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Bill Aims to Revoke Citizenship for Turncoats
Thursday, October 24, 2002 - Fox News

WASHINGTON � In the wake of the John Walker Lindh case, a Georgia congressman is introducing legislation that would make it easier to strip U.S. citizenship from turncoats. "Why should he have the right of retaining his citizenship when other people have lost their lives?" asked Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., the author of the No Citizenship for Terrorists Act, which was introduced in the House early this month. Currently, the law makes it virtually impossible to revoke citizenship without the individual�s consent. Lindh, who pled guilty for aiding Taliban forces in Afghanistan before and during the U.S. invasion last October, is serving a 20-year sentence in prison. "The only way John Walker Lindh could lose his citizenship under existing laws is for him to say, �When I took up arms against you, I had the intent of losing my citizenship.�" But one scholar says that�s what the U.S. Constitution intends. In previous years, the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned efforts to revoke citizenship for offenses ranging from draft evasion to voting in foreign elections. "Those decisions said that citizenship is a right given by the Constitution itself -- that the 14th Amendment defines who a citizen is and it�s really not within the power of the Congress to take that away," said Emory Law professor Robert Schapiro.

"The 14th Amendment was intended to take the rights of citizenship out of the hands of politicians," Schapiro added. "But in this age of terror, some say America should be able to cast out its citizens who turn on their own country." Johnny Spann, the father of Johnny Mike Spann, the CIA agent killed in the Nov. 25 Taliban prisoner uprising to which Lindh was witness, holds that belief. "We�ve just basically turned him loose," said Spann, referring to Lindh. "In 20 years, he�ll be a free man and at 42, he can start another life."

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 6:09 AM

 

Patriot Act causes libraries to review records
By Dana Hull
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

Attached to each staff phone in the Berkeley Public Library is a dark pink laminated card advising employees on how to handle subpoenas.

"If a person comes to you to serve a subpoena on the library, say that you are not in a position to act on it," the card reads. "Do not attempt to give them the information they are looking for."

Librarians in Berkeley and across the country are increasingly concerned that federal agents will use the USA Patriot Act -- an anti-terrorism bill signed nearly a year ago -- to demand patron circulation records and Internet logs. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee released the Justice Department's answers to a series of questions about the Patriot Act, including how many times federal investigators have obtained records from public libraries and bookstores. But the Justice Department declined to provide many details, saying the information is classified. FBI agents seized two computers from a Delray Beach, Fla., library because some of the Sept. 11 hijackers are believed to have used public computers to communicate. "I believe in privacy, but if we know that someone has committed a crime, we're not going to sit by and not say anything," said Kathleen Hensman, a reference librarian who remembers talking to the hijackers in the summer of 2001. "I would do it again, Patriot Act or not."

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 4:14 AM

 

The Ugly Truth About the Republican Party:
The Myth of GOP Conservatism
by Kevin Tuma


"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."
--Thomas Jefferson

"Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil."
---Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

As a paleoconservative, I find myself these days looking back at the Clinton Administration with a sort of warm, golden nostalgia. Much has changed since those days...and not for the better.
To anyone with even a basic understanding and respect for the Bill of Rights, the United States, since September 11, 2001, has begun a nightmarish descent. To put it simply, the Bush White House has put the Constitution on the chopping block in ways the Clintons would have never dared to attempt.

The US public---naive and obedient as always--blithely sucked up the maudlin flag-waving and crocodile tears that accompanied the passage of the Patriot Act and the Office of Homeland Security. Authorities can now invade homes without warrants, arrest people without charges, and jail people without trials.

The Feds have declared Posse Comitatus obsolete, and they are creating hordes of military police to be unleashed upon the country. A new branch of the military is now on the drawing board, to deal with "domestic threats"--i.e., common American citizens. Despite the fact that we are not at war, the government continues to hold hundreds of military prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and apparently will deal with them using military tribunals. People in the Press continue their ongoing demonstration that there's no lie the Federal government can tell that they are willing to expose, and no usurpation of power that they will ever find objectionable. Even the United States' 'shadow government' has been openly discussed--and no one dares to criticize the concept. Orwellian newspeak abounds.

