michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 15, 2006 14:53:55 GMT 4
A CORPORATION IS NOT A PERSON! PEOPLE [the living breathing kind] FIGHT BACK!Eureka (Calif.) Times-Standard, March 27, 2005 MEASURE T WILL ENSURE LOCAL CONTROL[Rachel's introduction: On June 6, the voters of Eureka, California will vote on Measure T, titled "Ordinance to Protect Our Rights to Fair Elections and Local Democracy." The ordinance would prohibit non- local corporations from making campaign contributions to local elections in Eureka. The opposition has wrapped itself in the First Amendment arguing that corporate money is a form of "free speech." Advocates for measure T reply that the First Amendment was intended to protect living, breathing humans, not pieces of paper called corporations. The fight is on.] By Nicole Spencer "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -- Thomas Jefferson. In the last Voices issue [in the Eureka Times-Standard newspaper], Robert Zigler authored an opinion piece attacking Measure T. Among his many factually challenged criticisms of our campaign, Zigler cites Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County as his source of understanding for Measure T. He quotes the Democracy Unlimited website at length, but it appears that he didn't even go to the website of the organization actually sponsoring the measure: the Humboldt Coalition for Community Rights (HCCR) -- www.VoteLocalControl.org. Democracy Unlimited is one of the organizations endorsing Measure T, but Zigler conveniently fails to mention the other people and organizations backing the measure, including: the Humboldt Democratic Party, the Humboldt Green Party, the Central Labor Council, a number of other local labor unions, over a dozen current and former elected officials including Humboldt District Attorney Paul Gallegos, a host of other local organizations and over 250 individuals (including a number of local and national attorneys). This diverse coalition is standing together to support Measure T because we support community rights, local control and individual rights over the notion that corporations should be treated the same as human beings.And we stand in good company. From Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith to Abraham Lincoln and the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, there have been many patriotic Americans who have pointed out the obvious truth: a corporation is not a person. While there is nothing wrong with doing business and nothing inherently wrong with a corporation, that does not mean that corporate personhood is necessary, inevitable, democratic or in keeping with American values. Measure T is not anti-corporate, it is pro-local control. Local corporations would still be allowed to contribute to elections. Measure T would in no way limit the rights of newspapers, corporate controlled or otherwise, to endorse or oppose candidates or ballot measures, nor would it restrict any person from contributing to campaigns. The statement that Measure T restricts freedom of speech is based on the false assumptions that corporations are human beings and that money is speech. Corporate personhood isn't necessary for corporations to exist. Corporations existed in this country for over 100 years before they were dubbed "people" by the courts. In the United States, corporations were originally mandated to serve the public good. However, during the late 1800s (known as the "Robber Baron" era in history textbooks), railroad corporations amassed tremendous wealth that would be used to litigate their way to becoming "people." Corporate lawyers brought lawsuit after lawsuit, all the way up to the Supreme Court, claiming that the clauses guaranteeing equal protection and due process in the 14th Amendment had been meant for them. Between 1890 and 1910, there were 307 cases brought before the court under the 14th Amendment. 288 of these cases were brought by corporations and only 19 by African Americans (the people for whom the amendment's protections had been intended). Judges gave way to the pressure in 1886 with Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad. This case substantially changed the democracy our founding fathers intended and breathed life and "personhood" into an artificial entity that had always been beholden to the people before that time. This is not ancient history. Today the power of corporate personhood outweighs labor, environmental and small-business protections. When a corporation successfully argues that its personhood "rights" are violated, a law attempting to protect people from potential harm is overturned. In the 1970s, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations would be allowed to move into the political arena when it decided that "money equals speech." This was an entirely new idea. Before this decision, all corporations had been explicitly denied participation in the political process. In Wisconsin it was a felony until 1953 for a corporation to contribute any "thing of value" to any political campaign.Most cases granting corporations personhood status have been 5-4 decisions. In other words, even the courts have been divided. In First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1977) Justices White, Brennan and Marshall dissented on the court's decision to overturn state laws limiting corporate expenditures on ballot initiatives. They wrote: "(T)he special status of corporations has placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power which may... dominate not only our economy but the very heart of our democracy, the electoral process.... The state need not allow its own creation to consume it." Justice Rehnquist, a staunch conservative, also dissented: "The blessings of perpetual life and limited liability... so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere." Measure T is not intended to get rid of corporate personhood. Measure T ensures local control by getting rid of money from outside entities in local elections -- be those entities corporations, unions or nonprofits. The only connection to corporate personhood is that the law refuses to sacrifice our community's right to define our elections to the idea that a corporation's personhood status comes before the rights of the people who live here. During the DA recall campaign we all heard it over and over again: "This ought to be illegal." Don't let corporate personhood apologists tell you that we don't have the right to define our community for ourselves. On June 6, stand up for your rights and vote yes on Measure T! "History honors none above those who, in the past, have set themselves against unjust laws.... The Republic of the United States is founded upon defiance of unjust law.... Manifestly unjust decisions of courts must be defied." -- Samuel Gompers. Source: www.precaution.org/lib/06/prn_humboldt_update.060328.htm
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Apr 25, 2006 15:25:32 GMT 4
Mary McCarthy's ChoiceRay McGovern April 24, 2006 Ray McGovern writes for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A 27-year veteran of the CIA, he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.As a 27-year-veteran of the CIA, I have one overwhelming reaction to the news that senior intelligence analyst Mary McCarthy has been fired for leaking information to the press on CIA’s network of secret prisons abroad: She must have seen no alternative to stop the abuses. It appears that McCarthy was one of the sources upon which Washington Post reporter Dana Priest relied for the prison scoop that won her a Pulitzer. The Post quoted an unnamed “former senior intelligence official” yesterday saying he thought a majority of CIA officers would probably agree with the firing of McCarthy. “A small number might support her, but the ethic of the business is not to leak,” said the former official, adding that one should stay within official grievance channels. That’s what my colleague, CIA analyst Sam Adams, did 40 years ago—and came to rue the day. Through painstaking research, Adams discovered that Gen. William Westmoreland’s staff in Saigon had been ordered to keep Communist force figures artificially low—about half the actual strength—in order to project a picture of progress. When the countrywide offensive at Tet in early 1968 gave the lie to Westmoreland’s figures and vindicated Adams, Sam tried manfully to hold the culprits accountable by going to the CIA’s and the Pentagon’s inspectors general. He got the proverbial run-around, and some 30,000 additional U.S. troops and a million more Vietnamese fell before the war was over six years later. Adams was never able to shake his nagging remorse at the thought that he might have helped prevent further carnage, had he gone out of “official channels” and briefed his findings to the then-free mainstream press. He died at 55 when his heart gave out. The tragedy of Sam Adams is well known, even to those, like Mary McCarthy, who joined the CIA many years after Sam left. From his present perch, I relish the thought that he is pleased that Mary may have learned a valuable lesson from the frustration he encountered by “staying within official grievance channels.” Like Sam, Mary McCarthy was an independent thinker, which she proved during her tenure as senior director for intelligence programs at the White House from 1998 to 2001. There she achieved some notoriety for the personal letter she sent President Bill Clinton, criticizing the flimsiness of the “intelligence” that led to the cruise missile strike on the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant that some suggested might be producing chemical warfare agent. She was correct, but then-CIA Director George Tenet vouched for the “evidence;” testosterone won the day; and they blew the place up. Those paying attention to the issue of torture by the CIA and the Army will recall the tortured memorandum of January 25, 2002, authored by David Addington (then counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and now Cheney’s chief of staff) and signed by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. That memo argued that “Geneva ’s strict limitations on questioning enemy prisoners” were “obsolete” in the new war-on-terror paradigm. Still, Addington/Gonzales felt compelled to remind the president that U.S.criminal code—specifically the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441), with its draconian penalties (including death)—could come into play. That statute pins the “war crime” label on any grave breach of Geneva, like “outrages against personal dignity,” regardless of whether the detainee qualifies as a prisoner of war. Addington and Gonzales warned the president of the danger that he could be prosecuted under that law by a future independent counsel, but reassured him that there is a “reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.” That was good enough for President George W. Bush, who on Feb. 7, 2002, signed a memorandum saying that detainees should be treated humanely, “as appropriate and consistent with military necessity.” And that is the loophole through which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld drove a Mack truck. That