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Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, “The Police State” Conspiracy”
Season 2, Episode 4
S02E04
It’s been said the government has a plan to declare martial law and round up millions of United State citizens into concentration camps. Jesse may have found a conspiracy in plain sight as he investigates the proliferation of law enforcement Fusion Centers around the country. And they may be connected to hundreds of detention centers ready to accept prisoners at the stroke of a Presidential pen. TV-PG-L
(NaturalNews) TSA agents, always looking to increase their reach (quite literally), are now reaching down the pants and into the underwear of female travelers. This is what happened to an ABC News employee, who described the experience as “worse than going to the gynecologist.”
In an ABC News story, this ABC News employee went on to say, “It was embarrassing. It was demeaning. It was inappropriate.” (http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/tsa-re…)
TSA head says everything’s great!
TSA head John Pistole, however, said the current system is working just as it was intended to work, and he refuses to back down on any changes (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-…). This means travelers can expect to continue to be subjected to these ionizing radiation scans (naked body scanners) as well as obscene X-rated pat-downs for the foreseeable future.
Apparently, the TSA feels it is entirely appropriate to feel your crotch, palm your breasts and even reach into your pants — and you’re supposed to just sit there and tolerate all this like good little sheeple.
In doing this, however, they are offending not just the patriots and freedom-oriented people in America; they’re also feeling up members of the press! And that’s a huge mistake because now all of a sudden the mainstream media is realizing this is no joke. This molestation of passengers is happening to them, too!
Why is “free trade at any expense” reserved only for multi-national corporations? Why is every other sector of the economy supposed to be allowed to engage in a free-for-all at the entire countries expense, but when it comes to family and independent agriculture there are literally hundreds of thousands of regulations, limitations, rules, and requirements, licensing, and forfeiture of rights, spanning multiple agencies who spend the bulk of their funding on “enforcement” of what usually amounts to nothing less than an interference in trade, profit and viability and which many times constitute an open assault on Constitutionally protected property and individual rights.
I can only imagine the salivating occurring behind the scenes in the District of Criminals, as the corporations and interested parties including the World Trade Organization, Codex Committees and other vested stakeholders anticipate the passage of S.510, the fake food safety bill. Should this bill pass, we as a country will be officially divested not only of our sovereignty but of our independence. No country in the history of the world has survived for long without a strong and independent agricultural sector. Take that away, and the fall of the country soon follows. No nation that cannot, or will not, feed its own people, ever survives. Independent agriculture is and always has been the backbone and the underlying support for economic stability and security. It is this support and security that S.510 seeks to destroy.
S.510 is not about food safety; it is however the last lynchpin in the seizure of food production and supply that was begun under Bush the Lesser. Control the food; control the people.
This same model envisioned in S.510 was used in recent years in Poland. An estimated 60% of Polish farms are now gone. In India, more than 8 million farmers have left their farms as a result of similar systems implemented by the World Trade Organization on behalf of bio-pirates of all kinds. Here in the US an estimated 1/3 of all farms that existed in 2000, have now vanished. We are, according to farmaid.org , losing 3-500 farms and ranches every week as the industrialized corporate machine being driven by congress and its agencies rolls across our land. Food safety never was the issue. Food as a Weapon is another story.
S.510 is set up to increase and subsidize exporting of our food production. With a food crisis building around the world and economists and geo-political prognosticators of all stripes predicting a massive food shortage, why in the world would our congress be contemplating passing a bill that expands and increases exports of our food products? Wouldn’t the rational and logical strategy be:
to reduce exports,
stockpile as much grain in strategic reserve as possible, (USDA sold our strategic reserve in 2008)
strategic reserves of dairy commodities especially in the Western States where USDA claims there is a glut of dairy
reinforcement of local producers who can keep their surrounding communities supplied with fresh produce and meats
Subsidies for farmers markets which would not only encourage the entry into produce production but would also help to boost the economies of the communities
Re-establish the strategic reserves of grains and other commodities and make this irrevocable
Make export possible only if and when adequate supplies are built up to back up the US
Once surplus levels are established, allow export only at levels beyond this.
