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Bush Presidency a Budding Criminal Dictatorship?

User Thread
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Bush Presidency a Budding Criminal Dictatorship?
quote:
This shit reminds me of V for Vendetta. I watch the news and start laughing because the way they spin everything is like a dictatorship.
Decius

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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
[  Edited by Ironwood at   ]
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
In case you happen to wonder why you might not want to trust news that directly quotes and advocates official Government policy and statements as fact with little or no investigation, question, or dissenting perspective, especially if you ever hear things to the effect of, "Questioning our Government aids terrorists and is treasonous". You might want to look into Operation Mockingbird, and the constitution and bill of rights while you're at it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
[  Edited by Ironwood at   ]
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
You may have noticed in that last clip that there seemed to be some question as of the clarity of the meaning, power, and parameters of the fourth amendment.

And then with this first one we see a pattern at poking fun at the NSA for their interpretation of the amendment.

Well, it would seem that there is either a misunderstanding, a mispeaking, or perhaps some sort of fibbing and fudging taking place.

Well, lets let General Hayden clarify in his own words, so we can come full circle and know once and for all if such activities and their allowance, concealment, cover up, continuance, and indeed increase are indeed legal or not.
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Excerpt: Judge Nixes Warrantless Surveillance
By SARAH KARUSH, Associated Press Writer
3 hours ago

DETROIT - A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

http://www.comcast.net/news/index.jsp?cat=GENERAL&fn=/2006/08/17/457
722.html&cvqh=itn_wiretap



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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Well, it looks like my question was answered, the next question is when are we going to do something about it. This suggests addressing congress' lack of action through the November elections.

Excerpt: Commentary

Bush is Two Times a Criminal

DAVE LINDORFF | August 21 2006

For the second time in two months, a federal court has ruled that the president is in violation of the Constitution. This time it's a federal court in Detroit that has ruled that President Bush has violated the Fourth Amendment against illegal search and seizure for his order to the National Security Agency to monitor the phone and Internet messages of Americans without bothering to obtain a court order based upon probable cause.

The first time, it was the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in late June that the president had violated the Constitution by asserting he had the power to ignore the Third Geneva Convention on Treatment of Prisoners of War-a treaty formally signed into law by the U.S. and made an integral part of the U.S. Criminal Code.

The important thing about these two rulings--and it is a point that the squeamish mainstream media have shied away from mentioning--is that they both are declaring the president to be a criminal. That is, he has been found in the first case to be in criminal violation of the Constitution, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and in the second, he has been found to be in violation of U.S. and International Law.

Note that when someone has committed a felony--say a bank robbery or a case of assault and battery or of murder--and when a court has found that person to be guilty of the crime in question, that person is from that moment hence considered a criminal. The case may be appealed to a higher court, but in the meantime, judgment has been rendered, and a penalty assigned.

In Bush's case, the highest court in the land has reached its verdict in the War Crimes case involving Bush's claim that as Commander in Chief he had the power to ignore both law and Constitution and declare captives in the so-called war on terror and in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to be excluded from the protections of the Geneva convention. The justices, by a margin of 5-3, declared that his claim was bogus. He has no power to ignore the Constitution, whether in wartime or peacetime. The clear result of that ruling is that the president is a war criminal.

The latest federal court decision, in a case brought by the ACLU, has reached the same conclusion, and on the same grounds. The president has been claiming that as commander in chief, he has the right to ignore both the FISA law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. And a federal judge has again found that his claim is bogus. The president, the judge has declared, is bound by the Constitution to follow the letter of the law, and has criminally failed to do so.

Now there has been no penalty established in either of these crimes, serious as they are, because under the Constitution, the president cannot be convicted or punished by a court unless he is first impeached and removed from office, but the facts of his serial criminal behavior has been established.

It is important to point out, as Barbara Olshansky and I have done in our book The Case for Impeachment, that impeachment is not, primarily, about actual criminal acts by a president. The Founders, when they included impeachment as a remedy for removing elected officials, including the president, from office, were clear that they were primarily concerned about political crimes, which may or may not be literally against the law. Such crimes, it is clear, referred to actions that threatened the political system--for example abuse of power, or lying to Congress or to the American people. At the same time, it is also clear that the Founders saw impeachment as an appropriate measure when a president actually breaks the law, if the violation is so serious as to threaten the political system or the welfare of the American people. So even if a higher court later overturned the Detroit federal court's decision, Congress could still determine that the president had committed a political crime against the Constitution in authorizing warrantless domestic spying, and could impeach him.

