Intelligence Deputy to America: Rethink Privacy - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

ScottKuma · 11-12-2007, 01:09 PM

Ok, this one has me so mad I can't even think straight. Your thoughts?

Quote:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States change their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil in order to protect Americans' privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.

Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appear reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might be the only way to determine how far the government has burrowed into people's privacy without court permission.

The committee is expected to decide this week whether its version of the bill will protect telecommunications companies. About 40 wiretapping suits are pending.

The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco, California.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the class-action suit, claims there are as many as 20 such sites in the U.S.

The White House has promised to veto any bill that does not grant immunity from suits such as this one.

Congressional leaders hope to finish the bill by Thanksgiving. It would replace the FISA update enacted in August that privacy groups and civil libertarians say allows the government to read Americans' e-mails and listen to their phone calls without court oversight.

Kerr said at an October intelligence conference in San Antonio, Texas, that he finds it odd that some would be concerned that the government may be listening in when people are "perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an [Internet service provider] who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data."

He noted that government employees face up to five years in prison and $100,000 in fines if convicted of misusing private information.

Millions of people in this country -- particularly young people -- already have surrendered anonymity to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and to Internet commerce. These sites reveal to the public, government and corporations what was once closely guarded information, like personal statistics and credit card numbers.

"Those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it's not for us to inflict one size fits all," said Kerr, 68. "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that."

"Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety," Kerr said. "I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but [also] what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere."

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that defends online free speech, privacy and intellectual property rights, said Kerr's argument ignores both privacy laws and American history.

"Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms," Opsahl said. "The government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together."

Opsahl also said Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service.

"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties," he said. "We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy."

"It's just another 'trust us, we're the government,"' he said.

dksuddeth · 11-12-2007, 02:08 PM

too many people in this country either feel the need to be totally protected from terrorism and will give up their freedom, as well as yours, to 'feel' that safety, or they just don't care enough and figure 'it's the government, that is what they are there for', so just prepare to have very little privacy anymore.

Not sure why people are in any kind of uproar over this? Several of us have been predicting that the constitution will just simply be ignored, no matter who is president or what party has power.

SecretMethod70 · 11-12-2007, 02:39 PM

This is very sad, though perhaps even sadder is that it's not surprising.

ASU2003 · 11-12-2007, 05:12 PM

No comment...

(They're watching me)

Plan9 · 11-12-2007, 05:20 PM

This is a revelation why?

(goes back into his Y2K shelter w/ his Beanie Weenie)

Willravel · 11-12-2007, 05:30 PM

Hey Kerr, suck my no longer anonymous dick. You're not the supreme court, you don't get to decide how to interpret the Constitution and more importantly the Bill of Rights.

Speaking of, where the fuck is the supreme court?

Plan9 · 11-12-2007, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Speaking of, where the fuck is the supreme court?

Hiding underneath the USA PATRIOT Act, clutching their Republican Party cards.

dksuddeth · 11-12-2007, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Speaking of, where the fuck is the supreme court?

please, you really believe the ussc is going to deny their executive branch benefactors the power they say they need to fight terrorism?

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-12-2007, 09:36 PM

Why don't you get down on the congress for making the laws? or not pushing for oversight? Or not bringing it to trial?

pan6467 · 11-12-2007, 11:33 PM

It's sad to say, but quite honestly we get what we deserve.

Whether you smoke or not, watching people vote laws into place that making smoking illegal, erodes rights.... but it's ok secondhand smoke, I don't smoke, etc etc ... still you took away the rights of the owner to decide what is best for his business and the right for smokers and non to choose where they want to do business. Around here people vote for which stores can sell alcohol and what type on Sundays... don't like a particular store or restaurant... nice way to get even isn't it? Take away their right but vote to let their competition sell.

But discussing how the voters take rights away is a threadjack isn't it? We'd rather have threads that show how Congress and the government are taking away our rights.

What's the difference in all honesty? If you vote to take someone's right away how does that make you any better than those you bitch about in Congress????

host · 11-13-2007, 01:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottKuma

Ok, this one has me so mad I can't even think straight. Your thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Hey Kerr, suck my no longer anonymous dick. You're not the supreme court, you don't get to decide how to interpret the Constitution and more importantly the Bill of Rights.

Speaking of, where the fuck is the supreme court?

ScottKuma reads a news report, and it "has [him} so mad!!! willravel asks, "where the fuck is the supreme court?"

...ScottKuma, how made would it make you, if you know what I've found out? willravel, the Supreme Court ain't comin' "to the rescue".

Why? For 30 years, ideological conservatives and politically strategizing conservative evangelical christians, have developed, funded, and executed a plan that brings us to where we find ourselves today.
The key players were the wealthy folks who backed Reagan's political campaigns, founded the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the Federalist Society, now thiry thousand plus conservative lawyers strong.

The same names appear and reappear, no matter who the republican candidates are, Reagan, GHW Bush, GW Bush, Giuliani, or Romney.

Ted olson, James Bopp, Pat Roberston. (The latter two are CNP members...) Robertson's protege, Sekulow, is reported in a Chicago Tribune article (below, near bottom..) to have had enough influence to literally "select" Roberts and Alito.
Timothy Flanigan, now advising Romney on "The Constitution And The Courts", received attention from me in prior posts:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...ed+politics%22

All of it is related, and the agenda is consolidation of power and control. The goal is to make the government and the courts objects of scorn from the POV of even those who formerly believed they offered solutions and justice.

Part of the agenda is to "demonize" the "have nots"...remember Reagan's "welfare queen driving a Cadillac"? They want your attention and your resentment focused on the powerless, the "have nots", as they consolidate the country's welath, one addtional percent at a time into their patrons' hands, until they are completely unaccountable, beyond the reach of the government and it's IRS and SEC, with the added "insurance" of a "unitary executive", to block efforts by the rest of us to use the government for our benefit, instead of them using it against us, for theirs.

Too many here, I'm startled by the number, post such resentment against "lazy people sucking off the government tit", while ignoring those who do the real damage, because they see the controlling parasites as the faction that they hope one day to be part of...."self made", virtuous example of American ingenuity and drive...deserving to keep it cuz I earned it. No illness, no setbacks. just naive ambtious crystal clear "vision", the best results of indoctrination that the RNC/CNP Ayn Rand "message" can buy.....

If it is so certain, so attainable, if "I work hard enough". how come just ten percent of American residents control 70 percent of total US assets?

If, as Time magazine reported in an article last month, the "Supreme Court is irrelevant", why are these people working so hard to gain overwhelming control of it?

There is nothing other to consider these people as, than fanatics. They care nothing about your rights, or about justice. I find them so repellent, I lean toward inept, clueless and objectionable democrats, only because they are not CNP, not Federalist Society, and not committed to eliminating women's rights to choose, and to jamb the ten commandments and the man on the cross, in our faces, and up our @sses.