Limit imports to only those products we cannot produce here, such as various tropical fruits.
(NaturalNews) If there’s one thing to give thanks for this year, it’s the fact that the Senate floor vote on the so-called “Food Safety Modernization Act” has been delayed until after the Senate’s Thanksgiving recess. This gives all of us — the commonsense opponents of S.510 who don’t want the FDA having authority over raw milk, seeds and backyard gardens — another week to flood the offices of U.S. Senators with calls, faxes and emails that express opposition to the bill.
The jury is still out on the Tester-Hagan Amendment which would exempt small farmers from some of the more tyrannical requirements under the law. If this amendment were adopted, it would substantially improve the bill, but even with this amendment, the bill is just another overreaching expansion of Big Government into yet another area of incompetence. (If the government can’t run health care worth a darn, how are they supposed to manage the entire food supply?)
The 1099 paperwork amendment
As part of this debate over the safety of the food supply, Sen Mike Johanns is making a courageous attempt to kill the new, idiotic 1099 reporting requirement that would require every person running a small business in America to get 1099 forms from Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Costco, Amazon.com or any other retailer where they’ve spent over $600 in the previous year.
This absolute nightmare of 1099 paperwork was passed as part of the Obamacare health care reform legislation earlier this year (http://www.naturalnews.com/028854_1…). It will turn America’s small business owners into paperwork pack rats and criminalize anyone who doesn’t spent several hundred hours a year chasing 1099 forms from corporations that are almost certain to refuse to give them to you. This is the government’s way of penalizing small business owners in America and killing off yet more jobs as a way to destroy the economy.
This 1099 recall is the only real positive thing being considered in the Food Safety and Modernization Act. And as you’ve probably noticed, it has nothing to do with food.
This is unconstitutional and violates your basic human right to grow your own food!
This is treason!
“The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion…. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Your help is needed to halt the tyrannical new “S.510” U.S. Senate bill that could criminalize saving seeds and outlaw backyard garden food production. It is being called “the most dangerous bill in the history of the United States of America.”
(NaturalNews) Senate Bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, has been called “the most dangerous bill in the history of the United States of America.” It would grant the U.S. government new authority over the public’s right to grow, trade and transport any foods. This would give Big brother the power to regulate the tomato plants in your backyard. It would grant them the power to arrest and imprison people selling cucumbers at farmer’s markets. It would criminalize the transporting of organic produce if you don’t comply with the authoritarian rules of the federal government.
“It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.” – Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower (http://shivchopra.com/?page_id=2)
This tyrannical law puts all food production (yes, even food produced in your own garden) under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security. Yep — the very same people running the TSA and its naked body scanner / passenger groping programs.
This law would also give the U.S. government the power to arrest any backyard food producer as a felon (a “smuggler”) for merely growing lettuce and selling it at a local farmer’s market.
It also sells out U.S. sovereignty over our own food supply by ceding to the authority of both the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Codex Alimentarius.
It would criminalize seed saving (http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/20…), turning backyard gardeners who save heirloom seeds into common criminals. This is obviously designed to give corporations like Monsanto a monopoly over seeds.
It would create an unreasonable paperwork burden that would put small food producers out of business, resulting in more power over the food supply shifting to large multinational corporations.
I encourage you to read more about this dangerous bill at the Food Freedom blog on WordPress: http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/20…
S.510 in more detail:
In addition, the Cornucopia Institute recently sent out an urgent call-to-action email containing the following information: (http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/11/a…)
1) Go to Congress.org and type in your zip code in the box in the upper right hand corner.
2) Click on your Senator’s name, and then on the contact tab for their phone number. You can also call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Senator’s office: 202-224-3121.
