Freedom

What did the government do in response to this letter? They ignored it. The White House kept pushing for Alberto Gonzales to be made the next Attorney General of the United States, and the Republicans in the U.S. Senate, with the help of some of their Democratic colleagues, went ahead and confirmed him anyway. (Source: Stars and Stripes, January 6, 2005)

So, predictably, the Bush Administration stonewalled. Members of the United States Senate requested the Gonzales torture memos, but George W. Bush refused to allow Senators to see them. Bush cited "longstanding practice" as his excuse for keeping the memos secret from everybody outside the White House. Of course, this excuse really only meant that Bush kept the memos secret because he has made it a longstanding practice to keep secrets from the American people.

It is not only the right of members of the Senate to have access to these documents, it is their responsibility to review them. The U.S. Senate is constitutionally bound to review and approve the President's appointments. When the President refused to hand over the Gonzales documents, the Senate became unable to perform its duty with responsibility, and was made into little more than a rubber stamp for the President.

Of course, Republicans insisted that the secrecy was no big deal. They asked us to trust that George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales had nothing to hide. Years later now, we all know that Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush had plenty to hide. (Source: Associated Press, January 3, 2005)

I learned that times have changed when I found out about an Air Force program that reminds me of the old Soviet system of neighbors spying on neighbors. It's called the Eagle Eyes Program. Who's supposed to have the eagle eyes? Surprise! It's you.

The Eagle Eyes program has set up local telephone numbers across America, so that Americans can inform on their neighors' "suspicious activity" without even bothering to work up a long distance telephone charge. The local reports are then funnelled automatically to the Kremlin, I mean Pentagon, where they are entered into a gigantic database that the military keeps in a top secret room, in computers full of records of the "suspicious" activities of American citizens.

The Eagle Eyes reporting system is operational 24 hours a day, so that people can peek through the hedges and make reports on people in their communities even in the dead of night. That way, you never know when someone might be watching you.

In this Air Force citizen informant system, you can never be sure who is watching you, either. The Eagle Eyes system even solicits snooping by little children - encouraging entire American families to become government informants.

What kind of "suspicious activity" does the Eagle Eyes citizen spying program tell its participants to be on the lookout for? Well, imminent terrorist attacks are, of course, on the watch list. There are other items in the Eagle Eyes description of "suspicious activities that warrant reporting". Among these is the observation of a "people who don't seem to belong" in a particular neighborhood.

When did it become the business of the government when American citizens visit neighborhoods where they "don't seem to belong"? Are white suburbanites supposed to make government reports when black people show up in their neighborhoods? What about when working class people show up in an upper middle class shopping district? Is that a threat to the Homeland as well? How about an anti-war demonstration that marches past the watchful gaze of an Eagle Eye recruit? Under the Eagle Eyes neighborhood espionage program, the military is asking citizens to become government informants to report on these kinds of lawful, peaceful activities. In this new system, stepping out of line and defying the expectations of the conservative society makes one a terrorist suspect.

The Eagle Eyes program hasn't gotten very much attention. It was introduced last year just as the Presidential election grabbed most people's attention, and it slipped into our daily lives without being widely reported in the press.

As it is, the John Kerry campaign didn't even try to talk about government programs to spy on American citizens and collect information about them. It simply never was brought up as a campaign issue. So, the Bush Administration was given a free pass to develop and implement its programs to watch what we do in our everyday lives.

The issues at stake could not be more vital. It isn't just a matter of privacy, or the integrity of the constitutional protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The Eagle Eyes program unlawfully blends the military intelligence activities of the Air Force with what ought to be domestic law enforcement. So, the Air Force watches all of us as if we are all potential "enemy combatants" - a frightening thought given the Bush Administration's willingness to take even American citizens into indefinite imprisonment without trial or access to lawyers. It's plainly against the law for the military to take over domestic law enforcement duties, but that's what's happening as part of a larger trend of increasing military power over civilian life.

Programs that encourage neighbors to spy on one another also degrade the trust that serves as the foundation of healthy American neighborhoods. When the government recruits Americans to make reports on the people in their communities, it breaks down the structures that make our society work. It makes people afraid to say or do anything out of fear that what they say and what they do might go into some kind of government file that is being kept on them. Freedom and democracy cannot survive long under such conditions.

That's what the KGB was counting on. The persistence of the Bush Administration in developing and implementing programs of this sort make me worry that the people in the White House have something similar in mind.

The motto of the Eagle Eyes program is "Watch. Report. Protect." The funny thing is, with my neighbors watching me and informing on me to the government, I don't feel very well protected at all. (Source: Working For Change, January 31, 2005)

The FBI admits that it willfully ignored that evidence because its investigators were convinced that Brandon Mayfield was guilty. That admission only came, however, with extreme public pressure on the FBI. These days, right wingers seem to believe that if someone is accused of connection to terrorism, the investigators and prosecutors could not have made a mistake. Progressives know better, and that's one important reason to elect a progressive President in 2008. (Source: Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2006)

Consider what the right wingers worked to achieve for religion in Iraq. Right wingers in the American government have hailed the new, post-invasion Iraqi constitution as a great achievement, but Section A of Article 2 of that constitution reads: "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."

The Iraqi constitution sets the rules of Islam as a source of law that is above all other law. That makes Iraq a theocracy. American right wingers think that's a great idea. Progressives, on the other hand, think it is a tragedy for American soldiers to fight in order to defend a government that does not allow for religious freedom. (Source: Inter Press Service, December 5, 2006)

It has already been reported that female American interogators at the prison at Guantanamo would remove their shirts, expose their breasts to prisoners, and grope prisoners' genitals. This may sound like fun to an American man, but to a devout muslim man, such treatment is a painful form of sexual humiliation.

These new allegations link the prison at Guantanamo Bay to the sexual torture that has been shown in photographs and videotapes from the American- run prison of Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Most tellingly, the Bush Administration directed the administrator of the Guantanamo Bay prison to be sent to run the Abu Ghraib prison after FBI agents sent allegations of torture to their superiors in the Bush Administration. (Source: Al Bawaba, January 2, 2005)

Why's that? Well, you see, he was a "potential threat."

What made him a "potential threat?" He was wearing a t-shirt that said "Young Democrats" on it.

Apparently now considered threatening to Homeland Security just to be a Democrat. (Source: Tucson Citizen, May, 2005)

Yet, in Bush's less public actions, he continues to push and push for more torture.

President Bush's clear preference for torture was made plain in early 2005, as he made a personal intervention in Congress to persuade members of the Republican congressional leadership to kill provisions of a new law that would have specifically outlawed CIA agents from torturing prisoners. The law would also have required the CIA to make reports to Congress about the methods of interrogation that the CIA is using against prisoners.

The obvious question is this: If President Bush truly opposes the use of torture, why did he personally intervene to stop a new law that would have outlawed torture?

The equally obvious follow-up question occurs to me: If President Bush truly wants to stop all the 'bad apples" from using torture, why is he enabling torture by preventing Congress from knowing more about the techniques currently used by CIA agents in American prisons?

The answers are as painfully obvious as the questions. Bush knows that torture is going on, and his action to block the new anti-torture law is a clear demonstration that he wants the torture to continue - out of the public eye.

Bush's action to protect the ability of the CIA to torture at the same time that a low-ranking Army reservist was made the patsy ringleader of the Abu Ghraib torture caught in photographs. Repeated testimony that intelligence officers ordered the torture have been ignored. No senior officers in the military or intelligence agencies have been court martialed or subjected to civilian trial for their crimes. They have been left to continue their dirty work, with new subordinates underneath them ready to take orders.

The signal sent by President Bush is clear: As far as Bush is concerned, torture is not a crime, but getting caught taking photographs of the torture is.

Bush is wrong on both counts. In spite of Bush's move to block new anti-torture legislation, the plain fact is that it is a crime against both international law and American law for anyone working for the federal government, from the President all the way down to new recruits in the military, to either conduct torture or order torture to take place. Taking photographs that document illegal torture is not a crime. Taking those photographs is a brave act of service to the rule of law.

Let us hope that low-ranking whistleblowers continue to demonstrate the allegiance to the rule of law that President Bush has so casually dismissed. (Source: International Herald Tribune, January 14, 2005)

The New York Times reported on January 14, 2007 that the United States Military - which is supposed to be engaged in operations to defend the country from outside aggression - is watching innocent American citizens' behavior, and keeping records.

That's right. The U.S. Military is tracking American citizens, right now.

The CIA, assigned the task of surveillance of foreign targets, is also tracking American citizens, right now.

No warrants are just involved, just letters that the Military and CIA write themselves to give themselves the appearance of legitimate authority.

The variety of information the NY Times found out about is financial - how much money you have, and how you're spending it. What do the Military and CIA do when they collect this personal information regarding citizens? Read the article for the full story; here's a telling excerpt:

Usually, the financial documents collected through the letters do not establish any links to espionage or terrorism and have seldom led to criminal charges, military officials say. Instead, the letters often help eliminate suspects.

"We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we'e out of it," said Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.

But even when the initial suspicions are unproven, the documents have intelligence value, military officials say. In the next year, they plan to incorporate the records into a database at the Counterintelligence Field Activity office at the Pentagon to track possible threats against the military, Pentagon officials said. Like others interviewed, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

Read between the lines. No, no, in this case just re- read the lines themselves:

1. The Military is looking into the personal records of people who become suspects because they have money, not who become suspects because there is evidence of any link to terrorism. Of course, this presupposes that the Military has financial records of Americans in general in the first place to search through for such wealth. If you get money, you're a "suspect."

2. Even if you turn out to have no connection to terrorism, the Military still keeps that information on your personal business, and has no inclination to give it back, ever.

All this without so much as a warrant.

You know, there's this little thing called the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law of the land. It reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Lately, the Constitution is being treated as if it were an inconvenient set of suggestions. That's in the passive voice, but it isn't a passive phenomenon. It's an activity carried out under the aegis of the Bush administration. A good progressive president would never let this sort of activity go on without constitutional checks and balances.