Learn the names of the players and the organizations, understand that this is all part of the same thing. It's killing the country, and if it succeeds....what then?

<h3>Ask yourselves, who appointed the effing guy who testified that we have to hand over our prior anonynimity to the government and private business, and who does he, and the candidates who hope to replace him, take instruction from? Do you find ANY dissent or disagreement concerning the deliberate steps they've made towards making the US a police state, under "marshall law lite", because I don't.....</h3>

It's about intelligence gatheing against anticipated political and legal opposition. If they can look into everyone's records, background and communication, they can identify potential for opposition to their continued control of the apparatus of state, and preempt it.

Preemption is not only a policy to prevent future 9/11 attacks, it is about preempting all opposition to "the plan", as early after it is first perceived, as possible. I think the press knows this, and the corporate media owners are not adverse to <h3>this campaign to restore, and maintain "order in a post 9/11 world"!!!</h3>

Wouldn't a US press with "liberal bias", trumpet the news that newly sworn in Atty. General Micahel Mukasey is also a very close personal friend of Rudy Giuliani?

Quote:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...670489,00.html
The Incredibly Shrinking Court
Thursday, Oct. 11, 2007 By DAVID VON DREHLE

....In which case, no one should be surprised that Roberts has turned out to be an uncompromising conservative on a court split 4 to 4 on ideology, with a fifth conservative, Justice Anthony Kennedy, deciding case after case according to his own self-dramatizing muse. When Roberts was picked to be the nation's 17th Chief Justice, he talked a great deal about the need for the fractious court to find more coherence and common ground, to wage fewer ideological spats on the pages of unnecessary separate opinions. Some wondered if this was an offer on his part to split the difference between the rival camps, but no one wonders anymore. <h3>In two terms, Roberts has not taken a single position on a high-profile case that you would not expect a darling of the conservative Federalist Society to take.</h3>

Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 2005, when Roberts was confirmed, was so annoyed by some of the Chief Justice's opinions last term that he threatened to investigate whether Roberts had misled the panel. But Roberts has told friends he stands by every word. <h3>He wasn't talking about compromising on ideological principles, he explains.</h3> He was talking about conducting disputes and expressing outcomes in the voice of a durable institution--not as nine voices of nine headstrong pundits.

So much for human wishes. Roberts, of all people, ought to have been more circumspect in trumpeting his plans to reform the vociferous court. His ambitions have so far been in vain. The warring factions of the Roberts court--and their pocked and smoking battlefields--have made his talk of self-effacing harmony seem obsolete. After a brief honeymoon of unanimous opinions in obscure cases, it is the same four Justices on the right and the same four on the left in one high-profile case after another, with Kennedy determining the law. Bombast, rhetorical excess and dueling opinions are thick as Pompeian ash.

Yet there is something strange about all this heat and division. As the dust rises and the opinions, concurrences and dissents pile up, the court turns its attention to ever smaller cases related to ever narrower points of law. There is, it seems, an inverse relationship between the passions expressed in judicial writings and the import of the cases that inspire them. In the midst of these battles, no one seems to have noticed that the stakes have diminished. This trend--a steady shrinking of the judicial role in public policy and a handing over of issues to the states--is consistent with Roberts' conservative philosophy. And it points to an obvious question about the highest court in the land. How much does the Supreme Court matter anymore?

The Incredible Shrinking Court

<h3>The irony is that the Court's ideology is playing a dwindling role in the lives of Americans.</h3> The familiar hot-button controversies--abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, police powers and so on--have been around so long, sifted and resifted so many times, that they now arrive at the court in highly specific cases affecting few, if any, real people. And it's not clear that Roberts wants to alter that trend. His speeches on the judicial role suggest a man more interested in the steady retreat of the court from public policy than in a right-wing revolution. Unless the Roberts court umpires another disputed presidential election (à la Bush v. Gore in 2000--a long shot, to say the least), the left-right division will matter mainly in the realm of theories and rhetoric, dear to the hearts of law professors and political activists but remote from day-to-day existence. What once was salient is now mostly symbolic.....

<a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1670489-2,00.html">(2 of 4)</a>
A single death-penalty decision, Furman v. Georgia, in 1972 struck down more than 30 state laws and spared some 600 prisoners. This year the Roberts court will hear a case asking whether death is an excessive punishment for the rapist of a child. There is only one such prisoner on death row in the U.S.

Of course, symbols matter. Court cases dealing with Executive power over Guantánamo detainees will directly affect relatively few people, but such cases help strike the philosophical balance between security and human rights that is relevant to the entire nation and to America's place in the world. As Harvard professor Frederick Schauer pointed out in an influential recent law-review article, however, "most of the court's agenda lies some distance from the nation's." Compounding this is the fact that the court is tackling fewer cases than at any other time in the past half-century. Last term's output of just 68 decisions was the lowest since 1953. Court watchers and even the Justices themselves aren't sure why the docket is so small. Nor do the Justices have a plan for picking up the pace. The U.S. is the world's most litigious society, but our
lawsuits aren't sexy enough to interest the Justices of the Roberts Court. We're not that into them, and they're not that into us....

Quote:

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/def...oId=24570#time
Countering TIME on the Court's Relevance to Americans
TIME magazine’s cover story this week told Americans they don't need to care about the Supreme Court because its decisions don’t make a difference in most people’s lives. That premise is just wrong, as the letter we submitted to TIME makes clear (see below). It’s also pretty astonishing to have that article appear the very same week that the GOP presidential candidates will appear before right-wing activists and the so-called "Values Voter Summit" <h3>and enthusiastically pledge to put more Justices like Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas on the Court — and cement for a generation the right-wing trends that are undermining Americans’ legal rights and protections.</h3>

To the Editor:

David Von Drehle ("The Incredibly Shrinking Court") claims the Supreme Court is less relevant to Americans because its cases now involve narrow legal issues and few people. This is simply not so. Von Drehle’s example, last June's 5-4 decision in which the Court invalidated voluntary school integration programs in Seattle and Louisville, may have directly involved "at most a few hundred students," as he claims, but now school districts across the country are struggling to find ways of achieving racial diversity in schools without running afoul of the new Court majority.

In another 5-4 ruling, the majority held that Goodyear Tire worker Lilly Ledbetter, who was subjected to sex-based pay discrimination for years, was not entitled to compensation because she filed her suit too late. It would be wrong to say this ruling affected only one person. The legal rules handed down in this cramped interpretation of civil rights law will keep anyone in similar circumstances from having her day in court.

The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what our Constitution means and how our laws are applied. And at a time when the President claims the power to override the Constitution, and bullies Congress into violating Americans’ rights and legal protections, the Supreme Court’s role as a check and balance to the exercise of executive and legislative power is particularly important to all Americans.

