Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Fascism

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

As events this week have proven, SCOTUS is too highly venerated. Their latest outrage is the decree that 'corporations are people' and may spend as much money as they like in order to get their stooges into public office.

It is the worst decision since Bush v Gore which was, at the time, compared to Dred-Scott, a decision of 1857 in which seven of nine Supreme Court Justices declared that no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen. As a non-citizen --the court stated --Dred Scott had no rights whatsoever and could not sue in a Federal Court! The court ruled that he must remain a slave. Dred Scott was denied the very personhood that the court now BESTOWS upon mere legal abstractions. This is absurd, stupid and intolerable.

The court was wrong then. It was wrong again with Bush v Gore! The court is wrong now, dead wrong! Corporations are not people and should, by right, have no rights whatsoever and should, by right, exist only for as long as the people may find them useful or tolerable. Of late, their venal behavior and the wars of naked aggression that are fought on their behalf alone have become intolerable. It is time to reassess the status that is given both the Supreme Court and to the corporations.

Both court and corporations should be not so gently reminded that 'we the people' are sovereign. 'We the people' are the boss'. 'We the people' have financed this farce with our moneys! 'We the people' demand a change NOW! We the people should stop financing wars of naked aggression waged on behalf of mere 'legal abstractions' now deemed by a dishonest court to be 'people!. Perhaps a real revolution will consider extensive reforms in the one case and outright abolition in another. Revolution now!

Even Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes blew it when he failed to defend Eugene Debs' rights of free speech. He compared Debs' statements in opposition to US entry into WWI to 'yelling fire in a crowded theatre'. But if there really is a fire, yelling fire seems to me to be the prudent thing to do! Seems to me that the venerable Justice Holmes made a cute but glaringly invalid analogy! Seems to me that true patriots have not only a right but a moral responsibility to oppose their nation's entry into foolhardly, vainglorious wars of naked aggression. It seems to me prudent that we demand an open, free and fair debate.

Otherwise, wars will continue to be fought by the poor for the benefit of the rich and the military-industrial complex which divides the spoils of war among Dick Cheney's oil buddies and the other 'paid thugs' like Blackwater who hide behind the monicker --'defense contrctors'.

For eons wars have been fought for booty! That's why the US fights them today. The booty du jour is oil! To deny one the right to oppose those wars --as Holmes denied Eugene Debs --is a recipe for military dictatorship.

St. Thomas More would have called the Military-Industrial complex and their shills on K-street a "conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodities in the name and title of the commonwealth!" [See: Thomas More, Utopia] This is why wars have been waged throughout the ages! If Holmes were alive, I will tell him that it is wrong NOT to yell fire in a crowded theater if the theater is, indeed, on fire! At this moment in our history, the American republic is threatened, and among those threatening it is the US Supreme Court itself!

I am yelling FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!

In his remarkably undistinguished 20-year stint as a Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas has rarely called attention to himself for original jurisprudential thinking. But if Thomas had had his way with Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, in which the court decided this week to remove critically important limits on campaign financing, an already horrible decision would have been made far, far worse. Crazy worse.

Thomas went along with the majority in agreeing that corporations and unions can once more be permitted to spend freely on political issues, thus driving a stake through the heart of the democratic process in the United States. But he dissented in part, because he didn't think the ruling went far enough. Specifically, he argued that the court was wrong to continue requiring that the sponsors of political advertising disclose who paid for them.

That's right. Thomas came out against the principle of transparency, and for the right of corporations to spend millions of dollars to influence public policy without having to tell anyone what they were up to. It's hard to imagine a less democratic stance.

Thomas did have his reasons, however. He blamed the gays. In the heated war over Proposition 8 in California, he wrote, any individual who contributed as little as $100 in favor of the ban on same-sex marriage was required to disclose his or her name and address to the public, and thus opened themselves up to harassment.

--This Week in Crazy: Clarence Thomas

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• Abolish Corporate Personhood
  
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

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The Man Who Stuck Us With Bush

If historians are honest, history will record that it was Antonin Scalia who finished off the American republic by sticking us with George W. Bush, a ne'er do well who aspired to dictatorship and with Scalia's help, got one! Scalia now sweats his legacy in an unseemly manner in public. Historians will say of his bone headed efforts to bully other justices into complicity was not not based in anyway on the Constitution, law or precedent. Scalia is what happens when justices give up law for partisan politics. Scalia's scholarly retort: 'get over it'.

Lately, Scalia has blamed Gore for Bush v Gore, ignoring the fact that Gore had already won his case in the Florida Court. A recount of all the votes was, in fact, underway but stopped when Bush made of a local election a federal case. The case is styled Bush v Gore. That means Bush brought the case.

The best damning criticism of Bush v Gore is found in Bush v Gore --the opinions of the dissenting judges. Clearly --they state even better than other legal scholars the UNCONSTITUTIONALITY of the Supreme Court overturning a decision of a State court with regard to the state court's own rulings, a state's own elections!!! Scalia is trying to rewrite history. Not surprising for an idiot, a crook, a Republican.

The Constitution assigns to the States the primary responsibility for determining the manner of selecting the Presidential electors. See Art. II, §1, cl. 2. When questions arise about the meaning of state laws, including election laws, it is our settled practice to accept the opinions of the highest courts of the States as providing the final answers. On rare occasions, however, either federal statutes or the Federal Constitution may require federal judicial intervention in state elections. This is not such an occasion.

...

It hardly needs stating that Congress, pursuant to 3 U. S. C. §5, did not impose any affirmative duties upon the States that their governmental branches could "violate." Rather, §5 provides a safe harbor for States to select electors in contested elections "by judicial or other methods" established by laws prior to the election day. Section 5, like Article II, assumes the involvement of the state judiciary in interpreting state election laws and resolving election disputes under those laws. Neither §5 nor Article II grants federal judges any special authority to substitute their views for those of the state judiciary on matters of state law.

