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INFORMATION IS POWER!

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Henry HYDE died today. You may remember him from the role he played in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Hyde was one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives in 1998 to conduct the impeachment proceedings. He was the typical virtuous Republican: the self-righteous, hypocritical kind that is most offensive. The corruption in the Republican government today is beyond anything ever witnessed in American history since the Nixon fascists were in office. In fact, many players of that administration show up in the Bush administration. Hyde was awarded the U.S. Medal of Freedom by Bush. Leave it to Bush to cheapen the Medal on someone like Hyde, who had an affair of his own 30 years earlier, when he was in his 40s. He called it a “youthful indiscretion.” Hyde died on November 29, 2007, in Chicago, Ill.

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Bushisms for his Presidential “Liberry”

“I don’t give a goddamn. I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

--George W. Bush, December 2005 in a meeting with the
RNC, re reviewing the USA PATRIOT Act.

Delivering what he obviously believes are profound statements, George Bush only shows the entire world how really dim-witted he is--it seems as though his explanations are made to reinforce his own understanding!

"My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions.’”

--George W. Bush, October 3, 2007

“You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket ... they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building somebody has got to come and build the building. And when the building expanded it prevented additional opportunities for people to work.”

--George W. Bush, October 3, 2007

“All of us in America want there to be fairness when it comes to justice.”

-- George W. Bush, September 20, 2007

“More than two decades later, it is hard to imagine the Revolutionary War coming out any other way.”

--George W. Bush, July 4, 2007

“Amnesty means that you've got to pay a price for having been here illegally...”

--George W. Bush, June 26, 2007

“The people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved.”

--George W. Bush, June 11, 2007

“I'm honored to be here with the eternal general of the United States, mi amigo Alberto Gonzales.”

--George W. Bush, May 4, 2007

“Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not no violence.”

--George W. Bush, on Iraq, Washington, D.C., May 2, 2007

It’s embarrassing, and he doesn’t even realize how inane it sounds! My grandmother would say, “Ignorance is bliss”!

Barbara's Daily BuzzFlash Minute
Submitted Mon, December 3, 2007- by Barbara's Daily Buzz

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On the road to fascism...

Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race.
Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism
of what is going on--
accuse them of "playing the race card"
or say they are paranoid.

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How to Destroy an African-American City in 33 Steps

By Bill Quigley -- human rights lawyer and law professor,

Loyola University New Orleans

Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps--just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.

Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled, and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars--25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans--will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems.

Step Three. When the disaster hits, make certain the national response is overseen by someone who has no experience at all handling anything on a large scale, particularly disasters. In fact, you can even inject some humor into the response -- have the disaster coordinator be someone whose last job was the head of a dancing horse association.

Step Four. Make sure that the President and national leaders remain aloof and only slightly concerned. This sends an important message to the rest of the country.

Step Five. Make certain the local, state, and national governments do not respond in a coordinated effective way. This will create more chaos on the ground.

Step Six. Do not bring in food or water or communications right away. This will make everyone left behind more frantic and create incredible scenes for the media.

Step Seven. Make certain that the media focus of the disaster is not on the heroic community work of thousands of women, men, and young people helping the elderly, the sick, and the trapped survive but mainly on acts of people looting. Also spread and repeat the rumors that people trapped on rooftops are shooting guns, not to attract attention and get help but AT the helicopters. This will reinforce the message that "those people" left behind are different from the rest of us and are beyond help.

Step Eight. Refuse help from other countries. If we accept help, it looks like we cannot or choose not to handle this problem ourselves. This cannot be the message. The message we want to put out over and over is that we have plenty of resources and there is plenty of help. Then if people are not receiving help, it is their own fault. This should be done quietly.

Step Nine. Once the evacuation of those left behind actually starts, make sure people do not know where they are going or have any way to know where the rest of their family has gone. In fact, make sure that African-Americans end up much farther away from home than others.

