Opponents of a compromise to renew the Patriot Act launched last-minute efforts to block it Monday, saying Congress needs time to include more protections for civil liberties.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121305J.shtml

Norman Solomon writes: No buzzards were gliding overhead, but several helicopters circled, under black sky tinged blue. On the shore of a stunning bay at a placid moment, the state prepared to kill.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121305I.shtml

Future of Freedom Foundation
by Sheldon Richman

12/12/05

It’s a measure of the imperial nature of the modern American presidency that George W. Bush misstates the truth even as he defends himself against the charge that he misstates the truth. It takes extraordinary disrespect for the American people to look them in the eyes and say that Congress had seen the same intelligence about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction as he did, and that a Senate committee had cleared his administration of twisting the WMD intelligence to serve its Iraq war agenda...

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0512d.asp


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The Moderate Voice
by Jack Gantt

12/12/05

Welcome to Amerika, 2005. People have no rights at all. If you do not have the right to own property, you simply cannot have any other rights. Free speech? Sorry, you can be arrested for standing in the wrong place, since you cannot own land, so that right is gone. Freedom of religion? Sorry, if you are in a church the government doesn't like, they can take it from you and demolish it, because you have no right to own property. Right to bear arms? Nope. If you cannot own property, government can, quite literally, take anything away from you that you own. How about the right to be secure in your own property and 'their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures?' Nope. If you cannot own property, then this right simply does not apply. The government can just claim that your house is their house, and they can do whatever they like in their own house...

http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1134394961.shtml


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Star Bulletin
by staff

12/12/05

House and Senate negotiators agreed last week to make 14 of the Patriot Act's 16 provisions permanent. Those essentially expanded surveillance and investigative powers of the federal government. ... A bipartisan group of six senators has vowed to fight the bill on the Senate floor, with Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., threatening to use a filibuster to block a vote. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, proposed a three-month extension to work out a better compromise. Proponents of the bill, including the White House, refer to it as a compromise, but no Democratic negotiator went along with it. Further Republican concessions are needed to gain bipartisan and public support...

http://starbulletin.com/2005/12/12/editorial/editorial02.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Human Events
by Bruce Bartlett

12/13/05

In its latest issue, Newsweek magazine has a disturbing portrait of George W. Bush as an aloof, out-of-touch president, isolated by his own governing style. Because of his intolerance for dissent, he has effectively surrounded himself with yes-men (and women) fearful of telling the president anything he doesn't want to hear. Written by veteran reporters Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe, the Newsweek story confirms reports we have heard for the last five years about Bush's disinterest in the policy process or even the day-to-day politicking that ordinarily goes with the job. He dislikes meeting with members of Congress, is not a big consumer of news that does not come to him through official channels and relies almost exclusively on a small cluster of close aides, ignoring his Cabinet and the rest of the federal establishment. The result is that Bush appears to live in a sort of fantasy world utterly divorced from reality...

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=10811


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Free Market News Network
by Bernie Quigley

12/12/05

It is startling to read an apologist for torture lobbying his special agenda in a New England newspaper. We have never experienced this climate before in New England. Perhaps the editors are from elsewhere. They seem to be. Maybe they are from Los Angeles. Perhaps they have become disassociated by not being from anywhere at all and live a life of genre and generational politics without any of the traditional moral bearings linked to regional life and provincial tradition. This is the curse of Hamiltonian federalism. The country becomes a series of special interests vying for power. No one is from anyplace. Jefferson's federalism develops the whole man and woman -- mind, body, spirit, culture, region and religion. But Hamilton is all about influence and lobbying influence with money. States lose their influence, regions lose their character and identity and so do the people in them. Torture is just another unpleasant fish stall in the marketplace of ideas...

http://www.fmnn.com/Analysis/27/3156/2005-12-12.asp?wid=27&nid=3156


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Independent Institute
by Ivan Eland

12/12/05

The much-ballyhooed elections in Iraq later this week are likely to dig the Iraqi hole a little deeper for the Bush administration. The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shi'ite Muslim cleric in Iraq, has indirectly ordered fellow Shi'a to cast their ballots for representatives of the Shi'ite religious parties that now control the interim Iraqi government. A permanent Shi'ite-Kurdish government may prove even more intransigent than the interim government in addressing Sunni concerns about being cut out of Iraq's oil revenues -- thus accelerating the incipient civil war in that nation...

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1634


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Christian Science Monitor

12/12/05

The arrest of six animal rights activists and environmental radicals last week is the clearest sign in years that law-enforcement authorities now are able to infiltrate the shadowy world of 'ecoterrorism.' But the apprehension of four men and two women in five states around the country - all charged with firebombings and other criminal acts committed years ago in the Pacific Northwest - also indicates how hard it is to do that. While the arrests are significant, many more crimes carried out in the name of protecting animals and the environment remain unsolved. ... Groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) usually claim credit for such acts. But as far as law-enforcement officials can tell, there is little organization or structure to the groups...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1212/p02s01-ussc.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

New Standard News

12/12/05

With Congress expected to renew several of the more controversial portions of the USA Patriot Act as early as this week, civil libertarians and privacy rights advocates are highlighting what they see as serious flaws in the new legislation. Their only hope is that public sentiment and political action will sway enough lawmakers to force changes to the law. ... Opponents of the reauthorizing the Patriot Act contend that the expanded surveillance provisions are overly broad and that many unconstitutionally abridge personal freedoms. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights advocate, Congress should let every sunsetting section die on New Year’s Eve. 'Several provisions can be used against Americans in a wide range of investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism,' the group alleged in an extensive analysis of fifteen of the provisions scheduled to expire on December 31. 'Others are too vague, jeopardizing legitimate activities protected under the First Amendment.' ... The American Civil Liberties Union largely agrees. In a statement released shortly after President Bush used his weekly radio address to urge lawmakers to quickly pass the reauthorization, ACLU Washington Director Caroline Frederickson called the joint Senate-House Conference Committee report a 'concession to the White House and a curtailment of the Constitution'...

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2669


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp