Cowboys, Congress, And Conspiring Against The Voters

This writer is no lawyer, but there is nothing that gives Donald Rumsfeld the authority to change the order of succession to the Presidency of the United States of America in either the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the Presidential Succession Act of 1947(Amended), or the XV Amendment (1967) to the Constitution of the United States of America, and if there exists legal precedent we need to change it immediately.
The amount of hubris in this arbitrary decision by Donald Rumsfeld to change the order of Presidential Succession based on his (or his bosses’) whims is incomprehensible.
What is also incomprehensible is the meek reporting of this matter in light of the seriousness that is implied in tampering with established succession without benefit of influence from Congress.
We, the People, did not elect Donald Rumsfeld. He is the political appointee of an increasingly traitorous administration. Rumsfeld has no right to change these matters, yet true to the Bush Method of Democracy, he has changed the order of succession for the President of the United States of America merely because he wants to create an auspicious climate for whatever hidden agenda remains in play following the potential trials of an increasingly large number of Bush appointees.
This administration is corrupt from the ground up and that becomes a more realistic premise every day. However, when it comes to tampering with the Constitution and her amendments (if that is indeed the case in this instance) then we need to be screaming “FOUL” at the top of our lungs.
Hopefully, lawyers will be inspecting this latest bull-headed and moronic attempt to alter the fabric of the Constitution and if there is any chance for the Bush Administration to gain an advantage in pursuing their dangerously Fascist agenda, then those lawyers—and Congress— will “cut the cowboys off at the pass” before democracy in America is rustled like cattle in a John Wayne Western.
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Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 12:00 AM

Rumsfeld alters succession

By Josh WhiteThe Washington Post

WASHINGTON — There is a new pecking order at the Pentagon should Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld not be able to perform his duties, one that favors his inner circle and pushes the three service secretaries down the line of succession.

The new list — approved by President Bush last week — still has Rumsfeld's top deputy as his replacement should the defense secretary die or resign.

But it now puts the undersecretaries for intelligence, policy and acquisition next in line, bumping the secretaries of the Army, Air Force and Navy into lower slots.

The secretary of the Army has traditionally been No. 3.

While the change does not have much impact on day-to-day matters, military experts said it illustrates Rumsfeld's interest in keeping his top advisers in line to run the department in the event of a catastrophe. Pentagon officials have said the move keeps defense policymakers who are responsible for broad departmental issues at the top of the line, moving down those civilian leaders who have specific concentrations on one of the services.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said this week that the moves allow people who are "in a position to have a broader perspective on the department overall" to take over the entire Defense Department if needed. He said that while the service secretaries have deep knowledge, they are more narrowly focused on military matters, such as training and equipping troops.

"They have shifted the line of succession from people who run particular parts of the Pentagon to policymakers who see the entire defense posture," said Loren Thompson, an expert at the Lexington Institute.

He said senior administration officials are preoccupied with what would happen in the event a large-scale attack — such as a nuclear explosion — were to occur in Washington, and that matters of succession have become an important topic. "It has as much urgency today as it did during the Cold War," he said.

The move gives Stephen Cambone, undersecretary for intelligence, second billing after acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, who has not been confirmed as deputy secretary. England gave up his position as secretary of the Navy on Thursday after serving in both roles for the past eight months, according to the Pentagon.

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution, said Rumsfeld often pays attention to such "symbolic issues" to send a message.

"Rumsfeld doesn't do things randomly," O'Hanlon said. "His inner circle is the key group."

Edwin Dorn, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a former undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said the change in succession intrigues him because the relatively new intelligence position appears to outrank everyone else.

He said he wondered if the department is trying to emphasize intelligence matters over ground forces.
"Obviously Rumsfeld believes intelligence is more important than war fighting," Dorn said.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
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(Rumsfeld’s New Order of Succession)

Pentagon power listThe new order of succession for the Defense Department if something happens to the secretary:
Deputy Secretary of Defense/Acting Deputy: Gordon England
Undersecretary for Intelligence: Stephen Cambone
Undersecretary for Policy: former Ambassador Eric Edelman
Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics: Kenneth Krieg
Army Secretary: Francis Harvey
Air Force Secretary: Michael Wynne
Navy Secretary: Donald Winter (confirmed by the Senate; scheduled to be sworn in Tuesday)
Undersecretary of Personnel and Readiness and the Defense Comptroller: David Chu and Tina Jonas
The Washington Post

(Former Order of Succession)
Department of Defense
· Office of the Secretary, The Pentagon (20301-1155)
· Established: July 26, 1947, as National Military Establishment; name changed to Department of Defense on Aug. 10, 1949. Subordinate to Secretary of Defense are Secretaries of Army, Navy, Air Force.
· Function: Oversees everything related to the nation's military security; directs the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and several specialized combat commands; nonmilitary responsibilities including flood control, development of oceanographic resources, and management of oil reserves.
· Secretary: Donald H. Rumsfeld
· Deputy Secretary: Gordon R. England (acting)
· Secretary of Army: Dr. Francis J. Harvey
· Secretary of Navy: Gordon R. England
· Secretary of Air Force: Pete Geren (acting)
· Commandant of Marine Corps: Gen. Michael W. Hagee
Joint Chiefs of Staff: Gen. Peter Pace, Marine Corps, Chairman; Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr., Navy, Vice Chairman; Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army; Adm. Vernon E. Clark, Navy; Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force; Gen. Michael W. Hagee, Marine Corps

Information Please® Database, © 2005 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0101032.html


Order of Presidential Succession

According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the Senate president pro tempore1 was next in line after the vice president to succeed to the presidency, followed by the Speaker of the House.
In 1886, however, Congress changed the order of presidential succession, replacing the president pro tempore and the Speaker with the cabinet officers. Proponents of this change argued that the congressional leaders lacked executive experience, and none had served as president, while six former secretaries of state had later been elected to that office.
The Presidential Succession Act of 1947, signed by President Harry Truman, changed the order again to what it is today. The cabinet members are ordered in the line of succession according to the date their offices were established.
Prior to the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967, there was no provision for filling a vacancy in the vice presidency. When a president died in office, the vice president succeeded him, and the vice presidency then remained vacant. The first vice president to take office under the new procedure was Gerald Ford, who was nominated by Nixon on Oct. 12, 1973, and confirmed by Congress the following Dec. 6.
The Vice President Richard Cheney
Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
President pro tempore of the Senate1 Ted Stevens
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of the Treasury John Snow
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton
Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns
Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez2
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao3
Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson
Secretary of Transportation Norman Yoshio Mineta
Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson
Secretary of Homeland Security4 Michael Chertoff
NOTE: An official cannot succeed to the Presidency unless that person meets the Constitutional requirements.
1. The president pro tempore presides over the Senate when the vice president is absent. By tradition the position is held by the senior member of the majority party.
2. Carlos Gutierrez was born in Cuba and is ineligible.
3. Elaine Chao was born in Taiwan and is ineligible.
4. In late July 2005, the Senate passed a bill moving the Homeland Security secretary to number 8 on the list. The bill is awaiting House approval.