...

One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

--Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer join, dissenting, Bush v Gore

The Florida State Court had already ruled that the recount could continue. The case had been settled where cases involving a state's right to conduct its own elections should have been settled and that is with a decision of Florida's high court.

The Court should not have reviewed either Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Bd., ante, p. ___ (per curiam), or this case, and should not have stopped Florida's attempt to recount all undervote ballots

...

There are three issues: whether the State Supreme Court's interpretation of the statute providing for a contest of the state election results somehow violates 3 U. S. C. §5; whether that court's construction of the state statutory provisions governing contests impermissibly changes a state law from what the State's legislature has provided, in violation of Article II, §1, cl. 2, of the national Constitution; and whether the manner of interpreting markings on disputed ballots failing to cause machines to register votes for President (the undervote ballots) violates the equal protection or due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these issues is difficult to describe or to resolve.

...

In sum, the interpretations by the Florida court raise no substantial question under Article II. That court engaged in permissible construction in determining that Gore had instituted a contest authorized by the state statute, and it proceeded to direct the trial judge to deal with that contest in the exercise of the discretionary powers generously conferred by Fla. Stat. §102.168(8) (2000), to "fashion such orders as he or she deems necessary to ensure that each allegation in the complaint is investigated, examined, or checked, to prevent or correct any alleged wrong, and to provide any relief appropriate under such circumstances." As Justice Ginsburg has persuasively explained in her own dissenting opinion, our customary respect for state interpretations of state law counsels against rejection of the Florida court's determinations in this case.

But as Justice Breyer has pointed out, no showing has been made of legal overvotes uncounted, and counsel for Gore made an uncontradicted representation to the Court that the statewide total of undervotes is about 60,000. Id., at 62. To recount these manually would be a tall order, but before this Court stayed the effort to do that the courts of Florida were ready to do their best to get that job done. There is no justification for denying the State the opportunity to try to count all disputed ballots now.

--Justice Souter, with whom Justice Breyer joins and with whom Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsburg join with regard to all but Part C, dissenting, Bush v Gore

Justice Ginsburg:

I might join The Chief Justice were it my commission to interpret Florida law. But disagreement with the Florida court's interpretation of its own State's law does not warrant the conclusion that the justices of that court have legislated. There is no cause here to believe that the members of Florida's high court have done less than "their mortal best to discharge their oath of office," Sumner v. Mata, 449 U. S. 539, 549 (1981), and no cause to upset their reasoned interpretation of Florida law.

...

As Justice Breyer convincingly explains, see post, at 5-9 (dissenting opinion), this case involves nothing close to the kind of recalcitrance by a state high court that warrants extraordinary action by this Court. The Florida Supreme Court concluded that counting every legal vote was the overriding concern of the Florida Legislature when it enacted the State's Election Code. The court surely should not be bracketed with state high courts of the Jim Crow South.

...

I agree with Justice Stevens that petitioners have not presented a substantial equal protection claim. Ideally, perfection would be the appropriate standard for judging the recount. But we live in an imperfect world, one in which thousands of votes have not been counted. I cannot agree that the recount adopted by the Florida court, flawed as it may be, would yield a result any less fair or precise than the certification that preceded that recount.

...

But no one has doubted the good faith and diligence with which Florida election officials, attorneys for all sides of this controversy, and the courts of law have performed their duties. Notably, the Florida Supreme Court has produced two substantial opinions within 29 hours of oral argument. In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States. I dissent.

--Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Stevens joins, and with whom Justice Souter and Justice Breyer join as to Part I, dissenting, Bush v Gore

From Justice Breyer:

By halting the manual recount, and thus ensuring that the uncounted legal votes will not be counted under any standard, this Court crafts a remedy out of proportion to the asserted harm.

...

The Florida Supreme Court, applying this definition, decided, on the basis of the record, that respondents had shown that the ballots undercounted by the voting machines contained enough "legal votes" to place "the results" of the election "in doubt." Since only a few hundred votes separated the candidates, and since the "undercounted" ballots numbered tens of thousands, it is difficult to see how anyone could find this conclusion unreasonable-however strict the standard used to measure the voter's "clear intent." Nor did this conclusion "strip" canvassing boards of their discretion. The boards retain their traditional discretionary authority during the protest period. And during the contest period, as the court stated, "the Canvassing Board's actions [during the protest period] may constitute evidence that a ballot does or does not qualify as a legal vote." Id., at *13. Whether a local county canvassing board's discretionary judgment during the protest period not to conduct a manual recount will be set aside during a contest period depends upon whether a candidate provides additional evidence that the rejected votes contain enough "legal votes" to place the outcome of the race in doubt. To limit the local canvassing board's discretion in this way is not to eliminate that discretion. At the least, one could reasonably so believe. ...

I repeat, where is the "impermissible" distortion?

--Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsburg join except as to Part I-A-1, and with whom Justice Souter joins as to Part I, dissenting, Bush v Gore

Certainly, the 'majority' decision did not even address the issues that compelled the case. Justice Breyer pointed out: there was absolutely no justification for the majority's remedy, which simply reversed a decision of the lower court and had the effect of halting the recount entirely. Some remedy!

By halting the manual recount, and thus ensuring that the uncounted legal votes will not be counted under any standard, this Court crafts a remedy out of proportion to the asserted harm. And that remedy harms the very fairness interests the Court is attempting to protect.

I repeat, where is the "impermissible" distortion?

--Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsburg join except as to Part I-A-1, and with whom Justice Souter joins as to Part I, dissenting, Bush v Gore

It is on this point that I have a nit to pick with Breyer who states that the 'remedy' was 'out of proportion' to the 'asserted harm'. It was, in fact, no remedy at all, not even addressing 14th issues --real, imagined, or strictly political. Stopping the recount entirely most certainly did not bring Florida into compliance with the 14th amendment even if it had not been prior. If anyone should think it does, I defy them to make the case. If any voter had been disenfranchised before Bush v Gore, they remain disenfranchised afterward. Additionally, a 'remedy' must be applicable universally, correcting wrongs wherever they occur throughout the nation. Bush v Gore, rather, applied in one case and in one case alone. It is, therefore, not a law but a decree.

Moreover, it was never proven by Bush v Gore that any voter had been disenfranchised except by practices associated with the Bush camp. Certainly, none of those instances or issues were addressed by Bush in his petition or by the decision of the high court.

First, normally in equal protection cases, the aggrieved party — in this case, the Florida voter who claims his or her vote was not counted equally — brings the action. That was not the case in Bush v. Gore, which raises the question whether Bush had standing (that is, the legal right) to sue.

Second, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the equal protection clause can only be successfully invoked if the discrimination was intentional, and in this case, an excellent case can be made that it was not. Any differences from county to county as to how intent was assessed probably were not intended to discriminate among various voters, though they may have had that effect.

Third, if the five justices were truly concerned about the voters' equal protection rights, then how could they adopt a solution that meant that those who submitted "undervotes" would not have their votes counted at all? Certainly eliminating certain voters' ballots, and not those of others, is the greatest voting inequality of all.

--Findlaw, A Review Of the Betrayal Of America

At last, it was not proven in Bush v Gore that Florida had not been in compliance. The majority opinion seems almost to concede that they had utterly failed to make 14th Amendment case law. It was, in fact, a decision that made no law! A single word sums up Bush v Gore: disingenuous!

Scalia's attempt to rewrite history is doomed to fail. It was Bush who brought the case ---not Gore. Had Gore brought the case it would have been styled "Gore v Bush". It was not. One is tempted to call Scalia a liar. But I am content to let the facts and history speak for themselves. And he knows what he is.

Secondly, Gore had no interest in pursuing the case as the Florida court had already mandated the only 'remedy' compelled by both law and common sense: count the votes! That process --underway --was halted by the high court which took the case upon a transparent pretext.

It was the partisan majority that set aside it's Constitutional responsibility to rule upon the law and only the law and ruled, instead, along partisan lines. That their decision to do so was foolhardy and ill-considered has been proven by the record of utter failure and catastrophe wrought upon this nation in the wake of this ill-considered, foolhardy, disingenuous 'decision'.

A high price continues to be paid because SCOTUS stuck its nose into an issue that had already been settled according to the law. The high court set the nation upon a path in which the rule of law no longer exists. A pox on the five majority justices who gave us the dictatorship of George W. Bush. They have, thus, ensured that their names and the decision to which their names are attached will forever live in infamy.

Scalia: "Get over it!"

Additional resources

• A GREAT CASE THAT MADE NO LAW:
  A Review of Alan Dershowitz's Book on Bush v. Gore
• New York Times: Posner v. Dershowitz
• A Review Of the Betrayal Of America
• The Legacy of Bush v Gore
• Antonin Scalia, self-made martyr
• Bush vs the Constitution

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GOP, Bush, Evil, Tyranny

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Bush's Unitary Executive Ends the Rule of Law, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Separation of Powers

Bush has decreed his "long term plan" for Iraq, committing the US, without Congressional authority, to a permanent presence. His decree is a poke in the eye to the public, the congress, the rule of law! Bush believes himself to be above the rule of law, the authority of Congress and the courts. When England was confronted by Charles I, a monarch who likewise presumed to be above Parliament, the English simply marched Charles out onto an improvised platform at the Banqueting House in Whitehall where they proceeded to chop off his head!

President Bush's plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq's security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval, according to legal specialists.

After World War II, for example - when the United States gave security commitments to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and NATO members - Presidents Truman and Eisenhower designated the agreements as treaties requiring Senate ratification. In 1985, when President Ronald Reagan guaranteed that the US military would defend the Marshall Islands and Micronesia if they were attacked, the compacts were put to a vote by both chambers of Congress.

By contrast, Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki have already agreed that a coming compact will include the United States providing "security assurances and commitments" to Iraq to deter any foreign invasion or internal terrorism by "outlaw groups." But a top White House official has also said that Bush does not intend to submit the deal to Congress.

--Boston Globe, Bush plan for Iraq would be a first

I had wondered why I am so bored with the primary process, this field of candidates, the coverage, the speeches, what passes for debate. I am bored because it's all as beside the point as the medieval debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin! It might as well have been scripted and given what I've learned about political consulting --it is scripted! I've heard all the talking points in focus groups. I can predict every question and every answer. This 'election' is for show! This election is a sop to those who have not gotten the news: American Democracy is over. Bush rules by decree. If he should decide to hang around, who's 'gonna' throw him out? The Military? Nope! The Congress? Nope! The Supreme Court? Stop me! My sides are hurting!

Everyone is just playing their roles. It is as if the candidates of both major parties had a conference and decided: we won't talk about how George W. Bush has ended, perhaps forever, the rule of law in the United States. Constitution: R.I.P! You won't know what you had until it's gone.

Unless something is done, you will just have to get used to more stories about how innocent folk get tasered, jailed, or roughed up for daring to practice 'free speech'. Get used to a permanent US presence in Iraq! Get used to Bush's evil smirk! Get used to GOP bullshit! Get used to being spied on at the mall, in your car, even at home with devices that can literally see through walls. Those devices exist.

