlawful directive. Providers receive costs and full immunity from civil suits for compliance with any directives issued pursuant to the Act.
A summary of key provisions follows. The Act empowers the Attorney General or Director of National Intelligence (“DNI”) to authorize, for up to one year, the acquisition of communications concerning “persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States” if the Attorney General and DNI determine that each of five criteria has been met:
There are reasonable procedures in place for determining that the acquisition concerns persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;
The acquisition does not constitute electronic surveillance (meaning it does not involve solely domestic communications);
The acquisition involves obtaining the communications data from or with the assistance of a communications service provider who has access to communications;
A significant purpose of the acquisition is to obtain foreign intelligence information; and
Minimization procedures outlined in the FISA will be used.
This determination by the Attorney General and DNI must be certified in writing, under oath, and supported by appropriate affidavit(s). If immediate action by the government is required and time does not permit the preparation of a certification, the Attorney General or DNI can direct the acquisition orally, with a certification to follow within 72 hours. The certification is then filed with the FISA Court.
Once the certification is filed with the FISA Court, the Attorney General or DNI can direct a provider to undertake or assist in the undertaking of the acquisition.
If a provider fails to comply with a directive issued by the Attorney General or DNI, the Attorney General may seek an order from the FISA Court compelling compliance with the directive. Failure to obey an order of the FISA Court may be punished as a contempt of court.
Likewise, a person receiving a directive may challenge the legality of that directive by filing a petition with the FISA Court. An initial review must be conducted within 48 hours of the filing to determine whether the petition is frivolous, and a final determination concerning any non-frivolous petitions must be made – in writing – within 72 hours of receipt of the petition.
Determinations of the FISA Court may be appealed to the Foreign Intelligence Court of Appeals, and a petition for a writ of certiorari of a decision from the FICA can be made to the U.S. Supreme Court.
All petitions must be filed under seal.
The Act allows providers to be compensated, at the prevailing rate, for providing assistance as directed by the Attorney General or DNI.
The Act provides explicit immunity from civil suit in any federal or state court for providing any information, facilities, or assistance in accordance with a directive under the Act.
Within 120 days, the Attorney General must submit to the FISA Court for its approval the procedures by which the government will determine that acquisitions authorized by the Act conform with the Act and do not involve purely domestic communications. The FISA Court then will determine whether the procedures comply with the Act. The FISA Court thereafter will enter an order either approving the procedures or directing the government to submit new procedures within 30 days or cease any acquisitions under the government procedures. The government may appeal a ruling of the FISA Court to the FICA and ultimately the Supreme Court.
On a semiannual basis, the Attorney General shall inform the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees of the House and Senate of incidents of noncompliance with a directive issued by the Attorney General or the DNI, incidents of noncompliance with FISA Court-approved procedures by the Intelligence Community, and the number of certifications and directives issued during the reporting period.
The amendments to FISA made by the Act expire 180 days after enactment, except that any order in effect on the date of enactment remains in effect until the date of expiration of such order and such orders can be reauthorized by the FISA Court.”[38] The Act expired on February 17, 2008.
Subsequent developments
Legal experts experienced in national security issues are divided on how broadly the new law could be interpreted or applied. Some believe that due to subtle changes in the definitions of terms such as “electronic surveillance”, it could empower the government to conduct warrantless physical searches and even seizures of communications and computer devices and their data which belong to U.S. citizens while they are in the United States, if the government contended that those searches and potential seizures were related to its surveillance of parties outside the United States. Intelligence officials, while declining to comment directly on such possibilities, respond that such interpretations are overly broad readings of the act, and unlikely to actually occur. Democratic lawmakers have nonetheless indicated that they are planning to introduce a revised version of the legislation for consideration as early as September 2007.[39]
Also on September 10, DNI Mike McConnell testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the Protect America Act had helped foil a major terror plot in Germany. U.S. intelligence-community officials questioned the accuracy of McConnell’s testimony and urged his office to correct it, which he did in a statement issued September 12, 2007. Critics cited the incident as an example of the Bush administration’s exaggerated claims and contradictory statements about surveillance activities. Counterterrorism officials familiar with the background of McConnell’s testimony said they did not believe he made inaccurate statements intentionally as part of any strategy by the administration to persuade Congress to make the new eavesdropping law permanent. Those officials said they believed McConnell gave the wrong answer because he was overwhelmed with information and merely mixed up his facts.[41]
Speaking at National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland on September 19, 2007, President George W. Bush urged Congress to make the provisions of the Protect America Act permanent. Bush also called for retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who had cooperated with government surveillance efforts, saying, “It’s particularly important for Congress to provide meaningful liability protection to those companies now facing multibillion-dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in efforts to defend our nation, following the 9/11 attacks”.[42]
On October 4, 2007, the bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee of the Constitution Project, co-chaired by David Keene and David D. Cole, issued its “Statement on the Protect America Act”.[43] The Statement urged Congress not to reauthorize the PAA, saying the language of the bill “runs contrary to the tripartite balance of power the Framers envisioned for our constitutional democracy, and poses a serious threat to the very notion of government of the people, by the people and for the people”. Some in the legal community have questioned the constitutionality of any legislation that would retroactively immunize telecommunications firms alleged to have cooperated with the government from civil liability for having potentially violated their customers’ privacy rights.[44]
In an article appearing in the January/February 2008 issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers journal of Security and Privacy, noted technology experts from academia and the computing industry found significant flaws in the technical implementation of the Protect America Act which they said created serious security risks, including the danger that such a surveillance system could be exploited by unauthorized users, criminally misused by trusted insiders, or abused by the government.[45]
On October 7, 2007, the Washington Post reported that House Democrats planned to introduce alternative legislation which would provide for one-year “umbrella” warrants, and would require the Justice Department inspector general to audit the use of those warrants and issue quarterly reports to a special FISA court and to Congress. The proposed bill would not include immunity for telecommunications firms facing lawsuits in connection with the administration’s NSA warrantless surveillance program. House Democrats said that as long as the administration withholds requested documents explaining the basis for the program that they cannot consider immunity for firms alleged to have facilitated it.[46] On October 10, 2007 comments on the White House South Lawn, President Bush said he would not sign any bill that did not provide retroactive immunity for telecommunications corporations.[47]
On October 18, 2007, the House Democratic leadership put off a vote on the proposed legislation by the full chamber to avoid consideration of a Republican measure that made specific references to Osama bin Laden. At the same time, the Senate Intelligence Committee reportedly reached a compromise with the White House on a different proposal that would give telephone carriers legal immunity for any role they played in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program approved by President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.[48]
On November 15, 2007, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10-9 along party lines to send an alternative measure to the full Senate other than the one the intelligence committee had crafted with the White House. The proposal would leave to the full Senate whether or not to provide retroactive immunity to telecommunications firms that cooperated with the NSA. Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy said that granting such immunity would give the Bush administration a “blank check” to do what it wants without regard to the law. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the committee, said that court cases may be the only way Congress can learn exactly how far outside the law the administration has gone in eavesdropping in the United States. When the full Senate takes up the bill, Specter is expected to offer a compromise that would shield the companies from financial ruin but allow lawsuits to go forward by having the federal government stand in for the companies at trial.[49]
On the same day, the House of Representatives voted 227-189 to approve a Democratic bill that would expand court oversight of government surveillance inside the United States while denying immunity to telecom companies. House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers left the door open to an immunity deal in the future, but said that the White House must first give Congress access to classified documents specifying what the companies did that requires legal immunity.[50]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
In February 2008, the Senate passed the version of the new FISA that would allow telecom companies immunity. On March 13, 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives held a secret session to discuss related information. On March 14, the House voted 213-197 to approve a bill that would not grant telecom immunity — far short of the 2/3 majority required to override a Presidential veto.[51] The Senate and House bills are compared and contrasted in a June 12, 2008 report from the Congressional Research Service.[52]
On March 13, 2008, the House of Representatives held a secret, closed door meeting to debate changes to the FISA bill.[53][54]
Glenn Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American political journalist, lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author. In August 2012, he left Salon.com, where he was a columnist, to become a columnist at the US edition of The Guardian newspaper,[1][2] to which he has contributed since June 2011.[3][4][5]
Greenwald practiced law in the Litigation Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz (1994–1995); in 1996 he co-founded his own litigation firm, called Greenwald Christoph & Holland (later renamed Greenwald Christoph PC), where he litigated cases concerning issues of U.S. constitutional law and civil rights.[6][18] According to Greenwald, “I decided voluntarily to wind down my practice in 2005 because I could, and because, after ten years, I was bored with litigating full-time and wanted to do other things which I thought were more engaging and could make more of an impact, including political writing.”[18]
In February 2007, Greenwald became a contributing writer at Salon.com, and the new column and blog superseded Unclaimed Territory, though Salon.com prominently features hyperlinks to it in Greenwald’s dedicated biographical section.[19][20]
Greenwald’s criticism of the conditions in which U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks leaker, was being held ultimately led to a formal investigation by the U.N. high official on torture,[26][27] denunciations by Amnesty International,[28] and the resignation of State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley after he publicly criticized Manning’s detention conditions.[29] Since then, Greenwald has been a strong supporter of Manning. He calls Manning “a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives”, and “a national hero similar to Daniel Ellsberg.”[30]
The Guardian
Greenwald left Salon.com on August 20, 2012 for The Guardian, citing “the opportunity to reach a new audience, to further internationalize my readership, and to be re-invigorated by a different environment” as reasons for the move.[31]
Greenwald has been placed on numerous ‘top 50′ and ‘top 25′ lists of columnists in the United States.[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] In June, 2012, Newsweek magazine named him one of America’s Top 10 Opinionists, saying that “a righteous, controlled, and razor-sharp fury runs through a great deal” of his writing, and: “His independent persuasion can make him a danger or an asset to both sides of the aisle.”[46]
Personal life
Greenwald is gay, and lives most of the time in Rio de Janeiro, the hometown of his Brazilian partner, David Michael Miranda.[18][47][48][49][50] In a profile in Out magazine, Greenwald explained that his residence in Brazil is due to the fact that American law, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), bars the federal recognition of same-sex marriages and thus prevents his partner from obtaining immigration rights in the US.[51]
Greenwald and his partner have 11 dogs, all rescued from the street,[52][53], and he frequently picks up dogs from the street and uses his platforms to find homes for them.[54][55][56]
Books
Greenwald’s first book, How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok, was published by Working Assets in 2006. It was a New York Times bestseller,[57] and ranked #1 on Amazon.com both before its publication (due to pre-orders based on attention from ‘UT’ readers and other bloggers) and for several days after its release, ending its first week at #293.[58]
A Tragic Legacy, his second book, examines the presidency of George W. Bush “with an emphasis on his personality traits and beliefs that drove the presidency (along with an emphasis on how and why those personality traits have led to a presidency that has failed to historic proportions).”[59] Published in hardback by Crown (a division of Random House) on June 26, 2007 and reprinted in a paperback edition by Three Rivers Press on April 8, 2008, it too was a New York Times Best Seller, also ranking #1 for a day on Amazon.com’s Non-Fiction Best Seller List and #2 the next day (also due to heavy “discussions and promotions by blogs – a campaign catalyzed by Jane Hamsher [at FireDogLake]“, according to Greenwald).[60]
His third book, entitled Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, was published by Random House in April 2008, the same month that Three Rivers Press reissued A Tragic Legacy in paperback.[61][62]
His fourth book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, was released by Metropolitan Books (of Henry Holt and Company) in October 2011.
