Patriot Act – Eight Years Later

Posted By aaron On February 4, 2010 @ 3:51 pm In War on Terror | 4 Comments

William Fisher
t r u t h o u t
February 4, 2010

After 2009 – a year when federal prosecutors charged more suspects with terrorism than in any year since the attacks of September 11, 2001 – and in today’s atmosphere of heightened fear triggered by the aborted plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, Congress will begin again this month to consider reauthorization of key parts of the USA Patriot Act.

The act was passed by a frightened Congress, with very little debate, just 45 days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the hijacked airliner that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Only one US senator – Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin – voted against the legislation.

Three sections of the Act were due to “sunset” – expire, unless reauthorized – on December 31 of last year. Congress must amend those sections that have been found unconstitutional or have been abused to collect information on innocent people. The House of Representatives passed legislation, but the Senate Judiciary Committee was unable to agree on language and voted to temporarily extend consideration until next month.

Reconsideration of the contentious law comes at a time of record federal terrorism prosecutions in 2009. According to The Associated Press, federal prosecutors charged more suspects with terrorism in 2009 than in any year since the attacks of September 11, 2001, providing evidence of what experts call a rise in plots spurred by Internet recruitment, the spread of al-Qaida overseas and ever-shifting tactics of terror chiefs.

A review of major national security cases by The Associated Press found 54 defendants had federal terrorism-related charges filed or unsealed against them in the past 12 months. The Justice Department confirmed that 2009 had more defendants charged with terrorism than any year since the 2001 attacks.

The quick pace of cases continued until the end of the year, with an attempted Christmas bombing aboard a Detroit-bound airliner. In that plot, a Nigerian student, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, boarded a Detroit-bound airliner, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with 289 people aboard, in Amsterdam. Explosives were later found sewn into his underwear. A fire broke out in the plane during an attempt to ignite the explosives. Passengers and cabin crew extinguished the blaze and subdued the would-be bomber, who was taken into custody when the plane landed safely in Detroit.

Reauthorization has also put the White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee on a collision course with powerful liberal lawmakers in the House of Representatives. The Obama administration announced it was willing to consider “modifications” to the Patriot Act, “provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities.”

With the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans – and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois – the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the USA PATRIOT Act Extension Act of 2009, a bill that critics say falls far short of restoring the necessary civil liberties protections lacking in the original Patriot Act. The bill, passed by the committee after two sessions of debate, makes only minor changes to the Patriot Act and was further watered down by amendments adopted during markup. The Senate body temporarily postponed reconsideration until next month.

Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee passed much stronger legislation. A Conference Committee will have to reconcile House and Senate versions. Negotiations over legislative language continue.

Congress first revisited expiring provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act in 2005. After months of debate and negotiations, legislation to authorize certain provisions in the Act was signed into law in March 2006. The 2006 reauthorization included another sunset provision for three surveillance tools, which were set to expire on December 31, 2009.

Here are the sections Congress will be considering:

The John Doe Roving Wiretap Provision.

Section 206 amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) so that a wiretap order issued by the secret FISA court no longer has to specify what type of communications the order applies to. This allows investigators to engage in “roving” surveillance, using a single wiretap order to listen in on any phone line or monitor any Internet account that a suspect may be using – whether or not other people who are not suspects also regularly use it.

Section 215 or the “Library Records” Provision.

Section 215 allows the FBI secretly to order anyone to turn over business records or any other “tangible things,” so long as the FBI tells the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court that the information sought is “for an authorized investigation … to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” These demands for records come with a “gag order” prohibiting the recipient from telling anyone, ever, that they received a Section 215 order.

The “Lone Wolf” Provision.

This provision amends FISA’s definition of “agent of a foreign power” to include any person, other than a US person, who “engages in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefore.” Previously, that definition required a nexus to a foreign power or entity, such as a foreign government or an international terrorist organization. The expanded definition allows the government to use FISA for surveillance of a non-US person who has no known ties to a group or entity. Congress passed this “lone wolf” provision because it was concerned that the previous FISA definitions did not cover unaffiliated individuals – or those for whom no affiliation can be established – who nonetheless engage in or are preparing to engage in international terrorism.

This past summer, Congress passed a law to permit the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of US residents’ international telephone calls and e-mails. Civil libertarians say this too must be amended to provide meaningful privacy protections and judicial oversight of the government’s intrusive surveillance power.

In addition, civil liberties advocates have been pushing Congress to revisit two other antiterror laws they say have had an adverse effect on constitutional protections.

These are:

Material Support of Terrorism.

