Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

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Republican Buyer’s Remorse

GOP Irritation At Bush Was Long Brewing By Jim VandeHei, Washington Post Staff Writer

“Bottom line, there is a lot of buyer’s remorse,” said Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.). If the vote were held today on the Medicare prescription drug benefit, he said, as many 120 Republicans would vote against it. “It was probably our greatest failure in my adult lifetime,” he said. …

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a Bush ally who dismissed concerns about an inattentive White House, said he regrets voting for the No Child Left Behind bill in the first term.

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Ginsburg Faults GOP Critics, Cites a Threat From Fringe

Ginsburg Faults GOP Critics, Cites a Threat From ‘Fringe’ By Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg assailed the court’s congressional critics in a recent speech overseas, saying their efforts “fuel” an “irrational fringe” that threatened her life and that of a colleague, former justice Sandra Day O’Connor. …

[A Feb. 28, 2005, chatroom] posting said: “Okay, commandoes, here is your first patriotic assignment . . . an easy one. Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg and O’Connor have publicly stated that they use [foreign] laws and rulings to decide how to rule on American cases. This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom. . . . If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then these two justices will not live another week.“

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Bill Would Allow Warrantless Spying

Bill Would Allow Warrantless Spying By Charles Babington, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration could continue its policy of spying on targeted Americans without obtaining warrants, but only if it justifies the action to a small group of lawmakers, under legislation introduced yesterday by key Republican senators. …

The bill would allow the NSA to eavesdrop, without a warrant, for up to 45 days per case, at which point the Justice Department would have three options. It could drop the surveillance, seek a warrant from FISA’s court, or convince a handful of House and Senate members that although there is insufficient evidence for a warrant, continued surveillance “is necessary to protect the United States,” according to a summary the four sponsors provided yesterday. They are Mike DeWine (Ohio), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Olympia J. Snowe (Maine).

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Kempthorne Picked for Interior

Kempthorne Picked for Interior By Peter Baker and Juliet Eilperin,
Washington Post Staff Writer

[E]nvironmental groups immediately assailed the selection, calling it the latest example of the Bush administration selling out to development and energy industry interests. Environmentalists noted that Kempthorne fought to open national forests to logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. They said he worked to weaken water safety and endangered species laws. …

The League of Conservation Voters offered a two-sentence response: “During his career in Congress, Governor Kempthorne earned a paltry 1 percent lifetime LCV score. Enough said.” …

“Gov. Kempthorne is a very nice, personable and noncombative person, which are some of the features the Bush administration is looking for and which will help in confirmation,” said Roger Singer, Idaho chapter director of the Sierra Club. “But his record on environmental issues is quite abysmal.”

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Army Transfers Could Trigger A Gang War

Army Transfers Could Trigger A Gang War – March 16, 2006 – The New York Sun – NY News By JOSH GERSTEIN – Staff Reporter of the Sun

Law enforcement authorities fear that the planned relocation of thousands of Army soldiers in Texas could trigger a battle the military has not trained for – a turf war between violent criminal gangs.

Local police and FBI officials said they expect the transfer of between 10,000 and 20,000 troops to Fort Bliss near El Paso, Texas, to bring more members of the Folk Nation gang into contact with a criminal group that is already well-established in the area, Barrio Azteca. …

Ms. Simmons said Folk Nation, which was founded in Chicago and includes several branches using the name Gangster Disciples, has gained a foothold in the Army. “The Folk Nation has a presence with the military and/or their dependents,” she said.

NBC 17 – News – Gang Members Learn Deadly Skills In Military Story by Spc. Bradley Rhen

Some of America’s most notorious street gangs are turning up in the military. But they aren’t just serving their country. Instead, many are taking the opportunity to learn a very deadly trade.

NBC 17 has learned there is a growing concern with gang members enlisting in the military with the hope of learning the art of war.

Detective Hunter Glass is a an Army veteran and Fayetteville gang officer.

“We do know through intelligence that some gang members are actually sent into the military to learn about military tactics,” Glass said.

Glass showed NBC 17 footage of a known gang member just back from Iraq firing on two California police officers — he kills one quickly using tactics perfected on the battlefield.

“Using strictly military tactics he learned in the Marine Corps, he applies suppressive fire power right into the corner,” Glass explains. “He didn’t learn those tactics as a gang member.” …

Joshua Sharp is a full-time military investigator at Fort Bragg who also tracks gangs. He’s very worried about what gang members are learning.

“These guys with military tactics can use it for drug buys or during busts,” Sharp told NBC 17. “They know how to handle surveillance and have other useful skills.”

