When you say all of the above, I know one thing, you don't have the slightest Idea what you are talking about. Go to Germany and spend about 3 years, you'll find out about fascism, from the Germans who lived through it. Fascists or Nazis, is remarkably similar to the principles professed by the Democrats and the Socialists. I personally spoke with people who lived under the Nazis I found out a few interesting concepts. Nazis were environmental extremists, Herman Goering, loving animals, and protecting trees and forests and protecting them over peoples rights and needs. They are socialists, ask a older German, what Baby Geld is, a huge social welfare system. Fascism is not right wing, it just another form of Left Wing Socialism, where the government provides a welfare state. So when you say fascism, its closer to the Democratic and Socialist Party, and some forms of it still survive today in Europe along with the hate for Jewish people.
Wednesday December 21, 3:44 AM For years, Bush said court orders required for spying WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush, caught up in a domestic spying controversy, for the past two years has assured Americans worried about expanded government anti-terrorism powers that court orders were needed to tap telephones. Bush has drawn fire over a 2002 order enabling the National Security Agency to monitor, without a judge's go-ahead, the telephone and electronic mail of US citizens suspected of Al-Qaeda ties when they are in touch with someone abroad. Critics have charged that the unprecedented move is an abuse of power and a violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires court approval of wiretaps and electronic surveillance. The White House has fired back that Bush's move is legal under the US Constitution and a congressional resolution, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, that authorized the use of force in Afghanistan. In 2004 and 2005, Bush repeatedly argued that the controversial Patriot Act package of anti-terrorism laws safeguards civil liberties because US authorities still need a warrant to tap telephones in the United States. "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order," he said on April 20, 2004 in Buffalo, New York. "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so," he added. On April 19, 2004, Bush said the Patriot Act enabled law-enforcement officials to use "roving wiretaps," which are not fixed to a particular telephone, against terrorism, as they had been against organized crime. "You see, what that meant is if you got a wiretap by court order -- and by the way, everything you hear about requires court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example," he said in Hershey, Pennsylvania. But under Bush's super-secret order, first revealed Friday by the New York Times and details of which have been confirmed by Bush and other top US officials, the National Security Agency does not need that court's approval. "A couple of things that are very important for you to understand about the Patriot Act. First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order," he said July 14, 2004 in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin. "In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order," he said. "What the Patriot Act said is let's give our law enforcement the tools necessary, without abridging the Constitution of the United States, the tools necessary to defend America." The president has also repeatedly said that the need to seek such warrants means "the judicial branch has a strong oversight role." "Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, a federal judge's permission to track his calls, or a federal judge's permission to search his property," he said in June. "Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the United States," he added in remarks at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy. He made similar comments in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 20 2005. Vice President Dick Cheney offered similar reassurances at a Patriot Act event in June 2004, saying that "all of the investigative tools" under the law "require the approval of a judge before they can be carried out." "And similar statutes have been on the book for years, and tested in the courts, and found to be constitutional," he said in Kansas City, Missouri. Asked whether Bush had misled the US public, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday that Bush "was talking about (the issue) in the context of the Patriot Act."
Bushâs Abuse of Power Deserves Impeachment By: Joe Conason Date: 12/26/2005 Page: 5 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 partyâs monopoly of power, he may force the nation to choose between his continuing degradation of basic national values and the terrible remedy of impeachment. Until Mr. Bush openly proclaimed as commander in chief that he can brush aside the law, cries for impeachment were heard only on the political fringe, although most Americans have long since realized that he misled America into war. Much as he is disliked and disdained by liberals, even they have shown little enthusiasm for impeachment. In addition to the obvious obstacle of a Republican-controlled Congress, there appeared to be no firm proof of an offense that justified such action. To mention the word was to be dismissedâeven by people who believe that this President may well have committed âhigh crimes and misdemeanors.â The partisan peepshow of the Clinton impeachment did not leave much enthusiasm for that process. Nor would any thoughtful citizen want to risk abusing it in the manner made infamous by Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. For responsible citizens, the reluctance to seek the ultimate sanction against the President is especially strong in a time of peril. He and his supporters could argue, quite plausibly, that to impeach him now would be dangerous and destabilizing. His pet pundits and flacks would deploy all the defensive arguments they scorned in 1999. He might well be able to rally the public to his side again by denouncing âpoliticians in Washingtonâ for âundermining national security.â As political strategy and as public policy, the impeachment of Mr. Bush is an unappealing prospect. (Besides, if he could be thrown out somehow, who would want Dick Cheney to succeed him?) And yet, the actions and attitudes of this President raise the question of how else we can preserve the bedrock principles of a democratic republic. Dark suspicions would be aroused by Mr. Bushâs insistence on his supposed wartime exemption from the law even if he had greater credibility than he now possesses. Hearing a leader with his diminished reputation for honesty announcing such claims, as he seeks to regain authority by promoting fear, it is impossible not to imagine the worst. The President says that if he is to protect the nation from our enemies, he must be able to order the surveillance of American citizens without seeking the authority of a court. He has repeatedly violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which provides very few safeguards of traditional civil liberties. He disdains a law that permits him to order the immediate electronic monitoring of anyone, requiring only that his officers seek a warrant within 72 hours from a secret court that approves those requests in almost every case and never hears an opposing brief. He claims that even those minimal restraints are too onerous. Why would the President instruct the Attorney General not to seek warrants from the FISA court, as the statute requires? What did he and his aides fear from that courtâs conservative judgesâappointed by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquistâwho have routinely approved all but a tiny percentage of the warrants presented to them by this and other administrations over the past quarter-century? Which wiretaps did he expect those pliable judges to reject? The Bush doctrine of a President above the law and the Constitution has a dishonorable tradition that dates back to his fatherâs idol, Richard Nixon. More recently, its pedigree derives from memoranda prepared by the same White House lawyers who have told Mr. Bush that he can tear up international treaties and American statutes that prohibit torture and protect against detention without trial. What has provoked fresh discussion of impeachment is the Presidentâs admission that he has ignored the lawâs requirements and that he intends to keep doing so. The impeccably conservative legal scholar and former Reagan aide Bruce Fein explained the deep implications of the Presidentâs arrogance: âIf President Bush is totally unapologetic and says, âI continue to maintain that as a wartime President I can do anything I wantâI donât need to consult any other branches,â that is an impeachable offense. Itâs more dangerous than Clintonâs lying under oath, because it jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages. It would set a precedent that ⦠would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant.â There are politicians in both parties who know that Mr. Bushâs trespasses cannot be allowed to stand. Only a bipartisan coalition can restrain and, if necessary, remove him. It is to be hoped that he steps back before such a struggle becomes inevitable.