This provision criminalizes providing “material support” to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since September 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations. Federal courts have struck portions of the statute as unconstitutional and a number of cases have been dismissed or ended in mistrial. Since 1996, five years before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it has been a crime to provide “material support or resources” to any group designated by US officials as a “foreign terrorist organization.” There have been a number of Justice Department prosecutions under this law. Congress revised it somewhat in 2004, three years after the attacks.

Numerous legal scholars have spoken out in opposition to aspects of the material support regimen. One of them, the Georgetown Law Center’s David Cole, a widely respected constitutional scholar, charges that “With our return to a ‘preventive paradigm’ of preemptively weeding out threats to national security, guilt by association has been resurrected from the McCarthy era. While it was illegal in the 1950’s to be a member of the Communist Party, it is now a crime to support an individual or organization on a terror watch list, although the government can designate and freeze assets without a showing of actual ties to terrorism or illegal acts.”

Cole asserts that support for the lawful activities of a designated group should not be unlawful, and that the not-for-profit sector needs to insist that constitutional rights apply in the war on terror. He is calling for changes in the enabling legislation when Congress returns from its August recess.

Cole also argues that “government is increasingly turning to public-private partnerships to reinforce and broaden the impact of its anti-terrorism policies.”

Cole said, “While the House Un-American Activities Committee once relied on the private sector to mete out punishment through the destruction of reputations and careers, today measures such as the Anti-Terrorist Financing Guidelines have turned funders into the new enforcers. In this light,” he said, “the nonprofit sector has an obligation to resist such a partnership with government.”

Like many of like mind, he has also been critical of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Although originally designed for embargoes, during the Clinton administration government started using it for anti-terrorist purposes, putting “embargoes” on political groups or individuals under suspicion. Again, Cole says, in the absence of a hearing or notification of charges, this is a violation of due process.

The “material support” statute has also had an adverse effect on immigration law. An immigrant cannot support any group that has threatened to use a weapon. Because this law is retroactive, even support for an organization such as the African National Congress that was legal at the time is an offense that could lead to deportation.

National Security Letters (NSLs).

The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people. Government reports confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these secret record demands go out each year. In response to an ACLU lawsuit (Doe v. Holder), the Second Circuit Court of Appeals struck down as unconstitutional the part of the NSL law that gives the FBI the power to prohibit NSL recipients from telling anyone that the government has secretly requested customer Internet records. They require no probable cause or judicial oversight. They also contain a gag order, preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing that the letter was ever issued. The gag order was ruled unconstitutional as an infringement of free speech, in the Doe v. Ashcroft case.

According to reporting in The Washington Post, the FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 US telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

E-mails obtained by The Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.

Reports from the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) revealed the government’s widespread misuse of NSLs and the authorities contained in Section 215, which allow the FBI to demand information about innocent people who are not the targets of any investigation.

The first two IG audits, covering NSLs and Section 215 orders issued from 2003 through 2005, were released in March 2007. They confirmed widespread FBI mismanagement, misuse and abuse of these Patriot Act authorities.

The NSL audit revealed that the FBI managed its use of NSLs so negligently that it literally did not know how many NSLs it had issued. As a result, the FBI seriously underreported its use of NSLs in its previous reports to Congress.

The IG also found that FBI agents repeatedly ignored or confused the requirements of the NSL authorizing statutes, and used NSLs to collect private information against individuals two or three times removed from the subjects of FBI investigations.

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In March 2008, the IG released a second pair of audit reports covering 2006 and evaluating the reforms implemented by the DOJ and the FBI after the first audits were released in 2007. The new reports identified many of the same problems discovered in the earlier audits.

The 2008 NSL report showed that the FBI issued 49,425 NSLs in 2006 (a 4.7 percent increase over 2005), and confirmed the FBI is increasingly using NSLs to gather information on US citizens (57 percent in 2006, up from 53 percent in 2005).

The 2008 IG audit also revealed that high-ranking FBI officials, including an assistant director, a deputy assistant director, two acting deputy directors and a special agent in charge, improperly issued 11 “blanket NSLs” in 2006 seeking data on 3,860 telephone numbers. None of these “blanket NSLs” complied with FBI policy and eight imposed unlawful non-disclosure requirements on recipients.

The report reveals a systemic, widespread abuse of power. The FBI’s authority to issue NSLs was widely expanded by the Patriot Act and it has been increasingly used to collect private information on American citizens without court approval.

