Monday, May 30, 2011

Memorial Day And The Patriot Act

The last Monday of May is Memorial Day. It is a day in which America remembers her fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. It began as a remembrance of Civil War dead but has come to be recognized as a day to honor all military men and women killed in battle in defense of this country. Congress made it a permanent, official, holiday in 1971.
These brave men and women died in service to their country, so the rest of US might continue in the freedoms and personal liberties under Nature’s God that were codified in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and Bill of Rights which were bequeathed to US by our Founding Fathers more than 230 years ago.

Generation, after generation, after generation, from Valley Forge to Gettysburg, from Flanders Field to Normandy Beaches, from Khe Sanh to Iraq and Afghanistan, American patriots have stepped forward in every time and season over the centuries to defend the rights, freedoms, and personal liberties enshrined in these documents. These are not mere words. This is the DNA of America. These documents are a Manifesto of Life that proclaim and guarantee individual liberties and the pursuit of happiness for each American throughout the land. Without these documents, America does not exist. With these documents, America is a light to all of human kind.


The DNA of America is under assault. Our Manifesto of Life is under assault.

The root and source of everything truly unique and American is under assault by Globalists. These Globalists are historically, the uber rich and the political and financial elite in America and around the world, who want to manipulate and control the economic, political, and social life of America and all of the other people in every other nation in the world, in order to maintain their own personal position at the top of the food chain for themselves and their progeny.

Globalists also include major institutions, like the Satanic Catholic Priesthood, and other "charitable" organizations who seek to exploit the middle class in the name of God, the poor, and "social justice" while they line their own pockets and use  donations to support a perverse and often criminal lifestyle; or use your donation for the poor to fund their hidden agenda.

Globalists profess to believe in “diversity” yet seek to homogenize everyone and are doing all they can to manipulate the masses through the Lame Stream Mass Media. They are simultaneously spreading both socialism for the middle and lower classes, and corporate fascism for the PTB. All of it paid for by taxes from the Middle Class.

At the same time, they are working to dumb down the masses with a national education program dictated by a central agency, rather than leaving the responsibility for the education of children on the local level and at the feet of the individual parents, where it belongs. University education, meanwhile, has become a quagmire of debt with fewer opportunities within America for American graduates.

It is easy to recognize a Globalist. They say one thing but mean another. When President O'bummer says he wants to increase exports 20% a year, over five years, what he means is that the value of the dollar is going to drop through inflation and exchange rate mechanisms destroying American purchasing power and the standard of living by 20% per year for all Americans. So what he is telling US is that inflation is coming, your dollars will buy less, and your quality of life will be drastically diminished.

Globalists say they will do one thing, but do another. "Free Trade"  is a euphanism for transferring the American means of production and the jobs associated with that production, offshore. Watch what they do, not what they say, and you will recognize the intent of their words by their deeds, and the results to your personal wealth and your family's well being.



The Globalists have taken the wealth of America and Europe where the energy and enterprise of their people have created it over generations, and are in the process of redistributing that wealth, the means of production, and the opportunities that rightfully belong to the American and European people, to other nations and other people in the name of world peace.

But “world peace” is just a cover for the exploitation of international labor and individual enterprise in the Third World, for the enormous, compounded, immoral profits for the Gangster Banksters, who will profit the most from the development of the Third World. The $40 billion of aid that the West has miraculously manifested from its taxpayers for the development of the Middle East after the “Arab Spring”, is just the latest transfer of wealth; and that at a time when both Europe and America are broke and its citizens burdened with enormous national debts.
Where did all the money go? To the Globalists of course, who get richer and richer while the Middle Class in Europe and America are stripped of their wealth, denied the opportunity that has historically been theirs, and burdened with subsidizing the really, really poor. In America today, the top 1% of the population has more wealth that the bottom 95%. Globally, the top 5% of the population has more wealth than the bottom 95%. Most of this disparity has occurred in the past 30 years. Free Trade is not "Free". And it is not "FAIR".

