Remember how Obama went on and on about the mosque-builders and freedom of religion, as if this had anything whatsoever to do with freedom of religion? I know, I know, how could anyone forget THAT little debacle.

But get this. Now the concern is about those of us who are speaking OUT about building the mosque near Ground Zero are inciting terrorists. Yes, if we have the audacity to be upset that Imam Rauf wants to build his cultural center and mosque at a site he picked SOLELY for its proximity to Ground Zero and as a site that was hit by part of the jet that disintegrated flying into the Twin Towers, we are empowering the terrorists.

Oh, how I wish I was making this up, but it was reported by no less than NPR in this piece by Dina Temple-Raston, “Rancor Over Mosque Could Fuel Islamic Extremists.” Oh, oh – someone didn’t get the memo that we don’t use that term anymore – “Islamic Extremists.” What, are they bigots or something? Ahem. Anyway, yes, by us utilizing our Constitutional Right Of Free Speech, we are giving ammunition to the Islamic Extremists who want to do us harm, according to this article:

Experts worry the controversy surrounding an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing right into the hands of radical extremists.

The supercharged debate over the proposed center has attracted the attention of a quiet, underground audience — young Muslims who drift in and out of jihadi chat rooms and frequent radical Islamic sites on the Web. It has become the No. 1 topic of discussion in recent days and proof positive, according to some of the posted messages, that America is indeed at war with Islam.

“This, unfortunately, is playing right into their hands,” said Evan F. Kohlmann, who tracks these kinds of websites and chat rooms for Flashpoint Global partners, a New York-based security firm. “Extremists are encouraging all this, with glee.

“It is their sense that by doing this that Americans are going to alienate American Muslims to the point where even relatively moderate Muslims are going to be pushed into joining extremist movements like al-Qaida. They couldn’t be happier.”

Ah, yes. It is all our fault that we want just a little sensitivity from this Muslim cleric. How dare we. (And if you want to read the rest of the NPR piece, click HERE.)

Hmmm – what does it say that there is a concern that even “moderate Muslims” in the US, because people are asking for sensitivity, not a pox on all things Islamic, could be coerced into acting against the country in which they live? I can’t decide if that is a backhanded slap against moderate Muslims that they could so easily be pushed, or an attempt to silence critics in general.

But here’s a little newsflash: We don’t have to do a damn thing but be Americans to incite these Islamic Extremists. I’m serious. All we have to do is be who we are, and that is sufficient. Remember the first WTC bombing in 1993? I don’t recall anyone going out of their way trash-talking Islam to incite that event. Remember 9/11? The WTC, the Pentagon, and whatever the target was of the plane that was wrested away from the terrorists and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania? Was anyone going out of their way to talk smack about Islam? No, I don’t think so. How about the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000?

If you want to get an idea of how much Islamic terrorists have wanted to attack us for a period less than a decade, click here to read a statement to the Joint Chiefs from 2002 listing the numerous terrorist attempts on the US or our territories. That is just from 2/93 – 9/01.

Unfortunately, I could go on and on and on. No amount of political correctness, or respect for Islam in general, can negate the reality that there are Islamic radicals who want to attack Americans here and abroad. And if we stop exercising our rights as American citizens to try and pacify them, to not raise their ire against us, then THEY HAVE WON.

If that is the case, then all of those who died in the attacks on the US Embassies, those 17 sailors who died on board the USS Cole, and the thousands who died on 9/11, did so in vain. And that cannot stand.

We cannot allow the threat of more violence to silence us, whatever the issue is. We cannot be coerced to give up our Constitutional rights on the possibility that our fulfillment of these same rights might feel antagonistic to those who wish us harm. We cannot stop being Americans lest we somehow, whether consciously or not, enrage a group by our sheer existence.

Can we?

*Update* Check out this interview of Andrea Mitchell and Ambassador Ahmed. Apparently, what we should be concerned about is how those of us who oppose the mosque in that location are going to impact President Obama’s desire to reach out to the Muslim World. Oh, wow…

But a warning label on the Constitution? Now that I really did not see coming:

Publishing Company Under Fire for Putting Warning Label on Constitution

A small publishing company is under fire after putting warning labels on copies of the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and other historical documents.

Wilder Publications warns readers of its reprints of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, among others, that “This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.”

The disclaimer goes on to tell parents that they “might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, says the company may be trying to ensure that oversensitive people don’t pull its works off bookstore or library shelves.

“Any idea that’s 100 years old will probably offend someone or other,” Olson told FoxNews.com. “…But if there’s anything that you ought to be able to take at a first gulp for yourself and then ask your parents if you’re wondering about this or that strange thing, it should be the founding documents of American history.”

No kidding. I am literally shaking my head at this. A warning. Wow. Yep, it’s offensive alright:

The warning seems to be offending more people than the documents themselves.

Amazon.com’s customer reviews of Wilder’s copy of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation show an overwhelming number of people speaking out against the disclaimer, describing it as “insulting,” “sickening” and “frankly, horrifying.”

Another review for Wilder’s edition of the Federalist Papers calls for an all-out boycott of the publisher, sarcastically pointing out the “dangerous ideas” it’s trying to protect children from: “limited government, checks and balances, constrained judicial review, dual sovereignty of states and federal government, and deliberative democracy.”

And though warning labels are usually posted to protect a company from potential lawsuits, constitutional attorney Noel Francisco says this disclaimer has no legal benefits.

“Would it ever be a legal concern that selling the Constitution would expose you to some kind of liability? No. Never,” Francisco told FoxNews.com. “The Constitution is the founding document of the country, an operative legal document.”

As for the idea that this warning label might help keep these works from being yanked off bookshelves, Francisco says it is more likely to have the opposite effect: people not carrying the book because it has the disclaimer.

“By putting on the warning, you’re making controversial something that’s not controversial: our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence,” he said.

Amazon customers appear to agree. Almost all of the reviews discussing the disclaimer end with the same thought: don’t buy from this publisher.

Efforts to reach the publisher were unsuccessful.

Wimps. Pick up the damn phone already and explain yourselves already. Sheesh.

Now let me say that I am all for understanding historical documents in the cultural, sociological milieu in which they were written. That informs our understanding of them, like the Bible, for instance. But a warning label on the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence?? You gotta be freakin’ kidding me. This is the very embodiment of political correctness run amuck, don’t you think?

Remember that “3:00AM” ad? Who would we want answering the phone? This woman, that’s who.