Step Ten. Make sure that when government assistance finally has to be given out, it is given out in a totally arbitrary way. People will have lost their homes, jobs, churches, doctors, schools, neighbors, and friends. Give them a little bit of money but not too much. Make people dependent. Then cut off the money. Then give it to some and not others. Refuse to assist more than one person in every household. This will create conflicts where more than one generation lived together. Make it impossible for people to get consistent answers to their questions. Long lines and busy phones will discourage people from looking for help.

Step Eleven. Insist the President suspend federal laws requiring living wages and affirmative action for contractors working on the disaster. While local workers are still displaced, import white workers from outside the city for the high-paying jobs like crane operators and bulldozers. Import Latino workers from outside the city for the low-paying dangerous jobs. Make sure to have elected officials, black and white, blame job problems on the lowest wage immigrant workers. This will create divisions between black and brown workers that can be exploited by those at the top. Because many of the brown workers do not have legal papers, those at the top will not have to worry about paying decent wages, providing health insurance, following safety laws, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, or union organizing. They become essentially disposable workers -- use them, then lose them.

Step Twelve. Whatever you do, keep people away from their city for as long as possible. This is the key to long-term success in destroying the African-American city. Do not permit people to come home. Keep people guessing about what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Set numerous deadlines and then break them. This will discourage people and make it increasingly difficult for people to return.

Step Thirteen. When you finally have to reopen the city, make sure to reopen the African-American sections last. This will aggravate racial tensions in the city and create conflicts between those who are able to make it home and those who are not.

Step Fourteen. When the big money is given out, make sure it is all directed to homeowners and not to renters. This is particularly helpful in a town like New Orleans that was majority African-American and majority renter. Then, after you have excluded renters, mess the program up for the homeowners so that they must wait for years to get money to fix their homes.

Step Fifteen. Close down all the public schools for months. This will prevent families in the public school system, overwhelmingly African-Americans, from coming home.

Step Sixteen. Fire all the public school teachers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers and de-certify the teachers union -- the largest in the state. This will primarily hurt middle class African Americans and make them look for jobs elsewhere.

Step Seventeen. Even better, take this opportunity to flip the public school system into a charter system and push foundations and the government for extra money to the new charter schools. Give the schools with the best test scores away first. Then give the least flooded schools away next. Turn 70% of schools into charters so that the kids with good test scores or solid parental involvement will go to the charters. That way, the kids with average scores, or learning disabilities, or single parent families who are still displaced are kept segregated away from the "good" kids. You will have to set up a few schools for those other kids, but make sure those schools do not get any extra money, do not have libraries, nor doors on the toilets, nor enough teachers. In fact, because of this, you’d better make certain there are more security guards than teachers.

Step Eighteen. Let the market do what it does best. When rent goes up 70%, say there is nothing we can do about it. This will have two great results. It will keep many former residents away from the city and it will make landlords happy. If wages go up, immediately import more outside workers, and wages will settle down.

Step Nineteen. Make sure all the predominately white suburbs surrounding the African-American city make it very difficult for the people displaced from the city to return to the metro area. Have one suburb refuse to allow any new subsidized housing at all. Have the Sheriff of another threaten to stop and investigate anyone wearing dreadlocks. Throw in a little humor and have one nearly-all-white suburb pass a law that makes it illegal for homeowners to rent to people other than their blood relatives! The courts may strike these down, but it will take time and the message will be clear -- do not think about returning to the suburbs.

Step Twenty. Reduce public transportation by more than 80%. The people without cars will understand the message.

Step Twenty One. Keep affordable housing to a minimum. Use money instead to reopen the Superdome and create tourism campaigns. Refuse to boldly create massive home ownership opportunities for former renters. Delay re-opening apartment complexes in African American neighborhoods. As long as fewer than half the renters can return to affordable housing, they will not return.

