Antifascist Calling… – 2009-11-05

President Barack Obama instructed Justice Department attorneys to argue last week in San Francisco before Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker, that he must toss out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Shubert v. Bush lawsuit challenging the secret state’s driftnet surveillance of Americans’ electronic communications.

This latest move by the administration follows a pattern replicated countless times by Obama since assuming the presidency in January: denounce the lawless behavior of his Oval Office predecessor while continuing, even expanding, the reach of unaccountable security agencies that subvert constitutional guarantees barring “unreasonable searches and seizures.” EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston wrote:

In a Court filing late Friday night, the Obama Administration attempted to dress up in new clothes its embrace of one of the worst Bush Administration positions–that courts cannot be allowed to review the National Security Agency’s massive, well-documented program of warrantless surveillance. In doing so it demonstrated that it will not willingly set limits on its own power and reinforced the need for Congress to step in and reform the so-called ’state secrets’ privilege. (Kevin Bankston, “As Congress Considers State Secrets Reform, Obama Admin Tries to Shut Down Yet Another Warrantless Wiretapping Lawsuit,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, November 2, 2009)

In June, Judge Walker dismissed EFF’s landmark Hepting v. ATT lawsuit, when he ruled that the telecoms enjoyed immunity from liability after the Democratic-controlled Congress rammed through the despicable FISA Amendments Act (FAA) in July 2008.

That law, passed in response to citizen challenges to the state and their corporate partners in crime, granted the Attorney General exclusive power to require dismissal of the lawsuits “if the government secretly certifies to the court that the surveillance did not occur, was legal, or was authorized by the president,” the civil liberties’ watchdog group wrote in June.

In essence, it is not the co-equal and independent federal Judiciary that determines whether or not a crime has been committed that flaunts constitutional norms but rather, an unchallengeable assertion by an imperial Executive Branch.

As Antifascist Calling has averred many times, this craven capitulation by Congress to the Executive locks in place the statutory machinery for a presidential dictatorship, one where power is wielded with neither transparency nor accountability.

EFF’s Jewel v. NSA civil suit, brought on behalf of AT&T customers to halt the firm’s ongoing collaboration with the government’s illegal surveillance continues–for the moment.

In April however, taking a page from the Bush/Cheney playbook, the Obama administration argued that this lawsuit too, must be dismissed, claiming that should the litigation go forward it would require government disclosure of “privileged state secrets.”

Antifascist Calling reported at the time that the Obama administration has argued that under provisions of the disgraceful USA PATRIOT Act, the state is “immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act.”

Claiming “sovereign immunity” in practice, this means that under DoJ’s ludicrous interpretation of the Orwellian PATRIOT Act, the government can never be held accountable for illegal surveillance under any federal statute. As Salon pointed out:

In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad “state secrets” privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and–even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal–you are barred from suing them unless they “willfully disclose” to the public what they have learned. (Glenn Greenwald, “New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ,” Salon, April 6, 2009)

The “change” regime’s cynical maneuver to have Shubert kicked to the curb is all the more remarkable considering that the Justice Department announced a month earlier that the administration will “impose new limits on the government assertion of the state secrets privilege used to block lawsuits for national security reasons,” The New York Times reported.

“Under the new policy,” investigative journalist Charlie Savage wrote, “if an agency like the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency wanted to block evidence or a lawsuit on state secrets grounds, it would present an evidentiary memorandum describing its reasons to the assistant attorney general for the division handling the lawsuit in question.”

According to the Times, “if that official recommended approving the request” it would be sent on to a high-level committee comprised of DoJ officials who would be charged “whether the disclosure of information would risk ’significant harm’ to national security.”

Under the new guidelines, Justice Department officials are supposed to reject the request to deploy the state secrets privilege to quash lawsuits if the Executive Branch’s motivation for doing so would “conceal violations of the law, inefficiency or administrative error” or to “prevent embarrassment.”

While Holder has claimed DoJ’s so-called “high-level committee” has reviewed the relevant material and concluded that disclosure would risk “significant harm” to “national security” if the case went forward, security analyst Steven Aftergood wrote in Secrecy News that “one aspect of the new policy that he did not address was the question of referral of the alleged misconduct to an agency inspector general for investigation.”

This is supposed to occur whenever “invocation of the privilege would preclude adjudication of particular claims,” as it certainly does in the Shubert litigation, particularly when the “case raises credible allegations of government wrongdoing.”

However as Aftergood avers, “somewhat artfully” (although this writer prefers a stronger phrase to describe the Attorney General’s actions) “the government denies that any such collection occurred ‘under the Terrorist Surveillance Program,’ implicitly allowing for the possibility that it may have occurred under some other framework.”

What that “other framework” is hasn’t been specified; however, in all probability it relates to other NSA above top secret Special Access Programs which haven’t come to light.

Whatever the secret state is continuing to do under Obama, a recent piece in InformationWeek provides striking details that it is massive.

The publication reports that the NSA “will soon break ground on a data center in Utah that’s budgeted to cost $1.5 billion.”

According to InformationWeek, the new facility will “provide intelligence and warnings related to cybersecurity threats, cybersecurity support to defense and civilian agency networks, and technical assistance to the Department of Homeland Security.”

The new data center will be located at Camp Williams, a National Guard training facility 26 miles from Salt Lake City in the conservative state of Utah. While providing few details on how NSA will use the 1.5 million square foot center, Glenn Gaffney, a deputy director of intelligence with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), claims that NSA will “protect civil liberties.”

“We will accomplish this in full compliance with the U.S. Constitution and federal law and while observing strict guidelines that protect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people,” Gaffney said.

As with other pronouncements by intelligence officials, Gaffney’s statement should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

The New York Times revealed in April and June that the ultra-spooky agency “intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year.”

Indeed, a former NSA analyst told investigative journalists James Risen and Eric Lichtblau that he was “trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants.”

We do know that NSA’s STELLAR WIND and PINWALE intercept programs are giant data mining vacuum cleaners that sift emails, faxes, and text messages of millions of people in the United States. These programs are not, as the Bush and now, the Obama regime mendaciously claim, primarily “targeting al-Qaeda.”

As Cryptohippie points out in their analysis of current global surveillance trends, “an electronic police state is quiet, even unseen. All of its legal actions are supported by abundant evidence. It looks pristine.”

