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| Science Forum Index » Medicine - Lyme Forum » From Jodi Rell's Office: "US Government" afraid of... |
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| Mort Zuckerman... |
 Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 5:45 am |
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Subject: From Jodi Rell's Office: "US Government" afraid of civil war
more than anything (more illegal spying).
Date: Nov 1, 2009 10:44 AM
GREENWALD ARTICLE BELOW ABOUT
THE EXPANDED ILLEGAL SPYING ON
AMERICANS
=======================
They're not afraid of "terrorists."
They're afraid of Americans and
American Militias.
They're afraid of *us,* organizing into
a revolt or a rebellion, and they're especially
terrified of people breaking into the houses
and businesses of all the rich people. Which
obviously *IS* *GONNA* *HAPPEN.*
Don't forget, though: the cops know
who has what goodies, and they have
done break-ins before. And they know
how to avoid prosecution. They use
ski masks. And they all band together
to protect each other:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmdqiUE7Gfw
In the beginning it will be a lot of small
jobs, but later, under the cover of the
chaos, the cops will have the most success
ransacking. They're armed like the Military
now, too. So, in the end, the whole gig
will backfire on the Bigs.
The Bigs, the rich people, the Banksters
are For Whom The Justice Department Works,
when they're not working to cover their
own asses, which is a secondary part of
this latest action by the Obamas and the
Dems.
Nobody is gonna win.
Me, I don't have a gun. My arms and
hands are too weak and fried to fire:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PHILLIPS_JE_PERVERT.htm
^^^"Moderately Severe Carpal Tunnel" in
both hands and every single one of the
nerves coming out of my neck is damaged
due to chronic Lyme meningitis.
I know Rell's office is egging me on to
bag me again and call me a terrorist
but sane people can see that my bag job
was all about James Phillips not being
sued for malpractice. People believe
what they WANT to believe (whatever serves
their own self-flattering ends).
And from speaking to Rell's staff, I am
*certain* this is what they are afraid of.
(That woman Rell is such a low-life. She's
a whore for the banksters. She's the worst
kind of a snob - a stupid, uneducated one.)
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
==================http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/01-0
Published on Sunday, November 1, 2009 by Salon.com
Obama's Latest Use of 'Secrecy' to Shield Presidential Lawbreaking
What was once depicted as a grave act of lawlessness -- Bush's NSA
program -- is now deemed a vital state secret.
by Glenn Greenwald
The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and
most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which
previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal
Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) -- to attempt to block courts
from ruling on the legality of the government's domestic surveillance
activities. Obama did so again this past Friday -- just six weeks
after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it
insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege.
Instead -- as predicted -- the DOJ continues to embrace the very same
"state secrets" theories of the Bush administration -- which Democrats
generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned --
and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from
judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the
law.
In the case of Shubert v. Bush, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
represents numerous American citizens suing individual Bush officials,
alleging that the Bush administration instituted a massive "dragnet"
surveillance program whereby "the NSA intercepted (and continues to
intercept) millions of phone calls and emails of ordinary Americans,
with no connection to Al Qaeda, terrorism, or any foreign government"
and that "the program monitors millions of calls and emails . . .
entirely in the United States . . . without a warrant" (page 4). The
lawsuit's central allegation is that the officials responsible for
this program violated the Fourth Amendment and FISA and can be held
accountable under the law for those illegal actions.
Rather than respond to the substance of the allegations, the Obama DOJ
is instead insisting that courts are barred from considering the
claims at all. Why? Because -- it asserted in a Motion to Dismiss it
filed on Friday -- to allow the lawsuit to proceed under any
circumstances -- no matter the safeguards imposed or specific
documents excluded -- "would require the disclosure of highly
classified NSA sources and methods about the TSP [Terrorist
Surveillance Program] and other NSA activities" (page  . According
to the Obama administration, what were once leading examples of Bush's
lawlessness and contempt for the Constitution -- namely, his illegal,
warrantless domestic spying programs -- are now vital "state secrets"
in America's War on Terror, such that courts are prohibited even from
considering whether the Government was engaging in crimes when spying
on Americans.
That was the principal authoritarian instrument used by Bush/Cheney to
shield itself from judicial accountability, and it is now the
instrument used by the Obama DOJ to do the same. Initially, consider
this: if Obama's argument is true -- that national security would be
severely damaged from any disclosures about the government's
surveillance activities, even when criminal -- doesn't that mean that
the Bush administration and its right-wing followers were correct all
along when they insisted that The New York Times had damaged American
national security by revealing the existence of the illegal NSA
program? Isn't that the logical conclusion from Obama's claim that no
court can adjudicate the legality of the program without making us
Unsafe?
Beyond that, just consider the broader implications of what is going
on here. Even after they announced their new internal guidelines
with great fanfare, the Obama administration is explicitly arguing
that the President can break the law with impunity -- can commit
crimes -- when it comes to domestic surveillance because our
surveillance programs are so secret that national security will be
harmed if courts are permitted to adjudicate their legality. As EFF
put it last July (emphasis in original), government officials:
seek to transform a limited, common law evidentiary into sweeping
immunity for their own unlawful conduct. . . . [They] would sweep away
these vital constitutional principles with the stroke of a
declaration, arrogating to themselves the right to immunize any
criminal or unconstitutional conduct in the name of national
security. . . .