infamous memorandum of Jan. 25 was leaked to Newsweek, which published it and others like it in May 2004. The reasoning was greeted with widespread scorn by the U.S. legal profession and in August 2004 roundly condemned by the American Bar Association, 12 former federal judges, former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, former FBI Director William Sessions and many others. The ABA formally condemned the administration’s treatment of detainees and called upon it to “comply fully” with the U.S. Constitution and intern ational laws and conventions ratified by the U.S. that outlaw torture. It was that same year, 2004, when the torture of prisoners was depicted in the leaked photos from Abu Ghraib, that Mary McCarthy returned to the CIA from a sabbatical that followed her stint at the White House. Those who have worked with her testify to her respect for law and regulation. That she had more than passing interest in, and respect for the law is suggested not only by her decision several years ago to attend law school at night, but also by the hackles she reportedly raised among operatives who saw her, in her White House role, as an annoying hindrance to aggressive tactics against terrorists. Back at the CIA, Mary McCarthy assumed a position in the office of CIA Inspector General John Helgersen, who is responsible for intern al investigations of wrongdoing by the agency and has extraordinary access to secrets deprived to others under the need-to-know principle. It is well known that agency personnel who witnessed torture by the U.S. military in Guantanamo, for example, complained to superiors and to the White House. It is a safe bet that some agency officers also registered objections to “extraordinary rendition,” including kidnapping and transporting “terrorist suspects” to so-called black prison camps for interrogation—“with the gloves off,” in the swaggering words of then CIA chief counter-terrorism official Cofer Black (now a vice president with the defense contractor Blackwater USA). In addition, some CIA officers may have learned of the warrantless eavesdropping in violation of NSA’s “eleventh commandment”—thou shall not spy on Americans. In any event, it is certainly safe to say that Helgersen’s IG account had become a growth industry, with a requirement for all the professional help it could muster. When Mary McCarthy came on board, she became privy to complaints of a variety of abuses. Sadly, common practice in such circumstances for someone at retirement age, as McCarthy was, is to hunker down, retire quietly with a healthy annuity, and then become something of a celebrity by writing a tell-all book and going on “60 Minutes.” Not McCarthy. Given the courage and independence she showed in her earlier professional life together with her sensitivity to the law, it is a safe bet she tried hard to get management to address the more egregious abuses—torture and rendition, for example. It is an equally likely that she got no help from former Director George Tenet or current Director Porter Goss, both of them on the end of a tight leash held by Vice President Dick Cheney. But couldn’t McCarthy appeal to “independent” Inspector General Helgersen? As statutory IG, Helgersen does enjoy some unique prerogatives and autonomy, should he choose to exercise them. Those familiar with his longstanding penchant for sniffing the breezes from the White House and director’s office and trimming his sails accordingly would be shocked to see him actually exercise those prerogatives. Rather, he has obediently acquiesced in denying Congress the particulars of his investigations—the one on the performance of CIA officers before 9/11, for example, which reportedly heaped criticism on Medal of Freedom awardee Tenet and other senior agency officials. And according to today’s New York Times, “independent watchdog” Helgersen recently let himself be talked into submitting to a polygraph exam by those he is supposed to be “watch-dogging.” Remarkable. It seems likely that Mary McCarthy quickly saw the lay of the land and decided the Helgersen-Goss route held no promise for success in addressing the abuses of torture and rendition. Had she any doubts on that score, they were presumably dispelled as she watched Director Goss trot off with Cheney to the office of Sen. John McCain to plead for an exception for the CIA from his draft amendment banning torture. This particular mission was not accomplished, but the president appended a “signing statement” saying, in effect, that he feels free to disregard the McCain amendment banning torture. Where else to turn? The intelligence committees of Congress? A fool’s errand. Indelibly imprinted on my mind is a remark made by CIA darling former Congressman Charlie Wilson, D-Texas, when he took the reins of the House Intelligence Committee during the war with the USSR in Afghanistan. Wilson wrote to his CIA friends, “Well, gentlemen, the fox is in the hen house. Do whatever you like.” Some 20 years later, the committee’s current chairman, Pete Hoekstra, R-Mi., has proven a worthy successor, occasionally sniping—as he did yesterday on TV—at National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, but essentially giving the intelligence agencies free rein as long as they remain harnessed tightly to White House policy. For example, late last year, having bowed for over a year to White House pressure to suppress New York Times journalist James Risen’s Pulitzer-winning scoop on warrantless wiretapping by NSA, the Times management suddenly awoke to the fact that Risen’s book was about to appear. In order to avoid the embarrassment of not having carried such a critical story by one of its own writers, the Times told the White House that the story was about to be published. On Dec. 5, 2005, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman were summoned to an oval office meeting with President Bush, who tried—this time in vain—to dissuade the Times from publishing the warrantless eavesdropping story, which then appeared 11 days later (and six weeks after Dana Priest’s expose in the Post regarding secret CIA prisons for interrogating suspected terrorists). The White House, however, forgot to inform NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander that a new die was cast. The next day, Dec. 6, the blindsided Alexander—still following the old talking points—assured visiting House intelligence committee member Rush Holt, D-N.J., that the NSA did not eavesdrop on Americans without a court order. When Holt later learned he had been purposely misled about the NSA eavesdropping program, he wrote a blistering letter to Alexander. Nothing has been heard from Hoekstra, though, and there is not the slightest sign he cared very much that his colleague was lied to on a key aspect of his oversight responsibilities. This fits in well with a pattern long familiar to senior intelligence officers. And, as Mary McCarthy watched this latest charade, she must have felt affirmed in her apparent conviction that turning to the House “oversight” committee, in present circumstances, would be a feckless enterprise. And who more than she could see the high farce attached to Hoekstra’s hyperbole yesterday on FOX as he parroted (twice) the “McCarthy talking points” from the White House: “This person in the CIA thought that they were above the law (sic). They thought that the law did not apply to them. They have put America at risk. They have put our troops on the front lines at risk because they broke the law.” With all due respect, Congressman Hoekstra, if you would exercise your oversight responsibilities, the system of checks and balances could work, and folks like McCarthy would not have to go to the press. Equally feckless would be recourse to the Senate intelligence committee chaired by Pat Roberts, R-Kan., patsy for the White House since day one of his tenure. No need to rehearse the evidence here. You may wish, though, to check out Scott Ritter’s comments on the Semper Fi senator from Kansas. And so, assuming there is substance to press allegations that McCarthy has admitted she talked with the press, small wonder. I was intrigued by a remark the press has attributed to former CIA deputy director Dick Kerr: “I have no idea what her motive was.” Kerr added that McCarthy was a “good, substantive person.” Well, Dick, it’s a no-brainer. Is it not clear that she thought the American people should be given the chance to know of the kidnapping, rendition, torture and other indignities being carried out in their name? Is it not clear that Mary McCarthy is one of those unusually courageous officers willing to take considerable personal risk in order to help democracy work, information being the oxygen of democracy? But what about her secrecy agreement? I have not spoken with Mary McCarthy in 10 years, but it seems clear to me she realized that she was confronted by an unwelcome choice between her oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and the secrecy agreement. Her entire record shows that she did not take such restrictions lightly. None of us did; none of us do. But agency alumnae, at least those of my vintage, believe we must always give priority to the Constitution. Mary chose well and, in so doing, offers an example to emulate. Source: www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/24/mary_mccarthys_choice.php
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 2, 2006 19:30:20 GMT 4
Bush Challenges Hundreds Of Laws President Cites Powers Of His Office Bush Has Quietly Claimed The Authority To Disobey More Than 750 Laws Enacted Since He Took Office, Asserting That He Has The Power To Set Aside Any Statute Passed By Congress When It Conflicts With His Interpretation Of The Constitution.By Charlie Savage SNIP:WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional. READ IT ALL: tinyurl.com/kfwy6
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 7, 2006 14:37:38 GMT 4
Sign Language Why does the press hold Bush to one constitutional standard and itself to another?By Michael Kinsley Updated Friday, May 5, 2006, at 6:21 AM ET If there is anything scarier than a president who thinks he is above the law, it is a president who thinks that journalists aren't. That is the combined message from two major newspapers this week. Last Sunday's Boston Globe carried an alarming 4,500-word front-page article about President Bush and the Constitution. It seems that Bush has asserted the right to ignore "vast swaths of laws," simply because he thinks that these laws are unconstitutional. Through the veil of objectivity, it is hard not to detect a note of disapproval here. Four times the article says that Bush has asserted this right "quietly," a word often used in news stories to imply menace. Quoted against Bush are people such as "legal scholars" and "many legal scholars," including "a professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term," a "professor who studies executive power" and a "professor who specializes in executive-power issues." Quoted in his defense are "former administration officials" and " ome administration defenders," as well as others who have served in or support the Bush administration.