Answering those who claim they have “nothing to hide,” Cryptohippie argues that “state use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence” is primarily for use “against its citizens.”

Indeed, the information gathered by the secret state and stored in huge data warehouses scattered across the country “is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial,” and “it is gathered universally and silently, and only later organized for use in prosecutions.”

In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it–the evidence is already in their database. (Cryptohippie, The Electronic Police State: 2008 National Rankings, no date)

How does this “quiet, pristine” system operate? As AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein revealed in a sworn affidavit that described how the company physically split and copied the traffic that flowed into its offices, NSA was virtually duplicating, sifting and storing the entire Internet. Klein wrote in his self-published book:

What screams out at you when examining this physical arrangement is that the NSA was vacuuming up everythingflowing in the Internet stream: e-mail, web browsing, Voice-Over-Internet phone calls, pictures, streaming video, you name it. The splitter has no intelligence at all, it just makes a blind copy. There could not possibly be a legal warrant for this, since according to the 4th Amendment warrants have to be specific, “particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” …

This was a massive blind copying of the communications of millions of people, foreign and domestic, randomly mixed together. From a legal standpoint, it does not matter what they claim to throw away later in the their secret rooms, the violation has already occurred at the splitter. (Mark Klein, Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine… And Fighting It, Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge, 2009, pp. 38-39.)

Klein’s revelations were confirmed by former NSA analyst and whistleblower Russell Tice, who told MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann in January that the NSA “had access to allAmericans’ communications” and spied “24/7″ on domestic political activist groups and “U.S. news organizations and reporters and journalists.”

In demanding that the independent federal judiciary toss these cases, the Obama administration is asserting a broad interpretation of Executive Branch privileges that caused much outrage and hand-wringing by congressional Democrats–when they were out of power.

Under the “change” regime however, what were once viewed by Democrats and their supporters as prime examples of Bushist lawlessness and contempt for constitutional safeguards, are now deemed vital state secrets that “protect” the American people, even as the capitalist state wages an endless “War on Terror” to seize other people’s resources for geostrategic advantage over the competition. As Glenn Greenwald wrote:

That was the principal authoritarian instrument used by Bush/Cheney to shield itself from judicial accountability, and it is now the instrument used by the Obama DOJ to do the same. Initially, consider this: if Obama’s argument is true–that national security would be severely damaged from any disclosures about the government’s surveillance activities, even when criminal–doesn’t that mean that the Bush administration and its right-wing followers were correct all along when they insisted that The New York Times had damaged American national security by revealing the existence of the illegal NSA program? Isn’t that the logical conclusion from Obama’s claim that no court can adjudicate the legality of the program without making us Unsafe? (Glenn Greenwald, “Obama’s latest use of ’secrecy’ to shield presidential lawbreaking,” Salon, November 1, 2009)

Democrat or Republican, “liberal” or “conservative:” what matters most for all factions in Washington is the defense and preservation of the elites.

Criminality on such a scale requires that the armed fist of the state is mobilized and ever-vigilant

Warrantless

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While battling the FBI’s expanded surveillance guidelines, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., also revealed (Daily Kos, Oct. that in the Senate Judiciary Committee review of the Patriot Act (also Oct. 8), Republicans protecting the Act were joined, in a closed-door classified session, by Obama officials with amendments further preserving it. Then, in a public session, all but three Democrats voted for a watered-down “compromise” bill by Patrick Leahy and Diane Feinstein.

Feingold, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and new Democrat Arlen Specter (Pa.) had the constitutional courage to oppose the Judiciary Committee bill eventually going to the floor that with few exceptions, leaves the Patriot Act intact. I’ll be reporting on the crucial fight to bring the Bill of Rights back into the Patriot Act as Senate and House versions merge into a law to be signed by Obama as he continues the Bush-Cheney legacy.

It was Feingold who, in October 2001, was the only member of the Senate to vote against the original Patriot Act as, on the floor, he accurately predicted our greatly weakened privacy, due process and other rights since then.

He is not giving up. “In the end,” Feingold says. “Democrats have to decide if they are going to stand up for the rights of the American people” or (for recent example) “allow the FBI to write our laws.”

As I have reported, the FBI is already writing our laws — without going to any judge. How much have you seen about the FBI’s locking up of the Fourth Amendment on cable and broadcast television (from the right- or the left-leaning stations) in newspapers, on the Internet or, of course, from the Democratic Congressional leadership, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, characteristically indifferent to the Bush-Cheney-Obama assaults on the Bill of Rights?

As James Madison warned, “A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.”

When were the first FBI guidelines on domestic surveillance and why? In the 1970s, Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, chairman of a Senate Committee on Intelligence Activities, exposed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO (Counter-intelligence Program) as an omnivorous surveillance operation that aimed squarely at preventing Americans “exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association.”

If Big Brother is always watching you, you become careful of what you say and with whom you associate.

The Church committee’s revelations resulted in the then-attorney general, Edward Levi (a former professor of constitutional law), and Congressman Don Edwards formulating the first FBI guidelines specifically faithful to the Constitution.

When I was reporting on Edwards’ congressional service (1962 to 1995), I often described him as the “The Congressman from the Constitution.” As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, Edwards, a former FBI agent, set standards for congressional oversight of the FBI.

Under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, these standards have become obsolete.

I commend to every member of Congress and their constituents what Edwards said in 1975 about the Church committee’s newly disclosed unbounded, warrantless standards of FBI surveillance of Americans who might “threaten” national security. And compare the Don Edwards’ definition of fundamental American civil liberties with those of present Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller — and their astonishingly permissive standards of FBI accountability.

“No federal agency,” said Congressman Edwards, “the CIA, the IRS, or the FBI, can be at the same time policeman, prosecutor, judge and jury. That is what constitutionally guaranteed due process is all about. It may sometimes be disorderly and unsatisfactory to some, but it is the essence of freedom.”

The Constitution, Edwards continued, does not permit “federal interference” with Americans’ speech or associations, and other such citizen constitutional rights, “except through the criminal justice system, armed with its ancient safeguards.” Like mandated judicial supervision — absent from current Obama administration FBI surveillance guidelines.

Edwards regarded as “subversive” the “notion that any public official — the president or a policeman — possesses a kind of inherent power to set aside the Constitution whenever he thinks the public interest, or ‘national security’ warrants it.”

