Now Bush ignores the 4th Amendment

and conducts illegal PHYSICAL searches of not just suspected terrorists (i.e. any American who disagrees with his policies), but breaks into the homes of the ATTORNEYS for these suspects, as well.

If you have any fondness for the Constitution, this might chill your bones a bit.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/17.html#a7564

• Now Bush ignores the 4th Amendment - PK

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President Has Issued 750 Statements That He May Revise or Disregard Measures.

WASHINGTON (June 27) -- The White House on Tuesday defended President Bush's prolific use of bill signing statements, saying There's this notion that the president is committing acts of civil disobedience, and he's not, said Bush's press secretary Tony Snow, speaking at the White House. It's important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions.

Snow spoke as Senate Judiciary Committe Chairman Arlen Specter opened hearings on Bush's use of bill signing statements saying he reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard a measure on national security and consitutional grounds. Such statements have accompanied some 750 statutes passed by Congress -- including a ban on the torture of detainees and the renewal of the Patriot Act.

There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview, Specter, R-Pa., said.

It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution, he added. I'm interested to hear from the administration just what research they've done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick.

A Justice Department lawyer defended Bush's statements.

Even if there is modest increase, let me just suggest that it be viewed in light of current events and Congress' response to those events, said Justice Department lawyer Michelle Boardman. The significance of legislation affecting national security has increased markedly since Sept. 11..

Congress has been more active, the president has been more active, she added. The separation of powers is working when we have this kind of dispute.

Specter's hearing is about more than the statements. He's been compiling a list of White House practices he bluntly says could amount to abuse of executive power -- from warrantless domestic wiretapping program to sending officials to hearings who refuse to answer lawmakers' questions.

But the session also concerns countering any influence Bush's signing statements may have on court decisions regarding the new laws. Courts can be expected to look to the legislature for intent, not the executive, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., a former state judge.

There's less here than meets the eye, Cornyn said. The president is entitled to express his opinion. It's the courts that determine what the law is.

But Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is doing an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency's sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto that could be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house.

The president is not required to (veto), Boardman said.

Of course he's not if he signs the bill, Specter snapped back.

Instead, Bush has issued hundreds of signing statements invoking his right to interpret or ignore laws on everything from whistleblower protections to how Congress oversees the Patriot Act.

It means that the administration does not feel bound to enforce many new laws which Congress has passed, said David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues. This raises profound rule of law concerns. Do we have a functioning code of federal laws?

typing too fast - oops.

The poster isn't *getting away* with anything.  He/she is exerting his/her constitutional right to form and voice an opinion.  Just so happens what the poster said is true about Bush having the Saudis being escorted out of the U.S., and if I remember correctly, some of those escorted were relatives of Bin Laden.

Like I said, the poster isn't *gettin away* with anything because the poster hasn't done anything wrong.   The person who has *gotten away* with a lot of illegal, immoral, unethical acts is Bush.

You said, "The constitution may be slowly being eroded away, but luckily nobody had taken away the second ammendment."

That's something we all have to fight against. They have been trying for years to do this, but thank heavens for the NRA. Sure, they are somewhat radical at times, but they do protect the right to bear arms. I surely don't want to live in a country where only the criminals have guns and I want the right to defend myself as said earlier.

I rarely watch Fox News because I simply don't trust them to be "fair and balanced," after actually watching them a few years ago.

However, they have the same rights as MSNBC, CNN, HLN, etc., and I think that singling them out in order to silence them goes against the First Amendment that this country stands for.

Let them fall or survive on their own merit (or lack of same).

our opinions, short of using obscenities.  As soon as the Thought Police are empowered, this may change, but currently we are free to say what we think. 

I personally do not think Obama is stupid or naive, but I do believe he is a suck-up when it comes to currying favor with foreign countries and throwing his own country under the bus to do it.  He really believes that the worse he can make this country's history look, the more radiant his countenance will appear in comparison.  He truly believes he is the Hope Diamond in a hog wallow.  The arrogance is all his.

gun control supporters always fall back on is ''well regulated militia''.  But the militia back then was considered to be all able-bodied males capable of fighting.  Also, having had such recent experience with the tyranny of an out-of-control government, our founders wiisely built the right to possess and bear arms into our constitution to make sure our new government did not become too big for its britches. 

I believe it was in Justice Scalia's opinion on the Heller case (or maybe in his questioning of the pro-gun-control attorney)  that I read something to the effect that in revolutionary war times firearms were necessary to procure food and also to protect ourselves and families from hostile attacks, bears, wolves, and other predators.  Nowadays most of us don't have to fight off wild animals anymore; the predators have become.....us.

