This news story surfaced a few hours ago from Reuters, it shows, we believe, the undeniable truth that our policy in Iraq is nothing but (like everything else from this Administration) a dismal failure. We have done nothing more than provide a reason for the next generation to continue to fight us and at the end of the day, we have not (and will never be able to) win the GWoT as long as our policy excludes dialogue and real solutions. Here is the news story, read it, then make up your own mind.

Al Qaeda videos show boys in mock attacks: U.S.

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Click Here To Find Out More About Our Middle East Policy

Join the Forces for Change….

Since Dennis Kucinich has quit his race for the White House, we are urging all Americans to join the forces for change and VOTE for Barack Obama for President. Unless you want four more years, like the last seven, then Obama is the only choice left.

VOTE for HOPE

Why does anyone need immunity unless they are guilty of something?

One has to wonder what is happening here!

In his new book, Crimes Against Nature, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. probes the failure of broadcasters to cover the environment, writing, “The FCC’s pro-industry, anti-regulatory philosophy has effectively ended the right of access to broadcast television by any but the moneyed interests.”

Not convinced? Take a look at this short video from Robert Greenwald.

We need to bring back the Fairness Doctrines, to insure that the citizens of this country hear, not only fair and balanced reporting, but all sides of the issues. Additionally, it will end fear mongering by the media and politicians, who are attempting to placate their corporate sponsors or appear to be doing something useful for society. Without the Fairness Doctrine, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and all other news and information outlets cannot, nor will not be held responsible to provide accuracy and non-biased facts. Until then, the citizens can expect more of the same, propaganda, and misinformation, in place of facts and truth.

Here is what you can do. (1) Stop supporting the sponsors of these news outlets, without advertising dollars, the Board of Directors of these outlets will be forced to re-evaluate their programming choices. (2) Spread the word; tell people about this web site FOX ATTACKS and keep spreading the word to everyone you meet.

It is time for all good Americans to come to the aid of their country. DO IT, before it is too late!

The Death of Freedom:

From the Washington Post:

“Be careful what you say and whom you help — especially when it comes to the Iraq war and the Iraqi government.

President Bush issued an executive order last week titled “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.” In the extreme, it could be interpreted as targeting the financial assets of any American who directly or indirectly aids someone who has committed or “poses a significant risk of committing” violent acts “threatening the peace or stability of Iraq” or who undermines “efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform” in the war-torn country.

The executive order, released Tuesday, was designed to target “perpetrators of violence in Iraq including Shiite militia groups linked to Iran, Sunni insurgent groups with sanctuary in Syria, and other indigenous Iraqi insurgent groups,” said Molly Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, which will determine who is in violation of the order. The move follows similar Bush orders to freeze assets of members or associates of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and former Iraqi government officials, Millerwise said. “It fills in the cracks,” she added.

White House press secretary Tony Snow offered further clarification at a briefing on Tuesday: “What this is really aimed at is insurgents and those who come across the border . . . or anybody who is caught providing support or poses a significant risk of providing support to those who may come across the border.”

However, the text of the order, if interpreted broadly, could cast a far bigger net to include not just those who commit violent acts or pose the risk of doing so in Iraq, but also third parties — such as U.S. citizens in this country — who knowingly or unknowingly aid or encourage such people.

Under the order, the Treasury secretary — in consultation with the secretaries of defense and state — creates the list of those whose assets are to be frozen. However, the targeting of not just those who support perpetrators

of violence but also those who support individuals who “pose a significant risk” of committing violence goes far beyond normal legal language related to intent and could be applied in a highly arbitrary manner, said Bruce Fein, a senior Justice Department official in the Reagan administration and a frequent Bush administration critic.

Fein also questioned the executive order’s inclusion of third parties, such as U.S. citizens who assist, sponsor or make “any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services” to assist people on the Treasury list. “What about a lawyer hired to get someone off the list?” Fein asked.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control keeps a “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” roll that includes those covered by several such executive orders. It most recently ran to 276 pages; of the roughly 11,000 entries, more than 700 are Iraq-related. Millerwise said the list is primarily for use by banks and other financial institutions that regularly check it to freeze assets and prevent financial transfers.