3) Once connected ask to speak to the legislative staff person responsible for agriculture. If they are unavailable leave a voice mail message. Be sure to include your name and phone number.
Give them this message in support of the “Tester Amendment” which would exempt small farms from S.510:
“I am a constituent of Senator___________. I ask that he/she support the Tester Amendment to the food safety bill. The Tester Amendment will exempt the safest, small, owner-operator farms and food facilities and farmers who direct market their products to consumers, stores or restaurants. Food safety legislation should not create inappropriate and costly regulatory barriers to family farms and the growing healthy food movement in the drive to crack down on corporate bad actors. Please support the Tester Amendment and market opportunities for small and mid-sized family farms, and small food processing facilities.”
You may also wish to explain that you oppose the Food Safety Modernization Act in its entirety, and it is a destructive, freedom-crushing law that will destroy the future of food in America.
Remember, America has already lost control over its money supply to the Federal Reserve (nearly a hundred years ago). America has lost its health due to the medical industry and its profit-from-sickness agenda. Now we may lose our right to grow our own food and save our own seeds if Senate Bill 510 passes.
This is a dangerous, tyrannical law that would thrust the American people into an age of darkness and malnutrition. It would criminalize many of the very people growing our food and turn food production into yet another corporate monopoly.
Please take the time right now to contact your U.S. Senator and voice your strong opposition to this bill.
Law enforcement agencies are digging deep into the social media accounts of applicants, requesting that candidates sign waivers allowing investigators access to their Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and other personal spaces.
Some agencies are demanding that applicants provide private passwords, Internet pseudonyms, text messages and e-mail logs as part of an expanding vetting process for public safety jobs.
More than a third of police agencies review applicants’ social media activity during background checks, according to the first report on agencies’ social media use by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the largest group of police executives. The report out last month surveyed 728 agencies.
“As more and more people join these networks, their activities on these sites become an intrinsic part of any background check we do,” said Laurel, Md., Police Chief David Crawford.
Privacy advocates say some background investigations, including requests for text message and e-mail logs, may go too far.
“I’m very uneasy about this,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Where does it all stop?”
Emails and mobile phone text messages would be stored for six months by internet service providers (ISPs), according to a bill presented by the Swedish government on Thursday to bring the country in line with EU dataretention rules.
Critics have come down hard on the proposal, which would compel telephone and broadband providers to retain electronic data for six months, the shortest possible time in accordance with EU directives.
Justice Minister Beatrice Ask explained that the bill is concerned about privacy when she presented the legislative proposal on Thursday.
“The proposal means that the information can only be disclosed for crime-fighting purposes,” Ask said a news conference.
The government has proposed that the law come into force on July 1st, 2011. It is part of the introduction of the disputed EU Data Retention Directive.
The directive would force member states to legislate the storage of telephone calls, text messages, email and other internet traffic. The aim is to prevent and solve crimes.
The Data Retention Directive has been severely criticised by those who believe that such rules restrict privacy protection and create a surveillance society.
Leaves fall on the grounds of the Supreme Court of Canada this week in Ottawa. The court ruled Friday that Canadians do not have the right to have a lawyer present during questioning as Americans do under the Miranda rule.
OTTAWA—The American Miranda rule that gives a suspect the right to have a lawyer present during questioning has no place here, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday.
In three related decisions, a sharply divided court fine-tuned the rules on suspects’ right to counsel.
In the main case, the justices ruled 5-4 that the Charter of Rights does not confer a right to have a lawyer present during interrogation.
As an antiterror measure, the US government has deployed mobile X-ray technology to randomly scan cars and trucks. But the measure is riling privacy proponents.
Using the Z Backscatter Van, officials detected drugs hidden in the body of this pickup truck. Business Wire/File
For many living in a terror-spooked country, it might seem like a great government innovation: Use vans equipped with mobile X-ray units to scan vehicles at major sporting events, or even randomly, for bombs or contraband.
