By: Ellen Ratner  

Think about it. In only two months, law enforcement agencies have been granted the authority to wiretap - virtually at will - monitor e-mails, detain suspects without ever having to file a charge or even identify the suspect or, for that matter, even admit they have a suspect. Lawyer-client conversations are open to inspection. Suspected terrorists can be tried, convicted and executed on the say-so of a panel of colonels without anyone even knowing that someone was arrested. And think of the convenience! No messy public appeals unless the President (the colonels' commander-in-chief) or the Secretary of Defense (their immediate boss) says so. This has nothing to do with ideology. This has to do with everybody's rights. It bothers both liberal Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and conservative Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA).

Ashcroft Creates Interagency Force on Security Leaks

By: Jerry Seper  

The review, the first in nearly two decades, will look at current tools to stop leaks and will make recommendations for modifications to administrative policies and regulations, and formulate new statutory remedies, if necessary.

"Leaks of classified information do substantial damage to the security interests of the nation. As a government, we must try to find more effective measures to deal with this damaging practice, including measures to prevent it", Mr. Ashcroft said.

"We are training our guns on any media outlet or any reporter interfering with America's war on terrorism or trying to undermine the authority of President Bush. We are taking no prisoners!"

- Media Research Center Recruitment Email Letter

From:  

In Joe McCarthy's day they were called "snitch" lines. They worked like this: if you suspected your colleague or neighbor or employee was up to something un-American - leaving lights on when nobody was home, sympathizing with the Communists, etc. - you could call up a special phone number and anonymously rat them out.

In this time of heightened national security, the snitch lines are back. They're now called "tip" lines, but the principal is the same. In the aftermath of September 11th, the FBI received tens of thousands of calls on "tip" lines, and folks were broadly rounded up for questioning.

By: Tim Francis-Wright  

Republican lawmakers have been notable by their silence about the recent pronouncement by Mitch Daniels, the Director of Management and Budget, that the federal government will have budget deficits though 2004. During the last year of the Clinton administration, by contrast, the federal government ran a surplus, even without the built-in surplus of the Social Security system.

John Maynard Keynes was the economist who espoused government action to regulate the vicissitudes of the market. He advocated government spending or tax cuts in down times and fiscal restraint in up times. Republicans have rediscovered Keynes in recent years: they advocate tax cuts no matter what the season. The goals are twofold: to reward their constituencies in the short run and to cripple the government in the long run. The Democrats should have been prepared, because the Republicans had the same game plan during the last stretch that they ran the White House.

By: Paul Krugman  

Embarrassing but true: Just one month ago the James A. Baker III Institute presented Alan Greenspan with its Enron Prize. I'm not suggesting any impropriety; it was just another indication of how deeply the failed energy company was enmeshed with our ruling elite.

And yet Mr. Greenspan also finds himself in Chapter 11. That is, the Fed has now cut interest rates 11 times this year, and has yet to see any results. What's going on?

"In a democracy the intent of the voter is all that counts. In fact, the U.S. took that position in two other elections in 2000: when Slobodan Milosevic disqualified ballots and therefore won the presidency of Yugoslavia we refused to recognize his government. And when Alberto Fujimori of Peru knocked out counting of rural ballots for technical reasons, once again the U.S. refused to recognize his presidency. The U.S. said you cannot win a presidency on a technicality. We said that for Milosevic and for Fujimori but somehow we didn’t say that to Mr. Bush."

- Greg Palast

Editorial from:  

President Bush's broad assertion of executive privilege to block a Congressional review of internal Justice Department documents pertaining to F.B.I. misuse of mob informants has inflamed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle - and properly so.

By: Gene Lyons  

After last week's sickening performance by Attorney General John Ashcroft and his former colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's tempting to paraphrase the immortal words of Margaret Thatcher: Have the American people gone all wobbly in the face of terrorism, or is it just that the politicians think they have? How any self-respecting group of American citizens, much less a group of U.S. senators, could sit politely and listen to an intellectual thug like Ashcroft equate their concern for constitutional rights to support for Osama bin Laden beggars my poor imagination. Only Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina showed any guts at all.