(Source: New York Times, January 14, 2007)

I never thought that I would live to see the day when a significant element of America's ruling party would be calling for the banning of publications that dare to question the actions of the government. Yet, that day has come. (Source: Washington Post, May 23, 2005)

Exhibit A: Charles D. Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Stimson publicly expressed his disapproval of the lawyers who represent the people in the extra- legal Guantanamo Bay Detention center, held for years without charges being filed. Then he suggested that major American corporations should cease to hire lawyers from legal firms whose partners represent detainees.

This man who holds a leadership role over the U.S. military is a lawyer himself, so if he paid any attention in law school whatsoever he should know that it is lawyers' responsibility to represent clients and ensure their fair treatment under the American legal system. The law, legal rights and legal representation are for everybody under United States jurisdiction, not just the people Stimson likes. The 6th Amendment to the Constitution says so.

Either Stimson hasn't read the Constitution- in which case he doesn't belong in government - or he has read the Constitution and just doesn't care. Ignorance or arrogance? Whichever it might be, it can't be good that this man is a leader with authority over the same military that spies upon American citizens.

Stimson is a Republican Bush appointee. It's time to clean house, and the best way to do that is to clean out the White House in 2008.

(Source: New York Times, January 13, 2007)

How many terrorist attacks have there been in the United States in the last five years? Zero.

That's an awfully big sacrifice of freedom without any sign of serious need. The ratio of spying incidents to recent terrorist attacks is 2,821 to 0.

That kind of record is worse than failure. It is blatant, needless abuse of power. Our next President should seek to protect the freedom of ordinary citizens, not the powers of government operatives. (Sources: Washington Post, January 17, 2007; ACLU report, January 17, 2007)

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e- mail addresses or keywords.

The report goes on to detail the manner in which the FBI is collecting broad swaths of information on the online activities of innocent people, and then doing keyword searches to find evidence of nefarious intent. Because warrants related to these database activities are issued only for suspects, and not for the broader set of citizens involved, these end up being searches of innocent citizens' "papers and effects" without a warrant.

What's the problem? The problem is that sort of activity is in clear violation of the 4th amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The FBI wants you to ignore this activity -- that's why they've changed the name of their program from the scary sounding "Carnivore" to "DCS1000" to ... well, we don't even know what the name of this latest program is.

Will you do what the FBI wants, and simply ignore this threat to your liberty?

In case you didn't know, the FBI is a subsidiary of the Bush administration, through the U.S. Department of Justice. But the Democratic party, dominated by "practical" politicians and not by liberals and progressives as FOX News would have you suppose, looks to do little or nothing about the Bush administration's unconstitutional practice through the FBI. That's why it's less important to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008 than it is to vote for a candidate that makes a specific commitment to liberal and progressive values -- which include taking the Constitution more seriously than a piece of useful toilet paper. (Source: CNET News, January 30, 2007)

The abuses of the Department of Homeland Security and its affiliated programs of surveillance throughout the federal government have added new meaning to the declaration by Tennessee Williams that "Security is a kind of death."

March 10, 2005, the Bush Administration announced that it is withdrawing the United States of America from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. This protocol is an important international treaty that gives citizens from participating nations the right to meet with diplomatic representatives of their own governments whenever they are imprisoned in foreign countries.

The result that the Bush Administration wants the American public to focus on is this: Foreigners who are imprisoned while within the United States will no longer have the right to meet with diplomats from their home countries. Apparently, President Bush and his Republican supporters believe that this kind of move sends a get-tough message to all foreigners who might want to make trouble while in the United States.

It is particularly disturbing that this move comes just a week after it was revealed that the Bush Administration has rounded up hundreds of people in America, imprisoned them without charge, and sent them to third countries in order to be tortured. With the Bush Administration's new abandonment of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, foreign governments will no have no legal ability to detect this kind of illegal torture and extradition by the United States government. Once a person is taken prisoner by the United States government, that person will to all practical effect become invisible to anyone but the American agents holding him or her prisoner. Such a lack of oversight seems designed to enable more torture to occur without any foreign interference.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the majority of Americans really don't care whether their government tortures its prisoners. However, what the Bush Administration doesn't want Americans to think about is that the American withdrawal from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations also makes American citizens themselves vulnerable to improper imprisonment, torture, and any other imaginable abuse by foreign governments.

You see, international treaties like the protocol that the Bush Administration renounced today work both ways. Not only did the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations protect foreigners travelling within the United States and Americans travelling within foreign countries.

So, because of the Bush Administration's action, if you are travelling abroad and are put in prison by the government of the nation you are visiting, you no longer have a right to meet with a diplomatic representative of the United States. That means that you can be imprisoned, tortured, sent through a kangaroo court, and even executed, and at no point along the way will you have the right to meet with an American diplomat to ask for help or even get a message back to your family. Just as foreigners within the United States have begun to mysteriously disappear, you too might disappear, and no one in the American government will be able to do anything about it.

This increased vulnerability of American travellers comes as a result of the Bush Administration's desire to continue holding prisoners outside of all legal bounds. Because President Bush is so eager to continue the torture of foreign prisoners, Americans have now become more vulnerable to torture themselves.

Bush's Homeland Security apparatus is increasingly making Americans less secure. Instead of protecting our freedom, the Homeland Security schemes of our Republican rulers are restricting what Americans are able to do. By undermining international law in his quest for power, President Bush makes all Americans easy prey for despots around the world. From today forward, any American citizen who wishes to travel beyond the borders of the United States will be putting their liberty, and their lives, at risk.

What is Illegal for Americans in Cuba:

It is illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba without the permission of the United States federal government. It is also illegal for Americans to engage in any kind of commercial activity with Cuba. Even buying a Cuban cigar is strictly against the law.

What is Legal for Americans in Cuba:

Thanks to the Military Commissions Act, it is now legal for Americans working for their government to kidnap people off the streets and fly them against their will to Cuba, where they can be imprisoned and tortured for the rest of their life without any trial or right to file a writ of habeas corpus. It is also legal for Americans in Cuba to put their prisoners on trial in a kangaroo court that violates the most basic legal rights recognized by civilized nations.

Right wingers say that the legalization of private travel of American citizens to Cuba is completely unacceptable. On the other hand, the same right wingers say that it is perfectly acceptable to allow Americans to transport, imprison, and torture people in Cuba.

We progressives recognize the insanity inherent to this double standard. Right wingers think it makes perfect sense. Which philosophy would you rather see in action in the White House?

Back in 2005, when challenged on the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act, George W. Bush retorted, "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" Without that God-damned piece of paper, the presidency doesn't even exist. Our next president needs to remember that. (Source: Capitol Hill Blue December 5, 2005)

Through 2005, George W. Bush went travelling the country "asking advice" on Social Security - by speaking to halls packed with Republican supporters trucked in by local GOP organizations and asking pre-scripted questions to people up on stage with him who have been hand-picked to provide Bush with the exact talking points that he needs to make his standard sales pitch. Bush called these "town hall meetings" - a strange twist on the original idea that all citizens in a communty could come together to discuss important issues.

Well, at one of these Social Security public meetings, three non-Republicans decided to show up, just to hear what the President had to say. Unfortunately, they never had the chance to find out. They were forcibly thrown out of the meeting before it ever started, by Republican Party official.

Why? The three ejected citizens weren't causing any disruption. They were just sitting still in their seats, waiting like everyone else. In fact, the three were invited to attend by Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez. The reason they were thrown out is that they had been tracked down and observed to have driven to the meeting in a car with a bumper sticker, one of the ones that we sell at Irregular Times, reading "No More Blood for Oil".

Apparently, the local Republican Party had been tracking these people, watching them as they came to the meeting. The Republicans in the area hosting the event seem to have set up surveillance stations near the event to identify dissidents and prevent them from participating.

So, at Bush's Social Security meeting, everything went just as the Republicans had planned. President Bush heard plenty of advice - from a hall full of people who had been screened to ensure that they agreed with the opinions that the President had already formed.

You shouldn't have to be an opponent of George W. Bush to be concerned about these Republican Party tactics of censoring the opinions heard by the President of the United States. Anyone who is concerned about the health of the American nation ought to want America's leaders to hear a variety of good ideas, and promote an open public debate. When we have a President who proudly admits that he doesn't even read the morning newspaper, it is especially important that the full range of the American people have the ability to participate meaningly in public policy discussions organized by the White House.

Yet, Republicans seem to approve of their political party's efforts to prevent anyone but strict party loyalists from participating in these fraudulent "town meetings". The White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, has issued a statement in which he essentially argues that the incident was no big deal. "There is plenty of opportunity outside of the event to express their views," McClellan said.

The obvious problem is that people from the Bush White House do not solicit citizens' views outside of these fake town hall meetings. The President has constructed an airtight bubble of silence around him and his closest advisors. Over time, the lack of fresh air has resulted in an extreme atrophy of an ability to recognize significant dissent when it exists.

American progressives are faced with two choices. Either they can try to assimilate, and gain a voice in the public debate by hiding their opposition to Republican policies, or they can work outside the rigged system of Republican pre-scripted public meetings and speak independently, with their own true voices. The progressives who were pushed out the door by Bush's henchmen were trying to do both, but it's become quite clear that the Republicans have no intention of allowing anyone but their own followers to have a voice in government. Similar incidents of censorship and expulsion are reported at meetings wherever George W. Bush and top White House staff members go.

If ever there were a person who was justified in the acceptance of security established by others through the sacrifice of freedom, it was Helen Keller. Yet, Keller was too independent, and too much of a lover of freedom, to accept such sacrifice. She advised others, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure." If Helen Keller could refuse the deal of surrendering freedom in return for the promise of security, so can we.

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." George W. Bush, December 18, 2000

The tongues wagged with the veneer of outrage: Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot! Who would have thought we would have heard such a thing? It's just shocking, TV news anchors cried.