Who is Joe Conason? Joe Conason is a HUGE CLINTON MOONBAT, with articles how Clinton was wronged in Impeachment. Joe is doing nothing but promoting TIT for TAT. The mean Republicans Impeach our boy Clinton so now we are going to try and Impeach Bush. Read more of Joe on Salon.com the Clinton cronies Web site. His books are marked down to 5 bucks in the bargin bin at Borders. NEXT CASE!
These are all very good points...not that I am arguing with their merit at all, but historically in our country, "the party of Lincoln," the Republicans, have been way way more pro-environment than the democrats. In fact, Nixon created the EPA. And nobody can disagree that free societies require free markets. Look at Venezuela.
Live and Let SPY By: Ann Coulter, 21 Dec 2005 Apart from the day The New York Times goes out of business -- and the stellar work Paul Krugman's column does twice a week helping people house-train their puppies -- the newspaper has done the greatest thing it will ever do in its entire existence. (Calm down: No, the Times didn't hold an intervention for Frank Rich.) Monday's Times carried a major expose on child molesters who use the Internet to lure their adolescent prey into performing sex acts for Webcams. In the course of investigating the story, reporter Kurt Eichenwald broke open a massive network of pedophiles, rescued a young man who had been abused for years, and led the Department of Justice to hundreds of child molesters. I kept waiting for the catch, but apparently the Times does not yet believe pedophilia is covered by the "privacy right." They should stop covering politics and start covering more stories like this. In order to report the story, the Times said it obtained: -- copies of online conversations and e-mail messages between minors and the creepy adults; -- records of payments to the minors; -- membership lists for Webcam sites; -- defunct sites stored in online archives; -- files retained on a victim's computer over several years; -- financial records, credit card processing data and other information; -- The Neverland Ranch's mailing list. (OK, I made that last one up.) Would that the Times allowed the Bush administration similar investigative powers for Islamofacists in America! Which brings me to this week's scandal about No Such Agency spying on "Americans." I have difficulty ginning up much interest in this story inasmuch as I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East, and sending liberals to Guantanamo. But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9/11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief. With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war. (Perhaps it's because of the media blackout on images of the 9/11 attack. We're not allowed to see those because seeing planes plowing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon might make us feel angry and jingoistic.) Among the things that war entails are: killing people (sometimes innocent), destroying buildings (sometimes innocent) and spying on people (sometimes innocent). That is why war is a bad thing. But once a war starts, it is going to be finished one way or another, and I have a preference for it coming out one way rather than the other. In previous wars, the country has done far worse than monitor telephone calls placed to jihad headquarters. FDR rounded up Japanese -- many of them loyal American citizens -- and threw them in internment camps. Most appallingly, at the same time, he let New York Times editors wander free. Note the following about the Japanese internment:
Great piece by Coulter. Let's look at the "misdeeds" of the Bush war machine comparatively in a historical context. Americans killed in Iraq. 2200 Americans killed in Viet Nam 58,000 Americans killed in WWll 395,000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Atrocities in Nam: My Lai where as many as 500 civilians were allegedly slain on 3/16/68 Abu Ghraib: Terrorists are tortured by being posed in humiliating positions while wearing East Village homo erotica paraphernalia. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WWll: "World's Greatest (socialist) President FDR "interns" i.e. commits into concentration camps, 110,000 Japanese Americans, costing them homes, business, dignity and reputation. War on Terror: Perhaps hundreds of Arabs living in the U.S. have their phones tapped! Oh, the HUMANITY!
The only KLAN member in office is a DEMOCRAT. Funny how the media makes no mention of him. Instead they try to convince/ brainwash poor people and minorities that every hard working white person from the south in a government position is somehow a racist. Unreal. Kinda strange that Farrakhan/ Jackson/ Sharpton arent bumbling over each other racing to the nearist pulpit demanding that Sen. Byrd step down for his membership in the KKK. No liberal bias you say? I just proved it.