Everyone, it seems, from Bill Maher on Larry King Live to Virginia Tech Professor Theodore Fuller, believes Bush will be remembered as the very worst President in US history. Fuller's list includes the perpetual nature of Bush's obvious failure in Iraq. It includes Bush's failure to reform Social Security, though I am suspicious of efforts to "reform" what is, in fact, the Government's only success story. What I have not heard except via the 'blogosphere' is why! The 'why' should top the list and should have been blazened atop every major daily in the nation. Instead, the truth is whispered if at all: Bush destroyed the very concept of the "rule of law" and, more specifically, "Due Process of Law" because he is the tool of America's moneyed 'elite'.

It's not that they lied about justifications for war, but in their failure to allow oversight into the processes that produced those lies. It's not in the firing of federal attorneys and the refusal to substantiate the firings, but in the pure partisanship of their actions. It's not their countless refusals to comply with subpoenas from Congress or Freedom of Information Act from the people, but in their arrogated stance, setting themselves above the requirements themselves.

Once when challenged for his unwillingness to submit to the rule of law in an obvious snub of the Constitution, Bush screamed, "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

And thus our Constitution has now become what Bush has made it. This annihilation of the foundational document of our republic was orchestrated by a president who swore an oath of honor to protect it, a devout Christian who promised to restore honor and integrity to the Oval Office.

Congress, in its acquiescence and subservience, is equally culpable. When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced, "impeachment is off the table," she not only absolved Bush of all previous transgressions but paved a figurative superhighway for any to come. There's a reason Congress's approval ratings are even lower than the administration's.

--Michael Abraham, Bush's legacy is the end of law

Bush could not have put himself above the law without help from Republicans of all stripes as well as timely betrayals and sellouts by key Democrats. Without effective opposition, Bush-Cheney have enabled a "unitary executive"! A dubious doctrine without precedent in American history, it is the belief that the "President" is above regulation, above oversight or supervision, above the decisions of the courts, including the Supreme Court, above laws passed by Congress, above all responsibility to the people.

"[Since Watergate] I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job. ... One of the things that I feel an obligation [to do] ... is to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors."

--VP Dick Cheney, [Interview with Cokie Roberts] New York Times, Recent Flexing of Presidential Powers Had Personal Roots in Ford White House, SCOTT SHANE. January 2002,

I submit to Bush, Cheney, their NEOCON base, the Republican party, and assorted enablers inside the Democratic party that this "doctrine" is utter bullshit! Not even European monarchs --at the very height of their power and influence --could boast or wield such power.

It is ironic that at the height of his "power", Bush is among the least popular "Presidents" in American history. What then is the source of his power? Bush, addressing a gathering of well-heeled Republicans and other representatives of corporate power called them "his base". And --so they were. 'They' are an increasingly tiny elite which alone benefits from GOP tax cuts and the enrichment of the Military/Industrial complex.

The influence of the cabal begins at Yale, where Skull and Bones has appropriated university funds for its own use, leaving the school virtually impoverished. Skull and Bones' corporate shell, the Russell Trust Association, owns nearly all of the university's real estate, as well as most of the land in Connecticut. Skull and Bones has controlled Yale's faculty and campus publications so that students cannot speak openly about it. "Year by year," the campus's only anti-society publication stated during its brief tenure in 1873, "the deadly evil is growing."

The year in the tomb at Yale instills within members an unwavering loyalty to Skull and Bones. Members have been known to stab their Skull and Bones pins into their skin to keep them in place during swimming or bathing. The knights (as the student members are called) learn quickly that their allegiance to the society must supersede all else: family, friendships, country, God. They are taught that once they get out into the world, they are expected to reach positions of prominence so that they can further elevate the society's status and help promote the standing of their fellow Bonesmen.

--Alexandra Robbins, George W. Bush and the Brotherhood of Death, 'Secrets of the Tomb' Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power

The movies have discovered Skull and Bones. The most recent entry, The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert de Niro, explores a symbiotic relationship between Yale's super secret Skull and Bones and the equally secret CIA. Another thriller advertises itself with a Hollywood logline: A secret society so powerful, it can give you anything…at a price., the subtitle to The Skulls, a new thriller by Rob Cohen.

Interestingly, both CIA and Skull and Bones are called "brotherhoods". Both apparently control those inside by compromising them. Both exhibit all the characteristics of kooky cults. In all, the individual is subordinated to the group. The Faustian term for this is "selling your soul". There are more prosaic descriptions but none as accurate. Both "Skull and Bones" and its ally, the CIA, are evil cults. [See: Ronald Reagan is Still Dead!, and The Role of the Psychopath in the Generation of Global Evil]

The Good Shepherd is an Academy Award-nominated 2006 film directed by Robert De Niro and stars Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The main story lines are credible and set against historical events. If it is not literally "the untold story of the birth of counter-intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency", it is most certainly true in terms of the relationship of Skull and Bones to the CIA and in terms of the evil, pernicious effects both have had on the US, indeed, the world!

The film is most powerful when it traces the common origins of the CIA and the Skull and Bones and compares the dark results of both. I defy any rational person not a part of either cult to watch this movie and resist the conclusion that both the CIA and the Skull and Bones are evil organizations, cults in fact, that have harmed this nation, the people, the rule of law, and civilization itself. Down with both!

The following is a video playlist beginning with a trailer for the film "The Good Shephard", followed by two clips from a well-sourced documentary series exposing the Skull and Bones cult, and, at last, "We Do", the Simpsons brilliant lampoon at every cult from Bilderberg, Tri-Lateral Commission, to Skull and Bones:

An addendum: writer Alexandra Robbins recalls her 'encounter' with a bonesman.

"Who controls the British crown?"

"Who keeps the metric system down? "

"We do! We do. . . "

" Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do! We do. "

Certainly, Skull and Bones does cross boundaries in order to attempt to stay out of the public spotlight. When I wrote an article about the society for the Atlantic Monthly in May 2000, an older Bonesman said to me, “If it’s not portrayed positively, I’m sending a couple of my friends after you.” After the article was published, I received a telephone call at my office from a fellow journalist, who is a member of Skull and Bones.

