Archive for February, 2008
Feb 12, 2008 11:00 am US/Eastern
A Russian Tupolev 95 bomber like this one buzzed the USS Nimitz in Feb. of 2008. (File)AP
WASHINGTON (AP) ― U.S. fighter planes intercepted two Russian bombers, including one that buzzed an American aircraft carrier in the western Pacific during the weekend, The Associated Press has learned.
A U.S. military official says that one Russian Tupolev 95 flew directly over the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at a low altitude of about 2,000 feet, while another bomber circled about 58 miles out. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because the reports on the flights were classified as secret.
The Saturday incident, which never escalated beyond the flyover, comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and Russia over U.S. plans for a missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Such Russian bomber flights were common during the Cold War, but have been rare since.
The bombers were among four Russian Tupolev 95s launched from Ukrainka in the middle of the night, including one that Japanese officials say violated their country’s airspace over an uninhabited island south of Tokyo.
U.S. officials tracked and monitored the bombers as two flew south along the Japanese coast, and two others flew farther east, coming closer to the Nimitz and the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton.
As the bombers got about 500 miles out from the U.S. ships, four F/A-18 fighters were launched from the Nimitz, the official said. The fighters intercepted the Russian bombers about 50 miles south of the Nimitz.
At least two U.S. F/A-18 Hornets trailed the bomber as it came in low over the Nimitz twice, while one or two of the other U.S. fighters followed the second bomber as it circled.
The official said there were no verbal communications between the U.S. and the Russians, and the Pentagon has not heard of any protests being filed by the United States. Historically, diplomatic protests were not filed in such incidents because they were so common during the Cold War era.
This is the first time Russian Tupolevs have flown over or interacted with a U.S. carrier since 2004.
In that incident, a Russian Tupolev flew over the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan on Jan. 29, 2004. Since then, however, relations between the U.S. and Russia have deteriorated to their worst point since the Cold War, largely due to the United States’ plans to put a radar system in the Czech Republic and 10 missile defense interceptors in Poland.
The U.S. has defended the plan as necessary to protect its European allies from possible attacks by Iran. But the Kremlin has condemned the proposal, saying it would threaten Russia’s security.
“We are being forced to take retaliatory steps,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also warned that a new arms race is under way.
Japan, meanwhile, filed a formal protest with the Russian Embassy in Tokyo after Saturday’s incident, saying that one of the Russian bombers crossed into Japanese airspace for three minutes. Russia has denied there was an intrusion.
Friday, February 29th, 2008
After years of insisting there is no evidence to link vaccines with the onset of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the US government has quietly conceded a vaccine-autism case in the Court of Federal Claims.The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff’s identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.The claim, one of 4,900 autism cases currently pending in Federal “Vaccine Court,” was conceded by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and other Justice Department officials, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, the “defendant” in all Vaccine Court cases.
The child’s claim against the government — that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism — was supposed to be one of three “test cases” for the thimerosal-autism theory currently under consideration by a three-member panel of Special Masters, the presiding justices in Federal Claims Court.
Keisler wrote that medical personnel at the HHS Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation (DVIC) had reviewed the case and “concluded that compensation is appropriate.”
The doctors conceded that the child was healthy and developing normally until her 18-month well-baby visit, when she received vaccinations against nine different diseases all at once (two contained thimerosal).
Days later, the girl began spiraling downward into a cascade of illnesses and setbacks that, within months, presented as symptoms of autism, including: No response to verbal direction; loss of language skills; no eye contact; loss of “relatedness;” insomnia; incessant screaming; arching; and “watching the florescent lights repeatedly during examination.”
Seven months after vaccination, the patient was diagnosed by Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a leading neurologist at the Kennedy Krieger Children’s Hospital Neurology Clinic, with “regressive encephalopathy (brain disease) with features consistent with autistic spectrum disorder, following normal development.” The girl also met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) official criteria for autism.
In its written concession, the government said the child had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was “aggravated” by her shots, and which ultimately resulted in an ASD diagnosis.
“The vaccinations received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder,” the concession says, “which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of ASD.”
This statement is good news for the girl and her family, who will now be compensated for the lifetime of care she will require. But its implications for the larger vaccine-autism debate, and for public health policy in general, are not as certain.
In fact, the government’s concession seems to raise more questions than it answers.
Read More Here:
http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/government-concedes-vaccine-autism-case/2568/
Astounding FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report as CIA veteran Robert Baer calls for investigation to be re-opened
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Astounding newly released FBI documents obtained via the Freedom Of Information Act show that alleged 9/11 hijacker Hamza Al-Ghamdi had booked future flights to San Francisco and Riyadh, suggesting that he was unaware of his eventual fate aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the plane that hit the World Trade Center’s south tower.
The papers consist of a 300 page Federal Bureau of Investigation timeline (PDF link) that was used by the 9/11 Commission but not made public until now.
The 9/11 Commission failed to mention in its final report that Al-Ghamdi was booked onto several flights scheduled to take place after 9/11, including another flight on the very day of the attacks.
The fact that Al-Ghamdi had booked post-9/11 flights obviously gives rise to doubts about whether the alleged hijacker knew the 9/11 attack was a suicide mission and even brings into question if he was on the flight at all.
Citing “UA passenger information,” on page 288 under an entry pertaining to “H AlGhamdi,” the FBI timeline reads: “Future flight. Scheduled to depart Los Angeles International Airport for San Francisco International Airport on UA 7950,” reports Raw Story (excerpt below).
Al-Ghamdi was also booked to fly on September 20, 2001 from Casablanca, Morocco to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and September 29, where he planned to fly from Riyadh to Damman, Saudi Arabia.
The FBI timeline documents also contradict with several other details of the 9/11 Commission Report, notably on the movements of alleged Flight 77 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.
According to researcher Paul Thompson, he believes the Commission cherry-picked the dates of the alleged hijacker’s movements in order to shield their ties with high-level Saudi Arabian officials.
He points to the redaction of the name of a person who is a known employee of a Saudi defense contractor, Omar al-Bayoumi, who lived at the same location, reports Raw Story.
“We know it’s Bayoumi,” said Thompson, “because after 9/11, the Finnish Government mistakenly released a classified FBI list of suspects that showed Bayoumi living in apartment #152 of Parkwood Apartments.” That information is available here.
“But also important is that it strongly suggests that the hijackers already had a support network in Southern California before they arrived,” Thompson continued.
“In the official version of the story now, the hijackers drift around L.A. listlessly for two weeks before chancing to come across Bayoumi in a restaurant [according to Bayoumi’s account],” Thompson added. “Whereupon he’s an incredible good Samaritan and takes them down to San Diego, pays their rent, etc.”
