***Previously Posted at Middle Earth Journal ***
Our government has secrets, always has had and in a real world should have some. It is in the nature of government to have some secrets, nobody would advocate wide dissemination of the design specifics of a hydrogen bomb. We understand that and get along with it. This administration has taken that understanding to greater lengths than any previous one.
There are times it has worked to the government's advantage in the legal arena, see Chuck for... to see how this worked for kidnapping and torturing the wrong person in the Supreme Court. The government should be able to wiretap because it says so, it's secret so you can't know why or even how much, just 'cause. Habeas Corpus gets to go away because, well it's secret, because the government asserts it is in its interest while saving us from those secret threats. A Portland lawyer wrongfully accused cannot have back his own documents because they are secret. A report on Iraqi government corruption compiled by the State Department is secret at the same time the administration is asking for hundreds of billions of dollars for Iraq. It certainly cannot be public, it would embarrass our government or maybe the corrupt Iraqis. We're headed down a rabbit hole here folks and the outcomes are all bad.
Laws are passed affecting our civil liberties without review, citizens can be disappeared, crimes cannot be defended against, the government engages in policies nationally and globally that we are responsible for and yet know nothing of. It gets deeper and deeper, the President asserts the authority to ignore or enforce laws in secret at his discretion. No one is allowed to know what the government is up to, you're allowed platitudes and "trust me."
So, we come to a certain pass that we should never have come close to, your vote is meaningless, your rights are meaningless, all that matters is what the Executive branch wants. That means that what exists is force. Reason and compromise are without import, the interests of the government are protected and projected through force and the countervening forces of legislation and judicial review are abrogated, so the citizen's interests are only protected by whatever level of force they are willing to avail themselves of.
Does anybody in the Executive Branch stop to think about anything at all? Are they so divorced from reality that they do not understand that the limiting of options reduces action to its simplest forms? Democracy is a very complicated and somewhat delicate system, it operates through compromise achieved through informed debate, if you short circuit that process you stop it. If you remove information from the scheme debate becomes nothing but partisan power seeking and the public's interests vanish from the process. Why should any citizen consider himself represented? Why should any citizen consider themselves safe around their government? The rabbit hole is not where we want to be, we cannot go there without chaos ensuing at the very simplest point, the only reasonable approach for a citizen is to be armed and dangerous at all times in any contact with the government. What is that? The only possible redress from the government is revenge taken through force?
If someone proposed to set you on such a course you'd consider them lunatics and have them locked away for the protection of them and others. Is it incremental stupidity that afflicts them or an actual agenda? These people have to go and all their enablers with them. I include the Democratic Party weasels who cave to every BushCo whim. It is that, or chaos.
4 comments:
I will gladly work actively and passionately for anyone running for president that will expose all of George W. Bush's crimes. Our next president must be willing to release all of the documents associated with these crimes. The truth will not hurt the innocent! Will someone please ask the candidates how they will treat the "State Secrets Privilege"?
I'll second that. In a heartbeat.
A Portland lawyer wrongfully accused cannot have back his own documents because they are secret.
OH PLEASE...look at the following, I FOUND THIS STUFF AT YOUR HOUSE...YOU'D HANG REAL QUICK.
A computer in Mayfield's residence had:
1. been used to research airline schedules for travel from Portland, Oregon to Madrid, Spain, in September and October 2003;
2. accessed websites marketing rental housing in Spain in the fall of 2003;
3. accessed a number of websites based in Spain, including a website apparently sponsored by the Spanish national passenger rail system – the target of the March 11, 2004 bombings;
4. been used to perform a "Google search" regarding the phrase "target practice at home;" and
5. been used to specifically access a FAQ ("frequently-asked question") contained on "expedia.com" relating to the use of a "credit card with a billing address outside the U.S." for payment for travel services.
In addition, during the search of Mayfield's home, agents discovered, among other items:
6. a handwritten notation of a telephone number in Spain;
7. virulently anti-Semitic articles printed from the internet which appeared to blame Jewish people for various world problems;
8. pilot training logs showing Mayfield's experience as a small aircraft pilot in the 1980s; [a footnote here adds that "Al-Qaida has in recent years sought to recruit individuals with piloting skills."]
9. a book chronicling the development of the Al Qaida network;
10. 2 firearms; and
11. classified national defense documents relating to a U.S. weapons system.
In the court-authorized search of Mayfield's office, agents found:
12. a post-September 11, 2001 letter, apparently written by Mayfield, expressing support for the Taliban. [DP addition: It stated, "Who is America to bomb the Taliban because they don't like Afghanistan's law? All I say that Americans should think twice about the example you are setting on the rest of the countries"]
In the court-authorized search of Mayfield's safe deposit box, agents found:
13. $10,000 in cash, all in one-hundred dollar denominations, strapped in five two-thousand dollar increments with straps dated November, 2002. This large quantity of cash seemed inconsistent with the apparently limited income generated by Mayfield's law practice (which appeared to be under $25,000 per year adjusted gross income.)
He was just "misunderstood!" he was a legal Radical Islamist bomb, and he got all of you.
He was accused of a bombing which he didn't do. It's that plain and simple.
If you have an agenda you can make those things look like exactly what you're trying to do, you could also make them look like something else with another agenda. I'm not going to try to make them look like anything. He also had a client that was in that kind of trouble so would it be odd that he was looking into such things?
I'll bet that if the government had an axe to grind about something to do with illegality and cars they'd find a bunch of stuff at your house that linked you to cars. Damn. I don't want to think about what kind of BS they could make up about me, considering the breadth of my interests.
More seriously Dat, you've pissed off enough people that you could probably be made to look bad. This is the part you don't get, what you've done isn't criminal (I hope) but the government can make it look so. The tools you want to give them make that real easy.
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