Don Edwards represented the Constitution we are losing.

On Aug. 10, 2002, in Washington, Don Edwards received the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award for his “unswerving devotion to the Constitution and its values throughout his career.”

How many present members of Congress do you believe qualify for that award? Any of the Senate or House members representing you? Unhesitatingly, I nominate Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.

It was in 2002 that I asked Don Edwards what he thought of the then Bush-Cheney definition of the Bill of Rights. “Locking people up,” he began, “citizens or noncitizens, without being charged and without access to a lawyer is wrong.” But our Nobel Prize-winning President Obama is seriously considering “permanent detention” of terrorism suspects who cannot be tried in court because of the tortures they have undergone under American custody. This same president does not object to the current warrantless FBI surveillance of Americans without evidence, for reasons of “national security.” Would you give Obama a Liberty Medal?

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Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) and Patrick Leahy, (D-Vermont) ride the Up escalator moments after approving constitutionally suspect Patriot Act provisions./AP photo

By David Kravets~WIRED

A deeply divided Senate committee on Thursday forwarded legislation to the full Senate that reauthorizes three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act hastily adopted in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks.

The measures greatly expanded the government’s ability to spy on Americans in the name of national security.

Thursday’s 11-8 vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee came as lawmakers struggled to beat a looming deadline. The three provisions expire at year’s end, unless renewed.

During more than two hours of sometimes-heated debate in the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, some lawmakers accused one another of caving to intelligence officials who wanted to expand their powers, while other senators said the renewal was necessary to protect against looming — and classified — terror threats.

But when the hearing was over, the committee approved renewing measures that include allowing broad warrants to be issued by a secretive court for any type of record, from financial to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation. A proposal that would put limits on such requests was defeated.

Many senators said they’d been privately briefed by intelligence officials who were worried that adding constitutional protections for Americans could place them in harm’s way and jeopardize ongoing investigations. Lawmakers said they could not discuss the private briefing publicly because it was classified. “That’s the very nature of dealing with some of the laws dealing with the collection of highly classified material. It’s regrettable,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) who approved the renewals.

Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) said he wished “the American public could have seen” the classified briefing. Leahy voted to forward the measure to the Senate.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) countered there was no evidence that adding limited privacy protections for Americans would hinder any investigation. Instead, he said, his colleagues were sanctioning “fishing expeditions.”
“I don’t buy it,” said the senator, who voted against sending the measure to the full Senate, where it meets an uncertain fate. The bill must also be approved by the House and signed by the president for the renewals to take effect.

No vote date for either body has been set.

Members also renewed the so-called “roving wiretap” provision, allowing the FBI to obtain wiretaps from the secret court, known as the FISA court, without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped. Finally, the committee renewed the so-called “lone wolf” measure that allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but said it wanted to retain the authority to do so.

A Feingold measure (.pdf) to allow that provision to expire was defeated.

Feingold did not submit a much-discussed amendment to withdraw the immunity Congress granted to the nation’s telecommunications companies last year, one that shields the companies from lawsuits accusing them of funneling Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. Feingold announced the proposal two weeks ago and had said he would submit it to the committee for consideration during the Patriot Act renewal negotiations.

With limited exceptions, the committee-approved measure largely resembles existing law.

However, one change requires publication of audits, including how many times the government has used the Patriot Act’s provisions, including the number of targets. Much of the government’s public reporting on the topic has been voluntary, and very little is known about how often each power has been used and why.

Another change centered on library records. In order to obtain warrants for them from the FISA court, the new plan requires a tangential connection to a terror investigation or foreign power. The expiring version does not.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) worried the provision might “encourage terrorists they have a safe haven” in America’s public libraries. Session voted against the measure.

The most-intense debate centered on a controversial and often abused aspect of the Patriot Act that is not expiring at year’s end. Lawmakers went back and forth on whether to alter the standard by which National Security Letters are issued.

The letters allow the FBI, without a court order, to obtain telecommunication, financial and credit records relevant to a government investigation. The FBI issues about 50,000 of them annually, and an internal watchdog has repeatedly found abuses of the National Security Letter powers.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) proposed a new standard (.pdf) that would authorize those records only if the investigation concerned terrorism or spy activities of an agent of a foreign power.

Durbin, whose proposal was defeated, said his plan would set “reasonable limits on these powers to protect basic constitutional rights we have sworn to uphold as members of the Senate.”

But other members said the FBI needs the carte blanche authority because it cannot know if the records relate to a terror investigation or foreign agent until they get the records.

Terrorists, he said, “don’t carry cards in their wallets that say I am a respected member in the al-Qaida organization.”

Voting to send the package to the Senate floor were:

Democrats (9)
Benjamin Cardin, Maryland
Dianne Feinstein, California
Al Franken, Minnesota
Edward Kaufman, Delaware
Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota
Herb Kohl, Wisconsin
Patrick Leahy, Vermont
Charles Schumer, New York
Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island

Republicans (2)
John Cornyn, Texas
Jon Kyl, Arizona

Voting against:

Democrats (3)
Richard Durbin, Illinois
Russ Feingold, Wisconsin
Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania

Republicans (5)
Tom Coburn, Oklahoma
Lindsey Graham, South Carolina
Charles Grassley, Iowa
Orin Hatch, Utah
Jeff Sessions, Alabama

A link to the measure and the amendments that were forwarded to the Senate can be found at the Senate Judiciary Committee home page.

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Patriot Act being used against its own citizens !
The family has been told they have no rights to see their child and, under the USA PATRIOT ACT, the child has no rights to even defend himself. They claim the Constitution does not apply to this 16 year old, natural born, American citizen.

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New Legislation Will Rein in Overbroad National Security Letter Power

WASHINGTON – March 30 – Congressmen Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced legislation today to narrow the overbroad subpoena power in the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Patriot Act. The bipartisan bill, National Security Letters Reform Act of 2009, aims to curb rampant abuse of that power by federal law enforcement following the expansion of the Patriot Act and was introduced with 17 cosponsors. NSLs are secret subpoenas used to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies without prior court approval.

“To ensure that Americans’ privacy and free speech rights are protected, there must be clear oversight and strict guidelines tied to the use of NSLs,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Mr. Nadler and Mr. Flake should be applauded for taking this legislative step. Their bill will realign the current NSL authority with the Constitution. Congress must take this opportunity to rein in the power of the NSL.”