The article is specifically about "signing statements," in which the president offers his interpretation of an act of Congress as he signs it into law. This was an innovation of the Reagan administration, intended to give courts something other than a law's legislative history—that is, Congress' side of the story—in any future dispute over its meaning. Bush often signs a law and says that parts of it are unconstitutional at the same time. Sneaky!
To put pursuers off the scent, the Globe reports, Bush often obeys and enforces the very laws he says are unconstitutional. Even the fact that Bush has never vetoed a single act of Congress is part of his quiet executive power grab, because it denies Congress the "chance to override his judgments."
The Globe does not report what its cadre of professors of executive power think that a president should do when called upon to enforce or obey a law he or she believes to be unconstitutional. It's not an easy question. Some connoisseurs of "quiet" constitutional power grabs point to Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case in which the Supreme Court established its power to have the last word in constitutional interpretation, as the beginning of a power grab by the judicial branch. That judicial power is not in the Constitution in so many words. The logic of Marbury was that every officer of the government has an obligation to follow the Constitution, and courts get the last word in any dispute over its meaning simply because their opportunity to express a view comes last procedurally. The Constitution is like a hot potato, and the judges are holding it when the music stops.
The tradition of judicial review is almost universally accepted, and it has served this country very, very well. What was dangerous about the Reagan administration's signing-statements initiative was the claim that a president is entitled to govern according to his or her own interpretation of the Constitution even after the courts have ruled. This is a recipe for near-dictatorial executive power, not to mention governmental chaos, in which no fundamental issue can ever be resolved. But the Globe does not even suggest that Bush is claiming the right to thumb his nose at the courts in this way.
The complications come when the courts haven't, or haven't yet, ruled on the subject at hand. In that situation, shouldn't the president—who swears to "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution—follow his own sincere beliefs about what the Constitution requires? Well, yes and no. It depends on how unclear the issue really is and how plausible the president's interpretation. A president shouldn't force the courts to rule again and again on some issue because the specific facts of each case are slightly different. More than that: After 220 years of constitutional interpretation, the doctrines are pretty thick on the ground. As a general rule, even on some novel issue, the president ought to follow the Constitution as he sincerely imagines that the courts will see it, rather than as he wishes they would see it. On the other hand, even the Supreme Court does change its mind occasionally. And the president, like anyone else, has the right to present a test case. But this is a right best used sparingly.
Bottom line: It is not necessarily an outrage for the president to run the government according to his own interpretation of the Constitution. And it is certainly not an outrage for the president to simply state his view and then do nothing about it. Legitimate outrage comes when the president acts in flagrant violation of the Constitution, defending his actions unconvincingly, disingenuously, or not at all. And Bush has offered plenty of grist for this mill in his assertion of the right to kidnap people off the streets, keep them locked up for years without a trial or even a public acknowledgment of their existence, to torture them, and so on. But nailing him simply for stating his views on a constitutional issue, without even asking whether those views are right or wrong, is wrong.
It's wrong especially when contrasted with another current fever running through the nation's editorial pages: the ongoing issue of leaks and anonymous sources. Many in the media believe that the Constitution contains a "reporter's privilege" to protect the identity of sources in circumstances, like a criminal trial, in which citizens ordinarily can be compelled to produce information or go to jail. The Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled and ruled again that there is no such privilege. And it certainly is not obvious that the First Amendment, which seems to be about the right to speak, actually protects a right not to speak. Yet many in the media not only believe that it does. They believe passionately that it is not merely OK but profoundly noble to follow their own interpretation and ignore the Supreme Court's.
Why must the president obey constitutional interpretations he disagrees with if journalists don't have to? Upholding the Constitution is actually part of his job description. It is not part of theirs.
Last Sunday, the same day as the Globe piece, the New York Times had a front-page article [ www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/washington/30leak.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print ] about the other shoe waiting to drop in these leak cases. The Bush administration might go beyond forcing journalists to testify about the sources of leaks. It might start to prosecute journalists themselves as recipients of illegal leaks. As with the Globe story, this turns out to be a matter of pugnacious noises by the Bush administration. Actual prosecutions of journalists for receiving or publishing leaks are "unknown," the Times article concedes. But this could change at any moment.
Well, maybe. It would be odd for the Bush administration to take up this particular cause at this particular moment, since the fellow most eager for evidence from journalists is the special prosecutor investigating the Bush administration. But it wouldn't be constitutionally crazy. Maybe you can find an implied journalist's privilege in the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press, but you've got to look pretty hard. Why should the Constitution allow the government to prosecute the provider of stolen government information but not the knowing recipient or to prosecute all other recipients of such information (like two lobbyists currently under investigation) but not journalists?
Maybe journalists sincerely believe they are entitled to such constitutional special treatment. Maybe they are even right about this, and the courts are wrong. But who wants to live in a society where every citizen and government official feels free to act according to his or her own personal interpretation of the Constitution, even after the Supreme Court has specifically said that this interpretation is wrong? President Bush would top my list of people I don't want wandering through the text and getting fancy ideas. But why should he stay out of the "I say what's constitutional around here" game if his tormentors in the press are playing it?
Michael Kinsley is Slate's founding editor. Source: www.slate.com/id/2141085/fr/nl
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michelle
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Post by michelle on May 18, 2006 17:50:01 GMT 4
Join the Legal Fight Against Big Brother Corporationsby Carl J. Mayer May 17, 2006 On Friday, May 12, 2006 I, along with fellow public-interest lawyer Bruce Afran, filed the first lawsuit challenging the domestic spying operation conducted by the Bush White House, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the major phone companies.
We are seeking to permanently enjoin an Orwellian Big Government/Big Business snooping operation that monitors the calling habits of 200 million Americans. The lawsuit was filed as a federal class action before Judge Sand in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. This program violates the rights of American citizens in two ways: First, the Constitution protects the privacy of all Americans. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prevents the government from engaging in unreasonable searches and seizures. Monitoring the domestic calls of millions of phone company consumers without a warrant or court order may well violate this Amendment. The Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, also protects a general right of privacy: the right “to be let alone,” in the words of Supreme Court Justice Brandeis. Second, the phone companies have patently violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934, which prohibits them from releasing the records of customers without court order. The fine for each single violation is $1,000. We filed a $50 billion dollar lawsuit against Verizon. That might get their attention. Now is the time for progressive and committed Americans to stand up and be heard and to demand an end to this wholesale privacy invasion of virtually every citizen that owns a phone in this country. Even the ethics-challenged and insider-trading indicted CEO of Qwest corporation understood plainly that the Bush administration's request for millions of phone records without court order or warrant was patently illegal. Accordingly, Qwest refused to turn over customer records. The company even went so far as to tell the Bush administration that it would tender the records if the government obtained a court order or an opinion from the Attorney General. The Bush administration never did, but persuaded ATT, Verizon and Bell South to cough up, wholesale, the records of tens of millions of Americans without probable cause or court order. When the CEO of a phone company takes a tougher stand to protect individual privacy in this country than the leaders of either political party, you know its time to get organized. The Democratic Party leadership has already signaled that it will not stand tall to safeguard the privacy of America’s citizens. Republicans, not Democrats, are leading the call for hearings on this topic. The Democratic Party leadership is trying to finesse the issue; with its titular leader Senator Kerry saying that the Administration may be doing the program in a “manageable” way. Hello? Has your dial tone malfunctioned, Senator Kerry? How do you monitor an entire citizenry in a “manageable way”? Rather than participate in Republican show hearings, Democrats ought to join our lawsuit. Where are the state attorney generals who are supposed to be protecting consumers and upholding local contract and privacy laws? Where are the law school deans speaking out against this invasion of privacy and questioning whether the calling patterns of law professors are being monitored? When are the leaders of the Democratic Party going to decide that now is not the time to play it safe hoping that Republicans keep making mistakes, but rather the time to take aggressive stands to protect the very liberties that are the cherished common heritage of our Nation? The Bush administration has lost enormous credibility on national security matters (WMDs, Guantanamo and “Total Information Awareness”) and this latest program is just another techno-dream of electronic surveillance substituting for field intelligence on the ground. It’s not just illegal, but likely ineffective. Our offices have been flooded with calls and emails from citizens wanting to join this litigation.
