All of the commentary and site information that was in this area  has been   Archived.

FOR PICTURES  RELATED TO THE CURRENT PAGE SEE:   PHOTOS    

DAILY NEWS OF NOTE, or,

"'Almost Daily' Notes on News

and Other 'Stuff'"

As of Nov. 8th Less Bush

_____________________________________________________

REMODELING IN PROGRESS

10-18-05 Site Changes 

SEE: JAR2.com: As you may have noticed the site has changed quite a bit. I have been consolidating the information being hosted on my server into tighter groups and have eliminated some of the pages altogether. For  example the Student's page and the IQ page are now one, the Wallpaper page now contains links to almost all of the photographic content on the JAR2 server, and so on and so forth, if you have any suggestions please send them. I hope that some of you are actually reading my stories in the window above and that you enjoy them. That is all for now, enjoy!

John

  ooo0 

  (    )   0ooo            

   \  (    (    )

    \_)     )  /          

            (_/                       

☼``*-,,_♥♪♥ ♥♪♥_,,.-*`☼ ☼``*-,,_♥♪♥ ♥♪♥_,,.-*`☼ ☼``*-,,_♥♪♥ ♥♪♥_,,.-*`☼ ☼``*-,,_♥♪♥ ☼``*-,,_♥♪♥ ♥♪♥_,,.-*`☼ ☼``*-,,_♥♪♥ ♥♪♥_,,.-*`A :-)

story here

_____________________________________________________

What happens next? You tell me...

The intrepid young man, naïve in his unawareness of the ramifications of his actions, boldly proceeded with his as of yet unsuccessful forays into the black arts. Machiavellian manifestations stemming from previously attempted spells only served to obfuscate the true source of the evil permeating his life in myriad ways. Were he to have believed in ancient Egyptian curses, the source would have been clear, but as with the other victims of the curse of the boy pharaoh enlightenment only came at the moment of death.

           Into the darkness he drove, through the mists and the fog which played tricks on his eyes. He had been driving for six hours through the forest and was becoming increasingly nervous as he drove deeper and deeper into what was becoming pure wilderness. The trees had become stranger and stranger as he drove on, at first he had dismissed the moss and the weird limbs as nothing to get excited about but now he was becoming afraid. The trees were twisted and knarled and were beginning to choke in on the road which had become a narrow one lane path through the thickets. The forest here was so dense that he could not see into it at all now and the trees, whose limbs now met above the road were getting closer and lower. In effect making a tunnel through which he tried to maintain a healthy rate of speed, something telling him not to dare to slow down. It  had become so narrow that he could not have turned around had he wanted to and want he did.  

Copyright 2005 by John Robles II

_____________________________________________________

The Pogrom Continues in Iraq 63/

The NSA

NSA uses cookies that expire in 2035

12-30-05

The NSA warrants our attention

SEE: GOOGLE WATCH

UPDATE 2005-12-27:
The two persistent cookies are gone as of the afternoon of December 27.

Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 17:56:48 -0500

Mr. Brandt,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The cookies have been removed from the site and our Web Team is looking into the issue.

Very respectfully,
Jane Hudgins
NSA Public and Media Affairs

MI6 SPY SCREWS UP AND IS EXPOSED

The MI6 station chief in Athens appears to be Nicholas Langman (see Greek spelling of the name in red box in Greek paper below), Counsellor at the British Embassy in Athens. Langman has been identified as an MI6 official by Steven Dorril in MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service: http://cryptome.org/mi6-sd36.htm.

Langman listed in the Foreign Office HM Diplomatic Service Overseas Reference List in Aug 2005:

The Pogrom Continues in Iraq 62/

The NSA

12-27-05

The NSA warrants our attention

SEE: The New York Times

NSA, the Agency That Could Be Big Brother
By James Bamford
The New York Times

Sunday 25 December 2005

Washington - Deep in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.

Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another NSA listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country.

A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the NSA has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the NSA to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment.

According to John E. McLaughlin, who as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 was among the first briefed on the program, this eavesdropping was the most secret operation in the entire intelligence network, complete with its own code word - which itself is secret.

