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Governments

  • No President Is Above the Law
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    by US Senator Robert C. Byrd
    Floor Speech
    Senator Byrd on Monday expressed his strong concerns about possible violations of the Constitution in the Bush Administration’s admitted practice of spying on American citizens:
    Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country’s law-abiding citizens, and against our (…)

  • Watchdog says FBI violated surveillance rules
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by From Terry Frieden
    WASHINGTON (CNN) — A government watchdog is calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate at least 13 occasions of alleged improper use of FBI surveillance, including searches and seizures of e-mail and bank records.
    The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) released 93 pages of internal FBI documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The documents previously were classified, The Associated Press reported.
    The center told (…)

  • Bush fund-raisers cash in by giving - then receiving
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    By JIM TANKERSLEY, JOSHUA BOAK, AND CHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICK BLADE STAFF WRITERS
    First of three parts
    President Bush’s corporate champions see the spoils of his administration in coal. And timber. And credit-card payments, Afghan electric lines, Japanese bank transfers, and fake crab.
    America’s business leaders supplied more than $75 million to return Mr. Bush to the White House last year - and he has paid dividends.
    Bush Administration policies, grand and obscure, have financially (…)

  • Spying and Lying
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Katrina vanden Heuvel
    "This shocking revelation ought to send a chill down the spine of every American."
    Senator Russell Feingold, December 17, 2005
    As reported by the New York Times on Friday, "Months after the September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic (…)

  • Report | The Constitution in Crisis
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By House Judiciary Committee Minority Staff
    The Downing Street minutes and deception, manipulation, torture, retribution, and coverups in the Iraq war.
    Full Report: www.truthout.org/3.122005ConRes.pdf
    Executive Summary
    This Minority Report has been produced at the request of Representative John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He made this request in the wake of the President’s failure to respond to a letter submitted by 122 Members of (…)

  • A Ten-Step Program
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Jane Smiley
    Is Bush in a bubble? Is Bush a dry drunk? Is Bush a drunk drunk? Is Bush a narcissist? Is Bush an idiot? Is Bush a madman? Does Bush have an “Authority Problem”? Theories abound about why Bush does the things he does, but most of them assume that he is making mistakes that he could or would correct if he understood how misguided he was.
    On Monday, there was an editorial in the New York Times lamenting the apparent indifference of the Bush administration to the rebuilding (…)

  • The Border Is a Common Ground between Us
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By David Bacon
    The House of Representatives has just passed HR 4437, by Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, incredibly with the votes of over 30 Democrats. It is the most repressive immigration bill in decades, and would deprive immigrants of important due process rights, divide families, criminalize undocumented status, and drive those without papers even further underground. Other Congressional proposals are even more extreme. Some, like Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, (…)

  • Political Science
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by JOHN HORGAN
    Last spring, a magazine asked me to look into a whistleblower case involving a United States Fish and Wildlife Service biologist named Andy Eller. Eller, a veteran of 18 years with the service, was fired after he publicly charged it with failing to protect the Florida panther from voracious development. One of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act, the panther haunts southwest Florida’s forests, which builders are transforming into gated golf communities. (…)

  • The Decline of the American Empire
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    Defeated in Iraq, Bankrupt at Home, Despised Around the Globe (And That’s Just the Good News)
    By GABRIEL KOLKO
    The dilemma the US has had for a half-century is that the priorities it must impose on its budget and its imperial plans have never guided its actual behavior and action. It has always believed, as well it should, that Europe and its control would determine the future of world power. But it has fought in Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq—the so-called "Third World" in general—where (…)

  • Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
    22 December 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
    WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
    Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and (…)