He scolded me for writing the article—”writing that article was not an ethical or honorable way to make a decent living in journalism,” he condescended —and then asked me how much I had been paid for the story. When I refused to answer, he hung up. Fifteen minutes later, he called back.

“I have just gotten off the phone with our people.” “Your people?” I snickered.
“Yes. Our people.” He told me that the society demanded to know where I got my information.

“I’ve never been in the tomb and I did nothing illegal in the process of reporting this article,” I replied.

“Then you must have gotten something from one of us. Tell me whom you spoke to. We just want to talk to them,” he wheedled. “I don’t reveal my sources.”
Then he got angry. He screamed at me for a while about how dishonorable I was for writing the article.

“A lot of people are very despondent over this!” he yelled. “Fifteen Yale juniors are very, very upset!” I thanked him for telling me his concerns.
“There are a lot of us at newspapers and at political journalism institutions,” he coldly hissed. “Good luck with your career”—and he slammed down the phone.

--Alexandra Robbins, Secrets of the Tomb

Timely updates: Just recently, Northcom, announced on their web site its readiness to implement martial law in the US.

USNORTHCOM’s official response to Commission on National Guard and Reserves Final Report

February 1, 2008

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- U.S. Northern Command’s primary mission is Homeland Defense, and the command stands ready to respond to any homeland defense or civil support mission requirement.

“The U.S. military absolutely has the capacity to respond to potential threats within our nation today. It will get better in this coming year and continue to improve beyond that,” said Gen. Gene Renuart, USNORTHCOM commander.

Established in 2002 as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, USNORTHCOM has dramatically expanded DoD’s focus on all aspects of Homeland Defense, including planning and exercising, as well as organizing new headquarters and units that are specifically tailored for domestic response.

...

---USNORTHCOM’s official response to Commission on National Guard and Reserves Final Report

Hannity’s Afternoon Meltdown

Boy, oh boy. Something is happening with the ‘true’ conservatives on AM Talk Radio. I tuned into Hannity see what had happened today and the guy just went off on what can only be described as a lick-spittle tirade! Apparently Rich Galen wrote a piece today and noted how conservatives tearing down McCain is basically doing the liberal media’s work for them. It is a fair if slightly exaggerated point to make, especially after years of the right tearing down El Presidente Jorge Bush for disagreeing with them.

But something inside Hannity snapped over this and he was in the throws of insanity. He claimed those who question his actions are pompous, arrogant, hanger-ons who are simply trying to angle for jobs in the new administration and have sold their principles for money. And he was just getting started! The most hilarious (and pathetic) part came where he declared himself and other angry and raving talk show hosts the future of America! You could almost see him stand up and salute himself.

Clearly Hannity and his sharp-tongued friends are not as able to take criticism as they are at dishing it out (with insults and demeaning undertones). Geez, it was just one man’s view of the coalition self-destructing. I think what was most bizarre was how he kept trying to claim he was upbeat and things were great through out his tirade (Dude, there was so much anger and hurt I don’t know who you think you are kidding?). He also started the whole thing by claiming he got all these media calls today - as if to prove to himself he is still relevant. He then went on to say he had the power of the airwaves and people in DC better be careful or he would close their access. The threats were really something else and went on for quite a while. ...

Additional resources

• By way of Crooks and Liars: How George torpedoed Jeb's presidential hopes and sank the family's political dynasty.
• New CIA Protocol to Legalize Torture
• Philip Roth: 'Bush Is Too Horrendous To Be Forgotten'
• Bush believes he is above the law
• Who Controls the CIA Controls the Media
• MSNBC/Today Show:‘Secrets of the Tomb’

GOP, Bush, Government Incompetence, CIA

A man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!

Crooks are to be found even among liberals who swallowed Bush's kool-aid. Following Bill Maher's absurd attack on those favoring an investigation of one of the worst crimes in history, I found the following comment in response to my blog entry: Bill Maher Aligns With Neocons, Tries to Assault Truthseeker

Apparently, in bizarro world, a truth seeker is someone who believes that the stupidest, most incompetent, most utterly unintelligent buffoon, with an administration that is equally mind-numbingly stupid and unable to do one thing right, are also, on one magical day, the most ingenious terrorists in US history, capable of not only a spectacularly flawless attack on the United States, but able to silence ALL the people necessary to be in on such a grand master plan.

--Anonymous

I might not have signed my name either. But I would not have written to begin with. The writer has fallen into a common trap, having swallowed Bushco's fallacious label: "conspiracy theorist". This obvious fallacy, a mainstay of propagandists, was expertly practiced by Goebbels. The only comprehensive "theory" of 911 is the "official" one and it's full of holes. It goes like this:

Bin Laden, head of al Qaeda, planned and coordinated the attacks from his cave in Afghanistan. A gang of Saudi pilots got a quick crash course at a Florida flight school. Like seasoned, veteran pilots they manage to get on board American flights, subduing passengers and crew with box cutters. With incredible precision, they crashed two skyscrapers and the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed and disappeared into a tiny little ditch in Pennsylvania.

Now that is a conspiracy theory if there ever was one. It's insane on it's face. Some obvious holes among thousands:

• Even if it were true, it hardly takes the onus off the Bush regime. Bin Laden was and, perhaps, remains a CIA asset who was visited by the CIA as he received dialysis in Dubai.
• Al Qaeda was created by the CIA. When did they stop working for the CIA? The official theory does not address that thorny point.
• The pilots simply could not have executed the maneuvers for which they are given credit. Hani Hanjour, specifically, is said to have had problems in a simulator. Yet we are expected to believe that he piloted, expertly, a 757 through an incredible spiral into the Pentagon without so much as scorching a blade of grass on a pristine, putting green lawn.
• Many of the Arab "pilots" either survived the crashes which killed everyone else or they were never on the planes to begin with. Some even gave interviews afterwards though they were officially dead.
  