Sincerely,

Judith E. Schaeffer
Legal Director

Quote:

http://www.joinrudy2008.com/news/pr/447
Rudy Giuliani Campaign Unveils Justice Advisory Committee
Jul 16th

The Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee today unveiled the members of Rudy Giuliani’s Justice Advisory Committee. Former Solicitor General of the United States Ted Olson will serve as Chairman.

The Committee is comprised of some of America’s leading conservative scholars and practicing attorneys, many of whom Rudy Giuliani has known since his time serving as Associate Attorney General in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department. Members include former Assistant to the Solicitor General Miguel Estrada, Co-founder of the Federalist Society Steven Calabresi and former Deputy Attorney General of the United States Larry Thompson.

<h3>“Rudy Giuliani believes in limited government, individual liberty and interpreting the Constitution the way its framers intended,” said Ted Olson</h3>, former Solicitor General of the United States and Chairman of the Justice Advisory Committee. “He understands that we need judges who interpret the Constitution, not legislate from the bench. Rudy Giuliani will appoint strict constructionist judges who share that philosophy.”....

Quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...671089,00.html
Widow blames US officials for Guatemala dirty war death

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Thursday March 21, 2002
The Guardian

.........The US knew at the time of her husband's kidnapping who had carried it out but, Ms Harbury says, it chose to tell her that it had no information.

The government's lawyers argue that the case should not proceed, on the grounds that government officials are entitled to give misleading information.

<h3>"There are lots of different situations when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information,"</h3> the solicitor general, Theodore Olson, told the supreme court this week. .............

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true
The Two Theodore Olsons
Although Conservatives Love Him, Some Doubt Solicitor General Nominee's Candor

By Robert G. Kaiser and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 17, 2001; Page A01

...........Olson has done legal work for Ronald Reagan, Monica Lewinsky and Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied for Israel. He has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, and won several historic ones, most notably last year's Bush v. Gore..............

...............He has been not only an architect of the conservative legal movement but a significant political player as well, advising Paula Jones's legal team when she sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment, and defending his friend Kenneth W. Starr during the Whitewater investigation...............

...............Olson's nomination was held up at the Judiciary Committee last week, after Democrats expressed concern that the nominee was less than candid in testimony about his role with the American Spectator magazine and its "Arkansas Project," a $2.3 million effort to report on Bill and Hillary Clinton that was funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, a conservative philanthropist..................

................Fifteen years ago, Justice Department lawyers found "significant evidence" that Olson had given carefully worded testimony to Congress that "was knowingly false." An independent counsel cleared him of criminal wrongdoing in that episode...............

................ Olson and his wife, Barbara, have made no secret of their political predilections. Barbara Olson worked for House Republicans investigating Clinton, became a prominent anti-Clinton television commentator and wrote a gleefully hostile bestseller about Hillary Clinton, "Hell to Pay."

Olson himself wrote a long article for American Spectator denouncing Janet Reno's Justice Department as politically corrupt, and co-authored an article for the magazine enumerating, with sarcasm, the federal and Arkansas laws the Clintons might have violated. When R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the Spectator's combative editor, got married in 1998, Olson was his best man. ...............

Quote:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/074...t,78212,6.html
'No Skeletons in My Closet!'
Oh yeah? How Michael Mukasey and Bernie Kerik are haunting Rudy's run.
by Wayne Barrett
October 30th, 2007 5:57 PM

...The question for Mukasey is not what he'll do at Justice for the soon-to-be- departing Republican president, but what he'll do for the putative next one, <h3>his lifelong friend Rudy Giuliani</h3>. Mukasey and Giuliani were young federal prosecutors together in the early 1970s and then practiced at the same Manhattan law firm, Patterson Belknap, where Mukasey returned in 2006 when he retired after 18 years on the federal bench in New York. Giuliani chose Mukasey to swear him in at his inaugurals in 1994 and 1998....

Quote:

http://www.mittromney.com/News/Press...itution_Courts
Governor Mitt Romney Announces The Advisory Committee On The Constitution And The Courts

Tuesday, Oct 02, 2007

Co-Chairs Of The Advisory Committee On The Constitution And The Courts:
- Douglas W. Kmiec – Caruso Family Chair & Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University; Former Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush

....Members Of The Advisory Committee On The Constitution And The Courts:

...- Bradford A. Berenson – Partner, Sidley Austin LLP; Former Associate White House Counsel to President George W. Bush; Law Clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; <h3>Chairman, The Federalist Society</h3>, Executive Committee of the Criminal Law and Procedure Practice Group

<h3>...- James Bopp, Jr. – Partner, Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom; General Counsel for the James Madison Center for Free Speech; Special Adviser on Life Issues to Governor Mitt Romney</h3>

...- Timothy Flanigan – Former General Counsel, Corporate and International Law, Tyco International; Former Deputy White House Counsel to President George W. Bush; Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, for President George H.W. Bush; Law Clerk to the Honorable Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United States

...- Allyson Ho – Baker Botts; Former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Counselor to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft; Law Clerk to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States

<h3>...- Jay Sekulow – Constitutional Law and Supreme Court Advocate</h3>

Quote:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,6757620.story
or http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search
Legal groups putting God on the docket

By Lisa Anderson | Tribune national correspondent
September 5, 2007

.....Far fewer know of the American Center for Law and Justice, a leader in the flourishing field of Christian legal advocacy that may be less famous but is no less determined to see its views prevail in the nation's courts and, ultimately, its culture.

<h3>The best-financed and highest profile of these conservative Christian legal groups, the ACLJ, headed by aggressive chief counsel Jay Sekulow</h3>, has led the way in transforming the complaints of the religious right from raucous protests on the courthouse steps to polished presentations inside the highest courts in the land.
<h3>...Founded by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1990, the ACLJ has an annual budget of $35 million and employs about 130 people, including 37 lawyers, around the world, Sekulow said.</h3>

"They're a very, very significant player in constitutional law, particularly regarding the 1st Amendment," said Barry Lynn, executive director of the non-profit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who often has crossed swords with Sekulow....

Sekulow, he said, "had this very clever idea of using what might be called religious arguments in the past and transforming them into free-speech arguments. So children who want to engage in religious speech in a public school are engaging in a free-speech right, not a free-exercise-of-religion right."

...."Those are newer kinds of cases," said Sekulow, sitting in the ACLJ's headquarters, an elegant 19th Century blue brick townhouse across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court. "You really don't see the pro-life protests on the courthouse square or in front of the abortion clinic. Now it's more these kinds of cases. Nuanced. There's federal legislation involved in this. There's state legislation. There's state regulatory issues. It's Title VII. So it's much more nuanced."