Amendment XXV

(The proposed amendment was sent to the states July 6, 1965, by the Eighty-ninth Congress. It was ratified Feb. 10, 1967.)
Section 1
[Succession of vice president to presidency.]
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2
[Vacancy in office of vice president.]
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Section 3
[Vice president as acting president.]
Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4
[Vice president as acting president.]
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (Amended)
(As Amended)
US Code as of: 01/23/00
Sec. 19. Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President; officers eligible to act
(a)
(1) If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress, act as President.
(2) The same rule shall apply in the case of the death, resignation, removal from office, or inability of an individual acting as President under this subsection.
(b) If, at the time when under subsection (a) of this section a Speaker is to begin the discharge of the powers and duties of the office of President, there is no Speaker, or the Speaker fails to qualify as Acting President, then the President pro tempore of the Senate shall, upon his resignation as President pro tempore and as Senator, act as President.
(c) An individual acting as President under subsection (a) or subsection (b) of this section shall continue to act until the expiration of the then current Presidential term, except that -
(1) if his discharge of the powers and duties of the office is founded in whole or in part on the failure of both the President-elect and the Vice-President-elect to qualify, then he shall act only until a President or Vice President qualifies; and
(2) if his discharge of the powers and duties of the office is founded in whole or in part on the inability of the President or Vice President, then he shall act only until the removal of the disability of one of such individuals.
(d)
(1) If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is no President pro tempore to act as President under subsection (b) of this section, then the officer of the United States who is highest on the following list, and who is not under disability to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President shall act as President: Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
(2) An individual acting as President under this subsection shall continue so to do until the expiration of the then current Presidential term, but not after a qualified and prior-entitled individual is able to act, except that the removal of the disability of an individual higher on the list contained in paragraph (1) of this subsection or the ability to qualify on the part of an individual higher on such list shall not terminate his service.
(3) The taking of the oath of office by an individual specified in the list in paragraph (1) of this subsection shall be held to constitute his resignation from the office by virtue of the holding of which he qualifies to act as President.
(e) Subsections (a), (b), and (d) of this section shall apply only to such officers as are eligible to the office of President under the Constitution. Subsection (d) of this section shall apply only to officers appointed, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, prior to the time of the death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, of the President pro tempore, and only to officers not under impeachment by the House of Representatives at the time the powers and duties of the office of President devolve upon them.
(f) During the period that any individual acts as President under this section, his compensation shall be at the rate then provided by law in the case of the President.

The legal reference to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 is 61 Stat. 380; 3 U.S.C. 19.
Sources:
Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School
Congressional Research Service

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December 31, 2005
Editorial

Conspiring Against the Voters

President Bush has announced four nominees for the Federal Election Commission, moving to keep the policing of campaign abuses firmly in the hands of party wheel horses. The timing of the announcement - the president waited until the Senate had gone home - is likely to allow the nominees to avoid the full hearing and confirmation process needed to evaluate them properly.

The most objectionable nominee is Hans von Spakovsky, a former Republican county chairman in Georgia and a political appointee at the Justice Department. He is reported to have been involved in the maneuvering to overrule the career specialists who warned that the Texas gerrymandering orchestrated by Representative Tom DeLay violated minority voting rights. Senators need the opportunity to delve into that, as well as reports of Mr. von Spakovsky's involvement in such voting rights abuses as the purging of voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 elections.

The need for a clean broom at the six-member election panel becomes clearer with each new round of decisions favoring big-money politics over the voters. But the newly nominated majority promises no improvement. In fact, the slate would mean an end to the service of Scott Thomas, the one incumbent praised for his independence by Senator John McCain, who has campaigned for a clean, hack-free Federal Election Commission.

Both parties suggested candidates; the Democrats include a union lawyer and a trusted political associate of the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid. By endorsing them, the president has finally shown his commitment to bipartisanship in the worst of ways: by installing another undistinguished group of factotums to referee the democratic process.

· Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

Unbelievable

John McCain must be the most duplicitous, lying, deceiving man that ever came down the pike. He has appeared, at times, to be a “true American patriot” and then he has knuckled under to the Neoconservative agenda without a backward glance.

What happens to a man under extended torture? Ask any gay man into leather and sado-masochism: you got your tops and you got your bottoms. McCain fits the role of a bottom to a “T”: seeking approval from his top while blithely doing anything, and I mean anything his top asks him to do eagerly and completely.

McCain needs help to escape his training at the hands of North Vietnamese torturers. He needs to wake up and realize he is programmed to act in these ways and the present administration is taking full advantage of this programming to manipulate the American public under the guise of McCain’s heroism. It does not take heroism to exist and survive in a situational position from which one cannot escape. It only takes endurance and the genetically programmed will to survive.

The unbelievable continues if McCain, through whatever (so-called) Republican machinations becomes the President of The United States of America. The people of great wealth and personal power who are directing the actions of our current administration in defiance of our Founders’ system of checks and balances will continue to erode and destroy long held American democratic values in their bull-headed and greed-motivated drive to gain all the wealth it is possible to accrue and to further enslave the peoples of America and the world.

Really: talk to your local gay leather man and listen to what he tells you if you want insight into how the Bush Cabal operates.

This is not all that outrageous a premise. It worked just fine in Nazi Germany.
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Liberty Beat

McCain's Retreat

Praise for the president's yielding to John McCain ignored the awful details in fine print

by Nat HentoffDecember 23rd, 2005 6:03 PM

Now we can move forward and make sure that the whole world knows that, as the president has stated many times, we do not practice cruel, inhuman treatment or torture.

Concessions already obtained by the administration from Mr. McCain, and a separate amendment [agreed to by McCain] authored by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), could prevent any foreign detainee from seeking relief in a U.S. court in the event that he was tortured. . . . Mr. Graham and Senator Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) recently agreed [along with Senator McCain] to yet another administration provision that would—incredibly—allow evidence obtained by torture to be considered by military review panels (at Guantánamo.) Editorial, The Washington Post, December 16, the very day after Bush and McCain congratulated each other on ending human rights abuses, including torture, of U.S. prisoners anywhere in the world
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Newspaper editorials after the McCain-Bush summit meeting celebrating America's dedication to human rights were glowing: "President Backs McCain on Abuse" ( The New York Times); "Bush Backs Down on Proposed Torture Ban" ( USA Today); "White House, McCain Reach Deal on Terror Suspect Torture Policy" ( The New York Sun); "Principled McCain Prevails Over the White House" ( Financial Times, U.S. edition, December 17/18)

In a few of the stories, those readers going beneath the headlines found harsh revelations of the shell game that McCain and Bush are playing. These discoveries add to the accelerating exposure of how George W. Bush—with the cooperation of the once principled John McCain and of other members of Congress—is engaging in the cruel and inhumane debasing of the values we are fighting for against homicidal terrorists.