• No wreckage was ever produced or examined at either the Pentagon or Pennsylvania. Now, I've covered plane crashes as a reporter. That includes fighter jets, airliners, and small private planes. In every instance, there was scorched but identifiable wreckage. In every instance there were scorched bodies and I've seen more of those than I care to remember. In every intances ---at any speed and circumstance --there was evidence that might have been collected and studied. But NOT on 911. And the gullible American people have swallowed this bullshit! The Bush administration has lied to you and is still lying to you.
  
• The fires were neither hot enough or long enough to have melted steel. If molten steel was found, its source was not airliners nor kerosene. It was said"An inferno commenced with 50,000 liters of fuel can melt anything" That is simply not true. Most large fires are relatively "cool" as evidenced by the billowing black smoke indicative of a "cool" fire.
  
• The fire, said to have been big enough and hot enough to have melted steel in New York, did not even inflame papers lying on a desk at the Pentagon. The official theory does not explain why similar alleged "causes" would have such disparate results.l
  
• If the "official version" of events had been true, there would not have been the "punch out" hole in the Pentagon's inner ring.
• Where is the wreckage of an airliner at the Pentagon? Show me the wreckage! A single scrap would do. Investigators in Scotland pieced together the flight that exploded over Lockerbie. Why does a lesser, flawed and fallacious standard apply to the events of 911?
  

It goes on and on. Not a single component of the "official theory" can be demonstrated to be true. There is no verifiable evidence of any sort in support of it.

Under fire for having lied about everything else, Bushco tars his critics with the label "conspiracy theorist" when, in fact, the work of David Lee Griffen and numerous others deal with the holes in Bush's theory. The burden of proof is on Bush. Those who assert must prove. Bush must prove or at least support his ridiculous scenario --for which there is not one one shred of admissible evidence!

The anonymous comment falls victim to the strawman fallacy attributing positions to so called "conspiracy theorists" that most have not taken. Popular Science magazine is the most prominent offender. PS invented positions and falsely attributed them to "theorists". Knocking down the strawman is easy.

Another common fallacy is that of over-generalizing. There are many points of contention among Bush critics, but almost all have this much in common: they demand a real, fair and complete investigation of all the facts and evidence. The 911 Commission was most certainly not such an investigation. Of late, even co-chairs Kean and Hamilton charge that they were obstructed by Bush. If the work of the 911 Commission was intended to be the imprimatur of legitimacy so desperately sought by Bush, it failed even the standards of its own co-chairs.

There is, therefore, no official conspiracy to defend. That being the case, where does Bill Maher get off presuming to kick anyone's ass? Has Maher issued a challenge? If so, I get choice of weapons: a real debate under university rules. Maher can be Bush's proxy and put forward Bush's official theory. In debate terminology, he gets the affirmative. As the negative, a debunker of his official theory, I get to kick both his and Bush's asses! At the outset, I will demand a single shred of verifiable evidence that might be admissible in court. Debate over! Maher can consider his ass kicked! Hey Bill, bring it on! Dare to give me equal time!

I don't think anyone believes Bush himself capable of conceiving and orchestrating the details of 911. The question, rather, is one of complicity, of having authorized with a wink, nod, or midnite powwow. Bushco would have had Pentagon literature to fall back on. I referenced the Northwoods Project in the last entry. Secondly, there is the Project for the New American Century --proof that just such a "project" was not only conceivable but wished for. PNAC describes --wistfully --a cataclysmic event comparable to Pearl Harbor. The authors of PNAC are, in a word, sick.

Bush's evil genie, Dick Cheney, was in fact commanding exercises that day --exercises that gamed the PNAC dream of world domination at the end of a terrorist attack on the people of America. It was the very scenario that Condo Rice would later say could not have been foreseen. But, everyone, in fact, did foresee it! But that would not be Condo's first, or last, lie.

Dick Cheney's "exercises" prove that the scenario had been foreseen in considerable detail, despite Condo's disingenuous protestations to the contrary. What happened on 911 IS that very scenario. What ARE the odds? What is more credible --that as Cheney was conducting the exercise, terrorists suddenly decided to enact it? Or --was Cheney's exercise the attack itself?

I am expected to believe unquestioningly the absurd position that it was only coincidental that Cheney's very exercise became real even as he was coordinating it. The number of coincidences surrounding this administration is astronomical.

Bush is neck and neck with Nixon and Carter for the very worst poll numbers in US history. Yet the American consciousness is not raised inversely to Bush's plunge into poll oblivion.

The numerous damning critiques of the official conspiracy theory are not, in themselves theories, at all. They are, rather, probable cause that 911 should have been investigated but inexplicably was not. Since when are crimes NOT investigated? Since when is evidence hauled off and disposed of --God knows where!

Forget about 911 --the disposal or destruction of evidence is itself a crime, a felony, as egregious as the crime it covers up. It should be a simple matter to determine who ordered the 911 debris dump. That person is guilty of obstruction of justice and should be prosecuted.

Each of the judicial acts by federal judges blocking the reporting of criminal activities under the federal crime reporting statute were felonies under the obstruction of justice statutes. Being in a position of trust, the offense of obstruction of justice is far worse than when done by someone not in government. The crime reporting statute requires that a federal judge receive evidence of the criminal activities as part of his administrative and not judicial duties. It is a mandatory responsibility.

Making matters even worse, documentary evidence reveals that Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court also blocked the reporting of the criminal activities, and aided and abetted the obstruction of justice by lower court judges over whom they have supervisory responsibilities. These are very serious matters, and an indication of even worst judicial misconduct.

