Will New Democratic Party Controlled Congress, Investigate Secret Republican "Orgs"? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 11-13-2006, 12:43 PM

Was Jack Abramoff an intelligence agent, controlled by the secretive christian fundametnatlist/republican party merged organization, the CNP?

Will democrats who will chair all house and senate investigative committees, look into any of this information? If this information and this agenda turns out to be accurate, should the republican party be treated by US authorities in a similar manner to the communist party? How can a "liberal media" pay so little attention to Abramoff's activities and background, to the CNP and it's leaders and financiers, and to the influence they wield over Bush, Cheney. et al, and to the damage they do to US domestic and foreign policy, and to US government finances........I'm still digesting these questions and I'll post along with you, if this thread "takes off".....

Quote:

Michael Hiltzik GOLDEN STATE; Abramoff Took Shot at Making Movies; [HOME EDITION]
Michael Hiltzik. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Jan 16, 2006. pg. C.1

..... Abramoff resurfaced in 1986 as founder of the International Freedom Foundation. IFF's function was to spread negative propaganda about the African National Congress, the opposition group that would eventually take over South Africa's government in the post- apartheid era, and its leader, Nelson Mandela. Many years later, the South Africans would reveal that IFF had been a front almost entirely funded by the apartheid-era regime.

Around the time he founded IFF, Abramoff also launched "Red Scorpion" as co-writer and producer, with an initial budget of about $12.5 million. The financial backers have never been fully disclosed, although it's known that Warner Bros. put up some money for distribution rights and the South African government provided military vehicles for the sets and troops as extras........

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2500248_3.html
Abramoff as Auteur: He Was No Run of De Mille Movie Mogul

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 27, 2005; Page N01

....When "Red Scorpion" was released, it was picketed by anti-apartheid protesters angry that Abramoff had shot the movie in territory controlled by South Africa's white supremacist government, using soldiers and military equipment lent by the South Africans. The protesters would have been even angrier if they'd known that the International Freedom Foundation, a right-wing group founded by Abramoff, was secretly bankrolled by the South African army -- but that wasn't known until a South African colonel revealed it in 1995.....

Quote:

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill...ff.html?200610

Editors Note:Front for Apartheid, appeared in Newsday, Sunday, July 16, 1995. The article was reported by Dele Olojede in South Africa and Timothy M. Phelps in Washington. The article concerns a Washington think-tank called the International Freedom Foundation that had branches in Johannesburg, South Africa and London, England. The International Freedom Foundation was actually a front for intelligence operators who worked on psycho-political operations to prolong apartheid. People involved included United States Department of State Officials, United States Congressmen, and US Intelligence agents. The article says "jobs" for South African intelligence provided at least half of the total IFF revenue, and South African military intelligence would send fees from the "jobs" directly to the IFF Washington office...

Quote:

http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.a.htm#abramhoff
Jack Abramoff - CNP Member 1984-85, 1988. National Chairman, College of Republicans; Chairman, United Students of America Foundation, 'dedicated to educating students on the need to defund political activism on campus'; president Scorpion Film Productions, Inc.; chairman, Regency Entertainment Group, Ltd.; member, Board of Directors, The Conservative Caucus Research and Education Foundation. Former executive director, Citizens for America, former chairman, College Republican National Committee, and also USA Foundation.

In the 1984-85 Council for National Policy Annual Directory, it stated under his bio; "National Chairman, College Republicans; under his leadership, College Republican National Committee has become the largest, most active student political organization in America; Chairman, United Students of America Foundation, dedicated to educating students on the need to defund political activism on campus; Executive Producer, "Fallout", a student radio program.; President, United Students Press Service; Publisher, New American Magazine, a national monthly conservative student magazine; College Republicans confront leftist groups on campus and promote the conservative agenda...." He was based in Washington DC at that time with the United Students of America Foundation address being his contact. He was also a law student by then.

Jack Abramoff is an Orthodox Jew with close ties to Rabbi Lapin/Toward Tradition and movie critic Michael Medved. He was also a supporter of CNP's Tom Delay, whom Delay once called "one of my best friends."

"In July 2002, at the height of the anti-Jena campaign, Bauer and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a fixture at Christian-right events, founded the American Alliance of Christians and Jews. On the group's board were Dobson, Robertson, Falwell and one Jack Abramoff. Lapin's organization, Toward Tradition, which administered the AACJ, received $25,000 from one of Abramoff's gambling industry clients in 2000; took $75,000 from Abramoff and his clients; and then, upon Abramoff's written instructions, hired the wife of Tony Rudy to the tune of $5,000 a month. Rudy, who was Tom DeLay's deputy chief of staff at the time, later a lobbyist, has been named in Abramoff's guilty plea" [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060220/blumenthal ]

Founder and former chairman of The International Freedom Foundation (IFF) which was recently exposed by senior South African military personnel as a cut-out of the South African military and Special Branch. IFF functioned as a propaganda arm for South African STRATCOM directed against the African National Congress and the trade union confederation. 3b

3b. For STRATCOM> Stratcom's bogus news agency rings by Ann Eveleth , August 14, 1998 See: http://web.sn.apc.org/wmail/issues/980814/NEWS16.html ; See: A Small Circle of Friends. by Tom Burghardt Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR)> http://www.webcom.com/~pinknoiz/right/lpratt.html

RE: STRATCOM "...General Viljoen had personally ordered the attacks on so-called "African National Congress Targets" including the blow up of suspected anti-apartheid activists and critics. As revealed by former spy Craig Williamson from classified State Security Council documents, Viljoen was also responsible for Stratcom (Strategic Communications), a covert organization involved in frame-ups, political assassinations, bombings, torture, covert propaganda and "dirty tricks campaigns"...(Stefaans Brummer, "The Web of Stratcoms", Weekly Mail and Guardian. 24 February 1995)." 4

[4. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/37/076.html > Political History of South Africa; > Fri, 9 May 97 ;EXPORTING APARTHEID TO SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA By Michel Chossudovsky; Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, author of The Globalization of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Third World Network, Penang and Zed Press, London, 1997. Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, 1996.]

http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.s.htm#sellars
Duncan Sellars - CNP 1984, 1988; former vice Chairman, International Freedom Foundation [IFF]; director, Council on Southern Africa; Former director, The Conservative Caucus Research Analysis and Education Foundation; Editor African Intelligence Digest; One of the I.F.F.'s less endearing traits is its uncritical support of the white South African government; advisory board, Institute of East-West Dynamics. SEE: UN Endorsement 54

Quote:

http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=Ne...=6949&abbr=cs_
Behind Closed Doors
Who Is The Council For National Policy And What Are They Up To? And Why Don’t They Want You To

Know?

by Jeremy Leaming and Rob Boston

When a top U.S. senator receives a major award from a national advocacy organization, it’s

standard procedure for both the politician and the group to eagerly tell as many people about

it as possible.

Press releases spew from fax machines and e-mails clog reporters’ in-boxes. The news media are

summoned in the hope that favorable stories will appear in the newspapers, on radio and on

television.

It was odd, therefore, that when U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) accepted a

“Thomas Jefferson Award” from a national group at the Plaza Hotel in New York City in August,

the media weren’t notified. In fact, they weren’t welcome to attend......

......The CNP was founded in 1981 as an umbrella organization of right-wing leaders who would

gather regularly to plot strategy, share ideas and fund causes and candidates to advance the

far-right agenda. Twenty-three years later, it is still secretly pursuing those goals with

amazing success.

Since its founding, the tax-exempt organization has been meeting three times a year. Members

have come and gone, but all share something in common: They are powerful figures, drawn from

both the Religious Right and the anti-government, anti-tax wing of the ultra-conservative

movement.

It may sound like a far-left conspiracy theory, but the CNP is all too real and, its critics

would argue, all too influential.

What amazes most CNP opponents is the group’s ability to avoid widespread public scrutiny.

Despite nearly a quarter century of existence and involvement by wealthy and influential

political figures, the CNP remains unknown to most Americans. Operating out of a non-descript

office building in the Washingomgton, D.C., suburb of Fairfax, Va., the organization has managed

to keep an extremely low profile an amazing feat when one considers the people the CNP courts.

New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick was finally able to pierce the CNP veil in August

when he attended a gathering of the group in New York City just before the Republican

convention, where the organization presented Frist with the “Jefferson Award.” .......

Quote:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politic...august2004.htm

8/25/04
The real convention?
Republicans will be showcasing their "compassionate conservatism" at next week's convention in

Manhattan by featuring moderates like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and California Gov.

Arnold Schwarzenegger in key speaking roles. But this week, true-blue conservatives are

getting together in Gotham City to flex their own ideological muscles and exert their own

influence on the GOP. The supersecret Council for National Policy, founded at the onset of the

Reagan era, will be meeting in New York at an undisclosed location in hopes of avoiding

protesters. The thousand member group includes political heavyweights like John Ashcroft, Bill

Frist, and Tom Delay, religious leaders from Pat Robertson to James Dobson, media moguls like

Steve Forbes, and conservative billionaires Howard Ahmanson and Nelson Bunker Hunt.

Conservative Republicans boast that the council's meeting is the "real" convention. "It's the

old smoke-filled room, but I wouldn't say it's corrupt," says a source. "Rather it's just

where the work gets done." The group met in San Diego earlier this year and will meet again

soon after the November election. One issue sure to be debated is whether a legitimate

democracy is achievable in Iraq; some on the right believe that part of the Bush

administration's rationale for war was flawed. –Suzi Parker

Quote:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121170&page=1
Inside the Council for National Policy
Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of
By Marc J. Ambinder

W A S H I N G T O N, May 2 (2002)- When Steve Baldwin, the executive director of an

organization with the stale-as-old-bread name of the Council for National Policy, boasts that

"we control everything in the world," he is only half-kidding.

Quote:

From CNP executive director, Steve Baldwin:
http://www.regent.edu/acad/schlaw/la...4_2baldwin.PDF
CHILD MOLESTATION AND THE HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENT

(From Page 1

"However, overwhelming evidence supports the
belief that homosexuality is a sexual deviancy often accompanied by
disorders that have dire consequences for our culture. A vast amount of
data demonstrating the deviant nature of the gay lifestyle is ignored by
the media as well as the leadership of the psychological, psychiatric, and
medical professions.
It is difficult to convey the dark side of the homosexual culture
without appearing harsh. However, it is time to acknowledge that
homosexual behavior threatens the foundation of Western civilization
the nuclear family. An unmistakable manifestation of the attack on the
family unit is the homosexual community’s efforts to target children both
for their own sexual pleasure and to enlarge the homosexual movement".

Half-kidding, because the council doesn't really control the world. The staff of about eight,

working in a modern office building in Fairfax, Va., isn't even enough for a real full-court

basketball game.

But also half-serious because the council has deservedly attained the reputation for

conceiving and promoting the ideas of many who in fact do want to control everything in the

world.

For many liberals, the 22-year-old council is very dangerous and dangerously secretive, and

has fueled conspiratorial antipathy. The group wants to be the conservative version of the

Council on Foreign Relations, but to some, CNP members — among the brightest lights of the

hard right — are up to no good.

The CNP meets this weekend at a Washington location known to fewer insiders than the identity

of the vice president's undisclosed chunk of bedrock.

Look for them if you're at a ritzy hotel in Tyson's Corner, Va.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the headliner. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales

will speak, as will Timothy Goeglein, deputy director of the White House Office of Public

Liaison. There have been no public announcements, and there won't be. The 500 or so members

will hear private, unvarnished presentations.

White House spokeswoman Anne Womack said Gonzales' remarks would not be released. The CNP's

bylaws keep out the press and prevent disclosure of the transcribed proceedings — unless all

the speakers give their assent. Few do.

In a 2000 filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the CNP says it holds "educational

conferences and seminars for national leaders in the field of business, government, religion

and academia." It says it produces a weekly newsletter keeping members abreast of

developments, and a biyearly collection of speeches. Executive Director Morton Blackwell was

paid a little more than $70,000. The organization took in more than $732,000.

Baldwin said he doesn't get many calls from the press. But he's happy to answer some basic

questions.

Of the group's reputation, he said, "There's a lot of stuff out there claiming we're a lot

more than we are."

What they are — or rather, what sway they hold — is a source of some dispute.

In 1999, candidate George W. Bush spoke before a closed-press CNP session in San Antonio. His

speech, contemporaneously described as a typical mid-campaign ministration to conservatives,

was recorded on audio tape.

(Depending on whose account you believe, Bush promised to appoint only anti-abortion-rights

judges to the Supreme Court, or he stuck to his campaign "strict constructionist" phrase. Or

he took a tough stance against gays and lesbians, or maybe he didn't).

The media and center-left activist groups urged the group and Bush's presidential campaign to

release the tape of his remarks. The CNP, citing its bylaws that restrict access to speeches,

declined. So did the Bush campaign, citing the CNP.

Shortly thereafter, magisterial conservatives pronounced the allegedly moderate younger Bush

fit for the mantle of Republican leadership.

The two events might not be connected. But since none of the participants would say what Bush

said, the CNP's kingmaking role mushroomed in the mind's eye, at least to the Democratic

National Committee, which urged release of the tapes.

Partly because so little was known about CNP, the hubbub died down.

The CNP Against Liberalism

The CNP describes itself as a counterweight against liberal domination of the American agenda.

That countering is heavy and silent, in part because few people, outside its members, seem to

know what the group is, what it does, how it raises money, and how interlocked it has become

in the matrix of conservative activism.

Conservative, it clearly is.

Unlike other groups that meet in darkened chambers, the CNP doesn't seem to favor, as a matter

of policy and choice of guests, one-worlders, secular humanists, or multicultural

multilateralists.

According to one of its most prominent members (who asked that his name not be used), the CNP

is simply and nothing but a self-selected, conservative counterweight to the influential

center-left establishment.

Panel topics at this year's convention hew to the CNP's world view, but Baldwin, who wouldn't

give specifics, said they reflected many different vantage points.