To begin, McCain, before his White House rapprochement with the president, had accepted administration language in his human rights amendment to give paid legal counsel and a certain amount of legal protection to interrogators—including the CIA's—accused of abusing prisoners. Their defense would be that a "person of ordinary sense and understanding would not know the practices were unlawful." Also, as at the Nuremberg trials after World War II, the defendants would say they were only following orders.

But as Josh White pointed out in the December 16 Washington Post, if these orders were plainly illegal, they would have to be disobeyed. In that case, what penalties would the commanders themselves, who gave the unlawful orders, face— including the top of the command at the Defense Department, the Justice Department, and the White House?

The Bush administration pressured McCain to accept this additional language in fear that, eventually, courts would decide that U.S. "coercive interrogations" have indeed violated U.S. law and international treaties we have signed. The ACLU and human rights organizations have already filed lawsuits making these claims against high levels of the administration.

Much more serious— and ignored by most of the media—is an amendment— voted for by McCain—to the Defense Authorization bill by Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Carl Levin (D-Michigan), and Jon Kyl (R-Arizona).

Tom Wilner, a constitutional lawyer who represents a number of Kuwaiti detainees (a/k/a prisoners) at Guantánamo, gets to the chilling core of the amendment:

"This amendment [which McCain has approved] tears the heart out of anything good that the McCain prohibition [against cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment] does. It strips the right of habeas corpus from detainees at Guantánamo, prohibits them from suing U.S. officials for their treatment, and in new language slipped into the bill [during the House-Senate conference committee sessions] actually authorizes the tribunals at Guantánamo [for enemy combatants] to use statements obtained through coercion [including torture] as 'probative' [testimony]. That provision works a significant change of existing U.S. and international law and actually provides an incentive for U.S. officials or officials from other governments through [CIA] rendition [sending terrorism suspects to other countries to be tortured], to obtain such coerced statements." (Emphasis added.)

Accordingly, Tom Wilner tells me, this "McCain/Graham/Levin/Kyl package is a disaster—a giant step backward for human rights. . . . By eliminating the Great Writ [habeas corpus] and authorizing the use of coercion, this amendment undermines the very foundation of our system.
"These changes far out- weigh the language for which Senator McCain has been so complimented, prohibiting the government from torturing or engaging in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."

Furthermore, how does this administration actually define torture anywhere? From a December 16 Washington Post editorial after Bush's "surrender" to McCain: "Mr. Bush's political appointees at the Justice Department [Alberto Gonzales at the top] and the Pentagon [Rumsfeld et al.] have redefined both 'torture' and 'cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment' as not covering in all circumstances such CIA techniques as 'waterboarding,' or simulated drowning; 'cold cell,' the deliberate inducing of hypothermia; mock execution; and prolonged and painful 'short-shackling.' It has taken these positions, even though 'cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment' as defined by the Senate [passage of the McCain amendment] covers everything that also would be prohibited by the Constitution [against prisoners held in the U.S.]. . . .

"[Accordingly,] the administration has adopted logic that accepts, in principle, the idea that the FBI could constitutionally use them on U.S. citizens in certain circumstances." (Emphasis added.)

Eventually, I expect to see an announcement by John McCain declaring his candidacy for the presidency—as he reminds us of the principled stand he and George W. Bush took to show the world how deeply the United States values human rights.

Copyright © 2005 Village Voice Media, Inc.

"The Nation" Speaks About The Hidden State

The Hidden State Steps Forward

by JONATHAN SCHELL

[from the January 9, 2006 issue]

When the New York Times revealed that George W. Bush had ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap the foreign calls of American citizens without seeking court permission, as is indisputably required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, he faced a decision. Would he deny the practice, or would he admit it?

He admitted it. But instead of expressing regret, he took full ownership of the deed, stating that his order had been entirely justified, that he had in fact renewed it thirty times, that he would continue to renew it and--going even more boldly on the offensive--that those who had made his law-breaking known had committed a "shameful act." As justification, he offered two arguments, one derisory, the other deeply alarming.

The derisory one was that Congress, by authorizing him to use force after September 11, had authorized him to suspend FISA, although that law is unmentioned in the resolution. Thus has Bush informed the members of a supposedly co-equal branch of government of what, unbeknownst to themselves, they were thinking when they cast their vote.

The alarming argument is that as Commander in Chief he possesses "inherent" authority to suspend laws in wartime. But if he can suspend FISA at his whim and in secret, then what law can he not suspend? What need is there, for example, to pass or not pass the Patriot Act if any or all of its provisions can be secretly exceeded by the President?

Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration. Previously when it was caught engaging in disgraceful, illegal or merely mistaken or incompetent behavior, he would simply deny it. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction!" "We do not torture!"

However, further developments in the torture matter revealed a shift.

Even as he denied the existence of torture, he and his officials began to defend his right to order it. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, refused at his confirmation hearings to state that the torture called waterboarding, in which someone is brought to the edge of drowning, was prohibited.

Then when Senator John McCain sponsored a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, Bush threatened to veto the legislation to which it was attached. It was only in the face of majority votes in both houses against such treatment that he retreated from his claim.
But in the wiretapping matter, he has so far exhibited no such vacillation. Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical.

If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.

The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word.

He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.

There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.

The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form. Until recently, these were developing and growing in the twilight world of secrecy. Even within the executive branch itself, Bush seemed to govern outside the normally constituted channels of the Cabinet and to rely on what Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has called a "cabal."

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported the same thing. Cabinet meetings were for show. Real decisions were made elsewhere, out of sight. Another White House official, John DiIulio, has commented that there was "a complete lack of a policy apparatus" in the White House. "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm." As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state, by which the real decisions were made.

With Bush's defense of his wiretapping, the hidden state has stepped into the open. The deeper challenge Bush has thrown down, therefore, is whether the country wants to embrace the new form of government he is creating by executive fiat or to continue with the old constitutional form. He is now in effect saying, "Yes, I am above the law--I am the law, which is nothing more than what I and my hired lawyers say it is--and if you don't like it, I dare you to do something about it."

Members of Congress have no choice but to accept the challenge. They did so once before, when Richard Nixon, who said, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," posed a similar threat to the Constitution. The only possible answer is to inform Bush forthwith that if he continues in his defiance, he will be impeached.

If Congress accepts his usurpation of its legislative power, they will be no Congress and might as well stop meeting. Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.

Right-wing Takeover = Terrorist Attack?

In the six articles and editorials included in today’s web log for the sake of their historical importance, this writer disagrees with only one statement: Froma Harrop states “The right-wing takeover of this sensible country has been stopped.”