Jokingly referred to as "No Such Agency," the NSA was created in absolute secrecy in 1952 by President Harry S. Truman. Today, it is the largest intelligence agency. It is also the most important, providing far more insight on foreign countries than the CIA and other spy organizations.

But the agency is still struggling to adjust to the war on terror, in which its job is not to monitor states, but individuals or small cells hidden all over the world. To accomplish this, the NSA has developed ever more sophisticated technology that mines vast amounts of data. But this technology may be of limited use abroad. And at home, it increases pressure on the agency to bypass civil liberties and skirt formal legal channels of criminal investigation. Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries, the NSA was never supposed to be turned inward. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency and came away stunned.

"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people," he said in 1975, "and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."

He added that if a dictator ever took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."

At the time, the agency had the ability to listen to only what people said over the telephone or wrote in an occasional telegram; they had no access to private letters. But today, with people expressing their innermost thoughts in e-mail messages, exposing their medical and financial records to the Internet, and chatting constantly on cellphones, the agency virtually has the ability to get inside a person's mind.

The NSA's original target had been the Communist bloc. The agency wrapped the Soviet Union and its satellite nations in an electronic cocoon. Anytime an aircraft, ship or military unit moved, the NSA would know. And from 22,300 miles in orbit, satellites with super-thin, football-field-sized antennas eavesdropped on Soviet communications and weapons signals.

Today, instead of eavesdropping on an enormous country that was always chattering and never moved, the NSA is trying to find small numbers of individuals who operate in closed cells, seldom communicate electronically (and when they do, use untraceable calling cards or disposable cellphones) and are constantly traveling from country to country.

During the cold war, the agency could depend on a constant flow of American-born Russian linguists from the many universities around the country with Soviet studies programs. Now the government is forced to search ethnic communities to find people who can speak Dari, Urdu or Lingala - and also pass a security clearance that frowns on people with relatives in their, or their parents', former countries.

According to an interview last year with Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then the NSA's director, intercepting calls during the war on terrorism has become a much more complex endeavor. On Sept. 10, 2001, for example, the NSA intercepted two messages. The first warned, "The match begins tomorrow," and the second said, "Tomorrow is zero hour." But even though they came from suspected al Qaeda locations in Afghanistan, the messages were never translated until after the attack on Sept. 11, and not distributed until Sept. 12.

What made the intercepts particularly difficult, General Hayden said, was that they were not "targeted" but intercepted randomly from Afghan pay phones.

This makes identification of the caller extremely difficult and slow. "Know how many international calls are made out of Afghanistan on a given day? Thousands." General Hayden said.

Still, the NSA doesn't have to go to the courts to use its electronic monitoring to snare al Qaeda members in Afghanistan. For the agency to snoop domestically on American citizens suspected of having terrorist ties, it first must to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, make a showing of probable cause that the target is linked to a terrorist group, and obtain a warrant.

The court rarely turns the government down. Since it was established in 1978, the court has granted about 19,000 warrants; it has only rejected five. And even in those cases the government has the right to appeal to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which in 27 years has only heard one case. And should the appeals court also reject the warrant request, the government could then appeal immediately to a closed session of the Supreme Court.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the NSA normally eavesdropped on a small number of American citizens or resident aliens, often a dozen or less, while the FBI, whose low-tech wiretapping was far less intrusive, requested most of the warrants from FISA.

Despite the low odds of having a request turned down, President Bush established a secret program in which the NSA would bypass the FISA court and begin eavesdropping without warrant on Americans. This decision seems to have been based on a new concept of monitoring by the agency, a way, according to the administration, to effectively handle all the data and new information.

At the time, the buzzword in national security circles was data mining: digging deep into piles of information to come up with some pattern or clue to what might happen next. Rather than monitoring a dozen or so people for months at a time, as had been the practice, the decision was made to begin secretly eavesdropping on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people for just a few days or a week at a time in order to determine who posed potential threats.

Those deemed innocent would quickly be eliminated from the watch list, while those thought suspicious would be submitted to the FISA court for a warrant.

