Gilmore Panel May Urge Domestic Spy Effort
The advisory panel tasked with making recommendations for anti-terrorism efforts in the United States is expected to release an interim report to Congress Thursday that may include a controversial domestic intelligence gathering policy, according to sources close to the panel. ... Sources say the debate has included serious discussion on whether a new agency directly drawing on the military should be created that combines services found in the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency - in other words, a domestic U.S. government agency tasked to spy on Americans. The new agency would have the capability to create a fusion between foreign and domestic sources of intelligence that is not legally possible today. Discussions have also included the model of British MI5, which works with the military, law enforcement and both foreign and domestic intelligence in the interest of protecting the country from terrorist threats and serious crime. ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70275,00.html
Information Awareness Office
http://www.drudgereport.com/DATA.gif
'Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every
academic grade your receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend'...
BOHICA: Lawmakers Make Final Changes to Homeland Bill
As negotiators wrapped up the compromise on the creation of a massive new Homeland Security Department, lawmakers inserted two key provisions to provide immediate financial windfalls to the health care and airline industries. The homeland security bill requires the government to pay all damages if someone is sickened or dies from a smallpox vaccination, Fox News has learned. It also grants the airline industry a long-sought extension in government-subsidized terrorism insurance.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70271,00.html
BOHICA: Congress Sends Bush $393 Billion Defense Bill
The Senate gave final approval Wednesday to a bill authorizing $393 billion in 2003 defense programs that lawmakers said will give the military the support it needs to keep fighting the war on terror while preparing for a possible invasion of Iraq. ... It is about 15 percent higher than the 2002 bill.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70291,00.html
U.S. Needs Reform-Minded IRS Commissioner
IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti recently announced that he is leaving the agency. This is great news for taxpayers and the Bill of Rights. His scandal-tainted tenure has been highlighted by flagrant attacks on the Fourth Amendment and gross abuses of the regulatory process. Adding insult to injury, his parting request is a bigger budget for the IRS. Hopefully, the Bush administration will choose a new IRS commissioner that respects the rule of law and understands that tax reform is needed to fix the problems in the tax code. Rossotti's legacy certainly is disappointing. For instance, he is responsible for issuing a regulation to help foreign governments tax income earned in America. ... The IRS has always refused to conduct a legally required cost-benefit analysis of that proposed regulation, showing a profound disregard for the law. And why? To hide the fact that the regulation would have a terrible effect on U.S. economic performance and could drive several hundred !
billion dollars out of the U.S. economy. Clearly, throughout this process, the commissioner demonstrated his willingness to put the interests of European tax collectors above the interests of the American people and jeopardize an already weak economy. Rossotti's legacy also includes numerous fishing expeditions undermining the Constitution's guarantee that government cannot investigate our private affairs unless it has sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant. His most recent campaign took place last April when the commissioner decided to target American taxpayers who use credit cards issued by foreign banks. ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70288,00.html
Pop tune catches mood of betrayal for German voters
Avril Lavigne and Atomic Kitten watch out. When Germany's next pop music charts come out on Saturday, a burly newcomer looks set to elbow aside the current number one and number two hits. Der Steuersong (The Tax Song) is expected to take this week's charts by storm, with 160,000 CDs already distributed and a further 100,000 on order. Sung to the tune of the The Ketchup Song, the Spanish summertime hit, a voice surprisingly akin to that of re-elected Chancellor Gerhard Schrder teases listeners on how he sold them down the river. The lyrics, written and sung by Schrder mimic Elmar Brandt, are strong enough. The video is tougher still, with a smug, cigar-smoking Spitting Image-style puppet bragging about having hoodwinked voters. The song's popularity stems from the fact that it catches the popular mood. Since narrowly retaining power on September 22 Mr Schrder has stunned electors with tax rises and subsidy cuts to plug huge budget shortfalls. Pension and health insurance!
contributions are also going up, while internationally Germany is facing a formal reprimand from the European Commission for breaching the budgetary rules for the single-currency eurozone.
Pass the 'Endangered Nation Act'!