Step Twenty Two. Keep all public housing closed. Since it is 100% African-American, this is a no-brainer. Make sure to have African-Americans be the people who deliver the message. This step will also help by putting more pressure on the rental market as 5000 more families will then have to compete for rental housing with low-income workers. This will provide another opportunity for hundreds of millions of government funds to be funneled to corporations when these buildings are torn down and developers can build less-secure buildings in their place. Make sure to tell the 5000 families evicted from public housing that you are not letting them back for their own good. Tell them you are trying to save them from living in a segregated neighborhood. This will also send a good signal -- if the government can refuse to allow people back, private concerns are free to do the same or worse.

Step Twenty Three. Shut down as much public health as possible. Sick and elderly people and moms with little kids need access to public healthcare. Keep the public hospital, which hosted about 350,000 visits a year before the disaster, closed. Keep the neighborhood clinics closed. Put all the pressure on the private healthcare facilities and provoke economic and racial tensions there between the insured and uninsured.

Step Twenty Four. Close as many public mental healthcare providers as possible. The trauma of the disaster will seriously increase stress on everyone. Left untreated, medical experts tell us this will dramatically increase domestic violence, self-medication, and drug and alcohol abuse – and, of course, crime.

Step Twenty Five. Keep the city environment unfriendly to women. Women were already widely discriminated against before the storm. Make sure that you do not reopen day care centers. This, combined with the lack of healthcare, lack of affordable housing, and lack of transportation, will keep moms with kids away. If you can keep women with kids away, the city will destroy itself.

Step Twenty Six. Create and maintain an environment where black on black crime will flourish. As long as you can keep parents out of town, keep the schools hostile to kids without parents, keep public healthcare closed, make only low-paying jobs available. Do not fund social workers or prosecutors or public defenders or police, and keep chaos the norm. Then, young black men will certainly kill other young black men. To increase the visibility of the crime problem, bring in the National Guard in fatigues to patrol the streets in their camouflage hummers.

Step Twenty Seven. Strip the local elected predominately African-American government of its powers. Make certain the money that is coming in to fix up the region is not under their control. Privatize as much as you can as quickly as you can -- housing, healthcare, and education for starters. When in doubt, privatize. Create an appointed commission of people who have no experience in government to make all the decisions. In fact, it is better to create several such commissions; that way, no one will really be sure who is in charge and there will be much more delay and conflict. Treat the local people like they are stupid, as if you know what is best for them much better than they do.

Step Twenty Eight. Create lots of planning processes but give them no authority. Overlap them where possible. Give people conflicting signals whether their neighborhood will be allowed to rebuild or be turned into green space. This will create confusion, conflict, and aggravation. People will blame the officials closest to them -- the local African-American officials, even though they do not have any authority to do anything about these plans since they do not control the rebuilding money.

Step Twenty Nine. Hold an election but make it very difficult for displaced voters to participate. In fact, do not allow any voting in any place outside the state even though we do it for other countries, and even though hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. This is very important because when people are not able to vote, those who have been able to return can say, "Well, they didn't even vote, so I guess they are not interested in returning."

Step Thirty. Get the elected officials out of the way and make room for corporations to make a profit. There are billions to be made in this process for well-connected national and international corporations. There is so much chaos that no one will be able to figure out exactly where the money went for a long time. There must be no real attempt to make sure that local businesses, especially African-American businesses, get contracts -- at best, they could get modest subcontracts from the corporations which got the big money. Make sure the authorities prosecute a couple of little people who ripped off $2000 -- that will temporarily satisfy people who know they are being ripped off and divert attention from the big money rip-offs. This will also provide another opportunity to blame the victims -- as critics can say, "Well, we gave them lots of money, they must have wasted it. How much more can they expect from us?"

Step Thirty One. Keep people's attention diverted from the African-American city. Pour money into Iraq instead of the Gulf Coast. Corporations have figured out how to make big bucks whether we are winning or losing the war. It is easier to convince the country to support war -- support for cities is much, much tougher. When the war goes badly, you can change the focus of the message to supporting the troops. Everyone loves the troops. No one can say we all love African-Americans. Focus on terrorists -- that always seems to work.

Step Thirty Two. Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race. Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism of what is going on -- accuse them of "playing the race card" or say they are paranoid. Criticize people who challenge the exclusion of African-Americans as people who "just want to go back to the bad old days." Repeat the message that you want something better for everyone. Use African-American spokespersons where possible.