In essence, NSA seemed to be on a classic fishing expedition, precisely the type of abuse the FISA court was put in place to stop.At a news conference, President Bush himself seemed to acknowledge this new tactic. "FISA is for long-term monitoring," he said. "There's a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring."

This eavesdropping is not the Bush administration's only attempt to expand the boundaries of what is legally permissible.

In 2002, it was revealed that the Pentagon had launched Total Information Awareness, a data mining program led by John Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who had served as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to rebels in Nicaragua.

Total Information Awareness, known as TIA, was intended to search through vast data bases, promising to "increase the information coverage by an order-of-magnitude." According to a 2002 article in The New York Times, the program "would permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to mount a vast dragnet through electronic transaction data ranging from credit card information to veterinary records, in the United States and internationally, to hunt for terrorists." After press reports, the Pentagon shut it down, and Mr. Poindexter eventually left the government.

But according to a 2004 General Accounting Office report, the Bush administration and the Pentagon continued to rely heavily on data-mining techniques. "Our survey of 128 federal departments and agencies on their use of data mining," the report said, "shows that 52 agencies are using or are planning to use data mining. These departments and agencies reported 199 data-mining efforts, of which 68 are planned and 131 are operational." Of these uses, the report continued, "the Department of Defense reported the largest number of efforts."

The administration says it needs this technology to effectively combat terrorism. But the effect on privacy has worried a number of politicians.

After he was briefed on President Bush's secret operation in 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney.

"As I reflected on the meeting today and the future we face," he wrote, "John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance."

Senator Rockefeller sounds a lot like Senator Frank Church.

"I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge," Senator Church said. "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

James Bamford is the author of Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency.

The Murder for Oil Continues in Iraq 61/

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of You Who

Value Peace and Remember

the Meaning of Christmas/For the Love of GOD

I

M

P

E

A

C

H

 BUSH

12-25-05

As part of a year end summary let's focus on the "I" word

Impeach George W. Bush

Impeach

Articles of Impeachment

of

President George W. Bush

and

Vice President Richard B. Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez
 

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:

1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of U.S. G.I.s.

2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.

3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.

4) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.

5) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

6) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.

7) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both a part of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.

8) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."

9) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.

10) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of detainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines a detainee is wrongfully held by the government.

11) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizens who are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official, prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.

12) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including in response to Congressional inquiry.

13) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the right to public trials.

14) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by the government, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has not been charged with a crime.

15) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior to hearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionary designation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."

16) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity.

17) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative oversight of executive functions.

18) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations of the United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations without consent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.
 

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH AND OTHER NAMED OFFICIALS OF THE UNITED STATES HAVE COMMITTED IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES OF UNPRECEDENTED DANGER TO THE CONSTITUTION AND PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.

Draft Articles of Impeachment of President George W. Bush and other named officials of the United States charge the most serious crimes known to law and history. Nothing in the experience of the impeachment power under the Constitution compares. The conduct charged threatens the Constitution, the United Nations, the rule of law and the lives of unknown thousands, or millions of people by their act and example.

The alleged impeachable acts of President George W. Bush include:

1. Ordering and directing "first strike" war of aggression against Afghanistan causing thousands of deaths;

2. Removing the government of Afghanistan by force and installing a government of his choice;

3. Authorizing daily intrusions into Iraqi airspace and aerial attacks including attacks on alleged defense installations in Iraq which have killed hundreds of people in time of peace;

4. Authorizing, ordering and condoning attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties are unavoidable;

5. Threatening the use of nuclear weapons and ordering preparation for their use;

6. Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently proclaiming his personal intention to change its government by force;

7. Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, murder, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners;

8. Authorizing, ordering and condoning violations of rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eight Amendments to the Constitution and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international protections of human rights;

9. Authorizing, directing and condoning bribery and coercion of individuals and governments to obtain his war ends;

10. Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda and concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment to create a climate of fear and hatred and destroy opposition to his war goals.

President Bush is accused of Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. No crimes are greater threats to the Constitution of the United States, the United Nation Charter, the rule of law or the future of humanity.