"We'll probably discuss some of the hot issues that are relevant today. The Middle East …

We'll have a number of speakers from different perspectives. We're not of all one like mind

when it comes to what's going on there."

He continued: "Worldwide terrorism. Campaign finance reform. Generally, we kind of mirror

what's going on in society. We pride ourselves on being relevant and timely, so that members

want to come to our meetings."

Still, the group's shadowy reputation deters some high-profile figures from speaking before it

— those who directly influence policy.

For example: A knowledgeable person lists former CIA Director James Woolsey as a Friday night

speaker and says that on Saturday, Reagan defense official Frank Gaffney will debate former

presidential candidate Pat Buchanan about Israel.

The cavalcade of "formers" resembles nothing more formidable than a Fox News prime-time guest

lineup.

In the 1990s, social issues tended to dominate the panels, and guests tended to be talking

heads who were plugged in to policy circles, rather than operating from within them.

The concoction of federalism, economic growth, social traditionalism, religious activism and

anti-secularism goes down well among members because it is spiced with disdain for a common

enemy: the creeping influence of political and philosophical liberalism.

Many current and former members politely said they would prefer not to speak on the

organization's behalf. Those who did respond to telephone and e-mail messages declined to talk

about their interest in the organization. More than a dozen did not respond at all.

"Obviously, membership would imply that there is a commonality, so that goes without saying,"

said Alvin Williams, CEO of a political action committee that promotes black conservatives. "I

don't think it is anything threatening at all."

He declined to elaborate.

Darla St. Martin, associate executive director of the National Right to Life, would only say,

"Since everyone else is so skeptical [about speaking], I don't think I should."

Even Judicial Watch's Larry Klayman, the watchdog and open government proponent, would not

comment, a spokesman said. His busy schedule — four depositions in two days — precluded a

short telephone interview.

Gary Bauer, the former presidential candidate and ubiquitous media presence, asked a spokesman

to decline a request for an interview about the CNP, citing the group's long-standing policy

against press publicity.

Judging by its 1998 membership roster, which was obtained by a secular watchdog group called

the Institute for First Amendment Studies and posted on its Web site, the New Right's many

colors are represented, but there are few, if any, neo-conservatives, Republican moderates and

libertarians.

Selective name dropping doesn't juice up a conspiracy. The evidence that the CNP is an axis of

nefarity is slim. Conservative groups are quick to point out that liberal watchdogs like

Common Cause have a great influence in public policy debates, and, for instance, a direct hand

in writing the campaign-finance legislation.

A New Force in the Age of Reagan

But even CNP backers claim that the liberal establishment has nothing comparable — no central

gathering of its powerful members.

The idea for CNP gestated since the late 1960s, when the American Right, aiming for more cake,

desired a vigorous voice to influence policy and elite opinion at the margins. Intellectuals

it had, but practical policy seminars were missing. The Moral Majority flashed into being

after Roe vs. Wade, but it was oriented toward Middle America, not to not-liberal Washington

power-brokers.

CNP was conceived in 1981 by at least five fathers, including the Rev. Tim LaHaye, an

evangelical preacher who was then the head of the Moral Majority. (LaHaye is the co-author of

the popular Left Behind series that predicts and subsequently depicts the Apocalypse). Nelson

Baker Hunt, billionaire son of billionaire oilman H.L. Hunt (connected to both the John Birch

Society and to Ronald Reagan's political network), businessman and one-time murder suspect T.

Cullen Davis, and wealthy John Bircher William Cies provided the seed money.

Top Republicans were quickly recruited to fill in the gaps; hard-right thinkers met up with

sympathetic politicians. And suddenly, the right had a counterpart to liberal policy groups.

Christian activist Paul Weyrich took responsibility for bringing together the best minds of

conservatism, and his imprint on the group's mission is unmistakable: It provided a forum for

religiously engaged conservative Christians to influence the geography of American political

power.

At its first meeting in May of 1981, the CNP gave an award to Reagan budget guru David

Stockman, strategized about judicial appointments, and reveled in its newness.

Since then, at thrice-yearly conventions, the CNP has functioned as a sausage factory for

conservative ideas of a particular goût: strong affirmations of military power, Christian

heritage, traditional values, and leave-us-alone-get-off-our-backs legislation. That red meat

is seasoned by groups like David Keene's American Conservative Union, researched and vetted by

conservative policy groups, chewed on and tested at statewide activist meetings.

There's no denying their influence: Money is transferred from benefactor to worthy cause.

Aspirants meet benefactors.

The CNP helped Christian conservatives take control of the Republican state party apparati in

Southern and Midwestern states. It helped to spread word about the infamous "Clinton

Chronicles" videotapes that linked the president to a host of crimes in Arkansas.

But the CNP is one factory among many. It stands out nowadays because it prefers not to stand

out.

Unlike, say, the Heritage Foundation, which has a media studio in its headquarters, or the

American Enterprise Institute, which publishes journals, the CNP is content to operate in the

alleyways of downtown Washington. Part of what keeps it so healthy, according to current

members, is the same penchant for secrecy that drives outsiders crazy.

As then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared to tell NBC News' Katie Couric that her

husband was a victim of a "vast, right-wing conspiracy," a senior Clinton adviser asked Skipp

Porteous, then the head of a secular watchdog group, for information on the CNP. Porteous'

conclusions — "that this is a group that has the ideology, the money and the political backing

to cause social change in the United States" — became a part of the White House litany.

Such talk is an apparition, members say. Much ado about nothing.

CNP will forever be nothing more than a "comfortable place" for like-minded folks to

brainstorm, one member said.

"What they decided at one point was that people will simply feel more at ease," said another

member, Balint Vazsonyi, who joined the group in 1997. "It's certainly not for a political

reason. The views discussed here are among those you see on the television or when you open a

newspaper."

Vazsonyi, a concert pianist who writes a column syndicated by Knight-Ridder, said CNP gave him

a chance to meet people who shared his views.

"I knew very, very few people in the political world. I knew lots of musicians, but nobody in

politics. Then someone said to me, 'There's a place for people who are and have been

interested in what you're interested in, and you might like to be known by them.'

"That," he said, "was really the hook."

Quiet — Just the Way They Like It

CNP may simply be press-shy because of traditional qualms about the establishment media's

secular, often politically liberal perspective, and because "they attribute things that

individual members may do to us," Baldwin says.

The London Guardian linked arch-conservative gun-rights activist Larry Pratt with Attorney

General John Aschroft by saying "the two men know each another from a secretive but highly

influential right-wing religious group called the Council for National Policy."

More recently, when California gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon disclosed his campaign's

contributors, The Associated Press made sure to note that four members of CNP had donated to

Simon's campaign — as if conservatives donating to conservatives was worthy of a news story

all its own. (Simon's father, the former treasury secretary, was a CNP member).

Other CNP press leaks have been less the product of liberal media snooping than of internal

jockeying. When James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, told a CNP gathering in 1998

that he was thinking of withdrawing support for the Republican Party, rival conservative

leaders made sure the national media got word of the speech.

The CNP remains obscure. Experienced Washingtonians often mistake them for another

organization, the liberal Center for National Policy. The Washington Times reported Jan. 23

that Sen. John Kerry spoke to the Council for National Policy about AWNR drilling, when, in

fact, the Massachusetts Democrat spoke to the Center for National Policy, a very different

organization. Both the Council and Center are not to be confused with the Center for Budget

and Policy Priorities. Or the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Porteous' group, The Institute for First Amendment Studies, posted the CNP's roster on its Web

site and managed to slip past security at several CNP meetings throughout the 1990s and soon

published details notes of the proceedings.

If their summaries are reliable — and the IFAS swears they are — the from-the-fly-on-the-wall

thrill and the occasional agitated quotation for Democratic opposition research files do

little to sustain the belief that the CNP is ruling America behind those French doors of the

Fairfax hotel conference rooms.

"There's nothing wrong with what they are doing," Porteous said. "It's just that they're

ultraconservative and a lot of people don't agree with that."

"I don't think they are out there pounding their chests," said Joel Kaplan, a Syracuse

University journalism professor who has studied CNP's ties to conservative projects. "But I

don't think that they're hiding either."

Quote:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...A10894DC404482
Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy
David D. Kirkpatrick. New York Times. New York, N.Y.: Aug 28, 2004. pg. A.10

Three times a year for 23 years, a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful

conservatives in the country have met behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a

confidential conference, the Council for National Policy, to strategize about how to turn the

country to the right.

Details are closely guarded.

''The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before of

after a meeting,'' a list of rules obtained by The New York Times advises the attendees.

The membership list is ''strictly confidential.'' Guests may attend ''only with the unanimous

approval of the executive committee.'' In e-mail messages to one another, members are

instructed not to refer to the organization by name, to protect against leaks.

This week, before the Republican convention, the members quietly convened in New York, holding

their latest meeting almost in plain sight, at the Plaza Hotel, for what a participant called

''a pep rally'' to re-elect President Bush.

Mr. Bush addressed the group in fall 1999 to solicit support for his campaign, stirring a

dispute when news of his speech leaked and Democrats demanded he release a tape recording. He

did not.

Not long after the Iraq invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H.

Rumsfeld attended a council meeting.

This week, as the Bush campaign seeks to rally Christian conservative leaders to send

Republican voters to the polls, several Bush administration and campaign officials were on

hand, according to an agenda obtained by The New York Times.

''The destiny of our nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement,'' the Senate

majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, told the gathering as he accepted its

Thomas Jefferson award on Thursday, according to an attendee's notes.

The secrecy that surrounds the meeting and attendees like the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Phyllis

Schlafly and the head of the National Rifle Association, among others, makes it a subject of

suspicion, at least in the minds of the few liberals aware of it.

''The real crux of this is that these are the genuine leaders of the Republican Party, but

they certainly aren't going to be visible on television next week,'' Barry W. Lynn, executive

director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said.

Mr. Lynn was referring to the list of moderate speakers like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of

California and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York who are scheduled to speak at the

convention.

''The C.N.P. members are not going to be visible next week,'' he said. ''But they are very

much on the minds of George W. Bush and Karl Rove every week of the year, because these are

the real powers in the party.''

A spokesman for the White House, Trent Duffy, said: ''The American people are quite clear and

know what the president's agenda is. He talks about it every day in public forums, not to any

secret group of conservatives or liberals. And he will be talking about his agenda on national

television in less than a week.''

The administration and re-election effort were major focuses of the group's meeting on

Thursday and yesterday. Under Secretary of State John Bolton spoke about plans for Iran, a

spokesman for the State Department said.

Likewise, a spokesman for Assistant Attorney General R. Alexander Acosta confirmed that Mr.

Acosta had addressed efforts to stop ''human trafficking,'' a major issue among Christian

conservatives.

Dr. Frist spoke about supporting Mr. Bush and limiting embryonic stem cell research, two

attendees said. Dan Senor, who recently returned from Iraq after working as a spokesman for L.

Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator, was scheduled to provide an update

on the situation there.

Among presentations on the elections, an adviser to Mr. Bush's campaign, Ralph Reed, spoke on

''The 2004 Elections: Who Will Win in November?,'' attendees said.

The council was founded in 1981, just as the modern conservative movement began its

ascendance. The Rev. Tim LaHaye, an early Christian conservative organizer and the

best-selling author of the ''Left Behind'' novels about an apocalyptic Second Coming, was a

founder. His partners included Paul Weyrich, another Christian conservative political

organizer who also helped found the Heritage Foundation.

They said at the time that they were seeking to create a Christian conservative alternative to

what they believed was the liberalism of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A statement of its mission distributed this week said the council's purposes included ''to

acquaint our membership with those in positions of leadership in our nation in order that

mutual respect be fostered'' and ''to encourage the exchange of information concerning the

methodology of working within the system to promote the values and ends sought by individual

members.''

Membership costs several thousand dollars a year, a participant said. Its executive director,

Steve Baldwin, did not return a phone call.

Over the years, the council has become a staging ground for conservative efforts to make the

Republican Party more socially conservative. Ms. Schlafly, who helped build a grass-roots

network to fight for socially conservative positions in the party, is a longstanding member.

At times, the council has also seen the party as part of the problem. In 1998, Dr. James

Dobson of Focus on the Family spoke at the council to argue that Republicans were taking

conservatives for granted. He said he voted for a third-party candidate in 1996.

Opposition to same-sex marriage was a major conference theme. Although conservatives and Bush

campaign officials have denied seeking to use state ballot initiatives that oppose same-sex

marriage as a tool to bring out conservative voters, the agenda includes a speech on ''Using

Conservative Issues in Swing States,'' said Phil Burress, leader of an initiative drive in

Ohio, a battleground state.

The membership list this year was a who's who of evangelical Protestant conservatives and

their allies, including Dr. Dobson, Mr. Weyrich, Holland H. Coors of the beer dynasty; Wayne

LaPierre of the National Riffle Association, Richard A. Viguerie of American Target

Advertising, Mark Mix of the National Right to Work Committee and Grover Norquist of Americans

for Tax Reform.

Not everyone present was a Bush supporter, however. This year, the council included speeches

by Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party and Michael A. Peroutka of the ultraconservative

Constitution Party. About a quarter of the members attended their speeches, an attendee said.

Nor was the gathering all business. On Wednesday, members had a dinner in the Rainbow Room,

where William F. Buckley Jr. of the National Review was a special guest. At 10 p.m. on

Thursday and Friday, members had ''prayer sessions'' in the Rose Room at the hotel.

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/wa...f1dba5&ei=5088
Conservative Christians Warn Republicans Against Inaction
David D. Kirkpatrick. New York Times. New York, N.Y.: May 15, 2006. pg. A.1

Some of President Bush's most influential conservative Christian allies are becoming openly critical of the White House and Republicans in Congress, warning that they will withhold their support in the midterm elections unless Congress does more to oppose same-sex marriage, obscenity and abortion.

''There is a growing feeling among conservatives that the only way to cure the problem is for Republicans to lose the Congressional elections this fall,'' said Richard Viguerie, a conservative direct-mail pioneer.