15th Amendment to the Constitution

"The first vote" A.R. Waud. Wood engraving. 1867. Prints & Photographs Division. Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-19234

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.  

did not pass.It was 32 ayes to 65 nays.

after it was ratified, by the beginning of 1868, more than 700,000 blacks had registered to vote. Black voters gained majorities in South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi.  The southern black voters elected many black politicians in the majority states and throughout the South: fourteen black politicians were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and two to the Mississippi State Senate.

The right for blacks to vote has NEVER been revoked.  The KKK may have made it difficult for black Americans to vote for a time, but they always had the right!

The democrats tried to object to his even reading of his statements yesterday. Guess they were afraid he would sway some votes.  This is long, but please read.

----

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, the amendment I have is a product of a lot of work from a number of Senators on this side of the aisle. I especially thank Senator Martinez of Florida, a great leader on this issue, along with Senator Thune, Senator Graham, and many other Senators who have been involved in this discussion. This is an alternative we believe would truly create jobs and stimulate our economy. The total cost is around $421 billion.

   I wish, before I describe the amendment--and I know others of my colleagues want to discuss this amendment--I wish to point out it is very clear that public opinion in this country is swinging against the proposal that is now before the Senate and was passed by the other body. They are opposed because they see now in the Senate a $995 billion package which could reach more than $1.2 trillion. Many Americans, certainly now a majority, do not see it as a way to create jobs and to stimulate our economy. They see it loaded down with unnecessary spending programs. They see it, very correctly, with policy changes which deserve extended debate and voting on their own, such as ``Buy American'' provisions, Davis-Bacon, giving Federal workers new whistleblower protections. Some of these policy changes may be laudable, others are not, at least in my view, but all of them deserve debate and discussion rather than being placed in a piece of legislation that is intended to stimulate our economy and create jobs.

   I think it is time that we also understand how we got where we are. I have been around this body long enough to recognize that we are now entering the final phase of consideration of this package. Whether it be today or over the weekend or early next week, this bill will be disposed of one way or another by the Senate. So how did we get to where we are today, with a $995 billion package, at least, or $1.2 trillion, or perhaps more than that, with a bill that probably would create, in the view of the administration--and I do not agree with it--3 million jobs, which would mean that each job that is created by it costs the taxpayers $275,000. I do not think many Americans believe that each job created should cost $275,000 of their hard-earned tax dollars.

   In fact, the response my office is getting borders on significant anger when we talk about many of the funding programs that are in the stimulus bill. I will go through several of them later on, but $400 million for STD prevention; $40 million to make park services more energy efficient; $75 million for smoking cessation. It is hard to argue that, even though these provisions, many of them, may be worthwhile, they actually create jobs. So we have strayed badly from our original intent of creating a situation in America to reverse the terrible decline and economic ditch in which we find the American economy, to the point we have had spending programs and policy provisions which have nothing to do with stimulating the economy and creating jobs. It may be Government--let me put it this way. It may be legislative activity, possibly, at its worst.

   We are offering today an alternative at less than half the cost that we think creates jobs and stimulates the economy. I remind my colleagues, despite the rhetoric about bipartisanship, this bill originated in the House of Representatives, as is constitutionally appropriate. There was no Republican input whatsoever. It passed the other body on a strict party-line basis with the loss of 11 Democrats and came over to this body, where in both the Appropriations and the Finance Committees, almost every Republican amendment was rejected on party lines.

   I appreciate very much that the President of the United States came over to address Republican Members of the Senate and Republican Members of the House. The tenor of his remarks I think was excellent. But the fact is, we did not sit down and seriously negotiate between Republican and Democrat. I have been involved in many bipartisan efforts in this body, for many years, that have achieved legislative result. The way you achieve it is not to come over and talk to a body. The answer is to sit down and seriously negotiate and come up with compromises which result in legislation which is good for the country.

   That has not happened in this process. Again, the American people are figuring it out. I am confident, because of the way this process has taken place, that gap, which is now 43-37, the majority of the American people opposing this package, will grow.

   A majority of the American people still believe we have to stimulate the economy and create jobs. I agree with them. But to spend $1.2 trillion on it, and have no provision for when the economy recovers to put us back on the path of fiscal sanity and stability--as the amendment that I had last night was rejected; we got 44 vote--does not provide the American people with confidence that spending will stop at some time.

   One thing they have learned is that spending programs that are initially supposed to be temporary become permanent. They become permanent. That is a historical fact.