It details the FBI’s use of exigent letters, or emergency letters, to gain Americans’ private phone records for investigations when no emergency existed and has significant and troubling redactions in portions dealing with those phone records. The report also details the bureau’s use of exigent letters to gain information on journalists in violation of the Attorney General Guidelines governing criminal and terrorism investigations. This audit follows two prior OIG reports on the FBI’s use of NSLs that found serious breaches of department regulations and multiple potential violations of the law.

“Given this report, there is absolutely no excuse for Congress not to reform the NSL authority during the current Patriot Act debate,” said Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.

“Without an outside check, FBI agents are able to demand and obtain sensitive information at will. This is the kind of abuse that is inevitable when we broaden the government’s surveillance power and don’t modernize privacy standards. It has become very clear that the FBI cannot police itself. Congress must step in to institute and conduct rigorous and frequent oversight of the agency’s use of NSLs and exigent letters.”

In 2004, the ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of an ISP that the FBI served with an NSL. Because the FBI imposed a gag order on the ISP, the lawsuit was filed under seal. Although the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in 2008 that the gag order provisions were unconstitutional, the “John Doe” NSL recipient in that case remains gagged.

“The Inspector General’s findings make crystal clear that the FBI engaged in a systemic abuse of power and those responsible must be held accountable,” said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “This report demonstrates the dangers of not only unchecked surveillance power, but also the FBI’s unchecked gag power. By preventing NSL recipients from speaking out against the FBI’s intrusive practices, the government was able to illegally demand the records of thousands of innocent Americans for years. The government must remove any unjustified and unnecessary gag orders from NSL recipients.”

The American Civil Liberties Union had endorsed the JUSTICE Act, an alternative bill that would heavily reform not only the Patriot Act but also other overly broad surveillance laws.

Amendments that were offered but failed by voice vote included an amendment by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) to curb the abuse of the overly broad National Security Letter (NSL) statute and another offered by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisconsin) to allow the “lone wolf” provision to expire (the never-used provision that targets individuals who are not connected to terrorist groups).

An amendment also failed that would make it more difficult for recipients to challenge the gag order that comes with receiving an NSL.

However, there were two amendments included in the final bill – both offered by Senator Feingold – that are victories for privacy: The Department of Justice would be ordered to discard any illegally obtained information received in response to an NSL and the government must notify suspects of “sneak and peek” searches within seven days instead of the thirty days currently outlined in the statute. “Sneak and peek” searches allow the government to search a home without notifying the resident immediately.

Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the ACLU Washington legislative office, probably spoke for most civil libertarians when he said, “We are disappointed that further changes were not made to ensure Americans’ civil liberties would be adequately protected by this Patriot Act legislation. This truly was a missed opportunity for the Senate Judiciary Committee to right the wrongs of the Patriot Act and stand up for Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. The meager improvements made during this markup will certainly be overshadowed by allowing so many horrible amendments to be added to an already weak bill. Congress cannot continue to make this mistake with the Patriot Act again and again. We urge the Senate to adopt amendments on the floor that will bring this bill in line with the Constitution.”

Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.

Nor have the White House and the Senate positions pleased the powerful House members who are proposing sweeping reforms to US surveillance law. In fact, they appear to be on a collision course.

Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, proposes limiting government’s Patriot Act spy powers.

Lawmakers are taking the expiration as an opportunity to revisit a number of surveillance provisions, including elements of the Patriot Act that aren’t set to expire, including a 2008 law that granted legal immunity to phone companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

The proposals by Conyers and Democrats Jerrold Nadler of New York and Bobby Scott of Virginia include a plan to alter the standard by which so-called National Security Letters are issued under the Patriot Act.

Under a provision that is not set to expire, NSLs allow the FBI, without a court order, to obtain telecommunication, financial and credit records relevant to a government investigation. The FBI issues about 50,000 NSLs annually, and an internal watchdog has found repeated abuses of the NSL powers.

The Conyers-Nadler-Scott package would restrict the government by only permitting NSLs in cases concerning terrorism or spy activities of an agent of a foreign power. If it became law, such a plan would vastly reduce the numbers of persons the government could target.

A virtually identical proposal by Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, failed to get out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 8 after lawmakers caved to FBI concerns that the changeover would jeopardize terror investigations.

Kevin Bankston, a privacy lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, applauded the latest NSL proposal.

“As currently written, NSLs can be used to obtain the records of somebody not suspected of a crime. It’s a suspicionless standard. Under the proposal, they must relate to an agent of a foreign power, of somebody working for a foreign government or foreign terror organization,” he said. “That ensures that there is a particularized suspicion rather than allowing them to go on a fishing expedition.”

