U.S. Constitution: Infected by Addington's Disease?

From our former conversation group, this gentleman is a minister who specializes now in arbitration....

Les Aaron






THE HIDDEN POWER
by JANE MAYER
The legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror.
Issue of 2006-07-03
Posted 2006-06-26



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 which revealed that President 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 had 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, the President 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 the President. 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.”

Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, who voted for Bush in both Presidential elections, and who served as associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, said that Addington and other Presidential legal advisers had “staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other Administration. This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He’s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President’s reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world’s a battlefield—according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It’s got the sense of Louis XIV: ‘I am the State.’ ” Richard A. Epstein, a prominent libertarian law professor at the University of Chicago, said, “The President doesn’t have the power of a king, or even that of state governors. He’s subject to the laws of Congress! The Administration’s lawyers are nuts on this issue.” He warned of an impending “constitutional crisis,” because “their talk of the inherent power of the Presidency seems to be saying that the courts can’t stop them, and neither can Congress.”

The former high-ranking lawyer for the Administration, who worked closely with Addington, and who shares his political conservatism, said that, in the aftermath of September 11th, “Addington was more like Cheney’s agent than like a lawyer. A lawyer sometimes says no.” He noted, “Addington never said, ‘There is a line you can’t cross.’ ” Although the lawyer supported the President, he felt that his Administration had been led astray. “George W. Bush has been damaged by incredibly bad legal advice,” he said.



David Addington is a tall, bespectacled man of forty-nine, who has a thickening middle, a thatch of gray hair, and a trim gray beard, which gives him the look of a sea captain. He is extremely private; he keeps the door of his office locked at all times, colleagues say, because of the national-security documents in his files. He has left almost no public paper trail, and he does not speak to the press or allow photographs to be taken for news stories. (He declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article.)

In many ways, his influence in Washington defies conventional patterns. Addington doesn’t serve the President directly. He has never run for elected office. Although he has been a government lawyer for his entire career, he has never worked in the Justice Department. He is a hawk on defense issues, but he has never served in the military.

There are various plausible explanations for Addington’s power, including the force of his intellect and his personality, and his closeness to Cheney, whose political views he clearly shares. Addington has been an ally of Cheney’s since the nineteen-eighties, and has been referred to as “Cheney’s Cheney,” or, less charitably, as “Cheney’s hit man.” Addington’s talent for bureaucratic infighting is such that some of his supporters tend to invoke, with admiration, metaphors involving knives. Juleanna Glover Weiss, Cheney’s former press secretary, said, “David is efficient, discreet, loyal, sublimely brilliant, and, as anyone who works with him knows, someone who, in a knife fight, you want covering your back.” Bradford Berenson, a former White House lawyer, said, “He’s powerful because people know he speaks for the Vice-President, and because he’s an extremely smart, creative, and aggressive public official. Some engage in bureaucratic infighting using slaps. Some use knives. David falls into the latter category. You could make the argument that there are some costs. It introduces a little fear into the policymaking process. Views might be more candidly expressed without that fear. But David is like the Marines. No better friend—no worse enemy.” People who have sparred with him agree. “He’s utterly ruthless,” Lawrence Wilkerson said. A former top national-security lawyer said, “He takes a political litmus test of everyone. If you’re not sufficiently ideological, he would cut the ground out from under you.”

Another reason for Addington’s singular role after September 11th is that he offered legal certitude at a moment of great political and legal confusion, in an Administration in which neither the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, nor the national-security adviser was a lawyer. (In the Clinton Administration, all these posts, except for the Vice-Presidency, were held by lawyers at some point.) Neither the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, nor the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, had anything like Addington’s familiarity with national-security law. Moreover, Ashcroft’s relations with the White House were strained, and he was left out of the inner circle that decided the most radical legal strategies in the war on terror. Gonzales had more influence, because of his longtime ties to the President, but, as an Administration lawyer put it, “he was an empty suit. He was weak. And he doesn’t know shit about the Geneva Conventions.” Participants in meetings in the White House counsel’s office, in the days immediately after September 11th, have described Gonzales sitting in a wingback chair, asking questions, while Addington sat directly across from him and held forth. “Gonzales would call the meetings,” the former high-ranking lawyer recalled. “But Addington was always the force in the room.” Bruce Fein said that the Bush legal team was strikingly unsophisticated. “There is no one of legal stature, certainly no one like Bork, or Scalia, or Elliot Richardson, or Archibald Cox,” he said. “It’s frightening. No one knows the Constitution—certainly not Cheney.”

Conventional wisdom holds that September 11th changed everything, including the thinking of Cheney and Addington. Brent Scowcroft, the former national-security adviser, has said of Cheney that he barely recognizes the reasonable politician he knew in the past. But a close look at the twenty-year collaboration between Cheney and Addington suggests that in fact their ideology has not changed much. It seems clear that Addington was able to promote vast executive powers after September 11th in part because he and Cheney had been laying the political groundwork for years. “This preceded 9/11,” Fein, who has known both men professionally for decades, said. “I’m not saying that warrantless surveillance did. But the idea of reducing Congress to a cipher was already in play. It was Cheney and Addington’s political agenda.”

Addington’s admirers see him as a selfless patriot, a workaholic defender of a purist interpretation of Presidential power—the necessary answer to threatening times. In 1983, Steve Berry, a Republican lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, hired Addington to work with him as the legislative counsel to the House Intelligence Committee; he has been a career patron and close friend ever since. He said, “I know him well, and I know that if there’s a threat he will do everything in his power, within the law, to protect the United States.” Berry added that Addington is acutely aware of the legal tensions between liberty and security. “We fought ourselves every day about it,” he recalled. But, he said, they concluded that a “strong national security and defense” was the first priority, and that “without a strong defense, there’s not much expectation or hope of having other freedoms.” He said that there is no better defender of the country than Addington: “I’ve got a lot of respect for the guy. He’s probably the foremost expert on intelligence and national-security law in the nation right now.” Berry has a daughter who works in New York City, and he said that when he thinks of her safety he appreciates the efforts that Addington has made to strengthen the country’s security. He said, “For Dave, protecting America isn’t just a virtue. It’s a personal mission. I feel safer just knowing he’s where he is.”

Berry said of his friend, “He’s methodical, conscientious, analytical, and logical. And he’s as straight an arrow as they come.” He noted that Addington refuses to let Berry treat him to a hamburger because it might raise issues of influence-buying—instead, they split the check. Addington, he went on, has a dazzling ability to recall the past twenty-five years’ worth of intelligence and national-security legislation. For many years, he kept a vast collection of legal documents in a library in his modest brick-and-clapboard home, in Alexandria, Virginia. One evening several years ago, lightning struck a nearby power line and the house caught fire; much of the archive burned. The fire started at around nine in the evening, and Addington, typically, was still in his office. His wife, Cynthia, and their three daughters were fine, but the loss of his extraordinary collection of papers and political memorabilia, Berry said, “was very hard for him to accept. All you get in this work is memorabilia. There is no cash. But he’s the type of guy who gets psychic benefit from going to work every day, making a difference.”

Though few people doubt Addington’s knowledge of national-security law, even his admirers question his political instincts. “The only time I’ve seen him wrong is on his political judgment,” a former colleague said. “He has a tin ear for political issues. Sometimes the law says one thing, but you have to at least listen to the other side. He will cite case history, case after case. David doesn’t see why you have to compromise.” Even Berry offered a gentle criticism: “His political skills can be overshadowed by his pursuit of what he feels is legally correct.”



Addington has been a hawk on national defense since he was a teen-ager. Leonard





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Their Plans Do Not End With the Control of North America!

STEALING MEXICO: Bush Team Helps Ruling Party "Floridize" Mexican Presidential Election

By Greg Palast

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War."


Friday, June 30, 2006 -- GEORGE Bush's operatives have plans to jigger with the upcoming elections. I'm not talking about the November '06 vote in the USA (though they have plans for that, too). I'm talking about the election this Sunday in Mexico for their Presidency.

It begins with an FBI document marked, "Counterterrorism" and "Foreign Intelligence Collection" and "Secret." Date: "9/17/2001," six days after the attack on the World Trade towers. It's nice to know the feds got right on the ball, if a little late.

What does this have to do with jiggering Mexico's election? Hold that thought.

This document is what's called a "guidance" memo for using a private contractor to provide databases on dangerous foreigners. Good idea. We know the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf Emirates. So you'd think the "Intelligence Collection" would be aimed at getting info on the guys in the Gulf.