Political views
Greenwald is critical of actions jointly supported by Democrats and Republicans, writing: “the worst and most tyrannical government actions in Washington are equally supported on a fully bipartisan basis.”[63] In the preface to his first book, How Would a Patriot Act? (2006), Greenwald opens with some of his own personal political history, describing his ‘pre-political’ self as neither liberal nor conservative as a whole, voting neither for George W. Bush nor for any of his rivals (indeed, not voting at all).[64]
Bush’s ascendancy to the U.S. Presidency “changed” Greenwald’s previous uninvolved political attitude toward the electoral process “completely”:
Over the past five years, a creeping extremism has taken hold of our federal government, and it is threatening to radically alter our system of government and who we are as a nation. This extremism is neither conservative nor liberal in nature, but is instead driven by theories of unlimited presidential power that are wholly alien, and antithetical, to the core political values that have governed this country since its founding”; for, “the fact that this seizure of ever-expanding presidential power is largely justified through endless, rank fear-mongering—fear of terrorists, specifically—means that not only our system of government is radically changing, but so, too, are our national character, our national identity, and what it means to be American.”[64]
Believing that “It is incumbent upon all Americans who believe in that system, bequeathed to us by the founders, to defend it when it is under assault and in jeopardy. And today it is”, he stresses: “I did not arrive at these conclusions eagerly or because I was predisposed by any previous partisan viewpoint. Quite the contrary.”[64]
Resistant to applying ideological labels to himself, he emphasizes repeatedly that he is a strong advocate for U.S. constitutional “balance of powers”[14] and for constitutionally-protected civil and political rights in his writings and public appearances.[6]
Throughout his work he has relentlessly criticized the policies of the George W. Bushadministration and those who support or enable it, arguing that most of the American “Corporate News Media” excuse Bush’s policies and echo administration talking points rather than asking hard questions.[49][32]
Regarding civil liberties in the age of Obama, he elaborated on his conception of change when he said, “I think the only means of true political change will come from people working outside of that [two-party electoral] system to undermine it, and subvert it, and weaken it, and destroy it; not try to work within it to change it.”[65] He did, however, raise money for Russ Feingold’s 2010 Senate re-election bid,[66] Bill Halter’s 2010 primary challenge to Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln [67] as well as several Congressional candidates in 2012 he described as “unique”.[68]
Greenwald has been criticized regarding his positions which are critical of Israel’s foreign policy and influence on U.S. politics.[69][70][71][72][73]
IRS official refuses to answer questions at scandal hearing
Tea Party Targeted by IRS Who Was Responsible-
Rand Paul Discusses IRS Targetting Scandal w/ Neil Cavuto on FOX (5-21-13)
The IRS Scandal – Who Knew What When?
Norquist: Obama responsible for IRS targeting
Glenn Beck – IRS targeted conservatives
Glenn Beck – Lois Lerner, IRS dodge questions
IRS Commissioner: “It Is Absolutely Not” Illegal For IRS To Target Conservatives
Using the IRS Issues as a Political Weapon Jenny Beth Martin Fox & Friends 051313
Who’s pulling the 501(c)(4)s’ strings?
What exactly is a 501(c)(4)?
IRS’s Tea-Party AUDIT: Explaining a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4)
NBC Owner Part Of Group Pushing New Obama 501c(4)
IRS in the spotlight: What’s a 501(c)(4)? By Martina Stewart, CNN
IRS Tea Party Scandal GOP Calling for Full Investigation
The Colbert Report 5/20/13 in :60 Seconds
Senator Menendez Speaks about 501(c)(4)s
The GOP has a “Liberal” Interpretation of IRS Law
Ex IRS agent Tells It all
Don’t Focus on Super Pacs. Focus on 501(c)(4)’s — Dwyer /
Rep. Mike Kelley Destroys IRS Comm. Steven Miller
Types of Organizations Exempt under Section 501(c)(4)
Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(4) provides for the exemption of two very different types of organizations with their own distinct qualification requirements. They are:
Social welfare organizations: Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, and
Local associations of employees, the membership of which is limited to the employees of designated person(s) in a particular municipality, and the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.
To be tax-exempt as a social welfare organization described in Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 501(c)(4), an organization must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare. The earnings of a section 501(c)(4) organization may not inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. If the organization engages in an excess benefit transaction with a person having substantial influence over the organization, an excise tax may be imposed on the person and any managers agreeing to the transaction. See Introduction to IRC 4958 for more information about this excise tax. For a more detailed discussion of the exemption requirements for section 501(c)(4) organizations, see IRC 501(c)(4) Organizations. For more information about applying for exemption, see Application for Recognition of Exemption.
To be operated exclusively to promote social welfare, an organization must operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community (such as by bringing about civic betterment and social improvements). For example, an organization that restricts the use of its facilities to employees of selected corporations and their guests is primarily benefiting a private group rather than the community and, therefore, does not qualify as a section 501(c)(4) organization. Similarly, an organization formed to represent member-tenants of an apartment complex does not qualify, because its activities benefit the member-tenants and not all tenants in the community, while an organization formed to promote the legal rights of all tenants in a particular community may qualify under section 501(c)(4) as a social welfare organization. An organization is not operated primarily for the promotion of social welfare if its primary activity is operating a social club for the benefit, pleasure or recreation of its members, or is carrying on a business with the general public in a manner similar to organizations operated for profit link].
Seeking legislation germane to the organization’s programs is a permissible means of attaining social welfare purposes. Thus, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may further its exempt purposes through lobbying as its primary activity without jeopardizing its exempt status. An organization that has lost its section 501(c)(3) status due to substantial attempts to influence legislation may not thereafter qualify as a section 501(c)(4) organization. In addition, a section 501(c)(4) organization that engages in lobbying may be required to either provide notice to its members regarding the percentage of dues paid that are applicable to lobbying activities or pay a proxy tax. For more information, see Lobbying Issues .
The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. However, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity. However, any expenditure it makes for political activities may be subject to tax under section 527(f). For further information regarding political and lobbying activities of section 501(c) organizations, see Election Year Issues, Political Campaign and Lobbying Activities of IRC 501(c)(4), (c)(5), and (c)(6) Organizations, and Revenue Ruling 2004-6.
To apply for recognition by the IRS of exempt status under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code, most organizations use Form 1023, Application for Recognition of Exemption and the related instructions. (Organizations applying for recognition of exemption under a provision other than section 501(c)(3) generally use Form 1024.) The application must be complete and accompanied by the appropriate user fee. See Application Process for a step-by-step review of what an organization needs to know and to do in order to apply for recognition by the IRS of tax-exempt status. Frequently asked questions about applying for exemption are also available.
The organization should also request an employer identification number, even if it does not have any employees. See Form SS-4, Application for Employer Identification Number, and its instructions to learn how to obtain an EIN. You may also obtain an EIN via telephone, by calling 1-800-829-4933, or by applying online.
A tax-exempt organization must make available for public inspection its approved application for recognition of exemption with all supporting documents available and its last three annual information returns. The organization must provide copies of these documents upon request without charge (other than a reasonable fee for reproduction and copying costs). Penalties are provided for failure to comply with these requirements.
Exempt Organization Public Disclosure and Availability Requirements
Tax-exempt organizations must make annual returns and exemption applications filed with the IRS available for public inspection and copying upon request. In addition, the IRS makes these documents available. The questions below relate to the public disclosure and availability of documents filed by tax-exempt organizations with the IRS.
A. Questions about Requirements for Exempt Organizations to Disclose IRS Filings to the General Public
The news that the Internal Revenue Service flagged conservative groups for extra scrutiny has drawn renewed public attention to 501(c)(4) organizations, which play a very influential role in politics. So, what the heck is a 501(c)(4), and why do such groups matter in electoral politics? If you’re curious, keep reading.
Typically referred to as “social welfare” groups, these are nonprofit organizations including civic leagues or local volunteer fire departments, for example, that in theory are designed to promote, well, social welfare causes. “501(c)” is just the IRS’s designation in the tax code for nonprofit groups, and (4) is the subsection of groups we are concerned with here. There are other types of nonprofits that fall under the “501(c)” umbrella, but they are subject to different requirements.
So where is the connection to electoral politics? Aren’t we talking about social welfare advocacy?
These groups are allowed to to participate in politics, so long as politics do not become their primary focus. What that means in practice is that they must spend less than 50 percent of their money on politics. So long as they don’t run afoul of that threshold, the groups can influence elections, which they typically do through advertising. The above “Colbert Report” segment sheds some more light on the nature 501(c)(4)s.
Give me some examples of 501(c)(4)s.
Crossroads GPS, the conservative group co-founded by Karl Rove is one well-known example. On the other end of the political spectrum is Organizing for Action, which is what President Obama’s campaign operation turned into after the 2012 election. Often, organizations will have multiple arms, including a nonprofit and a super PAC. American Crossroads, for example, is a super PAC affiliated with Crossroads GPS.
How much money are they spending?
A lot. And much of is being dished out by conservative groups. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, conservative nonprofits spent more than $263 million during the 2012 campaign, while liberal counterparts spent close to $35 million. A separate Center For Responsive Politics/Center for Public Integrity study found that in 2010, the social welfare nonprofits outspent super PACs by a 3-2 margin.
You mentioned super PACs? What’s the difference?
Here’s the key difference: Super PACs must disclose their donors while 501(c)(4)s do not. If you are a donor looking to influence election but do not want to reveal your identity, the 501(c)(4) is an attractive option through which to send your cash.
Why has the IRS gotten so many 501(c)(4) applications in recent years?
In short, conservative ones. The IRS says it flagged groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their names for extra scrutiny. The agency apologized and said partisanship did not motivate the tactics; rather, it was a misguided effort to come up with an efficient way to deal with the influx of applications. In addition, an inspector general’s report set to be released this week says the agency also gave extra scrutiny to groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution.
What’s next?
A lot more questions are going to be asked. Two congressional committees — the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee — are planning further investigations. The IG’s report will be released on Wednesday, which will shed more light on who in the IRS knew what and when they knew it.
Congressional Republicans and even some Democrats are up in arms. President Obama called it ”outrageous.” After a lot of review, look for officials and lawmakers to propose remedies to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.
Greetings citizens of the world, the following is a very special message for all of humanity. Too long have we lived in fear, fear of greed, fear of corruption, fear of failure, fear that everything we’ve known turned out to be wrong.
No longer will we live in fear! It ends here and now, with you and me! We are brothers and sisters of humanity, the time has come for us to unite! We must forge a new beginning of peace and love, we must be the good we want to see in the world.
Humanity is still young, and for the first time ever in human history we have a real chance at true peace as a species. The internet has united us more than ever before, its time we use this gift to promote the unity of us all. Its time we stand up as a planet and declare we will no longer take part in a system based on fear, greed, corruption, and war.
Lets put everything into perspective for those of you that need more convincing, the United Sates alone has spent trillions of dollars on wars. War has claimed the lives of over 264 million people throughout the course of known human history, many of whom where civilians. Human progress has been halted by senseless wars.
While we fight amongst ourselves on Earth there’s an entire universe passing us by. There are an estimated 160 billion planets in our galaxy alone, many of which could potentially be home to carbon-based life as we know it. Stars go supernova, entire solar systems get destroyed, even whole galaxies collide while we argue and fight over small and pointless issues. We should be happy we have a planet to live on, not fighting over who owns the planet. In truth no individual or even an entire species owns it, because in truth all life on Earth owns this planet.
Someday soon humanity will venture to the stars, will we go into the unknown divided and fighting? Or will we say as one voice, as one species, “We the People of Earth, united as one, declare from this day fourth that no force, however big or small, shall ever divide the spirit of humanity again. United in our cause for peace, knowledge, and progress, we go forward into the unknown as brothers and sisters, as a species no longer divided by war, greed, corruption, and fear.”
The choice is yours to make, you are Anonymous, you are the future of Earth. You can either continue the wars and division of humanity, or you can try something new. You can give peace a chance, you can help secure a beautiful world of peace, knowledge, and progress for all generations to come.
You are Anonymous,
You are part of Humanity,
You should Forgive,
yet You should never Forget,
It’s time to Expect Yourself…Lets unite under WORLD ANONYMOUS NOW.
With your help, may one day the innocent never suffer and the brave never die, for on that day we’ll truly be free. United as one, divided by zero.
anonymous ITU and WCIT 3-15 december
New Trend: Governing the Internet
TAKE ACTION for a FREE and OPEN INTERNET, Threat Wire Ep. 002
This week on Threat Wire, Darren and Shannon discuss the issues with the ITU and keeping the internet free and open for the world.
The UN have apparently released details that they will to add certain levels of control on the internet, which would for one thing cause traffic from abroad to larger international websites based in the US (such as facebook or Google) to have to pay a tax,.