The intent of the Globalists is to so burden the Middle Class in America and Europe with so much debt that they would consent to a new economic system, under new rules. Rules that would further enrich the uber rich and solidify the world into two classes: those that have and those who have not. To do that the US Constitution has to be abolished first, and it's protections for everyday people destroyed and replaced with a Compact under UN auspices.

In the United States, the political and financial elite that control the Congress have enacted Rules, Regulations, and Laws contrary to the US Constitution, in an attempt to erode the rights, personal liberties, and freedoms of Americans. It is a creeping gradualism that seeks to minimize individual rights in favor of the collective. The "collective" meaning to the financial benefit of the Globalists.

We will not mention here the annual attempt to impose gun control upon a people who are guaranteed the right to possess and bear arms by their Constitution; or O’bummer Care which attempted to force Americans to buy health insurance from Big Business. These are just a few of the latest examples of American rights under attack.

The Patriot Act, renewed late last week as an obvious gesture to American patriots, was extended for another four years by Congress. It is a law with rules and regulations diametrically opposed to the DNA of America. It is a shameful blight upon the American rule of law under Nature’s God: The Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights; allowing massive invasions of personal privacy, including roving (carte blanche) wiretaps on American citizens, the repeal of habeas corpus, and warrantless searches. All of this, just days before we honor those who died for our freedoms, rights, and liberties. How deceitful, demeaning, distasteful, and dishonorable of Congress!

Sen Mark Udall of Colorado, who is a member of both the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, opposed the recent renewal of the Patriot Act in a speech on the floor of the US Senate because he believes it unlawfully infringes upon the rights and liberties of American citizens, and is being used by the government in unintended ways which the American people do not fully understand. He is privy to classified information so he knows what he is talking about.

He put it this way:

“I cannot support the extension of the provisions we are considering today without amendments to ensure there is a check on executive branch authority, .... I don’t believe that the Coloradans who elected me to represent them would accept it either.  Mr President, Americans would be alarmed if they knew how this law was being carried out,   I still have concerns about the individual provisions we are considering today.

We just voted to invoke cloture – to cut off debate – on the four-year extension of provisions that give the government wide-ranging authority to conduct wiretaps on groups and individuals or collect private citizens’ records. And I voted no because this debate should not be over without a real chance to improve these authorities. I recently supported a three month extension of these expiring provisions as a bridge so that the Senate could take time to debate and amend the Patriot Act. We were promised that debate. But that opportunity is slipping through our hands. I want to stay here and continue making the case to the American people that this bill should be improved.


While a number of  Patriot Act provisions are permanent and remain in place to give our intelligence community important tools to fight terrorism, the three controversial provisions we are debating – commonly known as roving wire-tap, lone wolf and business records – are ripe for abuse and threaten Americans’ constitutional freedoms. Mr. President, I know that we must balance the principles of liberty and security. I firmly believe that terrorism is a serious threat to the United States…and we must be sharply focused in seeking to protect the American people.

In fact, with my seats on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, much of my attention is centered on keeping Americans safe, both here and abroad. I also recognize that despite Osama bin Laden’s death, we still live in a world where terrorism is a serious threat to our country, our economy, and to American lives. Our government does need the appropriate surveillance and anti-terrorism tools to achieve these important goals.

However, we need to and we can strike a better balance between protecting our national security and the constitutional freedoms of our people. For example, this debate has failed to recognize that current surveillance programs need improved public oversight and accountability. I know that Americans believe that we ought to only use Patriot Act powers to investigate terrorist- or espionage-related targets.

Yet, section 215 of the Patriot Act, the so-called “business records” provision, currently allows records to be collected on law-abiding Americans, without ANY connection to terrorism or espionage. If we cannot even limit investigations to terrorism or other nefarious activities, where do they end? Coloradans are demanding that in addition to the review of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, we place common-sense limits on government investigations and link data collection to terrorist- or espionage-related activities.

If, or should I say when, Congress passes this bill to extend the Patriot Act until 2015, it will mean that for four more years, the federal government will have access to private information about Americans who have no connection to terrorism – without sufficient accountability and no public awareness about how these powers are used.