NSLs were originally crafted to gain information about suspected terrorists but the Patriot Act expanded the statute to allow the subpoenas, which are issued in secrecy, do not require court review, and contain a gag order, to be used to obtain personal information about people who are simply deemed “relevant” to an investigation. After the statute’s expansion, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released a series of reports over the last several years outlining systemic misuse and abuse of NSLs by FBI agents.

The ACLU is asking that Congress repeal the expanded NSL authorities that allow the FBI to demand information about innocent people who are not the targets of any investigation and reinstate prior standards limiting NSLs to information about terrorism suspects and other agents of foreign powers. In December of 2008, as a result of an ACLU lawsuit, the gag order provision was struck down as unconstitutional. The ACLU is now advocating that Congress legislate a constitutional alternative. The National Security Letters Reform Act of 2009 would make these necessary changes.

“By expanding the scope of the statute’s power to collect information on innocent people, the Patriot Act failed to protect Americans’ privacy,” said Michelle Richardson, ACLU Legislative Counsel. “It has become painfully clear that unchecked Patriot Act power inevitably leads to abuse, and National Security Letters are no exception. Innocent Americans have been swept into investigations and recipients have been barred from speaking about it publicly. Representatives Nadler and Flake should be praised for the introduction of this bill and we urge swift action by Congress to assure its passage.”

Earlier this month, the ACLU released a report entitled “Reclaiming Patriotism” that describes the widespread abuses that have occurred under the USA Patriot Act. The report, authored by policy counsel Michael German and Richardson, was delivered to congressional offices on Capitol Hill, as well as posted to the newly re-launched site www.reformthepatriotact.org in anticipation of the upcoming congressional debate surrounding three Patriot Act provisions due to expire on December 31, 2009.  

To learn more about the ACLU’s work around NSLs, go to: www.aclu.org/nsl

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By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III urged lawmakers yesterday to renew intelligence-gathering measures in the USA Patriot Act that are set to expire in December, calling them “exceptional” tools to help protect national security.

The law, passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, created divisions between proponents, who said it was necessary to deter terrorism, and privacy advocates warning that it tramples on Americans’ civil liberties. Portions of the law are up for reauthorization this year.

Mueller told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee he hopes that the reauthorization of two provisions would be far less controversial than in previous years. One of those provisions, which helps authorities secure access to business records, “has been exceptionally helpful in our national security investigations,” he said.

In response to a question from Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), Mueller said that his agents had used the provision about 220 times between 2004 and 2007. Data for last year were not yet available, he said.

The measure allows investigators probing terrorism to seek a suspect’s records from third parties such as financial services and travel and telephone companies without notifying the suspect. The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized the provision, saying it violates the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.

Another provision, permitting roving wiretaps of terrorism suspects, was used 147 times and has helped eliminate “an awful lot of paperwork,” Mueller said. In the past, authorities had to seek court approval for each electronic device carried by a suspect, from a cellphone and a BlackBerry to a home computer. But under the provision, one warrant can cover all of those machines.

The ACLU issued a report this month describing “widespread abuse” of government authority under the Patriot Act.

“The Patriot Act has been disastrous for Americans’ rights,” said Caroline Frederickson, the director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. “Congress should use this year’s Patriot Act reauthorization as an opportunity to reexamine all of our surveillance laws.”

Agents’ use of the Patriot Act and other sensitive investigative tools has been a source of friction between FBI officials and Democratic lawmakers.

Mueller said he has not had a chance to meet with new Justice Department or White House officials regarding their views on the Patriot Act. But at the Senate confirmation hearing for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in January, Mueller expressed at least moderate support for renewing the provisions that will sunset in December.

David Kris, an expert on intelligence laws, won unanimous Senate confirmation yesterday as the new leader of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. He will play an important role in the Patriot Act reauthorization and in supervising the FBI’s national security operations.

“It is important that [Congress] examine more specifics,” Cardin told the FBI director. “We want to make sure you have the tools that you need and that you have appropriate oversight. There may need to be modifications . . . a fine-tuning of these provisions to make sure they are effective and used as intended by Congress.”

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An experimental program that begins today at Tulsa International Airport will test whether the $170,000 body scanners could replace $10,000 metal detectors that have screened airline passengers since 1973. Airports in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City will join the test in the next two months, TSA spokesman Christopher White said.

The scanners aim to close a loophole by finding non-metallic weapons such as plastic and liquid explosives, which the TSA considers a major threat. The machines raise privacy concerns because their images reveal outlines of private body parts.

“We’re getting closer and closer to a required strip-search to board an airplane,” said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Privacy advocate Melissa Ngo fears that passengers won’t understand that the scanners take vivid images that screeners view.

White said each scanner has explanatory signs on how the machines work and posters showing the image they create.

Passengers at the test airports will be instructed to go through the new scanners. Anyone who doesn’t want to go through will be allowed to refuse and instead go through a metal detector and receive a pat-down, White said.

People in the scanner will stand with their arms raised and their face will be blurred out in the metallic-looking image on a nearby screen. TSA screeners view the images from inside a closed room near a checkpoint and immediately delete them.

“We’ve struck a very good balance between security and privacy,” White said.

Christopher Bidwell, security chief at the Airports Council International trade group, said the scanner “really does not reveal as much as some people might think.”

The scanners aim to address problems exposed by government probes in which covert agents got liquid explosives and detonators through airport checkpoints. A 2005 Homeland Security report urged better checkpoint technology.

Security analyst Bruce Schneier, a frequent critic of the TSA, said the scanners should improve security but warned that they take longer than metal detectors — 30 seconds vs. about 15 seconds per passenger. “There will be pressure to do the screening faster, which will be sloppier,” Schneier said.

The scanners bounce harmless “millimeter waves” off passengers’ bodies and use no radiation.

The TSA has done preliminary tests of the scanner on passengers who had just passed through metal detectors. Those tests found that the machines excel at finding hidden objects, White said.

Based on the results of the latest test, the TSA will decide at an undetermined date whether to use more body scanners in place of metal detectors.

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February 10, 2009 By: Freedom Fighter

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John R. Brinkerhoff

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

-Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1385

The American aversion to a military gendarmerie was formalized after Reconstruction in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which severely restricts the use of active military forces in domestic law enforcement.