Step Thirty-Three. Repeat these steps.

Note to readers: Every fact in this list actually happened and continues to happen in New Orleans after Katrina.

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TV News Lies

Editor's Comments: Have You Read This, Mr. Bush?
Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War

Read this line by line. You will be stunned at how many provisions of the Geneva Conventions have been totally violated by George W. Bush and his war party. Everyone down to the field commanders is clearly guilty of war crimes based on just this one convention. As you read, you will be hard pressed to find even a single clause in which the Bush administration’s cabal has been compliant. It is simply stunning. And what will become clear to you by the time you finish reading this is that our criminal corporate media have been complicit in these crimes. They have ignored them even though it is their responsibility to hold our administration accountable to the people of this nation and to the laws of the land!

After watching George W. Bush conduct his affairs and speak in public for the past six years or so, I am not so sure he can actually read. Well, let’s just say I am not sure about how goodly he understands things like words and stuff. But I think no matter how difficult it may be, Mr. Bush may want to read this…or at least ask his lawyer to read it. But then again, this career criminal has nothing to worry about as long as we have a corporately-owned Congress and media who have no interest in running a legal and legitimate government…otherwise, Bush would have been arrested many times…for election fraud…conspiracy to commit mass murder on 9/11…etc. Anyway…just read this, Mr. Bush. It is a no-brainer when it comes to shining a light on the crimes that you have committed. The document is too long for me to include in this piece, so please click the link and read the entire document. I am sure you will be absolutely stunned at the level of violations you will be able to identify.

Perhaps because I did not grow up in Nazi Germany or communist Russia, I can not imagine a more criminal and corrupt government than the current U.S. administration. Then again, it may just be because there has actually never been a more criminal administration. Think about it!

--Jesse, Editor of TV News Lies

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Letter from Washington:

The Hidden Power

The legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror

by Jane Mayer July 3, 2006

On December 18th, Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, joined other prominent Washington figures at FedEx Field, the Redskins’ stadium, in a skybox belonging to the team’s owner. During the game between the Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys, Powell spoke of a recent report in the Times that revealed that George W. Bush, in his pursuit of terrorists, had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens without first obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by federal law. This requirement, which was instituted by Congress in 1978 after the Watergate scandal, was designed to protect civil liberties and curb abuses of executive power, such as Nixon’s secret monitoring of political opponents and the F.B.I.’s eavesdropping on Martin Luther King, Jr. Nixon had claimed that, as President, he had the “inherent authority” to spy on people his Administration deemed enemies, such as the anti-Vietnam War activist Daniel Ellsberg. Both Nixon and the institution of the Presidency paid a high price for this assumption. But, according to the Times, since 2002, the legal checks that Congress constructed to insure that no President would repeat Nixon’s actions had been secretly ignored.

According to someone who knows Powell, his comment about the article was terse. “It’s Addington,” he said. “He doesn’t care about the Constitution.” Powell was referring to David S. Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and his longtime principal legal adviser. Powell’s office says that he does not recall making the statement. But his former top aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, confirms that he and Powell shared this opinion of Addington.

Most Americans, even those who follow politics closely, have probably never heard of Addington. But current and former Administration officials say that he has played a central role in shaping the Administration’s legal strategy for the war on terror. Known as the New Paradigm, this strategy rests on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars share--namely, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it. Under this framework, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detention, and warrantless surveillance have been set aside. A former high-ranking Administration lawyer who worked extensively on national-security issues said that the Administration’s legal positions were, to a remarkable degree, “all Addington.” Another lawyer, Richard L. Shiffrin, who until 2003 was the Pentagon’s deputy general counsel for intelligence, said that Addington was “an unopposable force.”