But news that the US is buying custom-made vans packed with something called backscatter X-ray capacity has riled privacy advocates and sparked internet worries about “feds radiating Americans.”
“This really trips up the creep factor because it’s one of those things that you sort of intrinsically think the government shouldn’t be doing,” says Vermont-based privacy expert Frederick Lane, author of “American Privacy.” “But, legally, the issue is the boundary between the government’s legitimate security interest and privacy expectations we enjoy in our cars.”
American Science & Engineering, a Billerica, Mass.-company, tells Forbes it’s sold more than 500 ZBVs, or Z Backscatter Vans, to US and foreign governments. The Department of Defense has bought the most for war zone use, but US law enforcement has also deployed the vans to search for bombs inside the US, according to Joe Reiss, a company spokesman, as quoted by Forbes.
On Tuesday, a counterterror operation snarled truck traffic on I-20 near Atlanta, where Department of Homeland Security teams used mobile X-ray technology to check the contents of truck trailers. Authorities said the inspections weren’t prompted by any specific threat.
The mobile X-ray technology works by bouncing narrow X-ray streams off an object like a car and then analyzing the scatter rate of the returning rays. Operators can then locate less-dense objects that could be bodies or bombs.
Backscatter X-ray is already part of an ongoing national debate about its use in so-called full body scanners being deployed in many US airports.
In that case, US officials have said they will not store or share the images and will use masking technology to avoid revealing details of the human body.
At this point, I didn’t believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki’s father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims. That’s not surprising: both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality. But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”: in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.
A very intense case of food poisoning in New York on Thursday, combined with my traveling home all night last night, prevents me from writing much about this until tomorrow (and it’s what rendered the blog uncharacteristically silent for the last two days). But I would hope that nobody needs me or anyone else to explain why this assertion of power is so pernicious — at least as pernicious as any power asserted during the Bush/Cheney years. If the President has the power to order American citizens killed with no due process, and to do so in such complete secrecy that no courts can even review his decisions, then what doesn’t he have the power to do? Just for the moment, I’ll note that The New York Times‘ Charlie Savage, two weeks ago, wrote about the possibility that Obama might raise this argument, and quoted the far-right, Bush-supporting, executive-power-revering lawyer David Rivkin as follows:
The government’s increasing use of the state secrets doctrine to shield its actions from judicial review has been contentious. Some officials have argued that invoking it in the Awlaki matter, about which so much is already public, would risk a backlash. David Rivkin, a lawyer in the White House of President George H. W. Bush, echoed that concern.
“I’m a huge fan of executive power, but if someone came up to you and said the government wants to target you and you can’t even talk about it in court to try to stop it, that’s too harsh even for me,” he said.
Having debated him before, I genuinely didn’t think it was possible for any President to concoct an assertion of executive power and secrecy that would be excessive and alarming to David Rivkin, but Barack Obama managed to do that, too. Obama’s now asserting a power so radical — the right to kill American citizens and do so in total secrecy, beyond even the reach of the courts — that it’s “too harsh even for” one of the most far-right War on Terror cheerleading-lawyers in the nation. But that power is certainly not “too harsh” for the kind-hearted Constitutional Scholar we elected as President, nor for his hordes of all-justifying supporters soon to place themselves to the right of David Rivkin as they explain why this is all perfectly justified. One other thing, as always: vote Democrat, because the Republicans are scary!
* * * * *
The same Post article quotes a DOJ spokesman as saying that Awlaki “should surrender to American authorities and return to the United States, where he will be held accountable for his actions.” But he’s not been charged with any crimes, let alone indicted for any. The President has been trying to kill him for the entire year without any of that due process. And now the President refuses even to account to an American court for those efforts to kill this American citizen on the ground that the President’s unilateral imposition of the death penalty is a “state secret.” And, indeed, American courts — at Obama’s urging — have been upholding that sort of a “state secrecy” claim even when it comes to war crimes such as torture and rendition. Does that sound like a political system to which any sane, rational person would “surrender”?
