Author: roseeriter

Republican Leadership Seeks To Ensconce Judicial Tyranny

By  Chuck Baldwin

April 26, 2005 Speaking to church groups around the country, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist tried to rally support for President Bush’s judicial nominees. In so doing, Frist promoted his intention to change Senate rules in order to prevent Democrats from using filibusters to delay Senate votes on presidential nominees. Several elements of this story are very disturbing.

First, it is now painfully obvious that the Republican Party considers evangelical churches mere partisan political pawns. Instead of receiving her message and mission from Christ and the Scriptures, many churches apparently now receive their marching orders from the Republican Party. Though I have never personally received such a letter, I have heard that many pastors regularly receive “suggested” sermons from Republican officials.

Can you imagine the Apostle Paul being told by Nero’s administration what to preach? Or, imagine Herod “suggesting” a sermon subject to John the Baptist!

That Republican officials even think that they can directly suggest or influence church teaching and practice reveals just how deeply many evangelicals have become mired in political partisanship. It would seem, therefore, that instead of being prophets for God, many pastors and churches have become lackeys for the state.

Second, I wonder how Senator Frist and his fellow Republicans would feel if it were a Democratic Senate Majority Leader who was attempting to deny Republican Senators from using their legal right to filibuster? Does Frist really believe that laws governing the behavior of legislators are only proper when applied to one political party? In other words, does he really believe that only Republicans have the right to filibuster, but Democrats do not?

Third, while Senator Frist seems to suggest that President Bush wants to appoint conservative justices to the federal bench, his stated comments on the role of the judiciary (and Congress) reveal just the opposite. For example, according to AP reports, Senator Frist said, “judges deserve ‘respect, not retaliation,’ no matter how they rule.”

In other words, Senator Frist believes that the judiciary has no accountability to anyone! According to Frist, the legislative and executive branches of government have constitutional checks and balances, but the judicial branch of government has none. In essence, Senator Frist is serving to ensconce judicial tyranny into American government.

Obviously, Senator Frist has not read the U.S. Constitution. If he had, he would know that Article III, Section 1, clearly gives Congress the power to hold Courts accountable. It states, “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.” Obviously, it is Congress that must determine what is and what is not “good Behavior.”

More Here

NEW YORK, April 18, 2005 — A secret FBI report, obtained by ABC News, identifies 22 domestic terror organizations as the current subjects of 338 active FBI field investigations.

The Aryan Nations, and other white supremacist groups, are cited in the report for hate crimes, fire bombings, threats via mail, as well as robberies and murders. The National Alliance, one of the largest neo-Nazi organizations in the world, is subject to 51 FBI investigations alone, according to the report.

In fact there are “ticking time bombs,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, “who have the capacity, skill and hatred to carry out acts worse that what Timothy McVeigh carried out 10 years ago.”

Levin, and other terrorism experts, say that the Internet has become the principal recruitment tool, attracting the loners and the disturbed who boast of finding viable U.S. targets.

“We are likely to see more terrorist attacks by lone wolves, or small cells,” Levin said, “They’re in their bedroom accessing bomb-making information on the Net, and accessing hateful rhetoric which empowers them.”

James P. Wickstrom, who calls himself the world chaplain of the Aryan Nation, uses “Death to the Jew” as a mantra of sorts. He also regularly calls for the deaths of government leaders, including the president.

“There is none of them in this Cabinet that damnably deserves to breathe the air in this country today,” Wickstrom said in a speech given at the Aryan Nations World Congress in Pennsylvania July 2002.

Federal officials say his calls to action are not unlike those of leader of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. Wickstrom has declared himself an enemy of the United States government.

“I tell you we do not need this Congress and legislative body,” he said in the same speech. “We don’t need these vile bastards telling us what to do on our property and with our water and with our children. We don’t need to tell them we have to wear a seat belt. We don’t need have to be told anything.”

More

“I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South, and they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality. And now we have black-robed men, and that’s what you’re talking about,” Dobson said in his conversation with Levin.

CLEMENTS: Evangelicals want to control judiciary

By Cynthia Hall Clements, The Lufkin Daily News

Sunday, April 17, 2005

The evangelical elite in this country seems to have taken the admonition from the book of Proverbs, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” a bit too personally.

In fact, they seem to think that they, and only they, impart godly knowledge to the rest of us — fellow believers, agnostics, and atheists alike — who refused to be co-opted into their strict world view and for that reason alone, we should fear them. They have the ear of the Almighty in Heaven, and they are His voice here on earth, or so they would want us to believe.