”But from the FBI’s timeline, we now know the hijackers started staying at Bayoumi’s place on Jan. 15 – the very same day they arrived,” Thompson says. “So obviously they must have been met at the airport and taken care of from their very first hours in the US. That’s huge because the FBI maintains to this day that the hijackers never had any accomplices in the US.”
Alleged Hamza Al-Ghamdi appears in his “martrydom tape,” which interestingly enough was only released in September 2006, post-9/11 just like his flight plans were.
Former 20-year veteran CIA case officer Robert Baer, who has previously asserted that 9/11 has aspects of being an inside job, told Raw Story that the new developments immediately demand the 9/11 investigation be re-opened.
“There are enough discrepancies and unanswered questions in the 9/11 Commission report that under a friendly administration, the 9/11 investigation should be re-opened,” wrote Baer.
“Considering that the main body of evidence came from tortured confessions, it’s still not entirely clear to me what happened on 9/11,” he concluded.
Raw Story provides further details concerning how the documents shed more light on the role of Saudi authorities and their complicity in the attack.
These new revelations mark the most astounding 9/11-related developments in many months and are sure to kick of a firestorm of new doubts about the crumbling official government story.
Original Article:
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/february2008/022808_alleged_hijacker.htm
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
The “pause” is now official, replacing the surge. Once the summer’s withdrawal of five-plus brigades from Iraq is completed, a broad consensus of defense leaders appears to believe, a period of consolidation and reorganization will follow with the remaining U.S. forces. This period will take us into the general elections, during which time the likelihood of any significant change in Iraq is slim.
The pause makes sense, if for no other reason than a new president should be allowed to make his or her own policies for the future, regardless of what he or she is promising now on the stump.
Beware, though: This road to the pause has been in play for some time, and those in the military and defense establishment who believe that the United States requires a long-term presence in Iraq are quietly putting in place the pieces that will indeed tie the next president’s hands. This isn’t some conspiracy to install “permanent bases” in Iraq. What is unfolding is much more insidious.
Gen. David Petraeus now says that it would be “sensible and prudent” to pause with the drawdown of forces once the surge troops return this summer. “The consensus is that when you have withdrawn over one quarter of your combat forces — it’s literally a quarter of our brigade combat teams plus two Marine battalions and the Marine expeditionary unit – that it would be sensible and prudent to have a period of consolidation, perhaps some force adjustments and evaluation before continuing with further reductions,” Petraeus told Army Times.
With all eyes on the number of troops physically stationed in Iraq, one of the ways in which further reductions will be allowed is by shifting missions to other Persian Gulf countries, a process that is already underway. In Kuwait, for instance, the Army is completing the finishing touches on a permanent ground forces command for Iraq and the region, one that it describes as being capable of being a platform for “full spectrum operations” in 27 countries around southwest Asia and the Middle East.
Permanently deployed with the new regional headquarters in Kuwait will be a theater-level logistical command, a communications command, a military intelligence brigade, a “civil affairs” group and a medical command. “These commands now have a permanent responsibility to this theater,” Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace told the Mideast edition of Stars and Stripes. “They’ll have a permanent presence here.”
The Air Force and Navy, meanwhile, have set up additional permanent bases in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman. By permanent I mean large and continuing American headquarters and presences, most of which are maintained through a combination of coalition activities, long-standing bilateral agreements and official secrecy. Tens of billions have been plowed into the American infrastructure. Admiral William J. Fallon, the overall commander of the region, was just in Oman this week after a trip to Iraq to secure continuing American military bases in that country.
When a war with Iran loomed and World War III seemed to be gaining traction in the Bush administration, this entire base structure was seen as the “build-up” for the next war. The build-up of course began decades ago, but since 9/11, the focus has been almost exclusively “supporting” U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran is there, but to interpret the planting of the American flags and the moving of chess pieces as being focused on Tehran is to miss what is really going on.
Regardless of who is elected, in the coming year U.S. combat forces in Iraq will undoubtedly continue to contract to a fewer number of combat brigades and special operations forces focused on counter-terrorism and the mission of continuing to train and mentor the Iraqi Army and police forces. Much of the “war” that is already being fought is being supported from Kuwait and other locations, and the ongoing shifts seem to point to an intent to increasingly pull additional functions and people out of harm’s way.
Of course they will not be out of harm’s way at all, because a permanent American military presence in the region brings with it its own dangers and provocations. But most important what it brings for the next president is a fait accompli: a pause that facilitates a drawdown that begins to look a lot like a continuation of the same military and strategic policy, even at a time when there is broad questioning as to whether this is the most effective way to fight “terrorism.”
The Constantine Creed
“I renounce all customs, rites, legalisms, unleavened breads and sacrifices of lambs of the Hebrews, and all the other feasts of the Hebrews, sacrifices, prayers, aspirations, purifications, sanctifications, and propitiations, and fasts and new moons, and Sabbaths, and superstitions, and hymns and chants, and observances and synagogues. absolutely everything Jewish, every Law, rite and custom and if afterwards I shall wish to deny and return to Jewish superstition, or shall be found eating with Jews, or feasting with them, or secretly conversing and condemning the Christian religion instead of openly confuting them and condemning their vain faith, then let the trembling of Cain and the leprosy of Gehazi cleave to me, as well as the legal punishments to which I acknowledge myself liable. And may I be an anathema in the world to come, and may my soul be set down with Satan and the devils.”
(Stefano Assemani, Acta Sanctorium Martyrum Orientalium at Occidentalium, Vol. 1, Rome 1748, page 105)
Furthermore, any follower of the “Jewish Messiah” (Yeshua HaMashiach) who wished to join this “holy community” was compelled to adopt a different set of rules and customs. Subsequently special creeds were drafted, to which the Christian would have to swear such as:
“I accept all customs, rites, legalism, and feasts of the Romans, sacrifices. Prayers, purifications with water, sanctifications by Pontificus Maxmus (high priests of Rome), propitiations, and feasts, and the New Sabbath “So! dei” (day of the Sun, ), all new chants and observances, and all the foods and drinks of the Romans. In other words, I absolutely accept everything Roman, every new law, rite and custom, of Rome, and the New Roman Religion.”
Additionally, in approximately 365 AD, the Council of Laodicea wrote, in one of their canons:
Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day. Rather, honoring the Lord’s Day. But if any shall be found to be Judaizers, let them be anathema (against) from Christ”.
Note: Protestants are included as they still observe the holidays and sabbath of Rome, as in “are you going to church this coming Lord’s day”.