... Thirty-six years ago, Congress passed the first "Endangered Species Act." Maybe now, in this week honoring veterans, it's time to pass an "Endangered Nation Act," protecting the American military from the abuse of that and other environmental laws. The 1966 act, which sailed through Congress almost unopposed held that all domestic species [except humans, especially land owners-jpo] have an equal right to protection. Subsequent legislation expanded that concern to all species, everywhere. Who could possibly object? We should have. For the Endangered Species Act was never about species. It was about land use, and liberal environmentalists quickly turned it into a devastating legal weapon. Find a species, plant or animal, and get it on The List. Thereafter, or at least until that species was certified "unendangered," the land upon which it lived was held hostage. Public or private, no difference.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29661
Harry Browne: What we can learn from World War II
World War II is supposedly the one "just" war America has fought. Even critics of the Vietnam War or the so-called War on Terrorism feel obliged to say that World War II was necessary. And that war provided a justification for all sorts of military adventures afterward. In fact, whenever I write that Americans shouldn't be bombing Iraq or Serbia or Afghanistan or some other hapless Third World country, I get e-mails from critics saying such things as: ...
World War II has always been of great interest to me. I've known for decades that it was just one more war the politicians suckered us into. But I still learned a great deal from reading Richard Maybury's new book "World War II: The Rest of the Story." Maybury provides no startling new evidence. But he sifts through the known facts - which nearly all historians agree on - and assembles the evidence to show irrefutably that: ...
But the main point is that America should never have intervened in the age-old quarrels of Europe and Asia. If our politicians had minded their own business, 292,131 Americans wouldn't have died - died thinking they were defending American freedoms, but actually sacrificing for the benefit of politicians. Why did America get in the war? Because Franklin Roosevelt thought it was to his personal advantage. In 1939, most people considered the New Deal to be an abject failure. The unemployment rate was still at 17 percent, with no end in sight to the Depression. Roosevelt still managed to be re-elected in 1940 because he had great personal charisma, and because he was running against a typical me-too Republican, Wendell Wilkie - a man with no solution for the economic crisis. Roosevelt insisted he would keep America neutral, proclaiming "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." But in real!
ity, Roosevelt saw getting into the war as a way to redeem his reputation and join the ranks of the "great" presidents - wartime leaders like Washington, Lincoln and Wilson.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29660
The forever war, chapter next
... Of course, the average Iraqi has nothing whatsoever against the U.S. Or at least he didn't before the last war, or before U.S. policies caused the death of several hundred thousand Iraqi children, by Madeleine Albright's own admission. What Bush wants is "a regime change." I can understand that - it would be nice to have one both in Washington and in Baghdad. If that's the only problem, a good solution would be to put a billion dollar price on Saddam's head. My guess is it would be served up within a week. The U.S., however, considers it wrong to take out a foreign head of state, but OK to mount a war to do so indirectly. What would happen if a billion-dollar price was placed on the head of the U.S. president in return? Hmmm better stick to warfare as a way to change regimes.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29663
Sen. Warner Wants to Boost Military Role
The senator likely to head the Armed Services Committee says Congress may need to break down some legal barriers that prevent soldiers from helping local officials during terrorist attacks and other national emergencies. Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., said he would hold hearings to review the 19th century Posse Comitatus law that restricts the military's involvement in domestic law enforcement. "If local law enforcement is totally overwhelmed, would not the military be perhaps the best to help for that interim period until the local law enforcement can reconstitute itself?" Warner said in an interview Tuesday.
Sen. Boxer's save-the-wilderness bill pits bikers vs. hikers
The gears are oiled. The wheels are spinning. The tires are pumped up, and so is the rhetoric. Mountain bikers -- those strong-thighed, strong-willed cyclists -- are on the warpath. Their foe: California's major environmental groups, who are lobbying to create an additional 2.5 million acres of federal wilderness across the state. If approved by Congress, the wilderness plan would permanently protect 77 sites statewide from road-building and other intrusions, but it also would cut off cyclists from miles of trails -- since bikes are included in a wilderness prohibition against "mechanized transport." It's a conflict that only California could create, but now it threatens to further poison relations between two backcountry groups that, on another day, could be potent allies. ... Even some bicycling groups -- such as the Warrior Society of Orange County -- have joined the Blue Ribbon Coalition, creating an unlikely alliance between pedal-powered recreationists and those who !
like internal combustion engines. Don Amador, who heads the California chapter of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, said Boxer's bill faces mounting obstacles with the new Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, and the bill was in trouble anyway. "Mountain bikers are a key factor in the success or failure of any wilderness proposal," said Amador. Boxer will have to deal with them, he said, "if her bill is going to go anywhere."