   So we have initiated nearly $1 trillion--many in new spending, some hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending--with no provision, once the economy has recovered--and the economy will recover in America--this is no path to balancing the budget. Instead, we laid a $700 billion debt on future generations of America in the form of TARP, we are laying $1.2 trillion additional in the form of this bill, and another half a trillion dollars in the omnibus appropriations bill, and then we are told there will be a necessity for another TARP, which could be as much as $1 trillion, because of our declining economy. Yet there has been no provision whatsoever, once the economy recovers, to put us back on a path to balancing the budget and reducing and perhaps eliminating--hopefully eliminating--this debt we have laid on future generations of Americans.

   I used to come down to the floor here, and have over the years, and argue against provisions in appropriations bills--which, by the way, has led to corruption. I notice there is another individual staffer who is being charged today, or yesterday, for inappropriate behavior with Mr. Abramoff.

   There used to be hundreds of thousands and sometimes thousands. Now, they are in the millions and billions, tens of millions and billions. My how we have grown.

   Do we need $1 billion for national security at the Nuclear Security Administration Weapons Activities to create jobs? We may need $1 billion for National Nuclear Security Administration Weapons Activity, but to say it will create jobs and will stimulate the economy is a slender reed.

   There is nobody who appreciates more than this person the contribution that Filipino war veterans made to winning the Second World War. We are going to give millions of dollars to those who live in the Philippines. Do not label that as job stimulation.

   Smoking cessation is something that we all support. How does $75 million for smoking cessation create jobs within the next years that would justify expenditures of $75 million?

   This body, in the name of increasing health care for children, raised taxes by some $61 billion, I guess it is, on tobacco use. So we now hope people will use tobacco in order to pay for insurance for children. But the fact is, $75 million for smoking cessation should be an issue that is brought up separately and on its own. And the list goes on and on and on.

   Our proposal--I am grateful for the participation of so many Senators--would allocate approximately $275 billion in tax cuts. It would eliminate the 3.1 percent payroll tax for all employees for 1 year and use general revenues to pay for the Social Security obligation.

   It would allocate $60 billion to lower the 10-percent tax bracket to 5 percent for 1 year. It would lower the 15-percent tax bracket to 10 percent for 1 year. It would lower corporate tax brackets from 35 percent to 25 percent for 1 year.

[Page: S1619]  GPO's PDF

   We alarmed the world with the ``Buy American'' provisions which are included in this bill. The reaction has been incredible, and the fact is, jobs flee America for a number of reasons. But one of them is we have the highest business taxes of any nation in the world. We used to have among the lowest.

   So if we really want to create jobs in America and attract capital and investment for the United States of America, we need to lower the corporate tax bracket. We need to have accelerated depreciation for capital investments for small businesses. We need to assist Americans in need, there is no doubt about that. There are Americans who are wounded and are hurting today. It is not their fault.

   We need to extend the unemployment insurance benefits. That is a $38 billion pricetag. We need to extend food stamps. We need to extend unemployment insurance benefits, make them tax free. That is a $10 billion pricetag. And, of course, we need to provide workers with training and employment. That is a $50 billion cost.

   We need to keep families in their homes. We needed, and we did adopt last night, the $15,000 tax credit. But we also need to fund the increase in the fee that servicers receive from continuing a mortgage and avoiding foreclosure. We need to have GSE and FHA conforming loan limits. That is $32 billion. We also, by the way, need to do more in the housing area.

   You know, it is interesting in all of these spending proposals we have, there is not one penny for defense, not one penny. Obviously, we are going to have to reset our military. We need to replace the aging equipment that has been used so heavily in Iraq and will be needed in Afghanistan.

   We need to improve and repair and modernize the barracks, the facilities and infrastructure that directly support the readiness and training of the Armed Forces. We do not have that in the now $995 billion package that is before us. Obviously, we need to spend money on military construction projects which will create jobs immediately. Those people who say that is not the case, I can provide for the record adequate information that many of our military construction projects could begin more quickly than those that are not on our military bases because of environmental and other concerns.

   We need to spend $45 billion on transportation infrastructure. There are grants to States to build and repair roads and bridges, including $10 billion for discretionary transportation grants, and $1 billion for roads on Federal lands. Public transit, obviously, we need to fund, and airport infrastructure improvements are necessary, along with small business loans. That is about $63 billion in our proposal.