Concerning Antiochus Epiphanes…
He set up an image of Zeus in the Temple which was the Abomination of Desolation spoken of in Daniel 11. For 3 years, he continued to desecrate the Temple.
These were the new laws that Antiochus set up:
- Thou shall profane the Sabbath
- Thou shall change the set times (festivals) and laws
- Thou shall set up idols
- Thou shall eat unclean animals
- Thou shall not circumcise
- Thou shall forget Torah
3 years and 2 months later, the Temple was taken back and rededicated. This is known as the Feast of Dedication, or Festival of Lights, or Hanukkah.
What’s really is ironic…..these laws were created by an antichrist Antiochus, and are the same things Constantine would later repeat and this is what people want to live by today. Totally going against God’s Word. People today are living under laws created by Antiochus and Constantine; an antichrist.
Scripture to ponder
Matthew 24:15“Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation, ‘ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), 16“then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. 18And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. 19But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! 20And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. 21For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.
Matthew 7:23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Romans 6:19 I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.
Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, 12 teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, 13looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.
1 John 3:4 Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.
John 14:19 “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. 20At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
Revelations 12:17 And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Ecc 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
Col 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Act 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.
Mat 15:9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
The Water Cure
Debating torture and counterinsurgency—a century ago.
By Paul Kramer
21/02/08 “New Yorker” — Many Americans were puzzled by the news, in 1902, that United States soldiers were torturing Filipinos with water. The United States, throughout its emergence as a world power, had spoken the language of liberation, rescue, and freedom. This was the language that, when coupled with expanding military and commercial ambitions, had helped launch two very different wars. The first had been in 1898, against Spain, whose remaining empire was crumbling in the face of popular revolts in two of its colonies, Cuba and the Philippines. The brief campaign was pitched to the American public in terms of freedom and national honor (the U.S.S. Maine had blown up mysteriously in Havana Harbor), rather than of sugar and naval bases, and resulted in a formally independent Cuba.
[A picture of a “water detail,” reportedly taken in May, 1901, in Sual,
the Philippines. “It is a terrible torture,” one soldier wrote.] 
The Americans were not done liberating. Rising trade in East Asia suggested to imperialists that the Philippines, Spain’s largest colony, might serve as an effective “stepping stone” to China’s markets. U.S. naval plans included provisions for an attack on the Spanish Navy in the event of war, and led to a decisive victory against the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in May, 1898. Shortly afterward, Commodore George Dewey returned the exiled Filipino revolutionary Emilio Aguinaldo to the islands. Aguinaldo defeated Spanish forces on land, declared the Philippines independent in June, and organized a government led by the Philippine élite.
During the next half year, it became clear that American and Filipino visions for the islands’ future were at odds. U.S. forces seized Manila from Spain—keeping the army of their ostensible ally Aguinaldo from entering the city—and President William McKinley refused to recognize Filipino claims to independence, pushing his negotiators to demand that Spain cede sovereignty over the islands to the United States, while talking about Filipinos’ need for “benevolent assimilation.” Aguinaldo and some of his advisers, who had been inspired by the United States as a model republic and had greeted its soldiers as liberators, became increasingly suspicious of American motivations. When, after a period of mounting tensions, a U.S. sentry fired on Filipino soldiers outside Manila in February, 1899, the second war erupted, just days before the Senate ratified a treaty with Spain securing American sovereignty over the islands in exchange for twenty million dollars. In the next three years, U.S. troops waged a war to “free” the islands’ population from the regime that Aguinaldo had established. The conflict cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and about four thousand U.S. soldiers.
Within the first year of the war, news of atrocities by U.S. forces—the torching of villages, the killing of prisoners—began to appear in American newspapers. Although the U.S. military censored outgoing cables, stories crossed the Pacific through the mail, which wasn’t censored. Soldiers, in their letters home, wrote about extreme violence against Filipinos, alongside complaints about the weather, the food, and their officers; and some of these letters were published in home-town newspapers. A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.”
On occasion, someone—a local antiwar activist, one suspects—forwarded these clippings to centers of anti-imperialist publishing in the Northeast. But the war’s critics were at first hesitant to do much with them: they were hard to substantiate, and they would, it was felt, subject the publishers to charges of anti-Americanism. This was especially true as the politics of imperialism became entangled in the 1900 Presidential campaign. As the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, clashed with the Republican incumbent over imperialism, which the Democrats called “the paramount issue,” critics of the war had to defend themselves against accusations of having treasonously inspired the insurgency, prolonged the conflict, and betrayed American soldiers. But, after McKinley won a second term, the critics may have felt that they had little to lose.
Ultimately, outraged dissenters—chief among them the relentless Philadelphia-based reformer Herbert Welsh—forced the question of U.S. atrocities into the light. Welsh, who was descended from a wealthy merchant family, might have seemed an unlikely investigator of military abuse at the edge of empire. His main antagonists had previously been Philadelphia’s party bosses, whose sordid machinations were extensively reported in Welsh’s earnest upstart weekly, City and State. Yet he had also been a founder of the “Indian rights” movement, which attempted to curtail white violence and fraud while pursuing Native American “civilization” through Christianity, U.S. citizenship, and individual land tenure. An expansive concern with bloodshed and corruption at the nation’s periphery is perhaps what drew Welsh’s imagination from the Dakotas to Southeast Asia. He had initially been skeptical of reports of misconduct by U.S. troops. But by late 1901, faced with what he considered “overwhelming” proof, Welsh emerged as a single-minded campaigner for the exposure and punishment of atrocities, running an idiosyncratic investigation out of his Philadelphia offices. As one who “professes to believe in the gospel of Christ,” he declared, he felt obliged to condemn “the cruelties and barbarities which have been perpetrated under our flag in the Philippines.” Only the vigorous pursuit of justice could restore “the credit of the American nation in the eyes of the civilized world.” By early 1902, three assistants to Welsh were chasing down returning soldiers for their testimony, and Philippine “cruelties” began to crowd Philadelphia’s party bosses from the pages of City and State.
PHOTOGRAPH: ATTRIBUTED TO CORPORAL GEORGE J. VENNAGE
More Lies From The Bush Fascists
By Paul Craig Roberts
22/02/08 “ICH” — – President George W. Bush and his director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, are telling the American people that an unaccountable executive branch is necessary for their protection. Without the Protect America Act, Bush and McConnell claim, the executive branch will not be able to spy on terrorists, and we will all be blown up. Terrorists can only be stopped, Bush says, if Bush has the right to spy on everyone without any oversight by courts.