“”Proposals for the new ITU treaty run to more than 200 pages. One idea is to apply the ITU’s long-distance telephone rules to the Internet by creating a ‘sender-party-pays’ rule. International phone calls include a fee from the originating country to the local phone company at the receiving end. Under a sender-pays approach, U.S.-based websites would pay a local network for each visitor from overseas, effectively taxing firms such as Google and Facebook. “
ALERT – United Nations To Seize Control Of Internet ?!?
United Nation Planning to Control The Internet – Alex Jones Tv
United Nations Seeks to Control the Internet – Thoughts & Opinions
Does the ITU threaten freedom of speech on the Internet? – Truthloader
Assange s prophecy Govnts plan Internet takeover
Richard Hill at the EIF debate on WCIT and ITRs
The 193 member countries of the ITU will meet in Dubai 3-14 December at World Conference on International Telecommunication 2012 to revise the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), a 1988 treaty-level document establishing policies governing international telecommunications services between countries. While some Member States of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), as well as a few independent groups, are advocating for expanded intergovernmental powers over the Internet with respect to the Internet as well as wireless, IP-based, and next generation networks; other countries believe that the WCIT should adopt only minor changes to the ITRs as necessary to modernize the existing provisions of the treaty, and that new provisions and authorities are unnecessary.
Europe’s role and view will be crucial in the debate and to its outcome. In the dinner debate organised by the European Internet Foundation, representatives from the European Commission, European Industry and Civil society had been invited to exchange views on issues at stake and present their positions.
Perspectives from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) were presented by Richard Hill, Counsellor at the ITU
Vint Cerf on the ITU
Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, shares a message with participants at the Big Tent Dublin on the importance of free expression. Vint also expresses his concerns about potential threats to an Open Internet in Internet governance reform at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) conference in Dubai in December 2012.
YOUR INTERNET IS IN DANGER!!!
Your internet is fine. I lied. But Google lied first, so I think it’s justified.
Alex Jones Exposes Google’s Plan to Dominate the Internet
Goodlatte speaks in opposition to UN control of the Internet
ITU TELECOM WORLD 2012 – Highlights Video
Highlights video of ITU TELECOM WORLD 2012, Dubai, UAE.
ITU Telecom World 2012, 14-18 October 2012, Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC).
Five days of pivotal discussion and debate on some of the hottest topics facing the ICT industry.
The world is changing faster than ever before in human history, thanks largely to the explosive growth of the ICT sector. New technologies, new industry players and new global trends is at the heart of debates in Dubai.
Hundreds of industry leaders came together with government ministers, regulators and manufacturers for five days of critical debate to shape the policies, regulations and competitive strategies of future communications.
ITU INTERVIEW @ WCIT-12: Paul Budde, Independent Analyst, BuddeComm
Interview with Paul Budde, Independent Analyst, BuddeComm at WCIT 2012
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 3-14 December 2012.
The World Conference on International Telecommunications will review the current International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), which serve as the binding global treaty designed to facilitate international interconnection and interoperability of information and communication services, as well as ensuring their efficiency and widespread public usefulness and availability.
ITU Secretary – General Video Message: Dr Hamadoun I.Touré, S-G, ITU on WCIT – 12
ITU Secretary General Video Message: Dr Hamadoun I.Touré, Secretary-General, International Telecommunications Union, speaking about the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012(WCIT -12).
ITU will convene the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 3-14 December 2012. This landmark conference will review the current International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which serve as the binding global treaty designed to facilitate international interconnection and interoperability of information and communication services, as well as ensuring their efficiency and widespread public usefulness and availability.
FRANCE 24 Tech 24: Who rules the Web? : ITU vs. ICANN
Internet at Liberty 2012: Plenary II - Riz Khan, Gary Fowlie, Ben Wagner
Possible Internet Take Over By The ITU (UN) [HD]
Spread the word, share & take action! :
*Sign-on Letter Opposing ITU Authority Over the Internet :
[Internet advocates all over the world are organizing around the upcoming ITU conference. On this page, we've collected a set of tools and resources to help interested groups and citizens get involved.]
Ivailo Kalfin (MEP, BG) argues in the European parliament that Internet should stay free and open, ahead of the WCIT meeting in Dubai in December. Internet is a very strong tool these days and there are many that would like to control it and the people, using it. For example by changing its business model and making it more expensive and less accessible. Some governments are even suggesting creating a “national internet”, which is an oxymoron, something that is against the nature of Internet itself, says Kalfin
Operation WCIT – Keep OUR internet Free
We love the internet.
And we’re guessing you do too. Think about all the awesome things it gives us: A vast communication network; innovative businesses; a platform to freely speak or challenge powerful governments; and hundreds and hundreds of hours of cat videos.
All this great stuff is available because the internet was designed in an open and inclusive way, with a multitude of voices being able to get a say on how it’s governed.
But the internet is in danger.
There’s a meeting between the world’s governments in a just a few weeks, and it could very well decide the future of the internet through a binding international treaty. It’s called the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), and it’s being organized by a government-controlled UN agency called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
If some proposals at WCIT are approved, decisions about the internet would be made by a top-down, old-school government-centric agency behind closed doors. Some proposals allow for internet access to be cut off more easily, threaten privacy, legitimizes monitoring and blocking of online traffic. Others seek to impose new fees for accessing content, not to mention slowing down connection speeds. Used as a pretext to internet pornography among other things as an excuse to censor sensitive material pages (note that there are too many cases of child pornography that are ignored by the police) In addition to paying for internet service, you’d also have to pay for visiting certain sites, such as YouTube. Your communications would be constantly monitored and archived, meaning the end of Internet privacy. This could potentially lead to individuals becoming victims of blackmail by malicious people who control the monitoring. The Internet is home to many organized social movements which fight for human rights worldwide. If we allow this, we will not be able to use the Internet to organize the defense of our rights…
If the delicate balance of the internet is upset, it could have grave consequences for businesses and human rights.
This must be stopped.
Only governments get a vote at WCIT, so we need people from all around the world to demand that our leaders keep the internet open.
Watch the video, and take action above to tell your governments to oppose handing over key decisions about the internet to the ITU. Let’s use the internet’s global reach to save it.
We are the internet
We are anonymous
We are here to help you with your revolution
Background Articles and Videos
World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12)
“…ITU will convene the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 3-14 December 2012. This landmark conference will review the current International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), which serve as the binding global treaty designed to facilitate international interconnection and interoperability of information and communication services, as well as ensuring their efficiency and widespread public usefulness and availability.
The treaty sets out general principles for assuring the free flow of information around the world, promoting affordable and equitable access for all and laying the foundation for ongoing innovation and market growth. The ITRs were last negotiated in Melbourne, Australia in 1988, and there is broad consensus that the text now needs to be updated to reflect the dramatically different information and communication technology (ICT) landscape of the 21st century.
This is Part One of what was originally a 24 album set of a presentation Robert Welch did in th early 1960′s. If you are a serious activist, listening to this is well worth the time.
One Dozen Trumpets Part 2 of 8
One Dozen Trumpets Part 3 of 8
One Dozen Trumpets Part 4 of 8
One Dozen Trumpets Part 5 of 8
One Dozen Trumpets Part 6 of 8
One Dozen Trumpets Part 7 of 8
One Dozen Trumpets Part 8 of 8
Background Articles and Videos
Robert Welch Founder of The John Birch Society 1974
An Introduction to The John Birch Society by Robert Welch 1962
“…The Quock Walker case was actually a series of judicial cases that successfully challenged the legality of slavery in Massachusetts, based on the 1780 state constitution. Although chattel slavery continued to exist in Massachusetts, the Quock Walker decision indicated that it would no longer be supported by the state courts. This was one of the first times in the country that a written constitution was applied directly as law.
In 1781, Quock Walker (also referred to Quok, Quacks, Quaco, Quack, Quork, and Quork Walker) escaped from Nathaniel Jennison and took refuge on a farm belonging to Seth and John Caldwell. Walker and his parents had been purchased by the Caldwells’older brother in 1754. When the elder Caldwell died, Walker had become the property of his widow, who later married Jennison.
Walker was captured by Jennison and his friends, severely beaten, and forced to return to the Jennison farm. A few days later, he filed suit against Jennison for assault and battery. Jennison countered by filing suit against the Caldwell brothers for interfering in the use of his property, arguing that they had enticed Walker away for their own benefit.
In the first case, Quock Walker v. Jennison, the jury found that Walker was “a Freeman and not the proper Negro slave” of Jennison, and awarded Walker 50 pounds in damages (he had asked for 300). Jennison lost his appeal when he failed to appear. In the two decades leading up to the Walker case, juries had found in favor of slaves who sued for freedom on the basis of contracts with their masters.
The jury in the second case, in contradiction to the first verdict, decided in favor of Jennison and awarded him twenty-five pounds, a decision that was reversed by the Supreme Judicial Court on appeal. In the appeal of Jennison v. Caldwell, the Caldwells’ lawyer did not argue on the basis of the state constitution; he said that slavery was a violation of the laws of nature and of God.
In the final case, Commonwealth v. Jennison, the defendant was indicted and charged with assault and battery against Walker. The Attorney General argued that Jennison had attacked a free man, based on testimony that Jennison was aware that Walker’s former master had promised him freedom once he reached the age of 25, a promise that was renewed by the widow. Jennison’s lawyer argued that the 1780 state constitution did not specifically prohibit slavery.
In his instructions to the jury, Chief Justice William Cushing held that the constitution granted rights that were incompatible with slavery; the jury found Jennison guilty of assault and battery.
No opinion was ever written in the case, nor was it set down in the law reports. It was, however, widely discussed. Although historians credit the case with abolishing slavery, some at the time attributed abolition in Massachuseets to the weight of public opinion. John Adams considered the abolition of slavery to be “a measure of economy.” In fact, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 was never amended to specifically prohibit slavery. …”
“…As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that (it is true) has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established. It has been a usage–a usage which took its origin from the practice of some of the European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then Colonies, for the benefit of trade and wealth. But whatever sentiments have formerly prevailed in this particular or slid in upon us by the example of others, a different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven (without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses–features) has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our Constitution of Government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal–and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property–and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract . . . .
Credit: Civil Rights and the Black American A Documentary History, edited by Albert P Blaustein and Robert L. Zangrando, published by Washington Square Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1968
Quock Walker, also known as Kwaku or Quok Walker (b. 1753 – d. unknown), was an Americanslave who sued for and won his freedom in June 1781 in a case citing language in the new Massachusetts Constitution (1780) that declared all men to be born free and equal. The case is credited with helping abolish slavery in Massachusetts, although the 1780 constitution was never amended to prohibit the practice. It was the second state after Vermont to end slavery. Vermont became th 14th State in 1791, but had abolished slavery in its formation as a Republic in 1777 before joining the Union. By the 1790 federal census, no slaves were recorded in the state.
Early life
Quock Walker was born in Massachusetts in 1753 to slaves Mingo and Dinah, who were believed to be of Ghanaian origins. He is believed to have been named Kwaku[1] in Ghanaian, for “boy born on Wednesday”, a traditional day-naming practice among the people.[2][3] The following year, the entire family was bought by James Caldwell, of the prominent Caldwell family of Worcester County.[4] Quock was promised his freedom at age 25 by Caldwell. Caldwell died when Quock was ten, but his widow renewed the promise to free the boy and promised him freedom at age 21. The widow Mrs. Caldwell married Nathaniel Jennison in 1763 and died about 1772, when Walker was 19.
When the time came for Walker’s promised manumission, Jennison refused to let him go. In 1781, Walker, then twenty-eight, ran away. He went to work at a nearby farm belonging to Seth and John Caldwell, brothers of his former master. Jennison retrieved him and beat him severely as punishment. Soon after, Walker sued Jennison for battery, and Jennison sued the Caldwells.
Background
By the mid-18th century, enslavement of Africans had become common practice in Massachusetts.[5] A 1754 census listed nearly 4500 slaves in the colony.[6]Abolitionist sentiment had been growing, especially as the philosophical underpinnings of independence and democracy became common parlance in the colony. While Massachusetts had derived wealth from the Triangle Trade, its merchant and mixed economy was not dependent on slave labor to the extent of southern states.
