Fredericksburg.com - If you read the Gospels, the Religious Right is most often wrong: "All this hype about the God talk swirling around in our culture prompted me to do a little research (a big departure from how I usually prepare for writing a column). I cracked open my Bible and started rereading the Gospels.
And you know what? I can't see what all this sanctimonious values rhetoric has to do with Jesus. I've compared what I read in Gospels with what I've been hearing from the Religious Right, and I've concluded that the holier-than-thous must have traded in their red-letter editions of the Good Book for red-state versions that omit most of Jesus' teachings.

The truth is, if you depend on the Christian right for your theological sustenance, you probably won't recognize the Jesus of the Gospels.

Jesus was quite a troublemaker. In fact, I'm thinking the Bush administration would have a special place for Jesus were the swarthy Nazarene to take up his ministry today in the U.S. of A.--in a cell with other Middle Eastern men awaiting deportation.

Let's recall what the Jesus of the Gospels espoused. 'When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you,' the sandal-wearing rabble-rouser was known to say.

one can only hope. hope to God that German law will prevail.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Lawyers acting for a U.S. advocacy group will Tuesday file war crimes charges in Germany against senior U.S. administration officials for their alleged role in torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"German law in this area is leading the world," Peter Weiss, vice president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a human rights group, was quoted as saying in Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper's Tuesday edition.

According to the group, German law allows war criminals to be investigated wherever they may be living…

from the CCR:

The U. S. officials charged include Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Former CIA Director George Tenet, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Dr. Steven Cambone, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, Major General Walter Wojdakowski, Major General Geoffrey Miller, Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry L. Phillabaum, Colonel Thomas Pappas, and Lieutenant Colonel Stephen L. Jordan…

imagine if they did this in every county. oh dammm, they won't let it happen.

Signed, sealed, certified: Kerry wins Cuyahoga: "But while conceding that some mistakes were inevitable, the board of elections dismissed suggestions that systemic problems caused errors, which they characterized as minimal. At 10:43 a.m., it voted unanimously to send the county's tallies to the Ohio secretary of state, who is expected to certify statewide results on Dec. 6.
Officially, the count of provisional ballots stands at 16,750 accepted and 8,552, or 34 percent, rejected. Sen. John Kerry widened his margin over President George W. Bush in the county from 217,638 to 226,880 in the official count of the race that made Ohio a nail-biter.
But the discussions surrounding the certification focused primarily on procedures and their safeguards and potential flaws that determined whose vote was counted. A focus of Monday's testimony was three lists containing names and addresses of 495 voters whose provisional ballots were rejected, according to an analysis led by Dr. Norman Robbins, a neurosciences professor at Case Western Reserve University who volunteered for the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition.
The first list held names of 32 rejected voters the coalition said it reliably registered and delivered to the elections board. The names never made it onto the rolls or were entered incorrectly, Robbins said.
The second list contained 201 rejected voters who were on county voter registration rolls Aug. 17 but had dropped off by Oct. 26. They may have inadvertently been dropped, perhaps during a September software change, Robbins said. Elections Director Michael Vu said he doubts that happened.
The third list contained 183 voters who were on rolls Oct. 26 but given provisional ballots and rejected as not registered. Another 79 were rejected because they didn't sign the provisio"

Wal-Mart's China inventory to hit US$18b this year: "'If Wal-Mart were an individual economy, it would rank as China's eighth-biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia, Australia and Canada,' Xu said. "

and interesting tidbit on the BFEE, BCCI, and RIGGS.

Democratic Underground Forums - BCCI liquidators withdraw lying claim: "THIS DEVELOPMENT is not surprising given the intense amount of lobbying recently by both Margaret Thatcher and sources connected directly to former President George Herbert Bush.

Lest anyone forgets, Thatcher has just stumpted up a ?165,000 bail bon for her son who is in the dock accused of financing/masterminding the Equitorial Guinea Coup for which Simon Mann was given a 34 year jail sentence last week and former EG President Moto sentenced to 63 years in absentia.

Also not forgetting that Bush1 is not sitting too pretty at the moment as his brother Jonathan Bush is CEO of a subsidiary of the RIGGS BANK which is directly implicated on the coup.

From my own contacts I would say that there is a very fine line between persuasion and actually suborning of witnesses. In this case BCCI plaintiffs have no choice because the main witnesses who could have supported this allegation of deliberate misleading of the other international regulators over the 1975 Basel Concordat.

Standlen's comments in the second part of the article sound thin and desperate. The Bank of England knows that all it takes is for security/intelligence files from MI5 and MI6 on Thatcher, ex-Bank of England Governor Robin Leigh Pemberton and all the former London-based general managers of BCCI to be subpeonaed.

Also of great importance is the testimony of former BCCI general Manager John Hilberry, whose evidence started the domino effect.

For some time the official line is that he 'disappeared' after turning in evidence to the Met's fraud squad, was given a new identity and relocated until such a time as he could appear in a witness stand to put the record straight in the public domain.

I now understand that Hilberry was murdered "

why nobody wants to be on the bush economic team. instead of making policy (like they're supposed to), they're only going to sell bush's sick and twisted agenda. but one sums it up right nicely today:

Gutierrez Is Pick for Commerce Secretary (washingtonpost.com): "'Why would you want to take a job where you have no influence?' asked Bruce Bartlett of the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis. 'What's the point?' "

how many times have we been lied to again?

Terrorism & Security | csmonitor.com: "Late on the Wednesday afternoon before the Thanksgiving holiday, the US Defense Department released a report by the Defense Science Board that is highly critical of the administration's efforts in the war on terror and in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
'Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies [the report says]. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.'"

absolutely what i have been looking for. an open letter by jamesinca (on DU) to jerry falwell and rev. phelps of the god hates fags sewerbags:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from you and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle,for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states, it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them:

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female,provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not to Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21: 7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1: 9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that, even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality.I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there "degrees" of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have an eye defect. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev.24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev.20:14)

TheStar.com - Pakistani soldiers abandon search for bin Laden: "Pakistan will withdraw soldiers from tribal region considered hiding place for Al Qaeda leadership"

there's a wapo op-ed piece titled watch venezuela. condi's got her sights set on chavez.