The fight over the Protect America Act has everything to do with our safety, only not in the way that Bush and McConnell assert.
Bush says the Democrats have put “our country more in danger of an attack” by letting the Protect America Act lapse. This claim is nonsense. The 30 year old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives the executive branch all the power it needs to spy on terrorists.
The choice between FISA and the Protect America Act has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, at least not from foreign terrorists. Bush and his brownshirts object to FISA, because the law requires Bush to obtain warrants from a FISA court. Warrants mean that Bush is accountable. Bush and his brownshirts argue that accountability is an infringement on the power of the president.
To escape accountability, the Brownshirt Party came up with the Protect America Act. This act eliminates Bush’s accountability to judges and gives the telecom companies immunity from the felonies they committed by acquiescing in Bush’s illegal spying.
Bush began violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in October 2001 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10488458/ when he spied on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court.
Bush pressured telecom companies to break the law in order to enable his illegal spying. In court documents, Joseph P. Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications International, states that his firm was approached more than six months before the September 11, 2001, attacks and asked to participate in a spying operation that Qwest believed to be illegal. When Qwest refused, the Bush administration withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nacchio himself was subsequently indicted for insider trading, sending the message to all telecom companies to cooperate with the Bush regime or else. http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/16/former-telcom-ceo-bushs-illegal-spying-began-months-before-911-attacks/
Bush has not been held accountable for the felonies he committed and for leading telecom companies into a life of crime.
As the lawmakers who gave us FISA understood, spying on people without warrants lets a political party collect dirt on its adversaries with which to blackmail them. As Bush illegally spied a long time before word of it got out, blackmail might be the reason the Democrats have ignored their congressional election mandate and have not put a stop to Bush’s illegal wars and unconstitutional police state measures.
Perhaps the Democrats have finally caught on that they cannot function as a political party as long as they continue to permit Bush to spy on them. For one reason or another, they have let the Orwellian-named Protect America Act expire.
With the Protect America Act, Bush and his brownshirts are trying to establish the independence of the executive branch from statutory law and the Constitution. The FISA law means that the president is accountable to federal judges for warrants. Bush and the brownshirt Republicans are striving to make the president independent of all accountability. The brownshirts insist that the leader knows best and can tolerate no interference from the law, the judiciary, the Congress, or the Constitution, and certainly not from the American people who, the brownshirts tell us, won’t be safe unless Bush is very powerful.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison saw it differently. The American people cannot be safe unless the president is accountable and under many restraints.
Pray that the Democrats have caught on that they cannot give the executive branch unaccountable powers to spy and still have grounds on which to refuse the executive branch unaccountable powers elsewhere.
Republicans have used the “war on terror” to create an unaccountable executive. To prevent the presidency from becoming a dictatorial office, it is crucial that Congress cease acquiescing in Bush’s grab for powers. As the Founding Fathers warned us, the terrorists we have to fear are the ones in power in Washington.
The al Qaeda terrorists, with whom Bush has been frightening us, have no power to destroy our liberties. Compared to the loss of liberty, a terrorist attack is nothing.
Meanwhile, Bush, the beneficiary of two stolen elections, has urged Zimbabwe to hold a fair election. America gets away with its hypocrisy because no one in our government has enough shame to blush.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.
by Laurence M. Vance
Is there any reason a Christian who was opposed to the war in Iraq could in good conscience still join the military? I have previously explained why Christians have no business joining the military, even to serve as a military chaplain. I have also expressed my opposition to the National Guard. But what about a Christian joining the military to be a witness for Christ or to serve his fellow soldiers? What could possibly be wrong with that? My short answer is that one would be an accomplice to murder, that’s what wrong with it. My long answer follows below.
Because I often write about the incompatibility of Christianity and military service, I receive many e-mails from servicemen who wish to get out and young men who wish to get in. (For the record, I also get e-mails from super-patriots calling me a traitor or a communist because I dare question the activities of the military.) For those desiring to separate from the military or become a conscientious objector, I refer them to James Glaser, a Marine Corp Vietnam veteran, or to Mike Reith, a retired Air Force major. Because they recognize that war is the health of the state, both of these veterans discourage young men from following in their footsteps. For those thinking about joining the military, I try to answer myself because of how strongly I am opposed to not just Christians, but anyone enlisting in the military.
Here is a note I received recently from a sincere young man who is thinking about joining the military. He opposes the war in Iraq, and is concerned about having to take human life. I have omitted his name from his letter, which is reprinted below in its entirety with his permission:
Hello, I am a self-professed Christian (to better define my Christianity: I am a firm believer in Christ, and my faith dictates my actions, and I strive to better myself in my walk, and live a Christ-centered life). I am also looking towards the military to become a navy corpsman (a field medic attached to a marine unit). As a medic, I would not be fighting for my country (because I cannot fully agree with the reasons we are at war), but rather I would be there for my fellow soldiers who do in fact believe in the cause. I would view my job as serving the troops, and applying my skills of medical aide to help the troops. I also am very missions minded, and would view my deployment as a mission field, and a way to share the gospel with troops and/or whoever I come in contact with as a witness of God’s love. Anyway, I have not joined yet, but am seriously considering it. I am a high school grad, almost 18 years old from California, just trying to seek the opinions from intelligent and respectable people before I make my decisions. I would appreciate a response with any information, verses, or insight you may have. Thank you so much for your time. God Bless.
P.S. I know that I would be in a defensive position as a medic, and would only shoot to defend myself or others, but what if I was given a direct order to kill (or cause death), I still am thinking about things like this. Again, thank you.
Dear ____:
I am not sure if you have read my book, Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, or any of my articles on this subject archived at LewRockwell.com. If so, then you probably have some idea of the negative things that I am going to say about Christians joining the military. Either way, I would encourage you to read the fourteen articles I have written specifically about Christianity and the Military.
You have expressed a desire to be a medic to take care of your fellow soldiers. On the surface that seems like a noble thing to do. There are, however, some things you ought to consider.
First of all, there is no guarantee that by joining the military you would be assigned to care for wounded soldiers in Iraq (or Afghanistan). Don’t listen to what the recruiters tell you. You can’t trust them. They have been caught lying too many times. There is no way they can guarantee that you will wind up a medic in a war zone.
Second, even if you did wind up in Iraq, there is no guarantee that you would stay there. Military personnel are constantly moved from place to place. You may be placed in a situation where you will be doing anything but helping wounded soldiers.