The Posse Comitatus Act was passed to remove the Army from civilian law enforcement and to return it to its role of defending the borders of the United States.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits members of the U.S. armed forces or employees of the U.S. military from enforcing laws on civilians [emphasis added].

Some of those who opposed it [the Posse Comitatus Act] in the Congress charged that [it] was taking away from the20president entirely the power to use troops to repress internal disorders except on request of a state governor or legislature, that President Washington could not even had dealt with the Whiskey Rebellion under its terms. This interpretation of the Posse Comitatus Act has often been raised by those protesting against federal troops intervention in the many instances it has occurred since 1878. And indeed the question of what the real meaning of the Posse Comitatus Act was has been the subject of some dispute ever since its passage Š however … all that it really did was to repeal a doctrine whose only substantial foundation was an opinion by an attorney general, and one that had never been tested in the courts. The president’s power to use both regular and military remained undisturbed by the Posse Comitatus Act, and by the law of 1861 and the Ku Klux Klan Act that had in fact been substantially strengthened during the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. But the posse Comitatus Act did mean that troops could not be used on any authority than that of the President and that he must issue a cease and desist proclamation before he did so. Commanders in the field would no longer have any discretion but must wait for orders from Washington.

Applies only to the Army, and by extension the Air Force, which was formed out of the Army in 1947. Does not apply to the Navy and Marine Corps. However, the Department of Defense has consistently held that the Navy and Marine Corps should behave as if the act applied to them. Does not apply to the Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Transportation and is both an armed force and a law enforcement agency with=2 0police powers. Does not apply to the National Guard in its role as state troops on state active duty under the command of the respective governors. May not apply to the National Guard (qua militia) even when it is called to federal active duty. The Posse Comitatus Act contains no restrictions on the use of the federalized militia as it did on the regular Army. [9] It is commonly believed, however, that National Guard units and personnel come under the Posse Comitatus Act when they are on federal active duty, and this interpretation is followed today. Does not apply to state guards or State Defense Forces under the command of the respective governors. Does not apply to military personnel assigned to military police, shore police, or security police duties. The military police have jurisdiction over military members subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They also exercise police powers over military dependents and others on military installations. The history of the law makes it clear that it was not intended to prevent federal police (for example, marshals) from enforcing the law. Does not apply to civilian employees, including those who are sworn law enforcement officers. The origin and legislative history of the act make it clear that it=2 0applies only to military personnel. In those days, there were no civilian employees of the Army in the sense that there are today. In particular, no one envisioned that the Army would hire civilian police officers to enforce the laws at its facilities. Does not prevent the President from using federal troops in riots or civil disorders. Federal troops were used for domestic operations more than 200 times in the two centuries from 1795 to 1995. Most of these operations were to enforce the law, and many of them were to enforce state law rather than federal law. [10] Nor does it prevent the military services from supporting local or federal law enforcement officials as long as the troops are not used to arrest citizens or investigate crimes.

Robert W. Coakley, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders 1789-1878, Center of Military History, U.S. Army, Washington, DC, 1988.

Clayton D . Laurie and Ronald H. Cole, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders 1877-1945, Center of Military History, U.S. Army, Washington, DC, 1997.

Eugene P. Visco, More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Posse Comitatus, unpublished, available by request from gvisco@bellatlantic.net

0D

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Dear Readers,

As I feared, “Lord Obama” is amassing his forces for an all-out assault on our natural rights for self-defense and liberty.

Now is *not* the time to be passive or wait for the “change” that is about to start!

I urge you to get ACTIVE!  Join  a Pro 2nd Amendment group.  My favorite is “Gun Owners of America”  http://gunowners.org/

Write your congress-critter and senator!  Call, fax, petition!  Become a pain-in-their-ass for freedom and let them know you expect them to support the 2nd Amendment and Constitution as they pledged to do when they were sworn into office!

This is most-assuredly NOT a “republican vs. democrat” issue.  Long-time readers know we do not play that silly delusional and misleading mind game here!  Daddy Bush Sr passed the ban on “imported” so called “assault-weapons” back in 1989.  John McCain is on record having voiced support for bans.

The problem is that now…..with the immanent coronation of his majesty; the first brown-skinned puppet ever to be used by the globalists – the momentum is such that his lordship may propose we all light our selves on fire and thousands of dumbed-down acolytes, ecstatic in their servitude, will reach for the gas cans!

Didn’t the rap group “Public Enemy” have a song that said “Don’t believe the hype?”

Well Boys & Girls, I hope *you* don’t believe the hype!

Barack Obama is a puppet, pure and simple.  He runs nothing and he has no real power (just remember, the same forces that installed Obama also installed G. W. Bush…and Bush can’t tie his shoe laces without assistance!  A good puppet doesn’t have to be smart, just subservient!)

The biggest impediment to the total destruction of free America and the complete bondage of her people is that damn 2nd Amendment “Right to Keep and Bear Arms” — that simply has to go for “progress” to be made!

You will see all sorts of subterfuge and trickery employed by the socialist/fascists.  You will hear appeals that it is “for the children”  — we may even see a rash of shootings in schools or public places (typically places like Virginia Tech or Columbine where the intended victims are 100% disarmed!) and the plea will go out for “reasonable” gun control.

Don’t believe the hype.

Not one stinking lying word of it.

Of course there are bad people in the world that should not have guns.  Funny thing is, these are also the people MOST LIKELY to ignore any gun laws!

So where does that leave the good honest citizen that wishes to “play by the rules” and protect their family?  Well very simply, you will be disarmed and rendered helpless unless you start TO FIGHT FOR YOUR GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS !  Accept no “reasonable” restrictions!

Is it “reasonable” to prevent you from subscribing to more than one newspaper?  To pass a law preventing you from attending a religious service more than three times a year?

Is it “reasonable” to allow the police into your home without a warrant, to search through your papers and possessions whenever they wish because you “have nothing to hide?”

Once you neglect the 2nd Amendment, you will have no mechanism for retaining the others.

This is no joke and I am not trying to be dramatic.  The stakes are very high and the push to disarm us is going to begin very soon.

The gradual erosion and dismemberment of our Constitution is not fast enough for the Illuminati cabal that seeks to enslave us.