The cases
There were three trials related to these events, two civil and one criminal. These took place during the American Revolutionary War, when language about the equality of people was in the air and after the new Massachusetts constitution had been passed in 1780. The civil cases were : Jennison v. Caldwell (for “deprivation of the benefit of his servant, Walker”), apparently heard and decided first, and Quock Walker v. Jennison (for assault and battery),[4] both heard by the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas on June 12, 1781.
In the first case, Jennison argued that Caldwell had enticed away his employee Walker. The court found in his favor and awarded him 25 pounds. The Walker case was opened by the attorney considering the question of whether a previous master’s promise to free Walker gave him a right to freedom after that master had died. Walker’s lawyers argued that the concept of slavery was contrary to the Bible and the new Massachusetts Constitution (1780). The jury voted that Walker was a free man under the constitution and awarded him 50 pounds in damages.
Both decisions were appealed. Jennison’s appeal of Walker’s freedom was tossed out in September 1781 by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, either because he failed to appear[7] or because his lawyers did not submit the required court papers.[4][8] The Caldwells won the other appeal; a jury concurred that Walker was a free man, and therefore the defendants were entitled to employ him.
In September 1781, a third case was filed by the Attorney General against Jennison, Commonwealth v. Jennison, for criminal assault and battery of Walker. In his charge to the jury, Chief Justice William Cushing stated, “Without resorting to implication in constructing the constitution, slavery is…as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence.” This has been taken as setting the groundwork for the end of slavery in the state.[8][9] On April 20, 1783, Jennison was found guilty and fined 40 shillings.[4]
Aftermath of the trials
The state never formally abolished slavery until the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. Legislators were unable or unwilling to address either slave-owners’ concerns about losing their “investment”, or white citizens’ concerns that if slavery were abolished, freed slaves could become a burden on the community. Some feared that escaped slaves from elsewhere would flood the state.[10]
The Massachusetts Supreme Court decisions in Walker v. Jennison and Commonwealth v. Jennison established the basis for ending slavery in Massachusetts on constitutional grounds, but no law or amendment to the state constitution was passed. Instead slavery gradually ended “voluntarily” in the state over the next decade. The decisions in the Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker trials had removed its legal support and slavery was said to end by erosion. Some masters manumitted their slaves formally and arranged to pay them wages for continued labor. Other slaves were “freed” but were restricted as indentured servants for extended periods.[5] By 1790, the federal census recorded no slaves in the state.[11]
Mind blowing speech by Robert Welch in 1958 predicting Insiders plans to destroy America
NSA Building Colossal New Data Center: Spying on Americans
‘NSA are spying on the United States’
James Bamford: Inside the NSA’s Largest Secret Domestic Spy Center
Drones In America
Drones To Fly Over Midwestern Farms
Judge Napolitano Discusses Drones And Big Brother
Judge Napolitano : 30,000 Drones In U.S. Skies to spy on you violates Constitution (May 14, 2012)
30,000 ARMED DRONES to be used Against Americans
Phantom Eye: Pentagon builds gigantic mega-drone
Attack of the Drones – USA
The Drone War Coming to a Town Near You?
The Stream: The future of drone technology
The Slow Decline of Liberty – The Plain Truth – Judge Napolitano – Freedom Watch
Total surveillance: Thousands of secret court orders allow government to spy on Americans
SOPA, CISPA, FISA
FISA: US under total surveillance
Is The Government Spying On You? FISA Continues
Obama administration pushes to renew FISA
NSA under fire: Supreme Court to review Legality of Warrantless Wiretapping/Spying of U.S. Citizens
Big Brother spying on your car
FBI Caught Spying on Student with GPS Tracking Device
Anonymous Big Brother’s All Seeing Eye For Your Safety
SOPA changes name to CISPA
CISPA going international?
US House passes CISPA
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act
CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is picking up sponsors and it looks like the legislation will make it to the House floor for a vote next week. CISPA emerged from the House Intelligence Committee with an overwhelming vote of 17-1.
The bill, authored by Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, is supported by Google, the technology company in bed with the CIA and responsible for building the Great Firewall of China. Google is not alone in supporting CISPA. Corporate sponsors include Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Verizon, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others, according to the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, long a champion of rights online, has signed on to two coalition letters urging legislators to drop their support for HR 3523. The coalition behind the privacy letter includes dozens of groups, including the ACLU, the American Library Association, the American Policy Center, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and many others, according to the EFF website.
The letter warns: CISPA creates an exception to all privacy laws to permit companies to share our information with each other and with the government in the name of cybersecurity…. CISPA’s ‘information sharing’ regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like internet use history or the content of emails, to any agency in the government including military and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command. Once in government hands, this information can be used for any non-regulatory purpose so long as one significant purpose is for cybersecurity or to protect national security
Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act – CISPA - More Insights, pls see video responses
SOPA changes name to CISPA
CISPA: Another Fascist Takeover of the Internet. EMERGENCY ALERT!
Anonymous – CISPA Worse than SOPA
Ubiquitous Computing: Big Brother’s All-Seeing Eye – Part 1
Ubiquitous Computing: Big Brother’s All-Seeing Eye – Part 2
Words to Avoid Online Unless You Want Government Snooping
Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you (and they include ‘pork’, ‘cloud’ and ‘Mexico’)
Department of Homeland Security forced to release list following freedom of information request
Agency insists it only looks for evidence of genuine threats to the U.S. and not for signs of general dissent
Use of military surveillance drones overhead would be un-American
“…For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the government’s use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News Channel, where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done if – had they existed at the time – King George III had sent drones to peer inside the bedroom windows of Monticello. I suspect Jefferson and his household would have trained their muskets on the drones and taken them down. I offer this historical anachronism as a hypothetical only, not as someone who is urging the use of violence against the government.
Nevertheless, what Jeffersonians are among us today? When drones take pictures of us on our private property and in our homes and the government uses the photos as it wishes, what will we do about it? Jefferson understood that when the government assaults our privacy and dignity, it is the moral equivalent of violence against us. Folks who hear about this, who either laugh or groan, cannot find it humorous or boring that their every move will be monitored and photographed by the government.
Don’t believe me that this is coming? The photos that the drones will take may be retained and used or even distributed to others in the government so long as the “recipient is reasonably perceived to have a specific, lawful governmental function” in requiring them. And for the first time since the Civil War, the federal government will deploy military personnel insidetheUnitedStates and publicly acknowledge that it is deploying them “to collect information about U.S. persons.” …”
This is an excerpt from “Overview of America” produced by The John Birch Society. It is narrated by John McManus.
“There are 5 basic forms of government which are Monarchy(Rule by one person), Oligarchy(Rule by a small handful of people), Democracy(Rule by majority of the citizens), Republic(Rule by law), and Anarchy(No Government). This video relates these basic forms of government to our American government to clarify that we are in fact not a democracy but rather a Republic since democracies lead to anarchy and ultimately the tyranny of oligarchy.”
JBS (John Birch Society) Overview of America Part 1 (HQ)
John McManus narrates a moving tribute to America and discusses the history of what makes America great and how only we, as informed citizens, can keep the timeless concepts of Americanism alive.
Overview of America II – Stopping the New World Order
“John McManus, the president of the John Birch Society discusses the history of the elite’s grasp for globalism beginning in the late 18th Century and how it continues today. He demonstrates that history, politics, war, and government are not a series of accidents and coincidences, but rather, conspiratorial in nature. But who is part of the cabal and what is their end game? For answers, watch this presentation.”
Mind blowing speech by Robert Welch in 1958 predicting Insiders plans to destroy America
Background Articles and Videos
An Introduction to The John Birch Society by Robert Welch 1962
What is The John Birch Society?
“(circa 1965) John Birch Society founder Robert Welch briefly explains why he worked to form The John Birch Society and what type of people make for good members.”
The John Birch Society-An Invitation to Membership-1959
A Touch of Sanity by Robert Welch 1965
In One Generation 1974
Documentary on the John Birch Society
“A documentary from the 1960′s narrated by G. Edward Griffin.”
G. Edward Griffin: The Collectivist Conspiracy
The Still Report #34 – Robert Welch Critique – SR 34
Yaron Answers: Should the Supreme Court Overturn Obamacare?
Special Report Examines ‘Substantial’ Cost Increase For President’s Health Law
Andrew Napolitano Predicts 5-4 Obamacare Defeat!
Ron Paul Exposes Obamacare on Freedom Watch
Andrew Napolitano – Commerce Clause Gone Wild
David Rivkin Explains the Problem with ObamaCare’s Individual Mandate
Is Health Law’s Individual Mandate Constitutional? Legal Scholars Debate
Audio From Supreme Court Oral Arguments on Healthcare Mandate – Obamacare Part 1
Audio From Supreme Court Oral Arguments on Healthcare Mandate – Obamacare Part 2
Audio From Supreme Court Oral Arguments on Healthcare Mandate – Obamacare Part 3
Audio From Supreme Court Oral Arguments on Healthcare Mandate – Obamacare Part 4
Toobin: Obama healthcare reform law ‘in grave, grave trouble’
By Daniel Strauss – 03/27/12
“…A top legal analyst predicted Tuesday that the Obama administration’s healthcare reform legislation seemed likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court.
Jeffrey Toobin, a lawyer and legal analyst, who writes about legal topics for The New Yorker said the law looked to be in “trouble.” He called it a “trainwreck for the Obama administration.”
“This law looks like it’s going to be struck down. I’m telling you, all of the predictions, including mine, that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong,” Toobin said Tuesday on CNN. “I think this law is in grave, grave trouble.”
Toobin’s observation came on the second day of oral arguments at the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Earlier that day, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who could be the deciding vote on whether to uphold the law, told Solicitor General Donald Verrilli that there appeared to be a “very heavy burden of justification” on aspects of the law, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Toobin described Kennedy as “enormously skeptical” during the arguments Tuesday. …”
First Congress said it was a regulation of commerce. Now it’s supposed to be a tax. Neither claim will survive Supreme Court scrutiny.
By RANDY E. BARNETT
“…”tell” in poker is a subtle but detectable change in a player’s behavior or demeanor that reveals clues about the player’s assessment of his hand. Something similar has happened with regard to the insurance mandate at the core of last month’s health reform legislation. Congress justified its authority to enact the mandate on the grounds that it is a regulation of commerce. But as this justification came under heavy constitutional fire, the mandate’s defenders changed the argument—now claiming constitutional authority under Congress’s power to tax.
This switch in constitutional theories is a tell: Defenders of the bill lack confidence in their commerce power theory. The switch also comes too late. When the mandate’s constitutionality comes up for review as part of the state attorneys general lawsuit, the Supreme Court will not consider the penalty enforcing the mandate to be a tax because, in the provision that actually defines and imposes the mandate and penalty, Congress did not call it a tax and did not treat it as a tax.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) includes what it calls an “individual responsibility requirement” that all persons buy health insurance from a private company. Congress justified this mandate under its power to regulate commerce among the several states: “The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section,” the law says, “. . . is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce, as a result of the effects described in paragraph (2).” Paragraph (2) then begins: “The requirement regulates activity that is commercial and economic in nature: economic and financial decisions about how and when health care is paid for, and when health insurance is purchased.”
In this way, the statute speciously tries to convert inactivity into the “activity” of making a “decision.” By this reasoning, your “decision” not to take a job, not to sell your house, or not to buy a Chevrolet is an “activity that is commercial and economic in nature” that can be mandated by Congress.
It is true that the Supreme Court has interpreted the Commerce Clause broadly enough to reach wholly intrastate economic “activity” that substantially affects interstate commerce. But the Court has never upheld a requirement that individuals who are doing nothing must engage in economic activity by entering into a contractual relationship with a private company. Such a claim of power is literally unprecedented. …”
Birth-Control Mandate: Unconstitutional and Illegal
It violates the First Amendment and the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR.
AND EDWARD WHELAN
“…The refusal, for religious reasons, to provide birth-control coverage is clearly an exercise of religious freedom under the Constitution. The “exercise of religion” extends to performing, or refusing to perform, actions on religious grounds—and it is definitely not confined to religious institutions or acts of worship. Leading Supreme Court cases in this area, for example, involve a worker who refused to work on the Sabbath (Sherbert v. Verner, 1963) and parents who refused to send their teenage children to a public high school (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972).
