Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Welcome to Gulag Amerika, home of the shredded Constitution.

On June 21, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that citizens no longer have the right to remain silent when questioned by the police. That “the state’s interest in protecting police and investigating crime” takes priority over the constitutional rights of citizens.

Michael Moore Is Still a Jerk

American Indoctrination -- The harsh reality of public school

Bush going crazy, say his aides

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

People Against The Draft

What is the draft?
Conscription, or "the draft," is compulsory military service. Compulsory means just that: If you're drafted and fail to secure an exemption, you must be prepared to fight and die -- or face a lengthy prison term.

The US hasn't drafted citizens since the end of the Vietnam War, but current law requires virtually all male citizens aged 18 through 25, as well as male aliens living in the US, to register with the Selective Service – the federal agency that manages conscription.

How do we know a new draft is in the works?
Nationwide, long-dormant draft boards – local committees that decide who must fight and who is exempted -- have been quietly reactivated and restaffed (Lindorff, "Oiling Up the Draft Machine," Salon.com, Nov. 3, 2003). The Selective Service says it is is prepared to call up soldiers within 193 days after a draft is launched.

A consensus behind conscription is building on Capitol Hill. Senators Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) and Joseph Biden (D-Del), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are among many prominent politicians suddenly calling for a "national debate" on the draft (Washington Post, Apr. 22, 2004).

Read more ...

"...the despotic power."

Article published Jun 29, 2004

Property buys get a wary green light
A judge OKs Murdock Village land acquisition, but voices doubts about the whole project.

By Jamie Manfuso

CHARLOTTE COUNTY -- Circuit Judge William Blackwell on Monday allowed the county to seize 105 more properties for Murdock Village, though he questioned if the redevelopment project would be a multimillion-dollar disaster.

Blackwell said he was struggling to understand how the county could plan to spend $60 million or more to acquire lots for the project, when a developer has offered to purchase the land for $26.7 million.

Yet he said it's for the county, not a judge, to decide if any financial losses would justify replacing a "blighted" subdivision with a modern community.

"I'm realizing it's not for me to say what a reasonable cost of cure is," said Blackwell.

He compared the costs of removing blight to having an unwanted mother-in-law in the house.

"Do I go to the expense of building her a new home just to get her out of mine?" asked Blackwell, who ruled from the bench after the 41/2-hour hearing.

Attorney Bill Moore, who represented a property owner fighting condemnation, argued that the county began the 1,100-acre redevelopment effort in early 2003 without a feasibility study.

"There has been no substantial evidence of a cost feasibility analysis based on common sense," he said.

At one point in the hearing, Blackwell said he had begun to think that questions of feasibility were relevant.

Robert Gill, the county's eminent domain attorney, told the judge it wasn't his place to consider those questions.

"You can't substitute your judgment for that of elected officials," he said.

This is the second time that Blackwell has ruled in the county's favor. In the first hearing, in what was seen as a precedent-setting case, he allowed the county to take about 100 properties.

About eight more cases are planned before the county hopes to own all 3,000 properties in the redevelopment area. It plans to sell the land to a developer for a mixed-use community of homes, parks, businesses and a town center.

The $26.7 million offer came from Lennar Corp., the only developer to submit a proposal. Lennar has offered to pay the county in increments over more than a decade.

County officials have said they want more money from Lennar, including a larger amount up front.

Budget Director Ann Navan, whom the property owners called to testify Monday, said the county has known for a long time that there would be a gap between what it spends to acquire land and what a developer pays the county.

Some of the difference would be covered from future tax revenues generated within the redevelopment area.

"Since the negotiations are ongoing these numbers could change," Gill told the judge. He said that if the Lennar negotiations break down, the county could solicit more proposals.

The owners of seven properties had objected to the county's taking their property through eminent domain. The remaining owners either don't agree with what the county has offered to pay them or haven't responded to the county's lawsuits.

Moore said he planned to appeal the two decisions.

Near adjournment, Blackwell said, "This is an interesting issue. The appellate courts may have a totally different view of it than I do."

Mere flesh and bones....

"I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone...I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated my as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did nor for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Sunday, June 27, 2004

9/11 Questions

Find the answer to these questions. It's like playing Where's Waldo?

No Right to Remain Silent

No Right to Remain Silent
by Sheldon Richman, June 25, 2004


You have the right to remain silent — unless you’re asked your name when you aren’t even charged with a crime. That’s right: it can now be a crime to refuse to tell a policeman your name. What’s happening to America?

Nevada and 20 other states have criminalized remaining silent in the face of a policeman’s question “What’s your name?” By a 5-4 vote the U.S. Supreme Court said that’s okay — it’s no violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches or the Fifth Amendment prohibition against compulsory self-incrimination.

