Dragged Down by the Stone

Not really sure why this resonates with me. Perhaps it will make sense at the end of this thing.

Things have been a little skinny here at Moronathon. Life is intervening with increased ferocity and we are working quite hard at doing that full speed ahead, chin up thing. Leaves little time for complaining. None the less, we return to our friends Responsibility, Justice and Rule of Law. Hmm. Perhaps we had better start with Paranoia instead as it is a little easier to find in this day and age.

Those of you who read this blog with regularity know that I have a fascination with the relationship between our Government and our Privacy. In reading the following, please think about the utility and reasoning behind keeping even the idea of a government keeping an organization or plan secret. A rational might be created for hiding details - ie we hold up the following people in the event of a flying gerbil attack on Gotham City - but this gets a little less strong when you feel the need to hide the existence of the FGAPP (Flying Gerbil Attack Preparation Plan) or more likely the whole DFGAP (Department of Flying Gerbil Attack Preparation).

Attack Preparation... The US Government has quite reasonably developed plans for dealing with rotten things happening to the country and itself in order to maintain a continuity of operations. This is a Good Thing. For the past thirty years though these plans have added a significant inward looking component which is somewhat troubling. A very interesting article by Christopher Ketcham goes into a great deal of detail with regard to a good number of these changes. The points I make in this section are shamelessly taken from that reading.

The 'enemy lists' of Hoover's FBI are well known and understood. During the same time period the Federal Preparedness Agency (now known as FEMA) maintained a database of at least 100,000 Americans located at Mount Weather, which was publicly investigated in 1975 by Senator John V. Tunney. From the Ketcham article:

The senator's findings were confirmed in a 1976 investigation by the Progressive magazine, which found that the Mount Weather computers "can obtain millions of pieces [of] information on the personal lives of American citizens by tapping the data stored at any of the 96 Federal Relocation Centers"—a reference to other classified facilities. According to the Progressive, Mount Weather's databases were run "without any set of stated rules or regulations. Its surveillance program remains secret even from the leaders of the House and the Senate."

Moving ahead 10 years enter Oliver North. I am unable to express my contempt for this POS, except to say that he gives the usual group of political scoundrels like Donald Rumsfeld a bad name. We are also seeing the same distancing of the executive branch from congressional oversight via the same legal condescension that is being enjoyed today. Another quote:

A report in the Miami Herald contended that Reagan loyalist and Iran-Contra conspirator Colonel Oliver North had spearheaded the development of a "secret contingency plan,"—code-named REX 84—which called "for suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the United States over to FEMA, [and the] appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments." The North plan also reportedly called for the detention of upwards of 400,000 illegal aliens and an undisclosed number of American citizens in at least 10 military facilities maintained as potential holding camps.

North's program was so sensitive in nature that when Texas congressman Jack Brooks attempted to question North about it during the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings, he was rebuffed even by his fellow legislators. "I read in Miami papers and several others that there had been a plan by that same agency [FEMA] that would suspend the American Constitution," Brooks said. "I was deeply concerned about that and wondered if that was the area in which he [North] had worked." Senator Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Iran, immediately cut off his colleague, saying, "That question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you not touch upon that, sir." Though Brooks pushed for an answer, the line of questioning was not allowed to proceed.

Wired magazine turned up additional damaging information, revealing in 1993 that North, operating from a secure White House site, allegedly employed a software database program called PROMIS (ostensibly as part of the REX 84 plan). PROMIS, which has a strange and controversial history, was designed to track individuals—prisoners, for example—by pulling together information from disparate databases into a single record. According to Wired, "Using the computers in his command center, North tracked dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon's enemies list or Senator Joe McCarthy's blacklist look downright crude." Sources have suggested to Radar that government databases tracking Americans today, including Main Core, could still have PROMIS-based legacy code from the days when North was running his programs.

I am going through the information a little differently than the original article - 'Main Core' is the current implementation of the big unregulated database holding personal information about suspicious people that might need special attention in the event of a 'national emergency'.

The exact details are less important than the main points: information is being collected outside of the normal scope of regulation and oversight whose main purpose will be the detection and survaliense of American Citizens. The decision to use these rests with the executive branch as defined in Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (also known as NSPD-51), issued in May 2007, which reserves for the executive branch the sole authority to decide what constitutes a national emergency and to determine when the emergency is over. Finally, the historical firewall between states and the use of Federal troops - Posse Comitatus - was reduced in scope as well.

