Small minds, Large ramifications

[Political Waves]

Back when Pelosi took over as Speaker there was a big flap about Jane Harmon not being selected to head the House Intelligence Committee even though she was the one in line for leadership -- personal rancor between the women was sited as the problem. Nancy had been critical of Jane as too easy on the Dubby and his boyz.

 

Read why she has earned her place in my Congressional Hall of Shame, along with Clueless Joe and DiFi, below. With [Dem] friends like these ... yadda.

 

A collection on our liberties and their continued assault -- and a heads up on Harmon's bill; write, fax, email your Congresspersons.

 

Jude

 

 

Here come the thought police
Ralph E. Shaffer and R. William Robinson, Baltimore Sun
November 19, 2007
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.thoughtpolice19nov19,0,2384977.story

With overwhelming bipartisan support, Rep. Jane Harman's "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" passed the House 404-6 late last month and now rests in Sen. Joe Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee. Swift Senate passage appears certain.

Not since the "Patriot Act" of 2001 has any bill so threatened our constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The historian Henry Steele Commager, denouncing President John Adams' suppression of free speech in the 1790s, argued that the Bill of Rights was not written to protect government from dissenters but to provide a legal means for citizens to oppose a government they didn't trust. Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence not only proclaimed the right to dissent but declared it a people's duty, under certain conditions, to alter or abolish their government.

In that vein, diverse groups vigorously oppose Ms. Harman's effort to stifle dissent.

Unfortunately, the mainstream press and leading presidential candidates remain silent.
Ms. Harman, a California Democrat, thinks it likely that the United States will face a native brand of terrorism in the immediate future and offers a plan to deal with ideologically based violence.

But her plan is a greater danger to us than the threats she fears. Her bill tramples constitutional rights by creating a commission with sweeping investigative power and a mandate to propose laws prohibiting whatever the commission labels "homegrown terrorism."

The proposed commission is a menace through its power to hold hearings, take testimony and administer oaths, an authority granted to even individual members of the commission - little Joe McCarthys - who will tour the country to hold their own private hearings. An aura of authority will automatically accompany this congressionally authorized mandate to expose native terrorism.

Ms. Harman's proposal includes an absurd attack on the Internet, criticizing it for providing Americans with "access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda," and legalizes an insidious infiltration of targeted organizations. The misnamed "Center of Excellence," which would function after the commission is disbanded in 18 months, gives the semblance of intellectual research to what is otherwise the suppression of dissent.

While its purpose is to prevent terrorism, the bill doesn't criminalize any specific conduct or contain penalties. But the commission's findings will be cited by those who see a terrorist under every bed and who will demand enactment of criminal penalties that further restrict free speech and other civil liberties. Action contrary to the commission's findings will be interpreted as a sign of treason at worst or a lack of patriotism at the least.

While Ms. Harman denies that her proposal creates "thought police," it defines "homegrown terrorism" as "planned" or "threatened" use of force to coerce the government or the people in the promotion of "political or social objectives." That means that no force need actually have occurred as long as the government charges that the individual or group thought about doing it.

Any social or economic reform is fair game. Have a march of 100 or 100,000 people to demand a reform - amnesty for illegal immigrants or overturning Roe v. Wade - and someone can perceive that to be a use of force to intimidate the people, courts or government.

The bill defines "violent radicalization" as promoting an "extremist belief system." But American governments, state and national, have a long history of interpreting radical "belief systems" as inevitably leading to violence to facilitate change.

Examples of the resulting crackdowns on such protests include the conviction and execution of anarchists tied to Chicago's 1886 Haymarket Riot. Hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for several decades during the Cold War and the solo hearings by a member of that committee's Senate counterpart, Joseph McCarthy, demonstrate the dangers inherent in Ms. Harman's legislation.

Ms. Harman denies that her bill is a threat to the First Amendment. It clearly states that no measure to prevent homegrown terrorism should violate "constitutional rights, civil rights or civil liberties."

But the present administration has demonstrated, in its response to criticism regarding torture, that it can't be trusted to honor those rights.

Ralph E. Shaffer, professor emeritus of history at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and R. William Robinson, an elected director of a Southern California water district, wrote this article for the History News Service. ++


Internet Found Guilty of Promoting Terrorism
Barbara Peterson, OpEdNews
November 19, 2007http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_barbara__071119_internet_found_guilt.htm

According to HR 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, the Internet is guilty of promoting terrorism, and is subject to sentencing by Congressional committee.