For that reason, as EFF pointedly noted the last time the Obama DOJ
sought to compel dismissal based on this claim: "defendants' motion
is even more frightening than the conduct alleged in the Amended
Complaint." Think about that argument: the Obama DOJ's secrecy and
immunity theories are even more threatening than the illegal domestic
spying programs they seek to protect. Why? As EFF explains (click
image to enlarge)
Can anyone deny that's true? If the President can simply use
"secrecy" claims to block courts from ruling on whether he broke the
law, then what checks or limits exist on the President's power to spy
illegally on Americans or commit other crimes in a classified
setting? By definition, there are none. That's what made this
distortion of the "state secrets" privilege so dangerous when Bush
used it, and it's what makes it so dangerous now. Back in April, 2006
-- a mere four months after the illegal NSA program was first
revealed, and right after Bush had asserted "state secrets" to block
any judicial inquiry into the NSA program -- here is what I wrote
about the Bush administration's use of the "state secrets" privilege
as a means of blocking entire lawsuits rather than limiting the use of
specific classified documents:
[Q]uite unsurprisingly, the Bush administration loves this
doctrine, as it is so consistent with its monarchical view of
presidential infallibility, and the administration has become the most
aggressive and enthusiastic user of this doctrine . . . . As the
Chicago Tribune detailed last year, the administration has also used
this doctrine repeatedly to obstruct any judicial proceedings designed
to investigate its torture and rendition policies, among
others . . . . This administration endlessly searches out obscure
legal doctrines or new legal theories which have one purpose -- to
eradicate limits on presidential power and to increase the President's
ability to prevent disclosure of all but the most innocuous and
meaningless information.
That was the prevailing, consensus view at the time among Democrats,
progressives and civil libertarians regarding Bush's use of the state
secrets privilege: that the privilege was being used to exclude the
President from the rule of law by seeking to preclude judicial
examination of his conduct. Plainly, Obama is now doing the same
exact thing -- not just to shield domestic surveillance programs from
judicial review but also torture and renditions. Is there any
conceivable, rational reason to view this differently? None that I
can see.
Note, too, how this latest episode eviscerates many of the excuses
made earlier this year by Obama supporters to justify this conduct.
It was frequently claimed that these arguments were likely asserted by
holdover Bush DOJ lawyers without the involvement of Obama officials
-- but under the new DOJ guidelines, the Attorney General must
personally approve of any state secrets assertions, and Eric Holder
himself confirmed in a Press Release on Friday that he did so here.
Alternatively, it was often claimed that Obama was only asserting
these Bush-replicating theories because he secretly hoped to lose in
court and thus magnanimously gift us with good precedent -- but the
Obama administration has repeatedly lost in court on these theories
and then engaged in extraordinary efforts to destroy those good
precedents, including by inducing the full appellate court to vacate
the decisions or even threatening to defy the court orders compelling
disclosure. No rational person can continue to maintain those
excuses.
Is there any doubt at this point that, as TalkingPointsMemo put it in
a headline: "Obama Mimics Bush on State Secrets"? Or can anyone
dispute what EFF's Kevin Bankston told ABC News after the latest
filing from the Obama DOJ:
The Obama administration has essentially adopted the position of
the Bush administration in these cases, even though candidate Obama
was incredibly critical of both the warrantless wiretapping program
and the Bush administration's abuse of the state secrets privilege.
Extreme secrecy wasn't an ancillary aspect of the progressive critique
of Bush/Cheney; it was central, as it was secrecy that enabled all the
other abuses. More to the point, the secrecy claims being asserted
here are not merely about hiding illegal government conduct; worse,
they are designed to shield executive officials from accountability
for lawbreaking. As the ACLU's Ben Wizner put it about the Obama
DOJ's attempt to use the doctrine to bar torture victims from having a
day in court: "This case is not about secrecy. It's about immunity
from accountability." That's what Obama is supporting: "immunity
from accountability."
What makes this most recent episode particularly appalling is that the
program which Obama is seeking to protect here -- the illegal Bush/
Cheney NSA surveillance scheme -- was once depicted as a grave threat
to the Constitution and the ultimate expression of lawlessness. Yet
now, Obama insists that the very same program is such an important
"state secret" that no court can even adjudicate whether the law was
broken. When Democrats voted to immunize lawbreaking telecoms last
year, they repeatedly justified that by stressing that Bush officials
themselves were not immunized and would therefore remain accountable
under the law. Obama himself, when trying to placate angry supporters
over his vote for telecom immunity, said this about the bill he
supported:
I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not
resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse
of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to
telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by
cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless
wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law
and removes an important tool for the American people to demand
accountability for past abuses.
Yet here is Obama doing exactly the opposite of those claims and
assurances: namely, he's now (a) seeking to immunize not only
telecoms, but also Bush officials, from judicial review; (b) demanding
that courts be barred from considering the legality of NSA
surveillance programs under any circumstances; and (c) attempting to
institutionalize the broadest claims of presidential immunity
imaginable via radically broad secrecy claims. To do so, he's
violating virtually everything he ever said about such matters when he
was Senator Obama and Candidate Obama. And he's relying on the very
same theories of executive immunity and secrecy that -- under a
Republican President -- sparked so much purported outrage. If nothing
else, this latest episode underscores the ongoing need for
Congressional Democrats to proceed with proposed legislation to impose
meaningful limits and oversight on the President's ability to use this
power, as this President, just like the last one, has left no doubt
about his willingness to abuse it for ignoble ends.
Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights
litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times
Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush
administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His
second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci |
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