No so. When we received the document, we obtained as well its classified appendix. The target nations for "foreign counterterrorism investigation" were nowhere near the Persian Gulf. Every one was in Latin America -- Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and a handful of others. See one of the documents yourself.

Latin America?! Was there a terror cell about to cross into San Diego with exploding enchiladas?

All the target nations had one thing in common besides a lack of terrorists: each had a left-leaning presidential candidate or a left-leaning president in office. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, bete noir of the Bush Administration, was facing a recall vote. In Mexico, the anti-Bush Mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was (and is) leading the race for the Presidency.

Most provocative is the contractor to whom this no-bid contract was handed: ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Georgia. ChoicePoint is the database company that created a list for Governor Jeb Bush of Florida of voters to scrub from voter rolls before the 2000 election. ChoicePoint's list (94,000 names in all) contained few felons. Most of those on the list were guilty of no crime except Voting While Black. The disenfranchisement of these voters cost Al Gore the presidency.

Having chosen our President for us, our President's men chose ChoicePoint for this sweet War on Terror database gathering. The use of the Venezuela's and Mexico's voter registry files to fight terror is not visible -- but the use of the lists to manipulate elections is as obvious as the make-up on Katherine Harris' cheeks.

In Venezuela, leading up to the August 2004 vote on whether to re-call President Chavez, I saw his opposition pouring over the voter rolls in laptops, claiming the right to challenge voters as Jeb's crew did to voters in Florida. It turns out this operation was partly funded by the International Republican Institute of Washington, an arm of the GOP. Where did they get the voter info?

In that case, access to Venezuela's voter rolls didn't help the Republican-assisted drive against Chavez, who won by a crushing plurality.

In Mexico this Sunday, we can expect to see the same: challenges of Obrador voters in a race, the polls say, is too close to call. Not that Mexico's rulers need lessons from the Bush Administration on how to mess with elections.

In 1988, the candidate for Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PDR), who opinion polls showed as a certain winner, somehow came up short against the incumbent party of the ruling elite. Some of the electoral tricks were far from subtle. In the state of Guerrero, the PDR was leading on official tally sheets by 359,369. Oddly, the official final count was 309,202 for the ruling party, only 182,874 for the PDR. Challenging the vote would have been dangerous. Two top officials of Obrador's party were assassinated during the campaign.

Crucial to the surprise victory of the ruling party was the introduction of computer voting machines and the centralization of voter databases. Observer Andrew Reding of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported that ruling party operatives had special access codes denied the opposition.

Whether the US "War on Terror" lists will find a use in Sunday's election, we cannot know. But the use of American government resources to interfere in south-of-the-border campaigns is an open secret. The GOP's International Republican Institute has run training sessions for the PAN youth wing, funded by US taxpayers through the "National Endowment for Democracy."

Foreign -- that is, American -- interference in political campaigns is a crime. That didn't stop Team Bush. However, when the theft of its citizen files was discovered, Argentina threatened to arrest ChoicePoint contractors until the company returned the tapes -- and Mexico's attorney general did in fact arrest the ChoicePoint data thieves to avoid his party's looking too much the stooge of its Washington patron. Whether George Bush gave back his copy, no one will say.

Wholesale theft is expected on Sunday in forms both subtle and brutal. How the US' purloined "counterterrorism" lists will be used, we don't know. We are certain however, that the Administration did not siphon off these Latin voter files to fight a War on Terror. It appears, rather, part of the Bush Administration's and GOP's hemispheric War on Democracy -- along a battle line which runs from Florida to Ohio to Juarez.

**********

Beware What's Posing As Free Trade: It's A Cover for the New World Order

The Cancun Summit Called For North American Union by 2007

by JanAllen


http://www.opednews.com


Liberty Gone Forever

Introduction:
The three Presidents of N. America met at the Cancun Summit on March 31 2006 and noted progress on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (The SPP) http://tinyurl.com/pdzlk

The SPP was signed at Baylor University http://tinyurl.com/p82sr on March 23, 2005. The SPP is the plan to replace existing governments with state corporate rule over the entire North America continent http://tinyurl.com/eey4x


I. The Cancun Leaders Joint Statement http://tinyurl.com/pdzlk presented six action points to insure that state corporate rule be in place before the end of the year:
1) Establishment of a Trilateral Regulatory Cooperative Framework
The leaders said: We affirm our commitment to strengthen regulatory cooperation in this and other key sectors and to have our central regulatory agencies complete a "trilateral regulatory cooperation framework" by 2007.

2) Establishment of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC)
The NACC is to be the Main Council, junta of business executives and government ministers, who make recommendations for executive action.

3) Provision for North American Emergency Management
Develop a common disaster response, for events whether natural or man-made; and there will be coordinated training and exercises, with the participation of all levels of government in all countries.

4) Provision for Avian and Human Pandemic Influenza Management
Develop a comprehensive, science-based and coordinated approach within North America to avian influenza and human pandemic influenza management.

5) Development of North American Energy Security
Collaborate amongst business executives and governmental agencies for energy security.

6) Assure Smart, Secure Borders North American Borders
Establish checkpoints at borders; develop the North American trusted traveler program and provide a trilateral network for the protection of judges and officers.


II. The North American Union Is The Plan For Global Governance Of The Entire Continent
1) Global governance is the application of universal principles of democracy, order, security and prosperity. Global governance combines state power and corporate resources for rule over the people; it is this state corporatism that directs domestic and foreign policy.

2) The Cancun Summit's Leaders Statement shows that global governance is being installed via democratic institutions consisting of meetings, summits, councils and working groups; these replace constitutional law and statute law. Leaders set policy at meetings http://tinyurl.com/eh8l5 and summits http://tinyurl.com/h2rg3 Then councils http://tinyurl.com/ej2r3 and working groups http://tinyurl.com/n9q8c consisting of governmental ministers and businesses executives establish deep integration of government with industry, commerce and trade -- these provide the infrastructure for new governance. National sovereignty is sacrificed as the interests of the region rise in pre-eminence.

3) Global Governance is synonymous with Tyranny, meaning rule from above. The Age of Tyranny began March 23, 2005 when President George Bush signed the SPP thereby abrogating the US Constitution, signing away America's National Sovereignty and committing the US to a region of state corporate governance. The President's actions have gone unchallenged by Congress! Since the President's word, will and way are the law of the land (and the continent), The Liberty Bell and The US Flag have been retired http://tinyurl.com/lykgc

4) The Trilateral Regulatory Cooperation Framework = The Executive Branch Of The Forth Coming N. American Government. No specifics were given on this "framework"; one must assume the "framework" is Doublethink http://tinyurl.com/omyu4 for the Executive Branch of tyrannical state corporate rule; the Executive Branch is complimented by NORTHCOM, the Military Law Enforcement Branch http://tinyurl.com/hmfhj, and the NAFTA Tribunal, the Commerce Judiciary http://tinyurl.com/myecx

Action point six listed above provides for a trilateral network for the protection of judges and officers; one must assume that the judges will be given physical protection from people who might express hostility to the introduction and administration of global governance.

The SPP http://tinyurl.com/rofvg made use of the word stakeholders, councils and working groups, these recommend policy for Executive Action. Thus, the US Congress is largely an irrelevant body -- it is a relic of a bygone era. The SPP is the document for an secure, prosperous and orderly North American Homeland. The three presidents and their Trilateral Regulatory Cooperation Framework are the ruling body in the North American Union.

5) The NACC was actually put in place 6-14-2006 http://tinyurl.com/rpyrh The NACC will be "NAFTA on Steroids".