"Before we name more schools & airports after Ronald Reagan, can we get a look at what Bush is hiding in Reagan's files?"

- BartCop, from Vol. 666 on bartcop.com

By: Tommy Ates  

There is a wise phrase that says: "If it ain't broke. Don't fix it!"

Why then is U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft trampling on civil liberties? The answer is simple: it's convenient; it's helpful; and it makes everybody's job a lot easier, save the average citizen, who couldn't dream of getting an O.J. 'Dream Team' defense like the American Taliban, John Walker, will likely receive.

Enron Makes Whitewater Look Like Peanuts

By: Bill Press  

Something smells rotten in Houston. Energy giant Enron, which used to brag about becoming the world's biggest company, now holds the record for the country's biggest ever bankruptcy filing.

By: Robert Scheer  

Enron is Whitewater in spades. This isn't just some rinky-dink land investment like the one dredged up by right-wing enemies to haunt the Clinton White House - but rather it has the makings of the greatest presidential scandal since Teapot Dome.

The Bush administration has a long and intimate relationship with Enron, whose much-discredited chairman, Kenneth L. Lay, was a primary financial backer of George W. Bush's rise to the presidency.

By: Bruce S. Ticker  

President Bush should be impeached, and I am really convinced that the House of Representatives has grounds to follow through with it.

By: Bridget Gibson  

George Bush and Kenneth Lay are old friends. Just how far that friendship goes is the question of the day. Just like Enron, is the robber baron's mentality occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Are they creating a giant Ponzi scheme where the money is stolen from the workers (substitute taxpayers) and transferred to those at the highest level?

"You tell the President there's going to be war between the President and this committee. His dad was at a 90% approval rating and he lost, and the same thing can happen to him."

- Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), the head of the House Government Reform Committee, telling a Justice Department official during what was supposed to be a routine prehearing handshake on Thursday (12/13/01)

"All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

By: Walt Starr  

George W. Bush believes he can coin new words for the English language, so I thought I'd give my first shot at this practice with enronomy. Look at the beauty in the word. Enron is a perfect analogy for the current economic conditions in this nation. Previously number seven on the Forbes 500 list, and now bankrupt - compare it to the Clinton economy being taken over by Bush and run into the ground.

The entire idea of the enronomy runs deeper than any analogy, however. The complicity of the Bush administration in the happenings of Enron had detrimental effects on the enronomy (there's that word again). Sixty billion dollars just disappearing from the enronomy must have a detrimental effect, and let's face facts, there is no way that members of this administration didn't know what was going on.

Surely what happened to the employees of Enron can only be described as trickle down enronomics! That's exactly what Bush is doing to the average worker in America.

From:  

Clandestine organizations like the Cato Institute serve only the interests of Securities and Investment firms and exist exclusively to privatize Social Security. They say that "Social Security is in a financial crisis and will begin running a deficit in 15 years". They want to frighten and confuse Americans into letting Wall Street take over the role of our trustworthy Social Security system. In reality, the alleged crisis has been manufactured by those who would reap gigantic profits if they gain control of the American peoples Social Security retirement benefits.

According to the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, if we take no action at all to maintain our Social Security system, Americans will continue to receive 100% of their benefits until the year 2028, and 88% until 2075. Bush ignores these facts, pushing ahead with the privatization initiative. His so called Social Security commission held their first meeting on June 11, 2001. Their goal, to give partial control of the American peoples Social Security retirement holdings to the insurance companies, the banking industry, and the investment firms.

By: Arianna Huffington  

But it's not the unseemly blending of the political with the profitable that's the real problem, it's the message being sent: That the truest manifestation of patriotism is - as the president and his new kitchen cabinet put it in the ad - to "enjoy America's great destination spots".

In previous wars, sacrifice meant, well, sacrifice. Maybe even the willingness to die for one's country. Now we're being called on to show our willingness to fly for our country. To relax our way out of this recession even as we are told that we must remain on "high alert".