But no, it's not shocking, and that's the really sad part. Anybody who has grown up in a part of the country dominated by Republicans knows that the word "faggot" is used early and often, and not in the hip, ironic, and postmodern way you might hear the word said in Manhattan. Ann Coulter is using this word because she depends on liberals to be shocked and upset by it, sure, but also because it sounds familiar, comfortable and legitimate to a significant part of the country. News flash, people: Most Republicans Don't Like Gay People! And I'm not just whistling Dixie here: I'm talking about what Republicans say themselves. Only 9%-12% of Republicans say that gays should be able to marry and have the same consequent legal rights as straight people. 58% of Republicans oppose any legal status whatsoever for same-sex couples. 65% of conservatives say they view gay men unfavorably, and 63% report unfavorable opinions of lesbians. In the latest available General Social Survey, 65.9% of Independents who said they were closer to Republicans than Democrats, 57.1% of those who said they were Republicans but not strongly, and 69.9% of strongly-identified Republicans reported that "sexual relations between two adults of the same sex" was "always wrong."

The focus I see lately on getting people to stop using words -- "faggot," "nigger," "dyke," "traitor," "wetback," "bitch" -- is mystifying to me. Why should Ann Coulter apologize for using a derogatory word to express venom against the sort of person she despises? It is, for once, honest on her part, just like it was honest of Michael Richards to express his venom against black people with the use of the word "nigger." What exactly will get fixed if everybody masks their venom with nicey-nicey words? The only thing that will be addressed is our awareness of what people really think about others in this nation, and that awareness will counterproductively decline. Rather than focusing on the words people use, let's put our focus on what people believe, how they behave toward one another, and how those beliefs and behaviors affect the safety and liberty of others around them.

It boils down to this: the problem isn't that Ann Coulter said "faggot." The problem is that Ann Coulter and a majority of Republicans are in favor of laws that restrict the safety and liberty of their fellow Americans. The solution is to make sure that such Republicans are put out of power, so their inclination to act out against gays, lesbians, and other groups they don't happen to like remains purely personal. And that, finally, is yet another reason why we need to support progressives and vote them into office. (Sources: Reuters, March 4, 2007; Pew Research Center for People and the Press, November 18, 2003; Poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Oct. 26-27, 2006; General Social Survey)

Self-expression is at the heart of New York City's identity - or rather, it was, until Michael Bloomberg plopped his well-tailored little seat in the mayor's chair.

Over the last few years, Bloomberg has become infamous for refusing to grant permits to large and important demonstrations. He banned a huge anti-war protest before the invasion of Iraq. He banned another huge protest during the time of the Republican Presidential convention. Then Bloomberg has banned yet another large protest, an anti-war protest scheduled for May 1st, 2005. Along the way, many smaller protests have been forbidden as well.

Michael Bloomberg says that protests are disruptive, and so it's better for New York City if they just don't occur at all. Imagine for a second what the implications of this are for New York City's identity. In this great center of American art and literature, only non-disruptive ideas are to be given special free-speech permits, doled out by Michael Bloomberg. Writing a book? Better check with Bloomberg's office first. Only non-disruptive themes are allowed. Creating a painting or sculpture? Stick to the still life of a bowl of fruit and the war hero on a horse. No disruptive art will be given a permit.

It's shameful to see that New York City is led by such a wimp. Yes, Michael Bloomberg is a wimp, afraid of allowing anybody to present an opinion in a strong voice. Bloomberg's New York City is a New York City full of Anne Geddes posters and Care Bears and little unicorn figurines, where the essential mature adult activity of open debate is not permitted.

Alexander Dunlop, a native New Yorker, left his home to go out and get sushi - and got arrested by NYC police protecting the Republican presidential convention from peaceful protesters. Why?

Well, the police said that Alexander Dunlop was being violent and resisting arrest. However, it turns out that videotape that the police themselves submitted as evidence was fraudulently edited before it reached the courthouse. A complete version of the videotape that was found later does not show Dunlop engaged in any protest, much less any illegal acts, and it shows that when the police came to grab Dunlop off the sidewalk, he cooperated fully and in a peaceful manner. In fact, the police officer who claims to have arrested Dunlop is shown to have not even been there.

Consider what had to be done by the New York City Police in order for their documented false testimony in the Dunlop case to have been given:

1. New York City police officers grabbed an innocent man just walking down the sidewalk in his own home town and arrested him
2. The police officers who arrested him, and the four or five other police officers on the scene, would have had to agree to submit a false arrest report declaring that another officer, not even present, made the arrest
3. Another police officer, not on the scene, would have had to cooperated with the police officers on the scene to create the fraudulent arrest report, to certify that he was there and that he saw Alexander Dunlop breaking the law and violently resisting arrest
4. New York City police officers would have had to tamper with evidence, cooperating with each other and bringing in the people in charge of collecting, organizing and storing evidence, in order to edit out the parts of the videotape that exonerated Alexander Dunlop
5. All those New York City police officers would have then had to meet, and agree on the false testimony that would be given in court

Now consider that the Alexander Dunlop case is not an isolated incident. 400 other people arrested during the Republican presidential convention have been exonerated by videotape showing that police reports of their arrests were not truthful. So, that 5-step conspiracy between New York City police officers, to make false arrests and convictions, has been documented to have occurred hundreds of separate times during the Republican presidential convention.

Think now about the number of additional arrests that must have occured without being videotaped.

How is it possible that such consistent, widespread false arrests, withholding of evidence, and blatant perjury took place outside the Republican presidential convention without the knowledge of people high up in the New York City Police Department? Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he was personally involved in the preparations for the police to deal with anti-Republicans protesters. Are we supposed to believe that he was not involved in the purposeful effort to throw innocent people in jail?

I find it ironic that not long before these massive false arrests outside the Republican national convention, the Republicans were running television ads insulting non-Republicans as "sushi-eating liberals". After making those ads, the Republicans came to the hometown of many liberals, and arrested Alexander Dunlop for doing nothing but trying to walk down the sidewalk to get some sushi for dinner. That's a perfect representation of what's gone wrong with the Republicans' creation of the Homeland in what used to just be called the United States of America.(Source: New York Times, April, 12, 2005)

Over the last few years, we've done our best to follow the flood of information about the Bush Administration's programs to spy on the private activities of American citizens using data mining techniques. From the transfer of Total Information Awareness into the National Security Agency under codenames like topsail and basketball, through warrantless wiretape, seizures of massive amounts of cell phone and email records, and even the systematic entry of innocent Americans' DNA into gigantic government databases, we have seen a dramatic effort by the government to watch over the most personal aspects of Americans' lives. Thanks to these secretive government programs, Americans can no longer assume that their postal mail, email, phone calls, commercial activity, and other kinds of personal activity are at all private.

Through it all, there has been almost no congressional oversight. In 2007, however, a few senators finally asked for that to change. Two bills were been introduced that would force the White House to cooperate with efforts by Congress to gain oversight of the growing network of government databases used to spy on Americans. The bills, S. 236 and S. 495 (entitled the Federal Agency Data Mining Reporting Act of 2007 and the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2007, respectively), were co-sponsored by a small group of senators:

Federal Agency Data Mining Reporting Act
Authored by Senator Russ Feingold
Co-sponsored by:
Senator Daniel Akaka
Senator Ben Cardin
Senator Edward Kennedy
Senator Patrick Leahy
Senator John Sununu

Personal Data Privacy and Security Act
Authored by Senator Patrick Leahy
Co-sponsored by:
Senator Sherrod Brown
Senator Russ Feingold
Senator Bernard Sanders
Senator Charles Schumer
Senator Arlen Specter

The more observant among you will notice something about the list of co-sponsors for these bills: Both bills had the co-sponsorship of a Republican senator - John Sununu in the case of S. 236 and Arlen Specter in the case of S. 495. S. 495 also had the support of an independent senator, Bernard Sanders.

However, not a single one of the four Democratic senators who are running for President of the United States in 2008 co-sponsored either of these bills.

Hillary Clinton did not given her support to these bills. Neither did Barack Obama. Senators Joseph Biden and Christopher Dodd did not offered their support either.

The upshot is that, although these four senators are running around America trying to persuade Democrats that they will undo the Bush Administration's right wing agenda, they failed to do so in their current jobs in the United States Senate. Even worse, they were been outperformed in this regard by two Republican senators. Senators Sununu and Specter are more progressive in their action on government surveillance databases than Senators Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Obama.

This failure serves as yet another reminder that progressive voters in 2008 need to refine their focus away from just electing a Democrat instead of a Republican. The Democratic Party needs to be reformed, so that Democratic politicians stop moving toward the right and failing to act against abusive Republican policies. We need to be conscientious in distinguishing Democrat politicians who act progressively from those who fail to do so, and vote accordingly in 2008. (Source: The Library of Congress)

One day, I would like to be able to bury the dark joke that DARPA (Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency) -- the Defense Department unit that under the Bush administration introduced the Total Information Awareness project to gather your banking, travel, eating, reading, scholastic and veterinary habits into a government database to predict and contain the emergence of enemies of the state -- has posted a privacy policy on its website.

Republican politicians are extremely eager to please the Religious Right's desire to redefine what it means to be a traditional American, trying to convince people that being a Christian is an inherent part of being an American. America's regressive fundamentalists are fond of falsifying American history, claiming that the United States of America is a Christian nation, although our Constitution and laws clearly demonstrate that the United States of America is a secular nation, established with the idea that religion should remain private.

In truth, the fundamentalists of the Republican Party are seeking to go much further back in history than the founding of the United States of America. They seek to take America back to the Dark Ages from which the earliest European Americans fled. They want to take us back to the days of the Salem Witch Trials. When else, but in the dark colonial days of America, was there theocratic oppression of citizens of the kind that the right wing religious fringe seeks to install now?

It is a well established historical fact that many of the most prominent of America's founding fathers were openly distrustful of religious claims of authority. I'll provide one example today - an example that is not nearly as well known as it ought to be. It's from Thomas Jefferson, who wrote: "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."