Some evangelicals wave the banner of Jesus Christ, chant His words over their subversive political tactics, and demand God’s blessings on their politics. They exploit faith to justify their oppressive political agenda, and in the process stifle religious freedoms and trample on civil liberties in this country. Somehow I do not think that the familiar hymn, the call-to-action of the Christian faith, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” means that true believers are to wage war on the culture in the political arena through the government.

Mark Levin’s book, “Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America,” would be easy to reject as yet another tirade in the battle against the alleged spiritual enemy of “judicial activism.”

Levin, in rank-and-file goosestep with other religious conservatives, condemns liberal judges run-amuck for destroying all things good and moral in this country. Terri Schiavo is dead, and “abortion on demand” is still legal. The courts are clearing the way for homosexuals to marry, but the Supreme Court recently ruled it unconstitutional to execute minors. Immigration, socialism, moral relativism, a whole host of other “-isms,” and even affirmative action make the list of the top 10 sins of Supreme Court justices on Levin’s tablets.

It is past time, centuries past, according to Levin, to unseat Supreme Court justices and other federal judges, especially those who refuse to kneel at the altar of religious extremism, carefully cloaked as “Christianity.” Force them to repent of their sins, all under the guise of demonstrating Christ’s love, of course. Levin questions the “high moral authority” that our country confers upon the Supreme Court.

Instituting term limits, amending the U.S. Constitution to erode the power of the judiciary, and conferring on Congress a “supermajority” two-thirds veto over all Supreme Court decisions are among Levin’s suggestions to make the courts accountable to the whim and will of the majority. On James Dobson’s radio program, Levin also railed against judicial nominations being “obstructed” by a “small cabal of radical left-wing Senators.” Strip them of their judicial independence, and the courts may bow to the latest public opinion poll.

It is not “mobarchy” or tyranny of the majority, Levin reassures his readers. Sure, I say. Works fine as long as you are in the majority, but wait and see what happens when you are in the minority. The view is not the same from the bleacher seats.

Levin states in his book about the High Court, “They’ve announced that morality alone is an insufficient basis for legislation.” Here is the really important question Levin fails to ask, “Whose definition of `morality?'” The answer to this question shows the hypocrisy of Levin and other right-wingers. After all, if these evangelicals approved of the decisions of the Supreme Court and other federal judges, “judicial activism” would be a friend not a foe, a means to the end of changing the culture.

LINK

RFID Invades the Capital-Mar. 07, 2005 PT

WASHINGTON — A new smartcard, the type privacy advocates fear because it combines biometric data with radio tags, will soon be one of the most common ID cards in Washington.

Department of Homeland Security workers in May will begin using the new ID card, called the  DAC  to gain access to secure areas, log on to government computers and even pay their Metro subway fares.

LINK

The DAC, which stands for Department of Homeland Security Access Card, will carry a digital copy of its bearer’s fingerprint and other personally identifiable information. It will use radio-frequency identification and Bluetooth technologies to communicate with reader devices at the department’s offices.

LINK

RFID Cards Get Spin Treatment

Conspiracy theorists and civil libertarians, fear not. The U.S. government will not use radio-frequency identification tags in the passports it issues to millions of Americans in the coming years.

Instead, the government will use “contactless chips.”

The distinction is part of an effort by the Department of Homeland Security and one of its RFID suppliers, Philips Semiconductors, to brand RFID tags in identification documents as “proximity chips,” “contactless chips” or “contactless integrated circuits” — anything but “RFID.”

The Homeland Security Department is playing word games to dodge the privacy debate raging over RFID tags, which will eventually replace bar-code labels on consumer goods, said privacy rights advocates this week.

An RFID tag is a microchip attached to an antenna, which transmits unique information to a reader device that can be anywhere from a few inches to several feet away. The technology, with its many names (“contactless chips” has been around for some time), is used in security access cards, E-ZPass automatic toll-paying devices and ski-lift tickets.

Computer scientists and data-encryption experts, the editors of an RFID industry journal — even the makers of the contactless chips themselves — all agree that the Homeland Security Department is using RFID technology.

But the Homeland Security Department is very carefully avoiding use of the term “RFID.” The department, along with Philips, is also backing a trade group that is branding ID documents with RFID tags as “contactless smartcards.”

“We’d prefer,” said Joseph Broghamer, Homeland Security’s director of authentication technologies, “that the terms ‘RFID,’ or even ‘RF,’ not be used at all (when referring to the RFID-tagged smartcards). Let’s get ‘RF’ out of it altogether.”

The Homeland Security Department this spring will begin issuing RFID-tagged employee ID cards (which include fingerprint records) to tens of thousands of its employees. Homeland Security’s employee ID card has “contactless” technology to speed workers’ access to secure areas, said Broghamer. He also wants to replace conventional reader devices, because their metal contacts break down after repeated use.