What happens then to the Shiite Iraqi American who sends money or speaks out in support of humanitarian efforts by Moqtada al-Sadr’s political party? We’ll have to wait and see. Though Millerwise said the Treasury Department already has some names in mind for the list, they will be disclosed only after their assets under U.S. control are frozen.

Meanwhile, the department must develop rules and regulations to carry out the order, a process that Fein said he hopes will protect civil liberties that could be at risk.”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html

A Look at History:

“One of the most searing events in German history occurred soon after Hitler took office. On February 27, 1933, in what easily could be termed the 9/11 terrorist attack of that time, German terrorists fire-bombed the German parliament building. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Adolf Hitler, one of the strongest political leaders in history, would declare war on terrorism and ask the German parliament (the Reichstag) to give him temporary emergency powers to fight the terrorists. Passionately claiming that such powers were necessary to protect the freedom and well-being of the German people, Hitler persuaded the German legislators to give him the emergency powers he needed to confront the terrorist crisis. What became known as the Enabling Act allowed Hitler to suspend civil liberties “temporarily,” that is, until the crisis had passed. Not surprisingly, however, the threat of terrorism never subsided and Hitler’s “temporary” emergency powers, which were periodically renewed by the Reichstag, were still in effect when he took his own life some 12 years later.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18061.htm

Why it Matters:

“In substance, under this executive order, opposing the war becomes an illegal act.

The Executive Order criminalizes the antiwar movement. It is intended to “blocking property” of US citizens and organizations actively involved in the peace movement. It allows the Department of Defense to interfere in financial affairs and instruct the Treasury to “block the property” and/or confiscate/ freeze the assets of “Certain Persons” involved in antiwar activities. It targets those “Certain Persons” in America, including civil society organizations, who oppose the Bush Administration’s “peace and stability” program in Iraq, characterized, in plain English, by an illegal occupation and the continued killing of innocent civilians.

The executive order violates the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the US Constitution. It repeals one of the fundamental tenets of US democracy, which is the right to free expression and dissent. The order has not been the object of discussion in the US Congress. So far, it has not been addressed by the US antiwar movement, in terms of a formal statement.

In May 2007, Bush issued a major presidential National Security Directive (National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/HSPD 20), which would suspend constitutional government and instate broad dictatorial powers under martial law in the case of a “Catastrophic Emergency” (e.g. Second 9/11 terrorist attack).

On July 11, 2007 the CIA published its “National Intelligence Estimate” which pointed to an imminent Al Qaeda attack on America, a second 9/11 which, according to the terms of NSPD 51, would immediately be followed by the suspension of constitutional government and the instatement of martial law under the authority of the president and the vice-president.

NSPD 51 grants unprecedented powers to the Presidency and the Department of Homeland Security, overriding the foundations of Constitutional government. It allows the sitting president to declare a “national emergency” without Congressional approval. The implementation of NSPD 51 would lead to the de facto closing down of the Legislature and the militarization of justice and law enforcement.

The executive order to confiscate the assets of antiwar/peace activists is broadly consistent with NSPD 51. It could be triggered even in the absence of a “Catastrophic emergency” as envisaged under NSPD 51. It repeals democracy. It goes one step further in “criminalizing” all forms of opposition and dissent. to the US led war and “Homeland Security” agenda.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6377

Historic Parallels:

Some hold there is an uncanny similarity to events in 1930’s Germany and what we have seen in America since 2001. The Reichstag Fire Decree led to The Enabling Act of 1933, which gave the democratically-elected Nazis dictatorial powers legally. The Act enabled Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his cabinet to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag. Patriot Act I & II, Executive Orders and Signing Statements, have done the same here. In the final analysis, it should cause everyone to stop and at least question what is going on. However, like the Germans back in 1933, Americans today are too afraid. As back then, the media, the intelligencia, the politicians, religious leaders, everyone is too AFRAID to say anything or speak up. They who do not learn from the past……

The White Rose:

Google Hans and Sophie Scholl, learn about a group of courageous German Patriots, who while just in their 20’s, were beheaded by the Gestapo for being brave enough to stand up and speak out. “They were asking Germans to embrace a different and higher concept of patriotism — one that involves a devotion to a set of moral principles and values rather than blind allegiance to one’s government in time of war. It was a type of patriotism that involved opposition to one’s own government, especially in time of war, when government is engaged in conduct that violates moral principles and values.” Why can we not do the same now?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18061.htm

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This picture (see below) speaks volumes on how the Administration views our First (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.), Fourth (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.), Fifth (No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.), and Sixth (In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.) Amendment’s Rights as Citizens…..