The overarching intent of the New Paradigm, which was put in place after the attacks of September 11th, was to allow the Pentagon to bring terrorists to justice as swiftly as possible. Criminal courts and military courts, with their exacting standards of evidence and emphasis on protecting defendants’ rights, were deemed too cumbersome. Instead, Bush authorized a system of detention and interrogation that operated outside the international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war established by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Terror suspects would be tried in a system of military commissions, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, devised by the executive branch. The Administration designated these suspects not as criminals or as prisoners of war but as “illegal enemy combatants,” whose treatment would be ultimately decided by Bush. By emphasizing interrogation over due process, the government intended to preëmpt future attacks before they materialized. In November, 2001, Cheney said of the military commissions, “We think it guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve.”

Yet, almost five years later, this improvised military model, which Addington was instrumental in creating, has achieved very limited results. Not a single terror suspect has been tried before a military commission. Only ten of the more than seven hundred men who have been imprisoned at Guantánamo have been formally charged with any wrongdoing. Earlier this month, three detainees committed suicide in the camp. Germany and Denmark, along with the European Union and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, have called for the prison to be closed, accusing the United States of violating internationally accepted standards for humane treatment and due process. The New Paradigm has also come under serious challenge from the judicial branch. Two years ago, in Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled against the Administration’s contention that the Guantánamo prisoners were beyond the reach of the U.S. court system and could not challenge their detention. And this week, the Court is expected to deliver a decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a case that questions the legality of the military commissions.

For years, Addington has carried a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket; taped onto the back are photocopies of extra statutes that detail the legal procedures for Presidential succession in times of national emergency. Many constitutional experts, however, question his interpretation of the document, especially his views on Presidential power. Scott Horton, a professor at Columbia Law School, and the head of the New York Bar Association’s International Law committee, said that Addington and a small group of Administration lawyers who share his views had attempted to “overturn two centuries of jurisprudence defining the limits of the executive branch. They’ve made war a matter of dictatorial power.” The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who defined Nixon as the extreme example of Presidential overreaching in his book “The Imperial Presidency” (1973), said he believes that Bush “is more grandiose than Nixon.” As for the Administration’s legal defense of torture, which Addington played a central role in formulating, Schlesinger said, “No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world--ever.”

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Why does this NOT surprise me?

The White House Extensively Edited Climate Change Reports

There was a systematic White House effort to minimize the published significance of climate change by editing climate change reports. Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chief of Staff Phil Cooney and other CEQ officials made at least 294 edits to the Administration’s Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program to exaggerate or emphasize scientific uncertainties or to deemphasize or diminish the importance of the human role in global warming.

The White House insisted on edits to EPA’s draft Report on the Environment that were so extreme that the EPA Administrator opted to eliminate the climate change section of the report. One such edit was the inclusion of a reference to a discredited, industry-funded paper. In a memo to the Vice President’s office, Mr. Cooney explained: “We plan to begin to refer to this study in Administration communications on the science of global climate change” because it “contradicts a dogmatic view held by many in the climate science community that the past century was the warmest in the past millennium and signals human induced ‘global warming.’”

Just remember these little informational bits when this gang of bastards is out of the White House, folks. We’re in for a few surprises.

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Shadow Government, Shadow War--Meet Some of the Players

Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, P.L.L.C

Established: 1993; Firm Size: 68

practices in the following areas of law:

Commercial, Criminal, and Intellectual Property Litigation, Antitrust, Telecommunications, Securities, Supreme Court, Appellate Litigation.

Michael K. Kellogg (Member) born Palo Alto, California, April 18, 1954; admitted to bar, 1983, District of Columbia; 1987, U.S. Supreme Court. Education: Stanford University (A.B., 1976); Oxford University, St. Catherine's College (B.Phil., 1979); Harvard Law School (J.D., magna cum laude, 1982). Editor, Harvard Law Review, 1980-1982. Law Clerk: Hon. Malcolm Wilkey, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, 1982-1983; Hon. William H. Rehnquist, U.S. Supreme Court, 1983-1984. Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Southern District of New York, 1984-1986. Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, 1987-1989. Co-Author: Federal Telecommunications Law, Aspen (2d Ed. 1999); Special Report: The Telecommunications Act of 1996, Little, Brown & Co. (1996); Federal Broadband Law, Little, Brown & Co. (1995); The Geodesic Network II: 1993 Report on Competition in the Telephone Industry, Geodesic Publishing (1992). Languages: French. Practice Areas: Telecommunications; Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation.

