By: Jerry Politex  

Ever since Bush was selected by the Supreme Court by a vote of 5-4 to take over the U.S. presidency, the Dems have said that a fair and thorough recounting of the Florida vote would prove that Gore won. While the jury is still out on whether the reported Consortium recount, published late Sunday November 11, was fair and thorough, let's assume that it was. What does it tell us? It tells us that Gore won the Florida electoral vote, the U.S. Supreme Court took the presidency away from him, and the media is wrong in reporting otherwise. Here's how Bush lost Florida.

By: Cragg Hines  

The right to counsel is not some arcane bit of legal accretion. It's in the Constitution: "In all prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right... to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." It is among the most fundamental personal rights, from Article 6 in the Bill of Rights. And that's not the "so-called Bill of Rights", as Justice Hugo L. Black once famously reminded a Supreme Court colleague.

By: Nat Hentoff  

Congress has overwhelmingly passed, and the president has enthusiastically signed, an anti-terrorism bill that, as the ACLU says, gives "enormous, unwarranted power to the executive branch unchecked by meaningful judicial review". Moreover, "most of the new powers could be used against American citizens in counterterrorism investigations and in routine criminal investigations completely unrelated to terrorism". Also likely to be subject to this law: "those whose First Amendment activities are deemed to be threats to national security by the attorney general."

Editorial from:  

In wartime, there is little more vital to government than its ability to work in secret. Secrecy can save lives, both at home and on the battlefield.

But when that need is used as an excuse to avoid political embarrassment - as President Bush did recently in thwarting the release of old presidential records - public trust is lost.

By: Robert B. Reich  

In short, the fat years of the 90's have left us woefully unprepared for a deep recession that's likely to take a particularly large toll on the poor and lower-wage workers. Given all this, a "stimulus" plan like the one that passed last month in the House of Representatives and is being backed by the White House, which confers most of its benefits on large corporations and upper-income households, seems exactly the reverse of what's needed. Large corporations, already reeling from too much capacity, won't be induced to add more. Wealthier households, already spending whatever they want, won't be inspired to spend more. It's the bottom half who are in trouble. They're most likely to spend whatever extra they get. And they desperately need whatever government can supply.

By: Ted Rall  

We're living in dangerous times, and this neo-McCarthyist trend toward blacklists, the silencing of dissent, and government attacks on personal freedom represents an even greater threat to our country than terrorism. Nothing, after all, is more fundamentally un-American than keeping your mouth shut.

Editorial from:  

Mr Bush lectured the nations of the world as though they were a bunch of disobedient schoolkids. The time for action had arrived. Leaders around the world "must now carefully consider their responsibilities and their future". Every regime that sponsored terror would have to pay a price. There could be no exceptions to this comprehensive commitment. It was time for the United Nations to prove itself.

Editorial from:  

A year after election day, we have bittersweet vindication that a statewide recount - by any standard - would have handed Gore the state, and the presidency. Whether you like your chads dimpled, hanging, or poked clean through, Gore is your man.

Not surprisingly, the conservative news media seems to be giving the greatest amount of play to the revelation that Gore's flawed recount strategy would have resulted in a Bush win. But this angle misses the point. The point of the recount was not to weigh the merits of Gore's strategy. The point of the NORC recount was to determine once and for all who really won Florida.

By: Bill Geist  

I know we all should be supporting our president 110 percent these days, but I feel compelled to take issue with what seems to be his first major misstep in prosecuting the war on terrorism. I speak, of course, of his decision to immediately deploy Wayne Newton to entertain our troops.

Editorial from:  

It is hard to fathom why Attorney General John Ashcroft would think his recent order authorizing the monitoring of conversations between detainees and their lawyers would be acceptable in a society that values the rule of law.

By: Smokey Sojac  

In this time of crisis, when every flag shows our loyal support for the man who lost the election last November and the party that wants to toss out the Bill of Rights and use torture to get confessions, it's important that every American citizen takes this handy current events quiz, and then keeps the results to themselves.

