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POPSSupreme Court Rules Detainees Have Constitutional Rights Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court majority: "The detainees in these cases are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing. . . . Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the executive to imprison a person." The court was narrowly split, 5 to 4. The dissenters accused the majority of meddling in a wartime matter better left to the president and the military. The decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a dissent. President Bush said he would abide by the decision but added: "It was a deeply divided court, and I strongly agree with those who dissented." About 270 men are still held at Guantanamo. Fewer than 20 are now facing trial before a military commission, and about 60 are in the pipeline.
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POPSFrance and Germany Thwart Bush's Plans Many German papers on Wednesday questioned whether enlargement eastwards would really do anything to enhance security. US President George W. Bush seems determined to put pressure on his European allies to welcome Ukraine and Georgia into the NATO alliance, despite reluctance in Paris and Berlin to unnecessarily provoke Russia with such a move. In his keynote speech delivered hours before the 26-nation alliance meets in Bucharest on Wednesday, he said "NATO membership must remain open to all of Europe's democracies that seek it, and are ready to share the responsibilities of NATO membership." However, Moscow has made it clear that it will view any enlargement of NATO to its borders as a threat. Russia is particularly sensitive to any further loss of influence in the states it used to control. spiegel.de
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POPSHow Republicans created executive branch hegemony The Statue of Liberty (La liberté éclairant le monde) symbolizes the United States's wish to be free from oppression and tyranny. It was presented to the United States by France, which is the country of Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, whose idea of separating and balancing the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary power, is the fundament of any reasonable democratic constitution.
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POPSMore Police Thuggery: Cop Attacks 14-Year-Old Skateboarder [VIDEO] Why is Rivieri wasting his punk energy on this kid? All that's missing from the encounter is the officer grabbing his crotch to show Bush who's boss. Rivieri wouldn't be seen performing this sort of testosterone-laced hissy fit if he was faced with seasoned, weapon-carrying criminals. The profession police officer seems to attract people with a certain disposition. Being bastards, they can evolve into professional bastards. It's absolutely sickening.
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POPSPolice Atrocities Define The Bush Police State
"If you've ever publicly opposed Bush's war of naked aggression in Iraq, you can bet you're in NSA's database, called TALON. War protesters, naturally, were the first to wind up in Big Bro's TALON, or database. This practice most certainly goes far beyond Nixon's 'enemies list'. Bush's database, methods, scope and ruthlessness plops us in Orwellian territory." Well, it's too late now. I'm probably already screwed and plopped and TALON'ed and monitored... END THE OCCUPATIONS! ------------------------- talon: \ˈta-lən\ Middle English taloun heel, hind claw of a bird of prey , from Anglo-French talun, from Vulgar Latin *talon-, *talo, from Latin talus ankle, anklebone 1 a: the claw of an animal and especially of a bird of prey b: a finger or hand of a human being 2: a part or object shaped like or suggestive of a heel or claw: b: the shoulder of the bolt of a lock on which the key acts to shoot the bolt 3 a: cards laid aside in a pile in solitaire
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POPSOur corporate-controlled (Orwellian) mass media Furthermore, the Senate resolution that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were condemned for voting to support, clearly stated that the only way Bush could use force against Iraq is if he, Bush, certified in writing to the Senate, within 60 days of commencement of hostilities, that there was CLEAR EVIDENCE that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to the events of 9/11. And in fact, about 40 or 50 days after the invasion, George Bush did write a letter to the Senate saying that "I certify and I swear that Saddam Hussein was involved in the events of 9/11." A copy of this letter is available at www.whitehouse.gov Subsequently, however, Bush has publicly admitted that Saddam did not have anything to do with 9/11.
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POPSWhich is worse: regulation or deregulation? The Bush regime has deregulated the government in the sense that the regime has removed constraints that the Founders put on executive power. This was done in the name of the "war on terror." Simultaneously, Bush has increased the regulation of our travel and communication, spying on our Internet use and specifying to the ounce the quantities of toothpaste and shampoo with which Americans can board commercial airliners. Crises destroy liberty. Lincoln used the crisis of states withdrawing from the union to destroy states' rights . Roosevelt used the Great Depression to destroy the legislative power of Congress by having that power delegated to federal agencies. Bush used 9/11 to assault the civil liberties that protect Americans from a police state. Perhaps we have now reached a point where both libertarians and left-wingers can agree that the US government desperately needs to be reregulated and again held accountable to the people.
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POPSRay McGovern: Creeping Fascism - History's Lessons
Were the appropriate leaders in Congress informed that within days of Bush’s first inauguration the NSA electronic vacuum cleaner began to suck up information on you and me, despite the FISA law and the Fourth Amendment? What’s going on here? Have congressional leaders no sense for what is at stake? Lately the adjective “spineless” has come into vogue in describing congressional Democrats. Are they all complicit? "There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater." (Sebastian Haffner, “Geschichte eines Deutschen” - The Story of a German - “Defying Hitler”). In his journal, Haffner decries what he calls the “sheepish submissiveness” with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German Parliament (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933. You don’t have to be a Nazi. You can just be, well, a sheep.