CONTACT YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE TODAY AND ASK THEM TO SUPPORT LEGISLATION TO OVERTURN THIS EXECUTIVE (POWER GRAB) ORDER. HERE ARE LINKS TO FIND YOUR U.S. SENATOR AND HOUSE OF REPRESENATIVE MEMBERS.

http://senate.gov/

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

NOW is the TIME for ALL good people to COME to the AID of their COUNTRY!

ACT NOW…..

BEFORE it is TOO LATE!

The following is from a post on Truthdig -

Chris Hedges: Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse

Posted on Oct 9, 2006
By Chris Hedges

Editor’s Note: The former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” reports on Bush’s plan for Iran, and how a callous war, conceived by zealots, will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.” They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran. Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.

These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States, slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.

But this war will be different. It will be catastrophic. It will usher in the apocalyptic nightmares spun out in the dark, fantastic visions of the Christian right. And there are those around the president who see this vision as preordained by God; indeed, the president himself may hold such a vision.

The hypocrisy of this vaunted moral crusade is not lost on those in the Middle East. Iran actually signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has violated a codicil of that treaty written by European foreign ministers, but this codicil was never ratified by the Iranian parliament. I do not dispute Iran’s intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nor do I minimize the danger should it acquire them in the estimated five to 10 years. But contrast Iran with Pakistan, India and Israel. These three countries refused to sign the treaty and developed nuclear weapons programs in secret. Israel now has an estimated 400 to 600 nuclear weapons. The word “Dimona,” the name of the city where the nuclear facilities are located in Israel, is shorthand in the Muslim world for the deadly Israeli threat to Muslims’ existence. What lessons did the Iranians learn from our Israeli, Pakistani and Indian allies?

Given that we are actively engaged in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime by recruiting tribal groups and ethnic minorities inside Iran to rebel, given that we use apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what must be done to the Iranian regime, given that other countries in the Middle East such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are making noises about developing a nuclear capacity, and given that, with the touch of a button Israel could obliterate Iran, what do we expect from the Iranians? On top of this, the Iranian regime grasps that the doctrine of permanent war entails making “preemptive” and unprovoked strikes.

Those in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe. The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced—either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation.

“As a people we are enormously forgetful,” Dr. Polk, one of the country’s leading scholars on the Middle East, told an Oct. 13 gathering of the Foreign Policy Association in New York. “We should have learned from history that foreign powers can’t win guerrilla wars. The British learned this from our ancestors in the American Revolution and re-learned it in Ireland. Napoleon learned it in Spain. The Germans learned it in Yugoslavia. We should have learned it in Vietnam and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are learning it all over again in Chechnya and we are learning it, of course, in Iraq. Guerrilla wars are almost unwinnable. As a people we are also very vain. Our way of life is the only way. We should have learned that the rich and powerful can’t always succeed against the poor and less powerful.”

An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.

The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel. And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program “the Samson option.” The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.

If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.

AP Photo/Vahid Salemi

Accompanied by armed forces commanders, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reviews Iran’s Shahab-3 missile, a weapon capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching Europe, Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601009_bushs_nuclear_apocalypse/

The following article, although from October 2006, serves as PROOF that Sex Offender Legislation in particular the Adam Walsh Act is NOT ABOUT THE CHILDREN, IT IS ABOUT MONEY. Politicians would have you believe otherwise, to ingratiate themselves to voters. Read the article, see for yourself…

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Lobby game exposed?