Staging “false-flag” terrorist attacks was an effective way to push through Orwellian legislation like the “Patriot Act” but the problem with that is, too many people are waking up to the fraud.

So now the preferred method seems to be the orchestrated collapse of the economy, and with the massive increase in street crime, burglaries, and overall malaise, the Govt. can position itself as our “Savior” while enslaving us in the grip of its socialistic “bail-outs’ that ultimately only benefit Wall Street and the bankers.

Just remember one thing – in Nazi Germany gun control was complete and total.  In Communist China today gun control is complete and total.  In socialist Europe, gun “ownership” is so neutered through “reasonable” gun laws as to be effectively banned!

What kind of country do *YOU* want to live in?

More importantly, what kind of country do you want to leave for your children?

******************************

I would like to explain the meaning of the phrase “Molon Labe” embroidered on the gentleman’s cap in the picture at the top of this article.  Here from Wikepedia is the short answer:

The Greek phrase Molōn labe! (Μολὼν λάβε; approximate Classical Greek pronunciation [molɔ̀ːn labé], Modern Greek [moˈlon laˈve]), meaning “Come and take them!”, is a classical expression of defiance reported by Plutarch in response to the Persian Army’s demand that the Spartans surrender their weapons. It corresponds roughly to the modern equivalent English phrase “over my dead body“.

Μολὼν λάβε was reportedly the defiant response of King Leonidas I of Sparta to Xerxes I of Persia at the onset of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). Xerxes, whose forces vastly outnumbered the Spartans and their allies, offered to spare the lives of Leonidas and his few thousand warriors if they would only surrender and lay down their weapons.

Instead, the Spartans held Thermopylae for three days and, although they were ultimately annihilated, they inflicted serious damage upon the Persian army, and most importantly delayed its progress to Athens, providing sufficient time for the city’s evacuation to Salamis Island. Though a clear defeat, Thermopylae served as a moral victory and inspired the troops at the Battle of Salamis and the Battle of Plataea, where the non-medizing Greeks won their freedom and arguably saved the Western World.

The source for this quotation is Plutarch, Apophthegmata Laconica, 225c.11.

*************************************************************

And now, for those of you who may think I am just being alarmist, please read the following information on who his Lordship has selected to serve as Imperial Field Marshall in the war against our Freedoms:

http://gunowners.org/a011309.htm

Here is a clip from today’s (1/15/09) confirmation hearings.  The weaselly slimeball is directly asked about his plans for eviscerating the 2nd Amendment:

Also, out of the Annointed One’s home State of Corruption – The People’s Republic of Illinois – we have this gem of pending legislation:

http://www.infowars.com/?p=7133

**************************************************************************

Finally, I would like to offer some words of advice for my fellow freedom-loving Americans and loyal readers:

If you do not have a gun and ammunition – BUY THEM NOW!

If you have nothing;  first buy a .308 caliber semi-automatic magazine fed rifle! Go to your dealer and ask to see a Springfield Armory M1A or an “FAL” type rifle or perhaps a “G3″ type rifle.  These are battle proven .308 caliber (also known as 7.62 x 51mm NATO caliber) rifles that are normally available in the civilian-legal “semi-automatic” configuration.   (Note: You may not find all these choices available to you depending on which state you live in.  If you happen to live in one of the “advanced” socialist states like NJ, California, Illinois or the District of Columbia that already restricts the rights of it’s citizens, my best advice is to MOVE OUT!)

.308 is far more powerful than the .223 round used in the AR-15 /M-16 rifles.  If you have the money, buy an AR-15 rifle too.  Buy magazines, spare parts and ammo.  Buy a 12 gauge shotgun and a pistol if you have the funds, (the shotgun is ideal for home defense) and LEARN HOW TO SHOOT!

I am a strong advocate of gun ownership.  I can say that in the *MANY YEARS* I have gone to guns shops, gun shows and shopped the internet for guns, parts, accessories, and ammo, I have NEVER SEEN SUCH SCARCITY!

Thank-God that hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Americans are waking up to the dangers we face!

Since the election of  the ObamaMessiah, gun sales have gone through the roof, especially semi-automatic rifles (the best kind for a patriot to own!)

Thirty round magazines for AR rifles are extremely difficult to find, gun shops are out of inventory, prices are going up, and Obama has not even gotten started yet.

So *PLEASE* heed my warning – if you care about your rights, and your freedom, educate yourself and BUY NOW!

I am not exaggerating when I say that gun shops I have frequented for over ten years have hardly any inventory to sell.  Start now to secure what you need.  Even if you have cash to burn, you may find it is not as easy as you think!

So please get active, get informed, and fight on ALL FRONTS!

Join a pro 2nd Amendment group, contact your congress-critters and senators, hell even write, email or phone his Lordship; and tell them you will NOT TOLERATE any infringement on your right to own a gun, despite how “reasonable” they think their new laws will be!

As General George S. Patton so wisely put it:

“I always believe in being prepared, even when I’m dressed in white tie and tails.”   (see more here: http://www.generalpatton.com/quotes.html )

Obama is evil, but he is the symptom of an evil system.  He is a lackey, an opportunistic water-boy for a much more powerful gang that seeks to undermine the free people of the United States (and the world).

Their little game has been going on for a long long time, but now it is reaching a climax.

The times ahead will be hard and fraught with danger.

Let’s just make sure that we can make it as dangerous for our would-be masters as they wish to make it for us, the would-be slaves.

Molon Labe!

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The oversize white envelope bore the blue logo of the Department of Homeland Security. Inside, I found 20 photocopies of the government’s records on my international travels. Every overseas trip I’ve taken since 2001 was noted.

I had requested the files after I had heard that the government tracks “passenger activity.” Starting in the mid-1990s, many airlines handed over passenger records. Since 2002, the government has mandated that the commercial airlines deliver this information routinely and electronically.

A passenger record typically includes the name of the person traveling, the name of the person who submitted the information while arranging the trip, and details about how the ticket was bought, according to documents published by the Department of Homeland Security. Records are made for citizens and non-citizens who cross our borders. An agent from U.S. Customs and Border Protection can generate a travel history for any traveler with a few keystrokes on a computer. Officials use the information to prevent terrorism, acts of organized crime, and other illegal activity.

I had been curious about what’s in my travel dossier, so I made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a copy. I’m posting here a few sample pages of what officials sent me.