Instead we have President Obama, who has gotten his early morning call, particularly regarding Afghanistan. He’s letting it go to voice-mail. Hey, he has more important things to do, like go to Copenhagen to push for Chicago to get the Olympic Games in 2016. Yep – it’s true. He’s making a “personal” appeal – presumably on OUR dime. Oh, he can’t be bothered with what’s going on with ACORN, mind you, but he can press for Chicago to get the Olympics. So, General McChrystal, and our troops, can just wait, dammit, until Obama can get to them. (By the way, General McChrystal is holding firm on wanting those troops, despite the pressure he is under to shut up.)

Oh, and a little side note on that, the whole Chicago Olympics bid. Turns out that Fox TV in Chicago has been warned – as only they can do in Chicago – to NOT air a program they did on people in Chicago OPPOSED to having the Olympics there again. Oh, I just love this Free Speech, don’t you?

Every time I hear Secretary Clinton speak, and then President Obama, every time, I am reminded of who would have been the better choice to have at the other end of the phone line in difficult times. And it sure isn’t Obama, no matter how much he loves to hear himself talk (though largely about himself, as THIS article highlights. Almost 1,200 times in just 41 speeches, NOT including all of the speechifying he did last week. Holy SMOKES – narcissistic much?). He’s not the one I would trust to deal with the big issues. Seems like some other folks are figuring that out now, too. Too late, though, for dealing with some major issues, like Afghanistan.

If only it wasn’t our soldiers who were going to bear the brunt of that call going to voice-mail…

What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration’s bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama’s declining national support.

…As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration’s strategic missteps this year. … from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama’s plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

Due respect to Ms. Paglia, she might ask herself why she bought into any of this before the election. We did not. Their disastrous spending plans: using the cover of the economic crisis to push through pet projects under the phony label of stimulus, offering bailouts of Wall St., not Main Street. People are without jobs, losing their homes and they are playing games with our money? Most readers at NQ sensed where Obama’s allegiance would be 18 months ago. I find precious little satisfaction in yet another prominent Obama supporter expressing disgust. The stakes are too high and we are now stuck.

I am grateful, however, that a respected voice is calling the arrogant Dem leadership out on its despicable characterizations of American citizens, who are rightfully outraged at this mess:

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis.

Pelosi needs to lose her seat for that one. Disgraceful.

Paglia seems to think Obama might turn it around with a great speech, but wonders if too much damage has already been done. She has written the Dems off is 2012, unless Republicans nominate someone dead from the neck up – entirely possible. Paglia says she “has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go”:

…Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster — as witness the middle-of-the-night bum’s rush given to “green jobs” czar Van Jones last week — but there’s a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president’s innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to “help” the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators?

Ms. Paglia still betrays a trusting naiveté here, thinking that Democrats were too insulated to know the protests were genuine. Not so. The Obama Administration simply continued the same techniques of the Obama campaign – demonize any opponents in order to silence them. She acknowledges that network and cable TV are not the central forums for debate any longer. They just play out more junk politics, backing their respective brands. Ms. Paglia notes…

…the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. …[O]n talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco … I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

While she concludes her column giving the Republicans some well deserved slaps as well (and I encourage you to read the rest of her piece for yourself), most of it is devoted to pointing out Democratic Party arrogance. This is what the Clinton wing of the party, cruelly cast aside along with Hillary after the primaries, have noted as well. Ms. Paglia asks questions many here would find familiar:

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. …Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible.

If any of Obama’s supporters had been capable of critical thought last year, they would have seen through his ridiculous promises and contradictory policy statements and had the sense to turn away. As this article is a prelude to President Obama’s big speech on healthcare this evening, Ms. Paglia’s next comments reveal the shortcomings of a compliant media and congress…

Throughout this fractious summer, I was dismayed not just at the self-defeating silence of Democrats at the gaping holes or evasions in the healthcare bills but also at the fogginess or insipidity of articles and Op-Eds about the controversy emanating from liberal mainstream media and Web sources. By a proportion of something like 10-to-1, negative articles by conservatives were vastly more detailed, specific and practical about the proposals than were supportive articles by Democrats, which often made gestures rather than arguments and brimmed with emotion and sneers. There was a glaring inability in most Democratic commentary to think ahead and forecast what would or could be the actual snarled consequences — in terms of delays, denial of services, errors, miscommunications and gross invasions of privacy — of a massive single-payer overhaul of the healthcare system in a nation as large and populous as ours. It was as if Democrats live in a utopian dream world, divorced from the daily demands and realities of organization and management.

Yes, the party in power does seem oddly divorced from reality as if wishing at the foot of President Obama’s HOPE poster would make their rosy predictions about the effects of their reckless leglislation come true. This past week, other columnists have pointed out that dissent and disagreement are a value to any President. Blank stares and idol worship will not make this Administration better. For the sake of our country, it would be refreshing change indeed if someone in the White House showed actual concern for the needs of Americans and went back to doing the people’s business. I think that may only happen if left, right and center keep speaking out and keep the pressure on. Only fear of the voters might have any effect whatsoever. And I’m not even sure of that.

Ms. Paglia, for one, worries it’s too late for Obama to turn it around…

And if you go to the website for HCAN, check out their “Mobilization” section. It’s an eye-opener, especially in light of the charges hurled at those with questions about Health Care Reform.

Now, why do I bring this up? Don’t they have every right to be present at these meetings? Of course they do, if it is THEIR representative’s meeting. And if they want to make sure their side of the issue s represented. But to silence other people who are not there to disrupt the meeting, and who simply want to ask questions? Well, seems to me that they are doing what Rep. Pelosi accused others of doing in this clip:

And we cannot forget this one, too:

This is our Speaker of the House, the third in succession to the Presidency. Holy canoli. That is scary. One of the top Democrats who don’t understand what it means to live in a democracy. Yikes. I wonder what she will say about the practices of HCAN to drown out anyone who tries to ask a question of their elected official? Yeah, I think we know.

Well, at least ONE person in government has it right:

True that, at least last time I checked, though the way this Congress is going, who knows for how long that might be true?

And it is no surprise that Hillary Clinton is the one saying it. Clinton is most definitely a true patriot, and appreciates the rights and liberties with which we are endowed. It’s a shame too many Democrats have forgotten that…

The title of this CBS News article gives a good indication of just ONE of the issues about which we should be concerned, Democratic Health Care Bill Divulges IRS Tax Data. Yep. Sets the stage for what we can expect from this Congress, doesn’t it?

Let’s just see what our elected officials are trying to pull over on us, the ones who swore to uphold the Constitution, and to act as our representatives. There are some real doozies :

One of the problems with any proposed law that’s over 1,000 pages long and constantly changing is that much deviltry can lie in the details. Take the Democrats’ proposal to rewrite health care policy, better known as H.R. 3200 or by opponents as “Obamacare.” (Here’s our CBS News television coverage.)

Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and “other information as is prescribed by” regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for “affordability credits.”

Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details — there’s no specified limit on what’s available or unavailable — to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose, again, is to verify “affordability credits.”

Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a “low-income prescription drug subsidy” but has not applied for it.

Wow. I trust you see what the glaring issue is right off the bat with this, right? Consider this:

Over at the Institute for Policy Innovation (a free-market think tank and presumably no fan of Obamacare), Tom Giovanetti argues that: “How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your records? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest and most malcontented federal employee…. So say good-bye to privacy from the federal government. It was fun while it lasted for 233 years.”

I’m not as certain as Giovanetti that this represents privacy’s Armageddon. (Though I do wonder where the usual suspects like the Electronic Privacy Information Center are. Presumably inserting limits on information that can be disclosed — and adding strict penalties on misuse of the information kept on file about hundreds of millions of Americans — is at least as important as fretting about Facebook’s privacy policy in Canada.)

I, for one, have no problems seeing the wide scope of concerns, of privacy violations, that Giovanetti does, but then again, this past election has made me a bit cynical. I am willing to admit that, but a concern it very much is regardless of the scope.

Another way to look at the level of government intrusion is this:

A better candidate for a future privacy crisis is the so-called stimulus bill enacted with limited debate early this year. It mandated the “utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014,” but included only limited privacy protections.

It’s true that if the legislative branch chooses to create “affordability credits,” it probably makes sense to ensure they’re not abused. The goal of curbing fraud runs up against the goal of preserving individual privacy.

If we’re going to have such significant additional government intrusion into our health care system, we will have to draw the privacy line somewhere. Maybe the House Democrats’ current bill gets it right. Maybe it doesn’t. But this vignette should be reason to be skeptical of claims that a massive and complex bill must be enacted as rapidly as its backers would have you believe.

Update August 27 11 a.m: Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says in e-mail: “We would oppose section 431(a) of the bill because it violates the intent of the Privacy Act which generally requires agencies to obtain information directly from individuals and not from other agencies.” EPIC still hasn’t updated their Web site to reflect this sentiment, but it’s good to know that other folks have concerns too. (Declan McCullagh is a correspondent for CBSNews.com. He can be reached at declan@cbsnews.com.)

Why, yes – it is good that other people are concerned that our privacy is ripe for violation by government employees! Most definitely, there should be a BIG, THICK line to protect our privacy from government intrusion.

And it begs the question: why, WHY, would our elected officials want to violate our privacy, going between agencies, looking at our health records and our financial records without our knowledge or PERMISSION? Who dreamed this one up? I’m not an attorney, but I do think a case could be made that this attempt by Congress to gain access to our private records is a violation of our Constitutional rights under the Bill of Rights. Yep, “the devil is in the details,” and this bill is chock full of the little fellas.

We have been exposed to an education lately on International Law and the Rule of Law. Everyone has been following the torture memos and some of us have a quaint understanding of how the U.S. signing the treaty at the Geneva Convention forcibly influenced laws that we were required, by the treaty, to add to our books. That treaty suits us and most of us don’t argue with the fact that we signed and ratified it.

But what if the U.S. was considering signing an international treaty that – in essence – violated our Bill of Rights? Remember. We DO have rights that some countries do not afford their subjects.

Back up. Did you know that the U.S. does not have to pass any laws to inhibit your 2nd amendment rights? If the UN sanctions an international treaty then any country signing and ratifying the treaty is under international law, bypassing our traditional balance-of-power safeguards. An international treaty signed by the president only needs to be ratified by the Senate. The House does not get to vote on it and U.S. courts cannot alter international law. It becomes law.

In 1997 Bill Clinton signed CIFTA but the Senate has refused to ratify it. This law would make it illegal for you to reload your own ammunition, register to carry your gun to go out hunting, possibly make gun clubs illegal and grant the other treaty countries the right to have you extradited to their country for prosecution on charges such as selling a gun at a gun show and that gun ending up in their very democratic (NOT) country. Article V Jurisdiction. They would know if you did anything wrong because the treaty calls for each country to openly share everything they know about you and your gun ownership and transfers with all those friendly South American countries. Article XIII Exchange of Information.

There are more anti-gun provisions in this treaty than all the gun control laws we have seen come before congress this year combined. I don’t know about you but I do not relish the thought of Hugo Chavez getting upset with one of my comments and demanding that I be delivered unto him – on some trumped up gun charge – for a heaping helping of some Venezuelan justice that could make even Dick Cheney cringe.

In Article IV, parties commit to adopting “necessary legislative or other measures” to criminalize illicit manufacturing and trafficking in firearms. Remember that “illicit manufacturing” includes reloading and modifying or assembling any firearm in any way. And, while treaties should not trump the Bill of Rights (in contrast to what the Supreme Court held in Missouri v. Holland), they do have the force of statute — which would mean that the Obama administration could promulgate regulations on the basis of this treaty which would ban any modification or machining of any firearm in any manner whatsoever except by license of the government.

Article IV goes on to state that the criminalized acts should include “association or conspiracy” in connection with “said offenses” — which is arguably a term broad enough to allow, by regulation, the criminalization of entire pro-gun organizations or gun clubs, based on the facilities which they provide their membership.

Knowing that bills such as HB 45 (Bobby Rush – IL) that could put you in jail for keeping a gun anywhere your 17 year old son could reach, such as in his hand while he is squirrel hunting, will likely fail, President Obama went to Mexico and pledged to his “american idol” fan base there that he would urge the U.S. Senate to ratify this treaty, giving the United Nations the right to dictate the terms under which you may own a gun – or not.

Dianne Feinstein and Richard Durbin have been leading an effort to get this treaty ratified since February 26, 2009 and will lead the charge, along with John Kerry to push this through the Senate. There are four binding acts the U.S. Senate can execute without judicial oversight or input from the House of Representatives. Confirm Judges; Confirm Cabinet Appointments; Confirm Ambassadors and Ratify Treaties.

The administration softened up the electorate by publishing the Right Wing Extremist report and there may just be enough “lie down and surrender our rights to keep the radical conservative kooks and Ron Paul supporters away from a loaded gun” support to allow the Senate to ratify this treaty without public protest.

We must not let this happen. It is going to take action by people other than the NRA to stop this. Anyone who believes that the “rule of law” in this country should be written in this country under our system of creating law should act. That means contacting your U.S. Senators, sharing this article and urging all of your friends to take action as well.

Here are some links to give you a background on this. Share this information freely while you still have the freedom to do so.

Two minute CNN video briefly explaining it.

Gun Owners of America’s position against the treaty.

Feinstein’s Letter promoting the treaty.

The Treaty.

To ascertain with certainty that we will be joining a fine club, here is the guest list showing those who have RSVP’d.