Utah firm got language in federal bill to help sell its product

By Matt Canham

The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated:10/13/2006 02:04:02 AM MDT

Board of Pardons and Parole chairman Michael Sibbett is retiring after 15 years. Utah’s former Board of Pardons chairman tapped Sen. Orrin Hatch to help pass legislation virtually guaranteeing a multimillion-dollar windfall for a Sandy-based company that sells ankle monitors for parolees, according to a state court lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims to lay bare how the former pardons chairman, lobbyist Michael Sibbett, and other former public officials purportedly sought to secure no-bid federal and state contracts for their client through their congressional ties and their connections with Utah officials.

One of their main vehicles was a sex offender bill Hatch shepherded through Congress this summer. The bill included minimum requirements for ankle monitors taken “verbatim from a description” of Secure Alert’s product, TrackerPAL, according to the suit.

Sibbett and his partner Robin Riggs, who worked as legal counsel in former Gov. Mike Leavitt’s administration, wrote the language and pushed the product to Hatch and his staffers.

“TrackerPAL is to my knowledge the only company that can meet those minimum standards,” Sibbett said.

The bill creates a pilot program providing states with grants, but the money can only be spent on ankle monitors that meet the legislation’s requirements. And according to the suit, that means TrackerPAL. The bill appropriates $15 million over the next three years but also creates a path to increase the size of the program.

Sibbett stands behind his efforts, which he says will improve public safety and help decrease the costs of housing prisoners.

But Alex Knott, of the Center for Public Integrity, said Sibbett’s push undermines the free market system, where competition allows the public to “get the top amount of products or services for their tax dollars.”

“Circumventing” the competitive process drives up costs and depresses quality, said Knott, political editor for the center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization.

Such provisions are often “written behind closed doors with a nod and a wink.”

Secure Alert’s efforts to secure contracts were brought to light after the Sandy company’s executives fired their lobbyists, who were working under the business name HGR Enterprises, because the company felt the contract provided too much compensation, according to court records. HGR is now seeking $1.3 billion in damages.

HGR’s Sibbett still backs the TrackerPAL device and said of the lawsuit, “I’m just disappointed it has finally got to this point.”

Secure Alert hired Sibbett and HGR in late January to promote TrackerPAL among politicians throughout the country.

Sibbett felt the new technology offered benefits to the criminal justice system that traditional ankle monitors couldn’t match.

Standard tracking devices rely on radio waves and phone lines to keep tabs of those on house arrest. TrackerPAL uses satellite transmitters and a built-in, two-way radio so that police officers not only know when someone left their home but also can talk to them when they do.

The upgrade in technology comes with a price. The units cost $6 each per day to operate.

The company wanted government contracts and was willing to pay its lobbyists 50 cents a day for every monitor worn by a parole or sex offender in Utah and 75 cents a day for those outside the state.

Sibbett started in Utah. He discussed the need for more ankle monitors with lawmakers who were worried about the state’s burgeoning prison population.

He persuaded state Rep. Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, to propose intent language allowing the Department of Corrections to spend money on new tracking devices.

Sibbett then sold the TrackerPAL to his old colleagues in Corrections, who signed a contract on May 1.

The department promised to pay $173,000 for 50 ankle monitors as part of a test case, Corrections spokesman Jack Ford said.

Just two months later, the Adam Walsh Child Safety Act was signed by President Bush, giving Sibbett and Secure Alert a much bigger opportunity.

This bill, pushed by Hatch in the Senate and former Florida Rep. Mark Foley, among others, in the House, created a national sex offender registry and called for police to equip the worst sex offenders with an ankle monitor. The bill included “a single-source provision that only the TrackerPAL device can satisfy,” according to the lawsuit.

Before it was passed, Sibbett and Riggs say they recruited some high-profile supporters. Ed Smart and his daughter Elizabeth, who was famously kidnapped from her home in 2002 and found nine months later, appeared on television shows like “Good Morning America” and “America’s Most Wanted” to promote the bill. Ed Smart held up the TrackerPAL in one appearance, Hatch in the other. A picture from “America’s Most Wanted” now appears on Hatch’s Web site with the caption: “Hatch is holding an example of the ankle tracking device that will be attached to the worst of the worst convicted offenders.”

Hatch’s office declined to comment on HGR and Sibbett’s involvement in the sex offender bill.

Secure Alert has not yet signed any contracts as a result of the legislation but does promote that likelihood in materials it presents to investors.