Editorial from:  

President George W. Bush's decision to announce this week he intends to pull the United States out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty is wrongheaded and profoundly disappointing. Its timing is counterproductive to waging the war on terror. It is certain to cause tensions with Russia and European partners abroad and to raise a divisive partisan issue at home, at a time when maintaining unity against terror should be a top national priority.

By: Matilda Lipscomb  

The American people (except for the card-carrying Clinton haters) are ready for the truth. This corrupt, illegal administration cannot do anything to us unless we allow them to.

We simply cannot let this happen. We must fight back, and we must support, with all our hearts and minds, a candidate that will do just that... STAND UP AND FIGHT!!!

By: Helen Thomas  

Mr. Ridge, we hear you. But we don't understand.

Everyone is supposed to be on "heightened alert", but people also are being urged to go about their business in a normal fashion.

Editorial from:  

While Attorney General John Ashcroft's long-awaited appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week didn't turn out to be quite the explosive confrontation that many Senate observers expected, he did lay down some very clear views about how he views the legal and constitutional basis for the Bush administration's war on terrorism.

But some of those views are disturbing, to say the least.

From:  

BuzzFlash readers do the dardnest things, like exposing the hypocrisy of Bush and Ashcroft on the treatment of people of Arab descent in the United States. Politicians will say anything to win an election, right George and John!

Here is a BuzzFlash readers research on what they said before the election compared to the Bush/Ashcroft assault on civil liberties now!

By: Joseph A. Califano Jr.  

As defense lawyers and civil libertarians huff and puff about Attorney General John Ashcroft's procedural moves to bug conversations between attorneys and their imprisoned clients, hold secret criminal military trials and detain individuals suspected of having information about terrorists, they are missing an even more troubling danger: the extraordinary increase in federal police personnel and power.

"Today, America is being stampeded into a new undeclared war against Iraq. This is a time for truth, a time for Congress to do its duty, and debate and decide on war or peace. We do not need to have our politics poisoned for yet another generation by the mutual recriminations of a War Party and a Peace Party in the aftermath of yet another undeclared war. No more undeclared wars. No more presidential wars."

- Patrick Buchanan

"If there is a problem with Bush's order, it is the exemption of U.S. citizens from trials before military tribunals. Quirin held that Americans can be tried there, and it is clear that they should. The trial of American terrorists in criminal court would pose all the problems of trying foreign terrorists there: The prosecution would have to choose between safeguarding our intelligence capacity and trying the terrorist. The terrorists could well go free. Contrary to some heated reactions, military tribunals are well within our tradition. They are needed now more than ever."

- Judge Robert H. Bork, from the December 17^th, 2001, issue of National Review

From:  

Christmas is fast approaching, but don't worry! We've done your holiday shopping for conservative idiocy, and wrapped them all up nice for you in a convenient ten-pack. Topping the list this week is none other than George W. Bush, who sets the standard for idiocy in a time of national crisis. John Ashcroft (2) finally puts the brakes on his anti-constitutional jihad. Bill O'Reilly (3) has a small problem with the honesty factor. J.C. Watts (5) is back for the second week in a row. Meanwhile, the Salvation Army (6) goes soft on pedophiles, Enron execs (7) line their own pockets, Linda Tripp (8) loses her house, and one crazy guy with a gun (9) gets a little irked by some Christmas lights.

By: Daniel Baker  

In his Military Order on "The Detention, Treatment and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism", the President arrogates to himself the right to put any non-citizen, in the United States or elsewhere, whom he personally suspects of terrorism on trial before a military tribunal - a tribunal that, unlike our civil courts, is under his authority as Commander-in-Chief.

The military tribunals are secret unless the President chooses to make them open. He further claims the privilege of inspecting the trial record for "review and final decision by me", so he can convict anyone whom the tribunal acquits. The defendant is not allowed to appeal to anyone, not even the Supreme Court.

The Constitution nowhere gives the President the authority to do this. Indeed it specifically prohibits him, or anybody else, from doing it...

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