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My biggest surprise was that the Internet Protocol (I.P.) address of the computer used to buy my tickets via a Web agency was noted. On the first document image posted here, I’ve circled in red the I.P. address of the computer used to buy my pair of airline tickets.[An I.P. address is assigned to every computer on the Internet. Each time that computer sends an e-mail—or is used to make a purchase via a Web browser—it has to reveal its I.P. address, which tells its geographic location.]

The rest of my file contained details about my ticketed itineraries, the amount I paid for tickets, and the airports I passed through overseas. My credit card number was not listed, nor were any hotels I’ve visited. In two cases, the basic identifying information about my traveling companion (whose ticket was part of the same purchase as mine) was included in the file. Perhaps that information was included by mistake.

Some sections of my documents were blacked out by an official. Presumably, this information contains material that is classified because it would reveal the inner workings of law enforcement.

I have grayed out other parts of the documents because they contain information, such as my passport number, that I’d rather not share. The parts I’ve blocked out are colored gray to distinguish from the government censor’s black marker.

Here’s the lowdown on the records.

The commercial airlines send these passenger records to Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. Computers match the information with the databases of federal departments, such as Treasury, Agriculture, and Homeland Security. Computers uncover links between known and previously unidentified terrorists or terrorist suspects, as well as suspicious or irregular travel patterns. Some of this information comes from foreign governments and law enforcement agencies. The data is also crosschecked with American state and local law enforcement agencies, which are tracking persons who have warrants out for their arrest or who are under restraining orders. The data is used not only to fight terrorism but also to prevent and combat acts of organized crime and other illegal activity.

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Officials use the information to help decide if a passenger needs to have additional screening. Case in point: After overseas trips, I’ve stood in lines at U.S. border checkpoints and had my passport swiped and my electronic file examined. A few times, something in my record has prompted officers to pull me over to a side room, where I have been asked additional questions. Sometimes I’ve had to clarify a missing middle initial. Other times, I have been referred to a secondary examination. (I’ve blogged about this before.)When did this electronic data collection start? In 1999, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (then known as the U.S. Customs Service) began receiving passenger identification information electronically from certain air carriers on a voluntary basis, though some paper records were shared prior to that. A mandatory, automated program began about 6 years ago. Congress funds this Automated Targeting System’s Passenger Screening Program to the tune of about $30 million a year.

[+] Enlarge image

How safe is your information? Regulations prohibit officials from sharing the records of any traveler—or the government’s risk assessment of any traveler—with airlines or private companies. A record is kept for 15 years—unless it is linked to an investigation, in which case it can be kept indefinitely. Agency computers do not encrypt the data, but officials insist that other measures—both physical and electronic—safeguard our records.I wonder if the government’s data collecting is relevant and necessary to accomplish the agency’s purpose in protecting our borders. The volume of data collected, and the rate at which the records is growing and being shared with officials nationwide, suggests that the potential for misuse could soar out of hand. Others may wonder if the efforts are effective. For instance, I asked security expert Bruce Schneier Schneider about the Feds’ efforts to track passenger activity, and he responded by e-mail:

“I think it’s a waste of time. There’s this myth that we can pick terrorists out of the crowd if we only knew more information.”

On the other hand, some people may find it reassuring that the government is using technology to keep our borders safe.What do you think? Feel free to post a comment, below.

Oh, one more thing: Are your records worth seeing? Maybe not, unless you’ve been experiencing a problem crossing our nation’s borders. For one thing, the records are a bit dull. In my file, for instance, officials had blacked out the (presumably) most fascinating parts, which were about how officials assessed my risk profile. What’s more, the records are mainly limited to information that airline and passport control officials have collected, so you probably won’t be surprised by anything you read in them. Lastly, there may be a cost. While there was no charge to me when I requested my records, you might charged a fee of up to $50 if there is difficulty in obtaining your records. Of course, there’s a cost to taxpayers and to our nation’s security resources whenever a request is filed, too.

However, if you are being detained at the border or if you suspect a problem with your records, then by all means request a copy. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is required by law to make your records available to you, with some exceptions. Your request must be made in writing on paper and be signed by you. Ask to see the “information relating to me in the Automated Targeting System.” Say that your request is “made pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. 552).” Add that you wish to have a copy of your records made and mailed to you without first inspecting them. Your letter should, obviously, give reasonably sufficient detail to enable an official to find your record. So supply your passport number and mailing address. Put a date on your letter and make a copy for your own records. On your envelope, you should conspicuously print the words “FOIA Request.” It should be addressed to “Freedom of Information Act Request,” U.S. Customs Service, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20229. Be patient. I had wait for up to a year to receive a copy of my records. Then if you believe there’s an error in your record, ask for a correction by writing a letter to the Customer Satisfaction Unit, Office of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Room 5.5C, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20229.

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December 20, 2008

NewsWithViews.com

Intelligence comes in two distinct and uniquely critical components. The first is information—or intelligence—that comes from sources known to you as an investigator or intercepted sources that may not be known to you. The most critical intelligence sector is that of our own discerning creative minds. Together, these two arenas comprise the data mine that gives us a glimpse into the future. Military leaders and police officials know that this future depends solely on how we assess that data and our near miracle ability to shape outcomes by how we have collectively interpreted all of the “leads.” If we are able to process correctly, the police agency or forward military unit can deploy its forces based on qualified assumptions that have been drawn from the available “intelligence” and thus strike or defend effectively and efficiently.

Using this descriptive breakdown of the role of intelligence, let’s project into 2009, and see what type of outcomes we might expect over the next few months concerning the economic and political events here in the United States.

Let’s begin with what we do know based on existing information and substantiated reports from across the country. The executive branch of government assuming power on 20 January 2009 is comprised of the most socialist mindset since the Roosevelt years. The cabinet and department executives reflect a bias against historical constitutional precepts, are continuing programs or are set on implementing new ones that will devastate the Bill of Rights (what is left of it). They are viciously against the ownership of personal defense weapons and are morally degenerate in their rabid support of same-sex marriage, abortion, and homosexuality as a civil right, as well as promoters of open borders with Mexico. This hideous and brashly anti-traditional/historical America mindset in Washington has completed the destruction of the bridge between our Godly heritage and the present day four-lane interstate journey into oblivion and destruction.