Sibbett sees nothing wrong with his actions. He believes the device will help the criminal justice system so he pushed the connections he had to further its reach.

“We are not holding up banks or sticking a gun to somebody’s head saying, ‘You have to sign a contract,’ ” he said in an interview.

And of his effort to make hundreds of millions of dollars on its success, he says: “I don’t see anything wrong with it. That is kind of the American way, to go out and work hard, and I think I’ve worked hard.”

Lobbyists regularly use their political connections to help a specific company, said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., group that tracks money in politics.

But the lawsuit allows a “rare look at how business often gets done in Washington,” Ritsch said. “They’re showing how the sausage is made and sometimes it stinks a little.”

http://vote.peteashdown.org/media/articles/sltrib20061013/

mcanham@sltrib.com

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While the politicians are manipulating the facts, using fear mongering rhetoric and lying to their constituents, women, and children continue to be abused. How is it parents and women continue to accept this from their elected officials? It is time to demand better or remove these rascals from office. Call your Representative and Senators, tell them you know what they are doing, and tell them either they fix this mess that they made or you will find someone who will. Do it today for the sake of all women and children. 

Visit SOSNet for more information.

The following is from Americans United web site. I agree with Bishop Jakes, God does not have a political party. The hijacking of American Politics by The Religious Right is nothing more than our version of the Taliban. Americans need to WAKE UP before it is TOO LATE.

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No Theocracy Here: T.D. Jakes Takes On Christian Nation Claim

May 15th 2007

The Religious Right cabal that promotes America as a Christian nation and claims the U.S. Constitution is ripped directly from the Bible has an irritant in T.D. Jakes, arguably one of the country’s most influential evangelical leaders.

In an interview with National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Jakes, who heads a megachurch called Potter’s House in Dallas and has penned a slew of best-selling books, buttressed his contrarian reputation by taking the very anti-Religious Right tact of slamming the mixture of religion and politics.

“I don’t think that God should be assigned to a party,” Jakes told NPR yesterday during a segment that highlighted the pastor’s new book. “When the party goes bad, then the clergy are embarrassed, and I think that faith should transcend politics.”

NPR noted in its piece that not only does Jakes reach millions of Americans with the written word, but his church in Texas will typically pack in more than 100,000 followers. It’s an impressive reach that likely unnerves the blowhards of the Religious Right who have spent decades and lots of money trying to convince their followers that they need to take control of government to advance their agenda, which includes trashing the First Amendment and privacy rights.

The African-American pastor went on to slam clergy who would prod congregants to the voting booth on behalf of a specific candidate, saying that such actions are insulting to parishioners. They don’t need a pastor “to tell them how to vote,” maintained Jakes.

Finally Jakes chided the Religious Right’s demands that candidates, especially presidential contenders, be Christian.

“You have to be president of the United States,” Jakes said, “which incorporates atheists, agnostics and all brands of faith. And many, many Christians don’t understand that. They see this s a Christian nation. But I don’t see this as a theocracy. I see it as a democracy.”

This is not the first time Jakes, whom USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham has described as having “super-pastor standing,” has challenged the Religious Right’s Christian nation rhetoric. In 2005, Jakes told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he didn’t buy the claim that the nation is a Christian one and that “I don’t think we were meant to be.”

Jakes’ challenges to the Religious Right’s Christian nation rhetoric are commendable.

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http://blog.au.org/2007/05/15/no-theocracy-here-td-jakes-takes-on-christian-nation-claim/

This is from Salon.com and it speaks for itself, therefore I will refrain from any comment other than I recommend you read the book before the 2008 Elections.

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It could happen here

In an excerpt from his new book, Salon’s columnist explains why, for the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, Americans have reason to doubt the future of their democracy.

By Joe Conason

Feb. 19, 2007 | Can it happen here? Is it happening here already? That depends, as a recent president might have said, on what the meaning of “it” is.