At 51, Sekulow cuts a distinctive figure in the Christian legal fold, not just because he is a sharp legal strategist who eschews emotional or religious arguments but also because he is a Brooklyn-born Jewish convert to Christianity, or a "Messianic Jew," as he puts it. In fact, in the first of the 12 cases he has argued before the Supreme Court, he won a unanimous ruling in 1987 that members of Jews for Jesus had the constitutional right to distribute religious literature in Los Angeles airport terminals.

Moreover, in recent years Sekulow has achieved a significant measure of political influence; he is consulted by the Bush administration on the choice of judges.

<h3>Responsible for Roberts

"He is, I think, more responsible than any other person for John Roberts being chief justice," said Peter Irons, a constitutional scholar, civil liberties lawyer and author of the recently published "God On Trial: Dispatches From America's Religious Battlefields."</h3>

Sekulow said he was invited soon after President Bush took office to join what came to be called "the four horsemen." The group, which also included former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, Leonard Leo of the conservative Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, <h3>was formed "to be a kind of outside counsel on the judicial nomination issues, particularly the Supreme Court," Sekulow said. He also worked on the nomination to the Supreme Court of Samuel Alito, which the ACLU strongly opposed. Alito took the bench in 2006.</h3>

In many ways, the ACLJ represents the conservative mirror image of the American Civil Liberties Union, the 87-year-old non-profit group that many on the political and religious right love to hate for its rigorous insistence on the separation between church and state.

Although those words do not appear in the Constitution, that is the common interpretation of the 1st Amendment's clause banning government establishment of religion. Many conservative Christians take issue with that, including Bill Saunders, human-rights counsel at the Family Research Council, which promotes conservative family values and a Judeo-Christian view of the world.

"Free expression means the government should accommodate religious expression, not be hostile to it," said Saunders, who believes that groups like the ACLJ are needed to defend religious freedom.

<h3>Televangelist Robertson envisioned the ACLJ as a counterweight</h3> to what he, and many other Christian conservative leaders, describe as the ACLU's liberal, anti-faith stance and its threat to the presence of religion and the freedom to practice it in the public square.

"That is a grotesque -- word carefully chosen -- misrepresentation. When they say 'public square,' it's really 'government-sponsored,'" said Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief....

Note that James Bopp, Jr. is in "Mitt's corner", (see above...)

I posted about James Bopp, just last week:

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...pp#post2337826

Quote:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/17532.html
Was campaigning against voter fraud a Republican ploy?
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Sunday, July 1, 2007

........Rogers, a former general counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party and a candidate to replace Iglesias, is among a number of well-connected GOP partisans whose work with the legislative fund and a sister group played a significant role in the party's effort to retain control of Congress in the 2006 election.

That strategy, which presidential adviser Karl Rove alluded to in an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougher ID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely to vote Democratic.

McClatchy Newspapers has found that this election strategy was active on at least three fronts:

* Tax-exempt groups such as the American Center and <h3>the Lawyers Association</h3> were deployed in battleground states to press for restrictive ID laws and oversee balloting.

* The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division turned traditional voting rights enforcement upside down with legal policies that narrowed rather than protected the rights of minorities.

* The White House and the Justice Department encouraged selected U.S. attorneys to bring voter fraud prosecutions, despite studies showing that election fraud isn't a widespread problem.

Nowhere was the breadth of these actions more obvious than at the American Center for Voting Rights and its legislative fund.

Public records show that the two nonprofits were active in at least nine states. They hired high-priced lawyers to write court briefs, issued news releases declaring key cities "hot spots" for voter fraud and hired lobbyists in Missouri and Pennsylvania to win support for photo ID laws. In each of those states, the center released polls that it claimed found that minorities prefer tougher ID laws.

Armed with $1.5 million in combined funding, the two nonprofits attracted some powerful volunteers and a cadre of high-priced lawyers.

Of the 15 individuals affiliated with the two groups, at least seven are members of <h3>the Republican National Lawyers Association</h3>, and half a dozen have worked for either one Bush election campaign or for <h3>the Republican National Committee.</h3>

Alex Vogel, a former RNC lawyer whose consulting firm was paid $75,000 for several months' service as the center’s executive director, said the funding came from private donors, not from the Republican Party.

One target of the American Center was the liberal-leaning voter registration group called Project Vote, a GOP nemesis that registered 1.5 million voters in 2004 and 2006. The center trumpeted allegations that Project Vote's main contractor, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), submitted phony registration forms to boost Democratic voting.

In a controversial move, the interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City announced indictments against four ACORN workers five days before the 2006 election, despite the fact that Justice Department policy discourages such action close to an election. Acorn officials had notified the federal officials when they noticed the doctored forms.

<h3>"Their job was to confuse the public about voter fraud and offer bogus solutions to the problem," said Michael Slater</h3>, the deputy director of Project Vote, "And like the Tobacco Institute, they relied on deception and faulty research to advance the interests of their clients."

Mark "Thor" Hearne, a St. Louis lawyer and former national counsel for President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, is widely considered the driving force behind the organizations. Vogel described him as "clearly the one in charge."

<h3>Hearne, who also was a vice president and director of election operations for the Republican Lawyers Association</h3>, said he couldn't discuss the organizations because they're former clients.

But in an e-mail exchange, he defended the need for photo IDs. "Requiring a government-issued photo ID in order to vote as a safeguard against vote fraud and as a measure to increase public confidence in the fairness and honesty of our elections is not some Republican voter suppression effort," Hearne said.

Hearne called photo IDs "an important voice in election reform."

Hearne and Rogers appeared at separate hearings before the House Administration Committee last year in Ohio and New Mexico. They cited reports of thousands of dead people on voter registration rolls, fraudulent registrations and other election fraud schemes.

As proof, Hearne, offered a 28-page "investigative report" on Ohio events in the 2004 election, and then publicly sent a copy to the Justice Department, citing "substantial evidence to suggest potential criminal wrongdoing."

So far, no charges have been filed.

Earlier, in August 2005, the Legislative Fund issued a string of press releases naming five cities as the nation's top "hot spots" for voter fraud. Philadelphia was tagged as No. 1, followed by Milwaukee, Seattle, St. Louis and Cleveland.

With a push from the center's lobbyists, legislatures in Missouri and Pennsylvania passed photo ID laws last year. Missouri's law was thrown out by the state Supreme Court, and Democratic Gov. Edward Rendell vetoed the Pennsylvania bill.

In an interview with the federal Election Assistance Commission last year, two Pennsylvania officials said they knew of no instances of voter identity fraud or voter registration fraud in the state.

<h3>Amid the controversy, the American Center for Voting Rights shuttered its Internet site on St. Patrick's Day, and the two nonprofits appear to have vanished.