Gang members brag they now have a pipeline from the U.S. to Baghdad and are picking up new skills, such as war time medical training. …

“I can’t think of any problem we have as a law enforcement, other than drugs, that is this big of an epidemic,” Sharp said. …

NBC 17 has also learned that gangs are not the only groups the military is worried about. Officials are also concerned about extremist groups like skinheads and the Aryan Nation in the armed forces. …

“Gang activity is alive and well in the military — you just have to know what you’re looking for and where to look to identify it,” Schwind told the audience at the briefing.

There are several reasons gang members join the military, including getting away from the gang life, seeking legal employment and recruiting soldiers and family members. Also, combat tactics and weapons training can be taken back to the gangs once they get out of the military.

Once in the military, those gang members may recruit others — military and civilian — and form a clique, Schwind said. However, he pointed out that gangs usually aren’t formed within units, creating gangs like the “Alpha Company Mafia.”

“I would say that the gang situation within the military — not just the Army, but in the military in all — is a problem and it continues to grow every day,” Schwind. …

“It’s well known that gangs are specifically targeting the military for recruitment because of our vast ability to deploy and their outreach to different regions,” he said. “All the different regions that we deploy to, they can send their gang members, or their troops of their gang, to expand their territory, or their trafficking area.”

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Judging Judges

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Someone wrote a book entitled “What’s Wrong With Kansas?” Apparently, the sequel will have to be entitled “What’s Wrong with South Dakota?” Or maybe “WTF, SD?” Banning abortions and, now, setting up kangaroo courts to judge judges and keep them in line with the will of the mob.

There’s no way J.A.I.L. is constitutional. If this and the abortion ban are struck down in the same Supreme Court session, will that constitute some record for state incompetence? “Come to South Dakota — we don’t know what the hell we’re doing!” mjh

Text of the South Dakota J.A.I.L. Amendment

We, the People of South Dakota, find that the doctrine of judicial immunity has the potential of being greatly abused; that when judges do abuse their power, the People are obliged – it is their duty – to correct that injury, for the benefit of themselves and their posterity. In order to insure judicial accountability and domestic tranquility, we hereby amend our Constitution by adding these provisions as §28 to Article VI, which shall be known as “The J.A.I.L. Amendment.” [Judicial Accountability Initiated Law]

Rushmore to Judgment – South Dakota ups the ante in the national war over judges. By Bert Brandenburg

The newest front in the war on the courts is being fought in South Dakota, where, in the shadow of Mt. Rushmore, a group called “J.A.I.L. 4 Judges” is promoting one of the most radical threats to justice this side of the Spanish Inquisition. It’s extreme and it’s incoherent, but it’s got more than 40,000 petition signatures—and it will go to the state’s voters as a constitutional amendment in November. A national network of supporters is waiting in the wings, threatening to export the revolution to other states if they do well this fall.

The group’s proposed measure would wipe out a basic doctrine called judicial immunity that dates back to the 13th century, protecting judges from personal liability for doing their job ruling on the cases before them. A special grand jury—essentially a fourth branch of government—would be created to indict judges for a string of bizarre offenses that include “deliberate disregard of material facts,” “judicial acts without jurisdiction,” and “blocking of a lawful conclusion of a case,” along with judicial failure to impanel a jury for infractions as minor as a dog-license violation. After three such “convictions,” the judge would be fired and docked half of his or her retirement benefits for good measure. …

This movement is the brainchild of a Californian named Ronald Branson with a history of suing state and federal officials for alleged conspiracies (including his own trials for burglary and a traffic offense). …

In other words, J.A.I.L. 4 Judges seeks to capitalize on the incessant talk-radio hate-in against the courts, where America’s 11,000 judges are caricatured as godless, flag-burning, property-seizing, gay-marriage missionaries. J.A.I.L. is just the latest in a parade of groups twisting the notion of judicial accountability beyond recognition. …

Indeed, JAILers are brimming with confidence that they’ll win in South Dakota this fall, and around the country beyond. Writes Branson: “The People are slowly waking up to realize who the Enemy is—and it isn’t Bin Laden.”

Retired Supreme Court Justice hits attacks on courts and warns of dictatorship Nina Totenberg, NPR News

I, said [retired Justice] O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning.

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Secrecy is a formula for inefficient decision-making

SUNSHINE Week – SUNSHINE Week

Sixty-two percent of respondents to a Scripps Survey Research Center poll conducted at the request of the American Society of Newspaper Editors said “public access to government records is critical to the functioning of good government.”