Peter W. Huber (Member) born Toronto, Canada, November 3, 1952; admitted to bar, 1986, District of Columbia. Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1976); Harvard Law School (J.D., summa cum laude, 1982). Member, Harvard Law Review, 1980-1982. Law Clerk: Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, 1982-1983; Hon. Sandra Day O'Connor, U.S. Supreme Court, 1983-1984. Consultant, U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, 1985-1987. Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, 1987--present. Author: The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy, Basic Books (2005) (co-author with Mark Mills); Hard Green, Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists: A Conservative Manifesto, Basic Books (1999); Law and Disorder in Cyberspace ... Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm, Oxford University (1997); Orwell's Revenge: The 1984 Palimpsest, Free Press (1994); Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom, Basic Books (1991); Sandra Day O'Connor, Chelsea House Publishers (1990); Liability, Basic Books (1988); The Geodesic Network: 1987 Report on Competition in the Telephone Industry, U.S. Department of Justice (1987). Co-Author: Federal Telecommunications Law, Aspen (2d Ed. 1999); Judging Science, MIT Press (1997); Special Report: The Telecommunications Act of 1996, Little, Brown & Co. (1996); Federal Broadband Law, Little, Brown & Co. (1995); Phantom Risk: Scientific Inference and the Law, MIT Press (1993); The Geodesic Network II: 1993 Report on Competition in the Telephone Industry, Geodesic Publishing (1992). Editor: The Liability Maze, Brookings Institution (1991). Languages: French. Practice Areas: Telecommunications; Appellate Litigation.

Mark C. Hansen (Member) born New York, New York, August 13, 1956; admitted to bar, 1983, Massachusetts; 1990, District of Columbia; 1996, Maryland; 1997, U.S. Supreme Court. Education: Dartmouth College (A.B., summa cum laude, with highest distinction, 1978); Harvard Law School (J.D., cum laude, 1982). Phi Beta Kappa. Law Clerk: Hon. William H. Timbers, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 1982-1983. Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Southern District of New York, 1986-1990. Practice Areas: Litigation.

K. Chris Todd (Member) born Salina, Kansas, August 11, 1946; admitted to bar, 1972, Texas; 1979, District of Columbia; 1988, New York. Education: Texas Tech University (B.A., 1969); University of Texas School of Law, Austin (J.D., 1972); Cambridge University, Darwin College (1973-1974). Law Clerk: Hon. William M. Taylor, Jr., U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973. Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, Criminal Section, 1975-1978. Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Southern District of New York, 1978-1987. Associate Counsel, Office of Independent Counsel (Iran/Contra Matter), 1987-1989. Practice Areas: Litigation.

Mark L. Evans (Member) born Brooklyn, New York, December 2, 1942; admitted to bar, 1968, New York; 1969, District of Columbia; 1972, U.S. Supreme Court. Education: Hamilton College (A.B., with honors, 1964); Cornell Law School (J.D., with distinction, 1968). Phi Kappa Phi; Order of the Coif. Editor-in-Chief, Cornell Law Review, 1967-1968. Law Clerk: Hon. John A. Danaher, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, 1968-1969. Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, 1972-1976. General Counsel, Interstate Commerce Commission, 1976-1979. Member, Advisory Committee on Procedures, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, 1987-1993. Practice Areas: Telecommunications; Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation.