Mr. Viguerie also cited dissatisfaction with government spending, the war in Iraq and the immigration-policy debate, which Mr. Bush is scheduled to address in a televised speech on Monday night.

''I can't tell you how much anger there is at the Republican leadership,'' Mr. Viguerie said. ''I have never seen anything like it.''

In the last several weeks, Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential Christian conservatives, has publicly accused Republican leaders of betraying the social conservatives who helped elect them in 2004. He has also warned in private meetings with about a dozen of the top Republicans in Washington that he may turn critic this fall unless the party delivers on conservative goals.

And at a meeting in Northern Virginia this weekend of the Council for National Policy, an alliance of the most prominent Christian conservatives, several participants said sentiment toward the White House and Republicans in Congress had deteriorated sharply since the 2004 elections.

When the group met in the summer of 2004, it resembled a pep rally for Mr. Bush and his allies on Capitol Hill, and one session focused on how to use state initiatives seeking to ban same-sex marriage to help turn out the vote. This year, some participants are complaining that as soon as Mr. Bush was re-elected he stopped expressing his support for a constitutional amendment banning such unions.

Christian conservative leaders have often threatened in the months before an election to withhold their support for Republicans in an effort to press for their legislative goals. In the 1990's, Dr. Dobson in particular became known for his jeremiads against the Republican party, most notably in the months before the 1998 midterm elections.

But the complaints this year are especially significant because they underscore how the broad decline in public approval for Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans is beginning to cut into their core supporters. The threatened defections come just two years after many Christian conservatives -- most notably Dr. Dobson -- abandoned much of their previous reservations and poured energy into electing Republicans in 2004.

Dr. Dobson gave his first presidential endorsement to Mr. Bush and held get-out-the-vote rallies that attracted thousands of admirers in states with pivotal Senate races while Focus on the Family and many of its allies helped register voters in conservative churches.

Republican officials, who were granted anonymity to speak publicly because of the sensitivity of the situation, acknowledged the difficult political climate but said they planned to rally conservatives by underscoring the contrast with Democrats and emphasizing the recent confirmations of two conservatives to the Supreme Court.

Midterm Congressional elections tend to be won by whichever side can motivate more true believers to vote. Dr. Dobson and other conservatives are renewing their complaints about the Republicans at a time when several recent polls have shown sharp declines in approval among Republicans and conservatives. And compared with other constituencies, evangelical Protestants have historically been suspicious of the worldly business of politics and thus more prone to stay home unless they feel clear moral issues are at stake.

''When a president is in a reasonably strong position, these kind of leaders don't have a lot of leverage,'' said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst. ''But when the president is weak, they tend to have a lot of leverage.''

Dr. Dobson, whose daily radio broadcast has millions of listeners, has already signaled his willingness to criticize Republican leaders. In a recent interview with Fox News on the eve of a visit to the White House, he accused Republicans of ''just ignoring those that put them in office.''

Dr. Dobson cited the House's actions on two measures that passed over the objections of social conservatives: a hate-crime bill that extended protections to gay people, and increased support for embryonic stem cell research.

''There's just very, very little to show for what has happened,'' Dr. Dobson said, ''and I think there's going to be some trouble down the road if they don't get on the ball.''

According to people who were at the meetings or were briefed on them, Dr. Dobson has made the same point more politely in a series of private conversations over the last two weeks in meetings with several top Republicans, including Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser; Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader; Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the House speaker; and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader.

''People are getting concerned that they have not seen some of these issues move forward that were central to the 2004 election,'' said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who attended the meetings.

Richard D. Land, a top official of the Southern Baptist Convention who has been one of Mr. Bush's most loyal allies, said in an interview last week that many conservatives were upset that Mr. Bush had not talked more about a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

''A lot of people are disappointed that he hasn't put as much effort into the marriage amendment as he did for the prescription drug benefit or Social Security reform,'' Dr. Land said.

Republicans say they are taking steps to revive their support among Christian conservatives. On Thursday night, Mr. Rove made the case for the party at a private meeting of the Council for National Policy, participants said.

In addition to reminding conservatives of the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, party strategists say the White House and Senate Republicans are escalating their fights against the Democrats over conservative nominees to lower federal courts, and the Senate is set to revive the same-sex marriage debate next month with a vote on the proposed amendment.

But it is unclear how much Congressional Republicans will be able to do for social conservatives before the next election.

No one expects the same-sex marriage amendment to pass this year. Republican leaders have not scheduled votes on a measure to outlaw transporting minors across state lines for abortions, and the proposal faces long odds in the Senate. A measure to increase obscenity fines for broadcasters is opposed by media industry trade groups, pitting Christian conservatives against the business wing of the party, and Congressional leaders have not committed to bring it to a vote.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and another frequent participant in the Council for National Policy, argued that Christian conservatives were hurting their own cause.

''If the Republicans do poorly in 2006,'' Mr. Norquist said, ''the establishment will explain that it was because Bush was too conservative, specifically on social and cultural issues.''

Dr. Dobson declined to comment. His spokesman, Paul Hetrick, said that Dr. Dobson was ''on a fact-finding trip to see where Republicans are regarding the issues that concern values voters most, especially the Marriage Protection Act,'' and that it was too soon to tell the results.

stevo · 11-13-2006, 12:52 PM

to answer the question in the title. no, no they won't. but they will grant amnesty to illegals, raise the minimum wage, raise taxes, and withdraw from iraq turning the fragile country over to the (yes I'm gonna say it) terrorists. They'll probably do a bunch of other stupid things to.

host · 11-13-2006, 01:00 PM

You posted before you possibly could have even read and considered the citations in my OP........

Willravel · 11-13-2006, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo

to answer the question in the title. no, no they won't. but they will grant amnesty to illegals, raise the minimum wage, raise taxes, and withdraw from iraq turning the fragile country over to the (yes I'm gonna say it) terrorists. They'll probably do a bunch of other stupid things to.

I think the stupidist things Dems will do are balance the budget, clean up the mess that is Iraq, start putting the Bill of Rights back together, slow the conservative propoganda machine (that seems to have worked on some people), and start repairing our damaged international relations. Man, thoses Dems are stupid.

/end sarcasm

If the US leaves Iraq, there won't be terrorists there anymore if you catch my drift.

I think that the Dems have a lot of stuff on their plate that that things will have to be prioritized in order for them to really get going. To me, dealing with the highly corrupt organizations that pandered and still pander to conservatives is high on the list, and if the Dems want to win the 2008 election they should put it high on their list, too. Now, I'm not saying that conservative talking heads should be replaced with liberal talking heads. I don't think that talking heads have a place in the world besides in volcanos, but I do think that the obvious bias should be addressed. The coverage of Abramoff, mentioned above, was so beyond the scope that it made smoke come out of my ears. I cheered when he plead guilty on three counts of fraud, but those charges were just the surface of the true coruption.

I will watch with great interest as the next 2 years unfold.

ratbastid · 11-13-2006, 01:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevo

to answer the question in the title. no, no they won't. but they will grant amnesty to illegals, raise the minimum wage, raise taxes, and withdraw from iraq turning the fragile country over to the (yes I'm gonna say it) terrorists. They'll probably do a bunch of other stupid things to.

Sore loser say what?

Just because you don't have anything to say about the OP is no reason for a blatant threadjack. This was a complete troll.

I'm not sure about the conspiracy theorist tone some of the OP's quoted articles take. It is interesting the way that arch-conservatives are generally perceived to be evil under-the-table manipulators, though. Hey, why not? They have all the money, until recently they've had all the power. What's a downtrodden middle-American centrist to do?

stevo · 11-13-2006, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

You posted before you possibly could have even read and considered the citations in my OP........

I responded to the question in your title. Sorry if I have a job and can't spend an hour reading your posts. Was the content of your post close to the title? I assumed it was.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Sore loser say what?

and you calling me a sore loser isn't a troll? I didn't just make up what I said because the dems won. I said it because thats what they said they were gonna do. To qualify my "stupid stuff" statement I'll just point to the global warming bs agenda ms pelosi has in store.

mixedmedia · 11-13-2006, 04:14 PM

Wow, I have to say I've been blindsided here. I've never heard of this organization before. And the implications are chilling.

I'd like to see some of the conservatives here really address this issue and what it means to them. I don't think any of the conservatives on this site are what I would call "ultra-conservatives" but I'd really like to know what they think of so many heavyweight republican pols contributing to and belonging to an organization that openly professes the aim of turning America to the ultra-right. I'm appalled.

I think it notable that at least one of the articles points out that republican moderates and neo-conservatives are conspicuously absent from this organization. Which makes me wonder about the origin of the popular misconception about what a neo-conservative really is. The neo-conservative movement and the ultra-right wing movement are in many ways diametrically opposed to one another. Have the neo-conservatives been marginalized for not being socially conservative?

Wow, this has created a bit of a maelstrom in my head. I may need time to sift through it all.

One thing I can say right now is that as scary and threatening as the CNP seems in its illuminati-like ambition, I don't feel truly threatened by them. I think the notion of a free society is too deeply entrenched in the American psyche for them to fulfill their goal (ultimately) of a corporate theocracy, although their handiwork is certainly evident if you look at the political trends and slow implementation of religious activism, particularly in the rural South and Midwest.

So now we know where Karl Rove sowed his oats, most likely...

Interesting stuff, host, thanks for posting it.

roachboy · 11-13-2006, 04:38 PM

very interesting indeed host. thanks very much for posting it.
i am sorting through stuff and don't yet have a reaction/response.
it may take a little while, but i'll post more.

dc_dux · 11-13-2006, 04:56 PM

I can only hope that the Dems dont get anywhere near this, without knowing the extent to which it may have elements of truth.

The focus of Congressional investigations should be on what can be corrected NOW....if and/or how the President is exceeding Constitutional powers regarding national security (illegal wirestapping, violation of rights of those "accused" or "suspected" of terrorism connections), if/how the Executive Dept is countermanding existing laws and regulations (EPA, FDA) to the benefit of affected industries, if/how the current Administration is preventing whistleblowers from revealing misdeads of federal agencies, if/how the Administration has weakened the Freedom of Information Act and re-classified thousands of documents to prevent their release.......

mixedmedia · 11-13-2006, 05:11 PM

Yes, I'm more of the mind that republicans should take care of this themselves.

roachboy · 11-13-2006, 05:26 PM

actually i would think the best thing that could happen on this matter would be to out this organization...this information should be made as public as possible,a s widely as possible. more research should be done into what exactly these folks are doing. they are presented as a kind of extreme right networking apparatus...and i am sure that to some limited extent, they are.

the problem with political pressure coming down on these folks in this form would be twofold: 1. scarcity of information and 2. the problem that it looks like a kind of far right cabal, and so there is a danger that it could become the stuff of conspiracy theorists--who are not always wrong, but whose approach tends to be self-marginalizing. better to deal with (1) as a way of countering (2).

but it looks like a very interesting and very problematic outfit.
like a jackie-o style chanel number does when i wear it.

and there is no way--no way in hell--that the democrats are going to touch this. nor should they at the moment--for the reasons dc notes above.

Elphaba · 11-13-2006, 07:37 PM

I agree with roachboy. Moreover, I think it would be a mistake to pursue the more obvious choices of egregious behavior during this administration. There is a legal obligation to do so, but a compelling political reason to let it go for now.

There are too many pressing problems that need to be resolved in the next two years to be distracted by anything other than addressing those issues.

host · 11-14-2006, 12:24 AM

What will change, in the new congress, is that, for the first time since, Nov., 2003, house committees chaired by democrats will decide who and what to investigate, and they will have subpoena power. If these folks have nothing to hide, why the secrecy?

I have more on Abramoff and his Africa activities, and how they link to other CNP members. To avoid confusion, I'll post that info seperately.

In this curious organization, who leads, who follows.....is Canadian political leadership, "on board", now, too?

ABC removed the link in the OP story, in the apparently revised version that I had posted. It originally contained a link to this:

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200212021...1.html#sidebar
Who's Who at the CNP

According to a membership roster obtained by Institute for First Amendment Studies, notable former and current Council for National Politics members include:

Attorney General John Ashcroft and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. (Both are no longer members).

Christian businessmen like Holland and Jeffrey Coors, of the brewing company, and entrepreneur and Orlando Magic owner Rich DeVos.

Two of fundamentalist Christianity's most prominent end-of-the-world theologists: John Ankerberg, who believes that biblical prophecies were literal promises and are coming true; and Dave Breese, who hosts The King Is Coming, a show devoted entirely to Christian eschatology. Also: Chuck Missler, an Idaho radio host who has predicted an imminent invasion of Jerusalem by forces guided by the Antichrist.

Former presidential candidate and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson; former Texas GOP Rep. Steve Stockman, who stunned the political world in 1994 by ousting House Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks from his seat; the Rev. Don Wildmon of the American Family Association.

Christian reconstructionists like Rousas J. Rushdoony.

Williams, the founder of BAMPAC, a political action committee that promotes black conservatism.

Sam Moore, president of Thomas Nelson, the country's most successful Christian book publishing company.

Prominent creationist Henry Morris; political scientist Dora Kingsley; Red Cross board member Ann Drexel; Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead.

Center-right coalitionist Grover Norquist and values activist Phyllis Schlafly.

Oliver North, whose speeches to CNP members during the height of his involvement in Iran-Contra stirred up debate.

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/library/polit...-gop-bush.html
May 19, 2000

THE GOVERNOR'S SPEECH
Bush's Words to Staunchly Conservative Group Remain a Mystery
By JIM YARDLEY

THE 2000 CAMPAIGN

HOUSTON, May 18 -- The Council for National Policy is a little known group whose members are often very well known and very conservative. There are radio personalities like Oliver L. North and James C. Dobson; religious broadcasters like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell; and lawmakers like Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Representative Dick Armey of Texas.

It is the sort of group a Republican presidential hopeful would presumably want to address, which is exactly what Gov. George W. Bush of Texas did last October when the council held a two-day conference in San Antonio. But what exactly did Mr. Bush say?