Third, although you have acknowledged that the troops in Iraq have no good reason for being there, there is more too it than that. The troops are not merely neutral observers caught in a crossfire. The troops in Iraq are responsible for death, destruction, and genocide against the Iraqi people. If you think that genocide is too strong a word to describe what is happening in Iraq, see Lew Rockwell’s “None Dare Call It Genocide.” To serve as a medic so you can help your fellow soldiers means that you would be an accomplice to murder. What would you think of a physician who was willingly employed by a criminal gang to patch up the gang members after they were injured in the course of committing crimes? What is the war in Iraq if it is not a crime against the Iraqi people? Although he was not a Christian, Mahatma Gandhi did make a scriptural statement when he said: “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.”
Fourth, if you didn’t serve as a medic in Iraq then someone else would. Over 181,000 people joined the U.S. military last year. It’s not as though U.S. troops would be going without medical care just because you didn’t enlist.
And fifth, if you really want to attend to people that need medical care, then you should consider helping Iraqis wounded by American bombs and bullets. After all, the United States invaded Iraq, not the other way around. Now, don’t get me wrong. Even though I don’t support what the troops are doing in Iraq, I don’t want to see any U.S. soldier injured or killed. But I also don’t want to see any Iraqis injured or killed either. It would not, of course, be wise for you to actually attempt to treat wounded Iraqis. The U.S. government would label you as an enemy combatant and ship you off to Guantanamo Bay. And right or wrong, the Iraqis would try to kill you because you are an American.
You have also expressed a desire to share the gospel. Your attitude of viewing your deployment as a mission field is one that all Christians should have. You sound like a clean young man who is committed to serving our Lord. Joining the military will corrupt you. Yes, some Christians emerge unscathed and remain faithful to Christ, but many more do not. You should not enlist because “no man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). Joining the military means that you will be expected to unconditionally follow orders. You will be pressured to practically make a god out of the military. Because the purpose of the U.S. military has shifted from defending the country to intervening in other countries, the role that the U.S. military plays in the world is an evil one. To enlist would violate the admonition to “abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22). Remember the words of Bob Jones Sr.: “It is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right.”
You mentioned in closing that you would only shoot in self-defense. Joining the military means that you may be put into a position where you will have to kill or be killed. But is it really self-defense if you kill an Iraqi who is trying to kill you? How can it be considered self-defense when American soldiers travel thousands of miles from their homeland to invade a country that not only never attacked their country, but was never even a credible threat to their country? Is it self-defense if a thief kills you because you catch him with a gun in your house in the middle of the night and you fire your gun at him? You indicate that you are hesitant about following an order that might result in the death of someone. Since U.S. troops are the invaders, you should be just as cautious about justifying the shooting of someone in Iraq with the self-defense excuse. You are the one who is ultimately responsible for the people you kill, not the president and the secretary of defense. Not only will you have to live the rest of your life with the memories of the people you killed (or think you killed), you will also have to give an account of yourself to God at the judgment (Romans 14:12).
Don’t enlist; don’t be an accomplice to murder.
Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from Pensacola, FL. His latest book is a new and greatly expanded edition of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State. Visit his website.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
Mother Earth News Original Article 
Few new housing designs have drawn as much attention—or caused as much controversy—as has the double envelope. Pioneered in 1977 by Lee Porter Butler and Tom Smith in a house near Lake Tahoe, California (see
MOTHER NO. 56, page 120), the two-shell concept has gained an enthusiastic following. At the same time, however, the theory behind the thermal envelope has created a stir among solar designers.
When the Smith house was built, the dynamics of its performance were completely theoretical. No one had carefully instrumented such a building, and—accordingly—many architects and engineers reserved their acclaim . . . pending the availability of data on the efficiency of distribution and storage of the solar heat taken in through the home’s large south facing glass area.
Today there are hundreds of double envelope houses around the country, and the performance of the concept has been well documented. Very few experts now question the fact that thermal-envelope buildings are quite efficient … but the quibbling over why they work and about how well they compare with other passive designs, continues.
A REVIEW OF THE THEORY
The “collector” system for a thermal envelope house is a heat-producing sun space (which can, in many climates, double as a year-round greenhouse). It’s the method by which the sun space is incorporated into the structure’s heating system that sets this sort of dwelling apart from other solar-heated houses.
As the term “double envelope” implies, such a building is actually a house within a house. The exterior shell is load-bearing, and generally has a minimum of R-19 insulation. Between the outer and inner skins lies an air space (usually at least a foot wide) which extends from the east to the west end of the house along the roof line and the north wall. The inner wall is generally thinner—since the small temperature difference between the building’s interior and the air space requires less insulation—and supports only the structure of the living space. The passageway between the two walls is linked to the greenhouse by a crawl space or basement, which feeds air up through gaps in the boards of the solarium floor
The circulation of air through the envelope is entirely passive. The system takes advantage of the fact that warm air is less dense (and therefore more buoyant, since gravity’s influence is reduced) than is cold air. Sun-heated currents rise in the greenhouse and enter the envelope at the room’s peak … while the air between the shells—and particularly that along the north wall—loses heat and falls. The solar-heated air is then pulled through the passageway and the subfloor area, and returns to the sun space from below
Furthermore, as the air passes through the subfloor area, some of the heat it still holds is absorbed by the surrounding earth, rock, and/or masonry. These massive materials take in and store the warmth as long as they’re cooler than the circulating air. During the evening, however, the storage temperature may actually exceed that of the circulating air … which causes the thermal mass to give up heat.
A double envelope also taps its storage passively by reversing the convective loop. During the night the structure’s greatest heat loss is through the expanse of glass in the sun space. That cooling causes air to fall to the floor of the greenhouse, while the (relatively) warmer air of the storage area rises and is forced up the north wall cavity. The continual imbalance in pressure then keeps the loop flowing.
In the summertime, however, the sun space is likely to gain far too much solar energy . . . despite the fact that the tilted glass is oriented to admit winter—but not summer—sun. To prevent overheating, vents are usually set into the roof peak of an envelope house, allowing the rising hot air to escape. And in some designs, “cool pipes” (air intake tubes buried in the ground . . . see the article on page 128 for a fuller explanation of this system) are linked to the crawl space so that earth temperature air can be drawn in and distributed through the envelope.
The energy-saving capabilities of the envelope design are numerous. For one thing, a great deal of solar heat is taken in through the greenhouse, and at least some excess warmth is stored in the crawl space for use during the night or on cloudy days. Consequently, most double envelope houses require very little backup heat. In fact, they often satisfy 80% (or more) of their thermal needs directly from the sun.