What would Jefferson say now, upon seeing the Republican Party's attempts to destroy the separation of Church and State, and replace it with government programs based on nothing but faith?

What the Homeland Security authoritarians have managed to accomplish during their period of control over government is disheartening, but what they have attempted to accomplish is downright astonishing. Back in 2002, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah tried to push through a legislative amendment that would have permitted any government agencies to gain access to a citizen's communications without any need for the communications to be reasonably related to any imminent or future danger of any kind. This is what the authoritarians in charge want: total access to all details of your life, without a warrant, without a reason, backed up by law. In order for members of government to do that now, they have to break the law, and there are signs they've done just that. Let's keep it illegal. Let's stymie the probes of the Hatches of the world. Let's vote them out of office and replace them with progressive politicians who respect Americans' right to keep their own business. (Source: The Nation, October 30, 2002)

In 2006, many Americans assumed that, if enough Democrats were elected to establish majority control over both houses of Congress, they would act to promote a progressive agenda to counter the radical right wing politics of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Yet, so far, the Democratic Congress has failed to promote a strong progressive alternative to the right wing agenda.

Oh, there are progressive Democratic members of Congress. However, the progressives are being thwarted by a portion of the Democratic Party that prefers to avoid dealing with the issues that matter to progressives. What matters to these Democrats is gaining power for the Democratic Party. So, if they believe that going along with the right wing agenda on an issue is what it takes to acquire more power, that's what they'll do.

Consider the efforts of Russ Feingold, the progressive Senator from Wisconsin. In January of 2007, Senator Feingold introduced S.447, the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act to the floor of the Senate. The legislation would abolish the death penalty - something that progressives generally agree would be a good thing.

The inherent flaws of the death penalty have been firmly established. See the Death Penalty Information Center, Death Penalty Focus, and information from Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union if you're looking for details about the problems with the death penalty.

While the death penalty punishes the guilty, it has also been imposed upon many people who turned out not to be guilty of capital crimes at all. The death penalty is selected in a biased and discriminatory manner motivated by political concerns. Furthermore, the death penalty is often administered in ways that violate the guaranteed protection from the Bill of Rights against cruel and unusual punishment.

Although the case against the death penalty is clear and convincing, many leading Democratic politicians refuse to do anything about the problem. They explain that they want to look tough on crime, and don't seem to mind that looking tough requires being inhumane.

Of all the Democrats in the United States Senate, not a single one has co-sponsored the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2007. This includes the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates who are currently serving in the U.S. Senate.

Hillary Clinton does not support the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2007. Barack Obama does not support it. Christopher Dodd does not support it. Joseph Biden will not support it. These senators aren't opposing the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2007 in an active sense, but they are allowing it to die of neglect.

The failure of almost all the Democrats in the Senate to act on the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act is one more piece of proof that being a Democrat and being progressive are not the same thing. In 2008, we need to focus on electing a progressive President. Electing any old Democrat is not enough. (Source: The Library of Congress)

The hype about Iraq: "People are no longer disappearing into political prisons, torture chambers, and mass graves" - President George W. Bush

The truth about Iraq: "Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily executed every month in Baghdad alone by death squads working from the Ministry of the Interior, the United Nations' outgoing human rights chief in Iraq has revealed." - The Independent

Just over the weekend, a new Iraqi government torture chamber was found in Basra. British soldiers entered the offices of an Iraqi government intelligence agency and found 30 prisoners there, many of whom had been tortured.

George W. Bush says that his invasion and occupation of Iraq closed the torture chambers in Iraq. In fact, the new Iraqi puppet government just set up new torture chambers.

In 2008, we need to elect a progressive President, so that we can have a government devoted to stopping the torture once and for all. (Sources: International Herald Tribune, March 5, 2007; Presidential Radio Address, May 1, 2004; The Independent, February 26, 2006; Newsweek June 7, 2006)

If you still need another reason to vote progressive in 2008, consider what our current non-progressive administration is trying to do to the Supreme Court. No, I'm not talking about the way George W. Bush has packed the court with authoritarians. I'm talking about the arguments his people are making before the Supreme Court. The Bush administration has directly told the Supreme Court that it doesn't believe citizens have standing to bring constitutional challenges to it, not even regarding the most basic violations of the Bill of Rights. That's right: George W. Bush wants to put a sign on the doors of the Supreme Court: No Citizens Allowed.

In March of 2007, the New York Times reported on arguments made by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, representing the Bush Administration before the Supreme Court in the case of Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc.:

First, Mr. Clement said, taxpayers should be limited to challenging Congressional statutes, not executive branch programs like that in this suit. Second, the solicitor general argued, taxpayers should be able to challenge only spending outside the government, not internal spending like that cited by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Did that mean, Justice Antonin Scalia asked Mr. Clement, taxpayers could challenge a statute that gave money to outside groups to build churches, but not one that directed the government to build its own church?

It was a "horrible hypothetical," Mr. Clement replied, but Justice Scalia had understood him correctly: taxpayers should not have standing to challenge ¡°an internal government church."...

Mr. Clement was unruffled as the justices tossed various hypothetical questions his way. Could a taxpayer challenge a law that commemorated the Pilgrims "by building a government church at Plymouth Rock where we will have the regular worship in the Puritan religion?" Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked.

"I would say no," Mr. Clement said.

Justice Breyer persisted, asking about a law requiring the government to build churches "all over America" dedicated to one particular sect. "Nobody could challenge it?" he asked.

"There would not be taxpayer standing," Mr. Clement replied.

The arguments made by Paul Clement on the behalf of the Bush White House disregard the basic idea that the people of the United States should have the power to hold their government accountable to the law. Without the ability of citizens to sue when their constitutional rights are violated, there is no chance for a true government of the people.

Option 1: Let's just all butt out and let the political insiders do whatever they want to do.

Option 2: Let's elect a president who doesn't consider the constitutional considerations of citizens to be an impairment.

(Source: New York Times, March 1, 2007)

At this time, when so many Republicans are busy threatening attacks on the French, and executing attacks on the liberty guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, in the First Amendment to the Constitution, I think that it's appropriate to reflect back in history upon the words of the Marquis De Lafayette himself, and what he had to say about America and its liberty. The words of the Marquis: "If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy."

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice have urged President George W. Bush to shut down the beyond-the-law prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush refused to allow the closure of the Guantanamo prisons to take place.

The reason that the Guantanamo Bay prisons remain open? Bush, Cheney and Gonzales are afraid that if the prisoners currently held at Guantanamo Bay were brought to prisons in the United States, they would have to be prosecuted according to the standards of the American legal system.

In short, the President, Vice President and Attorney General of the United States are opposed to American standards of liberty and justice. They regard American freedom as a burden. The last thing we need is to elect another right wing President who has such a low opinion of the foundations of American law. (Source: CBS News, March 23, 2007)

When they were released after a few days in captivity, 15 British soldiers contradicted the televised confessions they had made while in Iranian custody. The Los Angeles Times reports that the soldiers claim to have been forced to make false confessions by the Iranians because they were "blindfolded and threatened" while held prisoner over a two-week period.

Keep in mind that the British prisoners are professional soldiers who are trained to be tough. If these professionals were forced so easily to make false confessions just by being blindfolded and talked to roughly in a brief period of imprisonment, how warped and twisted must the confessions be of prisoners who are subjected to even harsher treatment, over years of imprisonment?

The experience of the 15 British soldiers in Iran exposes the brutal folly of the American system of secret torture prisons at Guantanamo Bay and around the world. These prisons, and the testimony coerced by torture that they produce, have been made legal by the Military Commissions Act, which strips away habeas corpus, the right to a fair and speedy trial, repeals enforcement of the Geneva Conventions, and makes torture legal.

Because of the Military Commissions Act, we now are seeing people put through show trials in kangaroo courts where the proceedings are secret and confessions forced through torture are allowed as testimony. The sham trials allowed under the Military Commissions Act are really no better than the Salem Witch Trials.

The twisting of 15 British soldiers under coercive treatment much milder than the techniques used by the American government at places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib exposes the depravity of the military tribunals being conducted by the Bush Administration. Progressive recognize the disturbing connection. Right wingers pretend that it doesn't exist and continue to insist on one set of legal standards for the United States and its allies, and another legal standard for everyone else.

Please, contact your U.S. senators and your representative in the U.S. House. Urge them to co- sponsor and vote for S. 576 and H.R. 1415, the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007, which repeals most of the worst aspects of the Military Commissions Act. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle, April 7, 2007)

On March 2, 2005, 220 members of the House of Representatives (96% of them Republicans) voted to approve H.R. 27, a bill that makes it legal for religiously proselytizing organizations to take taxpayer money to support proselytizing activities, and to use those taxpayer funds to engage in hiring discrimination. H.R. 27 makes it legal, for the first time in American history, for government-funded programs to refuse to hire anyone who refuses to join a list of approved religions.

If this legislation had been passed:

- the Catholic Church would have been able to take federal government money to create missionary programs, and then refuse to employ anyone who refuses to convert to Catholicism.

- a Southern Baptist church could have set up a government-funded program in a Muslim neighborhood, then refuse to hire local workers until they agree to be baptised and renounce Islam.

- Jerry Falwell's Liberty University would have been allowed to set up a "community service" industry, using taxpayers' money to hire only conservative Christians, refusing employment to Unitarians, liberal Catholics, or secular Americans for the sole reason that these otherwise qualified people would not pledge allegiance to the religious teachings of Jerry Falwell.

- a Mormon charity group could have used government funds to set up a soup-kitchen requiring you to read Mormon religious tracts to get government-funded food, and then refuse to hire people to dole out the government-funded food to the homeless unless those people join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints first.

- a religious cult could have used this legal provision to distribute government-funded benefits to citizens and require administrative personnel to join their cult in order to keep collecting their government-funded salary. Not only does this bill violate the constitution provision against the government establishment of religion, it also violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law.

Have a religion the Bush administration favors? Congratulations! You get to establish jobs within your religious organization paid for in full by the U.S. Government! You also get to be sure that members of YOUR religion, and ONLY your religion, get government-paid jobs.

