The Busheviks know how to pick ‘em….

As the next Defense Secretary, Robert M. Gates will be in charge of a new star-chamber legal system that can lock up indefinitely “unlawful enemy combatants” and “any person” accused of aiding them. Yet, despite these extraordinary new powers, his confirmation is being treated more like a coronation than a time for tough questions.

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But there are serious unresolved questions about Gates’s past that the American people might want resolved before he is entrusted with the awesome new powers that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 puts in the hands of the Defense Secretary.

In 1991, for reasons mostly of political expediency and personal friendship, Gates’s last confirmation process for CIA director never got to the bottom of allegations linking Gates to some of the most serious national security scandals of the 1980s, including illegal involvement in arms deals with Iran and Iraq.

In his memoir, From the Shadows, Gates revealed why the inquiries were cut short when he thanked his friend, Sen. David Boren, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for shepherding him through the confirmation process.

“David took it as a personal challenge to get me confirmed,” Gates wrote.

Boren’s chief of staff who helped limit the investigation of Gates in 1991 was George Tenet, whose actions earned him the gratitude of then-President George H.W. Bush, who a decade later urged his son, President George W. Bush, to keep Tenet on as CIA director.

Amid all this cozy back-scratching, Gates’s alleged involvement in illicit contacts between senior Republicans and Iranian representatives during the 1980 hostage crisis was never seriously vetted. Neither was Gates’s alleged participation in arranging secret arms shipments to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s.

This guy should not be in front of Congress to receive an appointment. He should be there to receive an indictment. Another retread from the Bush Crime Family.

As USTV reader AM notes…

We really aren’t trading up with this new Sec. of Defense at all; the step-down of Rummy was just a timely post-election farce of a concession by the Administration.

Read The Full Article from Consortium News

I know America has the largest percentage of citizens in prison per capita than any other nation on earth, but this is taking the concept of a prison/police state to a new and disconcertingly dangerous level. All in the name of our ’safety and security’, of course.

Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we’ll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the United States.

It doesn’t matter if you have a U.S. Passport - a “travel document” that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the agency says “no” to a clearance request, or doesn’t answer the request at all, you won’t be permitted to enter-or leave-the United States.

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Think this can’t happen? Think again. It’s ALREADY happening. Earlier this year, HSA forbade airlines from transporting an 18-year-old a native-born U.S. citizen, back to the United States. The prohibition
lasted nearly six months until it was finally lifted a few weeks ago. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are two countries in recent history that didn’t allow their citizens to travel abroad without permission. If these regulations go into effect, you can add the United States to this list.

I know people get touchy about rhetorical comparisons of U.S. policy to abominations like Nazi Germany or the U.S.S.R., but those who wish to study the Third Reich will understand that its power grew with the open support and complicity of so-called law abiding, ‘polite’ German society, who would have NEVER imagined what was actually in store for them or the true meaning of what they were giving their acquiescence to.

Wake up, America, while there is still some remote semblance of an America to wake up to.

Read The Full Report

For more information on this proposed regulation, see
http://hasbrouck.org/IDP/IDP-APIS-comments.pdf

It was this exact same thing that Ronald Reagan used as an example of to explain why the Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua was a fraud and a blight on human liberty. Turning the nation into apparatchiks of the state used to be considered a threat to liberty. Today, Reagan’s so-called heirs are pushing the EXACT same activity they used to decry as tyranny.

But then again, we’ve always been at war with Eurasia, haven’t we?

Colorado counterterrorism officials used the 9/11 anniversary to launch an Internet system that lets ordinary people electronically report “suspicious activity” - ferreting out possible terrorist bombers or plotters in their midst. “One person can make a difference in thwarting terrorism,” State Patrol Chief Mark Tostel said Monday in unveiling the system.

Civil-liberties leaders immediately denounced the move as deeply destructive. The system lets anybody with Internet access send a report and photos (via www.ciac.co.gov) documenting anything that strikes them as suspicious.

Officials said suspicious activity may include “unusual requests for information,” “unusual interest in high-risk or symbolic targets,” “unusual purchases or thefts,” “suspicious or unattended packages,” “suspicious persons who appear out of place” or people acquiring weapons, uniforms or fraudulent identification. . .

“I hate it,” said Cathryn Hazouri, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado. “This is encouraging people to spy on one another.”

It moves modern America in the direction of communist societies of the Soviet Union and China, “where people were encouraged to turn in their family members, or their neighbors, if they believed those people were not toeing the government line,” Hazouri said. . .

“It’s almost as though they are trying to tell people that they need to be afraid. Very afraid. Afraid of people they know, and especially of people they don’t know.”

Read The Original Denver Post Article Here

Yeah, kiddie porn. Right. What about the political and moral pornography that these whores to power and mammon are peddling every day over our airwaves, as well as on the net?

This is the perfume for the pig. They could care less about ‘protecting our children’. This is all about having the power to monitor, track and maintain constant surveillance over anyone and everyone who may be deemed ‘enemies of the state’ (emphasis on ’state’, of course, not nation, country or people).

Gonzales Wants New Web Rules
Attorney General: ISPs Should Preserve Customer Info To Help Fight Kid Porn
Washington, Sept. 19th, 2006
Associated Press

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Congress should require Internet service providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography.

Testifying to a Senate panel, Gonzales acknowledged the concerns of some company executives who say legislation might be overly intrusive and encroach on customers’ privacy rights. But he said the growing threat of child pornography over the Internet was too great.