Note: Wings Under America was a response to Homeland Security’s Right Wing Extremism Alert discussed by Susan here and here.

If you really want to get the feel of a Klan rally you should don a sheet and sneak into one. Otherwise you are just guessing about what the tenor there really is. That is why, when I was researching information from the Left Wing Extremist Advisory (see note under photo), I knew that I could not really get that total left-wing feeling just by reading a banal review of The Anarchist’s Cookbook on Amazon. I went underground. I slipped into some true black screen anarchy web sites and wandered through the darkness. After I found the quotes I needed I took a long shower and returned to my scribbling.   What I learned later was downright scary. And it was not the freaky words from the left-loon anarchists that spooked me. Let’s go back to the Klan rally. I’ll take you with me on this journey.

Let’s say that, a few days before that research project, you went to the Post Office. While you were there you stepped on one of the itty-bitty, near invisible, tacks spread across the floor and one stuck in your shoe. As soon as you entered the big open field, surrounded by trees with a nice fire in the middle, (that’s where they always hold them in Hollywood) Klan rally the GPS transmitter in your shoe sends a signal back to home boy security alerting the obatron monitors that you have entered into the coordinates of a known risky bunch of stylishly impaired choir boys.

The wake-up call. A few days later you go to city hall to pay your water bill and the girl behind the counter asks you to wait a minute. A federal marshal comes out and asks you to state your business. You toss down the check for the bill and head back home. Behind you is a state trooper. You get in the house and hear an odd clicking when you pick up the phone. Twenty minutes later a man comes to the door and says he is there to pick up your sheets for cleaning.

Itty-Bitty Invisible Radio Tacks. That’s what the techies at Google have given to the White House. If you visit their website a software program operated from Google servers places a tracking device onto the hard drive of your computer. Since we all know that George Orwell was a prophet we must believe that “they” know the web address of every miscreant on the planet. As soon as you visit the anarchist site the itty-bitty invisible tracking device in your computer could send an alert to Washington, cc’d to Chicago, of course. You have just been tagged.

The common name for the IBIRTs (Itty-Bitty Invisible Radio Tacks) is a cookie. That may sound innocent. Cookies are used to help your computer remember your passwords and to help a website recognize you on your return visits. But not all cookies are alike. Some are the type of evil, nasty, spy vs spy information gobblers that even Larry Johnson’s former bosses would put a chain on.

But, isn’t our government, using such technology on an unsuspecting public, against the law? Well, it depends on who is ruling what the definition of isn’t is.

Bill Clinton signed into law a bill that forbade federal agencies from secretly collecting information from your browsing habits. Under George W. Bush the law was further defined and strengthened.

The use of cookies on agency sites is sharply restricted by guidelines set at the end of the Clinton administration, by the E-Government Act of 2002 and by regulations issued by the Bush administration in 2003. “‘Cookies’ should not be used at Federal Web sites… unless, in addition to clear and conspicuous notice, the following conditions are met: a compelling need to gather the data on the site; appropriate and publicly disclosed privacy safeguards for handling of information derived from ‘cookies’; and personal approval by the head of the agency,” according to a memo issued in June 2000 by Jacob J. Lew, then director of the Office of Management and Budget.

So, why are the IBIRTs back? Let’s pull back the sheets.

“The Executive Office of the President is not an agency and is therefore exempt from the law.”

Can we expect more of the same from the little Kenyan Who Could?

You can assume you know, or at least have an idea, what the White House is getting out of this technology partnership, but what’s in it for Google?

The Googles have already sent a sales team to DC to sell to members of congress a gold plated promise that if they advertise with Google in their next campaign that Google can guarantee that their ads will appear in the browser windows of only those people whose browsing habits match the profile of the type of voter who is interested in federal government and who have interests, determined by what other websites they visit, that would make them be classified as someone who would vote for or donate to the legislator.

You can expect this information farming/netting from a political campaign or a commercial web site. Yahoo and Goolge both know where you have been and display ads on your screen accordingly. The feds have rules that bar the use of government assets for political campaigning. But how long will that last?

“There are indications that the administration wants to revise some of these laws, particularly with respect to the Internet, and we’re waiting to see if we can play a role,” said Peter Greenberger, a former regional campaign manager for Al Gore’s presidential bid who now heads Google’s Elections and Issues Advocacy team. “The real question that people are trying to answer is what can the White House do now that they’re the White House as opposed to a [political] campaign.”

Snip

“There would be issues providing some services to an elected official that is not provided to somebody else,” such as a political opponent. But, he added, “in some cases, you know, incumbency is a powerful thing.” [He actually said that? - EMc]

Google is also working with federal officials to map out government data so that Google’s most valuable property, the Google search page, can better direct citizens to sought-after government information. Any increased traffic through the Google Web page to federal sites gives the company a greater opportunity to sell advertising to government and commercial customers, said Greenberger. “It would be great if HUD’s site had a little ad saying, ‘Are you eligible for the mortgage bailout? Fill out this ad,’” Greenberger said in February, using the Department of Housing and Urban Development as an example.

Yes. But how “great” would it be if the ad said “You visited a divorce advice site yesterday and today you were reading a review of the Vagina Monologues. We can refer you to a Health and Human Services counselor to talk to you about your men-hating derangement,” and the person actually seeing the ad on your home computer was your husband?

I, for one, do not think this would be any more “great” than having my sheet pulled off, revealing my reporter’s notepad and pencil illuminated by the glow of a burning cross. “Oh, Brother. Where am I?”

The National Journal brought in some pros to research this information and you really should take the time to read the resulting article.

Just don’t visit any federal sites, especially the White House, before you go off to one of those Despicable. Shameful, Misleading and … anti-progressive websites.

I wouldn’t want you infected by an IBIRT.

A rally and march in protest of higher taxes in Santa Barbara, Calif., April 4.

Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed “tea parties” — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org. [KA-ZING! Take that, MoveOn!]

This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed “Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don’t know each other.

In the old days, organizing large groups of people required, well, an organization: a political party, a labor union, a church or some other sort of structure. Now people can coordinate themselves. … [THIS SELF-DETERMINATIVE ACTION HARD FOR THE LEFTIES TO GRASP SINCE THEY COMPLIANTLY WAIT TO TAKE THEIR ORDERS FROM MOVEON ET AL.]

So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. …

NRO’s Andy McCarthy also has a new remarkable piece – “The Obama Administration Is Criminalizing Dissent? Intimidating Its Ideological Opponents? You Must Be Joking“ – condemning the DHS report. All of you who’ve been longtime readers and supported Hillary will vividly recall these wholly inappropriate uses of Obot government figures to silence dissent and to intimidate ordinary citizens who are NOT extremists — and note that the litany of anti-Constitutional examples was written by McCarthy in October 2008:

The DHS screed … is entirely predictable. The only conceivable surprise is that it is so blatant and has happened so soon. But all they’ve done is commit to paper the same stuff they say to each other in conversation. [...]