What Bush and his administration have done in both of these cases falls clearly into that category. By claiming to be above the law and even above the Constitution, the president has in both the NSA spying case and in the Geneva Conventions case, claimed the power of an absolute despot. He has asserted that in time of war--including a so-called "war" on terror which clearly has nothing to do with an actual war--he operates without any checks and balances or any oversight.

He has twisted the role of commander in chief, which the Founders included in the powers of the presidency solely to insure that there would be a civilian responsible to the citizenry above any general, into the role of a generalissimo--a military ruler in charge of the entire nation.

The lock-step Republicans and spineless Democrats in Congress have not challenged this coup by lexicographical manipulation, but the judicial branch has thrown down the gantlet.

Now it is time for the People of the United States to follow up this action.

In November, all the members of the House of Representatives are up for election, along with one-third of the Senate.

For the sake of the future of Constitutional government and for the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, it is essential that the American people wake up and replace in November all those members of Congress who have allowed this presidential dictatorship to develop unchecked.

The courts have spoken: this president is a criminal on multiple counts. Now the process moves to our elected representatives in Washington. No member of Congress who is unwilling to hold Bush and his accomplices to account and initiate impeachment proceedings against him for his crimes and violations of the Constitution should be returned to office in November.

Some critics have argued that impeachment is an unnecessary diversion from the task of government, since Bush will be gone in 2008 anyway. These people miss the point that leaving this president's crimes and constitutional affronts unchallenged and unpunished would enshrine his transgressions in the mantle of precedent, allowing the next president and her or his successors to pick up wherever Bush leaves off.

To do that would be to sign the death warrant for American democracy.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff08192006.html

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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 72yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that cturtle is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
quote:
An interesting note as I browsed the Gainesville Sun newspaper in the Commentaries Section, page11A . Paul Krugman article called "Tax farmers & mercenaries" gives a perception of the past being revisited by the King George in the now of today's problems!

Privatization provides an opportunity to evade accountability.
I checked the online version but didn't find the commentary but I found it an interesting preception on Bush so I would like to go over the highlights of his writings. Hope you may find them interesting if not helpful as an outlook.
By now, you are probably wondering 'what is a tax farmer?' I know I was enticed by the title so . . . evidently Bush's plans for our future call for the outsourcing Tax Collection to private debt collection agencies as reported in New York Times.
Krugman's comments shows his disapproval & then adds . . . "But what is really amazing is the extent to which this plan is a retreat from the modern principles of government. I used to say that conservatives want to take us back to the 1920's, but the Bush administration seemly wants to go backto the 16th century." . . . . . ."In the bad old days, governmentwas a haphazard affair. There was no bureaucracy to collect taxes, sothe king subcontracted the job to private "tax farmers", who often engaged in extortion. There was no regular army, so the king hired mercenaries, who tended to wander off & pillage the nearest village. There was no regular system of administration, so the king assigned the task to favored courtiers, who tended to be corrupt, incompetent or both." . . . . "But President Bush apparently doesn't like these innovations, preferring to govern as if he were King Louis XII."
quote:
Krugman, writer for the New York Times News Service, goes on to give a few of the actions in Iraq which is informative as well as innovative. "Like the mercenaries of old, today's corporate mercenaries have disciplinary problems."
"They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath", declares a U.S. officer last year. Armed men operating outside the military chain of command have caused at least one castastrophe. Remember the four Americans hanged from a bridge? They were security contractors from Blackwater USA, who blundered into Fallujah -- bypassing a Marine check point -- . . . . . Yet Blackwater, whose chief executive is a major contributer to the Republican Party, continues to thrive. The Department of Homeland Security sent heavily armed Blackwater employees into New Orleans immediately after Katrina.
the KING is Dead, long live the King . . . George Bush!

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"Terrorist or tyrant, few may come to the Truth that both are poor choice."
[  Edited by cturtle at   ]
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.


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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Congress gives Bush the right to torture and detain people forever (Torture Bill Gives Bush Retroactive War Crimes Immunity)

House approves warrantless wiretap law

This is disgusting people. We are now officially a country of war criminals who torture and defend it. This is OUR legacy, don't hate your children if they decide to jail you, that is if you don't place them in internment camps first.

Because, just so you know, Americans are not protected from use of these laws. This is a sad state of affairs.

This is the blooming of the budding.
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
[  Edited by Ironwood at   ]
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Constitutional Crisis
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
 46yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that Ironwood is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
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"The Greatest Enemy of Knowledge is Not Ignorance, It is the ILLUSION of Knowledge. Stephen Hawking"
Bush Presidency a Budding Criminal Dictatorship?
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