Join us. There is a role for everyone. If you are a lawyer, or have legal skills, stand with us. If you want to be a plaintiff, welcome aboard. Even if you don’t have the time or resources, just hang-up on ATT, Bell South and Verizon by switching your service to a carrier that will not turn over private records. When Big Government and Big Business team up to snoop in every neighborhood in the land, a citizen response shall ensue. Other than the venerable liberties safeguarded in our Constitution, the power of the people to reform the instrumentality of government is the noblest and greatest path we have to redeem the promise of democracy. Carl J. Mayer runs the Mayer Law Group with offices in New Jersey and New York. His blog www.newjerseyuntouchables.blogspot.com is devoted to fighting political corruption.Source: www.dissidentvoice.org/May06/Mayer17.htmU.S. Opens Assault On Wiretap Suit AT&T Is Accused Of Aiding Surveillanceby Bob Egelko tinyurl.com/epeopBowing To The Police Stateby Ray McGovern SNIP:James Bamford, one of the best observers of the inner workings of U.S. intelligence, warned recently that Congress has lost control of the intelligence community. “You can’t get any oversight or checks and balances,” he said. “Congress is protecting the White House, and the White House can do whatever it wants.” tinyurl.com/ql9yd
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jun 15, 2006 12:09:29 GMT 4
The American Friends Service Committee Sues the U.S. Defense Department for Unlawful Surveillance6/14/2006 2:41:00 PM Contact: Janis D. Shields of American Friends Service Committee, 215-241-7060 or 302-545-6596 after hours PHILADELPHIA, June 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) today became plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that challenges the Pentagon's failure to turn over information detailing secret surveillance of peace groups and private citizens. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and seeks disclosure of all documents maintained by the Department of Defense (DOD) on the groups named in the suit. It alleges the Pentagon has ignored national Freedom of Information requests made earlier this year. "Spying on citizens for merely executing their constitutional rights of free speech and peaceful assembly is chilling and marks a troubling trend for the United States," states Joyce Miller, assistant general secretary for justice and human rights. "These actions violate the rule of law and strike a severe blow against our Constitution."If the government has avowed pacifists under surveillance, then no one is safe," she adds.A pacifist Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee was at the forefront of combating illegal FBI surveillance tactics in the 1970s and secured hundreds of federal files detailing illegal government surveillance projects and intelligence documents targeting U.S. peace groups. The Service Committee is a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all Quakers for work to heal the wounds of war and efforts to feed starving children and help Europe rebuild during and after World Wars I and II. "Our country is governed by the rule of law, not the politics of hysteria and fear," Miller concludes. "This is the President's second term of office. He has twice sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. By spying on legitimate First Amendment activities he has not only broken the law; he has broken his word to the American people."More details can be found at www.afsc.org - the AFSC website. The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.
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michelle
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Post by michelle on Jun 28, 2006 16:48:14 GMT 4
June 28, 06OUR RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE I guess Homeland Security doesn't feel that we have the right to "JUST GIVE PEACE A CHANCE." This is a frightening situation; H.S. is attacking and detaining indigenous peoples, alternative healers, peaceniks, environmentalists, and other assorted gentle souls loosely joined together calling themselves the Rainbow Children. This is happening RIGHT NOW. Please read and lend help as suggested below.....Michelle Rainbow Children Detained in the name of Homeland Security!!!! by 1st Ammendment at risk Tuesday Jun 27th, 2006 11:54 AM right to assemble Rainbow Children Detained in the name of Homeland Security!!!! Please take the time to read this and do your part to help. Details are at the bottom on how to help. Thanks: The Freedom Files w Heretic.X I Have Woken UP! Corporations_Ate_My_BABY! Summary: Since 1972 people from all over the US and the world make a trek to the National Forests for something called "The Gathering Of The Tribes" to express activism mixed with alternative spiritual practices and prayer. The Bush Administration has spent millions of dollars trying to stop the Rainbow Gatherings. 500 people who have been issued citations, are then being herded into "trials" like none anyone has seen before in America. These pseudo trials are likely prototypes for what Homeland Security will use in the cases of insurrection or even a plague. Defendants inexplicably lose the right to a public hearing (this year these hearings are being held behind closed doors in a firehouse garage near the site.) Attorneys and legal observers have been denied the right to even view these trials. The defendants are not explained their rights nor afforded the right to an attorney, the right to summon witnesses, the right to a jury trial, even fresh water! We must understand that if these citizens lose their constitutional right to gather, we all lose such rights. This year the Rainbow Gathering is being used to set precedents that will be turned against drug policy, civil liberty, anti-war or other activists in the near future. Phone Numbers and A list Of Actions You Can Take Are listed at the end of the full story posted below and marked with **asterisks**. Original Post From: ----------------- Bulletin Message ----------------- From: Fight American Fascism EVERYONE!. This is serious businesss. This is not a joke, or anytime to ignore what is really going on. I am posting this again in an attempt to get EVERYONE involved. These people are having all of their rights violated and being thrown into all of those nice prison camps that we have heard so much about. It is your American duty to help these people. I have inclosed latest letter that I recieved right below. PLEASE help in every way possible so we can show the department of Homeland Security that we are not afraid and that they can not do this! From: LEXX My Original post has been deleted and they will not let me post this any more. At last contact, there are about 2-300 sites on other side of Roadblock. They are arresting EVERYONE! Any one on road or in area are being taken to a round up point to be taken to Detention camps! The family has been determined to be a threat to Homeland Security, so begins the first MASS ARRESTS! THIS NEEDS TO GET OUT VERY SERIOUSLY! THIS IS A WACO TYPE SCENARIO ABOUT TO HAPPEN! PLEASE GET THIS OUT TO EVERY ONE YOU KNOW THANKS,LEXX ============================================== I don't care who you are, or what you're beliefs are, you NEED to help with this in order to protect our freedoms. Please read this article and voice you're support by calling you're representatives and everyone else. I know most of you don't read or act on what I post but PLEASE do it this time. We have now lost our free internet because we didn't do enough, let's not lose our right to assemble. From: LEXX Dear Friends and Family, I need your help to protect my family, the collective efforts of tens of thousands of citizens known as the "Rainbow Family." This week, near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service has taken illegal action to stop this annual assembly for expression and prayer, in gross violation of the participants essential Constitutional rights. The 'Rainbow' Gatherings have borne a legacy of spiritual & cultural pilgrimage to the National Forests since 1972, the purest exercise of open consensual assembly in our time. The annual 'Gathering of the Tribes' draws thousands over the first week of July, focusing on the 4th as a holy day of prayer for peace and freedom. In recent years small regional events in this mode have emerged, and such gatherings have taken place in many nations around the world. THE GATHERING EXPERIENCE -- Some say the "Rainbow" Gathering is the continuation of the idealism of Woodstock. I think of it more as my annual spiritual retreat and family reunion. Since 1980, I have gathered with my family to compare ideas and pray for peace. I arrive loaded with the burdens of my work, depressed about the world situation. Each year I depart with my faith in humankind renewed and with the energy to fight the beast another year. The rainbow family is not organized in any way; it is an exercise in self-determination and cooperation in the public interest, without need of government controls. We understand that no matter what comes down, it is the respect and care for each other that win in the end. We have no leaders or leadership, we have no offices or officers, we have no treasurer or treasury. We sit in counsel, often for days at a time in order to make mutual decisions, but there is no power to enforce these decisions on any individual. In the end, just like in society, it works because enough responsible people make sure that what needs to be done gets done. We have been doing rainbow gatherings for over 30 years, each time in a different national forest across the country. We come in and set up a village in the woods. Cooperative kitchens pour out a wide variety of foods. Seminars on just about any topic are run by the hour. The Rainbow is known as a healing gathering; people with various ailments come for help. Here in one place they can receive healing, from herbalists, acupuncturists, chiropractors and masseuses working with osteopaths and physicians. These healers work as a team and share their knowledge in a holistic approach that teaches all involved a lot about the roots of medicine. Religious groups, ranging from Christians to Hare Krishnas set up camps. It's truly a free society. We go pretty far back in the woods to get away from the ills of civilization like alcohol and hard drugs. We have our gathering and then restore any damage we cause to the woods. And we have a perfect record of restoration of the forest. It's great to walk through a gathering and see so many people but not a scrap of paper on the ground, not a cigarette butt in sight. Each year we train thousands of newcomers how to get along in the woods without destroying the place. Knowledgeable Forest Servide 'Resource' personnel love us; it's the Federal bureaucrats and police from Washington who are on our case. REPRESSIVE FEDERAL POLICIES -- The Bush Administration has spent millions of dollars trying to stop the Rainbow Gatherings. They are enforcing a 'Noncommercial Group Use' permit regulation that is impossible for unaffiliated individuals to comply with. 36 CFR 251.54 They require that that someone sign as an agent for a fictional group entity named as permit Holder -- which then must assume full liability from the Government and bind participants vicariously to its terms. By the creed of the gatherings, no one can appoint themselves to such a position. More importantly, such an ad hoc gathering has no legal capacity to designate agents or act as a group party in any way. As a result, individuals are denied personal standing in First Amendment exercise and subjected to harsh criminal prosecution for being anywhere near the area The Forest Service requires that a permit be applied for in advance of the gathering. And they use any excuse possible to deny a permit application when we manage to submit one. This year their denial was based on the fact that a logging company had a permit to log in a nearby parcel of the national forest, even though there is no logging activity present whatsoever. The site is far remote from any inhabitants -- but still the Forest Service is all over our case. Millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to block this harmless gathering from taking place. The scariest aspect of all this is how Homeland Security is using these gatherings to perfect their techniques of martial law. Regulations written for the Federal Emergency Management Authority to deal with natural disasters are now being used to crush dissent in this country. Each year the Rainbow Gathering is declared a "National Incident" and federal military law ensues. A Special Agent is appointed "Incident Commander", with a Delegation of Authority, a large law enforcement "Team", and huge budget to control the gathering. Qualified Forest Service administrators lose their power, while the county sheriff and other officials are brought into targeted law enforcement actions by inclusion in the Incident Team and other inter-agency agreements. Each year Homeland Security gains more power over the individuals involved. RIGHTS CRISIS IN COLORADO -- At this writing Forest Service law enforcement has issued over 500 tickets to the early arrivals at the gathering in Colorado. They have blocked the road and have prevented food and water from reaching those who managed to get into the gathering before the police roadblock was set up. The 500 people with tickets are being herded into trials like none anyone has seen before in America. These pseudo trials are prototypes for what Homeland Security will use in the cases of insurrection or even a plague. Defendants lose the right to a public hearing (this year these hearings are being held behind closed doors in a firehouse garage near the site. Attorneys and legal observers have been denied the right to even view these trials. The defendants are not explained their rights nor afforded the right to an attorney, the right to summon witnesses, the right to a jury trial, etc. Defendants ordered to appear each day at 9:00 a.m. and sit in the hot sun without water or sanitary facilities until their trials. Some have now been waiting for several days. These abbreviated trials only take a few minutes. Last year I tried to help a string of defendants defend themselves in these trials but felt helpless to do much as the system was clearly stacked against them. This year is especially frustrating to me as I have to watch this come down from 6000 miles away. Right now I am in Hungary at a medical conference for my employment. I am flying home on Thursday and plan on being in court Saturday, July 1st, to defend some of my best friends who got a ticket for illegally gathering as they drove down a public highway. WHAT TO DO -- The confrontation this year is getting more intense by the minute, which is why I am asking for your help. The only way to stop a massive conflagration in Colorado in the next few days is to get thousands of people to contact their political representatives as well as the responsible administrators at the Forest Service to demand that this repression stop immediately. Please, even if you can never conceive of yourself at a Rainbow Gathering, you must understand that if these citizens lose their constitutional right to gather, we all lose such rights. This year the Rainbow Gathering is being used to set precedents that will be turned against drug policy, civil liberty, anti-war or other activists in the near future. ********************** Following are some instructions on who to write and/or call We hope to start flooding the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service with complaints starting Monday morning and not stopping until harassment stops. It is especially important that we get a few Congressional representative and Senators concerned enough to write the Forest Service for an explanation of why so much money is being spent to keep people from camping in the National Forest set aside for exactly that purpose. Please keep the pressure on these bureaucrats until we are able to spread the word that the government has backed off and that the gathering can proceed unhindered. If you do not know the contact information for your Congressman or Senator, you can find this here. You can call your representative at 212-224-3121. Besides your representatives in Washington, please call and write the following people to voice your protest to this harsh treatment of people who just want to go on a camping trip in the woods. Keep the calls coming until word is passed around that the government has called off their dogs. Please forward this letter to your friends and feel free to re-post it on any listserv or website you wish. Email me if you have any questions. Don E Wirtshafter Attorney at Law Box 18 Guysville, OH 45735 740 662 5297 don [at] hempery.com USDA, Natural Resources & Environment Mark Rey, USDA Undersecretary 1400 Independence Ave. SW, .. 217-E Washington, DC 20250 202-720-7173 Fax: 202-720-0632 mark.rey [at] usda.gov Kathleen Gause, Director 202-205-8534 USDA Forest Service Civil Rights Staff Stop Code 1142 1400 Independence Ave., S.W. Washington., DC 20250-1142 Tel (202) 205-1585 Office of the Chief Dale Bosworth, Chief USDA Forest Service Yates Federal Building (4NW Yates) 201 14th Street, SW - Washington, DCÊ20250 202-205-1661; Fx: 202-205-1765 Executive Assistant...Karla Hawley, 202 -205-1195 Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests, Mary H. Peterson, Supervisor 2468 Jackson Street -- Laramie, WY 82070-6535 307-745-2300 Fax: 307-745-2398 U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region (R-2) Rick Cables, Regional Forester Mail: P.O. Box 25127 -- Lakewood, CO 80225-0127 303-275-5451 Richard Stem, Deputy Regional Forester, Resources: 303-275-5451 Steve Silverman, Office of General Counsel, Regional Attorney: 303-275-5536 Bill Fox, Law Enforcement & Investigations, Special Agent in Charge: 303-275-5253 Jerome Romero, Deputy Director of Civil Rights: 303-275-5340 Some resources to research these issues further: The best Rainbow website: www.welcomehome.org A good article written before the feds came down hard: www.csindy.com More recent coverage: www.rockymountainnews.com and www.denverpost.comSOURCE: www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/06/27/18283162.php
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jul 7, 2006 17:38:33 GMT 4
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 11, 2006 16:53:39 GMT 4
Amnesty International Urges Congress to Uphold Due Process Tomorrow
7/10/2006 3:22:00 PM
Contact: Sharon Singh of Amnesty International USA, 202-544-0200, ext. 289
WASHINGTON, July 10 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director, issued the following statement prior to the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: Establishing a Constitutional Process, and the confirmation of William J. Haynes II on Tuesday:
"Amnesty International was heartened by the Supreme Court's recent decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld reaffirming fair trial standards for detainees being held at the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay. Anyone suspected of committing war crimes or crimes against humanity must be held accountable; however it must be done in accordance with minimum due process standards.
"The president has now turned to Congress to give him authorization to proceed with military commissions at Guantanamo. The ball is in Congress' court, and it now has an opportunity to swing the United States back to the rule of law and begin to repair its reputation as a human rights leader.
"Amnesty International encourages the United States government to use established mechanisms to try people for war crimes and terrorist acts, including the Uniform Code of Military Justice and courts martial or federal courts. All would provide for the minimum due process required by Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions, with the civilian courts providing additional protections and added transparency.