[From a McCarthy column in 2008]I’ll be blunt: Sen. Obama and his supporters despise free expression, the bedrock of American self-determinism and hence American democracy. What’s more, like garden-variety despots, they see law not as a means of ensuring liberty but as a tool to intimidate and quell dissent….

[I]n St. Louis, local law-enforcement authorities, dominated by Democrat-party activists, [are] threatening libel prosecutions against Obama’s political opposition. County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, abetted by a local sheriff and encouraged by the Obama campaign, warned that members of the public who dared speak out against Obama during the campaign’s crucial final weeks would face criminal libel charges — if, in the judgment of these conflicted officials, such criticism of their champion was “false.” [YES! THIS REALLY OCCURRED!]

The chill wind was bracing. The Taliban could not better rig matters. The Prophet of Change is only to be admired, not questioned. In the stretch run of an American election, there is to be no examination of a candidate for the world’s most powerful office — whether about his radical record, the fringe Leftism that lies beneath his thin, centrist veneer, his enabling of infanticide, his history of race-conscious politics, his proposals for unprecedented confiscation and distribution of private property (including a massive transfer of American wealth to third-world dictators through international bureaucrats), his ruinous economic policies that have helped leave Illinois a financial wreck, his place at the vortex of the credit market implosion that has put the U.S. economy on the brink of meltdown, his aggressive push for American withdrawal and defeat in Iraq, his easy gravitation to America-hating activists, be they preachers like Jeremiah Wright, terrorists like Bill Ayers, or Communists like Frank Marshall Davis. Comment on any of this and risk indictment or, at the very least, government harassment and exorbitant legal fees.

Nor was this an isolated incident.

Item: When the American Issues Project ran political ads calling attention to Obama’s extensive ties to Ayers, the Weatherman terrorist who brags about having bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, the Obama campaign pressured the Justice Department to launch an absurd criminal prosecution.

Item: When commentator Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center was invited on a Chicago radio program to discuss his investigation of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an “education reform” project in which Obama and Ayers (just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood”) collaborated to dole out over $100 million, the Obama campaign issued an Internet action alert. Supporters, armed with the campaign’s non-responsive talking points, dutifully flooded the program with calls and emails, protesting Kurtz’s appearance and attempting to shout him down.

Item: Both Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, have indicated that an Obama administration would use its control of the Justice Department to prosecute its political opponents, including Bush administration officials responsible for the national security policies put in effect after nearly 3000 Americans were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Item: There is a troubling report that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Section, top officials of which are Obama contributors, has suggested criminal prosecutions against those they anticipate will engage in voter “intimidation” or “oppression” in an election involving a black candidate. (Memo to my former DOJ colleagues: In a system that presumes innocence even after crimes have undeniably been committed, responsible prosecutors don’t assume non-suspects will commit future law violations — especially when doing so necessarily undermines the First Amendment freedoms those prosecutors solemnly swear to uphold.) [Emphasis added.]

Just consider the DHS gambit the first of many Domestic Contingency Operations. … Read all.

McCarthy’s title for his 2008 article? “Obama’s Assault on the First Amendment.”

Now Obama and his administration are going further than Bush to seize and concentrate all power in the executive branch.

But Americans are proving that we have not forgotten our forefather’s courage in standing up and fighting tyranny!

And any decent American should be proud of those organizing and attending today’s events! It does NOT matter that we agree with the sentiments of all who are participating. What counts is that they are the kinds of people who ordinarily don’t do protests, but they feel compelled to speak out! BRAVO!

Hey, all you Tax Day people. You’re not part of some ‘winger cabal, are you? You’re not into some dangerous, extremist rightwing group that the Department of Homeland Security has targeted in its new PDF document, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment?” This report has been sent to police (!) around the nation. (See footnote at end.)

The left seems, oh yes, to be more orchestrated in its mocking opposition than are the grassroots Tax Day efforts that, sadly, Paul Krugman called “Astroturf” (as in fake grass roots) and to which he devoted a precious column. (I’m wondering if someone got to Paul; he used to take Obama’s ruinous economic stimulus plans to task, but his last two columns have fired straight at the heart of the GOP. Now, here’s some of what the left is saying:

• “Fox News is bankrolling and promoting the events.”
• MSNBC’s new dimwit anchor Ed Schultz says that Tax Day participants are “psychos.”
• Firedoglake writes “Corporate Lobbyists Raising Money For Tea Parties (rebutted by Houston TPS).
• MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews goes after the Tax Day people, calling them “poopers,” and is concerned that many are “full-mooners”:

  Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Rachel Maddow mocks the anti-tax Tax Day protests, and oh is she so, so funny:

………………

Footnote about the DHS report (PDF): Yes, there are some truly frightening crazies out there. But I wouldn’t call them rightwing. I’d call them crazy, violent, and racist.

And, yes, the election of an African-American president has doubtless infuriated the tiny groups of Stormfront types.

However, it is very important for the DHS, FBI, and Secret Service to distinguish between right-wing political types and those few extremists who’d wish to harm the president. Otherwise, they’re going to be wasting a lot of time on ordinary Americans who are simply opposed to Obama’s policies.

There is NO logical correlation between having “rightwing” views and plotting violence. I’d guesstimate that 99% of “rightwing” people would never imagine taking violent action and in fact are probably more inclined to be law-abiding than most citizens.

There’s only a correlation between the Stormfront-type racists and violence.

I think about the couple people I know who are involved in the Tax Day demonstrations — GOPMom and LatinaFreedomFighter. I’ve never received any communication from either that would remotely suggest a bent towards violence; they’re just wishing to be vocal about their deep concerns about Obama’s mammoth debt-inducing budget that will likely lead to hyperinflation and leave future generations with nearly impossible debts to repay, debts that also make us far too reliant on our main lender, China, who they don’t trust.

Neither one has ever exhibited anything remotely like “pscyhotic” or dangerous behavior. Michelle Malkin, who is far to my right in her thinking, has written an excellent takedown of this DHS report and its wild claims, in “Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real“:

[T]he piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.

In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.

From the report, p.2:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

From the report. p. 3:

(U//LES) Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.

(U) Exploiting Economic Downturn

(U//FOUO) Rightwing extremist chatter on the Internet continues to focus on the economy, the perceived loss of U.S. jobs in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and home foreclosures. Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of Jewish “financial elites.” These “accusatory” tactics are employed to draw new recruits into rightwing extremist groups and further radicalize those already subscribing to extremist beliefs. DHS/I&A assesses this trend is likely to accelerate if the economy is perceived to worsen.

