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What The Future Holds...
Want a peek at what the Bush mis-Administration is aiming for? The ACLU has posted a very scary flash segment for your enlightenment. Check it out here.
[COMMENT] *****This is NOT an endorsement of the ACLU by this blogger - but it is prescient.  Got your National Identification Number yet?*****

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 5:56 AM

 

Government Storm Troopers Arrest Anti-Bush Demonstrators
(Paul J. Nyden, BuzzFlash, July 14, 2004)
A worker with the Federal Emergency Management Agency who wore an anti-Bush T-shirt at the president's July Fourth rally in Charleston has been sent home to Texas. . . . Nicole Rank, who was working for FEMA in West Virginia, and her husband, Jeff, were removed from the Capitol grounds in handcuffs shortly before Bush's speech. The pair wore T-shirts with the message "Love America, Hate Bush." . . . The Ranks were ticketed for trespassing and released. They have been given summonses to appear in court, Charleston Police Lt. C.A. Vincent said Wednesday. . . . Rank was doing environmental work for FEMA, Fredenburg said. "Nicole was deployed here after the Memorial Day flooding. I knew her personally ... We are reservists and work for intermittent periods of time." . . . [COMMENT: Ah ha, not only were these good people anti-Bush, they are also pro-environment. Big Brother doesn't tolerate this kind of behavior you know.] . . . The White House coordinated the president’s visit to the state Capitol. Organizers described it as a presidential visit, not a political rally. State and federal funds were used to pay for the presidential visit. . . . Dozens of people who attended Sunday's event wore pro-Bush T-shirts and Bush-Cheney campaign buttons, some of which were sold on the Capitol grounds outside the security screening stations. . . . Those who attended Bush's speech were required to have tickets that were distributed by various employers in the area and by the office of Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. . . . Those who applied for tickets were required to supply their names, addresses, birth dates, birthplaces and Social Security numbers. . . . A two-page document given to ticket holders said they were prohibited from bringing certain items to the event, including: weapons, video-recording equipment, food, beverages, umbrellas, signs and banners. T-shirts, political buttons and lapel pins were not on the list of prohibited items. . . . Robert Bastress, a West Virginia University law professor who specializes in civil liberties, questions whether people like the Ranks can be legally prohibited from wearing anti-Bush shirts or buttons. . . . "Obviously, you have a right to engage in nondisruptive protest," he said. "If you were legally there, you cannot be asked to leave because of whatever message is on a button or a T-shirt or a hat." . . . He said key questions are "whether the [Bush speech] was a public forum, whether you were lawfully there and what was the manner in which you were engaging in your expression." . . . Event organizers could prohibit signs, designating a place where people could carry signs. "But they can’t make those decisions based on what the content of any sign says." . . . Bastress also said it makes no difference whether Sunday's event was an official presidential visit or a political rally. . . . "That area was open to anybody who had a ticket," he said. "Once you were lawfully in there, you were entitled to even-handed treatment."

[COMMENT: I wonder if the NYC police are going to arrest all 100,000 demonstrators at the Republican convention when they break out singing the new American anthem, I Only Wish That God Would Take Bush

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posted by LoZo 10:43 AM

 

Bush's War on the Bill of Rights
(Anthony Gregory, LewRockwell.com, May 14, 2004)
In my first LewRockwell.com article, "Are Current Bill of Rights Erosions Unprecedented?" I argued that the Bush administration's attacks on the Bill of Rights, egregious as they are, do indeed have their precedents in history. I never meant to defend Bush on this basis, but merely to give historical perspective. I stand by what I said. Bush, bad as he is, has not violated the Constitution any worse than Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon or Harry Truman, and not as badly as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, or Abraham Lincoln. Nevertheless, Bush did swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, and he has shirked that duty considerably. We should not hold him to the standard of past American tyrants, but rather to the finest of America's founding principles. It is useful, though perhaps depressing, to see the many ways in which president Bush has trashed the most noble and inspiring of all attempts to limit government through law, the Bill of Rights. Even as he advocates a new amendment to the Constitution to set national standards on marriage, the most important amendments already in place have each fallen prey to the ravages of his government.
[COMMENT] ***** What follows in the original article are the 10 Amendments of the Constitution and and explanation of how Bush the Lesser has thumbed his nose at them. They are more emphatic when seen as a whole rather than the piece by piece occurances over the past 3.5 years...*****

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posted by A Curmudgeon 6:08 PM

 

