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George W. Bush ‘knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent’

Hat tip: Times Online
by Tim Reid, Washington


(Andres Leighton/AP) Two detainees are escorted to interrogation by US military guards at Guantánamo Bay

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

April 9th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING – STILL SEEKING THE TRUTH, FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

Event Location: The Oklahoma State Capitol Building
Second Floor, West Wing
State Supreme Court Corridor.

DATE: Thursday – April 15, 2010
TIME: 1:30 pm – CST.

SUBJECT
: THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING – STILL SEEKING THE TRUTH; FIFTEEN YEARS LATER.

Oklahoma City, OK – Oklahoma City bombing victim’s family members and survivors along with investigative journalists, law enforcement officers, private investigators, documentary film producers and attorneys impacted by the Oklahoma City bombing; will hold a press conference to review the unanswered questions and latest revelations pertaining to this very important part of U.S. History.

Well documented information contradicting the patently false, official account of the Oklahoma City bombing of April, 19, 1995 as offered by the U.S. Department of Justice and the F.B.I. will be reviewed. Why should any one of us be asked to remember the deaths of the Oklahoma City bombing victims in a lie?

April 8th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

Don’t Tread On Me! States Explore the Tenth Amendment

By Debbie Morgan
hat tip: TakeBackWashington.com
March 26, 2010

Watching the debate on healthcare was like having a nightmare while living in the circus. The clowns never hear those they “entertain,” yet they continue to throw nasty legislation at the public. In one of the better moments from the debate, a Representative said the bill was totally unconstitutional, as the Federal Government does not have the authority to force the public to purchase anything. In an online forum, one gentleman stated that the bill is tantamount to extortion. It is apparent that we are down to the only peaceful recourse available…Support local State Sovereignty bills; the only way to overturn the healthcare nightmare, as well as all other over-reaching federal legislation!

When the subject of the Tenth Amendment has been raised in past conversation, some have laughed and some have said, “Oh, that will never work.” Since its passage, many States have tried to invoke their Tenth Amendment rights on several occasions. The largest combined effort, before now, was during the Civil War, when eleven states sought to secede from the united States. Interestingly enough, the last time people got truly fired up about their States rights was during the Roosevelt Administration’s “New Deal.” Why do we have such a magnificent amendment to protect the states if we are not going to use it?

The February 2008 CRS Report for Congress, after quoting the Tenth Amendment, states, “While this language would appear to represent one of the most clear examples of a federalist principle in the Constitution, it has not had a significant impact in limiting federal powers. Initially, the Supreme Court interpreted the Tenth Amendment to have substantive content, so that certain ‘core’ state functions would be beyond the authority of the federal government to regulate.” Yet, in the past, as now, the Federal Government continues to take what it wants, expecting the states to bow down in servitude.

March 26th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

Utah Governor Signs Health Care Freedom Act

by: Michael Boldin
hat tip: Tenth Amendment Center
March 25, 2010

Governor Gary Herbert has made Utah the third state to pass the “Health Care Freedom Act” into law. House Bill 67 (HB67) was introduced by Rep. Carl Wimmer and passed the House and Senate by votes of 53-20 and 22-7, respectively.

The bill “prohibits a state agency or department from implementing federal health care reform passed by the United States Congress after March 1, 2010, unless a state agency reports to the Legislature regarding costs and impact on state reform efforts.” It authorizes the state legislature to specifically approve or deny implementation of federal health care legislation.

In short, it requires the state “to opt out of federal reform when the state determines that opting out is in the best interest of the citizens of the state.”

Governor Otter of Idaho signed similar legislation last week, and issued the following statement:

“Congress and the White House are working out their scheme for pushing through a healthcare ‘reform’ bill that has more pages than the U.S. Constitution has words. I guarantee you that not a single member of the House or Senate has a complete understanding of that legislation any more than they understood all the implications of the USA PATRIOT Act back in 2001,” Governor Otter said. “What the Idaho Health Freedom Act says is that the citizens of our state won’t be subject to another federal mandate or turn over another part of their life to government control.”

Yesterday, Governor McDonnell signed the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act, which passed the legislature there last month.

More than 2 dozen other states are considering similar legislation or state constitutional amendments to do the same. Many legislators and governors are calling for a federal lawsuit to affirm the principles of the state laws. But some constitutional scholars, including famed legal theorist Randy Barnett, have indicated that decades of precedent from the supreme court makes such legal challenges difficult, at best.

March 25th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

Dates That Destroyed America

by Chuck Baldwin
Posted on Mar 24, 2010
hat tip: Chuck Baldwin Live


Passage of the so-called “health care reform” bill in the House of Representatives this past Sunday, March 21 (I won’t even address the inferred unconstitutionality of Congress doing business on the Lord’s Day. See Article. I. Section. 7. Paragraph. 2.) drove yet another stake into the heart of America. For all intents and purposes, it is the health of the United States that is in dire need of healing. In fact, the US has been on extended life-support for decades. With its condition being rendered critical, and absent major surgery, its days are numbered. The passage of this bill only serves to further weaken an already frail Constitution.

In fact, this one may prove to be the fatal blow. Lady Liberty may never recover.

The decision by Congress to socialize medicine in the US ranks among the most draconian, most egregious, most horrific actions ever taken by the central government in Washington, D.C. This bill rocks the principles of liberty and constitutional government to the core. It changes fundamental foundations; it repudiates historical principle. Oh! The same flag may fly on our flagpoles, the same monuments may grace our landscape, and the same National Anthem may be sung during our public ceremonies, but it is not the same America. The Congress of the United States has now officially turned America into a socialist state.

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the health care bill into law, and as such, this date–along with March 21–joins a list of dates that have each inflicted unconstitutional, socialistic, and sometimes even tyrannical action against the States United and have, therefore, contributed to the destruction of a free America.

March 24th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

Kill the Bill, Invoke the 10th

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
George Orwell.

by Brian Roberts
hat tip: Tenth Amendment Center
March 21, 2010

The federal government takeover of the health care industry and your loss of medical freedom only lacks a Presidential signature to become a federal law. We the people know that this cannot stand if America is to remain a free country. Keep your head up, it is time to invoke the 10th and kill this bill and the others soon to follow once and for all.

Lenin said:

“Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism” and “The goal of socialism is communism.”

Thomas Jefferson said:

“Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force”

Ignore Washington D.C.

They are ignoring you, return the favor. In his speech on Saturday, Obama referred to you as “astroturf”. In political terminology that insinuates that you were paid for your phone calls and someone picked up your travel expenses and bought your dinner for your troubles. That’s one way they ignore you. Another way they ignore you is to use an unscrupulous process to pass an unconstitutional health care bill that changes the foundation of your country overnight.

March 22nd, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity’s Most Dangerous Moments

By Chris Hedges

Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.

These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism.

We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that a fantasy.

March 19th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

The Growing Movement for Publicly-Owned Banks

by Ellen Brown
Hat tip: web of debt
March 18th, 2010

As the states’ credit crisis deepens, four states have initiated bills for state-owned banks, and candidates in seven states have now included that solution in their platforms.

“Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs.”

–Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero in the Detroit News, May 9, 2010

Struggling with 14% unemployment, Michigan has been particularly hard hit by the nation’s economic downturn. Virg Bernero, mayor of the state’s capitol and a leading Democratic candidate for governor, proposes that the state relieve its economic ills by opening a state-owned bank. He says the bank could protect consumers by making low-interest loans to those most in need, including students and small businesses; and could help community banks by buying mortgages off their books and working with them to fund development projects.

Bernero joins a growing list of candidates proposing this sensible solution to their states’ fiscal ills. Local economies have collapsed because of the Wall Street credit freeze. To reinvigorate local business, Main Street needs a heavy infusion of credit; and publicly-owned banks could fill that need.

March 19th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

Sunshine Week, Except in Hawaii

Originally published as: Hawaii considering law to ignore Obama ‘birthers’

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on health insurance reform in Strongsville, Ohio Reuters – President Barack Obama delivers remarks on health insurance reform at Walter F. Ehrnfelt Recreation and …

by Mark Niesse, Associated Press Writer
Wed Mar 17, 2010

HONOLULU – Birthers beware: Hawaii may start ignoring your repeated requests for proof that President Barack Obama was born here.

As the state continues to receive e-mails seeking Obama’s birth certificate, the state House Judiciary Committee heard a bill Tuesday permitting government officials to ignore people who won’t give up.

“Sometimes we may be dealing with a cohort of people who believe lack of evidence is evidence of a conspiracy,” said Lorrin Kim, chief of the Hawaii Department of Health’s Office of Planning, Policy and Program Development.

So-called “birthers” claim Obama is ineligible to be president because, they argue, he was actually born outside the United States, and therefore doesn’t meet a constitutional requirement for being president.

Hawaii Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued statements last year and in October 2008 saying that she’s seen vital records that prove Obama is a natural-born American citizen.

March 17th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

To Make Informed Decisions, Public Must Have Access

by Jack Greiner, Esquire
Hat tip: Sunshine Week
3/12/2010

As a young lawyer, I worked for a little while on some of the litigation that grew out of the collapse of Home State Savings Bank (and much of the rest of Ohio’s saving and loan industry) in the mid-1980s. That’s not much of a surprise, since virtually every firm in town was involved in one way or the other. But it was an exciting case to be part of. I remember learning so much from some of the best lawyers in town. And I still recall Marvin Warner’s criminal sentencing.

Warner had been the head of Home State, and by the time the dust settled, he was about as popular as Old Man Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Warner was convicted on a number of charges related to the debacle. When he came before Judge Robert Ruehlman for the announcement of his sentence, he got a taste of what the local folks thought of him. Among other pronouncements, Judge Ruehlman told Warner, who had owned a substantial horse farm, that “[w]hen I get through with you, the only horse you will be riding is one of those horses in front of the K-mart on the little merry-go-round.”

March 17th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »

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