The department is also evaluating technology pitches from several RFID tag manufacturers, including Philips, for an RFID-tagged passport containing biometric data. The government’s plan will earn billions of dollars for the RFID suppliers while helping security officials track individuals more effectively by detecting their ID documents’ radio signals in airport terminals, or wherever reader devices are present.

The Homeland Security Department and Philips said they worry that the public will confuse the RFID tags in ID documents with those used by retailers, such as Wal-Mart, to track consumer goods. Contactless chips, said Broghamer, are more sophisticated than retail RFID tags, because they can carry more information and can better protect sensitive personal information.

But there is another problem with the “RFID” name: Many people associate the term with radio chips “that blab personal information indiscriminately” to any reader device, said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Privacy rights groups such as the EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union and CASPIAN have for years argued that RFID tags on consumer goods could be used to spy on individuals.

That is why Homeland Security is engaging in doublespeak, to dupe Americans into accepting RFID tags on their passports, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program.

“It’s a frightening, Orwellian use of the language,” said Steinhardt, referring to the “contactless” branding effort. Steinhardt called the RFID tags the Homeland Security Department is using, which have faster processors and more storage capacity than retail tags, “RFID on steroids.”

Government agents will use reader devices to track individuals wherever they use their RFID-tagged identification documents, Steinhardt and Tien said.

“They can call it a contactless chip,” said Tien, “but it is still RFID. And it shares virtually all of the same vulnerabilities.”

 More Here

Biometric chips will be capable of storing all the following information:

Travel records

LINK

Biometric Cell Phones Coming – But US Will Be Last

By Jack M. Germain
www.TechNewsWorld.com
Part of the ECT News Network
10/30/04 1:30 AM PT

Steve Mansfield, vice president of marketing with AuthenTec, estimates that new biometric features will be built into mobile phones in China during the first half of next year. These same features will hit the European market during the second half of 2005. “The U.S. will see those same features by the end of 2006,” he told TechNewsWorld.

LINK and
LINK

Esquire Poll Gives Bush Low Marks for Sex Appeal

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – He may be leader of the free world and Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” but a new international survey of women makes certain that President Bush is far from being the sexiest man alive.
In a recent online poll conducted by Esquire magazine, 11,000 women in 15 countries were asked to rate Bush’s sex appeal on a scale of one to 10, and America’s commander-in-chief failed to register much more than a two.

Women in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands were the harshest judges of George W.’s sexual allure, giving him an average rating of 1.4 each, Esquire said in its survey released earlier this week.

By contrast, Indonesian women were the most generous, giving Bush an average score of 2.2; American women found their president slightly less appealing, rating him a 2.1

LINK

Bushes Paid $207,307 In Federal Income Tax
Gross Earnings Reported at $784,219

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 16, 2005; Page A04

MENTOR, Ohio, April 15 — President Bush and first lady Laura Bush paid $207,307 in federal income taxes on taxable income of $672,788 in 2004, according to the tax return released Friday by the White House.

The Bushes listed the president’s $400,000 salary along with the investment income from trusts in which their assets are held, for an overall gross income of $784,219.

The couple, vocal advocates of volunteerism and the transforming power of targeted social service programs, reported contributing $77,785 to charitable organizations and churches in 2004. The recipients included St. John’s Church near the White House; Evergreen Chapel at Camp David; the Salvation Army World Service Office; the American Red Cross; AmeriCares, an international relief organization; and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which does breast cancer research.

The Bushes deducted $22,158 in property taxes they paid on their 1,600-acre Crawford, Tex., ranch. They also deducted $2,186 in sales taxes under a law enacted last year allowing Americans to write off either sales taxes or state income tax.

The Bushes’ tax bill was smaller than it was in 2003, when they reported paying $227,490 in taxes on an adjusted gross income of $822,126. In 2002, before the tax cuts the president proposed took effect, the Bushes paid $268,719 in taxes on income of $856,058.

Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne, reported paying $393,518 in taxes on earnings of $1,328,678 in 2004. During the course of 2004, the Cheneys paid $290,855 in taxes through withholding and estimated tax payments, and they paid another $102,663 when they filed their tax return yesterday, which was the tax-filing deadline.

The Cheneys’ income included the vice president’s $203,000 salary and $194,852 in deferred compensation from Halliburton Co., the Texas-based energy services firm and defense contractor that he headed until August 2000.