Venezuelan Politicians, Ministers Define the Revolution within the Revolution: "Caracas, November 15, 2004?Mayors- and governors-elect joined ministers, the upper echelon of the Venezuelan military and President Ch?vez this weekend in a meeting designed to articulate a new stage in the ?Bol?varian revolution.? The meeting, entitled ?Bol?varian Revolution: New Stage, New Strategic Map?, was closed to the press, but Minister of Information Andr?s Izarra has since held a series of press conferences outlining ideas discussed during the forum."

tom friedman's recent column is a doozy:

In my next life, I want to be Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.

Yes, I want to get almost the entire Republican side of the House of Representatives to bend its ethics rules just for me. I want to be able to twist the arms of House Republicans to repeal a rule that automatically requires party leaders to step down if they are indicted on a felony charge - something a Texas prosecutor is considering doing to DeLay because of corruption allegations.

But most of all, I want to have the gall to sully American democracy at a time when young American soldiers are fighting in Iraq so we can enjoy a law-based society here and, maybe, extend it to others. Yes, I want to be Tom DeLay. I want to wear a little American flag on my lapel in solidarity with the troops, while I besmirch every value they are dying for.

If I can't be Tom DeLay, then I want to be one of the gutless Republican House members who voted to twist the rules for DeLay out of fear that "the Hammer," as they call him, might retaliate by taking away a coveted committee position or maybe a parking place.

Yes, I want to be a Republican House member. At a time when 180 of the 211 members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Iraq who have been wounded in combat have insisted on returning to duty, I want to look my constituents and my kids in the eye and tell them that I voted to empty the House ethics rules because I was afraid of Tom DeLay.

If I can't be a Republican House member, I want to be Latrell Sprewell, the guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves. I want to say with a straight face that if my owner will only give me a three-year contract extension for a meager $21 million, then he's not worth working for, because "I've got my family to feed."

Yes, I want to be Latrell Sprewell. At a time when N.B.A. games are priced beyond the reach of most American families, when half the country can't afford health care, when some reservists in Iraq are separated from their families for a year, including this Thanksgiving, I want to be like Latrell. I want to make sure everyone knows that I'm looking out for my family - and no one else's.

If I can't be Latrell Sprewell, I want to be any American college or professional athlete. For a mere dunk of the basketball or first-down run, I want to be able to dance a jig, as if I'd just broken every record by Michael Jordan or Johnny Unitas. For the smallest, most routine bit of success in my sport, I want to be able to get in your face - I want to know who's your daddy, I want to be able to high-five, low-five, thump my chest and dance on your grave. You talkin' to me?

I want to be able to fight on the court, off the court, in the stands and on the sidelines. I want to respect no boundaries and no norms. And when I make your kids cry, I want to be able to tell you to just "chill" - that my coach says "stuff happens" and that my union rep is appealing my punishment in the name of the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta. Yes, in my next life, I want to be The Man.

If I can't be The Man, then I at least want to be the owner of a Hummer - with American flag decals all over the back bumper, because Hummer owners are, on average, a little more patriotic than you and me.

Yes, I want to drive the mother of all gas-guzzlers that gets so little mileage you have to drive from gas station to gas station. Yes, I want to drive my Hummer and never have to think that by consuming so much oil, I am making transfer payments to the worst Arab regimes that transfer money to Islamic charities that transfer money to madrassas that teach children intolerance, antipluralism and how to hate the infidels.

And when one day one of those madrassa graduates goes off and joins the jihad in Falluja and kills my neighbor's son, who is in the U.S. Army Rangers, I want to drive to his funeral in my Hummer. Yes, I want to curse his killers in front of his mother and wail aloud, "If there was only something I could do ..." And then I want to drive home in my Hummer, stopping at two gas stations along the way.

If I can't be any of these, then I want to be just a simple blue-state red-state American. I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own. And I want to thank them for doing this, even though on so many days in so many ways we really don't deserve them.

just thought i'd post this since it's not getting play in any of the corpMedia events on cable, much less network. but it goes to the heart of why we're in iraq, imho.

from GRAIN:
When former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) administrator L. Paul Bremer III left Baghdad after the so-called "transfer of sovereignty" in June 2004, he left behind the 100 orders he enacted as chief of the occupation authority in Iraq. Among them is Order 81 on "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety." [1] This order amends Iraq's original patent law of 1970 and unless and until it is revised or repealed by a new Iraqi government, it now has the status and force of a binding law. [2] With important implications for farmers and the future of agriculture in Iraq, this order is yet another important component in the United States' attempts to radically transform Iraq's economy.

...

Reconstruction work, thus, is not necessarily about rebuilding domestic economies and capacities, but about helping corporations approved by the occupying forces to capitalise on market opportunities in Iraq. The legal framework laid down by Bremer ensures that although US troops may leave Iraq in the conceivable future, US domination of Iraq's economy is here to stay.

...

Food sovereignty is the right of people to define their own food and agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade, to decide the way food should be produced, what should be grown locally and what should be imported. The demand for food sovereignty and the opposition to the patenting of seeds has been central to the small farmers' struggle all over the world over the past decade. By fundamentally altering the IPR regime, the US has ensured that Iraq's agricultural system will remain under "occupation" in Iraq.