Most of America has ridden this express train to hell, while listening to I-Pods, lost on the cell phone, or addicted to demonically inspired virtual games on the ever present lap-top. Family discussions around the dinner table, parent involvement with their children’s school and church, horseback camping trips and Christ honoring Christmas gatherings, have given way to illicit sex parties, including pre-teen homosexual experimentation encouraged by psychiatrists, cheating and plagiarism rings in the public schools, gang affiliation in record numbers, drug smuggling and dope dealing in every community in the country.

What then does our intelligence tell us? Based on these known facts, we can conclude that America’s days as the “moral leader” to the world are long over. Spiritually, we are worse off than the most backward African nation that still worships rocks and trees. We have offended the true God of the universe and are next in line for utter destruction. That fate, I believe, is well underway.

Even if you dismiss the spiritual component, the results of our moral disintegration have brought about its own unavoidable chain of events. Where moral character is absent, corruption, theft, sexual immorality, lying, selfish and traitorous conduct rushes in to fill the void. This is abundantly evident on every hand in disease ridden America. The family has disintegrated, churches have fallen away from God’s truth, government has failed, banks have crumbled, credit has replaced “money,” debt replaced “money” and “money” replaced gold and silver. Cowardice has replaced confidence, incompetency has replaced competency, and mistrust has taken over trust in the law and law officers. Virtue in the mission of the military has been replaced with unending wars and police actions by a now mercenary role for our soldiers who have been prostituted to serve the whore of government.

Any intelligence operation will predict that this vast negative change in standards results in the defeat of the nation from within. It cannot be avoided and its outcomes are unavoidably predetermined. Such corruption then begins to feed on itself. In order to protect the viability of the continuing operation of such a flawed entity, a self-defense mechanism must then be established to insure that the antithesis of the corrupted state (a morally virtuous state) cannot be reinstituted.

In the case of present day America, this means the establishment of a previously unheard of and unneeded police state apparatus. This internal security behemoth has been built to protect the unconstitutional and corrupted national government. This new Gestapo like state security network (homeland security) is in a continuing state of expansion and invasion of the private lives of Americans. It MUST do so, because it fears freedom, honest citizens, and clean government. Only corrupted officials need constant machine gun bearing black-clad killers in their employment. Conversely, free, honest, government works shoulder to shoulder with its citizens in an open concept where common sense and common integrity rules.

Now our intelligence gathering abilities will conclude that in order to staff such a police state army, men and women who have themselves been corrupted will be the most likely to be recruited and serve successfully. To be successful, they must voluntarily agree to obey all rules and direct orders issued from the corrupted police or general staffs which they serve. The future can be predicted then, that at some point, those who have sworn to obey the corrupted state police apparatus will come into direct conflict with those who have maintained their personal morality, dignity, independence, and allegiance to God and the Republic. There can be NO OTHER outcome. There is no road for compromise or “sit-down” resolution. The ONLY outcome is conflict. The state will maintain its “us against them” mentality and the freedom fighters will have no choice but to survive by fighting back. This scenario has been repeated throughout all of history on every continent with the same inevitable, predictable ending.

The maverick or rogue element in all of this has begun to emerge in a way that gives us some pause for hope, however. Vast amounts of information through patriot radio, constitutionally sensitive internet news services and courageous speakers across the country are bringing true and accurate facts to millions of citizens and of course police officers and armed forces at home and in theater. Because of these collective efforts, officers at all levels are being made aware of the real situation facing all of us and how they should respond—or not—to orders that will be coming to them.

The final segment of this article is directed to police and military officers at all levels. It is as though roll call was underway and the orders of the day issued. I ask that you read this carefully and let it become a part of your standard operating procedures manual of the heart. Your response to this will help decide the ultimate fate of our nation. As sworn officers and oath bound military men and women, you are under the lawful order domain that was codified for all time during the Nuremburg Tribunals of 1945-48. That body decreed to all men and women under arms that merely obeying orders of any kind was not an affirmative defense for actions taken in combat or against civilian populations. The benchmark that was established was, if the “order” was criminal in nature or “required” the affected forces to commit an act they knew was or suspected to be criminal in nature, they had the absolute right and duty to disobey that order and in some cases seek the immediate arrest and prosecution of the ordering authority. That operational standard still exists and will be used should the occasion arise in the near future. Let me be VERY clear. If a police officer from any jurisdiction, private contractors hired to act as agents of the police, or a military member acting in an “official” capacity should carry out unlawful, unconstitutional, or unethical “orders” that violates the effected person’s lawful rights, safety, security, or freedom, then the offending “agent” of government is liable in court both criminally and civilly. In the worse case situation, the offending agent may be at the mercy of citizens who will not tolerate such abuse.

Resistance to such government actions by the citizenry in these situations for the preservation of life and peace is therefore justified in the extreme.

We are left then with this “future” to contemplate. Either intelligence will dictate that this nation’s constitutional laws will be followed under all circumstances, or there will be severe consequences both immediate and long term. Be it known that NO police or military authority is exempt from safeguarding the American people from violations of their absolute rights and that all such authority must be lawful, constitutional, humane and fair.

That any officer of the law or of the military have as their first priority, the intelligent and judicious use of their power, and the full knowledge that the Republic of the United States and its people will hold them accountable and responsible for their individual and collective actions in defense of the American people during times of crises from whatever cause.

Be it further understood, that no President, General, Judge, Governor, Attorney General, law enforcement official, legislator, public official at any level or animal control officer may violate civil rights, the Bill of Rights, the law, constitutional authority, or any other covenant with the American people for any reason including open warfare. Any such violation will be considered a violation of the official’s oath of office and will be subject to civil and or criminal penalties.

Good intelligence is a useful tool in keeping the peace, safeguarding the general population and using the law for the purposes it was intended. Common sense is the gatekeeper for those laws and the maintenance of civilization. Together we must insure that both intelligence and common sense survive any application or misapplication of the law in any form including that of martial law. No other course is acceptable. No other course is lawful. No other course will insure that America survives its present economic and political calamities without resorting to all out conflict between its citizens and those in authority. Our future depends on the intelligent use of our intelligence, from whatever source we take it, and how we use it. We expect, indeed demand that those in authority begin at once to exercise intelligent strength of character and the wisdom to know from whence comes their strength.

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