6) Just as the "911 terrorist incident" http://tinyurl.com/mvbl5 and "so called international terrorism" http://tinyurl.com/luka9 and "Sadaam's WMDs" http://tinyurl.com/ljns6 led to military involvement in Iraq, a soon coming continental-wide emergency such as a currency devaluation, a shortage of gasoline due to a conflict with Iran or the outbreak of pandemic bird flu http://tinyurl.com/qroe6 will require that NORTHCOM deploy the military, global peacekeepers and Blackwater USA security guards http://tinyurl.com/q2ee9 under the terms of the terms of the SPP, for the Homeland's Security and Order http://tinyurl.com/pu4kn

Here are various articles suggesting that a pretext will be used to install state corporate rule over America:
6a) Bird Flu Quarantine: Pretext For A Globalist Martial Law Takeover Of America? http://tinyurl.com/s6t6c

6b) Urban Warfare Training Exercises: Practice For Martial Law Troop Deployment? http://tinyurl.com/z54sf

6c) Neocons Build World Army To Subdue Hotspots And North America http://tinyurl.com/rjr7y

7) The trusted traveler program, mentioned in action point six, is the foundation for what will become an "internal travel permit" program http://tinyurl.com/s94v9 whereby one presents papers for travel within the Union -- within the Homeland

8) Action point number three above mandates coordinated training and exercises for emergency management with the participation of all levels of government in all countries. Such a training exercise took place as reported by the The-Free Lance-Star article 'Police Training Guard' dated 6-21-2006 where thirty five of Fredericksburg's Army National Guard members received urban assault training from eight members of Fairfax County's SWAT team. The police officers drilled members of Alpha Company, 116th Brigade Special Troops Battalion--formerly the 229th Engineer Battalion--in techniques they use in urban, and suburban, scenarios. The group trained at Fort Pickett's MOUT, or Military Operation Urban Terrain section. It's a cluster of white concrete buildings built to simulate a neighborhood in Baghdad or Kabul -- a manufactured ghost town. Here they practiced commands such as Police! Get Down. The police officers were remained humble while training the unit; they said they were honored to work with the soldiers. http://tinyurl.com/l2bgv

Such a training exercise corrupts the National Guard in two way: First, the training is a subterfuge for what is really taking place: that being creeping tyranny to build the "homeland security state infrastructure" to control the people. Secondly the training destroys the ethic and underlying principle of historical law, that being, the Posse Comitatus Act. This is the U.S. statute prohibiting the use of "armed force" for law enforcement; its intent, purpose and application described quite well by Libertarian Gene Healy in ‘What of Posse Comitatus' http://tinyurl.com/f963p

9) The institution of the North American Union manifests the Straussian philosophy of the Bush administration http://tinyurl.com/pz3qu which is based upon the University Of Chicago Professor, Leo Strauss who taught that "philosopher kings" arise to arise; these elite Few are to rule over the vulgar Many.


III. Throughout history, transition to new governance has always been marked by asset depreciation and hyperinflation. Financial security is found in gold.

Gold has entered into a period of price stability http://tinyurl.com/m87uu after having risen parabolicaly http://tinyurl.com/rpjus Gold at $570/oz represents the last opportunity to buy gold before it rises again to $700, $800 and even beyond.

It is wise to own gold in physical form: this means one stores gold in a vault and stores gold on one's property. Some have suggested a Gold ETF such as GLD or IAU; however, these ETFs not real assets http://tinyurl.com/lpxzm

Bullionvault.com is a convenient service that purchases and stores one's gold. http://www.bullionvault.com. The Good Web Guide Review says: ""An investment website for people to buy and sell gold bullion, which they own outright and is securely stored in professional vaults by Brinks. The website scores highly for being easy to read and being well-designed. It is clearly laid out for even an inexperienced user and the home page has links to detailed but simple instructions and FAQs." At its first review BullionVault was awarded the maximum rating of 5 stars. http://tinyurl.com/o49rm

One should also store gold on one's property: like buried under concrete where one, at a time of need, can physically dig it up and use it as necessary.



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I provide articles on the Security And Prosperity Partnership Of North America (SPP) and how a national emergency or event, like bird flu pandemic, will establish defacto martial law and tyrannical state corporate government over the entire N. American continent

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human beings are in as serious trouble as they were 500 million years ago!
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"Gitmo to Close?"

From the Guardian


Thursday June 29 2006
Gitmo to close?By Mark Tran / USA 04:15pm

The Bush administration has just received the political cover it needs to close down Guantánamo Bay after a much-awaited decision from the supreme court.

America's highest court has ruled that George Bush exceeded his authority and violated the Geneva Conventions in ordering military war crimes trials for detainees at the US makeshift prison in Cuba, where 460 mostly Muslim foreigners have been held in a legal limbo.

For all of the political grief that Guantanamo has caused the Bush administration with its allies and human rights groups, Guantanamo has yielded precious little dividend in the war on terror.

Only 10 detainees have been charged with crimes, while about 120 others have been cleared for release, or transfer to their homelands where Washington expects them to remain in detention. Set against that have been numerous hunger strikes, attempted suicides, suicides and the damage to America's reputation.

Read more...

What's Another 160 Million From The Middle Class?

Incompetence Rules: US Taxpayers Asked to Come Up With An

Additional 160 Million in Funding

For Veterans Whose Identities Were Stolen.





from buzzflash:



WASHINGTON -



President Bush on Wednesday asked Congress for $160.5 million in emergency funds to help veterans and military personnel whose personal information was on a laptop computer stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee.


In a letter to House Speaker

Dennis Hastert, Bush said he was asking for the additional money to help the VA cover the increased costs caused by the May 3 theft. The money would help provide credit monitoring and fraud watch services for those affected.

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson told lawmakers on Tuesday that the money would cover monitoring for about half of the 17.5 million people whose

Social Security numbers were compromised. He said it also would pay for out-of-pocket expenses ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 for those whose identities are stolen.

No identity theft has been reported in connection with the theft of a computer from the VA data analyst's home in suburban Maryland. The laptop contained names, birth dates and Social Security numbers for up to 26.5 million people.

Under questioning, Nicholson acknowledged that more money might be needed to revamp information security at the VA and other agencies. He also left the door open to providing veterans more than one year of free credit monitoring.

IMPEACHMENT: THE PROCESS BEGINS...

By Kristin Bender, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
http://tinyurl.com/eot42
BERKELEY - The People's Republic of Berkeley has done it again.
The liberal, left-leaning city has become the first city in the nation to put a referendum on the Nov. 7 ballot to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan and Daniel Ellsberg, a Vietnam whistle-blower who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, both spoke in favor of the resolution at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

``Berkeley is a place where things begin,'' said Mayor Tom Bates. ``It was the first place in the nation that called for divestment from South Africa, it was the first city in the nation to have curb cuts for disabled people, we were the first city in the nation to have dog parks and the first city in the nation to really protest the Vietnam War,'' Bates said.

Let's not forget banning Styrofoam take-out containers in restaurants.

``What happens in Berkeley people need to pay attention to because it travels, it has legs... what happens in Berkeley today is conventional wisdom in the rest of the country tomorrow,'' Bates said.

Although the referendum is largely symbolic because only the United States Congress can impeach a president, city leaders don't see it that way.

``I don't see it as just symbolic, I see it as educational,'' said Councilmember Kriss Worthington.

Dozens of cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, have already approved resolutions calling for impeachment, but Berkeley is the first American city that will ask voters to decide.

It will cost the city roughly $10,000 to add the item to the November general election ballot.

Tuesday's resolution also had widespread support from a group called Constitution Summer, which originated on several university campuses, including UC Berkeley. Constitution Summer represents a coalition of students and young people dedicated to defending the constitution by launching a campaign to impeach the president.

It also had the support of the city's Peace and Justice Commission, which drafted language for a referendum. Specifically, supporters say the effort is being made based on Bush's handling of the Iraq war, federal wiretapping and other issues.

``We hope this is going to raise a national debate on the issues of the Bush administration shredding the U.S. Constitution, trampling on it,'' Bates said. ``We hope that this will be a debate about what the Bush Administration has done to our civil liberties and rights.''

A Man Who Never Misses A Photo-Op

Rhetoric over reality
Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, June 28, 2006

URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/158985/


As long as two weeks ago, when the world was young, the favored story line
of your biased, anti-American, left-wing media was that President Bush was
“on a roll.” “ Spate of Good News Gives White House a Chance to Regroup” was
The Washington Post’s front-page headline. The Wall Street Journal asked if
the White House was “setting the stage for a political recovery.” “The GOP
was clearly on a rebound,” Newsweek opined. “It’s been the kind of week that
President Bush and the beleaguered White House have only dreamed about,”
gushed ABC News’ Claire Shipman. Under Shipman’s shining face, documented by
the invaluable mediamatters.org, the on-screen text read, “Best week ever?
Is Bush on a comeback?” Best week ever? The evidence for this putative surge
was the killing of criminal psychopath Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, Bush’s
secret 5-hour visit to Baghdad, the non-indictment of Karl Rove and what ABC
called “a triumphant Rose Garden news conference” celebrating all of the
above.

Sorry, but this last phrase strikes me as perfectly indicative of almost
everything that’s wrong with the Bush administration and the celebrity press
corps that chronicles its dubious progress. Rhetoric, symbolism and spin
take precedence over reality at every turn. To put it bluntly, this nation
is allegedly at war with an evil and implacable enemy. Don’t tell me about
no triumphant press conferences.