Iraq has the potential to feed itself. But instead of developing this capacity, the US has shaped the future of Iraq's food and farming to serve the interests of US corporations. The new IPR regime pays scant respect to Iraqi farmers' contributions to the development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Samples of such farmers' varieties were starting to be saved in the 1970s in the country's national gene bank in Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad. It is feared that all these have been lost in the long years of conflict. However, the Syria-based Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) [17] centre - International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) still holds accessions of several Iraqi varieties. These collections that are evidence of the Iraqi farmers' knowledge are supposed to be held in trust by the centre. These comprise the agricultural heritage of Iraq belonging to the Iraqi farmers that ought now to be repatriated. There have been situations where germplasm held by an international agricultural research centre has been "leaked out" for research and development to Northern scientists [18]. Such kind of "biopiracy" is fuelled by an IPR regime that ignores the prior art of the farmer and grants rights to a breeder who claims to have created something new from the material and knowledge of the very farmer.

interesting. actually, right on cue.

t r u t h o u t - FOCUS | Senate GOP Set to Go 'Nuclear' Over Judges: "Washington - Senate Republicans, boldly confident after their Nov. 2 electoral success, are preparing to end months of frustrating delays over President Bush's judicial picks by hitting Democrats with Republican's ultimate legislative weapon.
But the Republican threat to neuter long-cherished filibuster rules by steamrolling Democrats is risky - so potentially destructive that Capitol Hill calls it the 'nuclear option.' Democratic retaliation would be swift and long-lasting, raising the prospect of escalating clashes in a body that prides itself on gentility and cool judgment. "

would that be like when cheney told senator leahy to fuck off on the senate floor?

i started a a thread on the globe's board about the propspects of one-party rule. now today there not one, but TWO articles in the majors.

from WaPo:

This election was the first in which exit polls showed equal numbers of self-identified Republicans and Democrats -- both at 37 percent -- erasing what had been a decades-long advantage for Democrats, 4 percent in 2000. In addition to the House and Senate gains, Bush received a higher raw vote total than any candidate in history (Kerry's total was second highest) and was the first presidential candidate to break the 50 percent barrier since 1988. On a percentage basis, he improved on his 2000 performance in 48 states.

Most significantly, in the view of people who suspect a realignment, exit polls showed Bush cutting into Democratic advantages with some historically Democratic groups -- especially Hispanics, who gave Bush 42 percent of their votes, compared with 35 percent in 2000.

However, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) was able to stay competitive by increasing Democratic voter turnout. And exit polls showed that self -identified independents favored the Democrat -- by dramatic margins in some of the most important battleground states. In Florida and Ohio, for instance, Kerry won independents by 18 points and 19 points, respectively.

then from the NYTIMES:

"If President Bush is re-elected, we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself," Robert Kuttner wrote last winter in The American Prospect, a liberal journal. "The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged."

Maybe. From the rapacious capitalism of the Gilded Age to the cronyism of Teapot Dome, from the corruption of Tammany Hall to the cultural and fiscal excesses of the Great Society, American history is replete with examples of the price of one-party rule. At the moment, Democrats on Capitol Hill lack even the power to call a committee meeting, issue a subpoena or do anything much more active than complain.

i agree. lets put the notion of abortion up for public referendum. put the damn thing on the ballot and lets see what the people want.

oh wait, we have to fix the election process first.

another fabulous article, one that'll explain just how they were able to accomplish the coup.

What Became of Conservatives? - by Paul Craig Roberts: "America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals 'end times' and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial expansion.
The evening before Thanksgiving, Rush Limbaugh was on C-Span TV explaining that these glorious developments would have been impossible if talk radio and the conservative movement had not combined to break the power of the liberal media.
In the Thanksgiving issue of National Review, editor Richard Lowry and former editor John O'Sullivan celebrate Bush's reelection triumph over 'a hostile press corps.' 'Try as they might,' crowed O'Sullivan, 'they couldn't put Kerry over the top.'
There was a time when I could rant about the 'liberal media' with the best of them. But in recent years I have puzzled over the precise location of the 'liberal media.'
Not so long ago, I would have identified the liberal media as the New York Times and Washington Post, CNN and the three TV networks, and National Public Radio. But both the Times and the Post fell for the Bush administration's lies about WMD and supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. On balance, CNN, the networks, and NPR have not made an issue of the Bush administration's changing explanations for the invasion.
Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there is a liberal media because the pri"

the billion dollar hoax. a MUST READ!!

The New York Times > Arts > The Great Indecency Hoax: "Even the stunned Mr. Limbaugh, curiously enough, didn't get around to mounting his own diatribe until Wednesday. Mr. Owens's agent, David Joseph, says that the flood of complaints at his office and Mr. Owens's Web site also didn't start until more than 24 hours after the incident - late Tuesday and early Wednesday. Were any of these complainants actual victims (or even viewers) of 'Monday Night Football' or were they just a mob assembled after the fact by 'family' groups, emboldened by their triumph in smiting 'Saving Private Ryan' from 66 ABC stations the week before? Though the F.C.C. said on Wednesday that it had received 50,000 complaints about the N.F.L. affair, it couldn't determine how many of them were duplicates - the kind generated by e-mail campaigns run by political organizations posting form letters ready to be clicked into cyberspace ad infinitum by anyone who has an index finger and two seconds of idle time. "

the double standard. one would have to ask: so what did you expect from hypocrites?Consortiumnews.com: "The Washington Post and other leading American newspapers are up in arms about the legitimacy of a presidential election where exit polls showed the challenger winning but where the incumbent party came out on top, amid complaints about heavy-handed election-day tactics and possibly rigged vote tallies.
In a lead editorial, the Post cited the divergent exit polls, along with voter claims about ballot irregularities, as prime reasons for overturning the official results. For its part, the New York Times cited reports of ?suspiciously, even fantastically, high turnouts in regions that supported? the government candidate. The U.S. news media is making clear that the truth about these electoral anomalies must be told.
Of course, the election in question occurred in the Ukraine.
In the United States ? where exit polls showed John Kerry winning on Nov. 2, where Republican tactics discouraged African-American voting in Democratic precincts, and where George W. Bush?s vote totals in many counties were eyebrow-raising ? the Post, the Times and other top news outlets mocked anyone who questioned the results."

no wonder berlosconi and bush are friends. they're both nazis.
News: "They make no bones about their contempt for capitalism and consumerism and their desire to change the system. And they were present in strength at the protests against the G8 summit in the northern Italian city of Genoa in July 2002 which ended in bloody violence and mass casualties among police and demonstrators.
But the 13 members of Italy's 'disobbedienti' group who go on trial next week are not charged with crimes of assault or vandalism. Instead, they face grave but abstract accusations: 'political conspiracy ... with the aim of disrupting the functions of the government'; 'making subversive propaganda, and creating an association of 20,000 people to violently subvert the constituted economic order of the state'.
The disobbedienti - the disobedient ones - have few friends in parliament, but voices across the opposition spectrum have united to condemn the trial, due to begin on Thursday in the southern city of Cosenza. The charges, used rarely, are a relic from pre-war years.
'The crime of opinion,' said the left-wing daily L'Unita, 'is a relic of the Fascist era and must be abolished'. Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the Rifondazione Comunista party, called the trial 'disturbing and dangerous', the product of a 'repressive drift, in progress for some time, for which they want to criminalise dissent, menacing the basis of the state of rights.'"

when those who control every facet of government are unable to do their jobs, why are we still supporting them?
DesMoinesRegister.com: "Members expressed shock at the provision and promised to rescind it, though no one has taken responsibility for putting it in the bill. The latest explanation is that some congressional staffers might have inserted the language.