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/5192213p-6201036c.html
CA: Poll finds views on growth conflict
Californians don't like traffic and smog but aspire to live in the burbs.
Californians fret about the effects of runaway growth, but aren't willing to abandon their ideal: a roomy house in a suburban neighborhood where they have to drive almost everywhere. An annual poll released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California concluded that state residents are deeply ambivalent about how to handle the massive growth expected in California during coming decades. Those surveyed expressed a high level of concern about traffic, air pollution and other growth-related issues, but also were largely satisfied with their lives. Even California's notorious rush-hour traffic snarls didn't bother them very much. Of the 2,010 people surveyed statewide, 82 percent said they were either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their commute.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/5192214p-6201038c.html
Thomas Sowell: A San Francisco liberal
... San Francisco liberals, like liberals across the country, spend a lot of time talking and wringing their hands about the need for "affordable housing." Yet, wherever liberals have been politically dominant housing prices are most unaffordable. Liberals proclaim their concern and compassion for minorities and people with low incomes. Yet these are precisely the people who are being forced out of places like San Francisco, which has the highest rents of any city in the country. The black population of San Francisco went down 15 percent between the 1990 census and the 2000 census. The number of children in San Francisco has also gone down, since people young enough to have children can seldom afford San Francisco housing. Despite liberals' professed concern for the poor, San Francisco is increasingly dominated by the affluent. It has the highest average income of any city in the country. That is not necessarily because San Francisco employers are more generous. People who!
work in San Francisco, but are not paid high salaries, are likely to be living outside the city -- sometimes far outside -- and commuting to work. All these things might be considered to be just unfortunate coincidences, if the same patterns did not appear time and time again, in other places where liberals have ruled the roost for years on end, whether in San Francisco or elsewhere. You can see the same thing in elite college towns like Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as in Berkeley across the bay from San Francisco or in Palo Alto, adjacent to tanford University. How do liberals manage to leave so much economic and social havoc in their wake, all the while feeling good about themselves and proclaiming their compassion for the poor, minorities, children and others? ...
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20021114.shtml
Totalitarian UK: Hate crime police raid 150 homes
Community safety units were set up in 1999 Police investigating allegations of racism, homophobia and domestic violence have raided about 150 addresses across London. At least 83 people have been arrested after officers from the Metropolitan Police's community safety unit took part in the dawn raids on Wednesday. Twenty-seven people have been charged, including one for rape but most have been arrested on suspicion of making racist threats and of homophobic harassment. The raids signal the start of a day of police action against "hate crime" - offences against people on the grounds of their race, faith, religion, disability, or sexuality. ... Commander Cressida Dick, director of the Diversity Directorate [said] "People should not have to go through life being subjected to abuse because of who they are or what they believe in."
[That is, unless who you are or what you believe in is is officially deemed to be politicially incorrect - then you get to where matching interconnected locking braclets. Orwell's _1984_ is in full force in the UK. Both Hitler and Stalin would be proud to have Cressida Dick in their internal security forces.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2457429.stm
Sen. Warner Wants to Boost Military Role
The senator likely to head the Armed Services Committee says Congress may need to break down some legal barriers that prevent soldiers from helping local officials during terrorist attacks and other national emergencies. Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., said he would hold hearings to review the 19th century Posse Comitatus law that restricts the military's involvement in domestic law enforcement. "If local law enforcement is totally overwhelmed, would not the military be perhaps the best to help for that interim period until the local law enforcement can reconstitute itself?" Warner said in an interview Tuesday.
Lawsuit to Test USA Patriot Act
Two major organizations are set to sue the Bush administration over possible abuses of privacy related to the controversial bill passed after September 11.