The entire episode played like a chapter out of Eric Boehlert’s incisive new
book, “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.” By any measure, the
killing of al-Zarqawi, Jordan’s answer to Timothy McVeigh, was unabashed
good news. So good that it appears fellow “insurgents” betrayed him. Even
al-Qa’ida objected to al-Zarqawi’s savage attacks against Shiite civilians
and holy places, although it called him a martyr after he was safely in his
grave.

The mystery is why, according to numerous reports, the White House turned
down several opportunities to capture or kill al-Zarqawi as long ago as
2001. The answer seems to be that it found his presence in the Kurdish part
of Iraq not under Saddam Hussein’s control useful for propaganda purposes.
Then things got out of hand.

Something similar could be said about Bush’s visit to Baghdad. Satirist
Stephen Colbert captured it perfectly during his standup routine at the
White House Correspondents’ Association dinner: “I stand by this man because
he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like
aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that
sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will
always rebound—with the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world.”

Yet even as Bush was en route to Iraq, The Washington Post obtained—and all
but buried—a cable from U. S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad portraying
increasing sectarian violence and sharply deteriorating security affecting
Iraqi employees at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Appearance not only trumps reality in the staging of photo-ops, it’s
beginning to look as if the Bush White House can no longer tell the
difference. It’s only natural for trendy TV pundits to think this way. What
Hollywood calls a rising story line means more “exclusive” interviews with
administration big shots, more face time on TV, invitations to more
exclusive dinner parties and better speaker’s fees.

But when policy-makers start thinking like screenwriters, things can get
dangerous. Consider last week’s Senate “debate” over two Democratic
proposals for setting a rational timetable for leaving Iraq. On cue, almost
every Republican in Washington began chanting, “Cut ’n’ run.”

Any and all proposals for withdrawing U. S. troops constitute evidence of
Democratic cowardice, if not treason. Except those subsequently revealed to
the press in a “classified briefing” (whatever that is) by Gen. George W.
Casey Jr., the top U. S. commander in Iraq, of course.

What nobody’s supposed to notice is that if the White House and Republicans
were truly serious, one option would be increasing troop levels to deal with
metastasizing sectarian violence among Iraqi factions. Military experts such
as Gen. George Shinseki, all but forced out of the Pentagon back in 2002 for
testifying to Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be
necessary to pacify a nation as large as Iraq, warned that the force Bush
was sending was inadequate to do the job.

So now American soldiers find themselves hostage to foolhardy decisions made
four years ago, essentially serving as referees and targets of opportunity
as a civil war breaks out around them. Bush can’t increase troop levels
because the public wouldn’t stand for it even if sufficient combat-ready
troops existed, which, with conditions in Afghanistan also deteriorating,
they do not. Hence “Cut ’n’ run,” a slogan more appropriate to the rollout
of an action/ adventure film than a grave matter of national security. What
the phrase really means, as political commentator Josh Marshall points out,
is “more of the same.”

Lily Tomlin said it best. "No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep
up."

Helen Thomas Takes Aim At The Washington Press Corps

ALL REVIEWS
Watchdogs of Democracy? : The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public (Hardcover)
by Helen Thomas

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS


She's the most unlikely of journalistic heroines, an octogenarian born in Kentucky of Syrian parents. In 2003, the Busheviks -- like school teachers who couldn't stand having the kid smarter than they are being in front -- confined her to the back row during presidential press conferences.

You see, Helen Thomas has the feisty temerity to actually still be a journalist -- instead of a Stepford White House Press Corps stenographer -- and that burns up Karl Rove and George W. Bush. You can hear them damning her: "Who the Hell does she think she is, asking probing questions as if she's some kind of smarty pants? What does she care about the truth for, anyway?"

No, Helen Thomas is not going to go slowly into the night. You can even tell from the photo of her new book that she's one spunky reporter, when most of her peers are in retirement communities in Florida or Arizona. There she is in a pink trench coat and matching mod hat, reporter's notebook in hand. No, she's not ready to settle down to her sunset years playing shuffleboard. Helen Thomas is the White House Press Corps Diogenes and Tarzan all wrapped into one.

Nobody intimidates Helen in the White House briefing room that has been her working venue since the Kennedy Administration. She regularly takes on Bushevik PR mouthpieces (press secretaries) when other "reporters" are happy to reprint press releases and ask a few lapdog questions.

So now Thomas has a new book, "Watchdogs of Democracy: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public." Obviously, the title alone isn't going to endear her to her younger "more realistic" careerist colleagues.

As the publisher notes of the book, "Here, the legendary journalist and bestselling author delivers a hard-hitting manifesto on the precipitous decline in the quality and ethics of political reportage -- and issues a clarion call for change. She is most emphatic about reporters' failure to adequately question President George W. Bush and White House spokesmen about the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and on subjects ranging from homeland security to the economy. This, she insists, was a dire lapse."

Like most BuzzFlash readers, Thomas is so outraged, she can barely contain herself. Here is a paragraph from Wikipedia.org:


In July 2005 Thomas was quoted in the newspaper The Hill [3] saying "The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is another liar." Thomas added, "I think he'd like to run, but it would be a sad day for the country if he does." Several days later, Thomas expressed outrage at The Hill for publishing her comments. [4] In a November 2002 talk at MIT, Thomas revealed: "I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter. Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'" In January 2003 Thomas made an off-the-record comment to a reporter from the Torrance, California Daily Breeze following the Society of Professional Journalists annual awards banquet. "This is the worst President ever. He is the worst President in all of American history." The Breeze ran the quote.


Hey, this book deserves your attention. Helen Thomas is fighting a one-person trench war to maintain the standards of professional journalism, such as it used to exist. She needs reinforcements. Let's give her some.

About the Author

Helen Thomas is the dean of the White House press corps. The recipient of more than thirty honorary degrees, she was honored in 1998 with the inaugural Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award, established by the White House Correspondents' Association. The author of "Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President"; "Front Row at the White House"; and "Dateline: White House," she lives in Washington, D.C., where she writes a syndicated column for "Hearst."

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

What Democrats Face....The Technology War

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Technology Sharpens the Incumbents' Edge
Redistricting Also Complicates Democrats' Effort to Take Control of House

By Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 7, 2006; A01



In Ohio's 1st Congressional District, Republican incumbent Steve Chabot is running up against his toughest reelection challenge in years. But his Democratic opponent is running up against Chabot's computer.

In one of the lesser-known perks of power on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are using taxpayer-funded databases to cultivate constituents more attentively than ever. Chabot -- a six-term legislator from Cincinnati who finds himself imperiled this year after years of easy races -- has a list of e-mail addresses of people who are most interested in tax cuts. His office recently hit the send button on a personal message to alert them to the congressman's support for extending tax breaks on dividends and capital gains.

Chabot's computer is one factor to keep in mind when assessing the odds that Republicans will get evicted this November from their 12-year majority in the House. Anti-incumbent sentiment, as measured by polls and voter interviews, is stronger than it has been in years. But so, too, are certain structural advantages that overwhelmingly favor incumbents.

Some are well known, such as the superior ability of incumbents to raise campaign funds and the fact that most lawmakers come from districts that have been carefully drawn to favor one party. Other benefits -- including the ways that lawmakers are using the latest "micro-targeting" techniques in their official communications -- are more obscure, virtually unheralded beyond the people who use them.

"A major reason fewer incumbents lose is we have perfected the use of information technology," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). "As incumbents, we have unlimited access to the most up-to-date technology in the world" free of charge, he said.

One way to think of this midterm election year, analysts say, is a collision between a wave and a wall.

The wave overwhelmingly favors Democrats: an unpopular war in Iraq, job approval ratings for President Bush at record lows, corruption scandals that have engulfed GOP congressional leaders, and polls showing voters favoring Democrats and their positions on the issues by distinct margins.

But Republicans still benefit from the wall: a long-term trend that for years has led to steadily fewer competitive districts.

Democrats are growing increasingly confident that this year the wave will be higher than the wall, but they acknowledge that the challenge of picking up the 15 seats they need to take control is daunting. Analysts have been watching yesterday's special election in California to replace resigned and convicted representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) for an early indicator of the year's trend. The San Diego area district is traditionally Republican, but recent polls have shown Democrats well positioned for an upset. No result was expected until early today Washington time.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), head of the House Democrats' reelection efforts, said that the party faces a "rigged system" and that only a pitched level of public discontent gives them a "fighting chance" to overcome it.

In a memo delivered to House Democrats last week, Emanuel told lawmakers that redistricting could impede their takeover hopes, noting that respected political handicapper Charlie Cook estimates there are 35 truly competitive races -- compared with 100 in 1994.