Skipp Porteous has tried to find out, though as yet without success. Mr. Porteous is national director of the Institute for First Amendment Studies, a Massachusetts-based group with about 3,000 members nationwide that tries to keep watch on the council. He regards the council as a secretive umbrella group plotting strategy for the Republican right.

The council says such talk is silly. It calls itself a nonpartisan educational foundation.

In recent years, Mr. Porteous said his group had planted a spy in several meetings.

But he found his group shut out when the council met in San Antonio.

Eager to know what Mr. Bush might say in private to conservative leaders, Mr. Porteous sent for audiotapes of the conference. The council sells audiotapes of conferences to members only, but the institute had obtained an order form from the company, Skynet Media, that handles the recording.

So when a package arrived earlier this year, Mr. Porteous thought success was at hand. But the tape of Mr. Bush's speech was not included.

Morton C. Blackwell, the council's executive director, said all speakers were asked for permission to include their remarks on the tapes and that the Bush campaign had declined.

"The Bush entourage said they preferred that the tape not go out, though I could not see any reason why they shouldn't," he said.

He added: "It was a standard speech, basically the same one. Basically everything he said, he's said before, and I've heard since."

Ari Fleischer, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said if anyone was "hoping to hear something that the governor would say that he hasn't said publicly, then they're on a wild goose chase." He declined to characterize the speech, saying, "When we go to meetings that are private, they remain private."

In fact, Mr. Fleischer said, "as far as we know, there is no tape."

But Mr. Blackwell said the Bush campaign should have a copy.

Curt Morse, president of the recording company, Skynet Media, said that he had a copy and that one was provided to the campaign after the speech.

"Maybe they lost it," he said.

He offered to make them a copy.

Stephen Harper's <a href="http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051213/elxn_harper_speech_text_051214/20051214/">1997 speech</a>, in Montreal to the CNP, was used earlier this year, in campaign ads by losing Canadian PM, Paul Martin:

Quote:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...e=election2006
Ad wasn't an attack on military: Paul Martin

Updated Thu. Jan. 12 2006 2:52 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

........Martin added: "You can't do that if it's spread out all across the country."

He then spoke on the difference in values that exists between his policies and those of the Tory Leader.

"(Harper) said that his views have not changed in 10 years. So if you take a look at our ads, what we have simply done is said, 'this is what Stephen Harper has said'," Martin told Canada AM co-host Beverly Thomson.

The Liberal Leader pointed to a speech that Harper gave in 1997 to the Council for National Policy, a right wing American think tank, in which he referred to Canada as a "northern European welfare state, in the worst sense of the term."

"Those are his words," said Martin. "He has said those are still his views. He said Canada was second rate -- that was his view."

The Conservatives have claimed that those comments, including one in which Harper told U.S. conservatives that their movement was a "a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world," were meant to be "tongue-in-cheek."

But Martin said those statements are indicative of the far right views harboured by the Tory Leader. "I don't share the views of the far right Conservative groups in the United States. And so that's the chasm between us and that's where the debate should take place," said Martin.

The Liberal Leader then took a series of questions from Canadians on a wide-range of topics. ........

Until 2001, Morton Blackwell, the genius political organizer who you probably never heard of, was executive director of CNP, during the 1990's, this CNP founder always held a CNP office. He trained "college Republicans" leaders, Abramoff, Norquist, Reed:

Quote:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...nwtca.asp?pg=2

......A shared passion for conservative activism--not the most common passion on campuses in Massachusetts--led him to a friendship with Norquist, a Harvard graduate student. Together they organized students for the 1980 Reagan campaign in their state, which Reagan, miraculously, carried. After graduation they launched a campaign to take over a sleepy, Washington-based subsidiary of the Republican National Committee called College Republicans.</a> Abramoff spent $10,000 of personal money winning the chairmanship. With Norquist as executive director, he transformed CR into a "right-wing version of a communist cell--complete with purges of in-house dissenters and covert missions to destroy the enemy left," as <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000308.php">Nina Easton puts it</a> in her useful history, Gang of Five.

Easton's sensibility may seem a bit delicate, but she well captures the revolutionary mood among the young idealists who came to Washington after Reagan's inauguration in 1981, among whom Abramoff and Norquist were the loudest and most energetic. They were soon joined by Reed, freshly graduated from the University of Georgia and looking even younger then than he does now, if you can imagine. Borrowing tactics from their leftist counterparts, College Republicans were particularly good at dramatizing the causes of limited government and anti-communism. When the Soviet Union invaded Poland, they swarmed the Polish embassy in Washington and burned the Soviet flag for news cameras. They staged counter-demonstrations to those put on by the useful idiots of the nuclear-freeze movement. At late-night gatherings they sang age-old anarchist anthems that Norquist had taught them. You could tell a College Republican by the buttons he wore: "There's no government like no government," for example.

After College Republicans, Abramoff brought the same theatricality to his other activist jobs. "His greatest strength was his audacity," says the writer and political consultant Jeff Bell, who worked with Abramoff and Norquist at a Reaganite group called Citizens for America in the mid-1980s. "He and Grover were just wildmen. They always were willing to throw the long ball. Jack's specialty was the spectacular--huge, larger-than-life, almost Hollywood-like events." As the group's chairman, Abramoff staged his greatest spectacular in 1985, a "summit meeting" of freedom-fighters from around the world, held in a remote corner of the African bush. Among the summiteers was Adolfo Calero, a leader of the Nicaraguan contras, and playing host was a favorite of the 1980s conservative movement, the Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi, who fought bravely against the Cuban occupiers of his country but turned out, alas, to be a Maoist cannibal. In her book Easton reports that both Abramoff and Norquist, who had been hired as Abramoff's assistant, were later dismissed from CFA for "lavish spending."........

Quote:

http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/a...section=morton
Morton C. Blackwell

Professionally, Morton Blackwell is the president of the Leadership Institute, a non-partisan educational foundation he founded in 1979...... [host sez....yup....it really reads "non-partisan" !]

.....In youth politics, Mr. Blackwell was a College Republican state chairman and a Young Republican state chairman in Louisiana.

He served on the Young Republican National Committee for more than a dozen years, rising to the position of Young Republican National Federation national vice chairman at large.

Off and on for five years, 1965-1970, he worked as executive director of the College Republican National Committee under four consecutive College Republican national chairmen.....

In 1980, he organized and oversaw the national youth effort for Ronald Reagan.

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...801588_pf.html
The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff
How a Well-Connected Lobbyist Became the Center of a Far-Reaching Corruption Scandal

By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 29, 2005; A01

.....Hints of Trouble

A quarter of a century ago, Abramoff and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist were fellow Young Turks of the Reagan revolution. They organized Massachusetts college campuses in the 1980 election -- Abramoff while he was an undergraduate at Brandeis and Norquist at Harvard Business School -- to help Ronald Reagan pull an upset in the state......

The Wapo's "steno Sue" Schmidt, won a pulitzer prize for her reporting about Jack Abramoff. If you click on the link in the preceding quote box, you will see the correction, at the top of the article, that resulted from an email that I sent to Wapo ombudsman, Deborah Howell. I pointed her to this newspaper clipping that I found while researching Abramoff's background:
http://scandal.atspace.com/mob.html

Doesn't it seem more likely than not, that....in 1980, from the information diplayed in the 2 preceding quote boxes, that CNP pioneer, Morton Blackwell, became acquainted with Jack Abramoff? Later reporting indicates that both Abramoff and Norquist became CNP members, and that Norquist is still a member.....

Quote:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...rts/index.html
Delegates mock Kerry with 'purple heart' bandages
Democrats: GOP 'mocking our troops'

Wednesday, September 1, 2004 Posted: 12:43 PM EDT (1643 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Delegates to the Republican National Convention found a new way to take a jab at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam service record: by sporting adhesive bandages with small purple hearts on them.

Morton Blackwell, a prominent Virginia delegate, has been handing out the heart-covered bandages to delegates, who've worn them on their chins, cheeks, the backs of their hands and other places.

Blackwell is president of the Leadership Institute, an educational foundation he founded in 1979. According to its Web site, the institute prepares conservatives for success in politics, government and the news media.....

Quote:

http://www.policycounsel.org/18856/3...ession*id*val*
<img src="http://www.policycounsel.org/img/content/37701_37703.gif">

Morton C. Blackwell - executive director, Council for National Policy; founder and president, The Leadership Institute; founder and chairman, Conservative Leadership PAC; Republican National Committeeman from Virginia; treasurer, Reagan Alumni Association; treasurer, Free Congress Foundation; member, Executive Committee, National Right to Work Committee; president, Legislative Studies Institute; member, Arlington County Republican Committee; former Special Assistant to President Reagan on the White House Staff; former staff member, Senate Republican Policy Committee; former policy director, U.S. Senator Gordon J. Humphrey; overseer, 1980 Youth for Reagan effort; former editor, The New Right Report; former contributing editor, Conservative Digest. Spouse - Helen. Arlington, Virginia.

<img src="http://www.policycounsel.org/img/content/37701_51301.gif">
.....When I founded the Leadership Institute in 1979, almost every other conservative educational foundation focused on issues and philosophy. That's wonderful work. I wish more of it were done. I benefit greatly from education from such foundations. The Leadership Institute does a little of such work, but education on issues and philosophy is not its primary role.

The mission of my foundation is very clear: to locate, recruit, train and place people in the public policy process. Conservatives are more successful as the number and the effectiveness of conservative activists increases across America.

Donors understand what I'm doing. They may support several foundations which specialize in issue and policy education, but they clearly see the uniqueness and the importance of the Leadership Institute.

I often give my students good books which cover issues and philosophy, but I focus on identifying, recruiting, training and placing people. Nobody else was doing just that. There was a market for the product of my new organization.

Think of an area of activity where more or better work should be done. Be able to express your group's mission in a short, clear statement. In marketing, this is called finding your niche.

It doesn't make much sense for you to try to start a group if there already is a nationwide organization doing a first-class job performing the same mission. It would probably make no sense at all for you to decide, "I'm going to create a rival to the National Right to Work Committee." The National Right to Work Committee is doing a great job of grassroots lobbying. But there are not many such examples.

You might consider a type of activity in which existing groups do things but the demand for that kind of work exceeds the supply. If existing non-profit groups aren't even close to doing all that needs to be done, you might be able to bring extra resources to the policy battle by starting a new group.

If your prospective new group's work is to be one of the main projects of your life, and it should be, make sure you have a strong and abiding interest in what it will be doing...

Quote:

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feat...ell/index.html

My right-wing degree

How I learned to convert liberal campuses into conservative havens at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, alma mater of Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Jeff Gannon and two Miss Americas.

By Jeff Horwitz
Pages 1 <a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/05/25/blackwell/index.html?pn=2">2</a> <a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/05/25/blackwell/index.html?pn=3">3</a>

May 25, 2005 | One recent Sunday, at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, a dozen students meet for the second and final day of training in grass-roots youth politics. All are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get. They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches them how to rig a campus mock election.

It's nothing illegal -- no ballot stuffing necessary, even at the most liberal colleges. First you find a nonpartisan campus group to sponsor the election, so you can't be accused of cheating. Next, volunteer to organize the thing. College students are lazy, and they'll probably let you. Always keep in mind that a rigged mock election is all about location, location, location.

"Can anyone tell me," asks Gourley, a veteran mock electioneer, "why you don't want the polling place in the cafeteria?"

Stephen, a shy antiabortion activist sitting toward the rear of the class, raises his hand: "Because you want to suppress the vote?"

"Stephen has the right answer!" Gourley exclaims, tossing Stephen his prize, a copy of Robert Bork's "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."

The students, strait-laced kids from good colleges, seem unconvinced. The lesson -- that with sufficient organization, the act of voting becomes less a basic right than a tactical maneuver -- doesn't sit easy with some students at first. Gourley, a charismatic senior from South Dakota and the treasurer of the College Republican National Committee, assures them: "This is not anti-democracy. This is not shady. Just put [the polling place] somewhere where you might have to put a little bit of effort into voting." The rest, Gourley explains, is just a matter of turnout.

When the state or national candidate you're backing wins by a suitably large margin, as he or she surely will, have the nonpartisan group that sponsored the election sign off on your prewritten celebratory press release and send it statewide. Reporters will almost certainly ignore it, but after a dozen similar victories, they'll start dashing off articles about the youth phenomenon behind your candidate's campaign -- or better yet, just start plagiarizing your press releases.

There is no better place to master the art of mock-election rigging -- and there is no better master than Morton Blackwell, who invented the trick in 1964 and has been teaching it ever since. Blackwell's half-century career in conservative grass-roots politics coincides neatly with the fortunes of the conservative movement: He was there when Goldwater lost, when Southern voters abandoned the Democratic Party in droves, and when the Moral Majority began its harvest of evangelical Christian voters. In the 1970s, Blackwell worked with conservative direct-mail king Richard Viguerie; in 1980, he led Reagan's youth campaign. Recently, he's been fighting to save Tom DeLay's job.

Yet Blackwell's foundation, the Leadership Institute, is not a Republican organization. It's a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) charity, drawing the overwhelming majority of its $9.1 million annual budget from tax-deductible donations. Despite its legally required "neutrality," the institute is one of the best investments the conservative movement has ever made. Its walls are plastered with framed headshots of former students -- hundreds of state and local legislators sprinkled with smiling members of the U.S. Congress, and even the perky faces of two recently crowned Miss Americas. Thirty-five years ago, Blackwell dispatched a particularly promising 17-year-old pupil named Karl Rove to run a youth campaign in Illinois; Jeff Gannon, a far less impressive student, attended the Leadership Institute's Broadcast Journalism School.

The institute's classes aren't tickets into an exclusive and shadowy club, however: I am also an institute graduate. In March, I attended its Youth Leadership School, a one-weekend, 28-hour crash course in political organizing. Registration was open to the public and cost $60, which got me a sourcebook, six free meals, up to three nights in a dorm, and a six-hour lecture on political principles delivered by the 65-year-old Blackwell himself. The morning I arrived at the Leadership Institute, I identified myself as a reporter for Salon. "That's great," said communications director Michelle Miller. By the end of the weekend, Blackwell took me on a tour of the headquarters, chatted with me for nearly an hour, and gave me a copy of the institute's antisocialism in-house film, "The Roots of the Ultra Left." The institute is a very friendly place.

