The Blue State

What is with Dianne Feinstein these days?

A voice that played a pivotal role in outing the actions of Alberto Gonzales in the US Attorney firing scandal is now all of a sudden going the other way.

This week, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) voted in favor of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey, despite the fact that Mukasey refused to say whether waterboarding was torture.  Now, Feinstein is backing immunity for telecommunications companies that handed over their customers' personal information to the NSA as part of the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping program:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein saidThursday that she favors legal immunity for telecommunicationscompanies that allegedly shared millions of customers' telephone ande-mail messages and records with the government, a position that couldlead to the dismissal of numerous lawsuits pending in San Francisco.

In a statement at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, whichis considering legislation to extend the Bush administration'selectronic surveillance program, Feinstein said the companies shouldnot be "held hostage to costly litigation in what is essentially acomplaint about administration activities."

Why are Feinstein and so many other Democrats scared of a President with a 32% approval rating?  Feinstein should know that there is a primary system -- and progressives will use it to oust certain lawmakers with a habit of being Bush lite.

Lieberman calls for more surveillance cameras across America

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) went on the ABC News' show "This Week" and called for surveillance cameras to be "more widely" used throughout the country to protect from terrorism:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), the chairman of the Senate Committee onHomeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said Sunday he wants to“more widely” use surveillance cameras across the country.

“The Brits have got something smart going in England, and it was partof why I believe they were able to so quickly apprehend suspects in theterrorist acts over the weekend, and that is they have cameras all overLondon and other of their major cities,” Lieberman said.

“Ithink it’s just common sense to do that here much more widely,” headded. “And of course, we can do it without compromising anybody’s realprivacy.”

At the very least, Benjamin Franklin would have a problem with that idea.  As Franklin once said, "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

It is one thing to put cameras in Washington D.C., New York and on the border, as well as in commercial areas, but when the government starts blanketing neighborhoods with warrantless surveillance it takes the phrase 'big brother' to an unprecedented level.

Also, it's very difficult to compare England's situation to our own.  Leaders over there tend not to abuse their power we ours do.  We have an Administration that consistently ignores subpoenas and makes up its own laws.  So even if it is legal, you have to ask whether you feel comfortable with our government exercising that power under the current political leadership we have in place?

Q: What Do You Call a Song Titled 'Let's Impeach The President'? A: A Good Start

I feel compelled to find and post the truth every time I hear Our GreatPresident open his mouth which has become synonymous with lying.Thanks again to "granny" for sending us the link for the video.

It didn't take the liberal bloggers and general long public to react and speak outagainst the dems for caving in on the funding bill. And it seems that theybetter grow a set quickly before we start shopping around. Think about this fora moment, you tell your spouse or significant other you are going shopping, butinstead go to a friends house...simple right? umm, NO!, you are confronted bythem and are told you lied. Maybe that's a simple minded analogy, but comparethat to The President of the United States lying on an ongoing basis, changingthe story and then his supporters actually lie further to support him. Wrong,just plain old everyday kindergartenly,  fundamentally, unacceptably wrong.

Well lets start this thing....

'Let's Impeach The President' Song by Neil Youg. Check out Neils page of Song Videos HERE.(check out the hompage)The Lyrics are HERE.

I do not like Andy Dick in just about everything I have ever seen himin...except this video

'Bush Idiot Speech'

Here is a huge list of anti-warsongs worth a peak. Listof Bush lies.

There is just so much more content which could be added to this post, but Ineed to move on from this "consumption" of me.

Robert Greenwald wants us to help impeach Gonzales

Robert Greenwald is like the RalphNader of the Blogosphere. Greenwald has exposedso much corruption from our government and major corporations for theAmerican people, he deserves an "atta-boy". If Alberto Gonzales wasn'tworried before, he should start getting worried. Greenwald and BraveNew Films have done it again with a new video and websitein assisting "us" in getting rid of the lying sack of "unknowledge"

 

'The President won't fire him--but you can'

Bonus Vid:Jack Kingston owned by Greenwald. Kingston never seems like he knows what hes talking about

Editorial: Is Bush's wiretap proposal really necessary?

President Bush's new bill that has been sent to Congress would amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- the law that requires spy agencies to get a warrant from the a FISA court before wiretapping anyone inside the United States.  The Administration's goal, should the bill pass, is to allow the NSA to spy on our soil without a warrant.

Now let's put aside the fact that the NSA should not be spying on us anyway, since it is their job to conduct foreign surveillance.  Also ignore for a minute that the Bush Administration is currently in violation of that '78 law.  Those two points are very important.  But they are not my number one concern regarding this new bill.

My question is why does the Bush Administration would want to bypass the FISA courts?   According to the Associated Press, the FISA courts sided with the Administration 2,176 times in 2005.  And how many warrants did the FISA courts not approve?  Only one.

So if the FISA courts rule in the Administration's favor 99.95% of the time, how can Bush sit there and argue that the existing FISA law restrains the intelligence community's ability to keep our country safe?