   Finally, the American people believe, and I think correctly, spending is out of control in our Nation's Capital. We continue to spend and spend and spend. We not only have accumulated over a $10 trillion deficit, this will add another $1 trillion or more. I mentioned the TARP of $700 billion, all of which is being paid for--we are printing money in order to fund it.

   At some point we are going to have to get our budget balanced or our children and our grandchildren are going to pay the bill. I recommend that this body hear as much as possible from David Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office, in the Congress of the United States. He paints a stark picture. In my view, it is also time that we establish entitlement commissions: one for Social Security and one for Medicare-Medicaid and make recommendations so we can act on what is a multi-trillion-dollar deficit in Social Security and over a $40 trillion debt on Medicare and Medicaid.

   Unless we address these long-term entitlement issues, there is no way we are going to be able to prevent the majority of Americans' taxes from being devoted to those two programs. So we need to establish those commissions and we need to put them to work and we need to put them to work right away.

   Now, I am told there is general agreement. Why not do it now? Why not do it now? We also need better accountability, better transparency, better oversight, and better results. Among many disappointments we have over TARP, one was that we were told the Congress and the American people would have oversight and transparency, and they would know exactly how that initial $350 billion was being spent.

   The American people and Members of Congress have been bitterly disappointed as TARP shifted from one priority to another. Funds went to the automotive industry, which none of us had anticipated when we voted for and approved it. We need more transparency and accountability and oversight of how this, probably the biggest single emergency spending package in the history of this country, is being spent.

   I notice I have other Members here who wish to speak on this issue. I hope we can pass this alternative, some $421 billion, to what has now surged to over $1 trillion. It probably may not pass for the reasons of numbers, but if we do not sit down and negotiate and come up with a package that is more than a $50- or $60- or $80 billion reduction, when we are talking about $1.2 trillion, the American people will not be well served.

   They will not be well served by requiring Davis-Bacon, they will not be well served by requiring ``Buy American,'' they will not be well served by spending their hard-earned dollars on unnecessary programs that even though in the eyes of some may have virtue, have no or very little association with job creation and relief for Americans who are struggling to stay in their homes and either keep their jobs or go out and find a new one.

   I believe the United States of America will recover from the economic crisis. I have a fundamental faith, belief, that American workers are the most productive, the most innovative, and the best in the world. But they need some help right now. What they need is the right kind of help.

   I urge my colleagues, when you see the money that is being spent in the name of job creation and stimulus that is laying a debt burden on our children and our grandchildren, we need to have serious consideration of this kind of spending because it is not fair, not only to this generation of Americans but to future generations as well.

Senator McCain opposes Marriage Protection Amendment

Sen. McCain has said he will oppose the Marriage Protection Amendment (MAP), which defines marriage as being only between one man and one woman, when it comes up for a vote on June 6th.

Sen. McCain says it should be left up to each individual state to define marriage. Can you imagine the mess if that happened! Fifty different laws defining marriage! That is totally unworkable. Our forefathers knew the mess that would create, and that is the reason marriage fell under the Full Faith and Credit Clause in the U.S. Constitution.

One liberal activist Federal judge could strike down the marriage laws in all 50 states because they would be so confusing and conflicting.

In reality, a vote for the MAP is a vote for traditional marriage. A vote against the MPA (which Sen. McCain currently plans to do) is, in reality, a vote for homosexual marriage.

Remember that no matter how Sen. McCain explains his opposition to the MPA, the bottom line is that a vote against it is a vote for homosexual marriage.

Senator McCain needs to hear from you today! Call him using one of the district office numbers below. If the line is busy keep calling until you get through.

"Anyone in my office involved with a leak will be fired" to "Anyone who is found guilty of leaking," I figured he had a handle on what the decision is going to be by the special prosecutor, who, incidentally, was appointed by BUSH.

I guess time will tell if justice truly does prevail.

Bush makes Nixon look like a choir boy.

    Wednesday 31 August 2005

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

A New Orleans resident waded through floodwaters coated with a fine layer of oil in the flooded downtown area on Tuesday, August 30, 2005.

    A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

    The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.

    The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised no net loss of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

    In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection, said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as highly questionable, and boasted, Everybody loves what we're doing.

    My administration's climate change policy will be science based, President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as a report put out by a bureaucracy, and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive Report on the Environment, stating, Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment, the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

    In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease. Bush completely ignored this statement.

    In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of abstinence. When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

    On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan. Bush had boarded his very own Streetcar Named Desire.

    --------

    Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

me as TAXPAYERS) pays Faux News for its' *fair and balanced* reporting. 

Ya gotta laugh at the morons who actually BELIEVE this nitwit, though!