MAXIMUM EFFORT TO SECURE FULL CONSIDERATION OF IMPEACHMENT IS THE DUTY OF EVERYONE.

Impeachment is the means by which We The People of the United States and our elected representatives in Congress can prevent further crimes by the President and the human catastrophe they threaten and force accountability for crimes committed.

Congressional proceedings for impeachment can bring about open, fearless consideration of the most dangerous acts and threats ever committed by an American President. If courageously pursued, they can save our Constitution, the United Nations, the rule of law, the lives of countless people and leave open the possibility of peace on earth. Each of us must take a stand on impeachment now, or bear the burden of having failed to speak in this hour of maximum peril.

- - Ramsey Clark
January 15, 2003

Movement to impeach George W. Bush
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The phrase "Movement to impeach George W. Bush" is used in two ways. It is used to describe actions by individuals and groups within the public and private spheres intended to support an impeachment of US President George W. Bush. The phrase is also used in a more broad sense to refer to a social movement, related to public opinion polls, including both Democrats and Republicans, which indicate a degree of public support for a Presidential impeachment.

Reasons given for impeachment include: the Plame affair, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the global war on terror, the Downing Street documents, the yellowcake forgery, the 2001 terrorist incidents known as "9/11" for September 11, 2001, the mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and authorization to conduct domestic wiretaps without a warrant. These reasons have been championed by activists on the political left and groups affiliated or supportive of anti-war causes. Some conservatives also have called for Bush's ouster on many of the same grounds.

There are no impeachment hearings nor is an impeachment vote scheduled.

Ramsey Clark, United States Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson, has set up a website, VoteToImpeach.org, in which he lists some of the reasons he believes Bush, as well as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should be impeached.

Impeach George W. Bush

Impeach Bush

December 22, 2005
Ex-Clinton official Schmidt's defense of warrantless wiretaps rife with inaccuracy, empty arguments, and unwarranted credulity
In defense of his argument, however, Schmidt falsely claimed that Jamie Gorelick, as deputy attorney general under Clinton, testified that the president has the authority to "go beyond" the terms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Schmidt also offered a number of empty and irrelevant arguments in defense of Bush.

December 22, 2005
An Impeachable Offense
Nuclear Monitoring of Muslim Americans Done Without Search Warrants
In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned.

December 23, 2005
Power We Didn't Grant
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

December 22, 2005
A Time to Impeach
But Bush had plenty of bipartisan help from Democratic co-conspirators in keeping knowledge of this illegal spying from reaching the American public. It began in November 2001, in the wake of 9/11, and -- from the very first briefing for Congressional leaders by Dick Cheney until today -- Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees were told about it. Those witting and complicit in hiding the crime included Democratic Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, former chairman and later ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, former ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. They knew it was a crime -- Rockefeller, for example, warned the administration against it -- and yet did not make it public. They were frightened by polls showing security hysteria at its height.

December 22, 2005
2005: The year of vanished credibility
Start with Bush. Never at ease before the cameras, he now has the hunted blink and compulsive nasolabial twitch of the mad dictator, a cornered rat with nowhere left to run. Nixon looked the same in his last White House days, and so did Hitler, according to those present in the Fuhrerbunker. As Hitler did before him, Bush raves on about imagined victories.

December 21, 2005
ACLU Letter Requesting the Appointment of Outside Special Counsel
Due to the severe constitutional crisis created by these actions, it is essential that such a counsel be appointed immediately. Such crimes are serious felonies and they need to be fully and independently investigated.

December 23, 2005
Congress said no on war powers: Daschle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress rejected the Bush administration's request for war-making authority in talks on a resolution passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks, former Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle said in Friday's edition of The Washington Post.

December 23, 2005
Deceit over spying -- prelude to long-term lame-duck president
The president's evasion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was bad enough, but in his statement to the public, his blatant omission of the fact that the act gave him the emergency power for wiretaps may have done incalculable damage to the dwindling faith of Americans in their government, a loss of faith that could be seriously detrimental to the president's goals during the remaining three years of his term of office.

December 21, 2005
Wiretap case called throwback to Nixon
While careful not to criticize the president, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Damon Keith said he thought the case bearing his name and unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court had put an end to eavesdropping without a warrant.