It is this writer’s belief, along with other, more prominent writers, that the current takeover of our country has been in process for the past thirty years and the real puppet masters of this cabal are buried deeply under cover of benign wealth.

Therefore, it would seem that now the “right-wing takeover” is being outed on an almost daily basis we should exercise even more caution as only an event of great magnitude with the label “terrorist attack” would serve to make this country and her citizens back down and allow the Bush regime to continue with that takeover.

It only makes sense.

The attack on America using passenger jets as flying bombs was proffered as a potential scenario long before the actual occurrences of September 11, 2001, and given that ECHELON was firmly in place, along with the magic spy apparatus used by the NSA and available to ‘elected’ officials who could have prevented the attack on America, common sense would dictate that somebody somewhere knew about the very real potential for terrorists attacking America in this way.

Several people in positions of trust and prominence brought events prior to September 11, 2001 to the attention of right wingers in power and those whistle-blowers were either ignored or discredited.

That all but one of the attackers of The World Trade Center and The Pentagon were Saudis—and with the long-term friendly relations between the Bush family and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia—one is remiss if one does not speculate on potential scenarios for these particular relationships.

After all, September 11, 2001 resulted in what can only be called an advantageous series of events for the closing of the right-wing trap on American freedoms—the Final Solution for the demise of democracy.

Yes: we know a lot more now than we did then about the Bush cabal and that is all the more reason to bring to light any possible indications of malfeasance and any connections to events which would destroy America and bring her ideals into submission to the whims of those who would destroy our country.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 12:00 AM

Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist

A bad week for blowhards

The right-wing takeover of this sensible country has been stopped. With this pleasant thought, we enter 2006.

In one golden week, three things happened that bore a common thread. In each case, mainstream positions won out over the bluster of blowhards. People of principle stared down charges that they were unpatriotic, loved Osama or hated religion. The results were gratifying — not only to liberals, but to moderates and a good number of self-described conservatives, who have distanced themselves from their leaders' excesses.

For starters, the Senate said "no" to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. It has saved the refuge before, but this time the Republican oilmen turned the vote into a game of chicken. The drilling provision was first stuck to the budget bill. When lawmakers balked, it was unstuck and attached to the defense-spending bill. Once there, the gamesters figured they could smear anyone voting against it as uncaring about the troops.

The defenders of the wildlife refuge, which included several Republicans, did not cave. Sen. Maria Cantwell, Democrat from Washington, accurately called the bill "legislative blackmail." Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut announced that the defense bill was not going anywhere with drilling in it. The Democrat had just returned from a grand tour of conservative talk shows, where the hosts covered him with praise for supporting the Iraq war. Any charges of not backing American forces bounced right off his armor.

The pro-environment senators easily ignored the latest tantrum by Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican obsessed with developing the refuge. And then they turned the tables on the opposition: Some questioned the patriotism of those who would load the "must-pass" defense bill with extraneous special interests.

In another vote, the Senate temporarily extended the USA Patriot Act past its Dec. 31 expiration date. President Bush wanted the anti-terrorism law renewed, but that wasn't going to happen without a frank conversation on his recently revealed surveillance activities.

Not long ago, anyone who wanted to contain the president's powers was smothered by accusations of leaving America open to attack.

It's true that after Sept. 11, 2001, many of us agreed that the government needed more powerful tools to track the bad guys. That the rules had to change, however, didn't mean there should be no rules.

The citizens have not signed on to giving Bush the right to wiretap Americans making international calls without a warrant — especially since he already can do it in an emergency and ask permission later. The president says he may act as he pleases.

Vice President Dick Cheney bared his teeth and warned that politicians who criticize these policies will pay a heavy political price. Sen. Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, coolly responded, "My oath is to the Constitution, not to a vice president, a president or a political party." Expect to hear that kind of thing more often.

The third victory for rational thinking took place in central Pennsylvania. There, a federal judge ruled that "intelligent design" — a crypto-creationist challenge to the theory of evolution — is religion, and forcing it on science classes in Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional.

Judge John E. Jones, a Bush appointee, called intelligent design "relabeled creationism." He accused its backers of lying about their true intentions, which was to promote religion in a science class. And before the intelligent-design sponsors could utter the words "activist judge," Jones told them to get lost.

Actually, the tide first turned against the intelligent-design boosters in November. That's when the Dover voters removed School Board members pushing the scientific-sounding doctrine.

As far as I can tell, there's hardly a liberal in this story. The judge is a Republican. The voters who kicked out their school board come from a staunchly conservative community. It appears that the movement to sneak religion into science class — which has commanded a national debate — is the work of a noisy few.

All these events, one after another, suggest that the newfound courage of moderates is not a fluke. There never was this big groundswell to develop a wildlife refuge, make Bush king or teach creationism in the schools. The nation has begun to march in the other direction from the right-wing majorettes. May the parade grow long in 2006.

Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is fharrop@projo.com

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCERhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/253471_powelled.asp

Secret Surveillance: Balance of power

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

The weekend provided yet another reminder of how much the reasoned voice of former Secretary of State Colin Powell is missed in the government.

Powell was asked about the Bush administration's decision to sidestep the law barring warrentless surveillance of U.S. phone and Internet communications. "It didn't seem to me," Powell replied, "that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants. And even in an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that."

The law provides for that.

But executive ego apparently does not.

The separation-of-powers issue at stake is not between the executive and legislative branches but between the executive and the judicial.

The purpose of a warrant is to provide for review of law-enforcement by requiring some level of proof that suspicions about a suspect are, well, warranted.

The president could have done precisely what Powell suggests: Make the case for surveillance to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The administration justifies the civil liberties shortcutting with the terrorism menace. And in the 1950s and '60s the communism menace was the justification for abuses of privacy and power.
Some Americans may feel secure by assurances that the mounds of data gathered without warrants will be used solely in the battle against terrorism. Other, more prudent Americans will be uneasy over the other, less noble, uses for which this data might be used.

© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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December 27, 2005

Editorial

Phantom Voters, Thanks to the Census

The first Constitution took for granted that enslaved people could not vote, but counted each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning representation in Congress. This inflated the voting power of slaveholders and gave them much more influence in legislative matters than their actual numbers warranted.

No American would knowingly tolerate such an arrangement today. But a glitch in the census that inflates the populations of some state legislative districts - thus exaggerating their voting power - has led to a contemporary version of that problem. It involves counting prison inmates in the district where they are confined rather than where they actually live. The Census Bureau could fix this problem in a heartbeat, so it needs to get a move on.

The culprit is a provision in the census that counts prison inmates as "residents" of the institutions where they are held, often for relatively short periods of time. Denied the right to vote in all but 2 of the 50 states, the inmates are nonetheless treated as voters when the State Legislatures draw up legislative districts. This practice mattered little 30 years ago, when the prison population was tiny. But with about 1.4 million people in prison today, it can be used to shift political power from one part of the state to another.