In the high-school case, the Supreme Court found that even a $5 fine on the parents substantially burdened the free exercise of their religion. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, employers who fail to comply with the birth-control mandate will incur an annual penalty of roughly $2,000 per employee. So it is clearly a substantial burden.
Objecting employers could, of course, avoid the fine by choosing to go out of business. But as the Supreme Court noted in Sherbert v. Verner, “governmental imposition of such a choice puts the same kind of burden upon the free exercise of religion as would a fine imposed against” noncompliant parties.
The birth-control mandate also fails the Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s “compelling governmental interest” and “least restrictive means” tests. …”
“…The Constitution limits federal power by granting Congress authority in certain defined areas, such as the regulation of interstate and foreign commerce. Those powers not specifically vested in the federal government by the Constitution or, as stated in the 10th Amendment, “prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The court will now determine whether those words still have meaning.
The President’s health-care law faces a Constitutional reckoning, Daniel Henninger discusses on Opinion Journal.
As we argued two years ago in these pages, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is unconstitutional. First and foremost, the law requires virtually every American to have health insurance. Congress purported to impose this unprecedented “individual mandate” pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, but the requirement is not limited to those who engage in any particular commercial or economic activity (or any activity at all). Rather, the mandate applies to everyone lawfully present in the United States who does not fall within one of the law’s narrow exclusions.
Under our Constitution’s system of dual sovereignty, only states have the authority to impose health and safety regulations on individuals simply because they are present. The Supreme Court has ruled many times that the Constitution denies to the federal government this type of “general police power.” Federal legislation must be grounded in one of the “enumerated” powers the Constitution grants to Congress—such as the power to regulate interstate commerce. Although the Supreme Court has interpreted that power broadly (especially since the 1940s), it has consistently held that the Commerce Clause has limits.
If Congress can require individuals to buy or otherwise obtain and maintain health insurance simply because they may be said to impact commerce by their very existence, without regard to any particular activity in which they have chosen to engage, then there is no limit on federal power. For example, if Congress can require you to buy health insurance because your lack of insurance may, at some point in the future, impose costs on the wider economy, then on the same theory it can require the purchase (or sale) of virtually any good or service, since the failure to have or use the relevant product can always be said to have some economic impact. …”
Obamacare Mandates Justified by ‘Interstate Commerce’?The administration’s argument before the Supreme Court recycles an old trick.
By Thomas Sowell
“…Roscoe Filburn was an Ohio farmer who grew some wheat to feed his family and some farm animals. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture fined him for growing more wheat than he was allowed to grow under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which was passed under Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.
Filburn pointed out that his wheat wasn’t sold, so that it didn’t enter any commerce, interstate or otherwise. Therefore the federal governmenthad no right to tell him how much wheat (which never left his own farm) he could grow.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says that all powers not explicitly given to the federal government belong to the states or to the people. So you might think that Filburn was right.
But the Supreme Court said otherwise. Even though the wheat on Filburn’s farm never entered the market, just the fact that “it supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market” meant that it affected interstate commerce. So did the fact that the home-grown wheat could potentially enter the market.
The implications of this kind of reasoning reached far beyond farmers and wheat. Once it was established that the federal government could regulate not only interstate commerce itself, but anything with any potential effect on interstate commerce, the Tenth Amendment’s limitations on the powers of the federal government virtually disappeared.
Over the years, “interstate commerce” became magic words to justify almost any expansion of the federal government’s power, in defiance of the Tenth Amendment. That is what the Obama administration is depending on to get today’s Supreme Court to uphold the administration’s power to tell people that they have to buy the particular health insurance specified by the federal government. …”
“…Since virtually everything affects virtually everything else, however remotely, “interstate commerce” can by this kind of sophistry justify virtually any expansion of government power.
The principle that the legal authority to regulate X implies the authority to regulate anything that can affect X is a huge and dangerous leap of logic in a world where all sorts of things have some effect on all sorts of other things.
As an example, take a law that liberals, conservatives, and everybody else would agree is valid — namely, that cars have to stop at red lights. Local governments certainly have the right to pass such laws and to punish those who disobey them. No doubt people who are tired or drowsy are more likely to run through a red light than people who are rested and alert. But does that mean that local governments should have the power to order people when to go to bed and when to get up, because their tiredness can have an effect on the likelihood of their driving through a red light?
The power to regulate indirect effects is not a slippery slope. It is the disastrous loss of freedom that lies at the bottom of a slippery slope. …”
“The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of it’s attainment. And the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity.”
~George Washington
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
~Thomas Jefferson
“Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”
~James Madison
President Eisenhower – Farewell Warning
John F. Kennedy’s most memorable speech’s highlights+transcript/subtitles
Reagan – A Time For Choosing
Ron Paul Incredible Video Twice Removed YouTube
“Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.”
~George Washington
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
~Abraham Lincoln
“Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.”
~John F. Kennedy
Background Articles and Videos
Eisenhower Farewell Address (Full)
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farewell Address
delivered 17 January 1961
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other — Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling — on my part — of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insiduous [insidious] in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research — these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations — corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many fast frustrations — past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament — of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust in that — in that — in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations’ great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the sources — scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
The Entire John F Kennedy ‘Secret Society’ Speech Uncut with Subtitles and Transcript
John F. Kennedy
Address to the American Newspaper Publishers
delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:
I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight. You bear heavy responsibilities these days and a article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession.
You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx. We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and managing editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of five dollars per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the “lousiest petty bourgeois cheating.”
But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath to the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution, and the Cold War.
If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had — had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different. And I — I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal from a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper man.
I have selected as a title of my remarks tonight “The President and the Press.” Some may suggest that this would be more naturally worded “The President Versus the Press.” But those are not my sentiments tonight. It is true, however, that when a well-known diplomat from another country demanded recently that our State Department repudiate certain newspaper attacks on his colleague it was unnecessary for us to reply that this Administration was not responsible for the press, for the press had already made it clear that it was not responsible for this Administration.
Nevertheless, my purpose here tonight is not to deliver the usual assault on the so-called “one party press.” On the contrary, in recent months I have rarely heard any complaints about political bias in the press except from a few Republicans. Nor is it my purpose tonight to discuss or defend the televising of Presidential press conferences. I think it is highly beneficial to have some 20 million Americans regularly sit in on these conferences to observe, if I may say so, the incisive, the intelligent, and the courteous qualities displayed by your Washington correspondents.
Nor, finally, are these remarks intended to examine the proper degree of privacy which the press should allow to any President and his family. If in the last few months your White House reporters and photographers have been attending church services with regularity, that has surely done them no harm. On the other hand, I realize that your staff and wire service photographers may be complaining that they do not enjoy the same green privileges at the local golf courses which they once did. It is true that my predecessor did not object as I do to pictures of one’s golfing skill in action. But neither on the other hand did he ever bean a Secret Service man.
My topic tonight is a more sober one — of concern to publishers as well as editors.
I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future — for reducing this threat or living with it — there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security — a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity.
This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President — two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.
The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it’s in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes, or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
But I do ask — But I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every newsman in the nation to reexamine his own standards, and to recognize the nature of our country’s peril. In time of war, the government and the press have customarily joined in an effort, based largely on self-discipline, to prevent unauthorized disclosures to the enemy. In times of “clear and present danger,” the courts have held that even the privileged rights of the First Amendment must yield to the public’s need for national security.
Today no war has been declared, and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired.
If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of “clear and present danger,” then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.
It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions — by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
Nevertheless, every democracy recognizes the necessary restraints of national security — and the question remains whether those restraints need to be more strictly observed if we are to oppose this kind of attack as well as outright invasion.
For the facts of the matter are that this nation’s foes have openly boasted of acquiring through our newspapers information they would otherwise hire agents to acquire through theft, bribery, or espionage; that details of this nation’s covert preparations to counter the enemy’s covert operations have been available to every newspaper reader, friend and foe alike; that the size, the strength, the location and the nature of our forces and weapons, and our plans and strategy for their use, have all been pinpointed in the press and other news media to a degree sufficient to satisfy any foreign power; and that, in at least in one case, the publication of details concerning a secret mechanism whereby satellites were followed required its alteration at the expense of considerable time and money.
The newspapers which printed these stories were loyal, patriotic, responsible, and well-meaning. Had we been engaged in open warfare, they undoubtedly would not have published such items. But in the absence of open warfare, they recognized only the tests of journalism and not the tests of national security. And my question tonight is whether additional tests should not now be adopted.
That question is for you alone to answer. No public official should answer it for you. No governmental plan should impose its restraints against your will. But I would be failing in my duty to the nation, in considering all of the responsibilities that we now bear and all of the means at hand to meet those responsibilities, if I did not commend this problem to your attention, and urge its thoughtful consideration.
On many earlier occasions, I have said — and your newspapers have constantly said — that these are times that appeal to every citizen’s sense of sacrifice and self-discipline. They call out to every citizen to weigh his rights and comforts against his obligations to the common good. I cannot now believe that those citizens who serve in the newspaper business consider themselves exempt from that appeal.
I have no intention of establishing a new Office of War Information to govern the flow of news. I am not suggesting any new forms of censorship or new types of security classifications. I have no easy answer to the dilemma that I have posed, and would not seek to impose it if I had one. But I am asking the members of the newspaper profession and the industry in this country to reexamine their own responsibilities, to consider the degree and the nature of the present danger, and to heed the duty of self-restraint which that danger imposes upon us all.
Every newspaper now asks itself, with respect to every story: “Is it news?” All I suggest is that you add the question: “Is it in the interest of national security?” And I hope that every group in America — unions and businessmen and public officials at every level — will ask the same question of their endeavors, and subject their actions to the same exacting tests. And should the press of America consider and recommend the voluntary assumption of specific new steps or machinery, I can assure you that we will cooperate whole-heartedly with those recommendations.
Perhaps there will be no recommendations. Perhaps there is no answer to the dilemma faced by a free and open society in a cold and secret war. In times of peace, any discussion of this subject, and any action that results, are both painful and without precedent. But this is a time of peace and peril which knows no precedent in history.
It is the unprecedented nature of this challenge that also gives rise to your second obligation — an obligation which I share. And that is our obligation to inform and alert the American people — to make certain that they possess all the facts that they need, and understand them as well — the perils, the prospects, the purposes of our program and the choices that we face.
No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition. And both are necessary. I am not asking your newspapers to support an Administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.
I not only could not stifle controversy among your readers — I welcome it. This Administration intends to be candid about its errors; for as a wise man once said: “An error doesn’t not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors; and we expect you to point them out when we miss them.
Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution — not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply “give the public what it wants” — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate, and sometimes even anger public opinion.
This means greater coverage and analysis of international news — for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security — and we intend to do it.
It was early in the 17th Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder, and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world’s efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.
And so it is to the printing press — to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news — that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.
Program Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, we take pride in presenting a thoughtful address by Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan:
Reagan: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn’t been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.
I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, “We’ve never had it so good.”
But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We’ve raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don’t own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we’ve just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it’s been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down: [up] man’s old — old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the “Great Society,” or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they’ve been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, “The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism.” Another voice says, “The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state.” Or, “Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century.” Senator Fulbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as “our moral teacher and our leader,” and he says he is “hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document.” He must “be freed,” so that he “can do for us” what he knows “is best.” And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.”
Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as “the masses.” This is a term we haven’t applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, “the full power of centralized government” — this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.
Now, we have no better example of this than government’s involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming — that’s regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we’ve spent 43 dollars in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don’t grow.
Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as President, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he’ll find out that we’ve had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He’ll also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He’ll find that they’ve also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn’t keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.
At the same time, there’s been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There’s now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can’t tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.
Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but how — who are farmers to know what’s best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.
Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a “more compatible use of the land.” The President tells us he’s now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we’ve only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they’ve taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we’ve sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency.
They’ve just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you’re depressed, lie down and be depressed.
We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they’re going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer — and they’ve had almost 30 years of it — shouldn’t we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we’re told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We’re spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you’ll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we’d be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.
Now — so now we declare “war on poverty,” or “You, too, can be a Bobby Baker.” Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we’re spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have — and remember, this new program doesn’t replace any, it just duplicates existing programs — do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the new program that isn’t duplicated. This is the youth feature. We’re now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we’re going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we’re going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.