But their influence could linger.</h3>

One of the directors of the American Center, <h3>Cameron Quinn, who lists her membership in the Republican National Lawyers Association on her resume</h3>, was appointed last year as the voting counsel for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

The division <h2>is charged with policing elections and guarding against discrimination against minorities.</h2>

...and here's an example resume:

Quote:

http://www.jamesmadisoncenter.org/Do...BoppResume.pdf

JAMES BOPP, JR., ESQ.

CIVIC ACTIVITIES

March 22, 2007
Page 7

Indiana Coordinator:
Citizen Review Committee, International Women’s Year
Indiana Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana, July 16, 1977
National Conference, Houston, Texas, November 18, 1977
National Pro-family Coalition on the White House Conference on Families, 1980
Member:
National Institute of Family & Life Advocates, National Advisory Board, 1993 - Present
<h2>Council for National Policy</h2>

March 22, 2007
Page 9

Other Positions:
<h3>Republican National Lawyers Association
Board of Governors, 2002 - present</h3>
Advisory Council, 2004 - present
Republican Victory Committee, Chairman, 2000
National Republican Pro-life Committee, Inc.
Board of Directors, 1983 - 1991
Vice Chairman, 1984 - 1991
1984 National Republican Convention Committee
1980 National Republican Convention Committee
Presenter:
Republican National Lawyers Association, 2004 National Summer Election Law Seminar &
School, Milwaukee, Wisc., July 16-17, 2004
Indiana Republican State Committee, Congress of Counties, Indianapolis, IN, February 27, 2004
Indiana Chapter, Republican National Lawyers Association, Indianapolis, IN, February 19, 2004
Republican National Lawyers Association, National Summer Election School, Irvine, California,
August 8-9, 2003
Republican National Lawyers Association, 2003 National Conference, Washington, D.C., March
21, 2003
Republican National Lawyers Association, 2002 National Election Law School, San Antonio,
Texas, August 16-17, 2002
Republican National Committee, Midwest Leadership Conference, Springfield, Mo., September
11, 1993
Indiana Republican State Committee, Congress of Counties, Indianapolis, Indiana, February 10,

...and here is James Bopp ranting away in a column at townhall.com:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...ngold-thompson

townhall.com is owned by Salem Comm. The two top officers of Salem Comm. are CNP members

Quote:

Stuart Epperson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stuart W. Epperson is co-founder and chairman of Salem Communications, and a member of the conservative Council for National Policy ("CNP"). ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Epperson

In our example, James Bopp is a CNP member and "Republican National Lawyers Association
Board of Governors, 2002 - present"....he is a Republican national committee official:

Quote:

GOP.com | Republican National Committee :: State Details - IN
Mr. James Bopp Jr. Present. National Committeeman, Indiana Republican State ... Republican National Convention, 2000; RNC Standing Committee on Rules, 1997- ...
www.gop.com/States/LinkRedirect.aspx?state=IN

James Bopp, until recently was also general counsel of the NRLC:

Quote:

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...%3D48509&cid=0
National Right to Life Committee Defends Brownback's Talks With ...
Kaiser network.org, DC - Oct 30, 2007
The letter was sent after James Bopp -- general counsel for NRLC and a prominent legal advocate for conservative antiabortion groups -- criticized Brownback

The point????? The point is that it is impossible to tell where the christian fundamentalist propaganda machine ends, and the republican party begins.

James Bopp is on the board of governors of the republican lawyers assoc. that McClatchey News reported was behind an elaborate plot to disinform about voter fraud in order to take the DOJ civil rights enforcement division out of the business of protecting minority voting rights.
Bopp is also a member of the secretive CNP, the group that candidate GW Bush gave a secret speech to, in the same series of Oct., 1999 meetings.....

Plan9 · 11-13-2007, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

What's the difference in all honesty? If you vote to take someone's right away how does that make you any better than those you bitch about in Congress????

Well, there used to be this slavery thing... but we took care of that.

I get your point, though. The "greater good" ends up raping us all.

The highway to hell is paved with good intentions in government.

dksuddeth · 11-13-2007, 04:23 AM

host, did you forget about ginsburg, stevens, souter, and breyer? they have also been very instrumental in relieving us irresponsible children of our rights.

I hate that you can't see that it's not just conservatives, but I can't call you partisan and not have you rail against it.

seretogis · 11-13-2007, 07:08 AM

So much for that slippery slope "fallacy", huh?

ratbastid · 11-13-2007, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crompsin

I get your point, though. The "greater good" ends up raping us all.

The greater good....

/Hot Fuzz reference

Rekna · 11-13-2007, 08:03 AM

Orwell only had the year wrong. If we keep heading down this path his vision of the world will be way to close for comfort. Maybe he should have named it 2014.....

host · 11-13-2007, 09:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

host, did you forget about ginsburg, stevens, souter, and breyer? they have also been very instrumental in relieving us irresponsible children of our rights.

I hate that you can't see that it's not just conservatives, but I can't call you partisan and not have you rail against it.

I lay out for you, in thread after thread, an extremely cohesive, amazingly well coordinated, at least 30 year old "mission", campaign, "op", to take over and disarm the government, the appellate, and the supreme court, and you come back with the "same old shit".

Did the four justices you named, vote for or against Bush in "Gore v. Bush" in December, 2000?

Is it any wonder, given that I cannot "reach" you, a politically absorbed individual with a passion for discussion here, who actually reads some, or all of my posts, that the democrats, even if they do understand what I have documented, do not have a clue about how to stop it?

Look, if you will, at Ted Olson's role in the watergate investigation and hearings, at that one grinding, obsessive, eight years long, partisan attack, and then come back and tell me again, that "host, it's the democrats and you refuse to see it!".

Yes, dksuddeth, the democrats are impotent, but they're not "in on it"!

Quote:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/...raq/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush is warming up his veto muscles after the Senate passed a war funding bill Thursday that sets a deadline for withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq by next April.

The 51 votes cast for the bill are nowhere near the 67 needed to override a veto, which Bush says he will deliver swiftly. The House passed the same measure on a 218-208 vote Wednesday night.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said the measure funds U.S. troops in the field while acknowledging that the four-year-old war needs a political, not military, solution.

"No one wants this nation to succeed in the Middle East more than I do," Reid said. "But I know that after four years of mismanagement and incompetence by this administration in the war in Iraq, there is no magic formula, no silver bullet that will lead us to the victory we all desire."

But Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said demanding a withdrawal while U.S. commanders are claiming progress in pacifying the Iraqi capital would hand a victory to the al Qaeda terrorist network, which has taken root in Iraq. (Watch Republicans tell what would fix the bill Video)

"We must give the plan for winning the military component of the war in Iraq a real chance to succeed," said McConnell, R-Kentucky. "Without it, there is no political solution."