The poll indicated that only a third of Americans consider the federal government “very open.” Twenty-two percent of respondents consider the federal government “very secretive”; another 42 percent said it was “somewhat secretive.”

Bush Expands Government Secrecy, Arouses Critics By Alan Elsner, Reuters [September 3, 2002]

“This administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon administration. They don’t believe the American people or Congress have any right to information,” said last week Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that is suing the administration to force it to reveal the members of the energy task force.

AlterNet: WireTap: Five Minutes with Helen Thomas By Elana Berkowitz, Campus Progress.

Helen Thomas: “This Bush administration is the most secretive I have ever covered, and I think the most secretive in American history since the time presidents have been covered.”

Ari Fleischer in 2002: “I make the case that we are more accessible and open than many previous administrations — given how many times Powell, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft have briefed,” he said.

Ari Fleischer in 2006

“It’s constantly getting worse,” said Ari Fleischer, who preceded Mr. McClellan as Mr. Bush’s spokesman. Perhaps surprisingly for a Bush defender, he attributed the soured relationship in part to what he said was a secretiveness within the White House.

“It’s accented and compounded now because this administration is more secretive,” he said.

USATODAY.com – Secrecy grows more common with war on terror as excuse

In the ensuing years, Americans have seen many examples, including:

• A program that allows authorities to intercept electronic communications between people in the USA and people abroad. It evades the long-standing safeguard against misuse: that a warrant be granted by an independent court. Even the program itself was kept secret from everyone save a few members of Congress.

• A stepped up effort to punish government officials who leak information and to prosecute journalists who refuse to name these officials.

• A network of foreign prisons about which virtually nothing is known, and an extreme reluctance to reveal any information about the detainees at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

• Sluggish response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documents going back to before Sept. 11, 2001.

• A policy of classifying more government documents than previous administrations and even reclassifying some that had been released to the public in recent years.

USATODAY.com – Survey finds more information kept from public By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY

Local, state and federal government agencies are keeping more information secret from the public, making it harder for citizens to keep tabs on what elected officials and bureaucrats are doing, an investigation by the Associated Press shows.

The findings alarm proponents of open government.

“What is happening, especially at the highest levels of government, is basically un-American,” says Hodding Carter, State Department spokesman in the Carter administration. “Americans should be treated as owners of their government and of their government’s information, not as supplicants to whom you dole it out when you feel like it.” …

The AP investigation found that:

• States have steadily limited the public’s access to government information since the Sept. 11 attacks. It analyzed legislation in all 50 states and found that, since the attacks, legislatures have passed “more than 1,000 laws changing access to information, approving more than twice as many measures that restrict information as laws that open government books.”

• “Many federal agencies fall far short of the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, repeatedly failing to meet reporting deadlines while citizens wait ever longer for documents.” The act, like similar laws in each state, is designed to ensure that most government information is available to the public. It also spells out how to request the information.

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) Blog: Public Hearing Transcript Taken Off Line

The news media kicked off Sunshine Week yesterday. Still, darkness looms. In recent days, the Defense Department’s NORAD reportedly ordered that a transcript be taken off the web from an open, public hearing which happened in January. That’s a new one, with Big Brotherish overtones, we say.

Government Openness at Issue as Bush Holds On to Records By Adam Clymer, The New York Times

The Bush administration has put a much tighter lid than recent presidents on government proceedings and the public release of information, exhibiting a penchant for secrecy that has been striking to historians, legal experts and lawmakers of both parties.

Some of the Bush policies, like closing previously public court proceedings, were prompted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and are part of the administration’s drive for greater domestic security. Others, like Vice President Dick Cheney’s battle to keep records of his energy task force secret, reflect an administration that arrived in Washington determined to strengthen the authority of the executive branch, senior administration officials say. …

Secrecy is almost impossible to quantify, but there are some revealing measures. In the year that ended on Sept. 30, 2001, most of which came during the Bush presidency, 260,978 documents were classified, up 18 percent from the previous year. And since Sept. 11, three new agencies were given the power to stamp documents as “Secret” — the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services. …

Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, argues that secrecy does more harm than good. …

“Secrecy is a formula for inefficient decision-making,” Mr. Moynihan said, and plays to the instincts of self-importance of the bureaucracy.

This week on NOW:
Friday, March 17, 2006 on PBS
(Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html)

“The Sunshine Gang”

Your government is keeping secrets from you. Meet some people fighting
back to uncover the truth. Continue reading Secrecy is a formula for inefficient decision-making →