Action Alert

Editorial from:  

Thousands of detainees being held in secret by the government; wiretaps on prisoners' conversations with their lawyers; public debate about the advisability of using torture to make suspects talk. Two months into the war against terrorism, the nation is sliding toward the trap that we entered this conflict vowing to avoid. Civil liberties are eroding, and there is no evidence that the reason is anything more profound than fear and frustration.

By: John Balzar  

If a narrow and crusading ideology were not his paramount consideration, an attorney general of the United States would have his mind focused on serious business right now, not on what happens in the candlelight behind drawn curtains on the tear-stained sickbeds of good people.

By: Paul Krugman  

Remember California's energy crisis? It illustrated, in particularly stark form, the political strategy of the Bush administration before Sept. 11. The basic principle of this strategy - which was also used to sell that $2 trillion tax cut - was that crises weren't problems to be solved. Instead, they were opportunities to advance an agenda that had nothing to do with the crisis at hand.

It is now clear that, at least as far as domestic policy is concerned, the administration views terrorism as another useful crisis.

By: William Rivers Pitt  

It is all finished now. Today in America, it is dangerous to speak freely. Officers of the government may enter private homes without notice and perform invasive searches of personal property. Officers of the government may listen to private conversations between client and attorney, thus tearing the shroud of privilege and thus the guarantee of zealous representation. Individuals are being held without charge or trial, their fates to be determined by secret courts.

By: Marjorie Kelly  

It's intriguing how incidents can open windows into the public psyche, illuminating ideas that we as a collective hold, without being aware we're holding them. The recent brouhaha over the Cipro patent is one such incident. Cipro is of course the anthrax treatment made by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, which everyone and their great uncle wants to stockpile these days. With the anthrax scare escalating, the question of the hour has been whether Bayer can make enough Cipro fast enough, and if not, whether the government should override Bayer's patent and order the stuff from generic drug makers. Canada announced it was doing so in mid-October. Senate minority leader Trent Lott said Congress ought to debate stripping Bayer of its patent. And the White House actually threatened to do so unless Bayer slashed its price - which it did on Oct. 24.

"The most disturbing aspect about the Al Qaeda members is how normal they appear, when in fact they all fit the profile of the 'true believer', an individual whose low self-esteem and confusion push him to seek refuge within a charismatic mass movement."

- Jerrold Post, a professor of political psychology at George Washington University

By: David Corn  

Here's a partial answer with two pieces: throughout much of the world, America has no credit to draw upon, and, beyond that, Bush has so bungled the meta-framework of this war that PR efforts may be useless at this point. When you're the only superpower left standing, large portions of the rest of the world may feel resentment and not possess a charitable attitude toward you. But the United States's decision to share only a meager slice of its tremendous wealth with other nations, its my-way-or-the-highway approach to certain international matters, its rapacious consumption of a disproportionate amount of global resources (see SUVs), its occasional heavy-handed interventions on behalf of less-than-exemplary regimes - all of this has left it little good will in the bank of international sentiment. It rescued Europe six decades ago. But there's been a lot of oil under the bridge since then.

By: Anthony Lewis  

George W. Bush has focused effectively on the need for an international alliance against terrorism. But he has not yet understood what a wartime president has to do at home: Put aside ideological politics so he can be president of all the people.

    

Shamelessly stolen from: 'The Latest Sedition'

By: Richard A. Stitt  

Making their Faustian pact with tyrannical, repressive dictatorships such as Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikstan has been easy enough for Bush/Cheney to pull off in the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

"One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous."

- Aldous Huxley

By: Mumia Abu-Jamal

For far too many Americans, the word 'terrorism' has acquired a whole new meaning in the dusty aftermath of 11 September 2001. The word now instantly refers to the mental imagery of the shattered twin towers of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, or the broken edifice of the Pentagon building in Washington, or even the smouldering mound of earth in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The Problems With Bush's Executive Order Burying Presidential Records

By: John Dean  

On November 1, President George W. Bush signed his latest effort to govern by secrecy - Executive Order 13233. For good reason this Order has a lot of historians, journalists, and Congresspersons (both Republican and Democratic) upset.

The Order ends 27 years of Congressional and judicial efforts to make Presidential papers and records publicly available. In issuing the Order, the President has pushed his lawmaking powers beyond their limits.