A startling analysis by Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative found seven upstate New York Senate districts meeting the population requirements only because inmates were included in the count. The Republican Party in New York relies on its large upstate delegation for its majority in the State Senate - and for its political power statewide. New York is not alone. The Prison Policy Initiative's researchers found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of so-called residents lived behind bars.

By counting these nonvoting inmates as residents, the prison counties offend the principle of one person one vote, while siphoning off political power from the home districts to which the inmates will return as soon as they are released. Since inmates are jobless, their presence also allows prison districts to lower their per capita incomes, unfairly increasing their share of federal funds earmarked for the poor. Congress, which has just caught on to this, recently gave the Census Bureau 90 days to file a report on the feasibility of counting inmates at their homes of record rather than in prison.

At the same time, a committee overseen by the National Academy of Sciences has been studying the residency issue and is expected to make its final report this spring. But why does the bureau need another study to decide whether it wants to uphold the one-person-one-vote principle? The bureau should get to work immediately on procedures that would allow it to count inmates where they actually live - and get those procedures locked in place by the 2010 census.

Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

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SEASICKENING

By GEOFF EARLE

EXCLUSIVE

WASHINGTON — A federal anti-terror program to beef up security at the nation's ports has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to luxury dinner-cruise boats and the Circle Line, The Post has learned.

Premiere Yachts Inc., which operates elegant dinner cruises along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., got a $45,000 grant for "access controls" around the ship, records show.

The company received a $123,000 grant for its Chicago cruise and $39,000 for its Boston operation.

New York lawmakers and port officials were fuming over the badly needed funds' going to dinner-cruise lines at a time when New York City has been pleading with Washington for more money to safeguard its ports.

"We thought it was a little ridiculous," Susan Monteverde of the American Association of Port Authorities said of the dinner-cruise dollars.

The Circle Line, which operates a ferry to the Statue of Liberty and other sight-seeing boats, collected a $231,000 grant for "physical enhancements," including security screening.
Officials from Premiere and the Circle Line did not return calls for comment.

Word of the grants comes after Post reports that Dunkin' Donuts shops received low-cost government loans following 9/11 and at a time when the Homeland Security Department is already under fire.

A harsh report by Homeland Security's inspector general concluded that Washington gave more to private companies than to public facilities in one round of grants.

This included awards to private projects that "appeared to be for a purpose other than security against an act of terrorism" and "were required as a normal course of business."

Homeland Security has since started requiring private companies to match half of the costs of security upgrades to get federal port grants.

Federal bureaucrats doled out millions in private grants at a time when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has gotten far less money than it requested for high-tech security improvements.

The Post reported earlier this month that New York/ New Jersey got only $7.5 million, or 5 percent, of port-security grants in the latest round while Texas got $54 million, or 38 percent.
That includes $3 million awarded directly to private Texas oil and gas companies.

"Big oil companies and luxury dinner-cruise ships should not be the first in line for millions of dollars in port-security grants — the port of New York and other large ports should be," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Major oil and gas companies — which posted record profits last year — have been among the program's biggest recipients.

geoff.earle@nypost.com

Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc.
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When the Cutting Is Corrupted

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005; A25

With indicted superlobbyist Jack Abramoff reportedly ready to cooperate with prosecutors and his partner, Michael Scanlon, already singing, 2006 is expected to be the year of congressional scandals.

Lord knows, a housecleaning in the Capitol is definitely in order. But the Abramoff scandal is just part of the corruption of our political system. There is another level of special-interest influence that cannot be handled by prosecutors: Only the voters can render a judgment on a politics of favoritism that has created a new Gilded Age. It's clear that the national government has placed itself squarely on the side of the wealthy, the privileged and the connected.

Rarely does a single action by Congress serve as so powerful an example of how the system is working. The recent budget bill, which squeaked through the House and Senate just before Christmas, is a road map of insider dealing. It shows that when choices have to be made, the interests of the poor and the middle class fall before the wishes of interest groups with powerful lobbies and awesome piles of campaign money to distribute.

Republican majorities in the Senate and House insisted that they wanted to cut the federal budget. But the Senate and House offered competing plans for achieving savings. When it came time to meld the two proposals, almost every choice congressional leaders made favored the interest groups.

Consider federal health programs. The House bill proposed substantial cuts for Medicaid beneficiaries, but the Senate bill -- partly because of pressure from moderate Republicans -- did not include those cuts. Instead, the Senate proposed to save taxpayer money by eliminating a $10 billion fund to encourage regional preferred-provider organizations, known as PPOs, to participate in the Medicare program. It also sought more rebates to the federal government from drug manufacturers participating in Medicaid.

Note the difference: Instead of imposing cuts on the poor, the Senate sought savings from corporate interests. Surprise, surprise: The final bill dropped the $10 billion cut to the PPOs and most of the rebate demands on drug manufacturers. Instead, the agreement hammered Medicaid recipients with $16 billion in gross cuts over the next decade. (The net cuts are lower because of new Medicaid spending, partly to help cover the scattered victims of Hurricane Katrina.)

The Medicaid cuts include increased co-payments and premiums on low-income Americans, and the budget assumes savings because fewer poor people will visit the doctor. As Kevin Freking of the Associated Press reported: "The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all -- contributing to some of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next five years."

Ah, say their defenders, but these cuts will be good for poor people. According to the New York Times, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Tex.), an architect of the Medicaid proposals, said the higher co-payments were needed to "encourage personal responsibility" among low-income people. Spoken like a congressman who never has to worry about his taxpayer-provided health coverage.

And that is just one instance among many of corporate interests being shielded from cuts, while child support enforcement and foster care programs were sliced. Shortly before the bill went to the House floor, Republican leaders, at the insistence of a group of GOP lawmakers from Ohio, dropped a $1.9 billion cut that would have changed Medicare payments to oxygen equipment manufacturers. The main beneficiary of this change was Invacare Corp. of Elyria, Ohio.

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) opposed the original, milder Senate budget bill but turned around and voted for the final, harsher bill. According to Congress Daily, Coleman backed the final budget "after negotiators took out cuts affecting his state's sugar beet growers." Coleman told the paper: "Karl Rove called me and asked what I wanted. A few hours later it was out of the bill."

The good news is that this budget is not law yet. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) used a clever procedural maneuver to force it back to the House for one more vote next year.

When this 774-page behemoth hit the House floor shortly after 1 a.m. on Dec. 19, many members were not fully aware of what was in it. Now that they know, maybe some of the moderate Republicans who caved to their leadership and voted for it will save their party's honor by killing this special-interest mess. If I may borrow from Mr. Barton, doing so would definitely "encourage personal responsibility" among Republican leaders.

postchat@aol.com

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Power That Bush Can't Just Take


By Eugene RobinsonTuesday, December 27, 2005; A25

Since the holiday season is a time of generosity and goodwill toward all -- even those who torture the Constitution and hoodwink the nation into ill-advised wars -- let's do a little thought experiment.