Title 18 U.S.C. §
2. Principals. (a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal. (b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.

Note: The legislative intent to punish as a principal not only one who directly commits an offense and one who "aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures" another to commit an offense, but also anyone who causes the doing of an act which if done by him directly would render him guilty of an offense against the United States. Case law decisions: Rothenburg v. United States, 1918, 38 S.Ct. 18, 245 U.S. 480, 62 L.Ed. 414, and United States v. Giles, 1937, 57 S.Ct. 340,
300 U.S. 41, 81 L.Ed. 493.

Title 18 U.S.C. §

3. Accessory after the fact. Whoever, knowing that an offense against the United States had been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact.

Title 18 U.S.C. § 4 Misprision of felony. Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined not more than $500 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

The books listed in this and related websites show many other people guilty of these crimes, including lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice, members of Congress, and many people in the media.

--Obstruction of Justice

Whoever ordered that destruction should be brought to trial, convicted and sentenced for having orchestrated the cover up of one of the most heinous crimes in human history.

Those who cover up crimes are most often the ones who commit them. The possibility of getting away with murder, perhaps escaping a death penalty, is strong enough motivation to cover up a capital crime. Whoever ordered the destruction of evidence from New York acted upon that motive. Whoever ordered the investigation shut down is up to his/her neck in mass murder.

Those in Bush's administration who knew what was afoot and did nothing are complicit. What, I wonder, did Condoleeza Rice know when she warned the Mayor of San Francisco not to fly over a period of several days leading up to 911? Has anyone ever bothered to ask her that question" What are the chances we might get to ask her that question while she is under oath? Those who cover up are almost always guilty or complicit. Whoever ordered the Congress not to do its job, is most certainly the same person who received reports from Dick Cheney the very day they "gamed" the plan!

The reason 911 was not investigated, the reasons 911 was ordered covered up, are themselves probable cause to resume a real investigation and, in this case, George W. Bush himself is the target. I want and, as a citizen, have a right to know: did George W. Bush sign off on orders to destroy evidence material to the investigation of the crime we now call 911? DESTROYING EVIDENCE AS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DID AFTER 911 IS A CRIME.

The term truth seeker, in this context, means supporting the full and complete investigation of obvious crimes. No one need be a "conspiracy theorist" in order to demand an investigation of what may be the worst single crime since Hitler's holocaust. I am weary and impatient with idiots who will not understand that simple concept. It's basic to Anglo/American jurisprudence. I am sick and tired of trying to explain basic concepts that should have been mastered by 7th grade.

I am increasingly intolerant of idiots who have swallowed Bush's kool aid. I am fed up with being lied to by people who live off tax moneys I pay. I am fed with with elected "servants" thinking themselves dictators. I am fed up with Bush megalomania. I am fed up with his faggy ass, Village People macho. I am fed up with his smirks, his psychotic sense of humor, the obvious pleasure he derived when he boasted of those whose deaths he himself ordered. I am fed up with the Crawford Caligula. I am fed with with a simpering, effeminate coward and chicken hawk who presumes to rule a nation. I am fed up with those who don't know and don't want to know. Bertolt Brecht summed it up well:

A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!

--Bertolt Brecht

My simple message to Americans: wake the fuck up or spend the rest of your life in slavery. You have no choice but to insist upon a real investigation of 911. You have no choice but to bring the gang of crooks and usurpers to trial and justice.

Alas, even so called "liberals" seem not to have gotten it. It is tragic to watch a free people descend into slavery and totalitarianism because they simply refuse or was never taught the most basic principles of our criminal law system and jurisprudence. It is said that a people get the kind of government they deserve. I also believe in the validity of a single imperative that one ought to behave in such a way that what is true can be verified to be true. By covering up the truth, by destroying evidence, Bush has violated that inviolate morality!

Americans are confronted with an existentialist choice whether they want one or not. Americans may simply bury their heads in the sand and be slaves or they may dare to speak truth to power and risk the ridicule of ...of what? The likes of a Bill Maher, a paid clown? If the people of the US will not speak up, they will have no one to blame but themselves when a Messiah fails to deliver them from bondage, bullshit, and the eventual collapse of the MIC ponzi scheme.

Bertolt Brecht might very well have had the GOP mentality in mind when he said:

A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!

But it was Molly Ivins who most certainly saved the following barb for American liberals who should know better.

“What you need is sustained outrage…there’s far too much unthinking respect given to authority.

--Molly Ivins (1944-2007)

The 911 Truth Movement has demanded the truth and, typically, are ridiculed for their efforts. A pox on Bill Maher! A pox on Bush! A pox on those who know the truth and call it a lie!

The Holes in Bush's Theory

We are expected to believe that Muslims changed the laws of physics!

---

How the Ship of State Became the Ship of Fools

The US has caught a nasty virus the symptom of which is running punditry. It's like cruise ship diarrhea without the satisfaction at the end of ordeal or even panic. Some quick notes: Barack Obama is the most shallow, non-descript, boring politician to ever come down the pike --an intellectual lightweight whose soul has been coached out of him by media consultants. In Barack Obama, I find the vacuous echoes of Ronald Reagan, a previous lightweight who had mastered the art of reading buzzwords off a cue card. My skin crawls.

I have stopped listening to what passes for debate these days. It's become a matter of stringing meaningless platitudes together such that they sound like real human speech. Or is it a Japanese robot?

More quick notes: I wish John Edwards were uglier. Hillary Clinton is damaged goods. Ron Paul, still a Republican, has many more scales to shed before he can change his repitil..uh...Republican skin.