Have a religion that the Bush administration doesn't favor? You don't get the privilege of hiring religious insiders on the government dole.

Have no religion whatsoever? Sorry! You don't get to discriminate against religious people in hiring. That would be illegal and immoral. You see, it's only a good thing when religious zealots approved by the Bush administration try it.

I've been reading Gonzales v. Carhart, the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court that renders some abortions illegal, even in cases for which the abortion is necessary for the health of a pregnant woman. The finding of the court majority in this particular regard is disturbing: that since there is no consensus between warring political camps about whether abortions may be necessary to preserve the health of a woman, it will be assumed for purposes of law that no such cases exist.

Women who wish to obtain these abortions for the sake of their health will now have to go to court sue to prove that their health is threatened. The government has declared it has the right to presume the health status of a woman, and women and their doctors are subject to those presumptions unless they can prove otherwise. So much for the presumption that a woman and her doctor are primarily responsible for determining when her health is threatened.

This movement toward authoritarian Big Daddy Government is brought to you by the people who voted for George W. Bush in 2004. In 2008, a corrective away from presumptions in favor of authority and toward presumptions in favor of liberty and bodily autonomy is called for. That means it's time to vote progressive for President. (Source: Supreme Court decision, Gonzales v. Carhart)

In this morning's USA Today newspaper, reporter Richard Willing describes how the Bush Administration has been hiring private companies to handle the work traditionally done by government spies. The full extent of the infiltration of government spy networks by private commercial organizations is unknown, and Bush Administration officials are refusing to allow the American people to know the full extent of what's really going on.

Willing writes that Ron Sanders, the human capital director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "would not say how many private intelligence workers are under contract to government agencies, saying that would compromise security." Mr. Sanders has it backwards. It is the secrecy about corporate spy mercenaries for the US government that threatens the security of the American people. (Source: USA Today, April 26, 2007)

George W. Bush says that he needed to escalate the military occupation of Iraq with a "surge" of American soldiers sent to the country in order to establish a free and secure Iraq. However, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, the escalation has promoted neither freedom nor security. Instead, the UN reports that the escalation has been founded upon methods that abuse the rights of Iraqis even as they fail to stop the violence there.

The Iraqi government which is sponsored by and working in coordination with the American military has instituted regulations that allow people to be put in prison without arrest warrants, without trial, and without any limitation on the length of time such imprisonments can last. So, the government that American soldiers are fighting and killing to defend has become one that grabs people off the street and throws them into prison cells without any guarantees that they will be allowed any legal rights. Even those prisoners who are given a trial are subjected to a system that the United Nations says "consistently failed to meet minimum fair trial standards."

At the same time, the Iraqi government is not even bothering to check that the people it takes prisoner are protected from torture and other abuses. Iraqi police and soldiers who are suspected of torturing and abusing prisoners are not being prosecuted.

The UN report explains, "The continuing failure to take decisive action in this regard can only serve to encourage a climate of impunity that prevails today, undermining the government s own efforts to restore law and order and ensure respect for the rule of law." (Source: New York Times, April 26, 2007)

The consequences of the stacking of the Supreme Court of the United States with right wing judges became apparent in the spring of 2007, when the court refused to consider the cases of prisoners of war who are being put on trial in a frightening new system of kangaroo courts. These courts have a new kind of trial, authorized by the Military Commissions Act, that replaces ordinary standards of justice with the kind of absurd Orwellian tactics we would expect from nations ruled by dictators.

Hearsay evidence and evidence obtained through torture are admissable. Defendants do not have full legal representation. The representative that defendants do have are not allowed to be present at the trial at all time, and neither is the defendant, who is not even allowed to examine, much less refute, all the evidence against himself. This comes after the defendant has been imprisoned as a criminal, but without habeas corpus rights, and so without adequate ability to gather relevant witnesses and other forms of evidence for his defense. Defendants are now put through their trial with the presumption that they are guilty, not with a presumption of innocence.

In short, the new system of trials allowed under the Military Commissions Act rips the justice out of the American courtroom. These trials betray the Constitution, and the liberty that is the core of our democracy. Worse than that, the Military Commissions Act that establishes these outrageous trials undoes the system of common law that was established hundreds of years before the United States, but was protected by the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights, which reads, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

If ever there was a law that needs to be reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States, it is the Military Commissions Act. The Military Commissions Act is killing American freedom, and replacing the rule of law with lawless rule by the powerful.

However, the Supreme Court decided not to consider the law. The majority of justices on the court declared that they just aren't interested in dealing with the most serious threats to the legal foundations of American liberty in more than a generation. Not at this time. Maybe later. Someday. Perhaps.

Only three justices, Stephen Breyer, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, voted in favor of considering the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act. If they had had two more votes, they would have been in the majority. Those two votes would have been supplied if we had elected a progressive President in 2004.

For the sake of our freedom, we must not repeat the mistake of 2004 in 2008. (Source: Christian Science Monitor, May 1, 2007)

It's important for for our nation to embrace anti-authoritarian priorities, starting right up at the top of the chain of authority in the Oval Office. This is because a lot of people will follow the president's lead, and when the White House starts mouthing off about how people need to "watch what they say, watch what they do," others will follow the White House's lead.

Take, for instance, the following instance from the year 2003:

A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.

According to the criminal complaint filed on Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall," said Downs.

When Downs refused the security officers' orders, police from the town of Guilderland were called and he was arrested and taken away in handcuffs, charged with trespassing Òin that he knowingly enter(ed) or remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises," the complaint read.

This incident didn't happen in isolation. It happened as a reaction to the federal message that dissent was no longer considered appropriate. The incident in turn sparked others. Reacting to the arrest, Southpoint Mall in North Carolina reiterated its no-peace-messages-in-our-mall policy, only backing down when angered individuals gathered at the mall in large numbers to wear their shirts in a particularly assertive fashion. In North Carolina, it took a group to push back and reassert the right for people to wear shirts with dissenting messages in public places.

On a national scale, it would be great to have a broad social movement to reassert the centrality of dissent in our politics. But, barring that, we sure could use a presidential shepherd to set an example for various localities' more fascist breeds of sheep. I know that's contradictory in a way, but as we allow ourselves to be silently herded hither and thither by our national government, we sure could use a change in government to give us a nudge back toward free expression. (Source: Reuters, March 4, 2003)

The Bush administration's drive for secrecy is so out of control that in 2003 a report on a meeting of microbiologists about the need for scientific openness was be classified as secret. Now openness is a secret, too. (Source: Scientific American, August 2003)

The American people got pretty upset about the Total Information Awareness project, and rightly so. They complained to their members of Congress, and pretty soon the project got shut down - or so everybody thought. With a few minor changes, Total Information Awareness was resurrected under a new name, and has been in development ever since.

In mid-2005, we learned that one component of the larger Total Information Awareness agenda has so grossly violated the privacy of American citizens that Government Accountability Office has sent special communications to the Transportation Security Administration within the Department of Homeland Security to deal with the issues.

What are these privacy violations? Well, I don't really know. That's because the Government Accountability Office refuses to tell anyone anything specific outside the Bush Administration about the violations. However, the violations apparently have something to do with the Department of Homeland Security going far beyond authorized parameters for searching through American citizens' airline flight records and private financial information. So, the Transportation Security Administration is charged with not disclosing its searches of private information, and the Government Accountability Office will not disclose what the Transportation Security Administration did not disclose. The irony smells like last week's goulash.

Essentially, it appears that the Department of Homeland Security took airline databases of information about where and when Americans have been travelling, and combined them with databases from banks, home mortgage providers, and credit card companies. The result was to create a single gigantic database that contained information about Americans' private movements and financial transactions, easily available within a few keystrokes to Homeland Security agents and politicians within the Republican government.

Hm. A gigantic government database containing information about Americans' private lives, including where they go and what they buyÉ that sounds an awful lot like Total Information Awareness. Now that I know that database exists, I want to know just what the Bush Administration has been doing with the information it contains. Who has access to the files created on American citizens' private lives? What are the plans for expanding the database?

The Bush Administration is refusing to provide answers to questions like these. They say the information is classified. The Bush Administration says that Total Information Awareness in its new and old incarnations is justified by the need for Homeland Security. The phrase "Homeland Security", of course, does not appear once in the United States Constitution.

What does the United States Constitution have to say about searches of private information? The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution, passed as part of the Bill of Rights, reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

It seems that the Bush Administration thinks that Total Information Awareness is more important than the Bill of Rights. The new incarnation of the Total Information Awareness database is not based on probable cause, and operates without search warrants. A point, and a click, and the personal activity of millions of Americans is now an open book to the information. I call that an unreasonable search.

Consider these two statements by President George W. Bush, in light of recent news:

"One year later, despite many challenges, life for the Iraqi people is a world away from the cruelty and corruption of Saddam's regime. At the most basic level of justice, people are no longer disappearing into political prisons, torture chambers, and mass graves -- because the former dictator is in prison, himself. And their daily life is improving." - May 1, 2004

"Thanks to our military, the torture chambers are closed, and the prison cells for children are empty." - November 24, 2003

Over three years have passed since President Bush made these statements, and year after year, it has become more clear that these statements were completely off the mark.

The Independent reports that as many as 60 prisoners at the American gulags built at Guantanamo Bay were sent there by the USA as children as young as 14 years old. CNN reports that yet another torture chamber was discovered in Iraq, run by Shiites. The Shiites are aligned with the American-installed Iraqi government.

When President Bush told us that torture chambers and prisons for children were being closed, he wasn't being straight with us. While some torture chambers and prisons for children were closed, new ones were opened up.