Reid M. Figel (Member) born San Francisco, California, January 28, 1956; admitted to bar, 1982, Colorado; 1987, New York; 1988, California; 2000, District of Columbia. Education: Middlebury College (A.B., cum laude, with honors in Political Science, 1978); New York University School of Law (LL.B., 1982). Member, New York University Law Review, 1980-1981. Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, 1978-1979. Law Clerk: Hon. George C. Pratt, U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 1982-1983; Hon. James R. Browning, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 1983-1984. Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Southern District of New York, 1987-1998. Deputy Chief, 1993-1995, and Chief, 1995-1998, Securities and Commodities Fraud Unit. Recipient: The Chief Postal Inspector's Special Award (for United States v. Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc. and United States v. Michael R. Milken), 1990; The Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service (for United States v. Christopher Drogoul, arising from the multi-billion-dollar fraud on Banca Nazionale del Lavoro), 1994; The Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service (for United States v. The Daiwa Bank, Ltd. ), 1996; The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission "Stanley Sporkin Award" (for outstanding contributions to enforcement of the federal securities laws), 1997. Practice Areas: Securities; Litigation.

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Regarding Don Siegelman

Something’s rotten in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Heart of Dixie Edition, continued. Seems that the New York Times has now secured the full text of the affidavit that is quoted in the morning edition, and it’s far more explosive than first indicated. To the point, it fingers the White House operator who called the shots to line up a prosecution of Governor Siegelman, and his name is Karl Rove.

Canary said “not to worry--that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman,” the Simpson affidavit says.

So Karl Rove was in on a GOP scheme to secure the Montgomery Statehouse. The first step was to bring a prosecution against the incumbent Democratic governor. Rove gave the command, and the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham went marching merrily off to do his bidding. Why is this so unsurprising?

The Republican operative, William Canary, is of course the husband of the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery and a close friend of the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham. But more than this, he is also tied at the hip to Karl Rove.

Recall that after Rove had a severe falling out with his partner in Texas and got an ear-boxing from President George H. W. Bush, he fled off to Alabama, where he was able to reignite his career with some very dark projects. His savior and bosom buddy was the same William Canary who figures so prominently in this affidavit. Their relationship was portrayed in an important article in the November 2004 Atlantic by Josh Green entitled “Karl Rove in a Corner.” Did Canary have access? Hell yes. Would Rove jump to do his bidding? You betcha. Is this affidavit credible? Better than that.

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American Oligarchy

It is difficult to identify a single date or event that marks the overthrow, but we can identify some critical steps.

The first was the Dick Act of 1903, which repealed the Militia Act of 1792 and tried to relegate the Constitutional Militia to the National Guard, under control of what is now the U.S. Defense Department. The second was the Federal Reserve Act, which established a central bank only nominally under the control of the government.

Further erosion of constitutional governance was motivated by several challenges that the powerful felt required them to put aside their differences and unite. The first was the Great Depression of 1933-1941. The second was World War II and the threat from fascism, followed by the Cold War and the threat from Soviet imperialism and from communism.

The third defies credibility but cannot be avoided: UFOs and aliens. Despite the lack of hard evidence accessible to ordinary citizens, there is enough testimonial evidence to compel a reasonable person to conclude three things: UFOs exist, they are intelligently directed, and they are not ours. Even if that were all that the government knew about them, minds already paranoid from the Cold War could hardly help perceiving such things as a significant potential threat -- one that required secrecy, preparation, and disregard for provisions of the Constitution that were inconvenient. There are, however, enough leaks from government officials to indicate that the government knows a great deal about them that it is concealing from the public.

The fourth is the eco-crisis, which combines both the ecological and economic crises. Many leaders have recognized for a long time that we are headed for disaster, not a kind of cyclical downturn like the Great Depression but an irreversible decline brought about by a combination of resource depletion, environmental degradation, and overpopulation. It is playing out in an anarchic international system of disparate nation-states, national currencies, national banks, and multinational corporations, exacerbated by traditional tribal rivalries, class conflict, and different languages and religions.

Confronted with the political fact that to deal with the problems faced in the last half of the 20th century, it was difficult enough to pass legislation thought to be needed -- without also having to adopt the amendments to the U.S. Constitution necessary to make such legislation constitutional -- that it became too easy just to adopt more and more legislation without worrying about its constitutionality. This depended and depends on compliant officials and judges to go along, which, for the most part, they have done. This was facilitated by the lack of sufficiently strong protests from the people, many of whom are ignorant of constitutional rights and limitations on governmental powers; focused on the problems to be solved, they supported much of the legislation.