Think about that. Is the operation of Congress so slipshod that unelected staffers can write legislation, put it into bills and no one notices? What do we pay the members for if not to oversee the writing of the bills themselves?"

International news from swissinfo, the Swiss news platform: "ANKARA (Reuters) - The head of Turkey's parliamentary human rights group has accused Washington of genocide in Iraq and
behaving worse than Adolf Hitler, in remarks underscoring the depth of opposition in Turkey to U.S. policy in the region.

The United Sates embassy said the comments were potentially damaging to Turkish-U.S. relations.

'The occupation has turned into barbarism,' Friday's Yeni Safak newspaper quoted Mehmet Elkatmis, head of parliament's human
rights commission, as saying. 'The U.S. administration is committing genocide...in Iraq.

'Never in human history have such genocide and cruelty been witnessed. Such a genocide was never seen in the time of the

pharoahs (of ancient Egypt), nor of Hitler nor of (Italy's fascist leader Benito) Mussolini,' he said.

'This occupation has entirely imperialist aims,' he was quoted as telling the human rights commission on Thursday."

HOLY CORRUPTION BATMAN!
Saudis, Enron money helped pay for US rigged election: "November 25, 2004?According to informed sources in Washington and Houston, the Bush campaign spent some $29 million to pay polling place operatives around the country to rig the election for Bush. The operatives were posing as Homeland Security and FBI agents but were actually technicians familiar with Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Triad, Unilect, and Danaher Controls voting machines. These technicians reportedly hacked the systems to skew the results in favor of Bush.
The leak about the money and the rigged election apparently came from technicians who were promised to be paid a certain amount for their work but the Bush campaign interlocutors reneged and some of the technicians are revealing the nature of the vote rigging program.
There have been media reports from around the country concerning the locking down of precincts while votes were being tallied. In one unprecedented action in Warren County, Ohio, election officials locked down the facility where votes were being counted. The officials said this was in response to a Level 10 high-threat terrorist warning being issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI for Warren County. George Bush won 72 percent of the vote in Warren County, much larger than his percentage of victory statewide.
The money to rig the election in favor of Bush reportedly came from an entity called Five Star Trust, largely based in Houston but a worldwide entity that is directly tied to the Saudi Royal Family. Five Star Trust was termed 'a well-protected vehicle' that has been used to support both Bush and Osama bin Laden in the US and around the world.
Other money used to fund the election rigging was from siphoned Enron money stored away in accounts in the Cook Islands, which was once the base of one of the more questionable and Saudi-linked"

SACRAMENTO -- Although Arnold Schwarzenegger says he won't make up his mind for months about whether to run for re-election, he is using a trip to Texas next week to raise money for his 2006 campaign account.

The governor plans to receive an award for public service from former President George H.W. Bush on Tuesday night. Then, he will raise an expected $150,000 or more at a small breakfast gathering the next day in Dallas, a city considered the Mecca for Republican fund raising.

Source

and we are reminded by barklley on DU:

Recall that CA separated the power industry into two pieces. Generators, like mainly owned by out-of-state companies, such as Dallas-based Reliant Energy to produce power and sell it wholesale to utilities, which then sell retail power to consumers.

Reliant Energy benefited greatly from the run up in electricity wholesale prices. There is mounting evidence that Reliant and others acted so as to restrict output and raise prices; in other words become the Generators such as Reliant were price makers in the wholesale market

Reliant Energy?s profit margin from generating electricity in California was $327 million in 2001. Soon thereafter, Pacific Gas and Electric filed for bankruptcy protection.

One of the primary factors that lead to the energy crisis was the market power of generator which helped robbed CA of more than $8 billion.

Now they're going to line Arnold's pockets so he'll squash any serious investigation into their criminal practices.

with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Newsday.com - AP News: "ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani authorities have banned an issue of Newsweek magazine for publishing material they said was offensive to Islam, local media reported Friday.

A government official in Islamabad had ordered the 'forfeiture of all copies of the weekly Newsweek of November 22,' the state-run agency Associated Press of Pakistan reported, quoting Tariq Mahmood Bajwa, a government official in the capital, Islamabad. "

imagine if you will, defendants paying off jurors before trial. that's exactly what is happening here. no money unless you ignore our guilt.

Congress Seeks to Curb International Court (washingtonpost.com): "UNITED NATIONS -- The Republican-controlled Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court, threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to governments that refuse to sign immunity accords shielding U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal.
The move marks an escalation in U.S. efforts to ensure that the first world criminal court can never judge American citizens for crimes committed overseas. More than two years ago, Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, which cut millions of dollars in military assistance to many countries that would not sign the Article 98 agreements, as they are known, that vow not to transfer to the court U.S. nationals accused of committing war crimes abroad."

DesMoinesRegister.com: "I wonder, would the ABC Television football commercial (so-called sex scene) have created the same outrage among the moral-right folks if the actors had been the same color?
-John Tapscott,
Indianola."

BUSTED!!

Matthew Shepard's Killers Deny Attack Was Hate Crime in First Interviews Since Gay Student's 1998 Death - from TBO.com: "CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - In their first public interview since attacking gay college student Matthew Shepard, his killers said they were motivated not by homophobia, but the prospect of robbery to fuel a methamphetamine binge.
'He was pretty well-dressed, had a wallet full of money,' Aaron McKinney said of meeting Shepard at a Laramie bar in October 1998. 'All I wanted to do was beat him up and rob him. ... Seemed like a good idea at the time.'
The interviews air Friday on ABC's '20/20.'
The robbery got out of hand, said McKinney and his buddy, Russell Henderson, and Shepard was beaten into a coma while tied to a fence outside the small college town. The 21-year-old died five days later. "

OH REALLY??