Marcy Wheeler has more on other aspects of the DOJ’s arguments, and I’ll have more tomorrow as well.
UPDATE: As a reminder: Obama supporters who are dutifully insisting that the President not only has the right to order American citizens killed without due process, but to do so in total secrecy, on the ground that Awlaki is a Terrorist and Traitor, are embracing those accusations without having the slightest idea whether they’re actually true. All they know is that Obama has issued these accusations, which is good enough for them. That’s the authoritarian mind, by definition: if the Leader accuses a fellow citizen of something, then it’s true — no trial or any due process at all is needed and there is no need even for judicial review before the decreed sentence is meted out, even when the sentence is death.
For those reciting the “Awlaki-is-a-traitor” mantra, there’s also the apparently irrelevant matter that Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution (the document which these same Obama supporters pretended to care about during the Bush years) provides that “No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.” Treason is a crime that the Constitution specifically requires be proven with due process in court, not by unilateral presidential decree. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that the same document — the Constitution — expressly forbids the deprivation of life “without due process of law.” This one sentence from the Post article nicely summarizes the state of Obama’s civil liberties record:
The Obama administration has cited the state-secrets argument in at least three cases since taking office – in defense of Bush-era warrantless wiretapping, surveillance of an Islamic charity, and the torture and rendition of CIA prisoners.
And now, in this case, Obama uses this secrecy and immunity weapon not to shield Bush lawlessness from judicial review, but his own.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Now we know what Homeland Security (sic) Secretary Janet Napolitano meant when she said on September 10: “The old view that ‘if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won’t have to fight them here’ is just that-the old view.” The new view, Napolitano said, is “to counter violent extremism right here at home.”
“Violent extremism” is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning’s FBI’s foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience, it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with “the material support of terrorism,” just as conservatives equated Vietnam era anti-war protesters with giving material support to communism.
Anti-war activist Mick Kelly, whose home was raided, sees the FBI raids as harassment to intimidate those who organize war protests.
I wonder if Kelly is under-estimating the threat. The FBI’s own words clearly indicate that the federal police agency and the judges who signed the warrants do not regard antiwar protesters as Americans exercising their Constitutional rights, but as unpatriotic elements offering material support to terrorism.
“Material support” is another of those undefined police state terms. In this context the term means that Americans who fail to believe their government’s lies and instead protest its policies, are supporting their government’s declared enemies and, thus, are not exercising their civil liberties but committing treason.
As this initial FBI foray is a softening-up move to get the public accustomed to the idea that the real terrorists are their fellow citizens here at home, Kelly will get off this time. But next time the FBI will find emails on his computer from a “terrorist group” set up by the CIA that will incriminate him.
Under the practices put in place by the Bush and Obama regimes, and approved by corrupt federal judges, protesters who have been compromised by fake terrorist groups can be declared “enemy combatants” and sent off to Egypt, Poland, or some other corrupt American puppet state-Canada perhaps-to be tortured until confession is forthcoming that antiwar protesters and, indeed, every critic of the US government, are on Osama bin Laden’s payroll.
“The information contained on this site is accurate and the information placed on this site has been taken from official documents, videotapes, police files, minutes of meetings, auditors reports, financial statements, Annual reports, press files, media files, correspondences and much more.
I welcome Chief Hanson and any of the individuals named on this site to refute what is being posted. In fact I will go so far as to challenge them directly to refute and or deny what is being posted on this site, and to provide any evidence to the contrary.”
Why did the Calgary Herald not mention the name of John Kelly’s website or give a link to it in this article?
John Kelly, 53, accused of interfering with homicide investigation
Posting critical comments about Calgary officers on a personal website goes beyond free speech, the police chief says.
John Kelly, 53, is accused of interfering with an active homicide investigation and was charged with four counts of libel and obstruction of justice after he allegedly posed as a paralegal and approached the mother of a 2003 homicide victim saying he could help her sue police.