To Sinclair Lewis, who sardonically titled his 1935 dystopian novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” “it” plainly meant an American version of the totalitarian dictatorships that had seized power in Germany and Italy. Married at the time to the pioneering reporter Dorothy Thompson, who had been expelled from Berlin by the Nazis a year earlier and quickly became one of America’s most outspoken critics of fascism, Lewis was acutely aware of the domestic and foreign threats to American freedom. So often did he and Thompson discuss the crisis in Europe and the implications of Europe’s fate for the Depression-wracked United States that, according to his biographer, Mark Schorer, Lewis referred to the entire topic somewhat contemptuously as “it.”

If “it” denotes the police state American-style as imagined and satirized by Lewis, complete with concentration camps, martial law, and mass executions of strikers and other dissidents, then “it” hasn’t happened here and isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

For contemporary Americans, however, “it” could signify our own more gradual and insidious turn toward authoritarian rule. That is why Lewis’s darkly funny but grim fable of an authoritarian coup achieved through a democratic election still resonates today — along with all the eerie parallels between what he imagined then and what we live with now.

For the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon more than three decades ago, Americans have had reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in our own country. Today we live in a state of tension between the enjoyment of traditional freedoms, including the protections afforded to speech and person by the Bill of Rights, and the disturbing realization that those freedoms have been undermined and may be abrogated at any moment.

Such foreboding, which would have been dismissed as paranoia not so long ago, has been intensified by the unfolding crisis of political legitimacy in the capital. George W. Bush has repeatedly asserted and exercised authority that he does not possess under the Constitution he swore to uphold. He has announced that he intends to continue exercising power according to his claim of a mandate that erases the separation and balancing of power among the branches of government, frees him from any real obligation to obey laws passed by Congress, and permits him to ignore any provisions of the Bill of Rights that may prove inconvenient.

Whether his fellow Americans understand exactly what Bush is doing or not, his six years in office have created intense public anxiety. Much of that anxiety can be attributed to fear of terrorism, which Bush has exacerbated to suit his own purposes — as well as to increasing concern that the world is threatened by global warming, pandemic diseases, economic insecurity, nuclear proliferation, and other perils with which this presidency cannot begin to cope.

As the midterm election showed, more and more Americans realize that something has gone far wrong at the highest levels of government and politics — that Washington’s one-party regime had created a daily spectacle of stunning incompetence and dishonesty. Pollsters have found large majorities of voters worrying that the country is on the wrong track. At this writing, two of every three voters give that answer, and they are not just anxious but furious. Almost half are willing to endorse the censure of the president.

Suspicion and alienation extend beyond the usual disgruntled Democrats to independents and even a significant minority of Republicans. A surprisingly large segment of the electorate is willing to contemplate the possibility of impeaching the president, unappetizing though that prospect should be to anyone who can recall the destructive impeachment of Bush’s predecessor.

The reasons for popular disenchantment with the Republican regime are well known — from the misbegotten, horrifically mismanaged war in Iraq to the heartless mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In both instances, growing anger over the damage done to the national interest and the loss of life and treasure has been exacerbated by evidence of bad faith — by lies, cronyism, and corruption.

Everyone knows — although not everyone necessarily wishes to acknowledge — that the Bush administration misled the American people about the true purposes and likely costs of invading Iraq. It invented a mortal threat to the nation in order to justify illegal aggression. It has repeatedly sought, from the beginning, to exploit the state of war for partisan advantage and presidential image management. It has wasted billions of dollars, and probably tens of billions, on Pentagon contractors with patronage connections to the Republican Party.

Everyone knows, too, that the administration dissembled about the events leading up to the destruction of New Orleans. Its negligence and obliviousness in the wake of the storm were shocking, as was its attempt to conceal its errors. It has yet to explain why a person with few discernible qualifications, other than his status as a crony and business associate of his predecessor, was directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency. By elevating ethically dubious, inexperienced, and ineffectual management the administration compromised a critical agency that had functioned brilliantly during the Clinton administration.

To date, however, we do not know the full dimensions of the scandals behind Iraq and Katrina, because the Republican leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives abdicated the traditional congressional duties of oversight and investigation. It is due to their dereliction that neither the president nor any of his associates have seemed even mildly chastened in the wake of catastrophe. With a single party monopolizing power yet evading responsibility, there was nobody with the constitutional power to hold the White House accountable.