From the report, p. 5:

(U//FOUO) Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point,
and recruiting tool. Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.

And echoing the anti-military bigotry last seen in that disgusting Penn State University training video, there’s this on p. 7:

(U) Disgruntled Military Veterans

(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

There’s no hackneyed left-wing stereotype of conservatives left behind in this DHS intelligence and analysis assessment. I asked both DHS spokespeople to tell me who, specifically, the report was accusing of “rightwing extremist chatter” and which “antigovernment” groups are being monitored as “extremists.” They say they’ll get back to me.

In the meantime, be aware of this from the report, p. 8:

(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.

Better make a few last-minute signs for the Tea Party. Obama’s DHS is watching:

Honk if you’re a radicalized rightwing extremist!

Guilty of rightwing extremist chatter

Anti-government, pro-freedom: Sue me

***

Previous: Missouri retracts report linking militias, 3rd party candidates.

***

Oh, I’m sure DHS will be issuing its report on self-proclaimed bank terrorists like Bruce Marks of NACA and criminal rackeeters harassing private citizens in their homes to “exploit the economic downturn” any day now.

Human beings have an inherent, necessary need to hone in on those who present a real threat to them. However, rational human beings have the logical capacity to DISCERN who is really an enemy who might do one harm, and those who simply disagree with one.

After 9/11, when more law enforcement resources (imho) should have been focused on monitoring the very few who exhibit true terrorist leanings, Attorneys General John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales decided that “ecoterrorists” were the major threat to the nation, and ordered the FBI to go all out to find any reason possible to charge anyone they suspected to be an “ecoterrorist” and toss them in federal prison.

Now, the Obama administration is making the same mistake: Instead of logically worrying about the porous Mexican/U.S. and Canadian/U.S. borders that allow terrorists to cross into the U.S. easily, and to monitor recruitment of young men into terrorist cells in the Middle East and Southeast/Southwest Asia, they (and their willing blogger abetters) are going after ordinary Americans who simply wish to express their disgust with irresponsible spending. Townhall sums it up so well:

This is almost unbelievable.  The message is simple:  If you are a conservative, you might be dangerous…

The WaTimes reports,

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines “rightwing extremism in the United States” as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

“It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration,” the warning says.

… That’s right, when they say ‘extremism’ they are not talking about what we think of when we think of ‘extremists’ — they are actually talking about mainstream conservatives who actually oppose things like (gulp) abortion.

(Of course, this comes just in time for the Tea Parties …)

Think about the federal law enforcement manpower that will be expended tomorrow to photograph and watch participants at the Tax Day protests. And you just KNOW that the leftwing bloggers will write nasty, mocking reports on their findings after they’ve combed through every news report tomorrow for any crazy remark, even though it’s always possible to find at least one crazy person at any public event.

Remember too that, of late, Obama hasn’t been scoring well with the left, given his executive power grabs and destruction of freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. But Obama’s people know how to divert the lefties’ attention, and they’ve found a perfect foil in the Tax Day participants. And the lefties are all falling for it.

What say you?

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Read more at Memeorandum.com about the DHS report and tomorrow’s protests.

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UPDATE — Here’s one of the crazed extremists behind Tax Day:

– LatinaFreedomFighter‘s latest video. She’s attending the Phoenix, Arizona Tax Day event tomorrow. I hope the FBI keeps an eye on her! She’s clearly a ticking timebomb! Snort.

Here’s part of her insane and dangerous speech:

WTF! The American Revolution was in essence to do away from bowing down before Kings and the monarchy.

How ’bout hearing about Obama bowing to the Saudi King? Its true. Obama bowed from the waist in a greeting which is unseemly coming from the President of the United States. So, not only do we have a rookie as Pres, he acts like one too! …. Read all.

SusanUnPC’s April 8th note: When even Keith Olbermann lowers the boom — calling President Barack Obama’s decision “change you cannot believe in”, condemning Obama for going further than Bush in his expansion of invasive, extra-Constitutional powers — you know the Obama Administration is going to the “dark side,” as Jane Mayer describes in her esteemed book. Howard Fineman explains the administration’s amoral political calculus and its “newbie” problem, and refers to Mayer’s book. When Mayer is a guest on No Quarter Radio soon, we will ask her about this astonishing abandonment of key principles touted by Obama during his candidacy, when he said whatever it took. Question of the Day: Didn’t the Kossack crowd scream for Bush’s impeachment over precisely this issue? Why not threaten Obama with impeachment?

P.S. Do you remember this Boston Globe article about Hillary Clinton on October 11, 2007? “Clinton vows to check executive powers.” If but for the willful Obamabots’ delusions and caucus thuggery, we’d have a president who would stand up to the intelligence community because, for one thing, Hillary wouldn’t have a learning curve hurdle and already knows who’s who, while Obama, as always, thinks he can cover up his ignorance by charming people through doing their bidding. My hunch is that, to a one, the intel community has disdain for his ignorance and unctuous collusion.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and friend of Larry Johnson’s, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and a fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance. Originally published at Antiwar.com.

Those who hoped that the change promised by candidate Barack Obama would include repeal of the various acts that have stripped Americans of their constitutional rights should be disappointed.

Benjamin Franklin supposedly wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The citation is likely apocryphal, at least in terms of its attribution to Franklin, but it is useful shorthand for the unfortunate abandonment of many of the liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution as a consequence of 9/11.

The trauma of 9/11 created an opportunity for those seeking to centralize executive power, an objective of recent presidents from both political parties. Many Americans initially accepted that there had to be some abridgment of fundamental liberties while fighting a multi-faceted and unconventional war against terrorism, but few realize just how much the constitutional rights that all citizens take for granted have been eroded. History also teaches us that once a right is suspended, in all likelihood it is gone forever.

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 might well be described as one of history’s more spectacular euphemisms employed to gut a constitution, somewhat akin to Hitler’s “emergency act” in the wake of the Reichstag fire of 1933. It is better known as PATRIOT Act I. PATRIOT Act I became law six weeks after the fall of the Twin Towers and was followed by PATRIOT Act II in 2006. The two laws together diminish constitutional guarantees of free speech, freedom of association, freedom from illegal search, the right to habeas corpus, prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and prohibition of the illegal seizure of private property. The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments in the Bill of Rights have all been discarded or abridged in the rush to make it easier to investigate, torture, and jail both foreigners and American citizens. The PATRIOT Act also incorporates the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of Oct. 17, 2001, which permits the freezing of assets and investigation of individuals suspected of being financial supporters of terrorism. “Suspected” is the key word, as there is no oversight or appeal in the process.