The Cheneys donated $303,354 to charity in 2004, primarily from royalties from publishing company Simon & Schuster on Lynne Cheney’s books, “America: A Patriotic Primer,” “A Is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Woman” and “When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots.”

The Cheneys also donated money earned from Halliburton stock options in accordance with an agreement they entered into before he took office in January 2001.

Bush used the occasion of Friday’s deadline for filing tax returns to promote making the tax cuts passed during his administration permanent. “Tax relief helps small businesses. If you’re interested in expanding jobs, one way to do so is to help small businesses,” Bush told five local small-business owners the White House invited to sit with the president around a table at the Yours Truly Restaurant here. He said that if Congress allows the tax cuts to expire, “your taxes are going to go up.”

Rest of article here

Voice of America to move part of news division to Hong Kong

Voice of America, the international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government, is shutting down the overnight shift of its central news division in Washington and replacing it with a new workforce in Hong Kong, which will be comprised partly of contractors.

News division employees were informed of the decision last Thursday and learned that overnight employees would take new jobs on the daytime and evening rotations, with a considerable decrease in salary, said Ted Iliff, the agency’s associate director for central programming.

Iliff, who oversees VOA’s news operations, said the move was prompted in part by budgetary concerns, and he bristled at the notion that the agency was “outsourcing” jobs to China, as the America Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents VOA, has charged.

“Outsourcing means a loss of jobs,” Iliff said. “Nobody [on the news staff] is losing a job.” He said the agency was eyeing a plan to hire 10 new reporters in Hong Kong, half of whom would be contractors and would receive no federal benefits. The remaining five would have the status of VOA employees, but would receive fewer benefits than full-time workers.

VOA could save at least $300,000 annually by moving the night shift to Hong Kong, where the agency has a news center, Iliff said. The transition also would place a contingent of reporters in an area of the world where VOA devotes significant news coverage now, Iliff added.

The move will likely prove unpopular with U.S.-based employees on the night shift and others in the VOA news division. The night shift is considered one of the toughest and least desirable slots, because of its unusual schedule, but employees are paid a bonus of approximately 10 percent of their regular salary, Iliff said.

VOA employees are reacting “with anger,” said one news division staffer, who asked not to be identified. Of the 10 employees who will now have to adjust to lower pay and different hours, the staffer said, “They feel like their world has been turned upside down.”

Iliff emphasized that the Hong Kong move would free up money for the agency to invest elsewhere, perhaps to beef up VOA’s online reporting and television broadcasting. And, he said, the move was motivated in part by the difficulty of filling slots on the overnight shift.

But the decision also has exposed the cantankerous relationship between VOA management and employees, some of whom suspect that officials want to scale back the agency’s English news operations in favor of other initiatives, the VOA staffer said.

“There’s a perception here, and it’s constantly being denied…that the present management at VOA is trying to do away with the English section,” the staffer said. “This really shows me that nothing is sacred.”

LINK

Most television viewers don’t know it, but a huge portion of what they watch on the local news programs aired by their favorite stations is not actually “news.” Rather, local television stations around the country have in recent years been taking “video news releases” from the federal government and major corporations – particularly the big pharmaceutical companies – and airing them as if they were news reports.

Video news releases (VNRs) are so common these days that they actually dominate some newscasts, blurring the lines between advertising and news more blatantly than product placements in movies do the lines between advertising and entertainment.

But, from now on, VNRs will be identified as productions of the corporations that developed them, rather than pawned off as part of the news.

LINK

A recent poll of teenagers who participate in the Junior Achievement program found that more than 11 percent are carrying credit cards, and some of them are as young as 13 or 14 years old. In addition, three out of 10 teenagers have checking accounts, and many are likely linked to automated teller machines with debit cards.

“We were a little surprised at the numbers,” said Darrell Luzzo, senior vice president for education at JA Worldwide, which is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo. “Having a credit card is not necessarily a terrible thing, so long as they’re being educated about the appropriate financial principles.”

But while 82 percent of the teen credit card users said they paid their bills in full every month, 18 percent said they carried balances over — a practice that has gotten a lot of their parents in trouble.

“That isn’t great,” Luzzo said. “After a little more education, we’d hope that 82 percent would rise.”

Financial experts are concerned about the growing use of credit cards by teens, although they generally must be co-signed by parents until a child is 18 or older.

“I personally think that 13 to 14 (years old) is too young,” said Laura Levine, executive director of the JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, a nonprofit educational group based in Washington, D.C. “It really depends on the individual kids. … Kids mature at different rates, so I don’t think there’s a single, magic age.”

The key, Levine said, is the involvement of parents in teaching children how to use both credit and debit cards — and in monitoring their children’s use of plastic.

More Here