Bolstered by political impunity, especially in a time of war, perhaps any group of politicians would be tempted to abuse power. But this party and these politicians, unchecked by normal democratic constraints, proved to be particularly dangerous. The name for what is wrong with them — the threat embedded within the Bush administration, the Republican congressional leadership, and the current leaders of the Republican Party — is authoritarianism.

The most obvious symptoms can be observed in the regime’s style, which features an almost casual contempt for democratic and lawful norms; an expanding appetite for executive control at the expense of constitutional balances; a reckless impulse to corrupt national institutions with partisan ideology; and an ugly tendency to smear dissent as disloyalty. The most troubling effects are matters of substance, including the suspension of traditional legal rights for certain citizens; the imposition of secrecy and the inhibition of the free flow of information; the extension of domestic spying without legal sanction or warrant; the promotion of torture and other barbaric practices, in defiance of American and international law; and the collusion of government and party with corporate interests and religious fundamentalists.

What worries many Americans even more is that the authoritarians can excuse their excesses as the necessary response to an enemy that every American knows to be real. For the past five years, the Republican leadership has argued that the attacks of September 11, 2001 — and the continuing threat from jihadist groups such as al Qaeda — demand permanent changes in American government, society, and foreign policy. Are those changes essential to preserve our survival — or merely useful for unscrupulous politicians who still hope to achieve permanent domination by their own narrowly ideological party? Not only liberals and leftists, but centrists, libertarians, and conservatives, of every party and no party, have come to distrust the answers given by those in power.

The most salient dissent to be heard in recent years, and especially since Bush’s reelection in 2004, has been voiced not by the liberals and moderates who never trusted the Republican leadership, but by conservatives who once did.

Former Republican congressman Bob Barr of Georgia, who served as one of the managers of the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the House of Representatives, has joined the American Civil Liberties Union he once detested. In the measures taken by the Bush administration and approved by his former colleagues, Barr sees the potential for “a totalitarian type regime.” Paul Craig Roberts, a longtime contributor to the Wall Street Journal and a former Treasury official under Reagan, perceives the “main components of a police state” in the Bush administration’s declaration of plenary powers to deny fundamental rights to suspected terrorists. Bruce Fein, who served as associate attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, believes that the Bush White House is “a clear and present danger to the rule of law,” and that the president “cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses.” Syndicated columnist George Will accuses the administration of pursuing a “monarchical doctrine” in its assertion of extraordinary war powers.

In the 2006 midterm election, disenchanted conservatives joined with liberals and centrists to deliver a stinging rebuke to the regime by overturning Republican domination in both houses of Congress. For the first time since 1994, Democrats control the Senate and the House of Representatives. But the Democratic majority in the upper chamber is as narrow as possible, depending on the whims of Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a Republican-leaning Democrat elected on an independent ballot line, who has supported the White House on the occupation of Iraq, abuse of prisoners of war, domestic spying, the suspension of habeas corpus, military tribunals, far-right judicial nominations, and other critical constitutional issues. Nor is Lieberman alone among the Senate Democrats in his supine acquiescence to the abuses of the White House.

Even if the Democrats had won a stronger majority in the Senate, it would be naive to expect that a single election victory could mend the damage inflicted on America’s constitutional fabric during the past six years. While the Bush administration has enjoyed an extraordinary immunity from Congressional oversight until now, the deepest implication of its actions and statements, as explored in the pages that follow, is that neither legislators nor courts can thwart the will of the unitary executive. When Congress challenges that presidential claim, as inevitably it will, then what seems almost certain to follow is not “bipartisanship” but confrontation. The election of 2006 was not an end but another beginning.

The question that we face in the era of terror alerts, religious fundamentalism, and endless warfare is whether we are still the brave nation preserved and rebuilt by the generation of Sinclair Lewis — or whether our courage, and our luck, have finally run out. America is not yet on the verge of fascism, but democracy is again in danger. The striking resemblance between Buzz Windrip [the demagogic villain of Lewis's novel] and George W. Bush and the similarity of the political forces behind them is more than a literary curiosity. It is a warning on yellowed pages from those to whom we owe everything.