Two major privacy and civil liberties groups are preparing to file lawsuits this week to force the Bush administration to disclose more information about how it has been using the USA Patriot Act, which was signed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks so as to give federal law enforcement officials greater powers to track and eavesdrop on electronic communications. The organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), say the legal action could come as early as Thursday, two days shy of the one-year anniversary of the legislation's signing by President Bush.
http://www.techtv.com/news/politicsandlaw/story/0,24195,3404703,00.html
When I Was A Kid This Was A Free Country - G. Gordon Liddy
... "Young people never miss what they never had." ... "Your liberty is no loophole." ...
http://www.nralive.com/index2.cfm
UK: Anti-crime plans 'fuelling crisis'
Probation chief warns service is in danger of overloading
A leading figure in the criminal justice system has warned Tony Blair and the home secretary, David Blunkett, that the new anti-crime strategy at the heart of today's Queen's Speech is in danger of fuelling the ever more punitive trend in the courts and failing to provide an alternative to the prisons crisis. The chief inspector of probation, Professor Rod Morgan, says in an interview with the Guardian that the government strategy is unsustainable and warns that "something will have to give". He says the probation service is facing the same overloading crisis as the prisons. The introduction of ever tougher-sounding community penalties, which were designed to provide an alternative to custody, has not led to fewer non-violent offenders being sent to prison. Instead it has become an alternative to fines. The sentencing "menu" has been "ratcheted up" and tens of thousands of low-level, low-risk offenders, including motorists - who in the past would have been fined - have bee!
n placed under probation supervision.
http://society.guardian.co.uk/queensspeech/story/0,7991,838969,00.html
Respect for the "law"
"If you have 10,000 regulations, you destroy all respect for the law." - Winston Churchill
Strange that Mr. Churchill thought 10,000 regulations would destroy all respect for the law. Wonder what he would think of a country that has - what - maybe 2,000,000 regulations? One might think that legislators in the United States and the united States of America have nothing to do but make regulations. That is their job but regulations regulating what? Is it their job to determine what is best for we individual American Citizens? Or is it their job to make regulations regulating the regulators, to manage the finances lawfully gained, and those who knowingly and willingly volunteer to be regulated as in becoming franchised? There are currently - or so one reads in many sources - 20,000 regulations covering firearms. And, if many ignorant people have their way, one final regulation will eventually be made - complete confiscation. Are any of the regulations "law"? Well, the Constitution for the United States of American says "no". The constitutions for the many states say!
"no". If fact, no regulation about firearms is "law". Why aren't they? It is because no regulation in opposition to the Constitution is law - it is null and void from its inception. This has been ruled many times in dozens of cases and is stated clearly in American Jurisprudence but anti-gun factions don't really care about the Constitution, justice, nor the positive effect firearms have against crime and - supposedly - tyranny. ... Contempt for the law and government is, however, spreading. There are undercurrents that are reaching the conscious level in hundreds of thousands of Americans, that the thousands of freedom-robbing frauds against the American people by out of control governments must be halted or this union of states - America - will be destroyed. "Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites ev!
ery man to become a law unto himself." - Supreme Court Justice Louis D
1928
One day a few Americans - perhaps more than a few - are going to crack. The government will eventually lay on the people the straw that will break the proverbial camel's back. It is bound to happen because - as warned by Mr. Justice Brandeis - the government is breeding nothing but contempt for the law. Something will give.
http://www.libertyforall.net/2002/archive/nov10/respect.html
ME: Judge sets bail for Canadian who crossed border to buy gas
A federal magistrate set bail for a Quebec hunter accused of illegally crossing the border to buy gas, but it was unclear Wednesday evening when the man would be allowed to return home. Magistrate Margaret Kravchuk set bail for Michel Jalbert at $5,000 cash with the stipulation that he not return to the United States without permission from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Immigration officials want to deport Jalbert, and those proceedings could delay his return home to the border town of Pohenegamook, Quebec. ... Jalbert, who had been bird hunting, had a shotgun in his truck when he crossed the border on Oct. 11 at the Gazbar gas station in Estcourt Station, where gas is cheaper than in Canada. He pleaded innocent Wednesday to charges that he illegally transported a firearm across the border, was in possession of a firearm with a criminal record and hindered inspection of his vehicle. ... The border is a tricky issue in Estcourt Station, where it cuts right thr!
ough some homes. That means a resident could have dinner in Canada and then retire to a bedroom in the United States. Indeed, the driveway of the gas station in question is in Canada and its pumps are in the United States. ...