"While Amnesty International does not take a position on confirmations, we ask that the Senate move cautiously with the nomination of William J. Haynes II to a lifelong appointment as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. In his role as general counsel to the Department of Defense, Haynes was an integral part of the legal team that created the legal framework in which abuses have flourished at Guantanamo and elsewhere."
Amnesty International has called for an independent commission to investigate all aspects of U.S. detention policies, including the use of secret detention sites and the practice of extraordinary rendition.
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Aug 26, 2006 9:00:17 GMT 4
Cafferty - Jail to the Chief (Video) FYI, in case you haven't seen this video. Our world gets [glow=red,2,300]BRIGHTER[/glow] every day. Color me happy! Copy of transcript and link below........MichelleCafferty - Jail to the Chief (Video) by Al Rodgers Thu Aug 17, 2006 at 02:46:08 PM PDT Al Rodgers's diary :: :: "Seems like we are having this discussion about the judge's ruling in the abstract, as if there's no precedent for what the judge decided. The judge upheld the ruling of the FISA court, which said if you want to wiretap phones, you need a court order to do so. The law of the land says -- get a warrant. The actions of the administration have ignored the law of the land in that regard. So it's not a discussion in the abstract. It's not hypothetical. There are laws on the books against what the administration is doing. And it's about time somebody said it out loud. This federal judge rules President Bush is breaking the law by spying on people in this country without a warrant. The judge said the president is violating the first amendment, the fourth amendment and the foreign intelligence surveillance act, FISA, passed by congress in 1978, specifically to reduce this kind of abuse of power. That's why the FISA court was created in the first place. What does this mean? It means President Bush violated his oath of office, among other things when he swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. It means he's been lying to us, when he tells us there's nothing illegal he's been doing. And a 75-year-old black female judge in Michigan has finally stepped in and done the job that Congress is supposed to do, namely oversight of the executive branch over government. But the Congress is controlled by Republicans and they are controlled by the president and they'd have done nothing in the way of oversight. I hope it means the arrogant inner circle at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may finally have to start answering to the people who own that address, that would be us, about how we conduct our country's affairs." To View Go To:www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/17/17468/7925
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Nov 30, 2006 7:42:10 GMT 4
A Story We Should All KnowIn a history-making lawsuit, the ACLU is challenging the CIA on behalf of Khaled El-Masri, an entirely innocent victim of rendition who was released without ever being charged.
Those paying attention to the issue of torture by the CIA and the Army will recall the tortured memorandum of January 25, 2002, authored by David Addington (then counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and now Cheney’s chief of staff) and signed by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. That memo argued that “Geneva ’s strict limitations on questioning enemy prisoners” were “obsolete” in the new war-on-terror paradigm. Still, Addington/Gonzales felt compelled to remind the president that U.S.criminal code—specifically the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441), with its draconian penalties (including death)—could come into play.
That statute pins the “war crime” label on any grave breach of Geneva, like “outrages against personal dignity,” regardless of whether the detainee qualifies as a prisoner of war. Addington and Gonzales warned the president of the danger that he could be prosecuted under that law by a future independent counsel, but reassured him that there is a “reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.” That was good enough for President George W. Bush, who on Feb. 7, 2002, signed a memorandum saying that detainees should be treated humanely, “as appropriate and consistent with military necessity. “I have come to America seeking three things. An acknowledgement that the United States government is responsible for kidnapping, abusing and detaining me; an explanation as to why I was singled out for this treatment; and an apology because I am an innocent man who has never been charged with any crime.” -- Khaled El-Masri, a victim of extraordinary rendition ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the ACLU: A Story We Should All KnowDear Friend, The case of our client Khaled El-Masri is one we should all be watching carefully. Yesterday, he stood up in a courtroom to challenge the Bush administration's use of "extraordinary rendition," abduction, detention and interrogation in secret overseas prisons. While it is a credit to our system of justice that Mr. El-Masri can now demand accountability from his CIA kidnappers, all of us must ask, how have we let our country stray so far from its ideals? Mr. El-Masri's story is a frightening catalogue of abuses. A father of six, he was forcibly abducted in Macedonia while on vacation, handed over to the CIA and flown to a secret interrogation center in Afghanistan where he was beaten, drugged and repeatedly denied legal counsel. After two months, CIA operatives informed director George Tenet that they were holding an innocent man. But it still took two more months before he was released -- flown in secret to Albania and left alone on a hillside in the middle of the night. People need to hear his story, and the agencies and private companies responsible must face real justice for their violations of U.S. laws as well as universal human rights laws. In a legal maneuver that is now familiar, the government is trying to use the veil of secrecy to avoid accountability for its actions. But yesterday, we argued that the government's official recognition of the program and information already available about this case show that the lawsuit does not jeopardize national security and must be allowed to continue. Our government would rather you didn’t hear his story. The last time Mr. El-Masri tried to come to the U.S. -- to hear his own court case -- he was denied entry because he did not have a visa, even though German citizens don’t actually need visas to enter the U.S. This week, Mr. El-Masri witnessed his court proceedings and will also be meeting in person with members of Congress to share his story. As he told the Washington Post today, “I never thought badly of the United States. I do think badly of the foreign policy aspects and the sitting government.” You can help.Learn more about El-Masri v. Tenet: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/rendition.htmlWatch Mr. El-Masri and his attorneys tell the story in their own words: action.aclu.org/site/R?i=Hly7eJFVerASaSDpPgRwgA.. And tell others about the case, and the unthinkable acts perpetrated in our name - and now being deliberately covered over through an abuse of the "state secrets" privilege: action.aclu.org/site/Ecard?ecard_id=3621&JServSessionIdr011=w24v62exg2.app24aThe ACLU is appalled that our government sanctioned and carried out these atrocious actions -- and that it continues to shirk responsibility by hiding behind state secrets. These are not the actions of a proud nation, instead they diminish us as a people. We will continue the fight both to seek justice for Khaled El-Masri and to end the practice of extraordinary rendition. Thank you for making those efforts possible. Sincerely, Anthony D. Romero Executive Director ACLU ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lawsuit also brought against these private corporations:El-Masri v. Tenet: ACLU Fact Sheet on "Air CIA" (11/27/2006)In legal papers challenging the illegal CIA kidnapping of German national Khaled El-Masri, the ACLU has named as defendants the owners and operators of a Boeing 737 airplane that was leased by U.S. government agents and used to transport El-Masri from Macedonia to Afghanistan and then Albania. According to the ACLU's legal complaint in El Masri v. Tenet, the U.S.-based, private aviation corporations "have played and continue to play an integral role in the implementation of the ‘extraordinary rendition' policy." The companies and their employees, the ACLU charges, conspired with then-CIA director Tenet and other U.S. government officials to kidnap, detain and abuse El-Masri. The owners and operators knew or should have known that the suspects they were transporting "will be subjected to prolonged arbitrary detention, torture, and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." The defendants are:Premier Executive Transport Services, located in Dedham, MA . PETS was the owner of the Boeing business jet 737-7ET, formerly registered with the Federal Aviation Authority as N313P and now registered as N4476S. The jet was used to transport Khaled El-Masri from Skopje, Macedonia to detention and interrogation in Afghanistan. The registration of the jet was changed shortly after media reports identified the aircraft's involvement in the CIA's rendition program. The company remains on the register of companies in Massachusetts. Keeler and Tate Management LLC, headquartered in Reno, Nevada. Records show that Keeler and Tate purchased the Boeing jet in December 2004; the company is being sued by the ACLU as the corporate successor to PETS. The ACLU has also charged that the transfer of the aircraft to Keeler and Tate was fraudulent because it was done in order to avoid detection and potential liablity for PETS' involvement in the illegal transport of El-Masri. In legal papers the ACLU said that the company is a "front" established to continue PETS' illegal transportation business. Aero Contractors, Ltd., headquartered at the Johnston County Airport in North Carolina. Aero was contracted by PETS to operate the Boeing jet; the company handled the transport of Khaled El-Masri from Skopje to Afghanistan. According to The New York Times, Aero Contractors is "a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service. The company was founded in 1979 by a legendary CIA officer and chief pilot for Air America, the agency's Vietnam-era air company, and it appears to be controlled by the agency, according to former employees." ("CIA Expanding Terror Battle under Guise of Charter Flights," The New York Times, May 31, 2005). Earlier this month, 12 members of North Carolina's State House wrote to the State Board of Investigations calling for an investigation of Aero's involvement in activities "that would not have been legal in the United States." New documents disclosed this week confirm the involvement of Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company, based in Seattle. In a statement to the Spanish police, the head of a local aviation company, Mallorcair, confirmed that his company received instructions from Jeppessen International Trip Planning, a Boeing subsidiary, for handling local logistics for the plane used to transport Khaled El-Masri and others. The documents were obtained by journalist Stephen Grey, author of Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. They include the Mallorcair statement to the Spanish police and copies of telexes from Mallorcair to Jeppessen confirming arrangements for the El Masri flight as well as many other flights. (See www.ghostplane.net/elmasri)Depending on the outcome of the pending appeal in the El-Masri case, the ACLU may amend its civil complaint to include Boeing as a defendant. The ACLU is also charging 20 "John Does,"current and former CIA agents and airline employees who directed or participated in the kidnapping, detention and abusive treatment of Khaled El-Masri. Their identities are not currently known. Chronology of the Plane Used in the Kidnapping of Khaled El-Masri Aviation documents show that a Boeing jet registered with the Federal Aviation Authority as N313P, took of from Palma, Mallorca, Spain on January 23, 2004 and landed at the Skopje airport at 8:51 p.m. that evening. The jet left Skopje more than three hours later, flying to Baghdad and then on to Kabul, the Afghan capital. On Sunday, January 25, the jet left Kabul, flying to Timmisoara, Romania. The ACLU has obtained a log of the plane's activities between January 22-24, 2004, online at www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/airplane_callsigns20040122.pdfDetails are not available concerning the plane that transported El-Masri back to Albania, where he was abandoned on a hill on May 28, 2004 with no explanation, never having been charged with a crime. For more information on the case, go to www.aclu.org/renditionCONTACT: media@aclu.org Source: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/27516res20061127.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Dec 11, 2006 8:34:04 GMT 4