The Military Commission Act of 2006 (MCA) followed the PATRIOT Acts, creating military tribunals for the trying of “unlawful enemy combatants,” including American citizens. Unlike a civil or criminal court, the accused needs only a two-thirds vote by the commission members present to be convicted. The act permits the indefinite jailing of suspects in a military prison without being charged with a crime or given access to a lawyer. The government is not required to produce any normally admissible evidence at a commission hearing and can rely on hearsay or even information obtained overseas during torture to make its case. Detainees do not have access to any classified information used against them and cannot cross-examine or even know the identity of witnesses. The MCA suspends habeas corpus for anyone charged and forbids the application of the Geneva Conventions to mitigate conditions of confinement or to challenge the judicial process or verdict. The Geneva Conventions also cannot be invoked if the accused subsequently claims he was tortured or otherwise abused, protecting overly zealous interrogators from later charges of “war crimes.” The act was also designed to cover all cases that were pending, meaning that it was retroactive.

An executive order issued on July 17, 2007, which is still in effect, authorized the president to seize the property of anyone who “threatens stabilization efforts in Iraq.” As the administration’s own Justice Department decides what constitutes “threatening stabilization efforts,” the order can be used to go after any critic of the government. Most disturbing, the order does not permit a challenge to the information the seizure is based on, and it also permits the confiscation of the property of anyone who comes to the assistance of the suspected de-stabilizer.

The threat to civil liberties is real. Under the authority of the PATRIOT Act, the FBI requested more than 30,000 national security letters in 2007, and the number was surely higher in 2008. The letters enable the FBI to look at anyone’s personal information without any judicial oversight or showing of cause. Anyone who is presented with a letter and compelled to cooperate to provide information on a suspect cannot reveal that the letter has been received. Are there 30,000 terrorists roaming the United States? If there were, the country would surely be a bombed-out ruin by now. The government is instead using the security letters and the other tools provided by the PATRIOT Act legislation to look at people who are completely innocent of any wrongdoing, because it is convenient to be able to do so without the bother of having to go to a judge for a search warrant.

Sen. Barack Obama opposed the MCA and voted against it. He was not in the Senate when the first PATRIOT Act was passed, but he criticized the second version for its abuse of civil liberties before voting for an amended version. Candidate Obama ran on his record of opposition to the various pieces of legislation, noting consistently that they had authorized the abuse of authority by law enforcement and had abridged the rights of every American. Unfortunately, President Obama appears to have forgotten the principled positions he took as a senator and presidential candidate. After his inauguration, he moved quickly to publicly ban the CIA’s use of torture, a meaningless gesture in that the Agency had already abandoned the practice, but it now appears that he will do nothing to revoke Bush-era legislation like the MCA that he once strongly criticized. There is every indication that he will also endorse renewal of the PATRIOT Act when it expires at the end of the year, afraid that if he does not do so and there is a terrorist attack he will pay a significant political price. The Obama administration has also been silent about the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretaps and has invoked the “state-secrets privilege” in connection with a lawsuit by the Islamic charity al-Haramain in an apparent bid to prevent disclosure of the warrantless wiretap procedure.

President Obama is not just contradicting his progressive campaign promises and betraying many of the people who voted for him. As a lawyer, he surely understands that protecting the government’s questionably legal “rights” to monitor citizens completely subverts the rule of law, because it guarantees that there will be no accountability. Currently, judges who rule on the state-secrets issue are not themselves allowed to see the alleged classified information, meaning that there is absolutely no transparency to the process in which the government is asserting an extralegal privilege that is surely unconstitutional.

If the Obama administration is beginning to sound like the Bush White House, it should. To be sure, the new president is relying on the advice of many Bush administration holdovers like FBI Director Robert Mueller. Mueller asserts, without providing any evidence, that the tools provided by the PATRIOT Act have been effective in preventing terrorism, just as Bush-era intelligence chiefs claimed that torture and extraordinary rendition were essential to meet the terrorist threat. All such claims should be viewed with extreme skepticism, particularly as they are rarely backed up by any evidence. The government also often lies when it wants to make a case for some illegal action. Claims made in 2008 that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida produced a flood of information that frustrated terrorist plots are now revealed to have been false. Zubaida confused his interrogators and sent them off on wild goose chases with information that was either deliberately deceptive or flat-out wrong. In reality, the government cannot cite a single instance where the use of draconian new legislation or illegal procedures like torture has either prevented a terrorist incident or led to the arrest of anyone who was ready, willing, and able to carry out a violent act.

Obama would have been wiser to ignore the experts and sit back and consider the broader picture. Does the creation of a monstrous Department of Homeland Security supported by a bloated defense and intelligence establishment really make sense in light of the threat that the U.S. actually faces? How did we arrive at a 400,000-name no-fly list and an NSA that has conducted hundreds of millions of interceptions of telephone calls without any oversight?

That a small group of terrorists holed up in an isolated and backward part of the world got lucky against an unsuspecting America on 9/11 is clear, but the odds of them repeating that spectacular success are minimal. More than seven years later, the actual vulnerability of international terrorism should be completely clear and the government should be telling the people the good news, that al-Qaeda is on its last legs and that the other Salafist terrorist groups that have a similar philosophy have been hounded and contained all around the world. There has been no successful terrorist action within the United States, and the appeal of jihadist terrorism is on the wane everywhere else. Its moment has passed.

In spite of the reduced threat, under Obama the business of fighting terrorism goes on with a change in the rhetoric but not in the policy, buttressed by an enlarged military budget to spread the cheer to Afghanistan and increased spending on intelligence. And there is no sign that the liberties that Americans have bartered away are about to be returned. Having an amorphous foreign threat hanging around is always good politics, as it can be used to divert attention from more serious problems at home. Having the mechanisms at hand to investigate an American citizen can also be useful when the critics become too loud. Those who feared that George W. Bush would give his successors unconstitutional tools that they would be reluctant to relinquish have apparently been vindicated.

Honestly, I’m getting tired of saying, “We told you so.” There are people who can be so easily deluded by a speech, which is an entirely different thing than ACTIONS and DEEDS. Do only grown-ups get that “talk is cheap”? And where are those grown-ups?

The grown-ups never drank the Kool-Aid. They saw that a pretty speech did not a president make.

(Thanks to LDP for the video link!)

There are new findings out from the Civic Literacy Report, and they are not good. In fact, they are disturbing. This is a follow-up survey by one done to test civic knowledge of college students conducted over two years. The best result – the BEST result – was 54.2% on basic civics and self-governance. How do I say this? Oh, here it is – that’s PATHETIC. So, the American Civic Literacy Organization decided to survey adults, and elected officials. Check out some of these findings based on 33 questions asked:

The results reveal that Americans are alarmingly uninformed about our Constitution, the basic functions of our government, the key texts of our national history, and economic principles.