Over the last 25 years, more than 40,000 young conservatives have been trained at the institute's Arlington, Va., headquarters in everything from TV makeup for aspiring right-wing talking heads to prep courses for the State Department's Foreign Service exam. Classes are taught by volunteers recruited from the ranks of the conservative movement's most talented organizers, operatives and communicators.

The Leadership Institute has succeeded, in part, because it's had little to no competition from the left. College campuses may still be havens for liberal thought, but the right-wing students are the ones organized enough to win major battles. Perhaps expecting that American youth would organize themselves as they did in decades past, progressive organizations have been outstripped by their conservative counterparts in professionalizing the ragtag world of college activism. "When it comes to campus controversy, from affirmative action to free speech, the right wing pumps in money and expertise and shows [students] how to out-hustle their opponents," says David Halperin of the liberal Center for American Progress.

Still, Blackwell says conservatives are underdogs on college campuses. Conservative students may be better organized, but they're still outnumbered. The Leadership Institute contends that liberal higher education is robbing the conservative movement of new blood -- and thereby handicapping the institute's efforts. "You know, the most conservative students are the freshmen," Blackwell told me. "There is an acculturation there.".....

Next Page:<a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/05/25/blackwell/index.html?pn=2">A Blackwell specialty: Stunts that enrage Democrats, like the "Purple Heart" Band-Aid gag</a>

dc_dux · 11-14-2006, 08:38 AM

Host....I dont like what this group does any more than you do, but that does not make it a legitimate reason for a Congressional investigation. It would smack of McCarthyism (I can see it now...."Are you or have you ever been a member of the CNP?")

By law, Congressional investigations should have a legislative purpose. The power of Congress to conduct investigations is broad, but it is not unlimited and should not be used to trample on anyone's first amendment rights of free speech or assembly, regardless of what you or I or any member of Congress may think about such persons or organizations.

Further journalistic investigations? Absolutely. Criminal investigation by the US Attorney General or a state AG. Definetely, if there is compelling evidence suggesting criminal activities. Congressional investigation. Under no circumstances. There is no legitmate Constitutional justification.

roachboy · 11-14-2006, 09:04 AM

it seems pretty clear that the cnp is being framed in host's posts about it as an extension of the abramoff affair(s) and so would logically fall within a congressional investigative purview. but it also seems to me that at the same time as this line of access/thinking COULD prompt an investigation, it is not obvious that this line would go as far as i think should be gone to expose and/or disrupt this organization. if it turns out that it in fact does the sort of things that it appears to do---and this appearance is a simple function of assembling the fragmentary information available in the thread and via simple searches into something of an image and interpreting it.

i am curious to know more about its actual activities.
were i doing a research project on the cnp, i would perhaps use the abramoff connection as a hook to sell the book, but would not gear the project itself around it a priori, simply because in doing that you commit yourself to centering your analysis in a particular way before you have determined the utility of it--marketing purposes aside, of course.

as a side note: the proliferation of shadow organizations, pseudo-organizations, front organizations etc. on the part of the american right curiously enough links it tactically to old communist party activities. there is a strange migration pattern of stalinist style tactics into retro-land, from the photographing of protestors and assembly of a database identifying/tracking them to the pathologization of all types of "deviant" behaviour in children and treating them with drugs.

kurt vonnegut wrote once: careful who you pretend to be
i guess one could add: wittingly or not....

dc_dux · 11-14-2006, 10:04 AM

Roach.....the Abramoff investigation has been a Justice Department investigation. Congress took a role only when it involved potential ethical violations of Members.

I would agree that Congress should investigate whether this or any Justice Department investigations have been unduly influenced by political pressure from the White House, but that should be the extent of Congress' involvement.

I would also agree that that "photographing of protestors and assembly of a database identifying/tracking them" should be appropriately investigated by Congress (rather than, or in addition to, the Justice Dept) when or if it involves the action of the federal government, not a private organization.

roachboy · 11-14-2006, 10:17 AM

dc: understood--my point was that i am not sure that the abramoff connection is the best way to approach the cnp.

i read in this morning's guardian that congress is going to launch investigation of the rendition program. to my mind, dismantling that is a pressing concern.

if the cnp finds itself outed and tangled up in a something, i will shed no tears, but i basically agree with you on why it is not and shold not be a target in itself of congressional investigations at this point.

other types of investigations, though, absolutely.
i want to know what these clowns are doing.

dc_dux · 11-14-2006, 10:38 AM

I agree with you on the rendition program.

I also want to know the justification for Bush's 132 signing statements challenging over 810 provisions of federal laws...when in the 211 years of our nation's history, presidents issued fewer than 600 signing statements that took issue with the bills they signed.

I want to know why the OMB director lied to Congress about the cost of the Medicare prescription bill and why the Medicare program cant negotiate drug prices in the same manner as the Veterans Administration.

I want to know why there were so many failures in the federal response to Katrina (not excusing the state/local response)...but why has the report requested by Congress still not been submitted by Bush/Chernoff.

There is lots more I want to know about what these "clowns" are doing, but I want it focused and conducted in a manner that is not a witchunt like the Repubs did to Clinton and the Dems.

host · 11-14-2006, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

dc: understood--my point was that i am not sure that the abramoff connection is the best way to approach the cnp.

i read in this morning's guardian that congress is going to launch investigation of the rendition program. to my mind, dismantling that is a pressing concern.

if the cnp finds itself outed and tangled up in a something, i will shed no tears, but i basically agree with you on why it is not and shold not be a target in itself of congressional investigations at this point.

other types of investigations, though, absolutely.
i want to know what these clowns are doing.

Quote:

http://www.eac.gov/soaries.asp
Commissioners: DeForest Blake Soaries, Jr., Chairman
Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, Jr.

Appointed to an initial four year term, Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, Jr. was elected Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission at the agency’s first public meeting on March 23, 2004.

In February 2003, Dr. Soaries was appointed by President Bush to serve as a public director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. He was a member of the affordable housing committee of the bank.

From January 12, 1999 to January 15, 2002, Dr. Soaries served as New Jersey's 30th Secretary of State. Appointed by former Governor Christine Todd Whitman, he managed one of the premier departments of State government and served as a senior advisor to the governor on issues that transcended traditional departmental lines.

Dr. Soaries is also the Senior Pastor of the 7,000 member First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey. A pioneer of faith-based community development, Dr. Soaries has led First Baptist in the construction of a new $17 million church complex and the formation of many not-for-profit entities to serve the community surrounding the church.....

Last week, on this thread:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=110309

I posted the content of the first quote box that follows....consider what Deforest Soaries told Lou Dobbs, just 3 weeks ago. Consider that Soaries was hand picked by Bush to oversee the results of the $2.5 billion federal legislative, cash "infusion" into the E-Voting industry.
If you consider what Soaries says, and who the "players" from the CNP have been who have invested in the E-Vote industry....and the results that Soaries describes....how can anyone advocate a "hands off" approach to congressional investigation of the CNP and the cabal of right wing financiers and religious fundamentalist who direct the officials who they got elected, to funnel public funds and political power (control), in their direction....all in rigidly maintained, secrecy?

Quote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-mhe_EqSmE&eurl= or here:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3656

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...23/ldt.01.html
LOU DOBBS TONIGHT

Changing Tactics, Language in War in Iraq; Iraqi Government Trying to Stop Rising Sectarian Violence; Where's the Fence?

Aired October 23, 2006 - 18:00 ET

.....DOBBS: Looking forward to it. Wolf, thank you.

Joining me now, two former members of the Election Assistance Commission, an agency set up in response to the Florida debacle in the 2000 election, part of the Help America Vote Act.

First meet Deforest Soaries, he's a Republican, former chair of the Election Assistance Commission.

Good to have you here.

Ray Martinez, Democrat, former vice chair of the commission.

Ray, good to have you with us, all the way from Austin, Texas. Thank you.

Let's begin with a third of -- and if we can show these stats. It's sort of interesting, one third of voters this November will be using new voting equipment. Thirty-eight percent will be using electronic voting equipment.

Deforest, what do you think is going to happen?

DEFOREST SOARIES, FORMER ELECTION COMMISSIONER: Well, I think we're going to have frustration at the polls. Many poll workers will be inadequately prepared for the use of this equipment. And if there's a close race, there will be tremendous frustration because there will be difficulty confirming what the real results were, given the lack of any paper to verify what happened at the polls.

DOBBS: And Ray, looking at another statistic that everybody might as well start getting comfortable with, the 2000 voting machines, they malfunctioned in 25 states. I mean, are we going to see that -- something that widespread, do you think, in this election, or will it be even worse?

RAY MARTINEZ, FORMER ELECTION COMMISSIONER: Well, I certainly hope it's not anything to that magnitude, Lou. And I think the American public ought to demand that election officials around the country do their due diligence to ensure that we don't see problems like that. You know, election administration is comprised of three essential parts, Lou, the technology we use, the processes that we have in place and the people that run our elections. And we've seen a lot of problems when it comes to the technology, but we've also seen equal amounts of problems when it comes to the people aspect of election administration. We have to emphasize that as well.

DOBBS: Lots of wonderful people volunteer, Deforest, around this country to work in polling booths and work for the election offices all across this country. As part of the Help America Vote, billions of dollars put into play here, jurisdictions all over the country buying these machines. Are we better off, in your judgment today, than we were in 2000?

SOARIES: Well, I think we're worse off because in 2000, at least we knew what we didn't know. And the hanging chad became center stage in 2000. Today six years later after spending $2.5 billion, we don't know what we don't know. We don't know about security, we don't know enough because the EAC never got enough money for research. The Congress passed a law that authorized $30 billion for research. EAC to this date has received zero of those dollars. The Republican party...

DOBBS: Zero.

<h3>SOARIES: The Republican-led Congress and the Republican White House have failed. And what Ray and I were invited to do was really a charade.</h3> And I think the public, as Ray said, should be outraged and demand results from the local to the federal level.

DOBBS: Ray?

MARTINEZ: Well, I think that's right, Lou. I mean, I certainly agree with my friend and former colleague Buster Soaries, who was an outstanding leader for the EAC.

Look, I think that it's time for us to make our elections work in this country, Lou. I mean, that's the bottom line. And obviously we have a great deal of work to do to make that happen. It's time for us to bring together the best and brightest from the high-tech industry, Lou, the business industry, election officials, et cetera, for us to make things work. You know, Friday, this coming Friday, we'll celebrate -- or actually mark, I suppose some people might scorn the passage -- it's the four-year anniversary of the passage of the Help America Vote Act this coming Friday, of Congress passing that historic law.

It's time, four years later, Lou, six years removed from Florida in 2000, it's time for us to achieve a consensus on exactly what we have to do to really improve the process of election administration.

DOBBS: Deforest Soaries, thank you very being here. Ray Martinez, we thank you as well. I hope you will come back over the next couple of weeks because you make me want to cry. And we have to deal with this issue and come up with a solution as you gentlemen are suggesting. And even with just two weeks remaining before this election, we've got to focus on it. And we thank you for your part, gentlemen.

MARTINEZ: Thank you for having me.

SOARIES: Thank you.

DOBBS: Still ahead, the results of our poll tonight, more of your thoughts. Stay With us........

Quote:

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,62790,00.html
How E-Voting Threatens Democracy

By Kim Zetter| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Mar, 29, 2004

.....Although there's no evidence that e-voting machines have ever been rigged, the political partisanship of voting company owners has only added to concerns about the systems. Howard Ahmanson Jr., a right-wing Christian fundamentalist millionaire based in California, bankrolled the founders of ES&S. Ahmanson, heir to the Home Savings of America fortune, no longer holds a stake in ES&S. ......

Quote:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...15957783/pg_10

(or...page 22

http://www.stjohns.edu/media/3/8985f...746ae69506.pdf
St. John's Law Review, Summer 2005 by Carrier, Michael A

<< Page 1 Continued from page 9. Previous | Next

D. Partisan Affiliations
These vulnerabilities take on added concern in light of the
ties that most of the major voting machine vendors have with the
Republican Party. The chief executive of Diebold, for example,
has been an active Republican fundraiser who famously promised
“to help ‘Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.’”
125
ES&S was initially funded by Howard Ahmanson, a member of
the right-wing Council for National Policy and the Christian
Reconstructionist movement, and is partly owned today by
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
126
The parent
company of Sequoia is a partner of the Carlyle Group, which has
employed former President George H.W. Bush as senior
advisor.
127
And a significant investor in Hart Intercivic is Tom
Hicks, who bought the Texas Rangers from President George W.
Bush in 1999.
128

VOTE COUNTING
667
It also is concerning that the concentration of vendors is
significantly higher today than it has historically been. Two
companies, Diebold & ES&S, have counted approximately eighty
percent of the votes cast in U.S. elections in recent years.
129
By
reducing the number of systems that need to be compromised,
such developments make it easier to commit widespread
tampering.
130
The dangers of such concentration and party affiliation are
exacerbated by the lack of transparency in vote counting today.
The voting machine vendors refuse to allow inspection of the
software used to count the vote, and the computerization of the
process means that local election officials can no longer uncover
fraud by examining the machines. As a result, the officials rely
more heavily on, and often develop close relationships with, the
vendors.
131
These relationships may play a role in the
enthusiasm for electronic voting displayed by Democratic and
Republican officials alike......

Quote:

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publ...icle_592.shtml
Why did J. Kenneth Blackwell seek, then hide, his association with super-rich extremists and e-voting magnates?

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
Online Journal Guest Writers

Mar 14, 2006, 00:56

The man who stole the 2004 election for George W. Bush -- Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell -- has posted a picture of himself addressing the white supremacist ultra-right Council for National Policy (CNP). He then pulled the picture and tried to hide his participation in the meeting by removing mention of it from his website, kenblackwell.com.