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POPSUS-America in deep slumber - going to awake in 2008 to another presidential nightmare? Survey reveals candidates' views on scope of executive power - The Boston Globe Biden Clinton Dodd Edwards McCain Giuliani Obama Paul Richardson Romney It's hard to overstate how vital this issue is, or how far off the media radar screen it remains. Indeed, it's hard to think of another issue in which the importance-to-the-public /attention-paid-by-the-media ratio is as out of whack. Alternet.org
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POPSPeter Chamberlin: Judgment Day Further excerpts: The criminal producers of our horror movie/psy-war operation intend to establish a new world order based on the ashes of the old. Their utopian world will be a world without conscience or morality, as it will be built upon the deaths of billions, who will have been harvested in the final act of this terrible horror script. Their perfected world (based on death) of unlimited profit to a very limited elite will come into being when Bush gives the order for the attack upon Iran. The world has been transformed by Bush’s war strategy into a very unstable swirling cauldron of pent up fear and hatred. The decision that he has made to escalate the wars (when his version of diplomacy visibly fails), seeking vindication through the total destruction of all opposition, is a suicidal decision.
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POPSHow the Neocon-Christian Right Alliance Brought Down the House of Bush C. UNGER: I traveled undercover with Tim LeHay, who is the prophet of the "Left Behind" series. I traveled with him to the battlefield of Armageddon, where they believe the final conflict would take place. Megiddo is -- from Megiddo, we get the term Armageddon, where the final conflict will take place. And I was walking up the hill with LeHay and about ninety of his followers, and as you look over this spectacularly beautiful pastoral valley . They see that it will be filled with blood, the blood of as many as two billion people. And I talked with them about that, and they say there will be a river of blood, 200 miles long, about four-and-a-half feet deep. And I asked one of them when all this would take place. And they said, “Very soon, but not soon enough. Any day now.” So they see this fantasy is taking place, and this is sort of one of the horrific visions that is spelled out in the Book of Revelation.
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POPSThe path to war with Iran Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, demonizing another Muslim nation -- and the Dems are supporting it. We've got to shut them down.
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POPSDemocrats in 2007: Majorities in Congress, Still Caving to Bush By their actions in the early days of the Clinton administration, the national Democrats revealed that they viewed the American people more as consumers eager for services than citizens needing honest information to fulfill their duties in a democratic Republic. Clinton also apparently thought that his magnanimous gesture, especially in letting former President George H.W. Bush off the hook, would win reciprocity from the Republicans. Instead, they took the Democratic scrapping of the Reagan-Bush investigations as a sign of weakness and unleashed the emerging right-wing media against Clinton.
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POPSWill there be a Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth) on the Iraq war? Warnings about a new stab-in-the-back myth may seem premature or overheated at this moment in the Iraq War. Yet, if the history of the original version of this myth is any guide, the opposite is true. They are timely precisely because the Dolchstoßlegende was not a post-war concoction, but an explanation cunningly, even cynically, hatched by Rightists in Germany before the failure of the desperate, final "victory offensive" of 1918 became fully apparent. Although Hindenburg's dramatic testimony in November 1919 popularized the myth in Germany, it caught fire precisely because the tinder had been laid to dry two years earlier. It may seem farfetched to compare a Prussian military dictatorship and its self-serving lies to the current Bush administration. Yet I'm not the first person to express concern about the emergence of our very own Iraqi Dolchstoßlegende. Is an American version of this myth really emerging then?
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POPSIs a Presidential Coup Under Way? Continuation: The list of Bushite excesses is long...and growing: Their sweeping, secret program of warrantless spying on Americans The usurpation of legislative authority by attaching "signing statements" to laws passed by Congress Suspension of habeas corpus for anyone whom Bush deems to be an "enemy combatant"-allowing innocent people to be detained indefinitely in prison without charges or civil trial, subjected to abuse and even torture, and denied access to judicial review of their incarceration (thus usurping the power of the courts) The assertion of a "state secrets" doctrine to prevent citizens and judges from pursuing legitimate lawsuits An ever-expanding grab bag of autocratic actions, including using "national security letters" to sidestep the courts and spy on American political groups and individuals with no connection at all to terrorism
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POPSBush's Response to 9/11 Was Deadlier Than the Attacks Themselves * Did Islamic religious extremism cause 9/11? * Why did American military preeminence breed delusions of omnipotence ? * How was the war lost ? * How did a tiny group of individuals, with eccentric theories and reflexes, recklessly compound the country's post-9/11 security nightmare? * What roles did Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld play in the Bush administration ? * Why did the U.S. decide to search for a new enemy after the Cold War, as argued by an old cold warrior, Samuel Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996)? * What role did left-wing ideology play in legitimating the war on terror ? * How did pro-war liberals help stifle national debate on the wisdom of the Iraq war ? * Why is the contemporary American antiwar movement so anemic ?
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POPSThe Pope Versus the President The article continues: The U.S. invasion of Iraq was similarly contentious for former Pope John Paul II, who sent a special envoy to the White House in March 2003 in an effort to prevent an attack. The papal envoy's pleas fell on deaf ears. Vatican criticisms of the Bush administration's military intervention in Iraq have continued unabated. French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran "The facts speak for themselves. Alienating the international community (with the U.S. push for war) was a mistake." Tauran, who has referred to the invasion and occupation as a "crime against peace," also said that Christians in Iraq "paradoxically, were more protected under the dictatorship" of Saddam Hussein. Benedict failed to honor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's urgent request for a private meeting last month. The ongoing tensions between Bush and Benedict put America's Roman Catholics in a tricky position for 2008.
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