One way to look at how incumbents have grown entrenched is to compare this election year with 1994 -- the year Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and his "Republican Revolutionaries" roared to victory by picking up 54 House seats. Although Democrats had held the majority for four decades, there was ample evidence long before Election Day of how vulnerable many of them were.

Democrats that year defended 61 seats in which the lawmaker had won no more than 55 percent of the vote in the previous election, a threshold many strategists and political scientists use to identify at-risk incumbents. Democrats lost 29 of the 61 seats.

This year, Republicans are defending only 19 seats in which their House member won 55 percent or less in the previous election.

In 2004, only five of the 404 incumbents seeking reelection lost -- a reelection rate of 99 percent.

In California, all 101 incumbents who ran for reelection in 2002 and 2004 won, and all but two clobbered their opponents by 20 percentage points or more. The story is the same in most states.

At the same time, the polarized electorate tends to reduce fluidity on Capitol Hill, an advantage for the party that benefits from the status quo. Thanks to packed districts and a decline in split-ticket voting, there are fewer districts that vote for a president of one party but elect a member of Congress from the opposite party. Bush carried 255 House districts in the past presidential election, compared with Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry's 180. "There has been a big increase in party-line voting at all levels," said Gary C. Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego who studies political trends.

In many state legislatures, which draw congressional districts, politicians have joined in an unspoken bipartisan alliance to protect incumbents. Often this has been accomplished by packing Democratic-trending voters -- especially African Americans -- into a few urban districts, rather than spreading them in ways that would make more districts truly competitive. Some Democrats, including Rep. Brad Sherman (Calif.), lament the trend. Sherman said he fears that "a majority of those casting votes will vote Democratic in November" but that votes will be distributed in a way that does not necessarily produce a majority of House seats.

Chabot is an illustration of the way lawmakers settle into their seats. He won by campaigning against then-President Bill Clinton's tax increases in 1994, taking 56 percent of the vote. He had tight races in 1996 and 1998. But after the 2000 census, Ohio's Republican governor and the GOP-led state legislature made life easier for him. His new district was shaped to include more Republican neighborhoods. In an interview, Chabot said he estimates the new lines added about five percentage points to his November returns.

Democrat John Cranley, a Cincinnati City Council member, is bidding to change that. He and other Democrats have been hitting Chabot for supporting the Iraq war and an overhaul of Social Security.

The national winds are gusting in Cranley's direction. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 56 percent of voters said they want Democrats to control the House, and a majority said they preferred Democrats to handle every domestic and foreign issue they were asked about. But these broad trends in public opinion will not mean much, strategists say, unless Democrats succeed in translating them into an expanded number of truly competitive races.

Chabot said he is not concerned about the toxic political environment because "I know my district very well."

Like all incumbents, he has some important tools in knowing his district, ones not easily replicated by challengers trying to reach the roughly 600,000 people who live in a typical congressional district.

One of these tools is the congressional account each lawmaker can use to communicate with constituents. In the past, this money went mainly for sending newsletters or other mailings to voters, who often turned around and tossed them in the trash. But technology has allowed lawmakers to track the interests of individual voters, file the information into a database and then use e-mails or phone calls to engage directly with voters on issues they know they care about. In essence, this is the traditional "franking" privilege updated -- and made far more powerful -- for the digital age.

There are some restrictions, such as requirements that official office communications are not overly political. But there is a fine line between politics and constituent service, legislators acknowledge.

The practice is so commonplace that a cottage industry of consultants has emerged to assist House members in their micro-targeting strategies. Aris McMahon of Constituent Services Inc. advises several lawmakers on the latest techniques, including increasingly popular "virtual town halls" or "tele-town halls."

Using taxpayers' money, legislators employ a new technology that allows them to call thousands of households simultaneously with a recorded message, asking people in their districts to join in on a conference call with their representative. With the push of a button, the constituent is on the line with the House member -- and often 1,000 or more fellow constituents. More important, the lawmaker knows from the phone numbers where the respondents live and, from what they say on the call, what issues interest them.

At a retreat in St. Michaels, Md., in January, Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Calif.) briefed Republicans on how to host these tele-town halls using their office budget, participants said. Information gathered from the events, as well as e-mails and phone calls from constituents, gets plugged into a database, giving the incumbent something a challenger could only dream of: a detailed list of the specific interests of thousands of would-be voters. E-mail then allows for personal interaction -- and a free reminder of why the incumbent should be reelected.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Investigation of 2004 Election Outcome

What do you think? The t r u t h o u t Town Meeting is in progress. Join the debate!

Go to Original

A Call to Investigate the 2004 Election
By Steven F. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss
The Boston Globe

Monday 26 June 2006

We've all heard the story. Nov. 2, 2004, was shaping up as a day of celebration for Democrats. The exit polls were predicting a victory for Senator John Kerry. Many Americans, including most political observers, sat down to watch the evening television coverage convinced that Kerry would be the next president.

But the counts that were being reported on TV bore little resemblance to the exit poll projections. In key state after state, tallies differed significantly from the projections. In every case, that shift favored President George W. Bush. Nationwide, exit polls projected a 51 to 48 percent Kerry victory, the mirror image of Bush's 51 to 48 percent win. But the exit poll discrepancy is not the only cause for concern.

In Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio co-chairman of the 2004 Bush/Cheney Campaign, borrowed a chapter from Secretary of State Katharine Harris's Florida 2000 playbook. Like Harris, he used the power of his office to affect turnout and thwart voters in heavily Democratic areas. Vote suppression and electoral irregularities in Ohio have been documented, first in January 2005 by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, and in June 2005 by the Democratic National Committee, which found, in the words of DNC Chairman Howard Dean: "More than a quarter of all Ohio voters reported problems with their voting experience."

Election Day 2004 also saw the advent of a congressional mandate under the Help America Vote Act to replace punch-card systems with new, unproven technologies. In that election, 64 percent of Americans voted on direct recorded electronic voting machines or optical-scan systems, both of which are vulnerable to hacking or programming fraud. According to a September 2005 General Accountability Office investigation, such systems contained flaws that "could allow unauthorized personnel to disrupt operations or modify data and programs that are critical to ... the integrity of the voting process."

A reasonable person could thus argue that a well-conducted exit poll that confirmed the official count would be about the only reason we would have to believe the results of such an election. Without an audit or a recount to verify the official count, those of us who suspect that the presidential election was stolen do so based on the information now available.

In the days after the election, the media largely ignored this exit poll discrepancy. When it was mentioned, it was only to report that the exit polls - based on a confidential, 25-question written survey of 114,559 voters in 1,480 precincts - were flawed. The discrepancy, however, was real and beyond the statistical margin of error. On that, there is widespread agreement. What is still being debated is only the reasons for the discrepancy.

In January 2005, on the eve of Bush's inauguration, the two men who conducted the 2004 exit poll, Warren Mitofsky and Joe Lenski, released their promised explanation. Their report began: "The inaccuracies in the exit-poll estimates were not due to the sample selection of the polling locations at which the exit polls were conducted." In other words, the precincts they sampled were representative of the nation, so the discrepancy was not the result of choosing unrepresentative precincts.

The data they released allows researchers to correlate voter characteristics (race, age, sex, etc.) with voting preferences - but it was not the data that identified specific exit poll results with specific precincts. That data remains the property of the media consortium (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and the AP) that commissioned the polls. No one has provided a coherent account of how polling error could explain the discrepancy. We have only the pollsters' blithe assertion that Kerry voters must have disproportionately participated in the polls. Yet the available state-level data contradicts the pollsters' explanation, also termed the "reluctant Bush respondent" theory. The data does show that key variables - racial makeup of a state, partisan control of governorships, whether a state is a swing state, and reports of Election Day complaints - all correlate with the magnitude of the poll discrepancy.

The report also indicated that for rural and small-town precincts - the only ones where comparable data does exist - the difference between the exit poll results and the official count is three times greater in precincts where voters used machines than in precincts using paper ballots alone. If we had access to the withheld precinct-level data, we would be able to investigate whether the size of the exit poll discrepancy correlates with the voting technology used.

For these reasons and more, it is imperative that our newspapers of record as well as our governmental oversight bodies now investigate the question people continue to ask: Was the 2004 election stolen?

--------

Joel Bleifuss and Steven F. Freeman are authors of the book Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” - Patrick Henry

Five Stars for Gore Film

Scientists OK Gore's movie for accuracy
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Tue Jun 27, 4:24 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The nation's top climate scientists are giving "An Inconvenient Truth,"
Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy.