* Less than half can name all three branches of the government.
* Only 21% know that the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
* Although Congress has voted twice in the last eight years to approve foreign wars, only 53% know that the power to declare war belongs to Congress. Almost 40% incorrectly believe it belongs to the president.
* Only 55% know that Congress shares authority over U.S. foreign policy with the president. Almost a quarter incorrectly believe Congress shares this power with the United Nations.
* Only 27% know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States.
* Less than one in five know that the phrase “a wall of separation” between church and state comes from a letter by Thomas Jefferson. Almost half incorrectly believe it can be found in the Constitution.

Americans from all age groups, income brackets, and political ideologies fail the test of civic literacy.

* Americans age 25 to 34 score an average of 46% on the exam; Americans age 65 and over score 46%.
* Americans earning an annual income between $30,000 and $50,000 score an average of 46%; Americans earning over $100,000 score 55%.
* Liberals score an average of 49%; conservatives score 48%.
* Americans who go to church once a week score an average of 48%; Americans who never go to church score 50%.

I know – holy crap, right? This sure does explain a lot to me, though, about how/why certain people do not see glaring violations of the Constitution even when it is shoved in their faces. They just do not know.

Wanna guess who it is in part responsible for the “dumbing down of America”? Did you guess the television? Then you would be right:

In order to help isolate the impact a college degree has on civic literacy, ISI examined additional factors that might add to or subtract from an individual’s civic knowledge. The survey results were put through a regression analysis to determine whether various behaviors in a respondent’s life had a unique, statistically significant impact on his or her civic knowledge.

The multiple-regression analysis indicated that a person’s test score drops in proportion to the time he or she spends using certain types of passive electronic media. Talking on the phone, watching owned or rented movies, and even monitoring TV news broadcasts and documentaries diminishes a respondent’s civic literacy.

Actively seeking knowledge through print media and high-quality conversations has the opposite effect. Reading about history and current events in books, magazines, and newspapers—and talking about these subjects with family and friends—increases a respondent’s civic literacy.

In fact, an American who lacks a college degree but has initiative and desire—and who does not spend too much time watching TV and talking on the phone—can acquire more civic knowledge than a couch potato with a college degree.

So there’s at least some hope if people can tear themselves away from CNN and MSNBC and pick up a newspaper and discuss it, they might actually learn something about this country.

Okay, as promised, wait, just WAIT until you see how our elected officials, those who swear to uphold the Constitution fared in basic civics. I’d put down that mug (or glass) if I were you:

The elected officeholders come from the ranks of Democrats (40%), Republicans (31%), Independents (21%), and those who say they belong to no party or indicate no affiliation (8%). None were asked to specify what office they held, so the proportion in which they held local, state, or federal positions is unknown.

Not all officeholders do poorly, of course. Some elected officials rank among the highest scorers. But the failure rate on the test among those who have won public office is higher (74%) than among those who have not (71%). Officeholders scored lower on all sub-themes of the test: political history, cultural institutions, foreign relations, and market economy.

In each of the following areas, for example, officeholders do more poorly than non-officeholders:

* Seventy-nine percent of those who have been elected to government office do not know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the U.S.
* Thirty percent do not know that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence.
* Twenty-seven percent cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment.
* Forty-three percent do not know what the Electoral College does. One in five thinks it either “trains those aspiring for higher political office” or “was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates.”
* Fifty-four percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Thirty-nine percent think that power belongs to the president, and 10% think it belongs to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
* Only 32% can properly define the free enterprise system, and only 41% can identify business profit as “revenue minus expenses.”

On some questions, Americans who have held elected office do better than Americans who have not. They are a little more likely, for example, to recognize the language of the Gettysburg Address (23% to 21%) and to know that the question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand into new territories was the main issue in the Lincoln–Douglas debates (25% to 20%).

Officeholders and non-officeholders find it equally difficult to identify the three branches of government. Only 49% of each group can name the legislative, executive, and judicial.

Well, that sure explains a lot, doesn’t it? No wonder we find ourselves screaming at the tv watching our lawmakers say the stupidest things that CLEARLY bear no relation to the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. But for ANYONE in this country – ANYONE – to not know we have three separate branches of government is – wow – staggering. How can any American NOT KNOW THAT???? Clearly, they did not see this enough while growing up:

So, will people be upset of Patrick Fitzgerald doesn’t stay on in his current position? For less than half of the nation who don’t even know the three branches of government, I’d say the percentage of people who wouldn’t even know anything had changed would be at least A GAZILLION percent. Sad. Really, really sad. This is exactly how we end up with people like Obama as the President Elect. People know so little about the government in general, how in the WORLD can we expect them to understand something like caucus fraud?? Wow. Just freakin’ wow. Go check out the site and see some of the other findings. I bet you’ll be be blown away, too. And I bet Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave.

Well, I can certainly agree with that – that’s the only reason I am willing to consider McCain: Obama.

I could get rich selling this one. Aw, hell – any one of them…

Seems people are paying attention to Obama’s BFF, Jeremiah Wright, after all!! And to McCain’s character – I mean, that he has a demonstrable one, and it is GOOD!

PRECISELY!! It defies logic to even make the claim that to question the resume of someone, especially a candidate for the most powerful job in the world is racist!!

Oh, please – do NOT get me started on the Fourth Estate and the depths to which they have sunk this election. Show of hands who thought they sucked in 2000? And how much more do they suck now? Uh, yeah – total. They have failed miserably in their obligation to REPORT and not editorialize, or promote, or belittle, or act as if their sole responsibility is to tell us their OPINION, and not do their level best to report NEWS impartially, not rumors or lies or innuendo, but the actual facts of the story that they spent time RESEARCHING. You know, actually working on stories as opposed to regurgitating press packet info. Oh, damn – I got started after all…

It is our Constitutional Duty to not have leaders who defraud us, as the Democrats did this year. As they have for several years now as they work to deconstruct the Constitution and its protections. And you better believe, with what Obama has already shown us, should he “win” his way into the White House, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If state offices are already investigating private citizens without cause, what do you think will happen if Obama ends up as president with a Democratic House and Senate? We saw how they acted this year, especially with the caucuses and the RBC/DNC. We have seen how Obama’s “supporters” have acted. Obama hasn’t called them off as a candidate, no way will he call them off as president. It will be a new day – and not a bright one.

Amen to that. Love of country, love of the Constitution, love for the Bill of Rights, and love for true democracy – and if that means a revolution is needed, count me in.