More than anything, this bill appears to represent an unprecedented excuse to increase Executive power -- coming from a President that campaigned on a platform of smaller government.

Is the Bush Administration Fascist?

In my younger years I considered myself a Republican, I wasn't sure why, butit probably had something to do with my traditional points of view, even though my ways ofthinking  were  liberal. I suppose the bottom line was Ihad no clue. As I grew older I learned how to understand my views and combine andmold them into what turned out to be mainstream liberal. I'm not easilyconvinced or swayed about everything left, I need to see it, hear it andunderstand it before I hop on any band wagons. That's why when I saw the title FascistAmerica, in 10 easy Steps, I was taken back a bit and thought another (nutty) conspiracytheory. Then I read it.

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there arecertain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutionalfreedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to betaking them all

I knew Bush did some evil things, andshould be impeached (and flogged), but how are they going to equate Bush toHitler? 

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the couptook a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list.In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down:the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residentialareas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press,tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

NowI had to keep reading, I had to see how this British paper was going to tie U.S.policy to that of a military coup in Thailand. 

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy -After we were hiton September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weekslater, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that hadlittle chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. Wewere told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "globalwar" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe outcivilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the USaccepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincolndeclared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands ofJapanese-American citizens were interned. 

2. Create a gulag - Once you have got everyone scared, the next stepis to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wantedthe American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal"outer space") - where torture takes place.

3. Develop a thug caste - Thugs in America? Groups of angry youngRepublican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workerscounting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you canimagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the nextelection day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election;history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a pollingstation "to restore public order".

4. Set up an internal surveillance system - In 2005 and 2006, whenJames Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret stateprogramme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and followinternational financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans thatthey, too, could be under state scrutiny.

5. Harass citizens' groups - The fifth thing you do is related to stepfour - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a churchin Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, founditself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches thatgot Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, havebeen left alone.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release - In 2004, America'sTransportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list ofpassengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried tofly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peaceactivists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member ofVenezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; andthousands of ordinary US citizens.

7. Target key individuals - Bush supporters in state legislatures inseveral states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fireacademics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants,the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spokeup for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publiclyintimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening tocall for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

8. Control the press - You won't have a shutdown of news in modernAmerica - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and SidneyBlumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well.What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false informationthat is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth fromuntruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying.When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands foraccountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason - Cast dissent as "treason" andcriticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as itelaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expandthe definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, thepublisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush calledthe Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", whileRepublicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, andrightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason"drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that onepenalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution

.10. Suspend the rule of law - The John Warner Defense AuthorizationAct of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This meansthat in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers todeclare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that hehas declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and itscitizens.

Special Thanks to granny for pointing us to this information.

My thought's quickly changed. These steps are much more detailedin the article and can be readhere.

2 other far left conspiracy theories that after seeing the information I was (conservatively) 65% convinced were true. Alex Jones's 'Martial Law 9-11: Rise of the Police State' (w/ VIDEO), and Robert Greenwald's Iraq For Sale: 'The War Profiteers'.

Things can escalate with Iran in the blink of an eye

Iran retaliates against U.S. for consulate raid in Northern Iraq.

Iran announced late-Tuesday that their troops shot down a U.S. spy drone that tried crossing into Iranian airspace.  This came just days after U.S. forces stormed a consulate in Northern Iraq, which resulted in the arrest of six Iranians.  The recent rise in tensions with Iran worries some foreign policy experts because it may mark a point of no return that leads to an imminent military confrontation.

There are many conservative intellectuals that would like to provoke a war with Iran.  Tit-for-tat aggression on the part of U.S. and Iran would give hard-liners in both governments a better excuse to start a war.

Just look at what happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  In October of 1962, John F. Kennedy was pressured by the Pentagon hawks to attack Cuba.  An attack on Cuba would have forced the Soviets to retaliate against West Germany, forcing the U.S. into a direct nuclear war with the Soviet Union -- which was exactly what the hard-liners in both governments wanted.  Thankfully, Kennedy chose diplomacy instead of aggression.

Bottom line: when you engage in direct confrontation with an adversary, rational thinking takes a back seat to one-upmanship.  Before you can blink, diplomacy then becomes an afterthought.  This is otherwise known as the fog of war.

These incidents that are now happening with Iran, although they seem small at the moment, are very serious because they can quickly escalate into something much larger.  The last thing we need is a fifth Middle East conflict (with the other four being Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine).

Bush might get Congressional pardon

Arlen Specter (R-PA) has a wiretap bill that is pending a vote in the U.S. Senate.  The bill would allow electronic surveillance of Americans for up to seven days without a warrant from the FISA court.  This alters the 1978 Foreign Surveillance Act, which strictly outlawed domestic warrantless wiretaps.

Even more importantly, because the bill would make domestic warrantless wiretaps partly legal, the Administration officials that have broken the law up to this point would be granted immunity.  MoveOn.org is raising awareness about this bill, and wants users to sign a petition to stop the vote:

This week, the Senate is planning to quietly hold a vote that wouldpardon President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretappinginnocent Americans. So far, Democrats and some Republicans are holdingstrong against the bill, and there are good chances to stop it ifenough of us speak up.