Let's assume that George W. Bush's claim of virtually unfettered presidential power is not just an exercise in reclaiming executive perks that Dick Cheney believes were wrongly surrendered after Watergate.

Let's assume that Bush genuinely believes he needs the right to blanket the nation with electronic surveillance, detain indefinitely anyone he considers a terrorist suspect, make those detainees disappear into secret, CIA-run prisons, and subject them to "waterboarding" and other degradations. Let's assume for the moment that the president's only desperate motivation is to prevent another day like Sept. 11, 2001.

Let's go even further and assume he decided to invade Iraq for the same reason. Even in a thought experiment, we can't forgive the way he snowed the country into believing there was some connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks; nor can we forget the way he hyped the flawed intelligence about weapons of mass destruction -- we're being generous here, not stupid.

But let's assume that however calculated and cynical the machinations, and however wrongheaded the decision to go to war, the underlying motive was purely to avoid another catastrophic terrorist attack.

All right: Given these overly kind assumptions, can this administration's usurpation of power somehow be justified?

Every time I work it through, the answer I come up with is no. The president has no right to ignore the rule of law as if it were a mere nuisance.

The problem is that if the president really were determined to do anything it takes to prevent another terrorist strike, why not suspend habeas corpus, as Lincoln did during the Civil War?

That way you could arrest everyone who could possibly be a terrorist, or who once lived next door to a suspected terrorist's uncle, and you could hold those people as long as you wanted.

Why stop at surveillance of international telephone calls and e-mails? Why not listen in on, say, all interstate calls as well? Or just go for it and scarf up all the domestic communications the National Security Agency's copious computers can hold?

Why stop at waterboarding? Why not go all the way and pull out some fingernails, if that would give Americans another tiny increment of security? Wouldn't electric shocks make us safer still? Just order the White House lawyers to draw up yet another thumb-on-the-scale legal opinion explaining how torture isn't really torture, and have at it.

If potential terrorists may be walking among us, why not have police officers stand on street corners all day and subject anyone who looks "suspicious" to questioning and a search? That's what Fidel Castro does in Cuba, and believe me, Cuba is an extremely safe country.

In Vietnam we destroyed villages in order to save them. In this war on terrorism, why not go ahead and destroy our freedoms in order to save them?

The reason we don't do these absurd things, of course, is that we see a line between the acceptable and the unacceptable. That bright line is the law, drawn by Congress and regularly surveyed by the judiciary. It can be shifted, but the president has no right to shift it on his own authority. His constitutional war powers give him wide latitude, but those powers are not unlimited.

If you go along with my experiment and assume that the president has the best of motives, then the problem is that he wants to protect the American people but doesn't trust us.

There can be no freedom without some measure of risk. We guarantee freedom of the press, which means that newspapers sometimes print things the government doesn't want printed. We guarantee that defendants cannot be forced to incriminate themselves, which means that sometimes bad guys go free. We accept these risks as the price of liberty.

The president would probably respond that in an era of loose-knit terrorist groups and suitcase nukes, the risks are exponentially greater than those his predecessors faced. Even if you agree, the answer is not to act unilaterally but to go to Congress and the courts and ask them to redraw that line between state power and individual freedom.

These are not tactical decisions about where a tank division should cross the Rhone. They are fundamental questions that go to the nature of this union, and the president is required to trust the American people to decide them.

End of experiment. Please return your rose-colored safety glasses to the front of the class.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Freedom House

Freedom House
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Monday, December 26, 2005 - 12:00 AM

Editorial

Respect the law, Mr. President

REVELATIONS of Bush administration spying on U.S. citizens are shocking enough, but they are particularly alarming as a part of a broader pattern of ignoring or interpreting the law as it sees fit.

President George Bush, and especially Vice President Dick Cheney, argue for expansive executive powers without regard to laws passed by Congress or respect for its oversight role.

The failure of the majority Republican Party to assert that responsibility is all the more disturbing. The latest case involves the failure of the administration to secure warrants from a special court prior to using wiretaps and other technical means to monitor communications between U.S. citizens and people abroad or from a foreign county to the U.S.
Subsequently, it was reported those sophisticated electronic devices have also picked up purely domestic communications by accident.

Too often, in too many circumstances, the administration behaves as if the laws of the land do not apply — or it simply chooses to ignore them.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was created to put secret requests for eavesdropping or searches before a judge. They were routinely approved. Regulations even provided a 72-hour window for the government to act before it explained itself and sought retroactive permission.

One of the judges has resigned to protest Bush's secret, 4-year-old order for warrantless spying that evades the court, The Washington Post reported.

The Bush administration again and again appears to be making it up as it goes along, mining the Justice Department for sympathetic legal interpretations or simply plowing ahead.

Terrorism suspects were defined as enemy combatants to give them an extra-legal veneer so they could be kept out of the U.S. court system, denied fundamental rights, carted off to compliant nations for interrogation or stuck in limbo, ironically, on the island of Cuba.

The U.S. has suffered legal and humanitarian scandals over the use of torture. International agreements and our own domestic laws have been flouted.

After the administration's spying was exposed, the president refused to discuss the matter for security reasons. The next day, he delivered lengthy defenses of the indefensible.

Take away the names, and the policies sound more like Vladimir Putin than Thomas Jefferson. The administration is emboldened to push the limits and create new boundaries because there is no congressional oversight by Republicans.

This is dangerous territory.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
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Champion Of Freedom?
Bush and the Year In Democracy

By Fred HiattMonday, December 26, 2005; A39

In 2005, President Bush set before the nation the goal of "ending tyranny in our world." In 2006, he is scheduled to attend the first meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Russia, which spent this year positioning itself as a leader of the world's pro-tyranny camp.

At best, Bush's attendance in St. Petersburg in July will demonstrate the complexities of claiming freedom-promotion as the central goal of foreign policy. At worst, it will be seen as proof that Bush's commitment to liberty is highly situational.

Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that tracks trends in liberty more closely than anyone else, insists that 2005 actually was a pretty good year. There are 89 free countries, 58 partly free and 45 not free, by its tally. Trends were positive in 27 countries, negative in only nine: "The global picture thus suggests that the past year was one of the most successful for freedom since Freedom House began measuring world freedom in 1972," the organization maintained.

Maybe so. There were obvious bright spots: elections in Liberia and Iraq, the inauguration of a democratically chosen president in Ukraine, stirrings of political change in Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

But even those bright spots had shadows. The gainers in Arab elections were Islamist parties that may or may not be committed to the democratic process. The elected government in Ukraine faced internal and external pressures. Liberia's president will need help from wealthier countries that she may not receive.