Congress Must Insist Bush Isn't Above Law
It's very good indeed that Rep. John Conyers has the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Mr. Conyers is a true man of the LIGHT within our dark government. And, the House Judiciary Committee has authority over everything. Two articles below for you to read....Michelle Congress Must Insist Bush Isn't Above Law By Jesse Jackson The Chicago Sun-Times Tuesday 05 December 2006 Should President Bush be impeached? The very idea seems extreme, if not loony. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has explicitly ruled impeachment off the Democratic majority's agenda. But activists and legal scholars are organizing to pressure Democrats to begin impeachment hearings. And the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, has issued two remarkable studies on abuses of presidential authority, raising the question of impeachable offenses. The Gingrich Congress' attempt to railroad President Clinton out of office gave impeachment a bad press. It is scorned as irresponsible, vindictive, partisan spitball politics. Rather than addressing the challenges the nation faces, impeachment, many pundits argue, wastes months on harsh, divisive wrangling. And of course, in 1998, the public punished Republicans - ultimately leading to the toppling of Gingrich himself. But in the current circumstances, the question isn't merely rhetorical or partisan. While in office, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have asserted an extraordinary array of extra-constitutional powers. Bush argues that he has the right to declare war on his own. He claims he can designate any American an "enemy combatant." For those under that suspicion, he claims the right to wiretap them without warrants, arrest them without charges, detain them without lawyers, torture them without judicial review and hold them until the war ends. He also says that neither Congress nor the public has any right to review his decisions, or to gain access to the papers that he chooses to keep secret. Because Bush himself says the war on terror will last for decades, the scope of this assertion is staggering. Bush and his men drove us into the war of choice in Iraq, distorting intelligence to gain public support and undermining our credibility across the world. His policies led directly to the disgraces of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. His assertions have trampled the rights of American citizens, as well as those from other countries. Lack of accountability squandered billions in taxpayer dollars on waste, fraud and abuse of major contractors in Iraq. The list goes on. Bush's remarkable assertions would make the president an elected king. That is not what the founders intended. They wrote the Constitution to create a system of checks and balances to limit presidential power. They gave Congress the right to declare war, arguing that "no one man" should ever have that power in a republic. They passed the Bill of Rights to guarantee rights to the people. How do we hold presidents accountable when they trample these limits? Presidents cannot be indicted. They are immune from civil lawsuits on the basis of their official actions. The only recourse in the Constitution is impeachment. The Democratic Congress has a duty to the Constitution to investigate Bush's claims to be above the law. Conyers may well put off any consideration of impeachment - but he has a duty to convene serious hearings on the scope of the president's claims, the abuses to the Constitution and to citizens resulting from those claims, and the remedies to them. Whether we're Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, we all should support defending our Constitution. We need a careful consideration of whether the Constitution can or should be changed in the light of the threats we now face. If it is to be changed, then surely it should be changed by amendment, not by the unilateral acts of a president. If changes are not needed, then Bush's claims must be clearly rejected. What if the president and his administration refuse to cooperate with Congress in this inquiry? What if they deny access to all documents, refuse to testify and issue "signing statements" stating that the president will not abide by the laws that Congress passes? Then the Constitution offers only two options: Vote the president out of office, and Bush is due to depart in 2009. Or impeach Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors. In my view, it should not come to that - but Congress must act to defend the Constitution before America turns completely into an elected dictatorship. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conservative for Impeachment By Brian Gilmore The Progressive Tuesday 05 December 2006 Bruce Fein reminds me of Jerry Lewis playing Professor Julius Kelp in the 1963 comedy classic The Nutty Professor. Intellectually astute and quick-witted, Fein, like Lewis as Kelp, is underestimated because of his peculiar style. But the stakes are too high to dismiss Fein simply for being didactic or eccentric. In fact, he's breaking conservative rank to defend our Constitution. Fein has a solid Republican résumé. He served as an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Administration, where he helped formulate conservative arguments on key legal issues that are still current today. He had stints as a resident scholar at the Heritage Foundation and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He also writes a regular column for The Washington Times newspaper, one of the country's leading conservative dailies. But his bona fides don't end there. He has trashed the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, stating that it required a "hallucinogenic intellectual flight" on the part of Justice Harry Blackmun to draft the opinion. "President George W. Bush should pack the United States Supreme Court with philosophical clones of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and defeated nominee Robert H. Bork," he wrote in Washington Lawyer in February 2005. He voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and he applauded the nomination of John Roberts as Bush's "finest hour." So why has Fein been collaborating with the ACLU and providing damning testimony to the Senate about President Bush? Why is he for censuring the President and even, perhaps, impeaching him? This is what did it: The disclosure that the National Security Agency (NSA) is engaged in the domestic wiretapping of American citizens in the United States without first obtaining warrants. The Bush Administration had crossed the line. Within twenty-four hours, Fein went into constitutional combat mode. And he hasn't stopped since. For Fein, there is nothing really to debate; the law is settled. In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, permitting the government to conduct electronic surveillance on citizens in the United States if it first gets a warrant from the FISA court, which exists for that reason only. The FISA court rarely has denied such a request. But the NSA has repeatedly conducted such surveillance without going to the FISA court for warrants. Every forty-five days, President Bush has been issuing Executive Orders saying that it is within his authority to bypass the FISA court. And he says he'll keep doing so. "There is not a single Supreme Court case that insinuates that the President can violate a federal statute in order to gather foreign intelligence," Fein tells me. "It was a flagrant violation of the Constitution, which I feel that citizens as well as the government have a duty to defend." Fein cites the 1952 Supreme Court case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer as support for the proposition that the President does not have "inherent authority" to bypass legislative enactments of Congress in a time of war. In the Youngstown case, President Harry Truman cited his "inherent authority" and attempted to seize a steel mill during the war in Korea. The court mashed him back. FISA, according to Fein, also reins in the President because it has never been overturned or held unconstitutional. It is the law, according to Fein, and if it can be disobeyed, why is the FISA court still in operation today? "The warrantless surveillance program," Fein stated before the Senate Judiciary Committee back on March 31, "justifies censure." He testified that the President is "seeking to cripple the Constitution's checks and balances" by bypassing the FISA court. And Fein said that Bush's rationales "would reduce Congress to an ink-blot in the permanent conflict with international terrorism. The President could pick and choose which statutes to obey in gathering foreign intelligence and employing battlefield tactics on the sidewalks of the United States." Fein denounced "President Bush's contempt for the rule of law and constitutional limitations." On August 17, federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor issued a strong ruling against the surveillance program. The verdict came under attack from a number of Republicans for being too harsh on the Bush Administration. Not from Fein, though. In an August 29 op-ed in The Washington Times, he said Taylor "too weakly condemned" the program, which he deemed as "flagrantly illegal." "Strong words. But he had even stronger ones when he testified to the Senate on June 27 about President Bush's signing statements - more than 750 of them, according to The Boston Globe. These are, in effect, asterisks that the President places next to his name when he signs a bill into law. As Fein explained, under the Constitution, the President has only two choices: Sign a bill and see that the law is properly executed, or veto the bill. But time and again, President Bush has added a signing statement that says he will enforce the law only to the extent that it doesn't interfere with his duties as commander in chief or his power as the unitary executive or his interpretation of the Constitution.