Calgary RCMP started their investigation after being contacted about the case by Calgary’s chief of police.
“In my 29 years, I’ve never heard of an individual being charged under the Criminal Code for libel charges, defamation of character,” said RCMP Supt. Randy McGinnis.
While libel itself is not rare, it is usually handled in civil court, not criminal.
Police Chief Rick Hanson said the rarity of the criminal libel charge speaks to the seriousness of the allegations.
“There are occasions when free speech does cross over and can cross over to where it’s criminal in nature, and that’s where the investigation has to take a look,” Hanson told reporters Friday.
“There’s a world of difference between the civil world and the criminal world. The RCMP and the Crown clearly felt in reviewing the facts that criminal charges were warranted.”
The lengthy ordeal and investigation took a toll on many officers who were named on the website, said Hanson.
“If you’re in policing, it’s not unusual to be the subject of criticism, that’s just the way it is. That’s something that a police officer gets used to. Most officers have a pretty thick skin,” the chief said.
“But when things transition over to where certain actions can be perceived as being criminal and there’s an investigation that leads to charges like that, that’s an entirely different thing than just being criticized.”
The website in question is still running. RCMP have no jurisdiction and can only ask the New York based Internet provider to take it down.
What makes Kelly’s site libellous, said McGinnis, are the false allegations made against two city homicide investigators.
Calgary police spokesman Kevin Brookwell said there are many websites and blogs that are critical of police and he said police don’t have a problem with people expressing their views online.
Brookwell said this website was different because it interfered with an active police investigation.
At his first court appearance Friday, Kelly’s wife said her husband would decline comment to media.
Kelly was released on several conditions, including not having contact with numerous police officers and not adding to his website.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Chuck Norris is no pinko-liberal-commie, and Human Events is a very conservative publication. The two have come together to produce an important article, “Obama’s US Assassination Program.”
It seems only yesterday that Americans, or those interested in their civil liberties, were shocked that the Bush regime so flagrantly violated the FlSA law against spying on American citizens without a warrant. A federal judge serving on the FISA court even resigned in protest to the illegality of the spying.
Nothing was done about it. “National security” placed the president and executive branch above the law of the land. Civil libertarians worried that the US government was freeing its power from the constraints of law, but no one else seemed to care.
Encouraged by its success in breaking the law, the executive branch early this year announced that the Obama regime has given itself the right to murder Americans abroad if such Americans are considered a “threat.” “Threat” was not defined and, thus, a death sentence would be issued by a subjective decision of an unaccountable official.
There was hardly a peep out of the public or the media. Americans and the media were content for the government to summarily execute traitors and turncoats, and who better to identify traitors and turncoats than the government with all its spy programs.
“… the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.”
Learn to read Sonia Sotomayor! Then start reading the constitution.
US supreme court likely to have to rule on issue of balancing national security and freedom of speech, says judge
Sonia Sotomayor described the balance between national security and free speech as ‘a constant struggle in this society’. Photograph: Ed Andrieski/AP
US supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor has said the court is likely to have to rule on the issue of balancing national security and freedom of speech due to WikiLeaks posting a cache of US military records about the Afghan war.
Sotomayor said the incident, which has been condemned by the Pentagon, was likely to provoke legislation in Congress that would require judicial scrutiny.
Her comments came in response to a question about security and free speech by a student at Denver university. The judge said she could not answer because “that question is very likely to come before me”. She said the “incident, and others, are going to provoke legislation that’s already being discussed in Congress, and so some of it is going to come up before [the supreme court]”.
WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the Afghan war on its website last month, providing a devastating portrait of the war. They revealed how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents and how Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.
The publication of the files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, was one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The Pentagon has said the leak put the lives of US service personnel and Afghan informants at risk – a charge WikiLeaks denies.
Sotomayor said the balance between national security and free speech is “a constant struggle in this society, between our security needs and our first amendment rights, and one that has existed throughout our history.”