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 1:44 PM

 

http://www.libertyforall.net/tuma3.html

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 1:23 PM

 

U.S. plans for martial law, tele-governance, suspension of elections
(John Stanton and Wayne Madsen, OnlineJournal.com, May 16, 2002)
The U.S. government and its military and corporate officials are fond of making the pitch to the American public that the U.S. Constitution mandates that their survival, above all others, is absolutely necessary to ensure that the government that emanates from that document survives a debilitating attack. It is astonishing that the American public believes such absurdities. . . . Undoubtedly, government and military planners�and their think tanks�have discussed attack scenarios that include the institution of a federal government tele-governing operation. Members of the U.S. Congress, Supreme Court justices, and the president and his cabinet could easily debate, vote, set policy, render legal decisions via encrypted communications lines, from the comfort of their protective bunkers, home shelters, and command posts on land, sea, and air. In the eventuality of nationwide martial law, these individuals, based on their cowardly performance on 911, would no doubt prefer the safe confines of Hitleresque bunkers. Such was the case on September 11 . . . The American public fell for this act from a "government" whose inserted president and appointees are the wealthiest Americans ever to oversee a US populace. And as the wealthiest and most corrupt person ever to occupy the White House uttered his inanities, "average people" were taking care of their post-attack communities in Arlington and New York City. As they suffered, the so-called civilian and military "leaders" ducked and covered in a classic CYA move. . . . The U.S. government has used martial law on numerous occasions, most often to quell domestic disturbances in specific locations around the country. . . . Martial law . . . destroys every guarantee of the Constitution and effectually renders the military independent of an superior to the civil power . . . In 2002, with the U.S. Supreme Court nothing more than a useful machination of the Bush regime, it seems likely that if Americans become subjected to a Bush declaration of martial law, any challenge to it would fail miserably. With that thought in mind, its useful to note that the Bush crowd has had plenty of experience with martial law and states-of-emergency. . . . Oliver North, came up with a secret plan, along with the fascist-oriented Federal Emergency Management Agency (the key-masters for the doors to the bunkers), to declare martial law in the event of a "national crisis," including "violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad." . . . The Bush family has managed to involve the United States in two wars; two invasions in Latin America, one that resulted in the fiery deaths of thousands of poor Panamanian barrio residents and another that resulted in the Bay of Pigs fiasco; aiding and abetting through murky financial investments America's Teutonic enemy in the last world war; corrupting the U.S. presidential election process; and making the wealthiest Americans and U.S. corporations richer while at the same cutting federal health, education, and welfare budgets and offloading those tasks to the overburdened states. . . . One incident, one aircraft hijacked, a "dirty nuke" set off in a small town, may well prompt the Bush regime, let's say during the election campaign of 2003�2004, to suspend national elections for a year while his government ensures stability. . . . In the event of martial law, draconian censorship laws would be implemented. Even now, the Patriot Act grants authority to obtain an order from the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court requiring any person or business to produce "any books, records, documents, or items." That law would undoubtedly be extended to encompass the Internet as well. It should be of little wonder why the Pentagon has brought Iran-contra felon Admiral John Poindexter back from retirement to head the Office of Information Awareness. Coupled with the Office of Information Exploitation, Poindexter's office is seeking ways to identify, block, and determine the sources of seditious material posted on the Internet. Blocked web sites, confiscated computers and servers, and the arrest of non-conforming web site managers would become the rule of the day. . . . The United States was founded by political sages like Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin. It will ultimately see its demise as a democracy through the likes of Bush II, his father, and the Trent Lotts and Dick Armeys that pervade the American body politic.

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 5:01 PM