And there seemed to be plenty of dark spots without silver linings. Bush undermined his own credibility as a champion of freedom with his refusal to abjure torture, his purchasing of positive news in Iraq and his secret detention policies.

High oil prices meanwhile lubricated the foreign policies of autocrats from Venezuela to Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia to Azerbaijan. In Africa, Uganda's ruler, once seen as a hope of the continent, threw his likely electoral opponent in jail; just this past weekend, Egypt's craven leader did the same. Nigeria's elected president was reported to be flirting with tearing up his constitution to grab a third term.

In South America, another elected president, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, consolidated one-party rule and moved to export his brand of populist autocracy to neighboring nations.

The Nelson Mandela of Asia, Burma's Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, finished the year as she began it, under house arrest and cut off from the world by her country's military dictators. North Koreans remained imprisoned inside a totalitarian nightmare, and their immediate neighbors (South Korea, China, Russia) didn't seem to care much.

The contradictions between China's economic growth and its lack of rule of law grew more acute -- but China's new-generation leaders, who many had hoped would promote political reform and freedom of expression, squelched them instead.

Russia, a major oil exporter, found its energy revenue sufficient to prop up friendly dictators and even to buy a German ex-chancellor. President Vladimir Putin at year's end was poised to stifle the last outpost of uncontrolled civil society, with a law regulating nongovernmental organizations.

The president and his ruling clique of former KGB agents already had brought television, provincial government, business and parliament under their control.

And Putin was not only a non-democrat at home; he was an active anti-democrat in the world. He threatened to raise gas prices for Ukraine's democrats and lower them for Belarus's dictator. He embraced Uzbekistan's strongman for bloodily suppressing a Tiananmen-like demonstration. He orchestrated phony elections in war-ravaged Chechnya. He saw democracy as a threat, at home and abroad.

So how does he come to be hosting the Group of Eight -- what used to be known as the club of leading industrialized democracies? Bill Clinton, who pressed to expand what was then the G-7 to include Boris Yeltsin's Russia, said he offered membership so that Yeltsin "would agree to NATO expansion and the NATO-Russian partnership." And when finance ministers objected that Russia's shrunken economy didn't rate inclusion, Clinton argued that "being in it would symbolize Russia's importance to the future and strengthen Yeltsin at home."

Whatever the merits of those arguments at the time, the tactics didn't work. The prospect of membership in Western "clubs" isn't inducing much cooperation, and democracy was not given a chance to gel. Russia remains "important to the future," of course, but its economy is smaller than those of non-G-8 democracies India and Brazil, and certainly smaller than China's.

St. Petersburg is lovely in July, and a U.S. president has to maintain a relationship with Russia's leader, come what may. Still, maybe Bush ought to think about spending his summer holiday with a host who shares his freedom agenda. There ought to be plenty of options in the Group of 89.

fredhiatt@washpost.com

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Legend Redoux

(With a nod to Elizabeth Gould Davis)

In the Christmas spirit of hope: If the day comes when women run the world, we may be able to repair the lethal games of men. If we manage to wrest control of the earth from men who would destroy Her with vast explosions, the rapes of drilling and mining, the suffocations of industrial effluvia, then perhaps we shall have hope for our future.

Perhaps it is time to say, “Enough! You men are killing us singly, in groups, and routinely. It is time to return to the days of pre-history—to the ideal of matriarchal rule and agrarian survival.

The time for choosing Democrat over Republican, Conservative over Liberal, Left over Right, is past.
Women must rise up and take control through whatever means possible. Enough of our children have died in stupid wars. Enough of our animals have died to feed the appetites of men. Enough of our vegetation has been ground into the dust of the god, Wealth.

Just a thought on Christmas 2005.
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Women Farmers Drawn to Mother Earth

Even as U.S. Farming Declines, More Women Are Tilling the Soil

KUTZTOWN, Pa., Dec. 25, 2005 — - Tilling Mother Earth traditionally has been thought of as a man's job. But as the business of farming has changed, so has the face of it.

While the number of American farms has dropped 14 percent in the last 25 years, the number of farms run by women has increased 86 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

On Cheryl Rogowski's family farm in Pine Island, N.Y., five of the seven field hands are women.
"I've never been so happy as I am being back home on the farm, getting down in that dirt and getting it under my nails," she says.

'Makes You Whole'

Rogowski believes women are naturally suited to farming.

"I think one of the biggest reasons that women are good farmers is the sensory nature of it," she says. "To know that you took that tiny, little thing from that process of putting it in the ground and bringing it to full maturity, it's so tactile. All your senses are involved. You smell it. You taste it. You feel it. You hear it. It makes you whole."

Many of the women now becoming farmers are especially interested in organic farming -- growing healthy food in a way that's healthy for the environment, too. Women account for more than 20 percent of organic farmers today, according to the Organic Farming Research Foundation.

At The Rodale Institute, an agricultural research center in Pennsylvania Dutch country, all 10 of this year's interns are women.

"Women in organic farming, we tend to think more holistically and systematically," says Kelly Grube of the institute, "as opposed to narrow approaches of, you know, 'what can we spray that will fix this problem tomorrow?'"

Rogowski says women farmers also do well at establishing relationships with customers, from restaurant chefs to community markets.

"Farmers' markets are very intimate relationships," she says. "It's one-on-one. To have that one-on-one input, it's immediate input. You put the product on the table. You know if it's good, it's bad, what their reaction is. And you can take that home and use that to build your business going forward."

It may not be an easy way for a woman, or a man, to make a living. But for a growing number of women, it's a genuine labor of love.

ABC News' Betsy Stark originally reported this story for "World News Tonight" on Dec. 4, 2005.
Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

Truth, Fiction, Lies And Plane Rides

Thank you to Anonymous for the comment on this web log regarding the “Another Bush/Cheney Fiasco” post. Had this writer known that the original story was fabricated, it might still have appeared as a post regardless of the fallacy it contains. This writer would have stated and states now that what makes this story compelling, whether true or false, is the ease with which it could be true.

It is remarkable how easily believable it is that our right to privacy is eroded to the point where none of us really know how much privacy we have. The original article was believable and reported by a reputable news organization. The “true” story of this being a hoax is equally believable.

Knowing the extent to which the Bush administration has gone to protect their agenda of secrecy, weeding truth from lies is the everyday business of seeking information with which to form an opinion in order to have an opinion to post.

Our library records are open to scrutiny at the federal level, which really is just folks looking at what other folks read with no idea other than their own spin on what that reading list indicates. These folks are hindered by whatever lack of imagination and education and experience that might have led them to employment with the federal government to start with.