Again, I want to underline we all agree the intelligence community needs effective tools to combat terrorism, but we must provide those tools in a way that protects the constitutional freedoms of our people and lives up to the standard of transparency that democracy demands. And again, I want to say that as a member of the Intelligence Committee, while I cannot say how this authority is being used, I believe it is ripe for potential abuse and MUST be improved to preserve the constitutionally protected privacy rights of individual, innocent American citizens.

Toward that goal, I have worked side-by-side with my colleagues to come up with common sense fixes that could receive bipartisan support. For example, Senator Wyden and I have filed an amendment that would require the Department of Justice to disclose the official legal interpretation of the provisions of the Patriot Act. This would make sure that the federal government is only using these powers in ways the American people believe they are authorizing them to.

While I believe that our intelligence practices should be kept secret, I do not believe that the government’s official interpretation of these laws should be kept secret. This is an important part of our oversight duties and I look forward to working with Chairwoman Feinstein in the Intelligence Committee to ensure this oversight occurs.

I have also filed my own amendments to address some of the problems I see with the roving wire-tap, lone wolf and business records provisions. For example, I was joined by Senator Wyden in filing an amendment designed to narrow the scope of the “business record” materials that can be collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act – and I just highlighted some of the problems with that provision. Our amendment would still allow law enforcement agencies to use the Patriot Act to obtain investigation records, but would also require those entities to demonstrate that the records are in some way connected to terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.

Law enforcement currently can obtain any kind of records. In fact, the Patriots Act’s only limitation states that such information has to be related to “any tangible thing.” That’s right, as long as these business records are related to “any tangible thing,” the U.S. government can require businesses to turn over information on their customers, whether or not there is a link to terrorism or espionage. I’ve got to say, I just don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask our law enforcement agencies to identify a terrorism or espionage investigation before collecting the private information of law-abiding American citizens.

These amendments represent but a few of the reform ideas that could have been debated. But without further debate on these issues, this or any other administration can abuse the Patriot Act, and because of the need to keep classified material classified, Congress cannot publicly fulfill our oversight responsibilities on behalf of the American people.

Mr. President, I plan to vote against the reauthorization of these three expiring provisions because we have failed to implement any reforms that would sensibly restrain these overbroad provisions. In the nearly 10 years since Congress passed the Patriot Act, there has been very little opportunity to improve this law. And I for one, am very disappointed that we are once again being rushed into approving policies that threaten the privacy of the American people.

The bill that is before us today does not live up to the balanced standard the framers of our Constitution envisioned to protect both liberty and security, and I believe it seriously risks the constitutional freedoms of our people. And by passing this un-amended reauthorization we are ensuring that Americans will live with the status quo for four more long years. I’m disappointed and know that many more of our constituents would be disappointed if they were able to understand the implications of our inaction on these troubling issues.

There is a gravitational pull to secrecy I think we all have as human beings. It’s hard to resist it. And the whole point of the checks and balances that our Founders put in place was to ensure that power couldn’t be consolidated and that power abused, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

We’d all like to be king for a day. We all have ideas about how to make the world a better place. But we know the danger of giving that power to one person or a group of people. Ben Franklin said it so well – I can’t do justice to his remarks, but to paraphrase him: He said that a society that would trade essential liberty for short-term security deserves neither. And our job as Senators is to ensure that we actually enjoy both of those precious qualities: security and liberty “.

What the good Senator is telling US, but cannot in fact tell US under the secrecy laws, is that the Administrations who have had these powers are interpreting the Patriot Act differently then it was intended to be implemented and have amassed unbelieveable amounts of personal data on every American whether connected to a terrorist organization or not, and with the computer power possessed by the Government can tap into all of our phone records, computer keystrokes, financial records, store purchases, and generate a psychological profile of any particular individual just by examing a persons on-line opinion responses to web site surveys and their comments posted in response to any article.

America, do you hear that rumbling in the Earth? It is our Founding Fathers and our Hallowed Dead, Patriots all, who paid the ultimate price for our liberties; rolling over in their graves. There is nothing patriotic about the Patriot Act. It is an abomination to all freedom loving Americans.

Big Brother needs to go: NOW!