“This is a problem that requires federal legislation,” Gonzales told the Senate Banking Committee. “We need information. Information helps us makes cases.”

He called the government’s lack of access to customer data the biggest obstacle to deterring child porn.

“We have to find a way for Internet service providers to retain information for a period of time so we can go back with a legal process to get them,” he said.

Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller have met with several Internet service providers, including Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, Comcast Corp., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc.

The law enforcement officials have indicated to the companies they must retain customer records, possibly for two years. The companies have discussed strengthening their retention periods “which currently run the gamut from a few days to about a year” to help avoid legislation.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Gonzales said he agreed with the sentiment of 49 state attorneys general who in a June letter to Congress expressed support for a federal law that would require longer retention of customer records.

“We respect civil liberties but we have to harmonize this so we can get more information,” he said.

The subject has prompted some alarm among Internet service provider executives and civil liberties groups after the Justice Department took Google to court earlier this year to force it to turn over information on customer searches. Civil liberties groups also have sued Verizon and other telephone companies, alleging they are working with the government to provide information without search warrants on subscriber calling records.

Justice Department officials have said that any proposal would not call for the content of communications to be preserved and would keep the information in the companies’ hands. The data could be obtained by the government through a subpoena or other lawful process.

Big Brother is watching. For the kids of course.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

A Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Law Enforcement pamphlet gives the public characteristics to identify terrorists that include buying baby formula, beer, wearing Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents like a drivers license, traveling with women or children and and individuals who “make numerous references to the US Constitution.”

Well that narrows it down.

Was this written by Rod Serling?

Need any more evidence that the ultra-rich elites that own our government identify their enemies as anyone who is not them?

Don’t mess with Texas is right, especially when run by paranoiacs of the Department of Public ‘Safety’.

So if you’re in Texas and you use a mobile phone, the Internet or text messaging then you could come under the scrutiny of a cadre of informants trained to identify terrorists based on those very precepts.

Why are the definitions so vague?

Because law enforcement personnel across the country have been trained to treat absolutely anything as suspicious in order to foster a return to a society not unlike the East German Stasi, where one in fifty citizens was an informant for the state.

Big Brother doesn’t need to be watching when he’s got all of his sycophantic siblings to do his work for him.

Read more Here on this anti-American trash peddled by the new American Stasi.

Voila — the little skunk in the woodpile is revealed! Tsk, Tsk - Now working for the FBI??

New legislation, seen here by News.com, would force ISPs and net gear makers to build in Big Brother.

The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.

FBI Agent Barry Smith distributed the proposal at a private meeting last Friday with industry representatives and indicated it would be introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

Defeat DeWine in 2006.

Read The Complete Article

- Posted by Maddi for USTV

From Media Tank…

AT&T certainly put a new spin on their slogan “Your World. Delivered” with the recent news (USA Today) that the company willingly turned over the phone call records of millions of citizens to the National Security Agency who requested the information without a legal warrant. The NSA is now in possession of what one employee described as the ‘biggest database ever built’. Verizon and Bell South (soon to be purchased by AT&T pending federal approval) followed suit in providing the NSA what they wanted. Only Quest resisted, by simply saying ‘no’ and challenging the NSA to follow legal process and produce a warrant (the NSA just went away).

Remember that AT&T was in the news (Wired) in April when an employee leaked information that AT&T had allowed the NSA to build a private switching room that allowed them to monitor all the internet and phone traffic passing through AT&T Worldnet internet backbones.

Read The Full Report Here

“Given George W. Bush’s history of outright lying, especially on national security matters, it may seem silly to dissect his words about the new disclosure that his administration has collected phone records of some 200 million Americans,” writes Robert Parry. “In his brief remarks, however, Bush didn’t define what he meant by ‘ordinary Americans’ nor whether the data-mining might cover, say, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people, just not ‘millions.’”

The stated goal of tracking phone numbers that had been called by al-Qaeda operatives could be easily done with warrants from the FISA court. There would be no need to compile every personal and business call made by 200 million Americans.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” one person told USA Today. The program’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, the person said. [USA Today, May 11, 2006]

In describing Bush’s policies over the past several years, the word “Orwellian” has sometimes been overused. But a government decision to electronically warehouse the trillions of phone numbers called by its citizens over their lifetimes is the essence of George Orwell’s Big Brother nightmare.

Read his full piece at Consortiumnews.com

Want don’t these gangsters want from the American people? Don’t they have enough of their own shit to swim in? And this, like so many acts of federal authoritarian clampdown, is all being done in the name of the ‘war on drugs’.

Earlier this month, the county agreed to participate in a White House pilot program to analyze wastewater from communities throughout the Potomac River Basin for the urinary byproducts of cocaine.

“It’s a very strange request,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said of the White House program. “We’re ready to do anything and everything we can do to eliminate illicit drug use. But I’d want to know a lot more about what this will actually lead to.”

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it is not seeking to single out specific localities. It also is premature, officials said, to conclude that levels of metabolized cocaine in sewage offer a more accurate index of consumption than traditional survey research.

Read The Full Article Here

Is there any wonder as to why Congress and the White House are such big advocates of the Telco corporations?

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers’ phone calls, and shunted its customers’ internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF’s lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

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Klein said he came forward because he does not believe that the Bush administration is being truthful about the extent of its extrajudicial monitoring of Americans’ communications.

“Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA’s spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA’s charter or with FISA,” Klein’s wrote. “And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals’ phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens.”

Read the complete story in Wired