“Rube in a suit”, (as David Letterman said) fingering a list of all the books this writer has checked out from the library—well, there’s a touch of fear that “American Dynasty” by Kevin Phillips was one of the books—And, there’s all those books by Harold Bloom and William Faulkner... and if it had occurred to me to check out Mao’s Little Red Book I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

Now I will. Now I will be circumspect about my reading list, and if there is some writing or other that might be controversial the local bookstore and an anonymous cash purchase—oh, wait—I’m broke.

In this current atmosphere of damning the poor with more cuts only the rich will be able to buy books and— well, you see? It’s just a ball of string and wax: impossible to untangle once it gets rolling.

When we accept the fear that our reading list might be dangerous to our well-being and live with that fear until fear becomes second nature then sooner or later fear determines what books are read and gradually this freedom to read and then the freedom to write and then the freedom to speak and then the freedom to vote and...

So, yes, this time maybe it was a hoax. Maybe it wasn’t and maybe the original “perpetrator” is sitting in a prison cell in some other country compliments of a free plane ride by the Bush Cabal. How would we know?

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Turns out the story on the student and the mao book was a big fat hoax. Read all about it here, in the same paper that originally ran the story: http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm

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Federal agents' visit was a hoax Student admits he lied about Mao book

By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writerNEW BEDFORD -- The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story. The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.

Had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved false.

But on Thursday, when the student told his tale in the office of UMass Dartmouth professor Dr. Robert Pontbriand to Dr. Williams, Dr. Pontbriand, university spokesman John Hoey and The Standard-Times, the student added new details. The agents had returned, the student said, just last night. The two agents, the student, his parents and the student's uncle all signed confidentiality agreements, he claimed, to put an end to the matter. But when Dr. Williams went to the student's home yesterday and relayed that part of the story to his parents, it was the first time they had heard it. The story began to unravel, and the student, faced with the truth, broke down and cried.

It was a dramatic turnaround from the day before. For more than an hour on Thursday, he spoke of two visits from Homeland Security over his inter-library loan request for the 1965, Peking Press version of "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung," which is the book's official title. His basic tale remained the same: The book was on a government watch list, and his loan request had triggered a visit from an agent who was seeking to "tame" reading of particular books. He said he saw a long list of such books. In the days after its initial reporting on Dec. 17 in The Standard-Times, the story had become an international phenomenon on the Internet. Media outlets from around the world were requesting interviews with the students, and a number of reporters had been asking UMass Dartmouth students and professors for information.

The story's release came at a perfect storm in the news cycle. Only a day before, The New York Times had reported that President Bush had allowed the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps on international phone calls from the United States without a warrant. The Patriot Act, created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to allow the government greater authority to monitor for possible terrorism activities, was up for re-authorization in Congress.

There was an increased sense among some Americans that the U.S. government was overstepping its bounds and trampling on civil liberties in order to thwart future attacks of terrorism. The story of a college student being questioned for requesting a 40-year old book on Communism fed right into that atmosphere.

In Thursday's retelling of the story, the student added several new twists, ones that the professors and journalist had not heard before. The biggest new piece of information was an alleged second visit of Homeland Security agents the previous night, where two agents waited in his living room for two hours with his parents and brother while he drove back from a retreat in western Massachusetts.

He said he, the agents, his parents and his uncle all signed confidentiality agreements that the story would never be told. He revealed the agents' names: one was Nicolai Brushaev or Broshaev, and the other was simply Agent Roberts. He said they were dressed in black suits with thin black ties, "just like the guys in Men in Black."

He had dates and times and places, things he had signed and sent back in order to receive the book. The tale involved his twin brother, who allegedly requested the book for him at UMass Amherst; his uncle, a former FBI attorney who took care of all the paperwork; and his parents, who signed those confidentiality agreements. But by now, the story had too many holes. Every time there was a fact to be had that would verify the story -- providing a copy of the confidentiality agreements the student and agent signed, for example -- there would be a convenient excuse.

The uncle took all the documents home to Puerto Rico, he said. What was the address of the Homeland Security building in Boston where he and his uncle visited the agency and actually received a copy of the book? It was a brick building, he said, but he couldn't remember where it was, or what was around it.

He said he met a former professor at the mysterious Homeland Security building who had requested a book on bomb-making, along with two Ph.D. students and a one pursuing a master's degree who had also been stopped from accessing books. The student couldn't remember their names, but the former professor had appeared on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News recently, he said. The former professor's appearance on The O'Reilly Factor did not check out.

Other proof was sought. Were there any copies of the inter-library loan request? No. Did the agents leave their cards, or any paperwork at your home? No. His brother, a student at Amherst, told Dr. Williams that he had never made the inter-library loan request on behalf of his brother. While The Standard-Times had tape recorded the entire tale on Thursday, the reporter could not reach the student for comment after he admitted making up the story. Phone calls and a note on the door were not returned. At the request of the two professors and the university, The Standard-Times has agreed to withhold his name. During the whole episode, the professors said that while they wanted to protect the student from the media that were flooding their voice mails and e-mail boxes seeking comment and information, they also wanted to know: Was the story true? "I grew skeptical of this story, as did Bob, considering the ramifications," Dr. Williams said yesterday. "I spent the last five days avoiding work, and the international media, and rest, trying to get names and dates and facts.

My investigation eventually took me to his house, where I began to investigate family matters. I eventually found out the whole thing had been invented, and I'm happy to report that it's safe to borrow books." Dr. Williams said he does not regret bringing the story to light, but that now the issue can be put to rest. "I wasn't involved in some partisan struggle to embarrass the Bush administration, I just wanted the truth," he said. Dr. Pontbriand said the entire episode has been "an incredible experience and exposure for something a student had said."

He said all along, his only desire had been to "get to the bottom of it and get the truth of the matter." "When it blew up into an international story, our only desire was to interview this student and get to the truth. We did not want from the outset to declare the student a liar, but we wanted to check out his story," he said. "It was a disastrous thing for him to do. He needs attention, he needs care. I feel for the kid. We have great concern for this student's health and welfare."

Mr. Hoey, the university spokesman, said the university had been unable to substantiate any of the facts of the story since it first was reported in The Standard-Times on Dec. 17. As to any possible repercussions against the student, Mr. Hoey said, "We consider this to be an issue to be handled faculty member to student. We wouldn't discuss publicly any other action. Student discipline is a private matter."

Dr. Williams said the whole affair has had one bright point: The question of whether it is safe for students to do research has been answered. "I can now tell my students that it is safe to do research without being monitored," he said. "With that hanging in the air like before, I couldn't say that to them." The student's motivation remains a mystery, but in the interview on Thursday, he provided a glimpse. "When I came back, like wow, there's this circus coming on. I saw my cell phone, and I see like, wow, I have something like 75 messages and like something like 87 missed calls," he said. "Wow, I was popular. I usually get one or probably two a week and that's about it, and I usually pick them up."

Contact Aaron Nicodemus at anicodemus@s-t.com This story appeared on Page A1 of The Standard-Times on December 24, 2005.