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/317/region/Judge_sets_bail_for_Canadian_w:.shtml
TX: Mother Finds Autistic Son In Handcuffs At School
A Houston-area mother who went to pick up her 8-year-old son at school said that she found him handcuffed and lying face down in his classroom in northwest Harris County. ... Lisa Calvin told Houston's KPRC-TV that she is upset after seeing her son, Adam, who is autistic and functions at a 5-year-old level, in handcuffs. "It felt like some kind of freak show," Calvin said. "I could hear him begging. He was saying, 'please take these off' and he was crying. When I saw him on the floor, he was soaked in sweat." Calvin said that her son was handcuffed by a Klein Independent School District police officer after having a tantrum. "I heard the cop tell him, 'Boy, when you calm down, I'll take these off of you.' (It was) what he was saying when I was coming down the hall," Calvin said. ...
http://www.local6.com/sh/education/stories/education-178177120021112-141144.html
Homeland Insecurity: Deconstructing the Constitution
Let the political pundits proclaim a new era of post-Reagan conservatism based on the victory of the Republican Party that now controls both Congress and the White House. It is an illusion and a dangerous one. The election was a voter revolt against further onerous taxation and a response to the threat of the global Islamic holy war. It was neither about conservative values nor a conservative political agenda.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCommentary.asp?Page=%5CCommentary%5Carchive%5C200211%5CCOM20021114b.html
Educating Girls About The Risks Of Marijuana Use:
'In the Zone' Activities from the White House Drug Policy Office and the Girl Scouts Teach Girls How to Live Healthy, Drug-Free Lives
Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign (Media Campaign) have joined forces to educate girls
across America about the risks of marijuana. The collaboration will focus on teaching girls ages 5 through 17
nationwide about the significant health, learning and behavioral problems linked to marijuana use and help them build skills to reject illicit drugs.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/021114/lnth009_1.html
FL: Elmo to help preschoolers in anti-bias program
Even 3-year-olds can show bias: Maybe they wonder why that little girl's skin is so dark, why that little boy is eating funny things for lunch or why someone talks differently. The preschoolers of Palm Beach County are among a select group of children nationwide to get special lessons to battle those biases under a $569,000 grant to the Anti-Defamation League from the local Quantum Foundation, the Children's Services Council, the Chicago-based Harvey L. Miller Family Foundation and the folks at Sesame Street. The ADL picked three regions nationally to try out the anti-bias program. Palm Beach County landed one of the grants because of its ability to raise money form local foundations and because it complements anti-bias training that is used in public schools, according to ADL's regional director, Bill Rothchild. Palm Beach County kicked off its program Tuesday with a visit from the red, furry Elmo. The grant provides nine hours of training for child care and preschool tea!
chers and interested families, said Marcie Shaughnessy, who directs ADL's anti-bias program, World of Difference. The lessons are designed to be slipped in to a preschooler's daily routine: from lunchtime discussions of "different foods" to art projects that depict children's varied cultures.
http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/epaper/editions/wednesday/local_news_d31ddd1ab28a91440042.html
Status of Mental Health Rises in Senate
Critics of a mental health bill are questioning if Congress
should be pushing for insurance coverage of illnesses like social phobia - described as the irrational fear of embarrassment - saying it could lead to coverage of jet lag, caffeine addiction and other commonplace phobias or vices. ... The Domenici-Wellstone bill tries to give mental health illnesses the same importance as physical illnesses by prohibiting employee group health plans and insurance companies from imposing treatment limitations or financial requirements on mental health problems unless those same limitations are placed on physical ailments. ... Mental heath conditions to be considered for coverage include those in the 941-page Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, produced by the American Psychiatric Association. Mental health proponents say this is exactly the step needed to make sure the mentally ill get the care they need. Earlier this year, President Bush pledged to help Domenici push the bill through Congress. ... But c!
ritics say the move will only raise insurance rates and open the door for taxpayers to pay for coverage for every type of fear out there. "The mental health mandates in the Domenici-Wellstone legislation are a hidden tax on businesses and workers," Donald Young, president of the Health Insurance Association of America, said in a statement. He said the problem with the bill is that "it goes far beyond this commonsense definition to an open-ended mandate for coverage of everything mental health advocates want." ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70278,00.html
--
Johann Opitz <johannp@earthlink.net> RKBA!
"Throughout recorded history, without exception, it has been the sole accomplishment of organized government to deprive their populations of liberty and of their property." -- John C. Calhoun