First discovered by a netroots investigator ( uaprogressiveaction.com ), Blackwell's photo at the CNP meeting was found on Blackwell's website on Monday, March 6. Then it mysteriously disappeared......

....The idea of an African-American like Blackwell speaking to a racist cabal like the CNP may seem incongruous. But Blackwell has been courting extremist right-wing support for a long time. Most importantly he has been embraced and supported by Rev. Rob Parsley of the powerful World Harvest Church. Parsley is a wealthy right-wing extremist with a powerful grassroots network throughout the state, and has a major stake in Blackwell's taking to the governorship. No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio. With Blackwell's continued control of the voting apparatus, the CNP and Republican Party could well step into an era of unchallenged national domination.

Not surprisingly, Blackwell and a few CNP members share crucial ties to the election/vote counting industry.

The electronic voting machine industry is dominated by only a few corporations: Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Together, Diebold and ES&S count an estimated 80 percent of U.S. black box electronic votes.

In the early 1980s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S's seminal corporation, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained financing from relatives of the far right-wing CNP-linked Howard Ahmanson in 1984, who purchased a 68 percent ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. Ahmanson has also been a chief financier of Rushdoony's Christian Reconstruction movement.

Brothers William and Robert Ahmanson, cousins of Howard, infused Data Mark with new capital. The name was changed to American Information Systems (AIS). The Ahmanson brothers have claimed that they have no ties to their more well-known right-wing cousin.

But in 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported that Howard and Roberta Ahmanson were important funders of the Discovery Institute, a fount of extremist right-wing publications, including much that pushes creationism in California schools. The Times said the institute's " $1 million annual program has produced 25 books, a stream of conferences and more than 100 fellowships for doctoral and postdoctoral research."

According to Group Watch, in the 1980s Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., was a member of the CNP. Heir to a savings and loan fortune, Ahmanson is little reported on in the mainstream U.S. press. But, English papers like The Independent are more informative. They list Ahmanson alongside Richard Mellon Scaife, one of the most important of all right-wing money men. "Such figures as Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson have given hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades to political projects both high (setting up the Heritage Foundation think-tank, the driving engine of the Reagan presidency) and low (bankrolling investigations into President Clinton's sexual indiscretions and the suicide of the White House insider Vincent Foster)," wrote The Independent last November.

The Sunday Mail described an individual as " . . . a fundamentalist Christian more in the mould of U.S. multi-millionaire Howard Ahmanson, Jr., who uses his fortune to promote so-called traditional family values. . . . By waving fortunes under their noses, Ahmanson has the ability to cajole candidates into backing his right-wing Christian agenda."

Ahmanson is also a chief contributor to the Chalcedon Institute that supports the Christian reconstruction movement. The movement's philosophy advocates, among other things, "mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards."

The Ahmanson brothers sold their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.

The presence of Ahmanson relatives and Hunt's sister in e-voting software may be a coincidence. But it certainly raises questions as to why family members of anti-democratic forces are getting heavily involved in non-transparent election software. And why they are forging ties to the man in charge of counting votes in Ohio elections......

.....Bob Urosevich was the Programmer and CEO at AIS, before being replaced by Hagel. Bob later headed Diebold Election Systems, but resigned prior to the 2004 election. His brother Todd is a top executive at ES&S. Bob created Diebold's original electronic voting machine software.

Thus, the brothers Urosevich, originally funded by the far right, figure in the counting of approximately 80 percent of electronic votes cast in the United States........

A week ago, Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio, and Dick Devos in Michigan, both lost in the governor's races in their respective states:

Quote:

http://www.michiganliberal.com/showD...F?diaryId=6964
Russ Bellant profile of Dick DeVos
Dick DeVos Profile
by Russ Bellant

Dick DeVos is the richest and most right wing major party candidate for Governor in Michigan history. He is the product of the Amway company and its decades of interlinks with the most influential religious extremists. He conducts himself like an Amway recruiter, deception and all.....

......DeVos Family Network

Dick DeVos was born into the Amway fortune in Grand Rapids.. His role as international vice president and later president of Amway is due to his anointment by his father. He married Elizabeth ( Betsy ) Prince, daughter of Edgar and Elsa Prince, who generated a family fortune in Holland, just south of Grand Rapids. Both family influences are reflected in the candidate for Governor that we see today.

The Prince family is also deeply connected to extreme right and Republican Party politics. No one in the United States gave more money to James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, its Michigan Family Forum affiliate, or its Washington, D.C. arm, the Family Research Council, than the late Edgar Prince. This network formed little known political action committees across the state and country that were more influential but less well known than Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition.

The brother of the would-be First Lady of Michigan, Erik Prince, also adopted the extreme right views of his parents but has used his wealth to start a military mercenary army. The company that it operates under, Blackwater USA, started in 1997 and quickly started getting contracts when George Bush became president. The are a major contractor in Iraq, hiring former Special Forces, Rangers and Navy SEALS to run security for U.S. ambassadors and unconventional warfare in the streets of Iraq’s cities.

The Bush administration also hired them to go into New Orleans days after Katrina, armed with machine guns and authority to kill, using veterans of Iraq. “Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world,” according to Jeremy Scahill, a journalist who has traveled with them, and Daniela Crespo, who also covered them in New Orleans. Blackwater patrolled and ransacked homes in the Black residential areas of New Orleans. The mercenary outfit is being sued by families of four of their deceased employees in Iraq and by Columbian commandos who were allegedly underpaid.

<h3>roachboy...maybe your wish will come true:</h3>
Blackwater also owns two airlines that were used by the CIA to illegally transport kidnapped citizens of other countries and take them to secret prisons in eastern Europe, where they could be tortured and held incommunicado indefinitely. This “extraordinary rendition” program was condemned in Europe and the Congress for its gross violations of international law.

Since George Bush became President, Blackwater has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts, but is now a featured topic in the new documentary film Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers.

Inheriting Rightist Politics

The Amway of Dick’s father has funded extreme right groups for over thirty years, In 1975 the elder Richard DeVos, for instance, funded the publication of a book that called for the U.S. to be transformed into a “Christian Republic.” This did not mean to merely increase church attendance, but to create movement to where authoritarian church structures would govern the United States, something like the Islamic states in other regions of the world. Richard Sr. and Jr. have been the most generous benefactors of this movement, along with Dick Jr.’s late father-in-law.

Dick Jr. was nurtured in a milieu of a far right wing that believes that the most privileged elite deserve to govern with minimal obligations to the middle or working classes or the poor. They take a hostile or skeptical view of public services, public education and taxpayer funded activities in general. They believe that this is the natural order of things and are comfortable with a form of politically motivated religious authoritarianism that supports their empowerment.

Dick DeVos and his family network have a variety of instruments for spreading their political influence, including membership in formal coalitions, family foundations, political action committees and the Amway corporate system.

Council for National Policy

Perhaps nothing shows DeVos’s extremism more than his membership in the secretive Council for National Policy ( CNP ). The Council was created in 1981 by leaders of the extremist John Birch Society to move the United States in a very rightward direction. The Birchers, as they were known, explicitly rejected democracy, as did many of the allies they recruited for the CNP. For years they organized White Citizens Council to fight the civil rights movement and later melded into the militia movement ( see sidebar ).

The membership list of the CNP is secret, its meetings are secret and their post meeting activities are secret. Beyond acknowledging that it exists, the CNP prefers the underground conspiratorial style. Membership lists obtained by this writer show why they prefer secrecy.

The CNP includes all the key funders and leaders of the far right: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and D. James Kennedy; Richard Shoff, a former leader of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan; a core of the proapartheid lobby that fought to support to the end, in open concert with the last ruling national socialist regime in the world, the South African apartheid government. Also part of the CNP are members of the Coors brewery family and Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt.

Ex-lobbyist and confessed felon Jack Abramoff ( who also lobbied on behalf of Blackwater ) and his cohort in crime, former Amway distributor Tom Delay, is also in the CNP.

Abramoff established the International Freedom Foundation in the 1980's to conduct campaigns against Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. It was later discovered that the IFF was a covert instrument of ( apartheid ) South African Military Intelligence. Jesse Helms was its main Senate contact.

CNP member Ralph Reed, former director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition and Abramoff associate, wrote a training manual for that group that asserted that the Bible requires employees to submit to their employers because the Bible commanded slaves to submit to their masters.

Members of the Congress such as DeLay, Dan Burton, Jon Kyl, Don Nickles Jesse Helms and other elected officials are part of the CNP, giving members access to the legislative process. AntiUnion activists such as Reed Larson, Mark Mix and others of the National Right to Work Committee and Tom Ellis of the white supremacist Pioneer Fund are also members. The Pioneer Fund once received an award from Nazi Germany for its racialist work

The thrust of the so-called religious leaders of the CNP is toward a movement called Christian Reconstructionism, which claims that our contemporary society is “unBiblical” and should be ruled by theocratic church authority. Also known as Dominionists, these proponents assert that democracy is “heretical,” as are the issues of working people and organized labor; civil rights and social justice issues, as well as empowerment of the disenfranchised. They would replace the Constitution with a form of rule based on Old Testament law. As extreme and bizarre as that sounds, many powerful, politicized religious broadcasters are secretly part of this movement and coordinate political action with others through the CNP. Among those associated with this movement is D. James Kennedy, whose generous funding from the DeVos family allows him to deliver scathing lectures against the gays and lesbians, against civil liberties and for “reclaiming America” to a rightwing version of godliness.

This is the most influential coalition that Dick DeVos is part of. He came in through his father, who is a governor of the CNP. His late father-in-law, Edgar Prince, was the single largest donor to the Council. DeVos Jr.’s foundation also has given the CNP at least $28,000. Others in the DeVos circle that are also in the CNP include Billy Zeoli, head of Gospel Films in Muskegon. Gospel Films is heavily funded by the DeVos’s. In the mid-1990's it had at least six top Amway distributors and two DeVos family members on its board. Zeoli speaks at Amway rallies and collection packets are passed out for donations for him from Amway distributors.

Why does DeVos and his network value being in a conspiratorial organization with so many persons with extreme political agendas? More disturbing is the question is how such a network could operate in secret with such radical goals and yet maintain ties to the White House and Congress, all without accountability. This is the closest thing we have to the leadership core of a fascist political movement and the world is silent.........

dc_dux · 11-14-2006, 03:35 PM

Quote:

....what Soaries says, and who the "players" from the CNP have been who have invested in the E-Vote industry....and the results that Soaries describes....how can anyone advocate a "hands off" approach to congressional investigation of the CNP and the cabal of right wing financiers and religious fundamentalist who direct the officials who they got elected, to funnel public funds and political power (control), in their direction....all in rigidly maintained, secrecy?

Bush appointed four commissioners (2 Repubs and 2 Dems nominated by the Senate Dems) to the b-partisan Election Assistance Commission, subject to confirmation by the Senate. It appears you are implying that Soaries may have had undue control of the Commission. In any case, the confirmation hearings would have been the appropriate time to question any of these nominees on their background, qualifications, associations, etc.

http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/200...03_hearing.htm

Quote:

Today six years later after spending $2.5 billion, we don't know what we don't know. We don't know about security, we don't know enough because the EAC never got enough money for research. The Congress passed a law that authorized $30 billion for research. EAC to this date has received zero of those dollars.

Now that we have conducted the first election under the new HAVA regulations overseen by the Election Assistance Commission, a Congressional investigation may be helpful in determining if HAVA is working, identifying problems encountered with voting machines, etc. (That gets back to the role of Congressional investigations having a legislative purpose).

It still doesnt justify a Congressional investigation of the CNP unless you have further evidence of malfeasance by Soaries (or any of the other three equally accountable commissioners).

I would like to see the CNP exposed as well, but you have yet to convince me of the legitimacy of a Congressional investigation. I dont want the Dems going on fishing expedidtions, as attractive as the "catch" might be.

host · 02-22-2007, 12:03 AM

Time for an overdue CNP update:

Quote:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politic...9whisplead.htm
Washington Whispers

By Paul Bedard

Posted Sunday, February 11, 2007

....Evangelical Vote: Down to Two

The race to win the Christian-right vote has already narrowed to a battle between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, say activists. And for many at this month's closed-door summit of the Council for National Policy-a top-secret club of marquee conservative advocates-Huckabee was the 60-40 fave, say attendees. This crowd counts: Members include Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Left Behind author Tim LaHaye. Huckabee, a Baptist minister, wowed the confab, even though it's Romney who has won over evangelical leaders. What's more, activists say "in-the-pew evangelicals" will most likely gravitate toward Huckabee, who is strong on marriage and antiabortion issues.....

as I supported here....
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...tpost&t=113609
there were reports of a CNP "board of governor's meeting" on Amelia Island on Feb. 2, and the threat of "Islamo Fascism", and "what to do about it", was covered, along with an appearance by republican presidential candidate, Duncan Hunter, also implicated in DOD defense procurement investigations that began in 2005 when Randy Cunningham sold his home for an inflated price...to defense contractor, Mitchell Wade.

I think that it is sad that Duncan Hunter, a republican congressman from southern California, chose to announce his run for the POTUS in South Carolina....calculating that the state where CNP founder, LeHaye (co-founded by Paul Weyrich), graduated from racist, homophobic, catholic bashing, Bob Jones University of Greenville, SC, and began his ministry, was the place to strengthen the chances of his "must have" CNP endorsement, if he was to be successful in his quest for the republican nomination in 2008.....

It strikes me that a successful republican presidential candidacy has been, and continues to be a sad dance before a powerful fringe group that divides the successful candidate from the mainstream...from the developments that have healed and unifies America for the last 60 years....and they all do this dance....:

Quote:

http://graphics.boston.com/news/poli...orge_W_+.shtml

.......History shows that the real Reagan was the one who spoke at the Neshoba County Fair and not the one at the Urban League. His presidency quickly became the most antipoor, antiblack, and antidisadvantaged in the latter half of the 20th century.