God help us --the only intelligent politician in the field is Dennis Kucinich who has only a snow ball's chance in hell of ever becoming President. It's our loss. Watching Democrats is akin to medieval debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I am sick to death of tedious debates about the conduct of the war of aggression against the people of Iraq. The "conduct" of the war is not the issue. Why we continue to stay is! Why we haven't impeached, tried, removed and imprisoned George W. Bush is! Why a grand jury has not been convened to investigate the GOP crime syndicate is! Why corporations rule the US government is! The validity of the electoral process is! Why bother going through the motions until paper trails are mandated at the polls?

I am sick to death of Congress kowtowing to a President who has the support of little more than 25 percent of the American people. Carl Jung predicted our malaise in 1957 in his "The Undiscovered Self", decrying "...apocalyptic images of universal destruction" brought on by WWII and an atomic age ushered in when the United States dropped weapons of mass destruction on two cities in Japan. In its wake, Jung was fearful that 40 percent of the population —called a "mentally stable stratum" —might not be able to keep the lid on mass psychosis; it might be unable to restrain the spread of "dangerous tendencies", presumably: fascism, fanaticism, militarism, and intolerance. Jung seems to have been less concerned with external threats. The more dangerous tendencies he feared were home grown. There are some real issues to be addressed but all have taken a back seat to punditry.

The theme of collapse seems to have reverberated around the world, now manifesting its symptoms in the scientific community’s latest dramatic reports on global warming, the issue of Peak Oil coming further out of the closet — being discussed openly in mainstream media, and the bursting of the US housing bubble that now finds 1 out of every 264 homes in the nation facing foreclosure as each day the value of the dollar decreases and the value of precious metals soars.

--The Cycle of Time

In the meantime, Democrats have failed to challenge Bush's exploitation of the ultimate strawman: terrorism. Bush owns the issue of "terrorism" even if he had to make it all up. As long as Democrats buy into the paradigm, they have no place from which to launch a counter-attack. Democrats too easily conferred legitimacy upon an illegitimate usurper, credibility when, in fact, Bush lied about everything. They are now paying the price for having played Bush's game. The spectre of terrorism has been of greater benefit to Bush than "real" terrorists who share with O.J.'s "real killers" all the characteristics of a phantom menace.

Political rhetoric is just more of the same when, in fact, nothing is the same. How could the Democrats have missed the sea change that has taken place, the fundamental challenges to Constitutional government? What are the implications? Simply, the Bush junta has challenged not only the Constitution but almost 1,000 years of progress. Principles mouthed by Bush simply fly in the face of the Magna Carta, the English Petition of Right, the Mayflower Compact, The Virginia Declaration of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, The Nuremberg Principles, and every US Supreme Court decision that has upheld the right of persons to be free of arbitary rule, to be secure in their homes, to be free of unreasonable arrest in the absence of probable cause that a crime has been committed.

Significantly, totalitarian states have their philosophical roots in Hegelianism, a straight road to both Nazism and Stalinism. There is, by contrast, another road that runs straight from Magna Carta to our own Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

If the Magna Carta is not the birth certificate of Democracy, it is the death certificate of despotism. It spells out for the first time the fundamental principle that the law is not simply the whim of the king. The law is an independent power unto itself. And the King could be brought to book for violating it!"

—Simon Schama, History of Britain

Bush's demogoguery is an issue and the Democrats should be on the offensive. Instead, most members of Congress lined up behind what Gore Vidal called an "un-American" administration.

Instead of bullshit and platitudes from Obama --nonsense talk about attacking Pakistan, Barack should have been screaming about America's enemies inside the White House --George W. Bush and his every supporter. Do the Democrats get it? Have they not understood what Bush has done? Is Congress without a clue?

The Constitution itself is explicit when it establishes the sovereignty of the people. But, if that were not enough to dispel notions of the "state as absolute", a Bill of Rights was insisted upon and ratified by the people. In the 1960's, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas believed the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights to be absolute —beyond the power of Congress or the executive to modify or infringe in any way. We could use someone like Douglas today. As his friend Tommy Corcoran pointed out, Douglas had "wanted the Presidency worse than Don Quixote wanted Dulcinea" and Franklin Roosevelt believed that Douglas would have been the strongest running mate in 1944. It was Democratic bosses who persuaded Roosevelt to pick Harry Truman instead. Oh well! "To err is Truman!"

Democratic "opposition" to Bush seems less naive than irrelevant, locked into the GOP paradigm when Democrats should be forcing a defensive GOP to debate on Democratic turf, on Democratic issues, indeed, the very future of Democracy in America. Tragically, the Democrats will get suckered into debating the "conduct" of a war that should never have begun, a war that is itself a crime, a war that has, in fact, no good end, a war that is, in fact, lost!

Democrats are in danger of blowing the last chance they will ever have to forge a new and better future. It's become a cliche that the Chinese character for "crisis", literally translated, means "dangerous opportunity". If the Democrats fail to make the most of this opportunity, the people of the US will be no better off, nothing will have been gained for the ordeal we have suffered, nothing true, lasting or valid will have been affirmed. What a waste if this should all turn out to be the most irrelevant presidential debate in this nation's history!

And now for something completely different:

Additional resources

• Purpose and Effect of the Preamble to the Consitution
• US Military Investigates Multiple Alleged Massacre Incidents
• Senator Feinstein Warns Against the Bush Administration's Efforts to Vastly Expand Executive Power
• US faces third charge of killing Iraqi civilians
  
• UN panel issued a stinging report of US torture policies
• Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws
• Now We Know How A Dictator Can Game The Presidency
• Evesdropping on America

Discoveries

• Herbie Hancock & Tony Williams
• The Phantom Planet
• Mesa of Lost Women
• Doctor Who - Rose

The Existentialist Cowboy

Conservative Lies
Indict Bush
Why Conservatives Hate America
GOP Crime Syndicate
Iraq

Spread the word: