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Obama’s Military Is Spying on U.S. Peace Groups

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 28 (News Report) - Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard. The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s.

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Bush Spying Relied on Faulty Theories

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Jason Leopold - Jul. 12 (News) - George W. Bush justified his warrantless wiretapping by relying on Justice Department attorney John Yoo’s theories of unlimited presidential wartime powers, and started the spying operation even before Yoo issued a formal opinion, a government investigation discovered.

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Stripping Away Free Expression: A Pennsylvania town tries—and fails—to ban a form of exercise.

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reason Magazine - By Shawn Macomber - Jun. 27 (Special Report) - Despite its cheeky name, the city of Mars isn’t always amenable to cultural efforts perceived as alien. The “pink-and-black color scheme of Ms. Babines’ website and the high-heeled shoe in her logo” were enough, according to court documents, to convince Code Enforcement Officer Gary Peaco to protect the community from these exercise classes.

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Dr. George Tiller (1941-2009): Murdered Abortion Provider Remembered for Lifelong Dedication to Women's Reproductive Health

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Dr. George Tiller, Ellie Smeal,Bonnie Scott Jones,Dr. Susan Robinson,Dr. Shelley Sella,Laura Shaneyfelt,AMY GOODMAN - Jun. 01 (Special Report) - The suspect, fifty-one-year-old Scott Roeder, has a history of involvement in anti-abortion activism and was once arrested and jailed on explosives charges. He has ties to the right-wing separatist group known as the Freemen. We look at the life of Dr. Tiller with five women who worked alongside him to uphold reproductive rights: two women doctors who fly into Wichita every month to work alongside him performing abortions; two of the attorneys who defended him through years of legal harassment, one in Wichita and one in New York; and Ellie Smeal of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who knew him for twenty years.

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Human Rights Attorney Vince Warren: Obama's "Preventive Detention" Plan Goes Beyond Bush Admin Policies

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Vince Warren, Amy Goodman - May. 22 (News Analysis) - We get reaction to President Obama and Vice President Dick Cheney’s dueling speeches on torture from Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Warren took part in a secret meeting Wednesday between Obama and several human rights groups. Warren says although he welcomes Obama’s willingness to hear critical views, he’s disappointed in Obama’s new support for preventive detention.

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Analysis: Guns, “chukas,” and the states

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

SCOTUSblog - By Lyle Denniston - Apr. 23 (News Analysis) - “Second Amendment law,” a federal appeals court remarked earlier this week, “remains in its infancy.” But, only about a year after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on gun rights in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Justices could soon be faced with one of the most significant issues left undecided by Heller.

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Obama Administration Claims "Sovereign Immunity" in Attempt to Dismiss Lawsuit Against NSA over Domestic Surveillance

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman - Apr. 16 (News Analysis) - We speak to attorney and blogger Glenn Greenwald about how the Department of Justice has demanded the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation based on “state secrets” and “sovereign immunity.” Greenwald says the “sovereign immunity” claim is “of breathtaking scope—never before advanced even by the Bush administration—that the PATRIOT Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is ‘willful disclosure’ of the illegally intercepted communications.”

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Justice Dept. Whistleblower Defends Decision to Leak Bush Domestic Surveillance Program & Calls for Prosecution of Gov't Officials and Telecoms

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Thomas Tamm, Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 16 (News Analysis) - The New York Times is reporting the National Security Agency has been intercepting private email messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year. The Times is also reporting the NSA attempted to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip in 2005 or 2006. But the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the NSA to spy on a member of Congress.

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Colbert Torches Obama On Bagram Decision

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Colbert - Apr. 16 (News Analysis) - Colbert instead veered, giving major props to Obama's decision to appeal the recent court decision that granted habeas corpus rights to Bagram detainees. "He's just following the long-standing principle of American justice: guilty until proven forgotten about." "It's essentially the same stance taken by George Bush," Colbert added, "With one important difference: Obama makes the kids like it." Sad because it's funny because it's true.

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Obama Admin: CIA Officials Won't Be Prosecuted For Waterboarding

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jennifer Loven, Devlin Barrett - Apr. 16 (News Report) - Senior administration officials told The Associated Press that Attorney General Eric Holder will release a statement Thursday giving the first definitive assurance to the CIA officials that they are legally in the clear.

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Glenn Beck and the rise of Fox News' militia media

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media Matters - By Eric Boehlert - Apr. 07 (News Report) - Beck's sure "[d]epression and revolution" are what await America under Obama, and fears moving "towards a totalitarian state." The country today sometimes reminds Beck of "the early days of Adolf Hitler." Beck thinks that Obama, who has "surrounded himself by Marxists his whole life," is now "addicting this country to heroin -- the heroin that is government slavery."

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Senate Vacancies Should Be Filled by Special Elections, Common Cause Tells Congress

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Bob Edgar - Mar. 11 (News Report) - Common Cause President and CEO Bob Edgar testified Wednesday before a joint House and Senate Judiciary panel in support of a resolution proposing a constitutional amendment that would require that states hold elections to fill Senate vacancies.