This is good news for President Bush, just in case the Democrats take back both the House and Senate.  However, there are few who think that Bush would be impeached even if a huge shift in Congressional seats took place on election day.

That isn't stopping a few local groups from putting impeachment on the ballot:

• The Badger Herald is reporting that Wisconsin Rapids is considering whether to put an impeachment referendum on the local ballot.  The Wisconsin Common Council President opposes it.  "If [the voters] want a referendum, that’s fine, let them have one,”Paterick said. “To me, I think the opposite — if we weren’t in Iraqright now, we might be getting bombed here."  Okay, that's about enough of that rhetoric!
• 38 U.S. House Reps. are supporting a bill that would create a Select Committee devoted to studying whether President Bush conducted any impeachable offense.  But 38 Reps. is probably all the support that bill will get.  There are more than 200 Democratic Reps. all together, and there is virtually no support for impeachment at all.
• Meanwhile, the conservative National Review blog is trying to scare people into thinking that if the Democrats take back the House they will impeach Bush.
• The Spectrum, a Southern Utah newspaper, is trying to stop the GOP scare tactic about impeachment.  The newspaper explained that the Democrats don't want to impeach Bush; and even if they did, they need a 2/3 vote in the Senate.  "While it is true that a simple majority is allthat is necessary to pass articles of impeachment in the House ofRepresentatives, a two-thirds vote is required in the Senate to convictan individual and remove them from office."

But this isn't just about impeachment, nor is it just about President Bush.  It is about precedent.  If the wiretap bill passes and all Administration officials are granted immunity, then whenever the Administration knowingly breaks a law in the future they can just ask Congress to pass a bill to make it legal.  This sort of thing happens when you have a GOP Congressional majority that does whatever the Executive Branch tells them to do.

Wiretap program may have been pre-9/11 decision

Today, the news that the White House is being subpoenaed in a suit brought by hundreds of plaintiffs hit the blogosphere like a tidal wave (or, due to the sensitivity of the anniversary of hurricane Katrina, maybe the phrase "like a bullet" is more appropriate!).

The blog Raw Story, which has obtained a copy of the subpoena targeting the Administration, is reporting that subpoenas are on their way to the White House in an effort to find out the details of President Bush's warrantless domestic wiretap program.  The lawsuit also seeks to determine whether phone companies violated the 1996 Telecommunications Act by handing over customer information to the government.

And as the Associated Press adds, more importantly, this will hopefully shed some light on when Bush's secret warrantless domestic wiretap program began.  In other words, did the monitoring start even before September 11, 2001?:

The lawyers said they suspected the administration had begunobtaining the records even before the Sept. 11 attacks, which, if true,would raise questions about whether the program was initiated to combatterrorism.

"We want to find out when they started going after these records. Wewant to find out who authorized it. Was it Dick Cheney? Was it someoneelse? And, frankly, we want to find out if they were using itimproperly," Mayer said.

Keep in mind that the Patriot Act was actually all planned out before the 9/11 attacks.  I wouldn't be surprised if this warrantless domestic wiretap program had the same pattern of origination.  Remember, ever since he was sworn in as Vice President, one of Dick Cheney's goals has been to increase the power of the Executive that he felt had declined after the Watergate scandal.

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Other sites blogging about this story: Hold the Phone, Jazz from Hell, Left Word, Huffington Post, Intoxination, Pogo was Right, View from the Bridge, Crimes and Corruptions of the New World, The Moderate Observer, Newsvine, The Push Journal, Green Sand.

Specter's bill allows unrestrained spying power each time Congress declares war

Arlen Specter's compromise with Dick Cheney on warrantless domestic wiretaps is really not a compromise at all.  It would completely amend the 1978 Foreign Surveillance Act, which until now indicates that a warrant from the FISA court is needed before spying on Americans in this country for terrorist reasons.

But the bill before Congress, S.2453, would give President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales unrestrained wiretap power for 45 days each time that the Congress declares war.  Read this part of the bill:

Sec. 706. EMERGENCY AUTHORIZATION
`Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President, through theAttorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a courtorder under this title to, acquire foreign intelligence information fora period not to exceed 45 days following a declaration of war byCongress.'.

To add even more power, the President does not have to consult members of Congress any more than once every six months on the issue of electronic surveillance:

`(1) IN GENERAL- In addition to any reports required under subsection(a), the President shall, not later than 6 months after the date ofenactment of this Act and every 6 months thereafter, fully inform eachmember of the congressional intelligence committees (or anysubcommittee thereof designated for oversight of electronicsurveillance programs under this title) on all electronic surveillanceconducted under the electronic surveillance program.

What is going on here?  Why is no one else talking about this?
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Other sites blogging about this issue: Orinkerr, Blatch, Pennsylvania Criminal Defense, William K. Wolfrum, Cut to the Chase, Madness Counseling, Out of the Mountains.