For the record I am somewhat skeptical that any notion of regulation or oversight is meaningful in the context of this sort of operation. It exists at a layer of government which is not all that well defined for those of us brought up in the now quaint notion of three house government.

I am also skipping the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as there has been some further clarifications act brought to us by the Supreme Court which I would need to look up and do not really have the space. Google "Salim Hamdan and Military Commissions Act" for more details.

So what? Those fans of the old X-Files series remember the tin foil hat brigaded talking about FEMA and a Vast Conspiracy to lock up countless Americans. Such a joke right? Until quite recently I felt the same way. Where we sit today the people with the power to do this are without shame or dignity. They have expressed contempt for the Rule of Law. They have sullied and destroyed our national reputation and treasure. American Citizens can and are being held without constitutional protections. They feed on the hopes and dreams of us leaving nothing but bitter ruin.

We - the United States - are currently holding more than 27,000 human beings in secret prisons around the world. The overwhelming majority of them are being held indefinitely, without charges, without rights, cut off from the outside world, and subject to "harsh interrogation techniques" (to use the prim locution for "torture" used by the Bush Administration and universally adopted by the American media).

Do you really think that they would be afraid to use this if it was in their best interest?

free advice for new visitors

The traffic profile for the previous post picked up a couple of interesting visitors. I suspect that one or more staff people for one or more of the mentioned senators spend some chunk of the day looking to see what stupid bloggers such as myself are saying about their employers. This seems like a reasonable and well thought out thing to do.

For my new visitors from washington: Quit browsing the web right now and go update your flash versions. Folks the versions on the browsers I saw are both really old and really vulnerable, and if you are not currently nodes for the Russian Business Network you sure will be soon. The thought of that bothers me a little...

This in no way changes what I think and feel, it is just a little public service net hygiene.

To help ensure the return of our friends from washington, I will re-post the bits of (todays) post which has names and whatnot.

Republicans, meanwhile, made their feelings about the hearing clear from the outset. In his opening statement, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) declared the hearing an utter waste of time. "These cases are old news," he fumed. His colleague, the former Texas judge Louie Gohmert, echoed those sentiments. "Why are we here today?" he demanded, noting that the committee had to cut short a markup of seven important crime bills to convene the hearing that he claimed was born out of "desperation." Gohmert ticked off a list of items he found more relevant for the committee's attention, including a random and inexplicable reference to former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who Gohmert thought ought to be investigated for perjury based on his numerous appearances before the committee regarding the outing of his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. Then, the Republican congressman stormed out of the hearing room, never to return.

These cases are old news, why are we here today?

That will be the theme of the next eight years.

We will hear again and again how this is all just old news and should be left to rest. Nothing to be seen here. Move along.

Congress holds an oversight committee, about things that happened less than 8 years ago. Illegal attacks on our system of government. The DOJ - a major player in this mess - doesn't even show. Just a no-show, like the fucking rule of law that they are supposed to stand for, that we the taxed are paying for, just does not really mean anything when you are supposed to be investigating violations of the law that got you in power.

And what does the GOP have to say:

Republicans, meanwhile, made their feelings about the hearing clear from the outset. In his opening statement, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) declared the hearing an utter waste of time. "These cases are old news," he fumed. His colleague, the former Texas judge Louie Gohmert, echoed those sentiments. "Why are we here today?" he demanded, noting that the committee had to cut short a markup of seven important crime bills to convene the hearing that he claimed was born out of "desperation." Gohmert ticked off a list of items he found more relevant for the committee's attention, including a random and inexplicable reference to former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who Gohmert thought ought to be investigated for perjury based on his numerous appearances before the committee regarding the outing of his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. Then, the Republican congressman stormed out of the hearing room, never to return.

Fire them. How fucking long would you last if you skipped out of a court appearance? Fire them and let the same rule of law that they have alternatively ignored or perverted provide them a little more down time on the tax payers dime.

Life has been complex as of late and I have not had the time or energy to work much on this endeavor. I am hoping to fix that a bit.

note on goings on

I am working on a pair of posts that discuss the Yoo torture memo/discussion that top white house staff were expressly invloved in the decition making process for torturing captives. See this ABC news link for a little more.