Although the conviction left McKinney eligible for the death penalty, Shepard’s parents agreed to let McKinney be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, saying their son would have wanted it that way. “I really don’t know what to say other than that I’m truly sorry to the entire Shepard family,” an emotional McKinney said in court Friday before his sentencing. “Never will a day go by I won’t be ashamed for what I have done.” McKinney’s actions in jail contradict that show of remorse, however, DeBree said. McKinney had laughed about the case and repeatedly used derogatory terms about gay men to refer to Shepard, including such references in letters, he said.

FROM THE ADVOCATE ARCHIVES

BUSTED!!

Matthew Shepard's Killers Deny Attack Was Hate Crime in First Interviews Since Gay Student's 1998 Death - from TBO.com: "CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - In their first public interview since attacking gay college student Matthew Shepard, his killers said they were motivated not by homophobia, but the prospect of robbery to fuel a methamphetamine binge.
'He was pretty well-dressed, had a wallet full of money,' Aaron McKinney said of meeting Shepard at a Laramie bar in October 1998. 'All I wanted to do was beat him up and rob him. ... Seemed like a good idea at the time.'
The interviews air Friday on ABC's '20/20.'
The robbery got out of hand, said McKinney and his buddy, Russell Henderson, and Shepard was beaten into a coma while tied to a fence outside the small college town. The 21-year-old died five days later. "

OH REALLY??

Although the conviction left McKinney eligible for the death penalty, Shepard’s parents agreed to let McKinney be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, saying their son would have wanted it that way. “I really don’t know what to say other than that I’m truly sorry to the entire Shepard family,” an emotional McKinney said in court Friday before his sentencing. “Never will a day go by I won’t be ashamed for what I have done.” McKinney’s actions in jail contradict that show of remorse, however, DeBree said. McKinney had laughed about the case and repeatedly used derogatory terms about gay men to refer to Shepard, including such references in letters, he said.

FROM THE ADVOCATE ARCHIVES

if ever there was any doubt about the new phase of what i'm calling a religious crusade, there will be none after you read this.

The New York Times > National > After Victory, Crusader Against Same-Sex Marriage Thinks Big: "'I'm building an army,' Mr. Burress said. 'We can't just let people go back to the pews and go to sleep.'"

Betting on apocalypse: "11/25/04 'New York Times' -- NEW YORK If America's secular liberals think they have it rough now, just wait till the Second Coming.

The 'Left Behind' series, the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, enthusiastically depict Jesus returning to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The world's Hindus, Muslims, Jews and agnostics, along with many Roman Catholics and Unitarians, are heaved into everlasting fire: 'Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and ... they tumbled in, howling and screeching.'

Gosh, what an uplifting scene!"

Creators.com - Creators Syndicate: "As though things on the legislative side weren't bad enough, Bush and Cheney are moving to make the executive branch all-powerful. You can already see several of the unfortunate characteristics of the first term being intensified in the second. The emphasis on secrecy is already more pronounced, as is the selection of people for loyalty rather than competence. "

U.S. ELECTION: 59,054,087 'Stupid' - 6,260 Sorry: "The site sprung up just days after the election and little more than a week later a response, ApologiesAccepted.com, appeared in cyberspace to welcome the gesture. That Europe-based site now counts 1,000-plus postings.

The two have elicited a number of counter-sites, including You'reWelcomeEverybody, which says its goal is ?to counter those who would pathetically apologise for the Bush victory.? It has nearly 200 submissions to date. "

Newsday.com - AP Washington: "On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that will determine whether Raich and similar patients in California and 10 other states can continue to use marijuana for medical purposes. "

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | One gulp, and Bush was gone: "Offstage, beforehand, Rove and Bush had had their library tours. According to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future George W Bush library and legacy. 'You're not such a scary guy,' joked his guide. 'Yes, I am,' Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: 'I change constitutions, I put churches in schools ...' Thus he identified himself as more than the ruthless campaign tactician; he was also the invisible hand of power, pervasive and expansive, designing to alter the fundamental American compact.
Bush appeared distracted, and glanced repeatedly at his watch. When he stopped to gaze at the river, where secret service agents were stationed in boats, the guide said: 'Usually, you might see some bass fishermen out there.' Bush replied: 'A submarine could take this place out.' "

its amazing how this lil' war is unfolding. what we have here is the abuse of intel taking backstage to charges that the intel was wrong.The New York Times > Washington > 2 Top Officials Are Reported to Quit C.I.A.: "Under Mr. Goss, it is a cadre of former House Republican aides, not Navy officers, who dominate the new management team. This month, they have toppled Mr. Kappes and his deputy, Michael Sulick, in a way that former intelligence officials say has shown little regard for the tradition-bound clandestine service which has always prized rank, experience and lines of authority."

Stop ?Big Brother? from snooping around your medicine cabinet!: "Do you want the government to have a record of every prescription you get? Every painkiller? Every anti-depressant? Every sleeping pill? And then to pass that information along to law enforcement to prosecute you and your doctor if they don?t like what they find?

The National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act (H.R. 3015) was passed by the House, but hasn?t been passed yet in the Senate so we still have time to stop it.

While masquerading as a law enforcement tool to help control the illegal use of painkillers, the national bill would cast a net so wide that tens of millions of suffering patients & doctors will be snared in suspicion. Not limited to prescriptions for painkillers, it would create a central database affecting tens of millions who are not even suspected of a crime. And the information will be shared with state and local law enforcement.

Prosecutors and law enforcement already second-guess doctors and prosecute them for prescribing ?too much? or if they decide the patient doesn?t ?deserve? treatment.

Overzealous prosecutors have already frightened many doctors out of prescribing pain treatment for the almost 50 million patients who suffer from pain. We can?t let them do it to the rest of us as well.

Do you want law enforcement deciding who ?deserves? medicines?"

they're crucifying dan rather. they will regret it.

BostonHerald.com - Business: Economic `Armageddon' predicted: "Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.