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The former vice president's movie — replete with the prospect of a flooded New York City, an inundated Florida, more and nastier hurricanes, worsening droughts, retreating glaciers and disappearing ice sheets — mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from The Associated Press.

The AP contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were vocal skeptics of climate change theory. Most scientists had not seen the movie, which is in limited release, or read the book.

But those who have seen it had the same general impression: Gore conveyed the science correctly; the world is getting hotter and it is a manmade catastrophe-in-the-making caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"Excellent," said William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. "He got all the important material and got it right."

Robert Corell, chairman of the worldwide Arctic Climate Impact Assessment group of scientists, read the book and saw Gore give the slideshow presentation that is woven throughout the documentary.

"I sat there and I'm amazed at how thorough and accurate," Corell said. "After the presentation I said, `Al, I'm absolutely blown away. There's a lot of details you could get wrong.' ... I could find no error."

Gore, in an interview with the AP, said he wasn't surprised "because I took a lot of care to try to make sure the science was right."

The tiny errors scientists found weren't a big deal, "far, far fewer and less significant than the shortcoming in speeches by the typical politician explaining an issue," said Michael MacCracken, who used to be in charge of the nation's global warming effects program and is now chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington.

One concern was about the connection between hurricanes and global warming. That is a subject of a heated debate in the science community. Gore cited five recent scientific studies to support his view.

"I thought the use of imagery from Hurricane Katrina was inappropriate and unnecessary in this regard, as there are plenty of disturbing impacts associated with global warming for which there is much greater scientific consensus," said Brian Soden, a University of Miami professor of meteorology and oceanography.

Some scientists said Gore confused his ice sheets when he said the effect of the Clean Air Act is noticeable in the Antarctic ice core; it is the Greenland ice core. Others thought Gore oversimplified the causal-link between the key greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and rising temperatures.

While some nonscientists could be depressed by the dire disaster-laden warmer world scenario that Gore laid out, one top researcher thought it was too optimistic. Tom Wigley, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, thought the former vice president sugarcoated the problem by saying that with already-available technologies and changes in habit — such as changing light bulbs — the world could help slow or stop global warming.

While more than 1 million people have seen the movie since it opened in May, that does not include Washington's top science decision makers. President Bush said he won't see it. The heads of the

Environmental Protection Agency and NASA haven't seen it, and the president's science adviser said the movie is on his to-see list.

"They are quite literally afraid to know the truth," Gore said. "Because if you accept the truth of what the scientific community is saying, it gives you a moral imperative to start to rein in the 70 million tons of global warming pollution that human civilization is putting into the atmosphere every day."

As far as the movie's entertainment value, Scripps Institution geosciences professor Jeff Severinghaus summed it up: "My wife fell asleep. Of course, I was on the edge of my chair."

___

"Off the Deep End..."

Consortiumnews.com

One Percent Madness
By Robert Parry
June 27, 2006


Author Ron Suskind’s account of Dick Cheney’s “one percent doctrine” – the idea that if a terrorist threat is deemed even one percent likely the United States must act as if it’s a certainty – supplies a missing link in understanding the evolving madness of the Bush administration’s national security strategy.

A one-percent risk threshold is so low that it negates any serious analysis that seeks to calibrate dangers within the complex array of possibilities that exist in the real world. In effect, it means that any potential threat that crosses the administration’s line of sight will exceed one percent and thus must be treated as a clear and present danger.

The fallacy of the doctrine is that pursuing one-percent threats like certainties is not just a case of choosing to be safe rather than sorry. Instead, it can suck the pursuer into a swollen river of other dangers, leading to a cascading torrent of adverse consequences far more dangerous than the original worry.

For instance, George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq may have eliminated the remote possibility that Saddam Hussein would someday develop a nuclear bomb and share it with al-Qaeda. (Some intelligence analysts put that scenario at less than one percent, although Bush called it a “gathering danger.”)

But the U.S. military invasion of Iraq had the unintended consequence of bolstering the conviction in North Korea and Iran that having the bomb may be the only way to fend off the United States.

The unending scenes of bloodshed in Iraq also have inflamed anti-American passions in other Middle East countries, including Pakistan which already possesses nuclear weapons and is governed by fragile pro-U.S. dictator Pervez Musharraf.

So, while eradicating one unlikely nightmare scenario – Hussein’s mushroom cloud in the hands of Osama bin-Laden – the Bush administration has increased the chances that the other two points on Bush’s “axis of evil,” North Korea and Iran, will push for nuclear weapons and that Pakistan’s Islamic fundamentalists, already closely allied with Osama bin-Laden, will oust Musharraf and gain control of existing nuclear weapons.

In other words, eliminating one “one-percent risk” may have created several other dangers which carry odds of catastrophe far higher than one percent. Bush now must decide whether to swat at these new one-plus-percent risks, which, in turn, could lead to even greater dangers.

Say, for example, that Bush orders air strikes against Iran’s suspected nuclear sites and kills large numbers of civilians in the process. That could trigger riots in Pakistan and lead to Musharraf’s downfall, putting Islamic extremists in control of nuclear weapons immediately, instead of possibly years into the future.

An attack on Iran also could backfire on the United States in Iraq, where Iranian-allied Shiite militias could retaliate against vulnerable U.S. and British troops, raising the death toll and endangering the entire U.S. mission in Iraq.

Swallowing Flies

In effect, Bush has found himself in a geopolitical version of “the little old lady who swallowed a fly.” As the children’s ditty goes, the little old lady next swallows a spider to catch the fly but soon finds that the spider “tickles inside her.” So, she engorges other animals, in escalating size, to eliminate each previous animal. Eventually, she swallows a horse and “is dead of course.”

Similarly, if Bush seeks to eradicate a succession of one-percent threats, he could well find himself trapped within a growing web of interrelated consequences, each pulling in their own entangling complexities. The end result could leave the United States in a much worse predicament than when the process began.

Charging headstrong after one-percent risks also makes you vulnerable to getting lured into traps. Al-Qaeda strategists, for instance, understood that the 9/11 attacks would lead to a furious reaction from the United States and welcomed the prospect that the American military would strike back at targets in the Islamic world.

Al-Qaeda hoped that the United States would overreact and thus sharpen what al-Qaeda saw as the contradictions within the Islamic world, forcing Muslims to take sides either with the “crusaders” and their regional allies or with the revolt against those forces.

Al-Qaeda’s gamble was that the United States might strike a well-aimed, powerful blow that would eliminate al-Qaeda’s leadership and its key supporters without alienating the larger Muslim populations.

But in late November and early December 2001, the failure to cut off escape routes at Tora Bora, near the Afghan-Pakistani border allowed Osama bin-Laden to evade capture along with Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second in command.

Then, Bush – prematurely celebrating victory in Afghanistan – shifted the U.S. military’s focus to Iraq, which had long been an obsession with Bush and his neoconservative advisers. Bush and Cheney judged that Saddam Hussein represented another one-percent-plus danger that required eliminating.

Perception Management

But there remained a political problem in the United States. The American people, while strongly favoring retaliation against al-Qaeda, were less convinced about the need to launch a series of “preemptive wars” against nations that were not implicated in 9/11.

Though the “one-percent doctrine” may transcend the need for any hard evidence among policymakers, it did not eliminate the political need to generate public support behind a war effort, especially when even casual observers could note that the new target country – Iraq – posed no immediate threat to the United States.

So, the Bush administration saw little choice but to engage in exaggerations and outright falsehoods, what the CIA calls “perception management.” Bush, Cheney and their subordinates spoke in absolute terms about evidence of the Iraqi threat, including vast stockpiles of terrifying unconventional weapons and secret work on a nuclear bomb.

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney told a VFW convention on Aug. 26, 2002. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors – confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.”

It’s now clear that Cheney was wildly overstating the level of confidence within the U.S. intelligence community about Hussein’s WMD programs. There was little hard evidence at all, more a case of conventional wisdom about unconventional weapons than actual intelligence reporting.

CIA analysts also didn’t believe that Hussein had any intent of using whatever WMD he did have unless his nation was attacked or he was cornered.

But intelligence took on a different dimension inside the “one-percent doctrine,” a strategy that cherished action over information. In the new book, The One Percent Doctrine, Suskind describes Cheney first enunciating his new approach when he heard about Pakistani physicists discussing nuclear weapons with al-Qaeda.

“If there’s a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response,” Cheney said. “It’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. … It’s about our response.”

Suskind reports that Cheney’s new “standard of action … would frame events and responses from the administration for years to come. The Cheney Doctrine. Even if there’s just a one percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty. …

“This doctrine – the one percent solution – divided what had largely been indivisible in the conduct of American foreign policy: analysis and action. Justified or not, fact-based or not, ‘our response’ is what matters. As to ‘evidence,’ the bar was set so low that the word itself almost didn’t apply.”