Now there’s no question that a large part of the energy efficiency of such structures does result from their thick insulation. The two shells and large air gap produce a total R-value that typically exceeds 30! In addition, the double walls reduce infiltration (direct air leakage) to the living space and dramatically improve the thermal resistance of any north-facing windows … because of the roughly 12″-wide air space. (In fact, that gap can, in effect, increase window Rvalue by as much as 4 . . . without producing the condensation that tends to be a problem in conventional multipane windows.)
Another thermal benefit of the envelope concept shows up in the form of comfort. Because the air circulating inside the envelope is significantly warmer than that outdoors, the difference in temperature (or At, in heating engineers’ lingo) between the living area and the air passage is relatively small. Thus the heat loss for the inner wall is less than that of an equivalent insulative fraction of a single wall whose total Rvalue equals the double envelope’s. As a result, the surfaces of the envelope’s interior walls remain warmer than would equally insulated single-layer walls.
Envelope home residents also enjoy pleasantly stable humidity through the winter, since moist greenhouse atmosphere is continually circulated through the air space and can be admitted to the living quarters by cracking a door or window. (In the summer, however, excess humidity—and heat—is vented at the sunspace peak.) Furthermore, the constant but gentle and silent circulation of air prevents stagnation and lends a balmy feeling to the interior environment.
Sacramento, CA: The American College of Physicians (ACP), the nation’s largest organization of doctors of internal medicine and the second largest medical association in the country, called for easing the federal prohibition of marijuana in a position paper released Friday, February 15.
The ACP asked the federal government to review the inclusion of marijuana as a Schedule I drug, a classification it shares with drugs such as heroin and LSD. Schedule I substances are declared to have no medical use and a high potential for abuse by the federal government. Since its inclusion as a Schedule I drug in 1970, the scheduling of cannabis has been constantly challenged.
The conflict between federal law and the twelve states where medical cannabis statutes have been enacted have made many doctors avoid recommending medical cannabis as a treatment. Dr. David Dale, president of the ACP, said that contributed to the ACP’s action: “We felt the time had come to speak up about this. …We’d like to clear up the uncertainty and anxiety of patients and physicians over this drug.”
Officials at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy panned the ACP’s move. “What this would do is drag us back to 14th century medicine,” said Bertha Madras, the ONDCP deputy director for demand reduction.
“With the ACP now supporting rescheduling, the ONDCP can no longer claim that medical cannabis is not supported by science or the practitioners of modern medicine,” NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said in response.
With this action, the ACP joins the American Nurses Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and many other medical associations calling for cannabis to be made a legal medicine.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at: allen@norml.org. Full text of the ACP policy papers is available in PDF format at: http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/where_we_stand/other_issues/medmarijuana.pdf
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, February 25th, 2008
Experts warn of food riots as foreign troops cleared to patrol American cities
The UN is warning of a food shortage crisis and drawing up plans for food rations which will hit even middle-class suburban populations as inflation and economic uncertainty causes the prices of staple food commodities to skyrocket.
The United Nation’s World Food Programme cautions today that if it doesn’t receive more funding, it will have to halt food aid to developing countries like Mexico and China.
“The WFP crisis talks come as the body sees the emergence of a “new area of hunger” in developing countries where even middle-class, urban people are being “priced out of the food market” because of rising food prices,” reports the Financial Times.
The warning coincides with a speech by William Lapp, of US-based consultancy Advanced Economic Solutions, who cautioned that rising agricultural raw material prices would translate this year into sharply higher food inflation.
It also parallels a prediction by Don Coxe, a Chicago-based global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group who correctly forecast the fall of the dollar and the rise in price of gold and oil years in advance, who last week spoke of a “global food crisis” which will cause the world to enter into, “A period of food shortages and swiftly rising prices,” leading to government embargoes.
Global food prices have skyrocketed by as much as 60 per cent in the past year, while UN officials warn of the likelihood of food riots.
“If prices continue to rise, I would not be surprised if we began to see food riots,” said Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, last October.
Many see the food shortages, whether real or manufactured, as simply another pretext for the implementation of martial law and the introduction of foreign troops to patrol major U.S. cities.
A recent announcement by Northcom confirmed that U.S. and Canadian troops will be allowed to patrol each other’s countries in the event of a national emergency.
“U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, and Canadian Air Force Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command, have signed a Civil Assistance Plan that allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency,” reads a Northcom press release.
Thursday, February 21, 2008 by: David Gutierrez
(NaturalNews) According to an internal U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) e-mail obtained by the Chicago Tribune, the USDA waited 18 days after confirming that a Florida teenager had become sick from E. coli-contaminated meat before recommending a recall of the contaminated beef.
Under U.S. law, the USDA is only empowered to recommend product recalls and cannot force them. On Sept. 25 of last year, the day it received the USDA recommendation, Topps Meat recalled 331,000 pounds of frozen hamburger patties. On Sept. 29, Topps expanded this to 21.7 million pounds, or one year’s worth of production.
Responding to the allegation that the USDA waited too long to recommend a recall, Undersecretary of Agriculture for Food Safety Richard Raymond admitted that “this agency is not completely satisfied with the time elapsed and the issuance of the recall. We will be reviewing data related to this recall as well as our own protocol to determine how we might improve.”
But Raymond said that the delay was really only 11 days, not 18. The first seven days, according to USDA official David Goldman, were necessary to confirm that the bacteria identified in Topps meat was the same kind that had infected Florida teenager Samantha Safranek.
Goldman said that the agency waited 11 days after this because they fail to detect any more E. coli in Topps meat. The agency acted only when the state of New York confirmed that two people in that state had been infected by Topps meat. New York issued an instant consumer warning, which went public even before the product recall.
According to Raymond, the USDA has launched an investigation into why regular inspections failed to uncover E. coli contamination in Topps meat before people became sick.
Consumer health advocate Mike Adams is skeptical of the USDA’s official explanation of the delay. “What we are routinely seeing in contaminated beef recalls now is a deliberate delay by the USDA designed to protect the profits of the beef industry. They know that the longer they wait to issue a recall, the more beef will have already been consumed by consumers, thereby greatly reducing the amount of contaminated beef returned to stores for a refund,” Adams said. “By delaying the announcement of the recall, the USDA protects the interests of the beef industry at the expense of public health. And yes, I believe they are doing it deliberately. Just look at who works for the USDA: Former beef industry executives!”
On October 5, Topps Meat announced that it was going out of business because it was unable to “overcome the reality of a recall this large.”
by Kevin R. C. Gutzman
Imagine yourself asked by a magazine editor to review a book with whose subject matter you are somewhat familiar, but about which you are far from expert. The book, based on five peer-reviewed articles in top academic journals in the field, makes arguments totally at odds with your preconceptions. You find them distasteful. What do you do?