December 23, 2005
Alito Said Attorneys General Can't Be Sued for Illegal Wiretaps
Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito wrote in a 1984 memo that U.S. attorneys general should be immune from being sued for ordering illegal wiretaps.

December 22, 2005
Gonzales, general lay out defense for spying
Responding to bipartisan concern about possible abuse of presidential power, the White House laid out a two-pronged argument Monday that President Bush has legal and constitutional authority to order electronic surveillance on domestic targets without court permission.

December 22, 2005
Wiretap Furor Widens Republican Divide
On one side is the national-security camp, made even more numerous by loyalty to a wartime president. On the other are the small-government civil libertarians who have long held a privileged place within the Republican Party but whose ranks have ebbed since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

December 20, 2005
Hagel seeks hearings on domestic spying
Allegations of potential abuse by the Bush administration involving domestic spying is a "very serious issue," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., Wednesday.

December 22, 2005
'Impeachment' Talk, Pro and Con, Appears in Media at Last
A smattering of polls (some commissioned by partisan groups) has found considerable, if often qualified, support for impeachment. But Frank Newport, the director of the Gallup Poll, told E&P recently that he would only run a poll on the subject if the idea really started to gain mainstream political traction, and not until then. He noted that he had been besieged with emails calling for such a survey, but felt that was a "well-organized" action.

December 21, 2005
Spying, the Constitution and the 'I-word'
They will respond by calling him Nixon 2.0 and have already hauled forth no less an authority than John Dean to testify to the president's dictatorial perfidy. The "I-word" is out there, and, I predict, you are going to hear more of it next year much more.

December 21, 2005
Censure and Impeachment
If we succeed in censuring Bush and/or Cheney, impeachment is next. The one does not cancel the other. The public will not allow it to. Censure will not satisfy those demands. It will, however, help move Congress and the media in the direction of listening to the public demand for accountability.

December 22, 2005
Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program
The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.

December 23, 2005
The return of Democratic clout
"Republicans worked very hard and gambled on being able to basically intimidate the Democrats on the Patriot Act and the ANWR provision in the Defense appropriations bill, and it didn't work," says Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

December 22, 2005
Courts unlikely to hear wiretap cases
The reason: The surveillance is so secret that its targets are unlikely to know they were wiretapped and thus are unlikely to raise a court challenge. That leaves the legal underpinnings of the program to be debated in Senate hearings expected to begin in early 2006.

December 20, 2005
Scott McClellan Lied: Congress had no oversight over illegal wiretaps
 

Q But as you know, members of Congress who were briefed said that they were informed -- yes, briefed, but given absolutely no recourse to formally object, to push back and say, this is not acceptable.

MR. McCLELLAN: They're an independent branch of government.

December 21, 2005
Must Read
Conservative Court Questions Administration's Honesty
The fourteen-page opinion makes a number of charges against the Administration. Fundamentally, it accuses the government of changing its version of the facts to suit its purposes and improperly seeking to avoid Supreme Court consideration of whether the President has the power to declare a U.S. citizen an "enemy combatant." The Court also castigates the government for at least creating the appearance that there really was not such a great need to hold Padilla as an enemy combatant and that the charges that he had entered the country to set off bombs might not be true.

December 20, 2005
Democrats say they never OK'd wiretapping
WASHINGTON - Some Democrats say they never approved a domestic wiretapping program, undermining suggestions by President Bush and his senior advisers that the plan was fully vetted in a series of congressional briefings.

December 26, 2005 Edition
Why Times Ran Wiretap Story
But Times sources said that Mr. Risen's book does include the revelation about the secret N.S.A. surveillance program. That left Mr. Taubman and his superiors in the position of having to resolve The Times' dispute with the administration before Mr. Risen could moot their legal and ethical concernsand scoop his own paper.

December 19, 2005
George W. Bush's Impeachable Offenses
The articles of Nixon's impeachment centered on his use of illegal surveillance methods against political opponents and obstruction of justice and contempt of Congress in covering it up.