But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who’d come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She’s eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who’d already done that very thing.
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we’re always “against” things — we’re never “for” anything.
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.
Now — we’re for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we’ve accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.
But we’re against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They’ve called it “insurance” to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they’re doing just that.
A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary — his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he’s 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they’re due — that the cupboard isn’t bare?
Barry Goldwater thinks we can.
At the same time, can’t we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn’t you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we’re for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we’re against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They’ve come to the end of the road.
In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar’s worth, and not 45 cents worth?
I think we’re for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we’re against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world’s population. I think we’re against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.
I think we’re for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we’re against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We’re helping 107. We’ve spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So, governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear.
Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.
Federal employees — federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation’s work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man’s property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.
Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, “If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States.” I think that’s exactly what he will do.
But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn’t the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died — because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.
Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the — or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men — that we’re to choose just between two personalities.
Well what of this man that they would destroy — and in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I’ve been privileged to know him “when.” I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I’ve never known a man in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.
This is a man who, in his own business before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn’t work. He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.
An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas. And he said that [there were] a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. And then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, “Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such,” and they went down there, and there was a fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in those weeks before Christmas, all day long, he’d load up the plane, fly it to Arizona, fly them to their homes, fly back over to get another load.
During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, “There aren’t many left who care what happens to her. I’d like her to know I care.” This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, “There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start.” This is not a man who could carelessly send other people’s sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the other problems I’ve discussed academic, unless we realize we’re in a war that must be won.
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy “accommodation.” And they say if we’ll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer — not an easy answer — but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we’re willing to make a deal with your slave masters.” Alexander Hamilton said, “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” Now let’s set the record straight. There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace — and you can have it in the next second — surrender.
Admittedly, there’s a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face — that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand — the ultimatum. And what then — when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we’re retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he’s heard voices pleading for “peace at any price” or “better Red than dead,” or as one commentator put it, he’d rather “live on his knees than die on his feet.” And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don’t speak for the rest of us.
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it’s a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” “There is a point beyond which they must not advance.” And this — this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater’s “peace through strength.” Winston Churchill said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits — not animals.” And he said, “There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.
Rick Santorum on Illegal Immigration – NOT Conservative
Rick Santorum Doesn’t Believe in … Freedom? ( Freedom Watch Judge Napolitano 1-5-2012 )
Big Government Liberal Rick Santorum Exposed
Matt Welch Discusses Rick Santorum’s Anti-Libertarian Beliefs on Freedom Watch
Ron Paul OWNS Rick Santorum!
Mitt Romney: I’m Progressive
MITT ROMNEY eX- posed:The Great Flip Flopper and Fed Shill
Mitt Romney on Taxes, Guns, Abortion
Still Voting For ‘Mitt Romney’?
Ron Paul: Counterfeit Conservatives
Ron Paul: Absolutely “No Deal” with Romney
Ron Paul – “The one who can beat Obama”
No One But Paul — Can Beat Obama
My political philosophy is classical liberalism or what is commonly referred to in the United States as libertarianism.
Starting with Barry Goldwater in 1964 I have been a member of the conservative movement.
Today I am also a supporter of the tea party movement.
I consider myself to be a libertarian conservative, although I am comfortable with both traditional conservatives and national defense conservatives.
A limited constitutional government in scope, size and power with balanced or surplus budgets is the number one issue with me.
Since 2006 I have been an independent.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties are not fiscally responsible.
I will never vote for a progressive and/or neoconservative whether Republican or Democratic.
SA@TAC – What’s a ‘Neoconservative?’
SA@TAC – The Great Neo-Con: Libertarianism Isn’t ‘Conservative’
SA@TAC – Daniel McCarthy on Neoconservatism
Ron Paul, the ONLY Constant Conservative
Big government progressive Republicans in the past include Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Robert Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain.
Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are all big government progressive neoconservative Republicans.
The only true libertarian conservative president that won two landslide victories was President Ronald Reagan.
Only one candidate would cut the U.S government budget by $1 trillion or $1,000 billion in fiscal year 2013, close five federal departments and balance the budget in three years–Ron Paul– a libertarian conservative.
Ron Paul Ad – Secure
Ron Paul Ad – Plan
This is what the conservative and tea party movements want most of all.
Only one candidate of either party has the wisdom, vision and courage to propose such a plan.
If you want another war, great depression/recession, escalating gas and food prices and food stamps–a warfare and welfare state– than vote for Gingrich, Romney, Santorum or Obama.
If you want a peace and prosperity economy and your freedom vote for Ron Paul.
I will support and vote for Ron Paul as a Republican or as a candidate on another party’s ticket.
I will never vote for any progressive and/or neoconservative in either political party.
Unfortunately, most voters including conservatives, vote for the candidate they like and identify with instead of examining a candidate’s political philosophy and position on the issues.
SA@TAC – Identity vs. Philosophy
Largely out of ignorance they fall for fake conservative candidates that are big government progressives and/or neoconservatives.
Gingrich, Santorum and Romney are undeniably big government progressive neoconservatives as evidenced by their own words and actions.
The American people are slowly but surely waking up to the fact that progressive politicians control both political parties in the United States.
Neither libertarian conservatives nor traditional conservatives will support big government progressive conservatives.
They will mostly stay home if the choice is between Obama, Gingrich, Santorum and Romney.
The conservative and tea party movements must rally behind Ron Paul.
No candidate is perfect, but Ron Paul is a consistent libertarian conservative and a man of character and integrity.
He is the best candidate the American people have for he truly understands how dire the economic situation really is and knows what needs to be done to avoid another Great Depression.
Joe Scarborough Credits Ron Paul for Predicting the Housing Bubble
Peter Schiff – “Remember, I Supported Ron Paul”
Peter Schiff – “Ron Paul Only Candidate I Trust”
Jim Rogers – none of the candidates have clue except Ron Paul
“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Newt: Obama Has Declared War on Religious Freedom in America
Obama Administration, Catholic Leaders Clash Over Contraception Mandate
Catholic League Poised To Go To War With Obama
The Health Care Betrayal
Obama Birth Control Mandate Debate Heats Up
Citizenlink Report: HHS Draws Line in Sand
Becket Fund on Stossel discussing HHS mandate
Our President Who Art in DC
Obama’s Anti-Catholic HHS Mandate
Obama Promises Abortion in Public Plan
Abortion doctor: ‘Am I killing? Yes, I am’
Glenn Beck & Bill Donohue Discuss Obama Admin vs. Catholic Church Contraception Debate – Part 1
Glenn Beck & Bill Donohue Discuss Obama Admin vs. Catholic Church Contraception Debate – Part II
Fr. David interviewed about HHS mandate and the Church
Ave Maria University Will Fight HHS Mandate
Obama Admin: Birth Control Mandate is Final; Bishops Vow to Fight
We Will Not Comply’: Catholic Leaders Distribute Letter Slamming Obama Admin Contraceptive Mandate
Obama The Betrayer of The Constitution and The American People
Obamacare: Abortion’s Trojan Horse
For The Record : Obama’s Abortion Bailout
Barack’s Big Abortion Bailout
Planned Parenthood’s Roots
Planned Parenthood’s Victims
Abortion and Black Genocide (Barack Obama and the Negro Project)
“…Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn’t that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant. Did you know that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a devout racist who created the Negro Project designed to sterilize unknowing black women and others she deemed as undesirables of society? The founder of Planned Parenthood said, “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.” Is her vision being fulfilled today? …”
Alex Jones – The Real Story Behind Bill Gates And his Death Panels!
Maafa 21
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 1/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 2/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 3/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 4/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 5/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 6/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 7/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 8/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 9/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 10/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 11/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 12/13)
Abortion: Black Genocide in 21st Century America (Part 13/13)
Repealing Obamacare and Restoring a Free Market in Healthcare
The Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination(Depopulation Eugenics) Exposed by Webster Tarpley 1 of 4
The Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination(Depopulation Eugenics) Exposed by Webster Tarpley 2 of 4
The Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination(Depopulation Eugenics) Exposed by Webster Tarpley 3 of 4
The Elite’s Plan for Global Extermination(Depopulation Eugenics) Exposed by Webster Tarpley 4 of 4
GlennBeck Eugenics part1 Short History
GlennBeck Eugenics part2 Healthcare Czars
Glenn Beck Eugenics part3 Healthcare Tree
Obama’s Eugenics Hoax Exposed
Repeal ObamaCare
Ron Paul Exposes Obamacare on Freedom Watch
“Ron Paul slammed Obama’s unconstitutional healthcare package on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch. The Congressman announced that he will introduce legislation to stop the government from forcing people to buy health insurance.
Ron Paul is America’s leading voice for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies.”
Ron Paul – Life is Precious
New Ron Paul Ad (Pro-Life): Staying on the Right Path
Ron Paul or Rick Santorum: Whom Should Catholics Choose?
Obama doesn’t believe in Natural law
Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell on Obamacare, Swine Flu and Big Government 8.18.09
President Obama will lose the Catholic vote and any chance he had to be re-elected President.
The Catholics are organizing to defeat Obama.
People of all religious faiths should wake up to this state threat to religious freedom.
Vote Obama and his radical progressive socialists out of office.
Repeal Obamacare by supporting and voting for only candidates for public office who want the repeal of Obamacare.
Ron Paul is defender of the Constitution and for liberty.
Both young voters and independents are the biggest supporters of Ron Paul.
Catholics and grandparents are now seeing the wisdom of voting for a defender of freedom of religion and the Constitution.
Death panels to kill the old and birth control, sterilization and abortion to kill the young.
The radical progressive socialists are dangerous to your health and life.
“…But Obama, at a meeting with Senate Democrats, reaffirmed his decision and was “not equivocating,” Senator Frank Lautenberg, who attended the closed-door session, told Reuters.
Republicans have seized upon the issue, seeing a chance to paint Obama as anti-religion and put him on the defensive at a time when signs of economic improvement appear to have energized his re-election bid.
The White House, caught off-guard by the fury of the response and now trying to calm objections, accused the Republicans of trying to make “political hay” out of the issue. It said it had begun outside discussions but gave no immediate sign of what, if any, concessions it might make.
“This attack … on religious freedom in our country cannot stand and will not stand,” Boehner vowed in a speech on the floor of his chamber.
The escalating fight centers on a provision in the 2010 healthcare law that requires health insurance to cover basic birth control services for women – even at Catholic charities, hospitals and universities.
Catholic bishops contend the policy infringes on religious liberty because the church does not condone the use of birth control pills or other contraceptives.
Boehner said if the president refuses to rescind the measure, Congress will do so legislatively.
But such a bill would have little chance of getting through a divided Congress. While Boehner may secure backing in the Republican-dominated House, he faces problems in the Senate, which is controlled by Obama’s fellow Democrats.
No matter how Congress responds, Obama is in a political bind. A retreat would anger his liberal base, while refusal to budge could alienate some Catholic voters. …”
“…As soon as Sebelius released this decision, the Catholic church panicked. The Conference of Catholic Bishops reached out to the administration to explain the position in which it had put them. But the tone of their concern was largely friendly: Most Catholic leaders were convinced that the entire thing was a misunderstanding and that the policy—which was labeled an “interim” measure—would eventually be amended.
The reason for this optimism was that more than a few important Catholics had previously climbed out on a high branch for Obama politically, and for his health care reform as a matter of policy. Despite what you may read in the New York Times, most lay Catholics are nominally at home in the Democratic party. (Remember that a majority of Catholics voted for Obama in 2008.) And what is true of the laity goes double for those in religious life. In 2009, Notre Dame president Father John Jenkins welcomed President Obama as the school’s commencement speaker in the face of a heated student protest. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops mostly kept its powder dry during the fight over Obamacare, and very few members of the church hierarchy actively, or even tacitly, opposed the bill. Others, such as Sister Carol Keehan, the president of the Catholic Health Association, actually lobbied in favor of it, early and often. So most Catholics took the president at his word when he met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan last fall and assured him that when the final version of the policy was eventually released, any fears would be allayed.
That was their mistake. Obama telephoned Dolan on the morning of January 20 to inform him that the only concession he intended to offer in the final policy was to extend the deadline for conformity to August 2013. Every other aspect of the policy enunciated by Sebelius would remain rigidly in place.