Buy this book
If you are neocon Matthew Franck reviewing my book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, among other things, you make groundless assertions about the author. So, Franck says, “Gutzman is a neo-Confederate who resents the course our history has taken since the first day of the Philadelphia Convention.”
As I demonstrated in this space mere days ago, despite the efforts of Mr. Franck’s monarchist and nationalist heroes, who told the state legislatures that their aim in Philadelphia would be to draft amendments to the Articles of Confederation but who instead attempted to substitute a national government for the old federal one, the Philadelphia Convention’s product was pretty much to my liking. Hamilton, Madison, and friends were defeated in Philadelphia, and the people were sold a limited government with only the powers that were “expressly delegated.” The new Constitution did not include, for example, unlimited legislative power in Congress, nearly limitless jurisdiction for federal courts, or a congressional power to veto state laws, nor did it eliminate the state governments’ role in choosing members of Congress – all despite Madison’s best efforts.
Any literate person who read my book would know this. Once again, Mr. Franck has left us with three alternative explanations: 1) that despite his implicit claim, he did not actually read The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution; 2) that he does not understand plain English; or 3) that despite understanding what it said, he has mischaracterized the argument of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution intentionally.
As to Franck’s calling me a “neo-Confederate,” Dictionary.com says, “Ad hominem attacks on one’s opponent are a tried-and-true strategy for people who have a case that is weak.” Apparently this explains Mr. Franck’s characterization of me as a “neo-Confederate.” According to Reference.com, “The term ‘neo-Confederate’ describes a political and/or cultural movement based mainly in the U.S. Southern states that is characterized by a celebration of the history of the Confederate States of America (CSA) and support for the CSA’s aims. Neo-Confederate issues may include states[’] rights, such as nullification (in which state laws override federal laws), and a pro-Confederate view of history, particularly regarding the American Civil War and the role of slavery in that war.”
I am not a neo-Confederate. I have never celebrated the Confederacy, nor do I downplay the role of slavery in the sectional crisis of the 1850s and ’60s. I do not support the CSA’s aims. There is nothing in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution along those lines. So what can Franck mean? Is he once again being either dishonest or incompetent?
Perhaps he is simply using the term “neo-Confederate” in reference to my argument that secession was constitutional. As I showed here, however, two of the leading Federalist spokesmen in the Virginia Ratification Convention, speaking on behalf of a five-man committee including James Madison and John Marshall, said that it was, and New York and Rhode Island joined in this assertion, so what more evidence might one adduce? A tendentious “scholar” such as Franck, after the fashion of the Blacks and Brennans of the world, could simply ignore or deny these facts – as indeed Franck does ignore them in his book on Marshall and his ilk. (I suspect that incompetence is the explanation for that omission, but it may be deceitful.)
I note too that pace Franck, I am not a “self-described conservative,” as that phrase seems reserved these days for supporters of John Yoo and apologists for the New Deal.
It is actually the Francks of the world who are unhappy with what happened in the Philadelphia Convention and the ratification process. Not for them the actual explanation of the Constitution offered by such as Edmund Randolph, James Wilson, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. I am, his editors say in their headline to his “review,” “Whistling Dixie” in calling attention to the actual history of the Constitution. If by that they mean to say that restoring an accurate understanding of that document, piercing the fog bank of misinformation that Marshall, Franck, and other politically correct defenders of unlimited government such as they have buried the Constitution under is a forlorn hope, they may well be right.
One common tactic that the liars have adopted is to invoke Great Names in defense of their assertions. Franck notes that I say that, in his words, “Madison – Madison! – is an untrustworthy guide to understanding the Constitution,” as if this were a scandalous point. But Madison was a notorious flip-flopper in his own day, and with good reason. It was Madison who in 1791 argued that Hamilton’s Bank Bill was unconstitutional, before he in 1816 called on Congress to pass a new bank bill. It was Madison who in October 1787 wrote to Jefferson to lament the structure of the Senate, before he told the public how wonderful it was in two essays of The Federalist. It was Madison who in 1798 wrote the Virginia Resolutions threatening state interposition in response to the Sedition Act, before he in the early 1830s denied having done any such thing. It was Madison who in 1787–88 denied that a federal bill of rights was necessary, before he in 1789 insisted it was essential. And one could go on. (Those interested in Madison’s inconsistency can consult my 1994 article in Essays in History, the shorter version of same in The Journal of the Early Republic for 1995, or my 1998 article in Continuity: A Journal of History.)
Mr. Franck does not know much about Madison. In his obscure tome on judicial imperialism, for example, Franck misapprehends Madison’s thinking concerning the constitutionality of the 1816 Bank Bill, which Madison believed could be justified only by precedent, not by reference to the pre-1790 meaning of the Constitution. In other words, Madison thought that the significance of the 1816 Bank Bill as a precedent could be limited by saying that it did not reflect a general doctrine of implied powers, but only a single exception, based on precedent, to the idea that Congress had only the enumerated powers. His argument was weak, but it did not amount to saying – as Franck has him concluding – that the Constitution provided no guidance in this area. We might have concluded that this argument demonstrated the futility of relying on Madison as a constitutional oracle, if Franck had not pooh-poohed my criticism of Madison as an inconsistent interpreter of the Constitution.
Elsewhere in his “review,” Franck gives his reader further reason to question his grasp of English. Thus, for example, he points out that I said that the United States “seceded from the British Empire,” as if that were debatable. The United States were parts of the British Empire. They left it. What is the controversial element?
I also note in The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution that the United States were not founded on the Declaration of Independence. That document was adopted by the Second Continental Congress, which, unlike today’s Congress, was not a legislature, but – to borrow the image of one of its members, John Adams – an assemblage of state ambassadors. Those ambassadors had been empowered precisely to declare independence (which in Virginia’s case was already a reality; it would have been hard for Virginia’s independence, established on May 15, 1776, to be founded on a document promulgated on July 4, 1776), not to concoct a novel theory of government and bind the states to it. According to Franck, all of these common-sense observations are “bizarre.”
Franck asserts that I wish the Supreme Court had been “more activist,” which simply is untrue. There is no basis for it in the book supposedly under review. I simply would have had the Supreme Court interpret the Constitution in the way that John Marshall’s committee, in a report presented by Governor Edmund Randolph and George Nicholas, promised the Virginia Ratification Convention it would be interpreted: as granting the federal government only the powers “expressly delegated.” Since Franck devotes an entire chapter of his obscure book to praising Marshall’s failure to do precisely that in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), it is unsurprising that he does not sympathize with me here. I note that James Madison, on reading the Court’s opinion in McCulloch, objected that if the people had known that the Constitution would be interpreted that way, they would never have ratified it. A Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution in this way would have been notably less activist, as the chapter of my book on the Marshall Court, for starters, makes abundantly clear.