Osama Bin Laden can't be blamed for these new torture chambers and child prisoners. Neither can Saddam Hussein, who was hung by a noose so hard that his head was nearly ripped off. (Sources: The Independent, May 28, 2007; CNN, May 6, 2007)

George W. Bush and his right wing allies follow a faith-based politics here in the United States, using the power of government to grant privileges to right wing religion in general, and Christianity in particular. Perhaps it should not be so surprising, then, that the Bush Administration has used the military in order to create and defend a new Iraqi government with the same theocratic values.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an official body within the US federal government, has determined that the Iraqi government should be placed on a list of governments that violate the religious freedom of their citizens. The widespread violent persecution of people, based on their religious identity, by the government and militias that operate with "government complicity", was cited by the commission. The only reason that the commission did not recommend that Iraq be placed on a list of nations of particular concern is that Republican appointees to the commission blocked the designation.

The promotion of this religiously-abusive Iraqi government is the benefit that pro-war right wingers promise as a victory for the United States. In 2008, we need to elect a President who understands that putting such a government in power is a victory for no one but the power-hungry theocrats themselves. (Source: Washington Post, May 3, 2007)

On the campaign trail earlier this year, Mitt Romney made the remark that "We need to have a person of faith lead the country."

Article Six of the United States Constitution states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

The constitutionally-mandated oath of office requires that the president make the following pledge: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

When a mainstream Republican politician makes a stand against the United States Constitution while running for the job of defending the United States Constitution, it's time to wade out of the Republican mainstream and find an alternative more respectful of our nation's founding compact. This is another reason to vote a progressive president into office in 2008. (Source: The Sunday Times, May 13 2007)

In the summer of 2005, New York City police went out onto the streets and began stopping law-abiding citizens to search their bags on the subway - even though there wass not any credible evidence of a terrorist threat or other criminal conspiracy against the New York City subway. During this massive, unprovoked search and seizure operation, five British tourists of South Asian descent were detained for by New York City policemen.

Why were these five tourists detained? Well, someone reported that they had knapsacks. Oh, and that they looked shifty. Oh, and that they had brown skin.

I will admit that it is true that these five tourists did have brown skin. I cannot confirm whether or not they looked shifty. However, I can say for certain that the five tourists did not have any knapsacks. None, not that it matters. What kind of country has America become that carrying a backpack is considered a crime?

Under George W. Bush, the American government has worked to whip citizens into an anti-terrorist panic. That's an effective means of preserving political power, but it has consequences. The consequences are paid by innocent people who get arrested for nothing more than being of the wrong ethnic background, or carrying a backpack. We ought to be ashamed that we have sunk so low - but our leaders insist on forging ahead with the same policies of panic that caused these travesties of justice.

Vice President Dick Cheney has claimed that he has the unlimited power to punish people who disagree with him and the political agenda of the Bush White House.

Justifying Dick Cheney's involvement in the purposeful revelation of Valerie Plame's identity as an undercover agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, Cheney and his lawyers are claiming that, because Cheney is Vice President, he cannot be stopped from doing anything to punish someone for political dissent. They're arguing that Cheney even has the right to break the law and endanger the lives of political dissidents.

In the courtroom in which Valerie Plame is filing suit against Dick Cheney, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked Dick Cheney's lawyers the following question about Cheney's direction to officials to reveal Valerie Plame's undercover identity to reporters, who would in turn make that identity publicly known: "You're arguing there is nothing, absolutely nothing, these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment..."

A lawyer representing Dick Cheney responded, "That's true, Your Honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy. These officials were responding to that criticism."

There you have it: Dick Cheney believes that, as Vice President, he has the power to do anything in response someone who criticizes him, even purposefully placing the critic's family members into lethally dangerous situations in order to intimidate the critic into silence and deter further criticism. That's the crux of the legal defense Dick Cheney and his lawyers have created for themselves.

That's not just a legally outrageous claim. It is a betrayal of American democracy. Dick Cheney has declared that he has the power to break the law in order to quash political dissent.

That is the power of a dictator, not a Vice President.

In 2008, we must elect a new President who will choose as Vice President someone who values the Constitution, and does not believe that he is a force above the law. (Source: Washington Post, May 18, 2007)

The gulag at Guantanamo Bay has become so transparently outrageous that the only defense that the Bush Administration has left for keeping its illegal Guantanamo Bay torture camps open is to get whiny.

John Bellinger, a legal aide to the State Department, recently tried to defend keeping the secretive detention camps at Guantanamo Bay open by whining that there are "no easy alternatives", and the Bush White House just can't figure out how it could ever shut the system down. "I am sure that there are many things we would have done differently in looking back, but people captured in Afghanistan would have to have been held somewhere," he said.

Here's an idea that has occurred to a lot of people, but never seems to have come into Mr. Bellinger's mind: The United States could just follow the law.

If there is solid, legal evidence that the prisoners committed crimes, then put them in prison in the United States and put them on trial. If some of the prisoners were captured on the battlefield, put them in proper prisoner of war camps that meet the standards of American and international law, including the Geneva Conventions. (Of course, prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are not, as Bellinger suggests, just from Afghanistan. They've been captured in Iraq, and snatched from many other places around the world as well.) If they are neither suspected of a crime, and were not captured on a battlefield, then let them go.

John Bellinger whines again about this possibility. He says some of the prisoners' home countries won't accept them back, or won't guarantee that the prisoners won't be abused in violation of international law. So, Bellinger suggests, they need to be kept in abusive conditions that violate international law in Guantanamo Bay. Once again, there's an easy solution. If there is no evidence that these prisoners committed any crime, and they were not captured while fighting against the USA on a battlefield, and they've been imprisoned and tortured by the United States for years, then they seem to have earned the right to become American citizens. If no other country will accept them, the United States should.

The Bush Administration should stop its whining about how hard it is to close the Guantanamo Bay prisons, and just do it. In the space of a month, all the prisoners could be cleared from the place. But, the Bush Administration won't do that, because they're hoping that another right wing President will be elected to succeed George W. Bush. They're hoping that the next President will continue the outrages of Guantanamo Bay. Let's elect a progressive instead, and deny them their wish. (Source: Earth Times, June 7, 2007)

To consider the dangers that obsession with security from outsiders can lead to, remember Jean Charles de Menezes. Jean Charles de Menezes was a Brazilian who was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder by an anti-terrorist squad in London. Was de Menezes a terrorist? No. He was just an ordinary guy on the street who had done nothing wrong. He was only running to catch a train, but that was enough for police to shoot him dead in his tracks.

Original police reports claimed that Jean Charles de Menezes was wearing a bulky heavy coat on a hot summer day, a coat that could have hidden a bomb. Actually, in spite of heated news reports, that day in London was not really hot. It was only 70 degrees out. But, this morning, we learn that Jean Charles de Menezes was not wearing a bulky coat when he was shot by police. He was wearing a relatively thin jeans jacket. His family has shown to police that Jean Charles de Menezes did not even own a bulky coat of the kind he was accused of wearing.

British police and the mainstream media reported as fact that Jean Charles de Menezes jumped a ticket turnstyle after being told to stop and stand still by police. Later, the world learned we learn that there actually never was any evidence that de Menezes did so. The police just said so - like they said he was connected to the earlier bombings in the Underground. There was no evidence of any crime by de Menezes, just a load of empty assertions the police used to cover their butts after pumping seven bullets into the brain of an innocent man. The only crime of Jean Charles de Menezes is that he had brown skin.

In a nation that allows itself to become consumed by fears that terrorists might attack, the nation attacks itself, and innocent people die.

On the 21st of October, 1994 the United States of America officially ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The Congress passed legislation to ratify it, and the President of the United States signed that ratification into law.

Article VI, section 2 of the Constitution of the United States of America reads, "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." That means that treaties ratified by the Congress and signed by the President have the force of law within the United States. The Convention Against Torture is not just international law. It is also United States law.

Article 2 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture reads, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture."

President George W. Bush has used a state of war and the threat of public emergency as a justification for torture - and not just the idea of torture. Under the direction of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, prison systems have been set up that include the torture of prisoners. Bush and Cheney justified the Military Commissions Act, which authorized torture, by issuing a release stating, "Information we have learned from the program has helped save lives at home and abroad." Later, George W. Bush said of the Military Commissions Act, "Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes Al-Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in attacking the American Homeland again."

In taking this action, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have violated the law - and not just some petty misdemeanor. They have violated the law of the land. They have committed a high crime, and they ought to be impeached for it.

Unfortunately, the Democrats in Congress don't have the backbone to play their constitutional role in holding the President and Vice President accountable to the law. The Democrats are refusing to impeach George W. Bush.

Nonetheless, the violation of the Convention Against Torture by Bush and Cheney, and the disastrous consequences of that violation for the reputation of the United of America, provide us an important lesson for the presidential election of 2008. This time around, we must be sure that we choose a President who will follow the law, and uphold the Convention Against Torture. (Sources: Constitution of the United States of America; Center for Victims of Torture; Office of the United Nations High Commissionser for Human Rights; White House Press Release, September 28, 2006; White House Fact Sheet, October 17, 2006)

Talk to anyone who has tried to get a passport recently, and you'll most likely get stories about prolonged delays and broken promises. The Department of Homeland Security, worried that terrorists are going to come and try to kill us all from Canada, are requiring that anyone travelling to the United States from Canada, including American citizens, must have a passport.

So, legitimate travellers who want nothing more than to go north of the border to visit Toronto, Quebec, Vancouver and the like are seeking passports in record numbers. Wouldn't you know it, the geniuses of Homeland Security never anticipated that, and so passports are taking months and months to process. People are having to cancel business trips and personal vacations because of the paranoia of the Homleand Security regime.

With all this trouble, is it all doing any good? Not really. The border with Canada is, in spite of the passport requirement, wide open in most places. The border stretches, free and open, with roads going unrestricted between Canada and the USA, for hundreds and hundreds of miles. A person can drive from one country to another no questions asked. If a person wanted to evade possible passport check roadblocks, they could just walk through a few farmers' fields.

Peaceful citizens are being trapped at home by a Homeland Security bureacracy that doesn't work, in order to enforce a plan that wouldn't keep terrorists from crossing the Canadian border with impunity anyway, if there are any terrorists actually planning to do so.