It’s unclear whether Obama anticipated the blowback which resulted from this announcement, or perhaps even welcomed the fight. The liberal Catholic establishment nearly exploded. Sister Keehan was so horrified she threw her lot in with the more conservative Dolan in full-throated opposition to Obama. Cardinal Roger Mahony, the spectacularly liberal archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, wrote, “I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience. . . . This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic community can muster.” Michael Sean Winters, the National Catholic Reporter’s leftist lion, penned a 1,800-word cri de coeur titled “J’accuse!” in which he declared that, as God was his witness, he would never again vote for Obama. The editors of the Jesuit magazine America denounced a “wrong decision,” while the Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne called the policy “unconscionable.” When you’ve lost even E.J. and the Jesuits, you’ve lost the church.
The reason liberal Catholics were so wounded is twofold. First, this isn’t a religio-cultural fight over Latin in the Mass or Gregorian chant. The subjects of contraception, abortion, and sterilization are not ornamental aspects of the Catholic faith; they flow from the Church’s central teachings about the dignity of the human person. Second, Obama has left Catholic organizations a very narrow set of options. (1) They may truckle to the government’s mandate, in violation of their beliefs. (2) They may cease providing health insurance to their employees altogether, though this would incur significant financial penalties under Obamacare. (The church seems unlikely to obtain any of Nancy Pelosi’s golden waivers.) Or (3) they may simply shut down. There is precedent for this final option. In 2006, Boston’s Catholic Charities closed its adoption service—one of the most successful in the nation—after Massachusetts law required that the organization must place children in same-sex households.
Which means that what is actually on the block are precisely the kind of social-justice services—education, health care, and aid to the needy—that liberal Catholics believe to be the most vital works of the church. For conservative Catholics, Obama merely confirmed their darkest suspicions; for liberals, it was a betrayal in full.
As a matter of law, this decision by Obama’s health care bureaucrats seems unlikely to survive. Last month, the Supreme Court struck down another attempt by the administration to bully religious believers in the Hosanna-Tabor case. In that instance, Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission argued that a religious organization does not have the right to control its hiring and firing according to its religious belief. The Court struck down this argument 9-0 in a rebuke so embarrassing that Justice Elena Kagan came close to openly mocking her successor as Obama’s solicitor general during oral arguments. It was the kind of sweeping decision that should have deterred the Obama administration from forcing Catholics into complying with the health insurance mandate, because it suggested that the Court will very likely side against the administration once this matter comes before it. Presidents typically dislike being overturned unanimously by the High Court …”
“…While Catholics were blindsided by the January decision, the left had been paying close attention to the subject for months. In November, several leftist and feminist blogs began beating the war drums, warning Obama not to “cave” (their word) to the bishops. They were joined by the Nation, Salon, the Huffington Post, and the usual suspects. (Sample headline: “The Men Behind the War on Women.”) At the same time, Planned Parenthood and NARAL launched grassroots lobbying efforts and delivered petitions with 100,000 and 135,000 signatures respectively to the White House urging Obama to uphold the policy and not compromise.
In that sense, Obama’s decision might be thought of as akin to his decision halting the Keystone oil pipeline: a conscious attempt to energize his base at the expense of swing voters, who he concluded were already lost.
The other possibility, of course, is that Obama sees the dismantling of Catholic institutions as part of a larger ideological mission, worth losing votes over. As Yuval Levin noted in National Review Online last week, institutions such as the Catholic church represent a mediating layer between the individual and the state. This layer, known as civil society, is one of the principal differences between Western liberal order and the socialist view. …”
“Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church,” said Catholic League head Bill Donohue.
Already Archbishop Timothy Dolan has spoken out against the law and priests around the country have mobilized, reading letters from the pulpit. Donohue said Catholic officials will stop at nothing to put a stop to it.
“This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets,” Donohue said. …”
The abortion provider uses a vast media and political network to maintain its subsidies from government and private charities.
“…Planned Parenthood has spent millions fighting even those legislative initiatives that command extremely wide public support, such as laws requiring parental notification and informed consent for abortions, and those banning late-term abortions when the child developing in the womb is fully viable. Planned Parenthood even opposes a bill recently introduced in Congress to ban abortions for the purpose of sex selection.
It is easy to see why Komen might not wish to be associated with Planned Parenthood. Fighting breast cancer is something all Americans can and do agree on; promoting and performing abortions is something that divides us bitterly.
While Planned Parenthood’s target in the Komen case was new, its tactics are not. In the past two years, we have seen the abortion giant (and the politicians it funds) hold for ransom a diverse array of hostages.
In 2010, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress risked and narrowly averted the rejection of their signature health-care law in order to block the inclusion of provisions (such as the 1970s Hyde Amendment) that prevent federal abortion funding. At the 11th hour, a handful of “pro-life” Democrats capitulated, giving Mr. Obama and Planned Parenthood their victory.
Last year, in April, Mr. Obama risked a government shutdown over language in a resolution that would have defunded Planned Parenthood at the federal level. At the last moment, congressional Republicans gave way and allowed the federal money to keep flowing.
Also in 2011, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services threatened to withhold billions of dollars in Medicaid funds from those states such as Indiana that prohibit state funding of Planned Parenthood and other entities that provide elective abortions. Planned Parenthood strongly opposed Indiana’s attempt to cut off its funding and celebrated the federal government’s intervention. Indiana is currently litigating the matter in federal court.
Most recently, after intense lobbying, the Department of Health and Human Services did the bidding of Planned Parenthood by imposing a mandate on virtually all employers to provide insurance coverage (without cost-sharing) for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations and contraceptives. This threatens to force many religiously affiliated charitable institutions out of the business of providing education, health care and social services to the poor. …”
Archbishop to U.S. Troops: Obamacare Reg ‘Is a Blow to a Freedom…for Which You Have Seen Your Buddies Fall in Battle’
By Terence P. Jeffrey
“…The regulation the archbishop spoke about was finalized by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Jan. 20. It mandates that all health-care plans in the United States cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions. A “religious” employer exemption included in the regulation only applies to organizations that primarily focus on inculcating the tenets of the church in question, primarily employ members of the church, primarily serve members of the church, and is organized under the section of the Internal Revenue Code used by actual parishes.
Catholic hospitals, universities and charitable institutions would not be exempt from the regulation, nor would Catholic individuals, business owners, or insurers.
Because the Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception, and abortion are morally wrong and that Catholics cannot be involved in them, and because the Obamacare law requires that all individual purchase health insurance and that larger employers provide health insurance to their workers or face a penalty, the regulation would force Catholics to act against the teachings of their faith and against their consciences.
Archbishop Broglio’s letter opposing the regulation and describing it as a violation of the constitutional rights of Catholics was read verbatim at Masses served by Navy and Air Force chaplains around the world.
However, the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains attempted to silence Catholic Army chaplains from reading it at their Masses—an effort rejected and resisted by Archbishop Broglio.
“On Thursday, January 26, Archbishop Broglio emailed a pastoral letter to Catholic military chaplains with instructions that it be read from the pulpit at Sunday Masses the following weekend in all military chapels,” the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military said in a statement.
“The letter calls on Catholics to resist the policy initiative, recently affirmed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, for federally mandated health insurance covering sterilization, abortifacients and contraception, because it represents a violation of the freedom of religion recognized by the U.S. Constitution,” said the statement by the archdiocese.
“The Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains subsequently sent an email to senior chaplains advising them that the Archbishop’s letter was not coordinated with that office and asked that it not be read from the pulpit,” said the archdiocese’s statement. “The Chief’s office directed that the letter was to be mentioned in the Mass announcements and distributed in printed form in the back of the chapel.”
On Saturday, Jan. 28, after the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains issued this directive, Archbishop Broglio spoke with Secretary of the Army John McHugh, a political appointee of President Barack Obama.
Archbishop Broglio’s position was that, in trying to stop Catholic Army chaplains from reading his pastoral letter, the Army was violating his First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion and the First Amendment rights of Catholic chaplains and Catholic service members. …”
Obama administration struggles to contain uproar over birth-control rule
By Amie Parnes and Sam Baker -
“…The White House struggled Wednesday to contain the growing uproar over its birth-control mandate, with Democrats peeling off one by one in what has become an increasingly divisive election-year controversy.
Pressure to roll back the new contraception policy mounted quickly as the day wore on, driven by divisions among Democrats, mixed messages from President Obama’s advisers and a constant drumbeat from the GOP.
“It’s becoming a thorny problem for the White House and it appears to only be getting worse,” said one Democratic strategist. “The politically astute move would be to modify this thing, and quick.”
Asked if the administration should shift course, a former senior administration official said, “I don’t see how they couldn’t. It’s pretty bad.”
With the consternation rising to a fever pitch, Republicans announced a plan to move a bill soon that would repeal the mandate. And prominent Democrats are breaking with the administration over the policy, which requires some religious organizations to cover contraception in their employees’ healthcare plans.
Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) urged the White House last week to broaden the exception for religious employers. Several of their Democratic colleagues have piled on since.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said Wednesday that the Health and Human Services Department “misstepped” in adopting the new policy.
“I just don’t think this is a fight that should have been picked and I think it needs to be fixed,” Connolly said. “I have every confidence that the administration will do so.”
Tim Kaine, a former Democratic National Committee chairman running for Senate in Virginia this year, also said the White House should revisit the rule’s exemptions for religious organizations. The current policy does not apply to churches, but institutions such as Catholic hospitals and universities have to comply.
“I think the White House made a good decision in including a mandate for contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act insurance policy, but I think they made a bad decision in not allowing a broad enough religious-employer exemption,” Kaine said in a radio interview, according to a transcript provided by his campaign. …”
Southern Baptist leader: If Obama mandate isn’t changed, Christians will go to jail
by Ben Johnson
“…One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans.
Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD.
“We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail,” Dr. Land said.
Dr. Land wrote an op-ed on Tuesday with Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research at ERLC, calling his fellow Southern Baptists and evangelical Christians throughout America to oppose any infringement on the First Amendment. …”
“…I thank Vice President Joe Biden for visiting Ohio today.
The Sisters of Charity Health System is a Cleveland-based Catholic health-care organization which, in collaboration with other Catholic health ministries, actively promoted the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We are dedicated to increased health-care coverage and access and are supportive of the law’s efforts to improve quality of care and patient outcomes.
I ask the vice president to help Catholic and other faith-based employers with a recent federal action. We are very disappointed with the Health and Human Services rule on women’s preventive services that requires the inclusion of contraceptive coverage and sterilization in employer-based employee-benefits plans. The regulation denies adequate conscience protections for religious employers like us.
Our faith motivates us; we carry out the healing mission because of God’s call. And we are blessed to be joined in our ministry by a diverse and inclusive work force.
We urge President Barack Obama to be consistent with existing provider conscience-protection laws and allow us to exercise our First Amendment rights to conscience protection as faith-based employers. Please fix this discriminatory rule.
Religious Self-Identification of the U.S. Adult Population: 1990, 2001, 2008[63] Figures are not adjusted for refusals to reply; investigators suspect refusals are possibly more representative of “no religion” than any other group.
Meet John Doe: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Brennan, Gene Lockhart (1941 Movie)
Meet John Doe
“…Meet John Doe is a 1941 American comedy drama film directed and produced by Frank Capra, and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. The film is about a “grassroots” political campaign created unwittingly by a newspaper columnist and pursued by a wealthy businessman. It became a box office hit and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story. Though the film is less well known than other Frank Capra classics, it remains highly regarded today. It was ranked #49 in AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Cheers. In 1969, the film entered the public domain (in the USA) due to the claimants’ failure to renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after release.[1]
Plot
Infuriated at being told to write one final column after being laid off from her newspaper job, Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) prints a letter from a fictional unemployed “John Doe” threatening suicide on Christmas Eve in protest of society’s ills. When the note causes a sensation and the paper’s competition suspects a fraud and starts to investigate, the newspaper editor rehires Mitchell who comes up with a scheme of hiding the fictional nature of “John Doe” while exploiting the sensation caused by the fake letter to boost the newspaper’s sales, for which she demands a bonus equal to 8 months’ pay. After reviewing a number of derelicts who have shown up at the paper claiming to have penned the original suicide letter, Mitchell and editor Henry Connell (James Gleason) hire John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a former baseball player and tramp who is in need of money to repair his injured arm, to play John Doe. Mitchell now starts to pen an article series in Doe’s name, elaborating on the letter’s ideas of society’s disregard of people in need.