The second is a breakdown of the recent revelations that white house legal thought that the 4th ammendment did not necessisarily apply. Nice writeup from the EFF:

"The EFF has uncovered a troubling footnote in a newly declassified Bush Administration memo, which asserts that 'our Office recently [in 2001] concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.' This could mean that the Administration believes the NSA's warrantless wiretapping and data mining programs are not governed by the Constitution, which would cast Administration claims that the programs did not violate the Fourth Amendment in a whole new light — after all, you can't violate a law that doesn't apply. The claimed immunity would also cover other DoD agencies, such as CIFA, which carry out offline surveillance of political groups within the United States."

More later ...

Spit please!

Another quick post.

Short version: Having completely lost the distinction between an individual accused of committing a crime and an individual convicted of said offense, Congress has authorized the justice department (no big 'J' for you!) to gather DNA samples from anybody who gets arrested.

This includes all those international travelers who have not even been charged with anything.

See DNA is the new duct tape of law enforcement. Just like all the wire tap infrastructure, we have nothing to fear with regard to our privacy given that there are rules by which law enforcement has to follow in order to get at the data.

Interesting quote:

Ablin said the DNA collection would be subject to the same privacy laws applied to current DNA sampling. That means none of it would be used for identifying genetic traits, diseases or disorders.

Perhaps I have been drinking the paranoid juice just a little too long, but that disclaimer is quite specific. Think for a moment of things not in that list that you would not like the justice department to be able to do in a large dragnet database sort of way. Do you have something to hide?

Money for Nothin'

Just in case you thought the state of the educational system was not quite crappy enough, I bring you a sad tale of the big corporation and the Really Stupid Book. This book is a favorite amongst the up by the bootstraps middle class, but alas, it is no Frankenstein.

Perhaps more of an ideological bodice ripper.

This may all be an act of fiction since I did not bother to track down the original sources. It would surprise me somewhat if that was the case. With that in mind I leave you with the complete quote:

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand….

“A corporation crosses a line and a university is complicit in crossing the line if it accepts money” and accedes to a request to assign specific books, said Jonathan Knight, director of the program on academic freedom, tenure and governance for the American Association of University Professors, in Washington. “It’s unique in my experience.” Knight has worked in the field for 31 years….

After BB&T mandated that some schools teach “Atlas Shrugged,” grant seekers became aware of Allison’s interest and now tailor their applications by stating up front their interest in Rand, Denham said.

Scholars scoff at the Rand bounty, saying her ideas are too shallow to build courses around her.

That last line has got to hurt just a little though...

Grown up Pants

Life has been just stupidly busy, so I have not had the pleasure of sharing my wit and charm with the legions of loyal readers across the globe. While waiting for some numbers to crunch for a homework set, I had the misfortune of reading a few political blogs. Jesus Mary and Joseph, what the fuck is wrong with the democrats? Do they have to shaft themselves at every opportunity?

From team O we seem to be getting a recycling of old Right Wing talking points about the Clintons. Did you not read my previous post? * The only thing that this is doing is providing free cannon fodder for the right.

From team C we get sentence dissection and other sophomoric crap. People mis-speak - if I had every thing I said or did dissected to this degree it would be a real horrorshow. To make my point clear, I will provide context for the quote since it is yet another stupid question script derived from a 24 like mentality. By the way, can someone please tell me just exactly why "Hardball" (sweet jebus...) is relevant.

MATTHEWS: Let me give you a scene that may face you in the next year or two, where the national security adviser calls you at 3:00 in the morning and tells that you a couple of jet — commercial jets have been hijacked. And they believe it is al Qaeda. And, as we know, al Qaeda always tries a second time. They tried for the World Trade Center after ‘93. They came back in ‘01. They’re heading for the Capitol. What do you do?

OBAMA: Well, look, I am hesitant to engage in hypotheticals like that, because…

MATTHEWS: But it has been predictable.

OBAMA: Oh, well, the — I don’t think anybody predicted 9/11. And, so, we don’t know what kinds of circumstances are going to come up.

Let me make my point - issues issues issues. The more time the left spends tearing itself up over sound bytes and fluff, the more disgusted actual people are getting with them. I want to know what the candidates are going to do about the economy, the war, the constitutional crisis, health care, corporate welfare, the mortgage crisis, New Orleans, the debt, jobs and what not. Do not fucking tell me about anything else. Quit with the racism and the misogamy and get it together because we do not have four more years to give to John McCain.

For the record, you get some really crazy shit for putting 'pants' into googles image search.
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* Three people read it actually.