Blog Pluse July 06 - December 15
Number of blog posts for "Impeach Bush" over the past six months

December 21, 2005
Two-to-one majority opposes violation of civil rights in fight against terrorism'
A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds 65% of Americans saying that while the government should make efforts to fight terrorism, it should not take steps that violate basic civil liberties. On the other hand, 31% would allow the government to take counter-terrorism steps to prevent terrorism, "even if that means your basic civil liberties would be violated."

December 20, 2005
O'Reilly retreats in "war on Christmas," declaring: " 'Happy Holidays' is fine'
Summary: On The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly apparently reversed his previous position that the phrase "Happy Holidays" is offensive, stating, " 'Happy Holidays' is fine, just don't ban 'Merry Christmas.' " O'Reilly has previously claimed the term "Happy Holidays" is offensive to "millions of Christians" and 'insulting to Christian America."

December 19, 2005
Wash. Post Impeachment Question
In her November 13 column, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Post polling director Richard Morin told her that the Post does not "do a poll on whether President Bush should be impeached" because such a question "is biased and would produce a misleading result." Media Matters for America pointed out the inconsistency in Morin's claim: the Post, under Morin's direction, asked similar questions about then-President Bill Clinton throughout 1998. Morin has now changed his story, saying that "we do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion."

December 20, 2005
Bush is Danger to the Rule of Law
President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. He cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses. Congress should swiftly enact a code that would require Mr. Bush to obtain legislative consent for every counterterrorism measure that would materially impair individual freedoms.

December 20, 2005
Peloski Wants Letters Declassified
"When I learned several years ago that the National Security Agency had been authorized to conduct the activities that President Bush referred to in his December 17 radio address, I expressed my strong concerns in a classified letter to the Administration and later verbally."

December 21, 2005
An Impeachable Offense
Spy Briefings Failed to Meet Legal Test, Lawmakers Say
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - The limited oral briefings provided by the White House to a handful of lawmakers about the domestic eavesdropping program may not have fulfilled a legal requirement under the National Security Act that calls for such reports to be in written form, Congressional officials from both parties said on Tuesday.

December 26, 2005 Edition
Bush's Abuse of Power Deserves Impeachment
Recklessly and audaciously, George W. Bush is driving the nation whose laws he swore to uphold into a constitutional crisis. He has claimed the powers of a medieval monarch and defied the other two branches of government to deny him. Eventually, despite his party's monopoly of power, he may force the nation to choose between his continuing degradation of basic national values and the terrible remedy of impeachment.

December 21, 2005
Spying Program Snared U.S. Calls
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.

December 21, 2005
Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest
A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

Impeach George W. Bush

The Best National, International, and Alternative News & Opinion

Bush
The Year of Vanished Credibility
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
--CounterPunch
Start with Bush. Never at ease before the cameras, he now has the glassy stare and mirthless smile of a cornered man with nowhere left to run. Nixon looked the same in his last White House days, and so did Hitler, according to those present in the Fuehrerbunker. As Hitler did before him, Bush raves on about imagined victories. Spare a thought for the First Lady who has to endure his demented and possibly drunken harangues over supper. The word around Washington is that he's drinking again. At this rate he'll be shooting the dog and ordering the First Lady to take poison, which I'm sure she'll have great pleasure in forwarding to her mother in law.
more...

Saturday December 24, 2005 4:11 PM EST

Bush
Dems Insist U.S. Deserves Better Than Bush
ELISABETH GOODRIDGE
--Yahoo News
WASHINGTON - Americans deserve better leadership than what the Bush administration offers, South Carolina Rep. James E. Clyburn said Saturday in the Democrats' weekly radio address.

Clyburn, chairman of the House Democratic Faith Working Group and chairman-elect of the House Democratic Caucus, said recent legislation promoted by Republicans has done little to help the lives of many Americans.
more...

Saturday December 24, 2005 4:10 PM EST

Iraq
New Lies About Iraq
Norman Solomon
--AlterNet
Three days before Christmas, the Bush administration launched a new salvo of bright spinning lies about the Iraq war.