(Dictators and elite criminals do struggle with the constitution. That was the intent!!!)
Tea Party Patriots demonstrate against healthcare reform (Photo: EPA)
The Battle of Obama’s Healthcare is looking to go down in history as a major confrontation between the power of federal government and the self-determination of individual states. And that eternal tension between what used to be called state’s rights and the coercive inclinations of federal authority has been at the heart of the most momentous struggles in national history – not least the civil war which tested the strength of the Union to breaking point.
Barack Obama’s health reforms have been challenged by a startlingly successful rebellion in Missouri. A state ballot referendum on Proposition C which prohibited federal government from requiring people to buy health insurance or from penalising them if they did not, was carried by a majority of 71 per cent. (Making health insurance compulsory is one of the fundamental tenets of Obamacare.) The actual constitutional basis for this challenge may seem technical in British terms: it centres on the point that there should be no federal compulsion forcing people to engage in inter-state commerce (ie buying things across state lines).
But in fact, the basic principle would be easily recognisable (and probably equally contentious) here. The new healthcare system makes it legally mandatory to purchase a particular kind of commercial product. This is not utterly without precedent, of course. You are at the moment legally required to have third party car insurance if you own a car. But that is the important difference: you are free to choose whether or not to own a car. As one political opponent of Obamacare put it, this is the first time that people would be forced to buy something simply by virtue of being alive. That is a form of state coercion that, particularly, in the US seems bizarrely autocratic and profoundly alien to the spirit of the Constitution.
The state of Virginia can continue its lawsuit to stop the nation’s new health care law from taking effect, a federal judge ruled Monday.
U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson said he is allowing the suit against the U.S. government to proceed, saying no court has ever ruled on whether it’s constitutional to require Americans to purchase a product.
“While this case raises a host of complex constitutional issues, all seem to distill to the single question of whether or not Congress has the power to regulate — and tax — a citizen’s decision not to participate in interstate commerce,” Hudson wrote in a 32-page decision.
“Given the presence of some authority arguably supporting the theory underlying each side’s position, this court cannot conclude at this stage that the complaint fails to state a cause of action,” he wrote.
The decision is a small step, but in no way a minor matter to opponents of the health care bill rejected by all congressional Republicans but signed into law by President Obama earlier this year.
“This lawsuit is not about health care, it’s about our freedom and about standing up and calling on the federal government to follow the ultimate law of the land — the Constitution,” said Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who brought the suit. “The government cannot draft an unwilling citizen into commerce just so it can regulate him under the Commerce Clause.”
“Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has brought forward a specific and narrowly tailored objection to the Act. It warrants a full and thorough hearing in our courts. It is meritorious and constitutionally correct. … I look forward to the full hearing this fall,” said Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
Cuccinelli filed the suit almost immediately after the law was signed, arguing that it conflicts with Virginia’s legislation — also passed this year — exempting state residents from the requirement that all Americans be forced into health care coverage. Cuccinelli argued that the law violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.
The Commerce Clause allows the U.S. government to regulate economic activity. But Virginia argued that it’s not economic activity when someone chooses to refrain from participating in commerce.
New powers: Police officers from European countries could soon be able to spy on and arrest Britons in the UK
Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.
Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons.
They will be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples.
Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers.
The move will spark a damaging row with backbench Tory MPs opposed to giving such draconian powers to Brussels.
The Tories were opposed to the directive in opposition, saying it showed a ‘relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties’.
But ministers have made a dramatic U-turn since joining the pro-EU Lib Dems in government, and the wide-ranging powers are due to be approved later this week.
According to the campaign group Fair Trials International, under the new rules it would be possible, for example, for Spanish police investigating a murder in a nightclub to demand the ID of every British citizen who flew to the country in the month the offence took place.
They could also force the UK to search its DNA database – which contains nearly one million innocent people – and send samples belonging to anybody who was in Spain at the time.