Thursday's vote was 51-46. Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon joined Democrats in supporting the bill. Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with the Democrats, voted with Republicans opposing it.

Two supporters of Bush's Iraq policy -- Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- did not vote. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-South Dakota, who is recovering from a brain hemorrhage, also didn't vote.

The White House quickly denounced the outcome.

<h3>"The Senate has now joined the House in passing defeatist legislation that insists on a date for surrender</h3>, micromanages our commanders and generals in combat zones from 6,000 miles away, and adds billions of dollars in unrelated spending," White House spokeswoman Dan Perino said.
Senators make their cases

Before the vote, Lieberman condemned the bill -- which he said laid out "a strategy based on catchphrases and bromides rather than military realities" -- as a guarantee of failure in the war in Iraq. (Watch Senators argue for and against the bill Video)

"In my opinion, Iraq is not yet lost," Lieberman said, countering a remark to the contrary Reid made last week. "But if we follow the plan in this legislation, it will be lost and so, I fear, will much of our hope for stability in the Mideast."...

Quote:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Pentag...Iraq_1113.html
US withholding Iraq strategy document from Democratic lawmakers
Jason Rhyne
Published: Tuesday November 13, 2007

The Pentagon has denied repeated requests from Democratic lawmakers to view a key document outlining the chief US strategy to achieve stability in Iraq.

Created by General David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, the Joint Campaign Plan details military and diplomatic steps intended to dramatically heighten security in Iraq by 2009. The exact nature of the plan, however, has been withheld from Congress thus far, according to Roll Call's Rachel Van Dongen.

"After persistent requests from House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the issue has moved up the Congressional chain of command to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)," Van Dongen writes. "According to an aide, Pelosi asked President Bush for the document several months ago in a White House meeting. Since then, Pelosi's staff has 'repeatedly' requested a copy, her aide said, but has not yet received one.".....

Quote:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004692.php
....In an April 11 letter to Erin Conaton, the Armed Services Committee’s staff director, Wilkie wrote that the department was receiving an “unprecedented number of requests” for documents from Congress.

“Even with the use of a full-time staff dedicated to this process, the work is time- consuming since we must determine what documents can be properly shared with the legislative branch,” Wilkie said.

At the end of May, the oversight subcommittee <h3>finally received a copy of the 2006 plan and an April “interim” plan for 2007.</h3>

But that was a day after The Washington Post first reported on the plan’s details. Lawmakers still don’t have a copy of the current plan for 2007 and beyond.

<h3>Watch it:</h3>

Quote:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/1...ical-purposes/

Tim Russert Accuses Senator Dodd Of Using FISA Hold For Political Purposes
By: Logan Murphy on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 9:03 AM - PDT

Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd has been front and center in the fight to protect civil liberties by putting a hold on the latest FISA legislation which gives immunity to telecom companies for illegally turning over customer data to our government. This morning on Meet The Press <h3>Tim Russert, armed with all the Bush talking points, ambushed Dodd</h3> and directly accused him of using the FISA issue for purely political purposes.

Dodd held his own, but when read a quote from Sen. Jay Rockefeller disagreeing with his views on FISA, he failed to mention the massive donations Rockefeller has accepted from the telecom industry which just might have something to do with his desire to give them immunity.

Quote:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=...e=UTF-8&tab=wn
Leahy Renews Request For White House Legal Documents On Torture
All American Patriots (press release), Sweden - Nov 9, 2007
8, 2007) – In a letter sent Wednesday to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) again requested legal ...<br>

House Democrats press Bush on subpoenas
The Kindred Times, UT - Nov 10, 2007
In a separate letter, Conyers urged White House Counsel Fred Fielding to comply. The Congressional Research Service, Conyers added, reported that in at ...<br>
US Congress sets ultimatum on subpoenas for White House
Xinhua, China - Nov 5, 2007
wrote in a letter Monday to White House Counsel Fred Fielding. Conyers said he was seeking to resolve the conflict one last time even as he filed a contempt ...<br>

The Associated Press
Demand for White House's Abramoff Data
The Associated Press - Oct 31, 2007
The White House has produced 3700 pages of records but is withholding more than 600 others, Rep. Henry Waxman said in a letter to White House counsel Fred ...<br>
House Presses Bush on Subpoenas
The Associated Press - Nov 5, 2007
In what he said was his ninth letter to the White House on this issue, Conyers said he was trying one last time to reach an agreement on the release of the
<br>
Abramoff's in the House
Washington Post, United States - Nov 1, 2007
In a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding yesterday, Waxman wrote: "Despite the refusal of key witnesses to provide testimony, the Committee has ...<br>
Leahy to White House: Ahem, Torture Docs Please
TPMElectionCentral.com, NY - Nov 8, 2007
Today, again, he wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding to request documents relating to the administration's torture and interrogation policies (see ...<br>
Conyers Makes New Offer to White House on US Attorney Documents
CQPolitics.com, DC - Nov 8, 2007
In a letter Monday to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, Conyers, D-Mich., proposed that the White House give the committee copies of communications ...

There's already been a successful coup, dksuddeth, paid for by the Coors, Scaife, and Prince, and Olin families, founders all, of the CNP.

The courts and the federal government are now unaccountable to democratic challenge, as are the wealthiest, and the allied politicized, christian evangelical zealots. The democrats failed to stop these folks and their "army", the Federalist Society", because enough of the American electorate were either too apathetic or too ignorant to see what was actually happening, to oppose it.

I know what you want. You have a preference for the "wisdom" of the "founding fathers", the men who wrote legalized slavery into the US constitution, to subordinate the wisdom enhanced by the further experience gained over time, by our grandfathers and fathers. In your world, the southern states would still have their segregation and "Jim Crow" anti voting laws, but you would have your gun "rights"....

You and I are divided, we argue, but Pat Robertson and his "boy" Sekulow, roll along, agenda and it's progress intact. Single minded in their purpose, no public dissent, and they've got GW, Rudy, and Mitt, solidly in "their corner", and their "gittin' et done". That's the difference bertween, them, and you, me, and the four SCOTUS justices who you referred to. <h3>We don't have that single mindedness of purpose, we're not corporatized, christianized, politicized, conservative zealots</h3>, out to diminish the role and effectiveness of the courts and the government. At least I am not, how about you?

dc_dux · 11-13-2007, 10:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

host, did you forget about ginsburg, stevens, souter, and breyer? they have also been very instrumental in relieving us irresponsible children of our rights.

I hate that you can't see that it's not just conservatives, but I can't call you partisan and not have you rail against it.