Now, 20 years later, here comes George W. Bush. Stung by his defeat in the New Hampshire primary, Bush needed a trump card in the South Carolina Republican primary. This was a problem, since he and John McCain are running neck-and-redneck on issues dear to racists. Both have chickened out on saying it is time to stop flying the Confederate flag over the state capitol.

Bush may have found his ace. He kicked off his homestretch drive in South Carolina by speaking at Bob Jones University. Bob Jones represents one of Reagan's early signs of being antiblack. Reagan fought to revoke the Internal Revenue Service's authority to deny charitable tax exemptions to the school. The denial was over the school's ban on interracial dating.

The Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, rebuked Reagan, saying schools that practice racial segregation can indeed be denied tax exemptions. Reagan would later appoint the lone dissenter, William Rehnquist, to chief justice.

Bob Jones University still bans interracial dating. George W.'s brother Jeb, the Florida governor who is married to a Latina, could not have graduated. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has a white wife and who was appointed by George W.'s father, could not have graduated.

Bob Jones also practices homophobia. Two years ago, when a gay, 60-year-old alum asked if he could come back to visit the school, the dean of students wrote back, ''With grief we must tell you that as long as you are living as a homosexual, you, of course, would not be welcome on the campus and would be arrested for trespassing if you did. We take no delight in that action. Our greatest delight would be in your return to the Lord.''

George W. took delight in validating this perverted version of Christianity, telling 6,000 students, almost all white, ''I look forward to publicly defending our conservative philosophy.'' He said he would seek ''compassionate results.'' But compassion could not have been foremost on Bush's mind, since it was only after the speech that he criticized the school's racial policies, not during it and not directly to the students.

His compassion is irrelevant when out of all the colleges in South Carolina, he chose the most racist and homophobic, a venue more discriminatory on paper than even the Neshoba County Fair. Speaking of papers, Bush's appearance was so outrageous newspaper and television reporters should hound him as to how he deserves the White House when he panders to such base thinking.

While many editorials have dutifully questioned the appearance, subsequent news coverage has made little mention of Bob Jones and certainly not enough to suggest this was a deep, permanent stain. Like Reagan and the Urban League, Bush is smart enough to sprinkle just enough pepper in his white sauce, such as photo-ops with black children, to keep the hounds at bay..........

...anybody know why Huckabee, besides being a baptist minister turned republican pol, would seem exceptional to the CNP?

....and dc_dux, can you share anything about this woman?:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...tro/obituaries

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/13716.html
A Tribute To The “101st Senator”
April 08, 2006 09:44 AM EST

I have written previously about the importance of Mrs. Miles (Margo) D.B. Carlisle, who, almost invisibly, managed to be one of the most important conservatives of our time. Senators called her the 101st Senator.

They were correct. First as Executive Director of the Senate Steering Committee (the caucus of conservatives), later as Director of the Senate GOP Conference, Executive Director of the Council for National Policy, Vice President of the Heritage Foundation, and an Assistant Secretary of Defense under Caspar N. Weinberger, she was consulted more and more about the Senate Rules and later on policies of cosmic importance.....

....Go in peace, Margo. We know God loves you. And so do those of us who have had the privilege of knowing you. May you rest in a place where there is no grief, no pain, no sighing. Just Everlasting Life. Memory Eternal!

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

Quote:

http://forums.macleans.ca/advansis/?...so=1&ps=0&sb=1
Posted by Maude Barlow at 15:55:35 January 24, 2006

January 21, 2006

Harper and the US Extreme Right

Today in the Globe and Mail, a number of organizations, including my own, published an entire speech that Stephen Harper delivered in 1997 when he was head of the right-wing lobby group, the National Citizens Coalition. We want Canadians to see for themselves exactly what Harper thinks of this country. It is worth reading in full on the eve of an election that might bring him and his party to power.

More disturbing than the views he expresses in this speech, however, is the organization to whom he delivered it and the fact that he would ever have allowed himself to be affiliated with it in any way. It is called the Council for National Policy and is a powerful and secretive collection of far-right American Christian and social conservatives who formed the backbone of the Bush victory. The CNP was founded in 1981 by Tim LeHaye, author of the best-selling "Left Behind" books that describe the "Rapture" (the literal end of time when true believers will be taken up to heaven and the rest of the world will perish in horrible ways), Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, a far-right pro-family/anti-gay/anti abortion lobby that claims on its web-site America is becoming a third world country because of its "long slide into the cultural and moral decay of political correctness," and businessmen Joseph Coors and Herbert and Nelson Bunker Hunt, rabid anti-communists who were affiliated with the John Birch Society.

The Council for National Policy initiated the Moral Majority Coalition and recruited Jerry Falwell to run it and later welcomed James Dobson, head of the far-right evangelical movement, Focus on the Family. Dobson has said that homosexuality will destroy the earth and is the prime architect of the ban on gay marriage in eleven states. The New York Times says the CNP is made up of the most powerful conservatives in the United States who "meet behind closed doors at undisclosed locations to strategize about how to turn the country to the right." Recently, the group has hosted powerful right-wing foreign policy hawks such as Vice President Cheney,
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and UN ambassador John Bolton, a hard-right ideologue who displays a mock grenade on his desk with the label "To John Bolton, World's Greatest Reaganite."

What was Stephen Harper doing by his association with these people? What does it say about his long-term agenda for this country? One thing is certain: the US right can hardly wait for a Harper win. Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation has e-mailed all his far-right friends in the US cautioning them to hold off any public gloating over a possible Harper win until after the vote Monday, "at which point hopefully there will be reason to celebrate." You can bet American social conservatives can hardly wait to see their White House counterpart ensconced at Sussex Drive. Patrick Basham of the right-wing American think-tank, the Cato Institute, says that a Harper win will "put a smile" on George Bush's face......

Quote:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...rend_doomsday/
Reverend Doomsday
According to Tim LaHaye, the Apocalypse is now

Robert Dreyfuss
It might seem unlikely that the commander in chief would take his marching orders directly from on high -- unless you understand the views of the Rev. Timothy LaHaye, one of the most influential leaders of the Christian right, and a man who played a quiet but pivotal role in putting George W. Bush in the White House............

..........Of course, there have always been preachers on the margins of the religious right thundering on about the end of the world. But it's doubtful that such a fanatic believer has ever had such a direct pipeline to the White House. Five years ago, as Bush was gearing up his presidential campaign, he made a little-noticed pilgrimage to a gathering of right-wing Christian activists, under the auspices of a group called the Committee to Restore American Values. The committee, which assembled about two dozen of the nation's leading fundamentalist firebrands, was chaired by LaHaye. At the time, many evangelicals viewed Bush skeptically: Despite his born-again views, when he was governor of Texas, Bush had alienated many of the state's Christian-right activists for failing to pursue a sufficiently evangelical agenda. On the national level, he was an unknown quantity.

That day, behind closed doors, LaHaye grilled the candidate. He presented Bush with a lengthy questionnaire on issues such as abortion, judicial appointments, education, religious freedom, gun control and the Middle East. What the preacher thought of Bush's answers would largely determine whether the Christian right would throw its muscle behind the Texas governor.....

...........In 1979, at a time when ministers confined themselves to their churches, he prodded the Rev. Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority, a group that launched today's cultural wars against feminism, homosexuality, abortion, drugs and pornography. In 1981, he helped found the little-known but vastly powerful Council for National Policy, a secretive group of wealthy donors that has funneled billions of dollars to right-wing Christian activists. "No one individual has played a more central organizing role in the religious right than Tim LaHaye," says Larry Eskridge of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, calling him "the most influential American evangelical of the last twenty-five years."

When the meeting with Bush ended, LaHaye gave the candidate his seal of approval. For Bush, it was a major breakthrough, clearing the decks for hundreds of leaders of the Christian right, from TV preachers and talk-show hosts to Bible Belt pulpit pounders, to support the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2000. "Bush went into the meeting not totally acceptable," recalls Paul Weyrich, the grandfather of the religious right, who has known LaHaye for thirty years. "He went out not only acceptable but enthusiastically supported."

More than half a century ago, as a student at Bob Jones University, Timothy LaHaye began his public ministry as a pastor at a small church in a tiny town in South Carolina, not far from the campus.....

.....By the mid-1980s, LaHaye was at the top of his game, powerful and well- connected, plugged into the Reagan administration and, through yet another of his groups, the American Coalition for Traditional Values, a pivotal factor in the 1984 election, registering Christian conservative voters through "pastor-representatives" in all 435 congressional districts. But he was also headed for a fall.

Lahaye's free-fall began in the mid-1980s, and by the end he'd almost been expelled from the political Garden of Eden. What set it into motion was his connection with the weird would-be messiah Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose Unification Church cult of "Moonies" was viewed by most Christians as laughably heretical. When Moon got entangled in legal controversy, LaHaye sprang to his defense, amid reports that he'd received substantial funding from the wealthy Moon. By the time LaHaye backed away, it was too late. His credibility was shot, and the American Coalition for Traditional Values soon folded.......

.......The success of Left Behind gave LaHaye an enormous boost, returning him to prominence and making him truly born again. "At meetings of the Council for National Policy now, Tim and Bev are treated like rock stars," says Grover Norquist, perhaps Washington's leading conservative activist. Last fall, LaHaye released the first book of a new series called Babylon Rising, which takes his apocalyptic notions even further. Striking while the brimstone is hot, LaHaye has already received a reported $42 million advance deal from Bantam Books for the Babylon books, built around a swashbuckling, Indiana Jones-style biblical archeologist in the Holy Land........

Bottomline... I don't want "my president", connected or beholden to any of these (not going to supply the adjectives....)"powerbrokers" ..... WTF?

Hanxter · 02-22-2007, 12:17 PM

well that certainly clears that up

host · 02-25-2007, 12:54 PM

Today, in the NY Times, a story makes it apparent that my last post about the 2008 presidential candidate preferences at the CNP "governors" meeting on Amelia Island last week, missed the general attitude of the attendees.

I apparently did post an accurate description of the history of the influence and fixation on South Carolina, by pols, conservative billionaires, and evangelicals:

Quote:

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...cid=1113935290
February 25, 2007
Christian Right Labors to Find ’08 Candidate
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 — A group of influential Christian conservatives and their allies emerged from a private meeting at a Florida resort this month dissatisfied with the Republican presidential field and uncertain where to turn.

The event was a meeting of the Council for National Policy, a secretive club whose few hundred members include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Liberty University and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Although little known outside the conservative movement, the council has become a pivotal stop for Republican presidential primary hopefuls, including George W. Bush on the eve of his 1999 primary campaign.

But in a stark shift from the group’s influence under President Bush, the group risks relegation to the margins. Many of the conservatives who attended the event, held at the beginning of the month at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., said they were dismayed at the absence of a champion to carry their banner in the next election.

Many conservatives have already declared their hostility to Senator John McCain of Arizona, despite his efforts to make amends for having once denounced Christian conservative leaders as “agents of intolerance,” and to former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, because of his liberal views on abortion and gay rights and his three marriages.

Many were also suspicious of former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts; members have used the council as a conduit to distribute a dossier prepared by a Massachusetts conservative group about liberal elements of his record on abortion, stem cell research and gay rights. (Mr. Romney has worked to convince conservatives that his views have changed.)

And some members of the council have raised doubts about lesser known candidates — Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Representative Duncan Hunter of California, who were invited to Amelia Island to address an elite audience of about 60 of its members, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who spoke to the full council at its previous meeting, in October in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Although each of the three had supporters, many conservatives expressed concerns about whether any of the candidates could unify their movement or raise enough money to overtake the front-runners, several participants in the meetings said.

Finally, in a measure of their dissatisfaction, a delegation of prominent conservatives at Amelia Island tried to enlist as a candidate Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a guest speaker at the event. A charismatic politician with a clear conservative record, Mr. Sanford is almost unknown outside his home state and has done nothing to prepare for a presidential run. He firmly declined the group’s entreaties, people involved in the recruiting effort said. A spokesman for Mr. Sanford said he would not comment.

“There is great anxiety,” said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation. “There is no outstanding conservative, and they are all looking for that.”

Mr. Weyrich, a longtime member of the council, declined to discuss the group or its meetings. The council’s bylaws forbid members from publicly disclosing its membership or activities, and participants agreed to discuss the Amelia Island meeting only on the condition of anonymity.

for the rest of the article..... click to show

...How could such a narrow focused, "fringe" group, with such a limited criteria for choosing "qualified" candidates", and with so much influence from and focus on South Carolina "players", have supported George W. Bush in 2000, and aside from their money driven, conservative religious zealotry, what is the basis for their outsized "influence" on republican politics, and....why the secrecy?

CNP "principals" are building a series of media outlets to spread their "message":

They have attempted to develop their own national news radio network, with the 1200 Salem radio stations:

Quote:

Salem Radio Network -- Programming That Delivers
A full-service satellite radio network based in Irving, Texas. Serves Christian formatted and general market news/talk stations through affiliate ...
www.srnonline.com/ - 15k - Cached - Similar pages

....and....

Quote:

TownHall.com™ is an interactive community on the Internet that brings users, conservative public policy organizations, congressional staff and political activists together under the broad umbrella of "conservative" thoughts, ideas and actions. Townhall.com is a one-stop mall of ideas in which people congregate to exchange, discuss and disseminate the latest news and information from the conservative movement.

host · 05-13-2007, 03:12 PM

Okay, now we know that Fred Thompson is a serious candidate....it is reported that he went before the "higher body" and delivered a "secret speech".....what is it with this party and it's candidates? Do they really think that speaking secretly before a Bob Jones/South Carolina fundamentalist christian centric, secret political group dominated by right wing billionaires, will influence "moderates" to support their candidacies? Sheesh !!!!!

Quote:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...nough-meeting/
May 12, 2007, 9:17 pm
Fred Thompson’s Just-Secret-Enough Meeting

By Sarah Wheaton

Fred D. Thompson, the “Law & Order” star and subject of much speculation about his presidential ambitions, is practically above our head right now, speaking to a secretive group of conservative heavyweights and activists.