First stories on Florida ballot review will run Monday

By: William Spain  

Temporarily lost in the aftermath of Sept. 11, what could be one of the biggest news stories of the year is about to break.

By: Molly Ivans  

I don't see how we can call the House "economic stimulus" package anything but war-profiteering. The bill is a disgrace, and the usual suspects from Texas - Tom Delay and Dick Armey - hold large responsibility for it.

"Today (11/8/01), I am announcing a wartime reorganization and mobilization of the nation's justice and law enforcement resources to meet the mission of the Department of Justice..."

- John 'Annointed One' Ashcroft, in a speech to managers at the Justice Department

By: Douglas Mattern  

The use of 1,000-pound cluster bombs, each scattering 200 "bomblets" over a large area, along with B-52 saturation raids, and B-1 bombers raining their destruction on this improvised country is not winning the hearts of minds of the Afghan people, but rather producing an unknown number of new terrorists for which future innocents will pay the price.

"The White House has great respect for the creativity of the [film and television] industry and recognizes its impact and ability to educate at home and abroad."

- Ken Lisaius, a White House spokesman

Action Alert

By: Helen Thomas  

Welcome to the handy excuse of "national security". It is being used to cover any past, current or future questionable government activities under a new order Bush has signed. The six-page document requires anyone seeking papers of past presidents and vice presidents to demonstrate a "specific need" for those papers before they can be produced. And any release then will be at the discretion of the sitting president - even if a past president wants the information released.

The new far-reaching order, obviously designed to block historic revelations, covers most records and state secrets in the White House files. You can be sure they will stay secret if this order is upheld in the courts. The Bush order declares that documents subject to release after 12 years that are not covered by "constitutionally-based privileges" will fall into the category of freedom-of-information requests. That will permit the Archivist of the United States to withhold them, too.

Is the Bush White House trying to protect the reputations of prominent political players - especially George H. W. Bush - through suppression of historic data? If so, that would deny the American people a chance to hold their past public servants accountable, albeit belatedly.

"For corporations to loot the U.S. treasury and prey on the environment while wrapping themselves in the flag is an act of sheer treachery, one Americans will not soon forget."

- John Passacatando, the head of Greenpeace USA

By: Joe Conason  

Whenever the press attempts to define a new Presidency, there is a tendency to make comparisons with its predecessors. Aside from the obvious echoes of his father in George W. Bush's wartime demeanor and choice of advisers, there have been evocations of others who came before, sometimes intentional and sometimes unconscious. In his effort to soften his party's negative image with the slogan of "compassionate conservatism", there was more than a hint of Clintonian cleverness. In his retrograde economic policy, there are almost daily imitations of Reaganism at its worst.

But a parallel to this administration's obsession with secrecy and hostility to open government can only be found by looking back much further. The description that seems increasingly and disturbingly apt is Nixonian.

Editorial from:  

The White House has assumed vast new powers for internal repression, establishing by executive order an Office of Homeland Security that is not subject to either congressional oversight or any vote on the personnel appointed to run it. An all-encompassing political police agency is coming into being, through the passage of an "anti-terror" law that effectively amalgamates the FBI and CIA and abolishes the longstanding separation between overseas spying and domestic policing.

Side by side with the bombing of Afghanistan, the Bush administration has declared that there is a second front in the war, the war at home. The federal government issues vague and unsubstantiated "terror alerts", which fuel anxiety while providing no protection to the public. Government spokesmen urge the population to get used to measures like random police searches and roadblocks as a permanent feature of life. National Guard troops patrol the airports, harbors, bridges, tunnels and even the US Capitol.

Fundamental constitutional safeguards - the right of habeas corpus, the right of the accused to know the charges against them, the right of arrested persons to see a lawyer, even the presumption of innocence - have been set aside for millions of immigrants from the Middle East and Central Asia. The right to privacy has been all but abolished for the entire population, with government intelligence agencies given the green light to plant bugs and wiretaps, monitor financial transactions, and conduct other forms of spying, virtually at will.

If the average American had been shown on September 10 a picture of the United States as it is today, the response would likely have been: "This is not the America I know. This looks more like a police state."

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