Justice DK.....I think if you take the time to look, you will find that Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer have often ruled in favor of individual rights over corporate or government rights (their most notable failure IMO, was the Connecticut eminent domain case)

Most notable was last year's decision that ruled Bush's military tribunals were illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Conventions. (ie individual rights over government rights)

And, in Congress, at least there still are a few Democrats (Kucinich, Dodd, Biben, et al) who have proposed legislation (National Security with Justice Act) to repeal parts of the Patriot Act...or to restore habeas (Restore the Constitution Act)...or to amend FISA to further limit warrantless wiretaps.

host · 11-13-2007, 10:40 AM

dc_dux, is there an awareness on capitol hill, of the agenda, names, organizations, and the clout that the "folks" and orgs I wrote about on this thread, wield....how organized and single minded it is?

Or, is the day to day familiarity democrats working in Washington acquire, with folks "on the other side of the aisle", obscuring the perception that they really are well funded zealots, walking in aggressive lockstep?

Do most people even know what CNP is and about Ted Olson's "hand" in virtually everything....from the firing of the air traffice controllers in '83, to his relationships with Ken Starr and R. Emmett Terrell Jr....and on and on until he ended up on the litigation committee at the law firm that <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/10/17/los-angeles-us-attorney-debra-yang-resigns-will-join-gibson-dunn/">"hired"</a> LA US Atty Debra Yang away from her investigations of Wilkes, Foggo, and Rep. Jerry Lewis....how big the Federalist Society membership is, yet how curiously reluctant now SCOTUS chief justice Roberts was, before his nomination to SCOTUS was approved, to admit he had been a Federalist member....?

Did you know that Mukasey and Rudy were such good buds?

dksuddeth · 11-13-2007, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I lay out for you, in thread after thread, an extremely cohesive, amazingly well coordinated, at least 30 year old "mission", campaign, "op", to take over and disarm the government, the appellate, and the supreme court, and you come back with the "same old shit".

Did the four justices you named, vote for or against Bush in "Gore v. Bush" in December, 2000?

Is it any wonder, given that I cannot "reach" you, a politically absorbed individual with a passion for discussion here, who actually reads some, or all of my posts, that the democrats, even if they do understand what I have documented, do not have a clue about how to stop it?

Look, if you will, at Ted Olson's role in the watergate investigation and hearings, at that one grinding, obsessive, eight years long, partisan attack, and then come back and tell me again, that "host, it's the democrats and you refuse to see it!".

Yes, dksuddeth, the democrats are impotent, but they're not "in on it"!

you seem to picture me as a diehard, partisan, republican. I assure you I am not. I also assure you that, despite your apparent belief that the dems are not 'in on it', they care as little about your rights and freedoms as the republicans do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

There's already been a successful coup, dksuddeth, paid for by the Coors, Scaife, and Prince, and Olin families, founders all, of the CNP.

The courts and the federal government are now unaccountable to democratic challenge, as are the wealthiest, and the allied politicized, christian evangelical zealots. The democrats failed to stop these folks and their "army", the Federalist Society", because enough of the American electorate were either too apathetic or too ignorant to see what was actually happening, to oppose it.

You aren't telling me anything I don't already know. I also know that the democrats didn't fail to stop it because they couldn't. They failed to stop it because they wouldn't. They didn't stop it because they have a reasonable expectation that THEIR party will be in total power in '08 and they most assuredly want to be able to have that same power you are railing against right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I know what you want. You have a preference for the "wisdom" of the "founding fathers", the men who wrote legalized slavery into the US constitution, to subordinate the wisdom enhanced by the further experience gained over time, by our grandfathers and fathers. In your world, the southern states would still have their segregation and "Jim Crow" anti voting laws, but you would have your gun "rights"....

you still have no clue what i'm truly about, do you?

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

You and I are divided, we argue, but Pat Robertson and his "boy" Sekulow, roll along, agenda and it's progress intact. Single minded in their purpose, no public dissent, and they've got GW, Rudy, and Mitt, solidly in "their corner", and their "gittin' et done". That's the difference bertween, them, and you, me, and the four SCOTUS justices who you referred to. <h3>We don't have that single mindedness of purpose, we're not corporatized, christianized, politicized, conservative zealots</h3>, out to diminish the role and effectiveness of the courts and the government. At least I am not, how about you?

the smaller and less powerful the government, the better. I've never once backed away from that belief. The only things a larger government does is take away YOUR money and YOUR freedoms. It doesn't matter which side is doing it, it is still happening.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Justice DK.....I think if you take the time to look, you will find that Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer have often ruled in favor of individual rights over corporate or government rights (their most notable failure IMO, was the Connecticut eminent domain case)

I singled out those four, not to intimate that ONLY they are undermining freedom, but that they collude with the others to do it. just in different ways while each having a different idea of what THEY want ideally.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

And, in Congress, at least there still are a few Democrats (Kucinich, Dodd, Biben, et al) who have proposed legislation (National Security with Justice Act) to repeal parts of the Patriot Act...or to restore habeas (Restore the Constitution Act)...or to amend FISA to further limit warrantless wiretaps.

A few....just a few. Why don't you think the others are pushing for these items?

Willravel · 11-13-2007, 11:50 AM

You're a second amendmentite. Most liberals (ginsburg, stevens, souter, and breyer) have a less radical interpretation and opinion of the second amendment.

dksuddeth · 11-13-2007, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

You're a second amendmentite. Most liberals (ginsburg, stevens, souter, and breyer) have a less radical interpretation and opinion of the second amendment.

so in todays environment, demanding our full rights and freedoms is 'radical'?
would that mean that your desire for freedom of speech could be considered radical?

dc_dux · 11-13-2007, 02:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

dc_dux, is there an awareness on capitol hill, of the agenda, names, organizations, and the clout that the "folks" and orgs I wrote about on this thread, wield....how organized and single minded it is?

Or, is the day to day familiarity democrats working in Washington acquire, with folks "on the other side of the aisle", obscuring the perception that they really are well funded zealots, walking in aggressive lockstep?

Do most people even know what CNP is and about Ted Olson's "hand" in virtually everything....from the firing of the air traffice controllers in '83, to his relationships with Ken Starr and R. Emmett Terrell Jr....and on and on until he ended up on the litigation committee at the law firm that <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/10/17/los-angeles-us-attorney-debra-yang-resigns-will-join-gibson-dunn/">"hired"</a> LA US Atty Debra Yang away from her investigations of Wilkes, Foggo, and Rep. Jerry Lewis....how big the Federalist Society membership is, yet how curiously reluctant now SCOTUS chief justice Roberts was, before his nomination to SCOTUS was approved, to admit he had been a Federalist member....?

Did you know that Mukasey and Rudy were such good buds?

Host...I would expect that the Dems in Congress are reasonably well informed about the CNP, and folks like Ted Olson, Grover Norquist and that crowd.

There needs to be clear lines of jurisdiction in order for Congressional oversight and some has occured with the hearings on politicization of DoJ and upcoming hearings on religious organizations and potential abuse of tax status for political purposes....the rest has to be left to DOJ to pursue potential criminal activities.