HR 1955 can be found in its entirety by clicking this link: HR 1955 text. While reading this bill, it occurred to me that one of the main thrusts of the bill, as indicated in the following excerpt, is to declare the Internet guilty of promoting terrorism, and to lay the foundation for sentencing. Please pay careful attention to numbers 2 and 3:

SEC. 899B. FINDINGS

The Congress finds the following:

1. The development and implementation of methods and processes that can be utilized to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States is critical to combating domestic terrorism.

2. The promotion of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence exists in the United States and poses a threat to homeland security.

3. The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.

4. While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States.

5. Understanding the motivational factors that lead to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence is a vital step toward eradicating these threats in the United States.

Let's go through the bill, starting with items 2 and 3, listed above:

The promotion of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence exists in the United States and poses a threat to homeland security. The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.

The Internet is charged with promoting violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence, which poses a threat to homeland security, and has been found guilty as charged.

HR 1955 then goes on to determine sentencing by creating a commission that shall be "established within the legislative branch of the Government: the National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism" (HR 1955 Section 899C(a)). This Commission is composed of 10 members, appointed for the life of the Commission. The Commission shall:

Not later than 18 months after the date on which the Commission first meets...submit to the President and Congress a final report of its findings and conclusions, legislative recommendations for immediate and long-term countermeasures to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence, and measures that can be taken to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence from developing and spreading within the United States...
(HR 1955 Section 899C(q)).

Section 899D of HR 1955 then creates "a university-based Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States (hereinafter referred to as 'Center')" (HR 1955 Section 899D (a)), to establish a method for carrying out the sentence recommended by the Commission. The Center's purpose shall be

...to study the social, criminal, political, psychological, and economic roots of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism in the United States and methods that can be utilized by Federal, State, local, and tribal homeland security officials to mitigate violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism (HR 1955 Section 899D (b)).

Section 899E internationalizes the efforts in section 899D:

(a) International Effort- The Secretary shall, in cooperation with the Department of State, the Attorney General, and other Federal Government entities, as appropriate, conduct a survey of methodologies implemented by foreign nations to prevent violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism in their respective nations.

(b) Implementation- To the extent that methodologies are permissible under the Constitution, the Secretary shall use the results of the survey as an aid in developing, in consultation with the Attorney General, a national policy in the United States on addressing radicalization and homegrown terrorism.

The Congressional verdict is in. The Internet is guilty of facilitating terrorism, and poses a threat to homeland security. Congress acts as judge and jury, convicts the defendant of the crime of promoting terrorism, and the Internet now awaits sentencing by the Commission; the method of carrying out that sentence to be determined by the Center.

Here are the steps in chronological order:

1. Congress accuses the Internet of having facilitated, and continuing to facilitate violent radicalization, in direct violation of HR 1955 Section 899B(2), and reaches a verdict of guilty.

2. The National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism committee (Commission) (HR 1955 Section 899C(a)) is assigned to submit sentencing recommendations.

3. A university-based Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States (Center) is given the task of determining the best method/s for carrying out the sentence recommended by the Commission.

4. Step 1, the verdict is in. Steps 2 and 3, sentencing recommendations, and method of dispensing sentencing are awaiting completion. When these steps are completed, the next step is to pronounce sentencing.

5. After the sentence is pronounced, the final step is to carry out the sentence recommended by the Commission, and implement it using the method/s arrived at by the 'Center.'

Will the government take this to its logical conclusion and eliminate the Internet as we know it? I believe it will try. ++

Barbara is retired from the California Department of Corrections, where she worked as a Correctional Officer at Folsom Prison. She was one of the first females to work at the facility in this classification. After retirement, she went to college online to obtain a Bachelor's degree in Business, graduated with honors, then started her own company. One day Barbara would like to visit the land of Israel, where a tree was planted in memory of her grandmother. Of Jewish heritage, she believes that Israel is the promised land. Her philosophy is this: You are on this earth for a reason - to fight for the light. Your words are swords that penetrate the darkness with truth and light. You have a purpose.  http://spktruth2power.wordpress.com/


Will Democrats Restore Our Liberties Stolen in the Bush Era?
Repealing the Patriot Act, ending warrantless wiretapping, restoring habeas corpus -- have Democratic leaders figured out that these are winning issues in the aftermath of Bush's power grab?
Ari Melber, AlterNet
November 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/rights/67488/

Does the Democratic Party still stand for human rights and civil liberties?

Yes and no.