“Obtaining a suspect’s name in the course of a Terry stop serves important government interests,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority, referring to an earlier case (Terry) that permits the police to detain people on the basis of a suspicion that falls short of the traditional standard of “probable cause” for arrest. It may serve “important government interests.” But some of us in the United States still harbor the impression that the rights and interests of individuals trump the interests of state.

The latest case arose out of a rancher’s refusal to identify himself while the police were looking for a man in a truck who had been seen beating a woman. The rancher had been spotted by his truck and, after refusing 11 requests to give his name, he was charged with and later convicted of a misdemeanor. He was fined $250.

It doesn’t seem like much of a penalty, but we have to think in principles. It should make the citizens of a putatively free country uncomfortable to know that the police can have the authority to stop and demand identification on the basis of a “reasonable suspicion,” which after all is a highly subjective state of mind. A person is looking at a storefront. Is he admiring the window display or casing the joint? It’s up to the policeman to decide. Under the Terry ruling, which was decided more than three decades ago, the cop can stop, question, and frisk the person without probable cause. The latest ruling simply fills in a missing detail. The policeman can demand that the person identify himself.

Kennedy and his four colleagues rejected the argument that giving one’s name can be an act of self-incrimination. Obviously, if the person questioned is wanted for another crime, then being forced to identify himself does violate the right against self-incrimination. Kennedy dismissed this objection all too casually: “Answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances.” But those unusual circumstances involved persons. I guess they are insignificant too.

It’s tempting and comforting to seek refuge in the notion that only bad people will want to withhold their names from the police. Maybe; maybe not. But even if we grant that, the comfort is false. The rule of law protects us all, even if its most visible effects involve people we suspect of evil. This was best captured in Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, about Sir Thomas More’s refusal to sacrifice his integrity to Henry VIII. When another character, William Roper, says he’d abolish the protections of law to nab the Devil, More replies,

“Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them all down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine.

Saturday, June 26, 2004

Storm Troopers At the Doors of Fahrenheit 9/11

Rob Kall | June 26 2004

The handcuffs hanging from the burly hired security guard were clearly, intentionally evident. He was checking younger-looking ticket purchasers for age, to protect them from the R-rating of the movie. But he looked big and nasty. I was bringing my 14 year old son, and since he accompanied me, there was no problem.

The movie was incredible, besides weaving together a strong case against George Bush and his administration, it was a riveting piece of entertainment. The 24 theater megaplex had devoted its largest room to the movie and it looked like the previous showing and the one we went to see were both sold out.

I'd gone, wearing a blue shirt, like Moveon.org had suggested. I'd printed out flyers with a message from Michael Moore, that I'd downloaded as a PDF file from moveon.org-- ten of them. I started passing them out before I went out the main doors. The flyers just about flew out of my hands and I was disappointed I didn't have more. People wanted them. They wanted to DO SOMETHING.

As soon as I was finished handing them out, I just kept walking, and went through the main exit doors for the particular theater the movie was shown, which put me in the front area within the movie megaplex. This time there were three big, bouncer-type security guards rushing past me, towards the exit doors. "There are people in there handing out flyers," one of them said urgently, as they rushed to go through the doors to catch .... me. They'd seen people walking out with the flyers I'd handed out.

They were hot for action. Fortunately for me, I'd handed out all the flyers I'd brought. I'd only printed out a small number because I knew my teen-ager might not be thrilled with his activist father. It was a good thing. Getting grabbed or even arrested would not have been a good thing. Civil disobedience that's intentional is one thing, but getting hassled for handing out flyers-- I'm not ready for that yet, even though it REALLY felt like we were in a police state.

After all, I'm a regular at that movie, and I've never seen special security guards carding people, never seen three guards AFTER the movie. Germany in the 1030s seem to be inching closer and closer. I spoke to my daughter, in upstate PA, and she had to drive over an hour, more than 60 miles, to get to a theater playing the movie. She said they were militantly carding there too. And even there, in Santorum country, the largest theater in the local megaplex was almost sold out... for the Friday noon showing... and the rest of the shows that day were already sold out by the time they were leaving.

This movie IS going to make a difference. It's going to bring people together and it is flushing out the sold out faux journalist and news networks that have been attacking the movie using all the talking points the Republican attack artists have conjured up, repeatedly reciting the attacks on Michael Moore's character, downplaying the accuracy of the film.

After the movie my son and I were talking about what would cause the censors to give Fahrneheit 9/11 an R rating. I said, "The most obscene thing in the movie is the topic of the movie-- George W. Bush and what he's done."

Judge Sorry for Likening Bush, Hitler
Federal Judge in New York Apologizes for Comparing Bush's Rise to Power With Hitler, Mussolini

The Associated Press



NEW YORK June 24, 2004 — A federal judge offered his "profound regret" Thursday for saying President Bush's rise to power was similar to that of Mussolini and Hitler.
Judge Guido Calabresi, 71, of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, drew an audible gasp from lawyers attending Saturday's convention of the American Constitution Society in Washington, according to the New York Sun, which quoted the speech in Monday's editions.