But you should hear what he's saying in private.

Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last week, including a group at Fidelity.

His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic ``armageddon.''

Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the Herald has obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A stunned source who was at one meeting said, ``it struck me how extreme he was - much more, it seemed to me, than in public.''

Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that ``we'll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual armageddon.''

The chance we'll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe. "

they need 300,000 trained iraqi forces to ensure that the elections are able to take place. commanders are reporting that there are about 150,000 trained now. remember now, we had these same commanders telling us there were 120,000 when actually there were less than 20,000. and of those 20,000, only 1 in 5 were trained fully. that doesn't take into account the 80% desertion rate at many of the outposts. i'll have to find a reliable source on just how many iraqi FULLY trained forces there really are.

for future reference. the title says it all. how the GOP is earning their swastikas. Back-room dealing a Capitol trend - GOP flexing its majority power

i don't know the Bible worth shit. i couldn't even quote you any verse, other than say, oh, the lord is my shepard, i shall not want... but that's about it.

however, i can tell you the meaning of any verse you read to me.

November 22, 1963: The Day Democracy Went Into a Tailspin. Kennedy Assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Johnny, We Hardly Knew You. Since Then, the Texas Neo-Confederate, Neo-Cons Have Turned Democracy Into a Politburo.

No More Sham Elections, By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF should say it all. and he's got remedies that should be given serious, and i do mean SERIOUS consideration.

fantastic article on jeff cohen's remarks at the ILCA workshop in d.c. on 11/12:

I had an ulterior motive in wanting to come to DC today.

I'm in search of the political genius who thought it would pass the smell test with swing voters if Kerry suspended his campaigning 12 days before the election and went duck-hunting in Ohio. Swing voters are often highly misinformed, but they're not stupid.

As labor communicators, you have an understanding of working people and swing voters that the high-priced Democratic Party strategists seem to lack. They pander to stereotypes of what a swing voter is. Democratic Party strategists need your help. And labor communicators can help in developing language that emphasizes economic and social justice as issues of morality and values.

You all know about journalists embedded with the troops in Iraq. I started out as a media critic at FAIR and, as if in a slow-motion nightmare, I ended up embedded inside the mainstream media. I've worked as a panelist/commentator over the years at all three cable news channels.

What I've found inside TV news is a drunken exuberance for stories involving celebrity, lurid crime and sex scandal -- matched by a grim timidity and fear of offending the powers that be, especially if they're conservatives. The biggest fear is of doing anything that could get you or your network accused of being liberal.

In 2002, I was an on-air commentator at MSNBC, and also senior producer on the "Donahue" show, the most-watched program on the channel. In the last months of the program, before it was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war, we were ordered by management that every time we booked an antiwar guest, we had to book 2 pro-war guests. If we booked two guests on the left, we had to book 3 on the right. At one meeting, a producer suggested booking Michael Moore and was told that she would need to book 3 right-wingers for balance. I considered suggesting Noam Chomsky as a guest, but our studio couldn't accommodate the 86 right-wingers we would have needed for balance.

When we look at the media's role in the 2004 election, we make a mistake to focus on election coverage per se. The basis for Bush's victory was in place way before 2004. At the end of last year, a huge study done by the University of Maryland's PIPA, the Program on International Policy Attitudes, found that most of those who got their news from the commercial TV networks held at least 1 of 3 fundamental "misperceptions" about the war in Iraq (and some held 2 or 3 of them):

-- that Iraq had been directly linked to 9/11
-- that WMDs had been found in Iraq
-- that world opinion supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Viewers of Fox News, where I worked for years, were the most misled. But strong majorities of CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN viewers were also confused on at least one of these points. Among those informed on all 3 questions, only 23 percent supported Bush's war.

How can you have a meaningful election in a country where, according to polls, half or more of the American people don't know who attacked us on 9/11? They think Saddam Hussein was involved.

To help Bush mislead Americans, Fox News Channel required that the banner "War on Terror" run when Iraq was discussed.

I was at MSNBC when Tom Ridge was holding a news conference at Homeland Security in late 2002 about alleged new terror threats from Al Qaeda -- and MSNBC ran a lower third: "Showdown with Saddam."

At MSNBC, I was asked to debate Frank Gaffney, the former Reagan official who seems to live on TV, in a segment based on Gaffney's claim that not only was Saddam Hussein behind 9/11, he was also behind Tim McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing! I'm not kidding.

Last month, PIPA released a new study that found majorities of Bush supporters, sometimes huge majorities, not only had major misunderstandings of the basic facts about Iraq, but they were misled on all sorts of other Bush positions. 74 percent of Bush supporters believed that Bush favors inclusion of labor and environmental standards in trade agreements.

60 percent of Bush supporters said the US should not have initiated a war with Iraq unless evidence established that Iraq had WMDs and was supporting the Al Qaeda terrrorists. This should have been a bloc of Kerry voters. But they were unaware the evidence did not exist.

These are faith-based voters -- not fact-based voters.

Among the reasons some of us worked for Bush's defeat was to get a new Federal Communications Commission. Many of us were ready to fight for the elevation of commissioner Michael Copps, a Democratic appointee, to FCC chair, replacing Michael Powell, Colin's son. Powell is the best friend of the media conglomerates. We need to stop Powell from any further media concentration over the next 4 years, and unions need to be in the forefront of that resistance.

Thanks to media deregulation started during the Reagan administration, and unfortunately continued by Bill Clinton: there are now 8 companies that largely determine what Americans see, hear and read through the media -- 8 companies sitting on the windpipe of the First Amendment.

We can thank Clinton's Telecommunications "Reform" Act of 1996 for the right-wing Clear Channel's dominance of radio and for the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group becoming the biggest TV chain in the country. Clear Channel owned 40 radio stations before the Telecom bill and 1200 soon after. Sinclair had 11 stations before the bill, and now has 62 TV stations.

TV news is dominated by 5 corporations.

NBC, CNBC, MSNBC are owned by GE. When I worked at MNSBC, some of the constraints imposed on the "Donahue" show were the result of GE ownership and a conservative NBC boss who'd come out of GE Financial and GE's plastics division.