Noting that President Bush's signing statements "have multiplied logarithmically," Fein testified that they "flout the Constitution's checks and balances and separation of powers. They usurp legislative prerogatives and evade accountability." Fein said they amount to an impermissible line-item veto.
"If all other avenues have proved unavailing," Fein testified, "Congress should contemplate impeachment.... The epitome of an impeachable offense, as Alexander Hamilton amplified in the Federalist Papers, is a political crime against the Constitution." Fein believes that President Bush is engaging in a power grab of the gravest dimension. "The Republic is withering in foolish imitation of Rome," Fein wrote in The Washington Times after Congress approved the Military Commissions Act. When I ask Fein if he has received any serious flak from other conservatives for his sustained criticism, he admits some of his ideological homies are perturbed. "To sort of borrow a phrase from President Clinton," Fein says laughing, "it depends upon what the meaning of the word 'flak' is." -------- Brian Gilmore is a poet, lawyer, and author of Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington.Both articles can be found here:www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120606J.shtml
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jan 10, 2007 16:27:31 GMT 4
"Surge in US Forces" without Congressional Approval Violates US Constitutionby Prof. Francis Boyle Global Research, January 6, 2007 Concerning the proposed 'surge' by the Bush administration of 20,000-plus U.S. troops into Iraq, this requires further authorization by the U.S. Congress under the terms of the War Powers Resolution. Section 4(a)(3) makes it quite clear that the War Powers Resolution is triggered ... 'In the absence of a declaration of war [which we do not have for Iraq], in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced ... (3) in numbers which substantially enlarge United States Armed Forces equipped for combat already located in a foreign nation....' We currently have about 140,000 troops in Iraq. Sending in an additional 20,000-plus would 'substantially enlarge' those forces. Therefore, the Bush administration would require further authorization from Congress for this euphemistic 'surge,' which is really a substantial escalation. Failure to obtain additional authorization from Congress for this substantial enlargement of U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq would constitute an impeachable offense under the terms of the United States Constitution for violating the Constitution's War Powers ClauseProfessor of international law at the University of Illinois, Francis Boyle is Author of Destroying World Order: American Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11Source:www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BOY20070106&articleId=4356
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Feb 1, 2007 8:17:29 GMT 4
Bush Is Not Above the Law By JAMES BAMFORD Published: January 31, 2007 Washington LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought. But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.The ruling was the result of a suit, in which I am one of the plaintiffs, brought against the National Security Agency by the American Civil Liberties Union. It was a response to revelations by this newspaper in December 2005 that the agency had been monitoring the phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans for more than four years without first obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In the past, even presidents were not above the law. When the F.B.I. turned up evidence during Watergate that Richard Nixon had obstructed justice by trying to cover up his involvement, a special prosecutor was named and a House committee recommended that the president be impeached. And when an independent counsel found evidence that President Bill Clinton had committed perjury in the Monica Lewinsky case, the impeachment machinery again cranked into gear, with the spectacle of a Senate trial (which ended in acquittal). Laws are broken, the federal government investigates, and the individuals involved — even if they’re presidents — are tried and, if found guilty, punished. That is the way it is supposed to work under our system of government. But not this time.Last Aug. 17, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the United States District Court in Detroit issued her ruling in the A.C.L.U. case. The president, she wrote, had “undisputedly violated” not only the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, but also statutory law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Enacted by a bipartisan Congress in 1978, the FISA statute was a response to revelations that the National Security Agency had conducted warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. To deter future administrations from similar actions, the law made a violation a felony punishable by a $10,000 fine and five years in prison. Yet despite this ruling, the Bush Justice Department never opened an F.B.I. investigation, no special prosecutor was named, and there was no talk of impeachment in the Republican-controlled Congress. Justice Department lawyers argued last June that warrants were not required for what they called the administration’s “terrorist surveillance program” because of the president’s “inherent powers” to order eavesdropping and because of the Congressional authorization to use military force against those responsible for 9/11. But Judge Taylor rejected both arguments, ruling that even presidents must obey statutory law and the Constitution. On Jan. 17, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales unexpectedly declared that President Bush had ended the program, deciding to again seek warrants in all cases. Exactly what kind of warrants — individual, as is required by the law, or broad-based, which would probably still be illegal — is as yet unknown. The action may have been designed to forestall a potentially adverse ruling by the federal appeals court in Cincinnati, which had scheduled oral arguments on the case for today. At that hearing, the administration is now expected to argue that the case is moot and should be thrown out — while reserving the right to restart the program at any time. But that’s a bit like a bank robber coming into court and arguing that, although he has been sticking up banks for the past half-decade, he has agreed to a temporary halt and therefore he shouldn’t be prosecuted. Independent of the A.C.L.U. case, a criminal investigation by the F.B.I. and a special prosecutor should begin immediately. The question that must finally be answered is whether the president is guilty of committing a felony by continuously reauthorizing the warrantless eavesdropping program for the past five years. And if so, what action must be taken? The issue is not original. Among the charges approved by the House Judiciary Committee when it recommended its articles of impeachment against President Nixon was “illegal wiretaps.” President Nixon, the bill charged, “caused wiretaps to be placed on the telephones of 17 persons without having obtained a court order authorizing the tap, as required by federal law; in violation of Sections 241, 371 and 2510-11 of the Criminal Code.” Under his program, President Bush could probably be charged with wiretapping not 17 but thousands of people without having obtained a court order authorizing the taps as required by federal law, in violation of FISA. It is not only the federal court but also many in Congress who believe that a violation of law has taken place. In a hearing on Jan. 18, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said, “For years, this administration has engaged in warrantless wiretapping of Americans contrary to the law.” His view was shared by the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who said of Mr. Bush, “For five years he has been operating an illegal program.” And Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, noted that much of the public was opposed to the program and that it both hurt the country at home and damaged its image abroad. “The heavy criticism which the president took on the program,” he said, “I think was very harmful in the political process and for the reputation of the country.” To allow a president to break the law and commit a felony for more than five years without even a formal independent investigation would be the ultimate subversion of the Constitution and the rule of law. As Judge Taylor warned in her decision, “There are no hereditary kings in America.”James Bamford is the author of two books on the National Security Agency, “The Puzzle Palace” and “Body of Secrets.”Source:www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/opinion/31bamford.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Feb 5, 2007 14:11:15 GMT 4
President's signing statements examinedThursday, February 1, 2007 - WASHINGTON — New House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., used his first oversight hearing Wednesday to say he's starting an investigation into President Bush's possible abuse of presidential signing statements.Democrats and some Republican lawmakers have accused Bush of conducting an imperial presidency by using bill-signing statements to declare that he'll interpret legislative provisions his way and will feel free to ignore some terms. Though some influential Republicans, such as Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., have railed against Bush's signing statements, several House Judiciary Committee Republicans balked Wednesday, describing Conyers' hearing as political fishing expeditions. Some legal experts disagree, saying Bush's assertion of this arguable executive authority undercuts Congress and enhances the power of the president beyond the limits set by the Constitution. Bush has issued 147 signing statements, according to Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Source:seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003550503_watch01.html
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