We can also identify several insidious developments which seemed necessary and harmless at the time but which led to the present situation. One was the rise of military and civilian intelligence organs during World War II. The need to prevent leaks of military secrets brought a censorship apparatus that gained substantial control over the flow of information through the press, the broadcast media, telephonic and telegraphic communications, and the mail. However, instead of dismantling that apparatus when the war was over, we immediately transitioned to the Cold War, and the information control apparatus only went underground and became somewhat less obtrusive. This led to the present situation in which the intelligence apparatus maintains effective control over the major media, can tap anyone's phone without a court order, reads people's mail, monitors their finances, and gathers information on citizens and their activities that threatens their privacy and liberties.

1947 was a critical year. It was the year in which UFOs became a matter of public concern and in which it appears that we recovered at least one crashed vehicle and perhaps at least one of its occupants. It is also the year that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established, ostensibly to bring together the disparate intelligence agencies that had often been operating at cross-purposes. It was also the beginning of the use of "black budgets" for government programs, the existence of which was kept secret from the public and most if not all members of Congress. This led later to the establishment of more agencies, such as the National Security Agency, whose entire budget was black, thus preventing effective oversight.

The situation had evolved to the extent that, at the end of President Eisenhower's second term, he warned in a speech of the potential danger to our freedoms from a “military-industrial complex.” In fact, by that time, it had become an “intelligence-military-industrial-financial-political-media -criminal” complex, which reached into almost every institution in this country and into many around the world.

What had developed was beginning to look more and more like the system of political control that prevailed in the Soviet Union, in which real decisions of government were made not by the official organs of government but by the parallel structure of the Communist Party, backed by the KGB. In competing with the Soviets, we had taken on their methods and attributes of political control.

But this apparatus did not seem to function as an effective Shadow Government, able to make and enforce decisions apart from the official government, until it came together to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. That was the watershed event. After that, too many people had too much to hide to allow the situation to return to governance as usual.

Since then, the Shadow Government has grown and tried to strengthen its grip on every sector of the society, motivated in part by honest concern about the very real threats we have faced, and in part by venality and greed, which brought increasing corruption and the effective incorporation of organized crime into the mainstream of government.

It appears that 1963 is also the year in which the Establishment Media sector of the Shadow Government was given effective control over computerized voting in the United States, through its National Election Service, as part of a deal in which they went along with the cover-up of the Kennedy Assassination through the Warren Commission. While campaign money continued to buy influence over elected officials, if it was not sufficient, the Shadow Government had other options. It put officials in compromising situations, then used its evidence to blackmail them into compliance. Failing that, it could easily select the winner of any election and suppress the support which third-party candidates might attain.

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Federalist Paper No. 10

The Federalist Papers were written and published during the years 1787 and 1788 in several New York State newspapers to persuade New York voters to ratify the proposed constitution. They consist of 85 essays outlining how this new government would operate and why this type of government was the best choice for the United States of America. The essays were signed PUBLIUS. The authors of some papers are under dispute, but the general consensus is that Alexander Hamilton wrote fifty two, James Madison wrote twenty eight, and John Jay contributed the remaining five. The Federalist Papers remain today as an excellent reference for anyone who wants to understand the U.S. Constitution. The following is attributed to James Madison.

To the People of the State of New York:

AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.

It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.

The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.

By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. The question resulting is, whether small or extensive republics are more favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal; and it is clearly decided in favor of the latter by two obvious considerations:

In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may be, the representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. Hence, the number of representatives in the two cases not being in proportion to that of the two constituents, and being proportionally greater in the small republic, it follows that, if the proportion of fit characters be not less in the large than in the small republic, the former will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a fit choice.

In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters.

It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.

The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.

Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic--is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not be denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these requisite endowments. Does it consist in the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest? In an equal degree does the increased variety of parties comprised within the Union, increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority? Here, again, the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable advantage.

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.

PUBLIUS.