Mukasey's nomination was secured once he had Schumer's (his other NY bud) support. Mukasey carries the Federalist baggage, but at least he is free of the personal loyalty to Bush...the best we could hope for at this point.

One good sign....Mukasey is reopening the internal DoJ investigation of pre-2005 potentially illegal wiretapping activities.

Some may recall how Bush personally intervened and stopped the earlier internal investigation in its tracks by not authorizing security clearances for the DoJ investigators.

Willravel · 11-13-2007, 02:12 PM

"In today's environment"? That's fearmonger talk. Every time in history has been referred to as "especially dangerous". It's a lot better today than it was yesterday.

The second amendment has little to do with speech. Demanding that every person have a gun is radical because it says nothing of the sort in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.

dksuddeth · 11-13-2007, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

"In today's environment"? That's fearmonger talk. Every time in history has been referred to as "especially dangerous". It's a lot better today than it was yesterday.

fearmonger? I'm simply referring to yours, as well as some others, declaration that the constitution must be a living document. In that regards, 'todays environment' is especially important for consideration.

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

The second amendment has little to do with speech. Demanding that every person have a gun is radical because it says nothing of the sort in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.

2nd Amendment - 'A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed'

the right of the people doesn't mean the people? the ussc seems to differ with your opinion.

Willravel · 11-13-2007, 03:15 PM

So everyone can have a gun without restrictions? No?

dc_dux · 11-13-2007, 03:17 PM

again....with the Second Amendment debate?

STOP....please!

Plan9 · 11-13-2007, 06:05 PM

Some people buy guns. Some people don't. Turns out guns were pretty important to the people who created our country. They put it in 2nd place... above all others except freedom of speech, religion, assembly.

This debate is silly. California should form its own country. Texas, too.

11-12-2007, 02:08 PM	#2 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	too many people in this country either feel the need to be totally protected from terrorism and will give up their freedom, as well as yours, to 'feel' that safety, or they just don't care enough and figure 'it's the government, that is what they are there for', so just prepare to have very little privacy anymore. Not sure why people are in any kind of uproar over this? Several of us have been predicting that the constitution will just simply be ignored, no matter who is president or what party has power. __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

11-12-2007, 02:39 PM	#3 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	This is very sad, though perhaps even sadder is that it's not surprising. __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

11-12-2007, 05:20 PM	#5 (permalink)
Plan9 I Confess a Shiver	This is a revelation why? (goes back into his Y2K shelter w/ his Beanie Weenie) __________________ *Whatever you can carry.* "You should not drink... and bake."

11-12-2007, 09:36 PM	#9 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	Why don't you get down on the congress for making the laws? or not pushing for oversight? Or not bringing it to trial? __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

11-12-2007, 11:33 PM	#10 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	It's sad to say, but quite honestly we get what we deserve. Whether you smoke or not, watching people vote laws into place that making smoking illegal, erodes rights.... but it's ok secondhand smoke, I don't smoke, etc etc ... still you took away the rights of the owner to decide what is best for his business and the right for smokers and non to choose where they want to do business. Around here people vote for which stores can sell alcohol and what type on Sundays... don't like a particular store or restaurant... nice way to get even isn't it? Take away their right but vote to let their competition sell. But discussing how the voters take rights away is a threadjack isn't it? We'd rather have threads that show how Congress and the government are taking away our rights. What's the difference in all honesty? If you vote to take someone's right away how does that make you any better than those you bitch about in Congress???? __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

11-12-2007, 05:12 PM	#4 (permalink)
ASU2003 immoral minority Location: Back in Ohio	No comment... (They're watching me)

11-12-2007, 05:30 PM	#6 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	Hey Kerr, suck my no longer anonymous dick. You're not the supreme court, you don't get to decide how to interpret the Constitution and more importantly the Bill of Rights. Speaking of, where the fuck is the supreme court?

11-13-2007, 04:23 AM	#13 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	host, did you forget about ginsburg, stevens, souter, and breyer? they have also been very instrumental in relieving us irresponsible children of our rights. I hate that you can't see that it's not just conservatives, but I can't call you partisan and not have you rail against it. __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." Last edited by dksuddeth; 11-13-2007 at 07:25 AM..

11-13-2007, 07:08 AM	#14 (permalink)
seretogis Huggles, sir? Location: Seattle	So much for that slippery slope "fallacy", huh? __________________ seretogis - sieg heil perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

11-13-2007, 08:03 AM	#16 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	Orwell only had the year wrong. If we keep heading down this path his vision of the world will be way to close for comfort. Maybe he should have named it 2014.....

11-13-2007, 10:40 AM	#19 (permalink)
host Banned	dc_dux, is there an awareness on capitol hill, of the agenda, names, organizations, and the clout that the "folks" and orgs I wrote about on this thread, wield....how organized and single minded it is? Or, is the day to day familiarity democrats working in Washington acquire, with folks "on the other side of the aisle", obscuring the perception that they really are well funded zealots, walking in aggressive lockstep? Do most people even know what CNP is and about Ted Olson's "hand" in virtually everything....from the firing of the air traffice controllers in '83, to his relationships with Ken Starr and R. Emmett Terrell Jr....and on and on until he ended up on the litigation committee at the law firm that <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/10/17/los-angeles-us-attorney-debra-yang-resigns-will-join-gibson-dunn/">"hired"</a> LA US Atty Debra Yang away from her investigations of Wilkes, Foggo, and Rep. Jerry Lewis....how big the Federalist Society membership is, yet how curiously reluctant now SCOTUS chief justice Roberts was, before his nomination to SCOTUS was approved, to admit he had been a Federalist member....? Did you know that Mukasey and Rudy were such good buds?

11-13-2007, 11:50 AM	#21 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	You're a second amendmentite. Most liberals (ginsburg, stevens, souter, and breyer) have a less radical interpretation and opinion of the second amendment.

11-13-2007, 02:12 PM	#24 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	"In today's environment"? That's fearmonger talk. Every time in history has been referred to as "especially dangerous". It's a lot better today than it was yesterday. The second amendment has little to do with speech. Demanding that every person have a gun is radical because it says nothing of the sort in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.

11-13-2007, 03:15 PM	#26 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	So everyone can have a gun without restrictions? No?

11-13-2007, 03:17 PM	#27 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	again....with the Second Amendment debate? STOP....please! __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire

11-13-2007, 06:05 PM	#28 (permalink)
Plan9 I Confess a Shiver	Some people buy guns. Some people don't. Turns out guns were pretty important to the people who created our country. They put it in 2nd place... above all others except freedom of speech, religion, assembly. This debate is silly. California should form its own country. Texas, too. __________________ *Whatever you can carry.* "You should not drink... and bake."