Attack on "Fahrenheit 911" documentary shows 'Constitution is on fire,' Libertarian says
NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
The attack on Michael Moore's new documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," shows that free speech has come under an unprecedented assault in America, thanks to the campaign finance law passed by Congress last year, says Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik. "The Constitution is on fire -- a fire that was set when Democrats and Republicans passed their so-called campaign finance reform law," says Badnarik, who was nominated by the party on May 30. "The attempt to gag Michael Moore demonstrates that McCain-Feingold was just an excuse to outlaw political criticism." The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is considering whether advertising for Moore's controversial new documentary, which is sharply critical of President Bush, can be banned as "electioneering communications." Under McCain-Feingold, corporate-paid radio or TV ads that identify a federal candidate are illegal to broadcast within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Since Moore has publicly stated that his goal is to help defeat Bush, Democrats and Republicans are waging partisan warfare over "Fahrenheit 9/11." But Badnarik -- who teaches classes on the Constitution -- says a much larger issue is at stake: Every American's freedom of speech. "The truth is that Democrats and Republicans committed a bipartisan crime against the First Amendment when they passed the McCain-Feingold law," according to Badnarik. "This law allows politicians to determine what their critics can say, when they can say it and how much they can spend in the process -- which is exactly what's not supposed to happen in a free country." Noting that the First Amendment clearly states that 'Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom speech,' Badnarik asked: "What part of the words 'no law' doesn't the government understand? The First Amendment doesn't contain exceptions for advertisements that might offend the president or cost him his job -- and it certainly doesn't authorize federal movie police. "Empowering a government agency to ban movie ads might be expected in the former Soviet Union, Cuba, China, or Iraq -- but not in the United States. Every American should stand up for Michael Moore's right to advertise 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' regardless of how they feel about George Bush."
[COMMENT] ****** My contention is that not enough people are paying attention to this. The Limbaughs and O'Reillys are blind to the loss of our freedoms, freedoms for which we have fought at high cost to attain and retain. But now, for political bias, the powers have decided that they know best for us and what they have decided is that they want to stay in power and the best way to do that is to outlaw political criticism. Shame on us - because we have allowed this to happen on our watch. Can we now honestly look our children in the eye and say we've left our country to you better than when we took control? I think not. But, that's just this old Curmudgeon's opinion... *****

. . . Read more!

posted by A Curmudgeon 5:15 PM

 

Wiretap Ruling Could Signal End of E-Mail Privacy
(Matt Hicks, eWeek, July 1, 2004)
A federal appeals court ruling this week has put a spotlight on the increasingly public nature of e-mail messages and has unraveled expectations that e-mail would gain the same privacy protections as traditional communications. . . . The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that protections under the federal Wiretap Act do not extend to e-mail messages stored on an e-mail provider's computer systems. . . . The fact is that there is now an emerging line of precedent in the courts that people should not expect privacy in their e-mail, for the most part," said Mark Plotkin, a partner at law firm Covington & Burling, in Washington, D.C. . . . Privacy advocates immediately called the ruling a blow to privacy rights, and technology attorneys agreed that the court's decision should put an end to users' expectations that their e-mails are safe from prying eyes. . . . The court's decision hinged on the fact that the Wiretap Act, which dates to 1968, covers eavesdropping on live communications such as a phone conversations but not on stored communications, such as an e-mail message even temporarily stored on an e-mail provider's servers or computers en route to a recipient. . . . The appeals court agreed that "the language may be out of step with the technological realities of computer crimes." But it argued that it is the role of the U.S. Congress, not the courts, to change any language in the law to extend the eavesdropping protections to e-mail and electronic communications. . . . [COMMENT: And if the anti-Patriot Act is any indication, the U.S. Congress isn't about to come to the aid of privacy advocates any more. Big Brother is so deeply a part of American culture today, that you have to assume everything you do online is being monitored.] . . . "What the courts are telling us is that unless the Wiretap Act is changed, e-mail should be viewed as public communication that anybody could potentially view," Plotkin said. . . . the ruling does remove what could have been one barrier to ISPs accessing e-mail for such activities as data-mining it for commercial purposes, said Paul Winick, a partner at law firm Thelen, Reid & Priest LLP, in New York. [COMMENT: With this ruling, I wonder how popular Google's 1 Gig of storage space for old email will be?] . . . Arrison said that rather than seeking new privacy laws, e-mail users need to embrace encryption methods for securing sensitive e-mails. . . . "E-mail is just inherently insecure, and we have a whole bunch of problems because of it," Arrison said. "There are two things to take from this ruling: Know that your e-mail is not private and it never has been, and figure out what to do about it."

. . . Read more!

posted by LoZo 12:08 PM