Truly, it pains one to receive a negative review of his work from a reviewer so evidently unfamiliar with the topic. I judge by reading Franck’s review, along with the book he wrote, the book he edited, a speech he gave at the Heritage Foundation, and some of his blog entries on National Review Online, that he is typical of the run of constitutional experts: his learning in the era of the American Revolution extends to having read judicial opinions, The Federalist, scattered writings of some prominent nationalist politicians, and secondary works on all of the above. This seems to have persuaded him of his own expertise, the absence of which screams through every line of his “review.” (Imagine such a pygmy slighting John Taylor of Caroline, for whose constitutional writings Thomas Jefferson had the highest praise and whom congressional colleagues called the very image of a republican!) While some are ignorant, others are just impervious to reality. As the highest authority put it, “They who have ears to hear, let them hear.”
Kevin R. C. Gutzman, J.D., Ph.D. [send him mail], Associate Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University, is the author of Virginia’s American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776–1840 (newly available in paperback) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution. He is also the co-author, with Thomas E. Woods, Jr., of Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (forthcoming from Crown Forum on July 8, 2008).
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
by Chuck Baldwin
February 22, 2008
The last thing we need is another liberal neocon in the White House. If the Presidency of George W. Bush proved anything, it proved the hazard of electing phony Republican conservatives. At least one is able to clearly see a liberal for what he or she is when they have a “D” behind their name. But put an “R” behind the name and suddenly their liberal, Big-Government, anti-freedom agenda is barely recognized, which makes a liberal Republican much more dangerous than a liberal Democrat.
Let me say it straight out: a John McCain Presidency would be far worse than a Barack Obama Presidency. With a Democrat in the White House, conservatives and Christians suddenly find their principles and are able to offer resistance. Put a Republican in the Oval Office, however, and those same people become blind, deaf, and dumb to most any principle they profess.
Nowhere is McCain’s chicanery and duplicity more jeopardous than in the area of the right to keep and bear arms. On issues relating to the Second Amendment, John McCain is a disaster! For example, the highly respected Gun Owners of America (GOA) rates McCain with a grade of F-. McCain’s failing grade is well deserved.
John McCain sponsored an amendment to S. 1805 on March 2, 2004 that would outlaw the private sale of firearms at gun shows. According to GOA, the provision would effectively eliminate gun shows, because every member of an organization sponsoring a gun show could be imprisoned if the organization fails to notify each and every “person who attends the special firearms event of the requirements [under the Brady Law].”
John McCain also sponsored an Incumbent Protection provision to the so-called “Campaign Finance Reform” bill, which severely curtails the ability of outside groups (such as GOA) to communicate the actions of incumbent politicians to members and supporters prior to an election.
The GOA report of the 106th Congress reveals that out of 15 votes relating to the right to keep and bear arms, Senator John McCain voted favorably only 4 times. Put that into a percentage and McCain’s pro-Second Amendment voting record is a pathetic 27%.
In addition, GOA warns that John McCain supported legislation that would force federal agents to increase efforts in arresting and convicting honest gun owners who may inadvertently violate one of the many federal anti-gun laws, which punish mere technicalities, such as gun possession.
For example, if John McCain’s proposed legislation were to become law, a gun owner who travels with a gun through a school zone or who uses one of the family handguns to go target shooting with a 15-year old could be sent to prison. And a person who uses a gun for self-defense could be sent to prison for a mandatory minimum of five years.
But there is so much more to the McCain madness.
Former California State Senator H.L. “Bill” Richardson wrote this about John McCain, “He’s [McCain’s] proven his dislike for conservatives and would gut us at every opportunity.
“Why do I say that? Because of three decades of experience as a Republican California Senator and a fifty year activist in the conservative movement. I have first hand, in-their-face experience with elitist RINO’s (Republican in Name Only) office holders. They are biblically ignorant, power hungry, status seeking egotists who have no difficulty aiding their liberal Democrat colleagues whenever their arms are politely twisted. The one thing they have in common with liberal Democrats is their dislike for all conservatives, especially those who are Bible-believing. McCain, as president, would stifle the voices of elected Republican leaders and try to legislate the conservative movement out of existence.”
Senator Richardson went on to say that he would in no way vote for John McCain, if indeed McCain is the Republican nominee (which he obviously will be).
I wonder how many gun owners and other professing pro-freedom Americans have already fallen victim to McCain’s phony conservative campaign? Do they not realize that they are giving a rope to the hangman? And that they–conservatives and gun owners–are the ones who McCain will send to the gallows? What is wrong with the American people these days? Have they not been betrayed enough by these phony conservative Republicans?
For example, President George W. Bush recently nominated Michael Sullivan to be Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Sullivan is one of the nation’s most rabid anti-gunners. GOA’s Larry Pratt describes Sullivan as being “as anti-gun as Ted Kennedy.” Honest gun owners, lawful firearms dealers, and law-abiding gun show operators could have no worse enemy within the federal government than Michael Sullivan. We could expect no worse from Hillary Clinton. And a John McCain Presidency would doubtless give us more of the same.
Regarding the Second Amendment, the American people have no better friend than Ron Paul. He has a 20-year proven track record of fidelity to the right to keep and bear arms. The GOA rates Congressman Paul with a grade of A+. According to GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt, Ron Paul has been a leader in the fight to defend and restore the Second Amendment. He has sponsored legislation to repeal the following: the Brady law; the requirement to lock up your guns; the law permitting the U.S. to be part of the U.N (which, among other attacks on American freedoms, seeks to ban privately transferred firearms); participation in UNESCO; federal prohibitions on any pilot wishing to carry a handgun to and in his cockpit; and the so-called “assault weapons” ban (prior to its sunsetting in 2004).
Ron Paul has also sponsored legislation requiring states to treat the concealed carry permit of one state the same as they do that state’s driver’s license. Dr. Paul also opposes a national ID card, which would be a tool of government to identify gun ownership.
Gun owners (along with conservatives and Christians of all sorts) should be ashamed of themselves for allowing an angry, gun-grabbing liberal such as John McCain to become the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, while rejecting the candidacy of one of America’s most principled pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, pro-Constitution, and pro-freedom legislators of this generation: Congressman Ron Paul.
I say again, the last thing we need is another liberal neocon in the White House. John McCain may have an “R” behind his name, but he is just another establishment liberal: one America cannot afford.
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© Chuck Baldwin
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