Most rank-and-file Democrats strongly support constitutional rights, from grizzled ACLU liberals to Iowa Caucus voters to MoveOn's web enthusiasts, and the issue regularly competes with Iraq as a top priority for party activists. Yet Democratic leaders are much more ambivalent. The Democratic Congress buckled in its largest civil liberties clash with the White House, passing legislation to expand warrantless spying in August. And while Democratic presidential contenders are better -- they all opposed the surveillance bill and the administration's unconstitutional Military Commissions Act -- few have used the full power of their office to advocate constitutional rights. As the Bush era of radical secrecy, unitary executive power and openly unconstitutional leadership draws to a close, the Democrats are still debating how to restore rights and liberties while waging a more effective battle against terrorists.

In the presidential field, Chris Dodd has outlined the most thorough civil liberties platform. The 26-year Senate veteran is the author of major legislation to restore habeas corpus and repeal the Military Commission Act. He also led the congressional battle against retroactive immunity for telephone companies that illegally assisted the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance. Joe Biden has staked out a leadership role on civil liberties as well. He was the first presidential candidate to back Dodd's pledge to filibuster Bush's surveillance bill -- later Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton followed suit -- and he was the first Democrat to introduce legislation reversing the controversial July executive order authorizing "enhanced interrogation techniques." Biden's legislation, "The National Security with Justice Act," would also close U.S. government "black sites," require that all interrogations comply with the Army Field Manual and provide oversight to constrain the administration's use of "rendition" (the practice of outsourcing torture to other countries).

Yet the bill does not have a single Senate co-sponsor -- an indication of how reticent Democratic leaders are in this area.

The remaining Democratic frontrunners do not prioritize civil liberties much on the campaign trail, though they do advocate constitutional rights in contrast to the Bush administration. Obama, Clinton and John Edwards each say that if elected, for example, they will restore habeas corpus, close Guantanamo and halt illegal domestic spying.

Obama and Clinton have both cosponsored stand-alone legislation to restore habeas corpus. And unlike Clinton, Obama has signed on to Dodd's more comprehensive bill, the "Restoring the Constitution Act," which has 13 co-sponsors. Edwards, a former senator, has not specifically spoken out on the bill, though he has endorsed several of its proponents in several addresses challenging the entire doctrine of a "Global War on Terror." Clinton also categorically ruled out the use of torture during a presidential debate in September, withdrawing her previous position that torture could be justified in a ticking time-bomb scenario.

Yet across the country, Democratic voters support a constitutional rights agenda much more forcefully than their elected leaders. According to survey that Belden Russonello & Stewart conducted this September, 81 percent of Democrats oppose torture, 70 percent favor restoring of habeas corpus, and 69 percent want to close Guantanamo. Iowa's pivotal (and knowledgeable) Democratic electorate supports these priorities at even higher rates than the national averages, including 94 percent opposition to torture and 88 percent support for habeas corpus. Democrats would not alienate swing voters on this score, either. The national survey found Independents had similar views, including higher support for habeas corpus (80 percent) and opposition to torture (87 percent) than Democrats across the country.

Civil liberties advocates say these positions, among Democrats and independents alike, are animated both by frustration with Bush's failures and a desire for new leadership that wages a battle against terrorists the "American way." That is the philosophy behind a new liberal group, the American Freedom Campaign, calling on all the presidential aspirants to affirm American values in the Constitution by strongly backing a freedom "pledge." That includes a policy commitment to restore habeas corpus, secure rights of the accused, ban all torture and defend personal liberties. With backing from MoveOn.org, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights, among others, the group has already elicited letters of support from each of the leading Democratic presidential candidates.

Yet even that important list of priorities is not sufficient to restore the rule of law in the post-Bush era. Though members of Congress rarely admit it, and the public may not appreciate it, the most significant rejections of President Bush's counterterror policies have actually come from the courts -- not from Congress or elections. The conservative Supreme Court has twice rejected Bush's detention policies at Guantanamo in the landmark Rasul and Hamdan decisions. Lower federal courts have also rebuffed executive programs to detain a U.S. citizen without trial and spy on Americans without the required warrants. Yet Bush has repeatedly responded by maligning court oversight as a barrier to national security and attempting to circumvent the rulings. Congress has reinforced that approach, even after the Democrats took control this year, by passing legislation to validate surveillance rebuffed by the courts; granting immunity to potential war criminals and contractors in Iraq; and stripping habeas corpus in the Military Commissions Act, which responded to the Hamdan decision in 2006. (The State Department also secretly granted immunity to Blackwater bodyguards, as the Associated Press reported this week.)

These congressional acts are counterintuitive, under traditional models of American government, because Congress is complicit in the reduction of its own power. The founders envisioned each branch of government asserting itself by checking the others -- "ambition must be made to counteract ambition," as James Madison declared in the Federalist Papers. Under both Republican and Democratic control, however, Congress has let its power ebb -- and assisted executive encroachments on the judicial branch.