"In an interview with reporters traveling with him on an Air Force cargo plane to Baghdad," the Associated Press reported Thursday morning, Donald Rumsfeld "hinted that a preliminary decision had been made to go below the 138,000 baseline" of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Throughout 2006, until Election Day in early November, this kind of story will be a frequent media refrain as the Bush regime does whatever it can to prevent a loss of Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
more...

Saturday December 24, 2005 7:55 AM EST

Justice
Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power
Editorial
--New York Times
With the Bush administration claiming sweeping and often legally baseless authority to detain and spy on people, judges play a crucial role in underscoring the limits of presidential power. When the Senate begins hearings next month on Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, it should explore whether he understands where the Constitution sets those limits. New documents released yesterday provide more evidence that Judge Alito has a skewed view of the allocation of power among the three branches - skewed in favor of presidential power.
more...

Saturday December 24, 2005 7:21 AM EST

Environment
Saving the North Pole
--Capital Times
Talk about a "war on Christmas"!

The mad rush of the Bush administration and its allies in Congress to drill for oil beneath the coastal tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge threatened to put big rigs on the edge give or take more than a thousand miles of the North Pole. And it looked for a few days this week as if the Senate might finally give in to the pressure.
more...

Saturday December 24, 2005 7:48 AM EST

Justice
Double rebuke for Bush as judges attack terror moves
Suzanne Goldenberg
--Guardian
President George Bush faced a rare challenge from the judiciary yesterday when two courts questioned the legality of his expansion of presidential powers in the war on terror.

In a startling rebuke, a federal appeals court refused to allow the transfer of a terror suspect, Jose Padilla, from military to civilian custody and strongly suggested that the Bush administration was trying to manipulate the judicial system.
more...

War
Iraq war: A Crime against Peace
--Islam Online
The United States violated international rules governing the use of force. Those rules, enshrined in the UN charter, limit the use of force to self-defense in case of an armed attack or military actions authorized by the Security Council to maintain or restore international peace and security.

According to an editorial on CounterPunch.org, the U.S.s war on IRAQ is a Crime against Peace as defined by the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950) as well as by paragraph 498 of the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).

Friday December 23, 2005 8:21 PM EST

Cuba
Fidel Castro Says Bush 'Very Much a Fool'
ANNE-MARIE GARCIA
--Yahoo News
HAVANA - Fidel Castro said Friday that the Bush administration was wrong to prohibit Cuba from sending a team to next year's World Baseball Classic.

"He is very much a fool," the Cuban president said of Bush. "He doesn't know who the Cuban baseball players are, or that they are Olympic and world champions. If he knew, he would know something about this country's government."

The Endless Slaughter Continues in Iraq 60/

Another Bush Crime

12-23-05

As part of a year end summary read the contents of the link below; 2004 reasons why Bush has got to go. Source : http://irregulartimes.com/

SEE: BUSH CRIMES

12-19-05

In case you were wondering I have been extremely busy. I will post some new stuff this week. Probably tonight, but no promises. Thanks for stopping by. Meanwhile I found this which pretty well sums everything up on Bush's latest debacle.

SEE: CRYPTOME

To: cryptography[at]metzdowd.com
Subject: A small editorial about recent events.
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry[at]piermont.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 13:58:06 -0500

A small editorial from your moderator. I rarely use this list to express a strong political opinion -- you will forgive me in this instance.

This mailing list is putatively about cryptography and cryptography politics, though we do tend to stray quite a bit into security issues of all sorts, and sometimes into the activities of the agency with the biggest crypto and sigint budget in the world, the NSA.

As you may all be aware, the New York Times has reported, and the administration has admitted, that President of the United States apparently ordered the NSA to conduct surveillance operations against US citizens without prior permission of the secret court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the "FISC"). This is in clear contravention of 50 USC 1801 - 50 USC 1811, a portion of the US code that provides for clear criminal penalties for violations. See:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sup_01_50_10_36_20_I.html
The President claims he has the prerogative to order such surveillance. The law unambiguously disagrees with him.

There are minor exceptions in the law, but they clearly do not apply in this case. They cover only the 15 days after a declaration of war by congress, a period of 72 hours prior to seeking court authorization (which was never sought), and similar exceptions that clearly are not germane.

There is no room for doubt or question about whether the President has the prerogative to order surveillance without asking the FISC -- even if the FISC is a toothless organization that never turns down requests, it is a federal crime, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, to conduct electronic surveillance against US citizens without court authorization.

The FISC may be worthless at defending civil liberties, but in its arrogant disregard for even the fig leaf of the FISC, the administration has actually crossed the line into a crystal clear felony. The government could have legally conducted such wiretaps at any time, but the President chose not to do it legally.

Ours is a government of laws, not of men. That means if the President disagrees with a law or feels that it is insufficient, he still must obey it. Ignoring the law is illegal, even for the President. The President may ask Congress to change the law, but meanwhile he must follow it.

Our President has chosen to declare himself above the law, a dangerous precedent that could do great harm to our country. However, without substantial effort on the part of you, and I mean you, every person reading this, nothing much is going to happen. The rule of law will continue to decay in our country. Future Presidents will claim even greater extralegal authority, and our nation will fall into despotism. I mean that sincerely. For the sake of yourself, your children and your children's children, you cannot allow this to stand.

Call your Senators and your Congressman. Demand a full investigation, both by Congress and by a special prosecutor, of the actions of the Administration and the NSA. Say that the rule of law is all that stands between us and barbarism. Say that we live in a democracy, not a kingdom, and that our elected officials are not above the law. The President is not a King. Even the President cannot participate in a felony and get away with it. Demand that even the President must obey the law.

Tell your friends to do the same. Tell them to tell their friends to do the same. Then, call back next week and the week after and the week after that until something happens. Mark it in your calendar so you don't forget about it. Politicians have short memories, and Congress is about to recess for Christmas, so you must not allow this to be forgotten. Keep at them until something happens.

Perry
The Cryptography Mailing List

Old American Century

12-02-05

The Ethnic Cleansing Continues in Iraq 59/

Abhorrent Aberration???/

Sen. Boxer: Bush Out of Touch/

Worst Person in the World Award

12-02-05 re: Limbaugh on kidnapping of peace activists in Iraq: "I'm telling you, folks, there's a part of me that likes this"
             Typical callousness and disregard for the sanctity of the lives of others from the neo-con gas bag. Hope he ends up in the same situation. Wonder how flippant he would be if some one started sawing his head off? Of course those really guilty for us being in Iraq will never set their corpulent feet anywhere near the place. It is sad that such comments are not an abhorrent aberration, but the M.O. of the neo-cons. John

SEE: Limburger Gas Bag

                       Go girl!

SEE: THE NET

            Statement from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer:
            The President fails to see and confront the truth about the war in Iraq.
           First, he refuses to acknowledge that the Iraq war has nothing to do with the 9/11 attack on our country by al Qaeda, and it has diverted us from our appropriate response to that attack which was to go into Afghanistan and hunt Osama bin Laden.
           Second, he refuses to acknowledge the fact that our long term presence in Iraq is fueling the very insurgency that the President vows to end.
            Third, the President refuses to acknowledge that any mistakes were made and that this war was based on false pretenses.
           Fourth, he ignores the tremendous financial burden on our citizens, and he completely ignores the thousands of wounded that need to hear that they will not be forgotten and that they will receive the care they need.
          Finally, the President even refuses to acknowledge that Iraqi government officials believe that we can withdraw within a two-year time frame, and he continues to demean those members of Congress who disagree with him.
          The President used this speech to lash out in a very personal way against those who believe the best strategy for success is an accelerated training of Iraqi security forces and a drawdown of American troops, starting with the National Guard. Once we clearly state that we do not intend to stay in Iraq forever, the insurgency will be diminished and our brave men and women can begin to come home.
          The Presidents failure to address the concerns of the American people and the Congress is a devastating blow to everyone who hoped to hear the President articulate a clear mission and a projection of when our troops can return home.

aberration, but the M.O. of the neo-cons.

SEE:  Bill O'Reilly Hate     Bill O'Reilly Award   Time for Countdown's list of today's three nominees for the coveted title of "Worst Person in the World."