Manipulation

By making careful evaluation of the evidence irrelevant, however, the U.S. government made itself vulnerable to willful deceptions by interested parties, such as Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, which easily could funnel enough disinformation into the decision-making process to push decisions over the one-percent brim.

American enemies also could manipulate the process by exaggerating their goals. For instance, Bush and Cheney have repeatedly defended the continuation of the U.S. military operation in Iraq by citing the supposed goal of Islamic extremists to build an empire from Spain to Indonesia.

But the real prospect for such an empire is miniscule, arguably close to zero. After all, prior to 9/11, nearly all key al-Qaeda leaders had been driven from their home countries and chased to Afghanistan, one of the most remote corners of the earth.

These al-Qaeda leaders had lost battles with fellow Muslims in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Though heroes to some Islamists, al-Qaeda leaders were dangerous but fringe operatives on the run.

Without the clumsy intervention of the United States and Great Britain in Iraq, al-Qaeda had few prospects for any significant expansion of its power base.

In an intercepted letter, purportedly written in 2005 by Zawahiri to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, al-Qaeda’s second in command fretted about the problems that would occur if the United States military withdrew from Iraq.

The “Zawahiri letter” cautioned that an American withdrawal might prompt the “mujahedeen” in Iraq to “lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.” To avert this military collapse if the United States did leave, the letter called for selling the foreign fighters on a broader vision of an Islamic “caliphate” in the Middle East, although only along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, nothing as expansive as a global empire.

But the “Zawahiri letter” indicated that even this more modest “caliphate” was just an “idea” that he mentioned “only to stress … that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Latest Iraq War Lies.”]

Brer Rabbit

In other words, assuming the “Zawahiri letter” is accurate, al- Qaeda’s leaders wanted to keep the United States bogged down in Iraq because that allowed the terrorists to swell their ranks with new fighters and to use the Iraq War as a training ground to harden them into dangerous militants.

The one-percent doctrine, therefore, empowers America’s enemies to influence U.S. policy in ways favorable to them. It lets al-Qaeda play the role of Brer Rabbit from the Uncle Remus tales, where the wily rabbit begs not to be thrown into the briar patch when that is exactly where he wants to go.

Bush has said the United States must take the word of the enemy seriously and act accordingly. But what if the enemy is exaggerating his capabilities or his goals? Do the enemy's words alone push matters beyond the one percent threshold and force the United States into responses even if they are not in America's best interests?

The one-percent doctrine is also developing a domestic corollary. Any home-grown threat – no matter how unlikely – must bring down the full force of U.S. law enforcement, as happened in last week’s arrest of seven young black men in Miami for a terrorist plot that one FBI official called more “aspirational than operational.”

On June 23, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conceded that the men had no weapons, no equipment and no real plans. Mostly, the seven seem to have been encouraged by an FBI informant posing as an al-Qaeda operative to talk loosely about waging a “full ground war” against the United States.

As absurd as this notion of a “full ground war” was – given the hapless nature of the alleged warriors – Gonzales said, “left unchecked, these homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda.”

Gonzales’s domestic declaration rang with an echo of Dick Cheney’s one-percent doctrine. If there is the slightest risk of terrorist activities, “it’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence,” Cheney reportedly said. “It’s about our response.”

Obvious Flaws

But another curious aspect of this one-percent doctrine is how obvious its flaws are. Wouldn’t even the most dimwitted foreign policy novice recognize the absurdity of striking out at one-percent risks around the world?

John Dunne wrote that “no man is an island, entire of itself,” meaning that every person is connected to other people. But surely, not even George W. Bush thought that Iraq was an island, somehow disconnected from a host of intersecting regional and global relationships.

The answer to that conundrum might simply be that the one-percent doctrine is less a doctrine than another excuse used by the Bush administration to justify actions, such as invading Iraq, that it always to do.

If the slimmest possibility of grievous harm – such as Saddam Hussein developing nuclear weapons and then slipping one to Osama bin-Laden – can be cited to trump more circumspect policymakers, then it could be powerful way to defeat bureaucratic rivals who show up at meetings with binders of intelligence analyses under their arms.

Then, when Bush and Cheney want to ignore other threats, they can simply revert to the posture of careful leaders not ready to jump hastily into an unfamiliar thicket. In other words, whether or not to invoke the one-percent doctrine gives them the ultimate debate-stopping argument.

Nevertheless, if Suskind is right and Bush is following the one-percent doctrine as his guiding light in the post-9/11 world, the American people can expect to find themselves led into an endless series of wars that only worsen the dangers.

Shocking Words from the Man Who Plotted the Technology Revolution!

One of my dearest friends is a software designer. One of his closest friends is a man named Andy Groves. Most people don't know the name, Andy Groves. But if you were into technology, his name would resonate with you. He is one of my few remaining icons. Andy Groves was the man who changed the world with his far reaching visions and his ability to shape Intel into the remarkable company that it was and his. Like Microsoft, Intel was a throw-away from IBM, the company that was too full of itself to see the future. Andy Groves saw the future...and it was full of potential.
Today, has a different vision of America. These are his words:
"America ....[is going] down the tubes, " he says, "and the worst part is nobody knows it. They're all in denial, patting themselves on the back, as the Titanic heads for the iceberg full speed ahead."

It is time for change.
If we wait, we have no excuse for what happens...

Les Aaron

Our Neglected and Forgotten Veterans

Iraq vets returning to U.S. face another battle _ and homelessness

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Discuss Article (No comments yet) Verena Dobnik


New York Daily News

Jun 25, 2006





NEW YORK (AP) -- As a member of the National Guard, Nadine Beckford patrolled New York train stations after Sept. 11 with a 9 mm pistol, then served a treacherous year in Iraq.

Now, six months after returning, Beckford lives in a homeless shelter.

"I'm just an ordinary person who served. I'm not embarrassed about my homelessness, because the circumstances that created it were not my fault," says Beckford, 30, who was a military-supply specialist at a base in Iraq that was a sitting duck for around-the-clock attacks, "where hell was your home."

Thousands of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a new nightmare - the risk of homelessness. The government estimates that several hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless on any given night around the country, although the exact number is unknown.

The reasons that contribute to this new wave of homelessness are many: Some are unable to cope with life after daily encounters with insurgent attacks and roadside bombs; some can't navigate the government red tape; others simply don't have enough money to afford a house or apartment.

They are living on the edge in towns and cities big and small from Washington state to Florida. But the hardest hit are in New York City, because housing costs here "can be very tough," says Peter Dougherty, head of the Homeless Veterans Program at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Former Army Pfc. Herold Noel had nowhere to call home after returning from Iraq last year. He slept in his Jeep, parked anywhere in New York "where I wouldn't get a ticket."

"Then the nightmares would start," says the 26-year-old, who drove a military fuel truck in Iraq - one of the war's most dangerous jobs.

At one point, he saw a friend's leg get blown off. "I saw a baby decapitated when it was run over by a truck. I relived that every night," said Noel, who walks with shrapnel in his knee and suffers from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.

To help people like Noel, the VA gives grants to nonprofit, private housing organizations that offer about 8,000 free beds nationwide. The space isn't always enough to accommodate everyone in desperate need of shelter among the more than 500,000 vets of Iraq and Afghanistan who have been discharged from the military so far.

When Noel got back, the shattered soldier couldn't immediately find a job to support his wife and children, and all the housing programs for vets he knew of "were overbooked," he says.

The family ended up in a Bronx shelter "with people who were just out of prison, and with roaches," he says. "I'm a young black man from the ghetto, but this was culture shock. This is not what I fought for, what I almost died for. This is not what I was supposed to come home to."

Noel now attends a Brooklyn program to get a job in studio sound production. He also is the protagonist of the documentary film "When I Came Home," which was named best New York-made documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival this year.

Just after the news reports about his plight came out, he got a call from the VA granting him the 100 percent disability compensation he sought - after being turned down.

He's not blaming the military, which "helped make my dreams come true. I had a house, a car - they gave me everything they promised me," he says.

"It's up to the government and the people we're defending to take care of their soldiers."

Before she went to war, Beckford put all her belongings in storage. And while in Iraq, she sent most of her National Guard earnings of about $25,000 a year into her New York bank account. When she returned, the Brooklyn storage locker had been emptied, as was her bank account. She believes her boyfriend took everything and disappeared; she reported the thefts to police, but "he just vanished."