The Council on National Policy is so secretive, in fact, that they kicked us off the entire floor of the Ritz-Carlton here in Tysons Corner, Va., before we could even try to get in to the closed-press dinner where Mr. Thompson is speaking right now. The former Tennessee senator is considering a bid for the Republican nomination, and his current popularity in the polls —ahead of many of the declared candidates — is a reflection of both admiration he holds within the party and the base’s dissatisfaction with the current crop of candidates.

We did, however, catch Mr. Thompson in the elevator on his way up to a private meeting with a select group of the council. He declined to talk, saying he was at the “behest” of the group and its schedule.

Tonight’s speech was anticipated by some political observers as a second chance for the former Tennessee senator after a speech to Orange County, Calif., Republicans on May 4. Robert D. Novak, the conservative columnist, called the speech “lackluster,” and others criticized it as too low-key and plagued by technical problems.

An associate of Mr. Thompson said the speech was “completely different” from the Orange County address. It would focus on “the rule of law and how that comes into play in civil society,” he said. Mr. Thompson would also discuss his experience guiding John Roberts, now the chief justice of the Supreme Court, through the confirmation process.

As was the case before his speech in California, there were rumors that Mr. Thompson would announce his candidacy. The associate said those were not true, adding that the speech is “not political.”

A prepared text is not available, aides said, because Mr. Thompson speaks extemporaneously from notes.

Formed almost 26 years ago by the Rev. Tim LaHaye, the author of the “Left Behind” series about an apocalyptic Second Coming, the Council for National Policy includes high-profile figures representing the spectrum of the conservative movement, such as Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association and Grover Norquist, the anti-tax lobbyist.

Then-Gov. George W. Bush met with the group in 1999 to seek its approval of his primary campaign. Wary of the top-tier Republicans, the council heard earlier this year from Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Representative Duncan Hunter of California. In each, members found something left to be desired in terms of both politics and policy.

The group’s meetings, held about three times yearly, are highly secretive. Not only is the press barred from attending, but the bylaws also ban members from discussing the meetings beforehand or afterward.

dksuddeth · 05-13-2007, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Okay, now we know that Fred Thompson is a serious candidate....it is reported that he went before the "higher body" and delivered a "secret speech".....what is it with this party and it's candidates? Do they really think that speaking secretly before a Bob Jones/South Carolina fundamentalist christian centric, secret political group dominated by right wing billionaires, will influence "moderates" to support their candidacies? Sheesh !!!!!

why not? It's worked in the past on both sides.

I find it humorous that some people abhor conservative politics over liberal politics and vice versa, then claim themselves to be 'moderates' or independents, but still maintain those political outlooks most beholden to their ideology.

Did anyone find it remotely hypocritical that none of the presidential candidates are releasing their tax records this election campaign?

Face it America, you're being led astray by those who hold power over your parties for their own private interests....whatever they may be.

some of us should hold ourselves in really serious contempt.

host · 05-15-2007, 08:18 AM

dksuddeth, while I believe that "money party" democrats, Clinton and Obama, Schumer and Emmanuel, go too far by obligating themselves to corporate interests in exchange for campaign funding, democrats have in their ranks, a senator like Russ Feingold, who has never accepted a dime from a defense contractor, and who has no "relationships", like this....the republicans have a lock on this religious subversion of the political process in the USA:

It was Richard Land who the NY Times reported, introduced Fred Thompson to the CNP last saturday night:

Quote:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archi...14/190500.aspx
The Politico's Allen notes that on Saturday night, "Thompson was the keynote speaker at a dinner organized by the Council for National Policy, a group of many of the nation’s most influential conservative leaders." Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, a major player in the '08 GOP sweepstakes, introduced Thompson at the event, which was closed to the press.

Quote:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...the_crusaders/
The Crusaders
Christian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image

BOB MOSERPosted Apr 07, 2005 12:00 AM

.....To implement their sweeping agenda, the Dominionists are working to remake the federal courts in God's image. In their view, the Founding Fathers never intended to erect a barrier between politics and religion. "The First Amendment does not say there should be a separation of church and state," declares Alan Sears, president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a team of 750 attorneys trained by the Dominionists to fight abortion and gay marriage. Sears argues that the constitutional guarantee against state-sponsored religion is actually designed to "shield" the church from federal interference -- allowing Christians to take their rightful place at the head of the government. <h3>"We have a right, indeed an obligation, to govern," says David Limbaugh, brother of Rush and author of Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity.</h3> Nothing gets the Dominionists to their feet faster than ringing condemnations of judicial tyranny. "Activist judges have systematically deconstructed the Constitution," roars Rick Scarborough, author of Mixing Church and State. "A God-free society is their goal!"

Activist judges, of course, are precisely what the Dominionists want. Their model is Roy Moore, the former Alabama chief justice who installed a 5,300-pound granite memorial to the Ten Commandments, complete with an open Bible carved in its top, in the state judicial building. At Reclaiming America, Roy's Rock sits out front, fresh off a tour of twenty-one states, perched on the flag-festooned flatbed of a diesel truck, a potent symbol of the "faith-based" justice the Dominionists are bent on imposing. Activists at the conference pose for photographs beside the rock and have circulated a petition urging President Bush to appoint Moore -- who once penned an opinion calling for the state to execute "practicing homosexuals" -- to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The other side knows we've got strongholds in the executive and legislative branches," Cass tells the troops. "If we start winning the judiciary, their power base is going to be eroded."

To pack the courts with fundamentalists like Moore, Dominionist leaders are planning a massive media blitz. They're also pressuring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist -- an ally who's courting support for his presidential bid -- to halt the long-standing use of filibusters to hold up judicial nominations. An anti-filibuster petition circulating at the conference blasts Democrats for their "outrageous stonewalling of appointments" -- even though Congress has approved more nominees of Bush than of any president since Jimmy Carter.

It helps that Dominionists have a direct line to the White House: <h3>The Rev. Richard Land, top lobbyist for the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, enjoys a weekly conference call with top Bush advisers including Karl Rove.</h3> "We've got the Holy Spirit's wind at our backs!" Land declares in an arm-waving, red-faced speech. He takes particular aim at the threat posed by John Lennon, denouncing "Imagine" as a "secular anthem" that envisions a future of "clone plantations, child sacrifice, legalized polygamy and hard-core porn."........

11-13-2006, 12:52 PM	#2 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	to answer the question in the title. no, no they won't. but they will grant amnesty to illegals, raise the minimum wage, raise taxes, and withdraw from iraq turning the fragile country over to the (yes I'm gonna say it) terrorists. They'll probably do a bunch of other stupid things to. __________________ "If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

11-13-2006, 04:14 PM	#7 (permalink)
mixedmedia has all her shots. Location: Florida	Wow, I have to say I've been blindsided here. I've never heard of this organization before. And the implications are chilling. I'd like to see some of the conservatives here really address this issue and what it means to them. I don't think any of the conservatives on this site are what I would call "ultra-conservatives" but I'd really like to know what they think of so many heavyweight republican pols contributing to and belonging to an organization that openly professes the aim of turning America to the ultra-right. I'm appalled. I think it notable that at least one of the articles points out that republican moderates and neo-conservatives are conspicuously absent from this organization. Which makes me wonder about the origin of the popular misconception about what a neo-conservative really is. The neo-conservative movement and the ultra-right wing movement are in many ways diametrically opposed to one another. Have the neo-conservatives been marginalized for not being socially conservative? Wow, this has created a bit of a maelstrom in my head. I may need time to sift through it all. One thing I can say right now is that as scary and threatening as the CNP seems in its illuminati-like ambition, I don't feel truly threatened by them. I think the notion of a free society is too deeply entrenched in the American psyche for them to fulfill their goal (ultimately) of a corporate theocracy, although their handiwork is certainly evident if you look at the political trends and slow implementation of religious activism, particularly in the rural South and Midwest. So now we know where Karl Rove sowed his oats, most likely... Interesting stuff, host, thanks for posting it. __________________ Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

11-13-2006, 04:38 PM	#8 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	very interesting indeed host. thanks very much for posting it. i am sorting through stuff and don't yet have a reaction/response. it may take a little while, but i'll post more. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

11-13-2006, 04:56 PM	#9 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	I can only hope that the Dems dont get anywhere near this, without knowing the extent to which it may have elements of truth. The focus of Congressional investigations should be on what can be corrected NOW....if and/or how the President is exceeding Constitutional powers regarding national security (illegal wirestapping, violation of rights of those "accused" or "suspected" of terrorism connections), if/how the Executive Dept is countermanding existing laws and regulations (EPA, FDA) to the benefit of affected industries, if/how the current Administration is preventing whistleblowers from revealing misdeads of federal agencies, if/how the Administration has weakened the Freedom of Information Act and re-classified thousands of documents to prevent their release....... __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire

11-13-2006, 05:11 PM	#10 (permalink)
mixedmedia has all her shots. Location: Florida	Yes, I'm more of the mind that republicans should take care of this themselves. __________________ Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

11-13-2006, 01:00 PM	#3 (permalink)
host Banned	You posted before you possibly could have even read and considered the citations in my OP........

11-13-2006, 05:26 PM	#11 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	actually i would think the best thing that could happen on this matter would be to out this organization...this information should be made as public as possible,a s widely as possible. more research should be done into what exactly these folks are doing. they are presented as a kind of extreme right networking apparatus...and i am sure that to some limited extent, they are. the problem with political pressure coming down on these folks in this form would be twofold: 1. scarcity of information and 2. the problem that it looks like a kind of far right cabal, and so there is a danger that it could become the stuff of conspiracy theorists--who are not always wrong, but whose approach tends to be self-marginalizing. better to deal with (1) as a way of countering (2). but it looks like a very interesting and very problematic outfit. like a jackie-o style chanel number does when i wear it. and there is no way--no way in hell--that the democrats are going to touch this. nor should they at the moment--for the reasons dc notes above. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 11-13-2006 at 05:32 PM..

11-13-2006, 07:37 PM	#12 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	I agree with roachboy. Moreover, I think it would be a mistake to pursue the more obvious choices of egregious behavior during this administration. There is a legal obligation to do so, but a compelling political reason to let it go for now. There are too many pressing problems that need to be resolved in the next two years to be distracted by anything other than addressing those issues.

11-14-2006, 08:38 AM	#14 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	Host....I dont like what this group does any more than you do, but that does not make it a legitimate reason for a Congressional investigation. It would smack of McCarthyism (I can see it now...."Are you or have you ever been a member of the CNP?") By law, Congressional investigations should have a legislative purpose. The power of Congress to conduct investigations is broad, but it is not unlimited and should not be used to trample on anyone's first amendment rights of free speech or assembly, regardless of what you or I or any member of Congress may think about such persons or organizations. Further journalistic investigations? Absolutely. Criminal investigation by the US Attorney General or a state AG. Definetely, if there is compelling evidence suggesting criminal activities. Congressional investigation. Under no circumstances. There is no legitmate Constitutional justification. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 11-14-2006 at 08:49 AM..

11-14-2006, 09:04 AM	#15 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	it seems pretty clear that the cnp is being framed in host's posts about it as an extension of the abramoff affair(s) and so would logically fall within a congressional investigative purview. but it also seems to me that at the same time as this line of access/thinking COULD prompt an investigation, it is not obvious that this line would go as far as i think should be gone to expose and/or disrupt this organization. if it turns out that it in fact does the sort of things that it appears to do---and this appearance is a simple function of assembling the fragmentary information available in the thread and via simple searches into something of an image and interpreting it. i am curious to know more about its actual activities. were i doing a research project on the cnp, i would perhaps use the abramoff connection as a hook to sell the book, but would not gear the project itself around it a priori, simply because in doing that you commit yourself to centering your analysis in a particular way before you have determined the utility of it--marketing purposes aside, of course. as a side note: the proliferation of shadow organizations, pseudo-organizations, front organizations etc. on the part of the american right curiously enough links it tactically to old communist party activities. there is a strange migration pattern of stalinist style tactics into retro-land, from the photographing of protestors and assembly of a database identifying/tracking them to the pathologization of all types of "deviant" behaviour in children and treating them with drugs. kurt vonnegut wrote once: careful who you pretend to be i guess one could add: wittingly or not.... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

11-14-2006, 10:04 AM	#16 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	Roach.....the Abramoff investigation has been a Justice Department investigation. Congress took a role only when it involved potential ethical violations of Members. I would agree that Congress should investigate whether this or any Justice Department investigations have been unduly influenced by political pressure from the White House, but that should be the extent of Congress' involvement. I would also agree that that "photographing of protestors and assembly of a database identifying/tracking them" should be appropriately investigated by Congress (rather than, or in addition to, the Justice Dept) when or if it involves the action of the federal government, not a private organization. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 11-14-2006 at 10:13 AM..

11-14-2006, 10:17 AM	#17 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	dc: understood--my point was that i am not sure that the abramoff connection is the best way to approach the cnp. i read in this morning's guardian that congress is going to launch investigation of the rendition program. to my mind, dismantling that is a pressing concern. if the cnp finds itself outed and tangled up in a something, i will shed no tears, but i basically agree with you on why it is not and shold not be a target in itself of congressional investigations at this point. other types of investigations, though, absolutely. i want to know what these clowns are doing. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

11-14-2006, 10:38 AM	#18 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	I agree with you on the rendition program. I also want to know the justification for Bush's 132 signing statements challenging over 810 provisions of federal laws...when in the 211 years of our nation's history, presidents issued fewer than 600 signing statements that took issue with the bills they signed. I want to know why the OMB director lied to Congress about the cost of the Medicare prescription bill and why the Medicare program cant negotiate drug prices in the same manner as the Veterans Administration. I want to know why there were so many failures in the federal response to Katrina (not excusing the state/local response)...but why has the report requested by Congress still not been submitted by Bush/Chernoff. There is lots more I want to know about what these "clowns" are doing, but I want it focused and conducted in a manner that is not a witchunt like the Repubs did to Clinton and the Dems. __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire

02-22-2007, 12:17 PM	#22 (permalink)
Hanxter The Griffin	well that certainly clears that up