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Lawmakers Debate Establishing "Truth Commission" on Bush Admin Torture, Rendition and Domestic Spying

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Michael Ratner, JUAN GONZALEZ, Amy Goodman - Mar. 05 (News Analysis) - On Capitol Hill, debate has begun over forming a truth commission to shed light on the Bush administration’s secret polices on detention, interrogation and domestic spying. A hearing on the issue was held Wednesday, two days after the Obama administration released a series of once-secret Bush administration Justice Department memos that authorized President Bush to deploy the military to carry out raids inside the United States. We speak to human rights attorney Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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How Close the Bush Bullet

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Mar. 04 (News Analysis) - it is now increasingly clear that President Bush and his top advisers viewed the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to implement a series of right-wing legal theories that secretly granted Bush unlimited power to act lawlessly and outside the traditional parameters of the U.S. Constitution.

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The Obama Code

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By George Lakoff - Mar. 02 (News Analysis) - The Obama Code is based on seven deep, insightful, and subtle intellectual moves. What President Obama has been attempting in his speeches is a return to the original frames of the Framers, reconstituting what it means to be an American, to be patriotic, to be a citizen and to share in both the sacrifices and the glories of our country. In seeking "bipartisan" support, he is looking beyond political affiliations to those who share those values on particular issues. In his economic plan, he is attempting to realign our economy with the moral missions of government: protection and empowerment for all.

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Our Enemy, the President

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The American Conservative - By Daniel McCarthy - Feb. 22 (News Analysis) - After eight years of George W. Bush, conservatives find themselves back at the beginning—that is, back at the beginning of the modern American Right, circa 1933. Once more the country is in a deep financial crisis (we don’t call them “depressions” anymore) for which Republicans have taken the blame. And again a pragmatic Democratic president, backed by majorities in both chambers of Congress, promises to spend us back to prosperity. After conceding the president virtually his every whim during the Bush years—with the occasional Harriet Miers-sized exception—conservatives have begun to rediscover the virtues of checks upon executive power.

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RNC Protesters Tried on Terrorism Charges Despite Acknowledgment They Didn't Commit Alleged Acts

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Luce Guillen-Givins, Joran Kushner - Feb. 18 (News Report) - Last September in St. Paul, Ramsey County prosecutors formally charged eight members of the group RNC Welcoming Committee with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism. The criminal complaints reportedly do not allege that any of the defendants personally engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. Instead, authorities are seeking to hold them responsible for acts committed by other individuals during the RNC’s opening days.

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NSA Spied on Journalists? Whistleblower Reveals Surveillance Target

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - By Olbermann, Russell Tice - Jan. 22 (News Report) - In an exclusive interview tonight on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," former NSA analyst Russell Tice says that the agency under the Bush administration secretly collected communications data on civilians, including journalists.

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Cheney Defends Waterboarding Order

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Jason Leopold - Dec. 24 (News Report) - Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners.

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U.S. Military Preparing for Domestic Disturbances

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

newsmax.com - By Jim Meyers - Dec. 23 (News Report) - The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warns that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”

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Cheney's Contempt for the Republic

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Dec. 22 (News Analysis) - Cheney’s description of a high-level bipartisan consensus on a program that ignored the clear legal requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act suggests that the threats to American liberties go deeper than simply the aggressive actions by the Bush administration.

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Voting Lines Stretch To Eight Hours

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Rachel Weiner - Nov. 03 (News Report) - Rachel Maddow discussed the long lines -- eight to ten hours in some places -- on MSNBC last night. While she admitted that images of people waiting hours to vote was inspiring, she reminded viewers that not everyone has the time to do it. Long lines, she argued, are a new kind of poll tax. Watch:

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Free Man Free Nation

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

freemanfreenation.org - By A Freeman - Oct. 14 (News Analysis) - An unconstitutional confederation of all the states and territories of the U.S.A. run by the American Bar Association, called The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which has overthrown the Republican form of government in its private legislative assemblies composed only of lawyers not elected by anyone. That unconstitutional confederation of states contrary to Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 1 has taken destructive control of two most fundamental rights of every man, woman and child, namely family and finance, by writing all the domestic relations, marriage and divorce code throughout all the states and in federal legislation, and by writing all the financial laws, rules and regulations basically titled "Uniform Commercial Code" ("UCC") which controls all the financial, securities, banking and credit-debt transactions. See An Unconstitutional Confederation of States and The Confederate States of America.

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Constitutional Minutia: The Vice Presidency

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TalkLeft - By Big Tent Democrat - Oct. 05 (News Analysis) - I submit that of the 3 people on the stage that night, Palin was the one who got it right on that question. Ifill had no idea what the issue was about and Biden was the one who got it just plain wrong. It is ridiculous that the Left and the Left allies in the Media tried to use this episode to attack Palin. For it was the Media and the Democratic candidate who embarrassed themselves in this episode, not Sarah Palin.

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OpEdNews » Seeing Through the Manufactured Crisis and What Might Come Next

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - By Colin Donoghue - Sep. 28 (News Analysis) - "This financial crisis is not caused simply by greed and uniformed consumers, as has become the Media's suggestion, it was manufactured, just like many previous financial emergencies of the past."

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