Fox News is owned by the right-wing Rupert Murdoch (and News Corporation), and does Murdoch's ideological bidding.

ABC is owned by Disney. You'll remember that CEO Michael Eisner said that Disney wouldn't distribute "Fahrenheit 911" because Disney "didn't want to be in the middle of a politically-oriented film during an election year." Eisner's comment was allowed to pass only because so few people realize that Disney is one of the biggest purveyors of political opinion this election year and every recent election year -- almost all of it right-wing political opinion. Each day in major radio markets nationwide, Disney radio stations serve up hour after hour of Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, etc. etc.

CBS News, owned by Viacom, got taken in by forged documents -- and then censored accurate reporting critical of Bush, apparently at the behest of Viacom's CEO, Sumner Redstone. Six weeks before the election Redstone endorsed Bush on behalf of Viacom: "From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on."

Until broadcasting is demonopolized and removed from the control of these corporations, and until major insulated funding goes to genuine public broadcasting, misinformed voters will be easy prey for political demagoguery in election after election.

When I lecture about media in culturally conservative places, as I did this week in West Virginia, what comes as a shock to people, including the so-called "values voter," is that what they see as sleaze on TV and radio is not brought to them by the "liberal media" but by Republican-endorsing media moguls like Murdoch and Redstone.

The spectrum of debate in our country keeps getting pushed further rightward by corporate media. Look at what passes for left-right debates in the distorting lens of national TV. Many complain about the Fox News pairing of forceful, telegenic Sean Hannity on the right against the less telegenic, often backpedaling Alan Colmes. But Fox News Channel did not invent the narrow center-right, GE to GM spectrum. That was firmly in place thanks to PBS and CNN years before Fox News Channel was invented. Indeed, FAIR has recruited thousands of members and subscribers over the years through full-page magazine ads with pictures of folks like Michael Kinsley, Mark Shields and others -- with the headline: "I'm not a leftist, but I play one on TV."

Almost all those who regularly represent the left on TV support corporate globalization and NAFTA; a TV rightist like Pat Buchanan opposes it. TV leftists tend to defend the immorality of media corporations while only rightists attack it. On CNN and NBC this election season, Time magazine's Joe Klein was presented as the left side of the debate against various hardcore rightwingers. A few months ago in a Time column, Klein hailed the corporate sponsored Democratic Leadership Council for supporting "fiscal responsibility and free trade" within the Democratic Party and for "gleefully assaulting the reactionary left -- the trade unions and bureaucrats."

Every day on TV and radio, you can hear from regular hosts and pundits who are proud allies of the anti-abortion movement, proud allies of the NRA movement, proud allies of the religious right movement. You don't hear from regulars who are proud allies of the labor movement.

Moving briefly from punditry to what passes for "objective reporting," too many reporters have become easily manipulated by Republican operatives. They allowed false and defamatory Swift Boat ads to dominate coverage for weeks; their fact-checking of campaign and debate claims has often meant that if they identify 2 huge whoppers from Bush, they have to inflate or invent 2 Kerry claims in the name of a false balance that actually distorts the news. FAIR has written thousands of words this year on "false balance" in election coverage.

Ending on good news: The movement to challenge media bias has never been stronger among progressive and union activists, and the movement to challenge media concentration has never been stronger. We had a real victory in 2003 in resisting FCC proposals to allow even greater media consolidation, with a coalition that started with groups like Free Press and FAIR and MoveOn and Common Cause and then attracted groups on the right to the effort: the NRA and the Parents Television Council. One easy way to get involved in these battles is to sign up for activist alerts at FAIR's website: http://www.fair.org.

Jeff Cohen founded FAIR, the New York-based media watch group. He's been a nationally-syndicated columnist, TV commentator and communications director of the Kucinich for President campaign.

ya know, blogger is getting to be pathetic with its servers. takes forever to get connected any more. ANYhoo... on with the show.

today's entry is the first up in a new series i'm carrying over from ITM: HYPOCRISY ALERT. today's mark from vermont is a doozie.

"The results of the presidential election of 2004 are still being parsed for what they say about the electorate’s supposed closer embrace of traditional cultural values. But for the network television executives charged with finding programs that speak to tastes across the nation, one lesson is clear. The supposed cultural divide is more like a cultural mind meld. Representatives of the four big broadcast networks as well as Hollywood production studios said the returns on display in the nightly television ratings bore little relation to the message apparently sent by a significant percentage of voters.

a blurb in the nytimes that i think sums up john ashcroft right nicely:

Criminal charges of civil rights violations were brought against 84 defendants last year, down from 159 in 1999, according to Justice Department data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

The study also found that the number of times the Federal Bureau of Investigation or another federal investigative agency recommended prosecution in civil rights cases fell by more than one-third, from more than 3,000 in 1999 to just over 1,900 last year. Federal court data also show that the government has sought fewer civil sanctions against civil rights violators.

One of the study's authors, David Burnham, said the results showed that civil rights enforcement dropped across the board in President Bush's first term in office. "Collectively, some violators of the civil rights laws are not being dealt with by the government," Professor Burnham said. "This trend, we think, is significant."

It is unlikely the decline has occurred because of fewer civil rights violations occurring, the study suggests. The number of complaints about possible violations received by the Justice Department has remained at about 12,000 annually for each of the past five years.

The Justice Department had no comment about the study.

When he announced his resignation on Nov. 9, Attorney General John Ashcroft listed as one of the department's accomplishments a statistic that showed the number of civil rights prosecutions was slightly higher over the past three years than the previous three-year period. Mr. Ashcroft also said the department had tripled the number of defendants charged in human trafficking cases compared with the previous three years.

...

Civil rights cases made up a tiny fraction of the Justice Department's total of 99,341 criminal prosecutions in 2003. The study found, however, that only civil rights and environmental prosecutions were down from 1999 to 2003 as the total caseload rose by about 10 percent.

By far the biggest criminal prosecution category is illegal drugs, at about 33,100 cases last year, followed by immigration, weapons violations, white-collar crime and others. The study was based on data collected from the Justice Department, federal courts and Congressional budget documents.

the perfect example of how georgie bush will cause a problem, then publicly whine about the problem being a problem.