From “It Can Happen Here” by Joe Conason. Copyright (c) 2007 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

– By Joe Conason

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/02/19/conason/

Yellow Journalism is Alive and Well at WSB-TV

First, we will reprint the news story that aired on WSB-TV News, and then we will provide a few comments…

Shack Behind Glenwood Academy Contains Porn

POSTED: 4:23 pm EDT May 8, 2007

UPDATED: 6:16 pm EDT May 8, 2007

DECATUR, Ga. — Parents are alarmed after an old shack containing porn, drug paraphernalia and beer cans was found behind their children’s school. The run-down shack sits behind the Glenwood Academy on Ponce de Leon in Decatur.

The shack is located next to a well-worn trail only a short walk from the school’s playground.

Scattered around the shack are X-rated pictures from pornographic magazines, old beer cans and bottles, a pair of pants and drug paraphernalia. Channel 2’s Tom Regan said the shack is located within 100 feet of the fenceless Glenwood Academy playing field.

“One of our concerns is that someone is back here getting high, looking at the pornographic materials and thinking, ‘This is an opportunity to get a child,’ said parent Karen Langley.

The school’s principal said they became aware of the shack last week after children attending a picnic saw it and told their parents.

Beyond the sexually explicit pictures, there are other potential dangers to kids who walk into the shack. Sheet metal with sharp edges hang down and there is broken glass all over the ground.

“This is not a safe place for kids to be,” said Langley.

Decatur Schools facilities director Mike Bruenig said, “It’s not our property, so we really can’t go in and tear it down without some kind of due process.”

According to Bruenig, the city has contacted the property owner and he has agreed to take it down.

(Copyright 2007 by WSBTV.com)

###

Comments from SOS-Net:

What is truly amazing is that last year, they (WSB-TV) were offered an opportunity to interview Registered Sex Offenders at a local therapist’s office; SOS-Net has obtained copies of the e-mail exchange with Anchor John Pruitt. Mr. Pruitt and WSB were offered the opportunity to find out first hand, if all Registered Sex Offenders were a threat to children or if the myth was just a convenient fear-mongering venue for ratings by the media and votes by politicians.

Let’s connect the dots for our obtuse friends at WSB. First, we must point out that, according to the United States Department of Justice, in about 90% of the sex abuse cases, the victim KNOWS their offender, and that stranger danger represents less than 8% of the cases.

Secondly, WSB-TV made sure to interview a “soccer mom” and air the fear in an effort to further scare parents. In place of common sense, which tells us that teenage boys will have private meeting places where they sneak a peek at porn, hide their booze and drug stash, and in general just be boys.

Now let’s be totally clear on what this means. First, Registered Sex Offenders are not living within 1000 feet of this school. That is the law. Therefore, if a sex offender was using this shack as a “staging area,” for an “opportunity to get a child,” that person is NOT living nearby or is most likely off law enforcement’s radar screen.

If the latter is the case, then is this not proof that the sex offender registry and more importantly Georgia’s sex offender laws are ineffective? However, WSB would never report that, because this type of responsible reporting would actually work toward making children safer.

Today’s mainstream media do not want to help make children safer, why? It would greatly reduce the body bags, which would greatly reduce the source for sensational news stories, and sensational news stories are the lifeblood of our media outlets. They guarantee higher ratings.

I contend that this type of “news” and reporting (and I use these terms loosely), is nothing more than Tabloid Journalism, and it is in fact making our children less safe. This is the same conclusion and declaration the FBI made.

Fear drives ratings and advertising dollars, fear makes for political sound bites and votes. At the end of the day, it is up to parents to insure their children are safe, evidently; the media and government are just not able to do that.

Until they become responsible citizens, our children remain at risk, until they stop the pandering of fear, our children remain at risk. We are simply stuck on stupid when it comes to the sex offender issue. End of story.

(About the pictures, top left - shows inside of “porn shack”, yeah it really looks like someone other than kids was hanging out in there just waiting for a victim. Bottom right - exterior of “porn shack”, again, it looks just like the place a child molester wants to hang out in. WSB-TV should have its license pulled for running such a stupid story, at the very least; viewers should switch over to another channel. When we stop supporting ridiculous and irresponsible journalism by the media, they will feel the effects of our outrage in their bottom line, and when that happens, they will change the status quo.)