Right wingers say that our survival depends upon such outlandish, unnecessary, and unworkable schemes as the new passport requirement. Progressives recognize this debacle as a case of an obsession with security that's gone far beyond reasonable reaction to any real threat. When freedom of travel of restricted, it's a sign that other freedoms are in danger too. (Source: USA Today, June 18, 2007)

Ron Paul, as a libertarian, claims to value liberty and to be dedicated to the protection of the liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. In truth, however, Congressman Paul has worked to devalue the liberty guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights.

Ron Paul has worked to hobble the freedom of religion, claiming that there should be no separation of Church and State in American government. In a speech in 2002 explaining his introduction of legislation that would forbid American federal district courts and federal claims courts from hearing cases in which citizens claim to have had their religious freedom violated, Representative Paul complained,

"In case after case, the Supreme Court has used the infamous 'Separation of Church and State' metaphor to uphold court decisions that allow the federal government to intrude upon and deprive citizens of their religious liberty."

Ron Paul further complained in that speech that the government ought not to be blocked from establishing official prayers in schools and at public events, and promoting the Old Testament as the source of American law in courthouses through the exclusive display of the Ten Commandments. In doing so, Ron Paul sided with radical right wing Christian zealots who seek theocracy, like Judge Roy Moore from Alabama.

Ron Paul's legislation, if enacted, would have enabled a two-class system of rights in America, with members of majority religious groups able to establish special rights to enforce their beliefs through the power of government institutions, and others unable to protect their right to not participate in the majority's religious rituals through the constitutionally-guaranteed access to the courts.

The separation of Church and State is not, as Ron Paul claims, infamous. It is celebrated by those who truly cherish liberty. The separation of Church and State has been invaluable in protecting the citizens of the United States of America from the establishment of a tyrannical theocracy of the sort envisioned by many of Ron Paul's Republican political allies. (Source: Congressional Record, June 13, 2002)

One of the most dangerous aspects of right wing ideology is that it perceives freedom as a liability, a risky vulnerability that makes American citizens insecure. This idea was recently expressed by a member of the Homeland Analysis Group, a company that profits from the massive Homeland Security bureaucracy that has sprung up in recent years to take advantage of the irrational fear of terrorists. This person commented after one of our articles, "I think your brainpower could be put to even better use if you were helping us all figure out how to defeat the Islamic Terrorists of the world, while realizing how and why they use our own liberties against us as they plot to kill innocent people, day after day."

That comment is flattering, and yet, unnerving. It bothers me, this claim that American liberty is a tool to be used by terrorists to kill innocent people.

The plain fact is that no terrorist has ever killed anybody with liberty. They've used bombs to kill people. They've used guns. They've even used airplanes. But liberty?

How do you kill someone with freedom of speech or freedom of the press? How do you kill someone with separation of church and state or the right to a fair trial? What is the exact method for killing an innocent person with protection against unreasonable search and seizure and the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment?

It can't be done. Liberty doesn't kill. Weapons kill.

Liberty is not a liability. Liberty is what protects us. As the bloody mess in Iraq proves, even hundreds of thousands of soldiers marching through the streets and patrolling the air cannot protect people from suicide bombers. True liberty can.

If you vote for a right wing politician who views liberty as a vulnerability, then you will help make yourself vulnerable to unscrupulous politicians. If you vote for a progressive who believes in strengthening the security that liberty provides, you will be less vulnerable to unscrupulous politicians and terrorists alike.

Be free and secure. Vote to elect a progressive President in 2008.

Article VI, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

George W. Bush, June, 2005: "We need commonsense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. Those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench."

I know which vision of freedom I prefer.

One of the best reasons to choose a progressive candidate over a right wing candidate for President is that right wingers have a profound misunderstanding of the Constitution of the United States Constitution. It's the sworn duty of the President to uphold and defend the Constitution, so the right wing's inability to understand the concepts of the Constitution makes their politicians profoundly unsuited for the presidency.

Take Ron Paul as an example. Yes, Ron Paul. Take away Congressman Paul's opposition to the Iraq War, and he's exposed as just another right wing kook.

Ron Paul plays fast and loose with the facts when it comes to the Constitution. Consider the claims Paul makes in the following passage from his web site, for example, as he seeks to justify his attempt to undo Americans' reproductive rights:

"The right of an innocent, unborn child to life is at the heart of the American ideals of liberty. My professional and legislative record demonstrates my strong commitment to this pro-life principle.

In 40 years of medical practice, I never once considered performing an abortion, nor did I ever find abortion necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman.

In Congress, I have authored legislation that seeks to define life as beginning at conception, HR 1094.

I am also the prime sponsor of HR 300, which would negate the effect of Roe v Wade by removing the ability of federal courts to interfere with state legislation to protect life. This is a practical, direct approach to ending federal court tyranny which threatens our constitutional republic and has caused the deaths of 45 million of the unborn."

The right of an innocent, unborn child to life is at the heart of the American ideals of liberty? Really? Actually, no, not really.

The heart of the American ideals of liberty is the Constitution of the United States of America. Though some American legal rights, such as habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence, were established in English common law before American Constitution was written, it's the Constitution that defines what liberty in America is. Other documents, such as the Declaration of Independence or Thomas Paine's Common Sense, are merely political speeches with no legal authority. The Articles of Confederation were overruled. If you want to understand the American tradition of liberty, you look at the Constitution.

The concept of the right of an unborn child to life is found absolutely nowhere in the Constitution of the United States of America.

Even if you search the Library of Congress Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, for any reference to "child", all you'll find is a reference to Francis Childs, a printer at the time. Search for the words "unborn", "birth", "mother" or "family", and you'll come up with nothing at all. These words aren't in the Constitution either - not even in any of the amendments.

When Ron Paul says that the right of a fetus, embryo, zygote, or even fertilized egg cell to life is at the heart of American ideals of liberty, he's just plain wrong. The rights of the unborn are not even on the periphery of the Constitution.

Neither is the idea of the "federal court tyranny" at all relevant to the Constitution. When Ron Paul complains about "federal court tyranny" coming from federal court judges overruling state laws, he is suggesting that the Constitution of the United States of America is a source of tyranny. After all, Article III, section 2 of the Constitution states:

"The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers, and Consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more States, between a State and citizen of another State, between citizens of different States, between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of different States, and between a State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign States, citizens or subjects."

The Constitution was written so that there would be a balance of power, not just within the federal government, but between the federal government and state governments. Article III, section 2 of the Constitution protects against tyranny on the part of state governments, ensuring that the courts have the power to protect liberty throughout the entire nation. Ron Paul is seeking to take away that protection.

As Ron Paul's sloppy considerations of American liberty in his discussion of the supposed legal rights of zygotes shows, he just doesn't understand the Constitution. Whether you believe that abortion is a good idea or not, Ron Paul's ignorance of the foundation of American liberty ought to be cause for concern.

The consequences of having a right wing President are felt dramatically in the courts, as became painfully clear in June, 2007, when the right wing majority of the Supreme Court made a series of decisions that selectively devalued the First Amendment. In two of those decisions, the right wing justices on the Supreme Court decided that corporations have more of a right to free speech than high school students.

In one case, Morse et al. v. Frederick, dealing with the free speech rights of American high school students, Chief Justice John Roberts declared, "the constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings."

However, when it came to the idea of the free speech of corporations, Chief Justice Roberts had another standard, writing, "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

Although he stated that the status of an American citizen as a student in a high school deprives them of their constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech, Justice Roberts was unwilling to accept a similar restriction in the case of corporations. In his opinion on the second case, Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Incorporated, Justice Roberts wrote, "the corporate identity of a speaker does not strip corporations of all free speech rights."

Justice Roberts worries little about the educational and civic impact of high schools that censor open speech on public issues. However, he quavers at the prospect of any censorship of corporations, quoting the majority opinion in the case Thornhill v. Alabama, "Freedom of discussion, if it would fulfill its historic function in this nation, must embrace all issues about which information is needed or appropriate to enable the members of society to cope with the exigencies of their period." Apparently, Justice Roberts believes that it is more important that corporations be able to speak on "on all issues about which information is needed or appropriate" than it is for students to do so.

The progressive minority on the Supreme Court sees things differently. The progressive justices of the Supreme Court are concerned that a school environment in which students are not free to fully discuss ideas will result in a stunted, restricted education. One of the Supreme Court progressives, Justice Stevens, writes in his opinion on Morse et al. v. Frederick, "Even in high school, a rule that permits only one point of view to be expressed is less likely to produce correct answers than the open discussion of countervailing views."

As we consider which candidate for President of the United States to support in 2008, we need to remember that the President has the power to appoint justices to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts was appointed by President George W. Bush. If we elect another right wing President, the right wing hold on the Supreme Court will strengthen, and we will see even more extreme interpretations of the Constitution, holding that yet more categories of American citizens have fewer rights than American corporations. (Sources: Slip Opinion, Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Incorporated; Slip Opinion, Morse et al. v. Frederick)

Back in 2005, H.R. 952 was introduced to the floor of the House of Representatives. H.R. 952 was written simply and exactly to end the Bush administration's practice of "extraordinary rendition," in which people are sent abroad by the American government to be tortured by other governments. The bill never passed. Heck, it never even came to a full vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. Why? Members of Congress were thinking more about how to be "electable" than how to fulfill their oath of office, to uphold the Constitution. (Source: Library of Congress)

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul doesn't seem to be able to speak about freedom without getting silly. The Ron Paul for President campaign is riddled with half-baked claims about the supposed foundations of American liberty. Here's one example, from the section on property rights on Ron Paul's campaign web site:

"Property rights are the foundation of all rights in a free society. Without the right to own a printing press, for example, freedom of the press becomes meaningless."

At a superficial glance, this seems like a profound observation about the nature of freedom in American society. Once a person stops to think about what Ron Paul is really saying, however, it starts to look more and more silly.