"My remarks were extemporaneous and, in hindsight, reasonably could be and indeed have been understood to do something which I did not intend, that is, take a partisan position," Calabresi wrote in a letter of apology to Chief Judge John Walker.

Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School, was quoted saying the U.S. Supreme Court "put somebody in power" when a ruling it made in December 2000 settled the dispute over whether Bush had defeated Al Gore.

"In a way that occurred before but is rare in the United States ... somebody came to power as a result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution that had the right to put somebody in power," Calabresi said. "The reason I emphasize that is because that is exactly what happened when Mussolini was put in by the king of Italy.

"The King of Italy had the right to put Mussolini in, though he had not won an election, and make him prime minister," the judge continued. "That is what happened when Hindenburg put Hitler in."

Calabresi told the lawyers: "I am not suggesting for a moment that Bush is Hitler. I want to be clear on that, but it is a situation which is extremely unusual."

Calabresi went on to say the public should expel Bush from office to cleanse the democratic system. "That's got nothing to do with the politics of it. It's got to do with the structural reassertion of democracy," Calabresi was quoted saying.

In his letter of apology, Calabresi said he was "deeply sorry" for remarks that were meant as "a rather complicated academic argument about the nature of re-elections after highly contested original elections" but that were "too easily taken as partisan."

"That is something which judges should do their best to avoid, and there, I clearly failed," he wrote.

In a letter to the rest of the appeals judges, Walker said Calabresi's "off-the-cuff" comments had been viewed as a call to oppose Bush's re-election. He warned them to refrain from political activity or public endorsements because partisan political comments violate the Code of Judicial Conduct.

Friday, June 25, 2004

US judge faces sack for 'immodest conduct'
24/06/2004 - 9:10:39 PM

An American judge is facing the sack after using a “penis pump” during court hearings, including a murder trial, it emerged today.

Several witnesses reported hearing the noise of the pump coming from beneath the robes of District Court Judge Donald Thompson, who sits in Oklahoma.

On one occasion a shorthand writer was shocked to see the 57-year-old judge masturbating during a trial, according to documents filed by the state attorney general.

The typist, Lisa Foster, told investigators she first started hearing a sound “like a blood pressure cuff being pumped up” in September 2000.

“Over the course of time, from where she sat in her court reporter chair, Lisa Foster saw Judge Thompson place a penis pump on his penis ’maybe ten’ times during either a non-jury or jury trial and operate the pump,” the legal papers said.

They went on: “Ms Foster saw judge Thompson masturbate on a number of occasions and during the course of her employment, saw his penis 15 to 20 times.

“On one occasion, Ms Foster saw Judge Thompson holding his penis up and shaving underneath it with a disposable razor while on the bench.”

The bizarre events were also witnessed by police officers giving evidence during a murder trial in Judge Thompson’s court, the legal papers said.

One “heard ’a swooshing kind of air, like kind of ch, ch’ and saw Judge Thompson making some movement with his upper body and arms” the papers said.

During an interval in the court proceedings, in August 2003, one officer discovered the pump and photographed it as evidence against the judge.

The documents continued: “A juror commented to Ms Foster during the August 22, 2003, trial that she heard a ’popping’ sound and asked what that sound was. Another juror said the noise sounded like sh, sh.”

But when she confronted him, the judge said to Ms Foster: “I don’t know what they’re talking about. Do you?”

When he was interviewed by investigators, Judge Thompson admitted that the pump was under the bench during the August 2003 murder trial but said it was a joke gift from a friend and he never used it.

State Attorney General Drew Edmondson has petitioned a court to have the judge removed for his “immodest conduct”.

He is accused by the Attorney General of violating rules governing the judiciary and “moral turpitude”.

“This conduct is immoral in itself by the doing of the act and therefore, constitutes an offence involving moral turpitude,” the legal papers state.

The court papers were obtained by American website The Smoking Gun, part of Court TV.

Judge Thompson, who sits at Creek County District Court in Oklahoma, could not be reached for comment.



Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11:

I just got in from seeing this movie. Frankly, I was disappointed. I just felt saddened, not just at the content of the film, but I just couldn't help but wish that all these people who were lining up to see this film would also see the Alex Jone's film, 911 The Road to Tyranny. This film is available at: http://www.infowars.com and I highly recommend it!

I know there was only so much time to cover only so much information...but, man oh man, are we screwed up here or what? Wait...I know what saddened me....really...it was all the poor folks in their "Jan Schneider for Congress" tees, wering their "Kerry" buttons. Please people...WAKE UP! There is NO DIFFERENCE! Really depressing to see these folks who really think "voting" for Kerry is any different than the "Regime" that's in there now. Let's face it...We're all screwed!

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Where the heck have I been?