Thus civil libertarians must move on two fronts, advocating policy priorities (like habeas corpus) and pressing politicians to address vital -- but vague -- notions of restoring the proper constitutional separation of powers.

The next president should work with Congress to strengthen the branch of government that makes the law work: the courts. Civil libertarians can press candidates to outline their specific policies to strengthen judicial oversight -- including potential misconduct in the next White House. The public is also entitled to know how a candidate would select judges with fidelity to the law -- not deference to the executive branch. Another sleeper judicial issue for the campaign agenda is the administration's expansion of the "state secrets privilege," often referred to as a "nuclear" doctrine in government circles. The Bush administration has shut down scores of important cases by radically expanding the state secrets privilege, a Cold War doctrine allowing the executive to completely preempt a case by asserting that state secrets are jeopardized. Thus cases die without judges ever reviewing the underlying claims, or descriptions of the alleged secrets. (Here conservatives have swapped "judicial activism" for judicial torpor.) The American Bar Association has criticized the administration's abuse of this doctrine, and the bipartisan Constitution Project is advocating major reforms to the privilege. The issue sounds obscure now, but if evangelical activists could popularize their fight over "strict constructionist judges," civil libertarians can show peace and human rights activists how this doctrine has prevented accountability for numerous allegations of torture, rendition, detention and spying -- fortifying a model of executive power that is remarkably unaccountable to the public.

There is a common theme in all of these measures. They affirm American values and enjoy wide support among Democratic and independent voters, but remain largely neglected by Democratic leaders.

It is an old fissure within the party. The 2000 Democratic Platform, for example, was notable for its prescient emphasis on how terrorism challenges an open society. The platform proposed to "disrupt terrorist networks" before they attack while protecting the "civil liberties of all Americans" and securing "the rights of the accused, even under the unusual circumstances of the investigation of threats to our national security." The document even singled out Osama Bin Laden as a key target for the United States, while the Republicans' 2000 platform does not mention him.

Yet even if the Democrats' 2000 platform reflected popular opinion within the party, it obviously did not drive party leaders after 9/11. Today, the question is whether the failures of the Bush administration have finally shown Democratic leaders what their constituents -- and many other Americans -- already believed. The United States can wage a battle against its enemies without sacrificing freedom, justice and democracy at home. ++


60 Minutes: Boy charged with war crimes at age 15 faces life sentence in US military trial Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane, Raw Story
Tuesday November 20, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/60_Minutes_The_Youngest_Terrorist_1119.html

Omar Khadr is a young Canadian citizen currently imprisoned at Guantanamo and facing a military trial for war crimes he allegedly committed in Afghanistan at the age of 15.

In July 2002, US special forces in eastern Afghanistan got a tip that al Qaeda forces were holed up nearby. After hours of fighting, the soldiers entered the bombed-out compound but were met by a grenade thrown over the wall that killed one man. They then found Omar Khadr lying in the rubble, badly hurt and begging them -- in perfect English -- to kill him.

The United States has charged Omar with murder, on the grounds that there was no one else left alive in the compound who could have thrown the grenade, and he now faces a possible sentence of life in prison. The only concession made for his youth was not to ask for the death penalty.

Omar has been held at Guantanamo Bay for the last five years, much of that time in a windowless maximum security cell. Amnesty International has claimed that he was severely tortured and is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and also that the Canadian government, rather than helping him, may have been complicit in his mistreatment.

Omar's chief defense will be that he was raised in a radical Muslim family and was taught to follow his father's orders without question. The family had moved from Canada to Afghanistan in 1993, and Omar and his siblings grew up playing with Osama bin Laden's children.

Omar's brother Abdurahman, who broke with the family after 9/11 and worked for the CIA, told CBS that Omar probably was in the compound simply because "he was sent there by my father, and as an obedient kid, he said 'Okay.'" He said he believes Omar was there as a translator, not a fighter.

In 2003, Omar's father was killed in cotninued fighting in Afghanistan and his younger brother Abdul shot and paralyzed. Abdul told an interviewer in 2004 that if Omar was released he would try to "take his revenge." But now Omar's mother says simply, "I pray that I see him alive standing in front of me. ... I don't want him brought back in a plastic bag."

When CBS asked General (ret.) John Alterberg, the military lawyer who recommended that Khadr be charged with war crimes, "Is there anything about his case that bothers you?" Alterberg replied, "Bothers me in what way?"

Even if Omar is not convicted of murder at his military trial, the United States could refuse to release him until its self-declared War on Terror is over.

The following video is from CBS's 60 Minutes, broadcast on November 18, 2007 [open link] ++

 

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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