Prosecutions Draw Attention to Influence of Witness Videos
In early April, state police officers raided Graber’s parents’ home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent.
That Anthony Graber broke the law in early March is indisputable. He raced his Honda motorcycle down Interstate 95 in Maryland at 80 mph, popping a wheelie, roaring past cars and swerving across traffic lanes.
Anthony Graber was arrested for posting a video of his traffic stop on YouTube.
But it wasn’t his daredevil stunt that has the 25-year-old staff sergeant for the Maryland Air National Guard facing the possibility of 16 years in prison. For that, he was issued a speeding ticket. It was the video that Graber posted on YouTube one week later — taken with his helmet camera — of a plainclothes state trooper cutting him off and drawing a gun during the traffic stop near Baltimore.
In early April, state police officers raided Graber’s parents’ home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent.
Arrests such as Graber’s are becoming more common along with the proliferation of portable video cameras and cell-phone recorders. Videos of alleged police misconduct have become hot items on the Internet. YouTube still features Graber’s encounter along with numerous other witness videos. “The message is clearly, ‘Don’t criticize the police,'” said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland who is part of Graber’s defense team. “With these charges, anyone who would even think to record the police is now justifiably in fear that they will also be criminally charged.”
Carlos Miller, a Miami journalist who runs the blog “Photography Is Not a Crime,” said he has documented about 10 arrests since he started keeping track in 2007. Miller himself has been arrested twice for photographing the police. He won one case on appeal, he said, while the other was thrown out after the officer twice failed to appear in court.
“They’re just regular citizens with a cell-phone camera who happen to come upon a situation,” Miller said. “If cops are doing their jobs, they shouldn’t worry.”
The ACLU of Florida filed a First Amendment lawsuit last month on behalf of a model who was arrested February 2009 in Boynton Beach. Fla. Her crime: videotaping an encounter between police officers and her teenage son at a movie theater. Prosecutors refused to file charges against Sharron Tasha Ford and her son.
Journalists are being fired for saying what they think while politicians on the Left and Right are being allowed to get away without being questioned
Octavia Nasr, senior editor of Middle East affairs at CNN, is leaving the US television news network after praising the late Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah on Twitter (AFP/Getty Images)
Freedom of speech may be part of the United States Constitution but perhaps the First Amendment that enshrines it could do with a caveat or two being added.
Congress may make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”, the Bill of Rights lays down. That still holds true but, increasingly, speaking freely can get you fired or tarred for life.
Even more ominously, the internet and the increased ease of free communication is allowing the cannier politicians to escape scrutiny rather than be held to account.
Ironically, it is the mainstream media itself that is on the attack against press freedom. Last week, Octavia Nasr, a Lebanese Christian who was CNN’s Senior Editor for Arab Affairs, was summarily fired after 20 years for tweeting that she was “sad” about the death of Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, describing him as “one of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot”.
We can debate the wisdom of that statement and question whether respect was what Fadlallah, who praised Palestinian “martyrdom operations” and was acclaimed as the spiritual leader of a group whose hands are drenched in blood, really deserved.
But Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government and Nasr’s sentiments are shared by millions in the Middle East. Her opinion was considerably milder than the gushing praise for Fadlallah from the British ambassador to Lebanon. Firing her for expressing it was boneheaded and killed any chance of intelligent discussion.
Dave Weigel, a Washington Post blogger, has also found himself out of a job after his colourful venting about conservatives in a private email group was maliciously leaked. Now, even the private opinions of journalists are grounds for dismissal? Reporters have to blog and tweet and show edge and attitude and be controversial – except when it becomes uncomfortable.
General Stanley McChrystal, a legendary Special Forces officer and the man who President Barack Obama had chosen to win the war in Afghanistan, is now spending his time on long walks in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
Why? Because of the idiotic utterances of some of his junior aides when they got stuck in Paris within earshot of a Rolling Stone reporter who wanted to make a name for himself.
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