Is it true that without the right to own a printing press, freedom of the press becomes meaningless? Of course not. It becomes more difficult, but not meaningless. First of all, a printing press is only one way to release the news. Secondly, a person doesn't have to themselves own the means of printing in order to publish.

I'm not arguing that people should not be allowed to own printing presses, or other means of publication or broadcast, but Ron Paul's statement is a bit of an exaggeration and a dramatic oversimplification. There's a lot more to freedom of the press than the right to own a printing press, but Ron Paul doesn't seem to consider that.

What about other rights guaranteed to Americans by the Constitution? Is property rights really the foundation of them all, as Ron Paul claims?

I have a difficult time seeing how property rights are the foundation of the right to peaceably assemble, or petition the government. Freedom of speech is not dependent upon property rights either, as a person is remains capable of speaking even if that person owns absolutely nothing. What about the right to due process of law, or the right to a trial by jury? Those don't have anything to do with property rights.

The right to confront witnesses, or the right to have a speedy trial, or the right to vote at age 18, don't have a clear foundation in property rights either.

Some constitutional rights, like the right of protection from unreasonable search and seizure, are clearly connected to property rights. Many other constitutional rights, however, have nothing at all to do with property rights.

When Ron Paul says that "Property rights are the foundation of all rights in a free society", he's just plain wrong... unless Ron Paul doesn't think that people ought to have legal rights unless they own property... or unless Ron Paul thinks that the United States is not a free society.

Whichever the case, Ron Paul seems profoundly out of touch with the constitutional foundations of liberty in the United States. Given that the President of the United States swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, Ron Paul seems like a downright rotten choice to become President of the United States in 2008. (Source: RonPaul2008.com)

You know, Bill Clinton was hardly a die-hard progressive president, but at least he understood why progressives place an emphasis on the separation of the passage of laws in the congress, the enactment of laws by the executive, and the enforcement of laws by the judiciary. Three separate and equal branches each interact with the law in their own way to prevent the law from being manipulated for any one person's or institution's gain. One area of overlap between the branches exists in the Department of Justice, which sits in the executive branch yet handles prosecutions of federal crimes in the courts. To preserve the independence of criminal prosecutions and keep political considerations from steering the path to imprisonment, Bill Clinton restricted the discussion of federal cases between the White House and the Justice Department to 2 liaisons in Justice and 4 in the White House. This system worked so well that Clinton managed to get impeached thanks to the activities of an independent counsel working in his own Justice Department!

Under the Bush administration, however, the independence of the Justice Department's prosecutions from White House politics disappeared as links between the two proliferated. Within a year of Bush taking office, 417 White House staff members and 42 Justice Department employees were involved in discussions of federal prosecutions, ensuring that the hammer of federal justice would strike to the partisan rhythm of the Bush administration. (Source: Associated Press December 20, 2007)

Ron Paul has a beautiful way of illustrating the fundamental absurdity underneath libertarian political philosophy. He makes outlandish claims about the foundations of American liberty. Those claims are easily exposed by just a quick look at the Constitution. However, Ron Paul supporters don't seem to care about that. It seems that Ron Paul is counting on the support of Americans who won't bother to read the Constitution, or to otherwise check the statements of political leaders.

I've already written about how Ron Paul plays loose with the facts when he claims that "Property rights are the foundation of all rights in a free society" and that "The right of an innocent, unborn child to life is at the heart of the American ideals of liberty." It's when these two claims are considered together that the full scale of Ron Paul's absurdity becomes clear.

If, as Ron Paul claims, property rights are the foundation of all rights in a free society, and if there is a right of zygotes, embryos and fetuses to live that is at the heart of American liberty, how do these two ideas work together?

How is an embryo's right to life based on property rights? Ron Paul said that all rights are based on property rights, after all, so there must be a connection.

Furthermore, Ron Paul has sponsored bill H.R. 1094, which defines the beginning of life, and the right to life, as at the moment of conception. So, does the fertilized egg cell itself, under Ron Paul's curious philosophy, have a legal right to live because of property rights?

What property rights does the fertilized egg cell have that give it the legal right to be protected from the Morning After Pill, RU486, or similar treatments?

The only argument that makes anything close to sense is the fertilized egg cell, and the blastula after it, and the fetus that it develops into, owns the uterus of its mother.

Even if you accept this bizarre idea, you start to get into trouble. If embryos own their mothers' bodies from the moment of conception forward, then expectant mothers have the legal status of slaves. They become human beings who do not own themselves, but are owned by other human beings.

This concept is blatantly unconstitutional. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America states, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Does Ron Paul want to repeal the Thirteenth Amendment, or make an exception to it so that "unborn children" are made the owners of their mothers? (Source: RonPaul2008.com)

Supporters of the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign go to great effort to contort the meaning of liberty into just another property right. They claim that, for example, the constitutional right of a defendant to confront prosecution witnesses is somehow just an extension of property rights. To most people, that idea is obviously silly.

Libertarians, however, claim that such freedoms are really based upon the concept of self-ownership. You own yourself, and the government doesn't, you see, and so that's why you get to confront the witnesses against you when you're accused of a crime. As earnest as this effort at mental contortion is, it still doesn't make sense to me.

Whether or not the weird loops in libertarian logic make sense to me, an equally important question is whether Ron Paul's supporters really believe in this idea that all people should have the liberty that comes with self-ownership.

Thus, we come to babies.

Ron Paul seems to have a political obsession with babies. I can understand that. Babies are wonderful things. Right now, I have a three month-old baby living in my house. He's terrific. I love babies as much as the next guy, but Ron Paul takes it further. He doesn't just love babies. He loves embryos. He loves fertilized eggs. He refers to one-cell fertilized human eggs as "unborn children", has offered up legislation to define them legally as such, and declares, "The right of an innocent, unborn child to life is at the heart of the American ideals of liberty."

Ron Paul's supporters explain that this right to life of a fertilized egg comes from the idea that, from the moment of conception, the itty bitty zygote owns itself. That zygote, Ron Paul's supporters believe, has all the rights of a full human adult. If that zygote was conceived in the United States, they believe, the zygote is entitled to, because of its self-ownership, all the liberty of an American citizen...

... unless its mother or father is not an American citizen.

This is where the self-ownership argument in favor of Ron Paul's weird ideas about the American foundation of liberty being in the right to life of a fertilized egg breaks down.

You see, even as Ron Paul argues that American liberty is founded in the rights of human life from the moment of conception, he seeks to rip away the rights of many children who were conceived and born right here in the United States of America. On his web site, Ron Paul says that if elected President, he would "End birthright citizenship. As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be citizens, the incentive to enter the U.S. illegally will remain strong."

In this act, Ron Paul is seeking to punish children for the decisions of their parents. He regards these children not as important, liberty-entitled individuals unto themselves. Rather, regards them merely as the assets of their parents, and as tools that can be used to control their parents' behavior.

Where did the libertarian ideal of self-ownership go? Apparently, Ron Paul believes that it can only be inherited from American citizens.

If Ron Paul truly believed that all human beings have inherent liberty based upon their self-ownership from the moment of conception, then he would have to conclude that all children born in the United States of America should be considered as individuals, and not as the chattel of their parents. Yet, that is not the policy that Ron Paul actually advocates. He advocates depriving these children, who have never lived anywhere else but in the United States of America, of the liberties to which they are currently entitled as American citizens. Most importantly, Ron Paul wants to take their liberty away because of who their parents are.

Ron Paul has a double standard. The babies of American citizens own themselves. The babies of immigrants, on the other hand, are the property of their parents.

This division is as illogical and unjust as the division in the early history of the United States of people into the categories of free and slave. Ron Paul's policies, following the logic of his own purported philosophy, categorize immigrants as less than human.

'There is, in this unjust double standard, a moral test for Ron Paul's libertarian supporters. Will they be true to their libertarian philosophy, and advocate for the equal inherent rights of all children, born of immigrants and citizens alike, or will they continue to support Ron Paul because they find him personally compelling? (Source: RonPaul2008.com)

When George W. Bush claimed that he was invading and occupying Iraq in order to spread democracy around the world, it was a load of bull, and reasonable people around the world could easily tell so. The invasion of Iraq by the United States has not spread democratic government as Bush predicted it would.

Unfortunately, what the invasion and occupation of Iraq did achieve was to give the cause of democracy a bad name. Bush used democracy as an excuse to wage an unprovoked and unnecessary war, and in doing so, he made it easier for other national leaders to dismiss democracy as nothing but a con.

Among those world leaders that took the cue from Bush's phony democratic posturing was Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declared after the occupation of Iraq had decayed into a chaotic mess, "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq."

We need to restore the good name of democracy, and in order to do that, America needs to elect a President in 2008 who truly respects democratic values. (Source: USA Today, June 28, 2007)

Senator Edward Kennedy skewered George W. Bush's rhetoric on surveillance without a warrant, corporations, and the value of human life in a speech to the Senate on December 17, 2007:

Think about what we've been hearing from the White House in this debate. The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. No immunity, no new FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.

People need not die if the FISA Amendments Act is not passed; all the Bush administration needs to do to wiretap anybody is to supply a court with a warrant Ñ that is, to have a good reason. But the Bush administration wants to spy on Americans when it doesn't have a reason. And of course the Bush administration prioritizes corporate interests over human lives. After all, one corporation can do so much to prop up a Republican politician, but the contributions of one person are nearly insignificant.

If that chills you, it should chill you more that Americans returned George W. Bush to office long after it became clear he held such disregard for restraints on power and such disregard for the lives of everyday Americans. (Source: Speech of Senator Edward Kennedy to the United States Senate, December 17, 2007)

Let's think about this in terms of patriotism. Freedom of information about government activities is nothing less than the freedom of the American people to participate in the democracy that was first promised to them 231 years ago.

Yet, a recent study of how the government complies with its legal obligations to inform the public of its activities finds widespread denial of service. It is not unusual for requests of public documents made according to the standards of the Freedom of Information Act to be fulfilled only ten years after they have been made. Some requests for information made two decades ago have yet to be answered.

The govern