"I was disappointed that the bill didn't pass. I thought it was going to pass up to the last minute."
-gwbush

http://nytimes.com/2004/11/22/politics/22panel.html?ei=5094&en=28092337b6be3110&hp=&ex=1101099600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=

"There's been a lot of opposition to this from the first," Roberts said on "Fox News Sunday." "Some of it is from the Pentagon. Some of it, quite frankly, is from the White House, despite what the president has said." As a result, he added, "I just don't see it [being approved] as of December 6."
--sen pat roberts

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2475-2004Nov21.html?sub=AR

(reprinted here for educational purpose)

The Revised Constitution of God’s United States

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Excerpted from America 2014: An Orwellian Tale Copyright 2004

The Revised Constitution of God’s United States

A Patriotic Citizens Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

(Passed by Congress and Ratified in 2009)

Preamble: We the people of God’s United States, in order to provide for the common defense, in balance with the blessings of liberty and our position as the Freest Country on Earth ™, do ordain the replacement of the Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with law, and ratified as per the original, outdated Constitution of the United States, by two thirds of both Houses of Congress, as well as the Legislatures of three fourths of the fifty states, in the year of our Lord 2009, to hereafter be known as The Patriotic Citizen’s Bill of Rights. The full force of the provisions of these Amendments are effective immediately, and the Judicial Branch of the Government of God’s United States is hereby instructed to interpret any disparity between the original Articles of the Constitution and its original Amendments, and this revised and updated Patriotic Citizen’s Constitution, in favor of the latter.

Amendment I: With the exception of the state-sanctioned religion of Christianity, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of any other religion or prohibit the private, non-subversive exercise of any religion. Nor shall Congress abridge the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances; although the President and his appointed agents may do so, in Time of War, or serious threat of war or terrorism, to protect the Country and its people, as he, in his sole discretion, deems fit in the exercise of his duty as Commander in Chief.

Amendment II: A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state of Patriotic Citizens, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, unless such people are suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists, as determined by the Department of Homeland Security.

Amendment III: No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law, as determined by the President and Commander in Chief, and administered by the Department of Homeland Security.

Amendment IV: Except during Time of War, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. During Time of War, as defined by the President and Commander in Chief, representatives of the Department of Homeland Security may take any and all measures necessary to search the homes, effects, electronic communications or records of suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists, and it shall be a federal crime, as prescribed in federal criminal statute 841 (d) 1, as described in Patriot Act V, to inquire about such searches, or to inform the subjects of such searches, or the public, of any actions taken under this statute by representatives of the Department of Homeland Security.

Amendment V: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in Time of War or public danger. With the exception of suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists; no Patriotic Citizen shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation, unless deemed necessary by the President and Commander in Chief or the Department of Homeland Security.

Amendment VI: In all criminal prosecutions except those involving suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists, Patriotic Citizens accused of crimes shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII: In suits at common law which do not involve the Government of God’s United States, Government officials, Party Members or Party Institutions, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII: Excessive bail shall not be required of any Patriotic Citizen, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted, with the exception of suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists. Should abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists be found guilty, by any state or federal court, of any criminal offense, then their voting privileges for any public election shall be permanently revoked.

Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage such rights to unborn children, from the very moment God Almighty breathes life into their eternal souls. In any and all cases, including rape, incest, and health emergencies, any persons infringing upon the life of the unborn, whether mothers, relatives, health care providers, or their co-conspirators, shall be subject to the full force of state statutes concerning homicide or attempted homicide.

Amendment X: During Time of War the President, Vice President, and all other elected officials who are members of the Nationalist Party, the only Party found by the American people to be a Patriotic Citizens Party, are exempted by federal, state and local term limit legislation, including Amendment XXII of the outdated Constitution of the United States, prescribing a two term limit to the Office of President.

In Time of War, as determined by the President and Commander in Chief, all political parties, with the exception of the Nationalist Party (“The Party”), are suspect and illegal until such Time of War has passed, and it shall be a criminal federal offense to lobby, propagandize, assemble, or vote for any political person or action that is not part of the official Party. It is henceforth the duty of all Patriotic Citizens to vote for and provide support to the Party, until such time as the President, in his sole discretion, determines that God’s United States is no longer at war.

This Patriotic Citizens Constitution expands the rights, and responsibilities of Citizens in the following manner:

All Patriotic Citizens of the United States shall enjoy the right, and responsibility, of receiving and watching Interactive TV. Such responsibilities include an obligation to watch requisite public service announcements, as determined by the President in Time of War. It shall be a federal offense, in Time of War, to tamper with or disable the security delivery or monitoring functions of any Interactive TV device.

Patriotic Citizens are also entitled to an expanded right of Pharmacological Happiness, and all providers of health insurance must fully cover the cost of providing such Pharmacological Happiness. In the event that the Department of Homeland Security establishes, in it sole discretion, that a citizen is psychologically imbalanced, then representatives of the General of Homeland Security shall have the right, in Time of War, to define Pharmacological Happiness within the context of the needs of God’s United States, and to medicate and/or genetically reform law-breaking criminals as they deem necessary.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Excerpted from America 2014: An Orwellian Tale, available from BuzzFlash.com.

from the bush's mass graves department:

BAGHDAD -- Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government.

After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

why do i allege that we can't win this 'war on terrorism'? because this 'war' is a fraud. a fraud is perpetrated when you sell something that isn't what you say it is. and now that we understand that nobody really has a grasp on what 'terrorism' really is, how can it be disputed that we are fighting an unknown enemy. and when you fight an unknown enemy, there is no way in hell you can win. from the
LAT:

WASHINGTON — Five months after embarrassed State Department officials acknowledged widespread mistakes in the government's influential annual report on global terrorism, internal investigators have found new and unrelated errors — as well as broader underlying problems that they say essentially have destroyed the credibility of the statistics the report is based on.

In a 28-page report, the State Department's Office of Inspector General blamed the problems on sloppy data collection, inexperienced employees, personnel shortages and lax oversight. Investigators also concluded that the procedures used by the State Department, CIA and other agencies to define terrorism and terrorist attacks were so inconsistent that they couldn't be relied upon.