Without support from family - her parents are barely making ends meet in their native Jamaica - Beckford lives in a Brooklyn shelter where she shares a room with eight other women.

Beckford is no longer angry - just anxious to get back on her feet as she attends a job-training program.

Long before the current war, the Homeless Veterans Program had guided men and women back into daily life after service in Vietnam, Korea and World War II. But Dougherty makes no secret of a truth few Americans know: About one-fourth of all homeless adults in America have served in the military - most of them minority veterans.

There are now about 200,000 homeless vets in the United States, according to government figures.

"In recent years, we've tried to reach out sooner to new veterans who are having problems with post-traumatic stress, depression or substance abuse, after seeing combat," says Dougherty. "These are the veterans who most often end up homeless."

Across the country, 350 nonprofit service organizations are working with Veterans Affairs to provide a network of kindness that breaks the veterans' fall.

But they still land on a hard bottom line: Almost half of America's 2.7 million disabled veterans receive $337 or less a month in benefits, according to the VA's Veterans Benefits Administration.

Fewer than one-tenth of them are rated 100 percent disabled, meaning they get $2,393 a month, tax free.

"And only those who receive that 100 percent benefit rating can survive in New York," said J.B. White Jr., a 36-year-old former Marine who served with a National Guard unit in Iraq. His entire colon was removed after he was diagnosed with severe ulcerative colitis, which civilian medical experts believe started in Iraq under the stress of war.

White is in the midst of an uphill battle to get benefits from the government. He also helps others, as head of the Hope for New Veterans program for Common Ground, a Manhattan-based social service agency that finds non-government housing for vets.

For those struggling to keep a roof over their head, filing for benefits can be a bureaucratic Catch-22 that ratchets up the stress. But it's their survival ticket, if their claim is not turned down.

To an outsider, the VA benefit formulas can seem like a riddle.

If, for instance, a vet is diagnosed as 70 percent physically disabled and 30 percent disabled as a result of post-traumatic stress, the total disability does not necessarily add up to 100 percent; it could amount to, say, 80 percent. And that means a monthly check of $1,277; $1,500 for a family of four - a paltry amount in places like New York where cramped studio apartments routinely exceed $1,000 a month.

Even with a college degree in African studies and English, Beckford says, "I don't know when I'll be able to move out of the shelter."

What's your take? Comment here (No comments yet).

"The End of Democracy As We Know It..."

Congress May Bestow Unchecked Spying Powers on President
By Catherine Komp
The NewStandard

Friday 23 June 2006

While dozens of lawsuits challenging the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance of Americans slowly move through the courts, the Senate Judiciary Committee is poised to consider legislation that would effectively legalize the practice.

Civil-rights advocates and constitutional-law experts say several proposed bills attempt to "whitewash" executive wrongdoing before Congress has the opportunity to conduct hearings and gather the facts surrounding the National Security Agency's involvement in warrantless wiretapping and telecommunications data mining.

"Congress has the power to ensure that the president follows the law; they just have chosen not to use it," said Brittany Benowitz, staff attorney for the Center for National Security Studies, a government watchdog group.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) introduced the "National Security Surveillance Act" (S.2453) last March, which he followed with a substitute proposal in May.

The legislation would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and establish new "procedures for the review of electronic surveillance programs." FISA, which was expanded under the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, was first established in 1978 to define the procedures and set up special courts to oversee the gathering of foreign intelligence through physical and electronic surveillance.

The Specter bill states in its findings, "It is in our nation's best interest for Congress to use its oversight power to establish a system to ensure that electronic surveillance programs do not infringe on the constitutional rights of Americans, while at the same time making sure that the president has all the powers and means necessary to detect and track our enemies."

But some legal experts say the bill eliminates checks and balances, failing to ensure protection of Americans' constitutional rights to freedom of expression and against unreasonable search and seizure. According to the ACLU's analysis of the bill, the legislation would amend a section of FISA that imposes penalties for warrantless surveillance - currently up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine - and permit the executive branch to approve a wiretap without a Foreign Intelligence court order.

The ACLU points out that the bill creates a "retroactive exception to criminal liability" for federal agents spying on people without warrants as long as it's done at the discretion of the president.

The bill would also eliminate a provision in the federal criminal code that designates FISA as the exclusive authority for wiretapping Americans to gather foreign intelligence. In abolishing this part of the criminal code, the ACLU said the bill would "reward the president's [past] refusal to follow FISA by [retroactively] exempting him from following these procedures." It would also, the group argues, "allow any president to make up his own 'rules' for wiretapping Americans and secretly implement those rules unless and until a court finds such rules unconstitutional."

Lisa Graves, ACLU senior counsel for legislative strategy, told The NewStandard, "It would embed into federal law the notion that the president has inherent power to monitor Americans' communications without court order."

Another bill, Senator Mike Dewine's (R-Ohio) "Terrorist Surveillance Program Act of 2006" (S. 2455), would also authorize warrantless surveillance if "the president determines that the surveillance is necessary to protect the United States, its citizens, or its interests, whether inside the United States or outside the United States."

According to Benowitz of the Center for National Security Studies, this legislation is even worse than Specter's bill. She said these changes are like "the PATRIOT ACT on steroids," because they include no checks and balances.

"It would, like the Specter bill, authorize the president to do what he's doing - which is spy on people who are suspected of wrongdoing, without a court order," Benowitz said. "But it would make it worse because it would actually restrict congressional oversight."

In response to domestic spying during the Nixon administration, Congress set up special intelligence committees under the National Security Act to conduct oversight of the intelligence community. But both Benowtiz and Graves said the Dewine bill, through the establishment of "Terrorist Surveillance Subcommittees," would undermine some of those laws by making it only necessary for the executive branch to brief certain members of Congress about its surveillance activities.

"If Congress passes either the Dewine or the Specter bill... then for the rest of our lives presidents of both parties will be able to spy on any American in this country at will without any check whatsoever that that person has done anything wrong," said Graves. "And that's not the kind of country that we should be living in."

A third bill introduced in May, the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Improvement and Enhancement Act of 2006" (S. 3001), also sponsored by Specter along with Senator Diane Feinstein (D-California), is the least problematic to constitutional-law experts interviewed by TNS.

The Specter-Feinstein legislation would reinforce FISA as the exclusive means through which electronic surveillance can be conducted; prohibit the use of funds on illegal surveillance; extend the emergency wiretap period from 72 to 168 hours; and permit the US attorney general to hire more application-processing staff and to delegate the authority to approve wiretap applications to other high-ranking agency officials.

Another key element of the bill, said Shayana Kadidal, staff attorney with the legal-rigths advocacy group Center for Constitutional Rights, is that it states Congress can never repeal or modify FISA by implication. That is, no White House would be able to claim, as the Bush administration has, that an authorization or mandate by Congress could be interpreted to override the FISA rules.

Some groups are also concerned about how the various legislative proposals would affect the dozens of pending lawsuits challenging warrantless spying and telecommunications data collection. A provision in the Specter substitute bill would send all lawsuits to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, a secret court the sole purpose of which today is reviewing denials of surveillance warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The judges on this court are appointed by the Supreme Court chief justice and the proceedings are closed and classified.

Though the Bush administration has used the rationale of "state secrets" as a reason to keep warrantless-surveillance litigation out of district courts, Benowtiz said that, if necessary, there are many mechanisms for protecting classified information. For instance, courts can hold closed proceedings or issue protective orders so evidence can be filed under seal.

"So to the extent that the Specter bill would send things to the FISA Court [of Review] in order to keep things secret, that's wholly unnecessary," she concluded. "There's no reason to take it out of the regular court system."

While some rights groups say the Specter-Feinstein bill is a step in the right direction, few want to see any legislation until Congress thoroughly investigates the facts behind the warrantless-surveillance program.

"It's extremely unusual for Congress to legislate in the face of violations of the law when they've never done an investigation about what's happening," said Benowtiz. "Congress has the power to make sure the president follows the law; they should use it. And they have the power to do oversight, they have the power to issue subpoenas; they should use those powers."

Earlier this month Specter reversed his announcement that he would hold a hearing with officials from the telecommunications companies about their alleged collusion with the Bush administration in collecting Americans' phone records.

The Dewine and Specter bills are currently awaiting mark-up. Benowitz fears the bills could be pushed through by a partisan Congress, resulting in sweeping changes for Americans.

"Both [bills] have the potential to fundamentally change the nature of our society," Benowitz said. "It's a constitutional crisis; it really is - the question of whether we'll have a system of checks and balances - that's what's at issue here."

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