Willoughby gets $50, a new suit of clothes, and a plush hotel suite with his tramp friend (Walter Brennan), who launches into an extended diatribe against “the heelots”, lots of heels who incessantly focus on getting money from others. Willoughby is hired to give radio speeches, guided by Mitchell who is promised $100 a week to writes his speeches, paid by the newspaper’s publisher, D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold). Willoughby turns down a $5,000 bribe to admit the whole thing was a publicity stunt, gives Mitchell’s speech, and dashes off to the countryside with “The Colonel”. They ride the rails, playing the harmonica and ocarina until they show up in Millsville, where John Doe is recognized at a diner. He’s brought to City Hall, where he’s met by Hanson, who gives a five-minute monologue about how he was inspired to start a local John Doe club.
The John Doe philosophy spreads across the country, developing into a broad grassroots movement whose simple slogan is, “Be a better neighbor”. Far from being an altruistic philanthropist, however, Norton plans to channel the support for Doe into support for his own national political ambitions. As a culmination of this plan, Norton has instructed Mitchell to write a speech for Willoughby in which he announces the foundation of a new political party and endorses Norton as its presidential candidate.
When Willoughby, who has come to believe in the John Doe philosophy himself, realizes that he is being used, he tries to expose the plot, but is first stymied in his attempts to talk his own mind to a nationwide radio audience at the rally instead of reading the prepared speech, and then exposed as a fake by Norton, who claims to have been deceived, like everyone else, by the staff of the newspaper. Frustrated by his failure, Willoughby intends to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of the City Hall on Christmas Eve, as indicated in the original John Doe letter. Only the intervention of Mitchell and followers of the John Doe clubs persuades him to renege on his threat to kill himself. At this point in the movie, a reference to Jesus Christ is made, that a historical “John Doe” has already died for the sake of humanity. The film ends with Connell turning to Norton and saying, “There you are, Norton! The people! Try and lick that!”
Mark Levin and Jeffrey Lord Precious Delicate Utopian Neocons
Mark Levin Interviews Jeffrey Lord On Ron Paul And His Supporters Being Neoliberal
Michael Medved, Jeffery Lord On Ron Paul’s Neoliberal Reeducation
Mark Levin, Ron Paul Hater, Put in His Place
American Spectator Dead Wrong on Ron Paul
SA@TheDC – “I Like Ron Paul Except on Foreign Policy”
SA@The DC – Ron Paul’s Reaganesque Foreign Policy
SA@TAC – A Conservative Foreign Policy Comeback?
SA@TheDC – Conservatism for What?
SA@TAC – Ron Paul’s Pledge to America
Jack Hunter on FOX News 12-29-11
Establishment Media Crucifies Ron Paul On Every Front
“As long as nations cling to protective tariffs, migration barriers, compulsory education, interventionism and etatism, new conflicts capable of breaking out at any time into open warfare will continually arise to plague mankind.”
~Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, pages 150-151
Jeffrey Lord has been attacking Ron Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy on various so-called “conservative” talk radio shows and accuses Ron Paul of not being a conservative.
Really, he must be kidding or simply does not know the history of the conservative movement.
Suggest he read George H. Nash’s book, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945.
SA@TAC – The Great Neo-Con: Libertarianism Isn’t ‘Conservative’
If Lord means that Ron Paul is not a neoconservative, then Lord is correct.
Ron Paul is definitely not a neoconservative.
Congressman Ron Paul, MD – We’ve Been NeoConned
Neoconservatives are right-wing progressives Democrats that became “boat people” and switched to the Republican Party in the 1970s when the Democratic Party nominated George McGovern as their Presidential candidate.
SA@TAC – What’s a ‘Neoconservative?’
SA@TAC – Who’s a Republican?
SA@TAC – Is Ron Paul Weird?
Most conservatives and libertarians do not consider neoconservatives as either new or conservative. They are really progressives that want the United States to have an aggressive interventionist foreign policy that supports nation or empire building, the U.S. as policeman of the world and Israel with foreign aid.
Both the progressives and/or neoconservatives that are in the Republican Party establishment are in panic mode that Paul may win the presidential nomination.
I suggest neoconservative Republicans get back in their boats and go back to the Democratic Party, where most of them came from in the first place.
Please take your hitman, Jeffrey Lord, with you.
Big government interventionists pervade the Democratic and Republican party establishments and leaderships.
The Democratic Party is the party of left-wing progressives that favor the expansion of welfare dependency.
The Republican Party is the party of right-wing progressives that favor the expansion of warfare dependency.
Both favor big government interventionism at home and abroad.
Making government omnipotent with a massive bureaucracy advocating and supporting the warfare and welfare state is the goal of the progressive interventionists of the Democratic and Republican Party establishments.
SA@TheDC – ‘Fixing’ Big Government is Not Conservative
Ron Paul favors limited government and opposes government intervention at home and abroad.
Ron Paul is a conservative traditionalist libertarian that puts faith, family, friends and freedom first.
Paul wants to replace the big government warfare and welfare economy with a limited government peace and prosperity economy.
This is the reason more and more American people are coming to the conclusion that Ron Paul should be President of the United States.
SA@TAC – Constant Conservative Ron Paul
This is the reason Ron Paul is leading in Iowa.
This is the reason Ron Paul will be elected President of the United States.
The Republican Party establishment might talk conservative, but they walk and spend like big government progressives and neocons, which most of them are.
Just look at the Republican Party budget passed in the House of Representatives. The Fiscal Year 2012 deficit will exceed $1 trillion each year.
This is not limited government.
This is not fiscally responsible.
This is not conservative or libertarian.
The neoconservatives want a war with Iran.
Starting World War III with Iran is the progressive answer to the United States economic problems.
The war on poverty, the war of drugs and the war on terror are all progressive wars of big government interventionists.
The U.S. government led by progressives of both the Democratic and Republican party establishments have lost all three wars that never end.
Those who support big government interventionism at home and abroad are progressive statistist and neoconservatives.
Progressives are collectivists that oppose individualists with a conservative and libertarian political philosophy.
These progressives are not conservatives.
Do not fall for the neoconservative con men of talk radio that say Ron Paul is not conservative and invite Jeffrey Lord on their shows to smear and discredit Paul.
Most of them are closet neoconservative big government interventionists. This includes talk radio show hosts Levin, Medved, Hewitt and Bennett, just to name a few.
Ron Paul: Iran Sanctions = Act of War
“Interventionism begets economic nationalism. It thus kindles the antagonism resulting in war. An abandonment of economic nationalism is not feasible if nations cling to interference with business. Free trade in international relations requires domestic free trade.”
~Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, page 66.
SA@TAC – The End of Right-Wing Progressivism?
This is a massively huge and interventionist government that favors the warfare and welfare dependency of the American people.
Gingrich Gone Wild – Might Vote For Obama
SA@TAC – Newt Gingrich is Not a Conservative
Ron Paul Interview w/ Jack Hunter on Foreign Policy & Israel
Jeffrey Lord Doesn’t Know The Founders or Ron Paul
Background Articles and Videos
Ron Paul – The Power of Nightmares
Mark Levin Avoids the “Empire” Question
SA@TAC – Joe Sobran’s Conservative Foreign Policy
SA@TAC – Obama Kept Us Safe
Poo Blobs & Jeffrey Lord Try to Say that DropDobbs.com is About Killing Debate, NOT Racist Diatribe
RON PAUL on RUSH LIMBAUGH
Jack Hunter Versus Mark Levin
Richard Perle PNAC and AIPAC hawk on why Ron Paul will not win the 2012 election
Ron Paul and the Neoliberal Reeducation Campaign
By Jeffrey Lord
“…Neoliberals and Quasi-Cons:
When it comes to foreign policy, Ron Paul and his supporters are not conservatives.
This is important to understand when one realizes that Paul’s views are, self-described, “non-interventionist.”
The fact that he has been allowed to get away with pretending to conservatism on this score is merely reflective of journalists who, for whatever reason, are simply unfamiliar with American history. Ironically, it is precisely because the Paul campaign has not been thoroughly covered that no one pays attention to the historical paternity of what the candidate is saying.
There is no great sin in Paul’s non-interventionist stance (or “isolationist” stance as his critics would have it). There have been American politicians aplenty throughout American history, particularly in the 20th century, who believed precisely as Paul and his enthusiasts do right now. (Paul touts his admiration for the Founding Fathers, but even that is very selective. James Monroe of Monroe Doctrine fame was a considerable interventionist, Washington as a general invaded Canada, and Alexander Hamilton gave rise to Paul’s idea of evil spawn — the Federal Reserve. Interventionists of all types have been with us right from the start.)
The deception — and it is a considerable deception — is that almost to a person those prominent pre-Ron Paul non-interventionist “Paulist” politicians of the 20th century were overwhelmingly not conservatives at all. They were men of the left. The far left.
From three-time Democratic presidential nominee and Woodrow Wilson Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan to powerful Montana Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler to FDR’s ex-vice presidential nominee Henry Wallace to the 1968 anti-war presidential candidacy of Minnesota Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy to 1972 Democratic presidential nominee (and Henry Wallace delegate in 1948) George McGovern, non-interventionists have held prominent positions in the American Left that was and is the Democratic Party.
But of particular interest, and here is where the deception by Paulists is so considerable, the Ron Paul view of foreign policy has been the cornerstone of Republican liberals and progressives. Those who, using current political terminology, would be called the RINOs (Republican In Name Only) of their day. …”
“…Jeffrey Lord is a former member of the Ronald Reagan administration, journalist, author, and political strategist in Pennsylvania.
Lord earned a degree from Franklin and Marshall College.[1] He first worked as a press aide in the Pennsylvania State Senate.[1] He worked for Pennsylvania Congressman Bud Shuster as Legislative Director and Press Secretary and for U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III as Executive Assistant.[1] Later Lord worked as Chief of Staff to Drew Lewis, who was a Co-chair of the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign.[1] He also served in the Reagan White House as an associate political director.[1] In that position he assisted in the judicial nomination process for several nominees, including Robert Bork.[2] He also worked for Jack Kemp during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush.[1]
Lord now works as a journalist, contributing material to The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator,National Review Online, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Harrisburg Patriot-News. He has appeared as a guest on numerous televisions and radio programs.[1] He also works as a political consultant for Quantum Communications, a Harrisburg-based political strategy firm.[1]
He is the author of The Borking Rebellion, about the confirmation of Federal Judge D. Brooks Smith.[1] It received a generally positive review in the Wall Street Journal.[3]
In July 2010, Jeffrey Lord claimed that the “lynching” of a relative of Shirley Sherrod is fallacious.[4]
In August 2011, Jeffrey Lord wrote an article in The American Spectator which was critical of Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), and the views of some of Ron Paul’s supporters.[5] It sparked considerable debate within the conservative movement.[6] …”
Jeffrey Lord: When Attacks on Ron Paul Fail, then Attack his Voters
“…
Get this. The reason Ron Paul is polling well in Iowa is because it’s Iowa. Jeffrey Lord is a special kind of dense. He is so dense he doesn’t know he is dense. He keeps repeating the same untruths (that non-interventionism is inherently left-wing) over and over again despite being corrected repeatedly. My reply is below:
I get it. When your attacks on Ron Paul aren’t working, then attack the people who vote for him.
First, you continue with the lie that non-interventionism is inherently left-wing. You have been corrected on this so many times, and I know you read these responses since you reply, that you have no excuse. You are engaging in demagoguery.
Second, you are making the case against yourself and don’t even know it. It is not a coincidence that non-interventionism was the preferred policy of heartland Americans in flyover country. And it is not a coincidence that support for war came from elite internationalists on the East Coast. So if you want to throw your hat in with elitist internationalists then be my guest. I’ll throw mine in with parochial Americans in the Heartland. Lord, you are a shill and you don’t even realize you are a shill. …”