Conyers, in a statement, said: “Over the past eight years, Americans grew tired of the same old scare tactics, designed to fool the public into believing that we needed to give up freedom to be safe from terrorism.”

Whether these and the other proposals would survive the House Judiciary Committee is unclear. No hearing date has been set. But the FBI and other counterterrorism agencies are expected to pressure committee members to follow the Senate’s path and not substantially alter Patriot Act spy powers.

Another of the Conyers’ measures would nullify 2008 Congressional legislation – which is not part of the Patriot Act – that immunized the nation’s telecommunication companies from lawsuits accusing them of siphoning Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued AT&T in a San Francisco federal court, which dismissed the case because of the immunity legislation, which President Barack Obama voted for as an Illinois senator.

A similar immunity bill by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) has not received consideration by a Senate committee.

The House proposal would also renew, but weaken, a Patriot Act “roving wiretap” provision expiring at year’s end. The law currently allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret court – known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court or FISA court – without having to identify the target or what method of communication is to be tapped. The Conyers proposal, while not requiring the government to disclose who is the target, requires the FBI to specify that a single person is being targeted.

The House proposal would also do away with the so-called “lone wolf” measure that expires at year’s end – that allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason – even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but that it wants to retain the authority to do so.

A Feingold measure to do away with the “lone wolf” concept was defeated two weeks ago by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Another proposal on the House table is similar to a measure the Senate Judiciary Committee sent to the full Senate two weeks ago.

It concerns one of the more controversial provisions of the Patriot Act – Section 215, the third and final expiring provision. The section allows the secret FISA court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of record, including those held by banks, libraries and doctors.

Neither the Senate nor the House require the government to show a connection between the items sought under a Section 215 warrant and a suspected terrorist or spy. But the Senate version and the latest House proposal require such a connection when it comes to library records.

In the House of Representatives, Democratic Congressmen John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler and Bobby Scott introduced the USA PATRIOT Amendments Act of 2009, which reforms a number of Patriot Act provisions. The bill reins in the government’s spying powers and would:

Protect the Privacy of Records.

H.R. 3845 amends the National Security Letter (NSL) authority so that the government can only access communications, financial and credit records when they pertain to a terror suspect or spy. Under the original Patriot Act, the government could collect the records of innocent people whenever it deems them “relevant” to an investigation – without any oversight by an impartial court.

The current standard is so low that independent audits found that Approximately 50,000 are issued every year and many are issued against people two or three times removed from an actual suspect.

Protect the Privacy of Communications.

The Conyers-Nadler-Scott bill amends the Patriot Act’s “roving John Doe” authority. That authority permits wiretap orders even without identifying either the person or the place to be tapped. The new bill would require the government to name either the person or the place.

Protect the Privacy of Homes and Businesses

The Patriot Act made it easier for the government to secretly conduct searches without giving prior notice by authorizing “sneak and peek” searches whenever notice would jeopardize an investigation. H.R. 3845 reins in this authority by removing this broad catchall, but permits government officials to continue secret searches in emergency or urgent circumstances.

Protect First Amendment Rights.

The USA PATRIOT Amendments Act requires that gag orders that come with National Security Letters or Section 215 orders meet traditional First Amendment standards. If a recipient of one of these requests wishes to speak out about the government’s actions, the burden will be on the government to convince a court that national security will be jeopardized if the recipient is not gagged.

The ACLU, always a major player on these types of issues, believes “The USA PATRIOT Amendments Act isn’t perfect.” It says the bill needs to be strengthened in two ways.

First, it should target terror prosecutions on those who intend to help terrorists. The bill should also amend the Patriot Act’s so-called “material support” provision, which permits the prosecution of those who work with or for charities that give humanitarian aid in good faith to war-torn countries. Congress should add a provision that would limit prosecution to those who actually intend to support terrorist-oriented actions.

Second, it should limit the government’s ability to obtain tangible evidence, even if it’s unrelated to a terrorist. The Patriot Act permits the government to get a secret warrant for “any tangible thing,” such as library or medical records, by showing only that the records are “relevant” to an investigation – a very easy standard to meet. The bill should require the government to show that the records relate to a suspected terrorist or spy to minimize the number of innocent people who are swept into terrorism investigations and government databases.

In counting major terrorism cases, the AP used a rigorous standard that produced a conservative count. The various charges that made the list include conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to murder people abroad and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

The ACLU’s recent report, “Reclaiming Patriotism,” says, “Congress should begin vigorous and comprehensive oversight hearings to examine all post-9/11 national security programs to evaluate their effectiveness and their impact on Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. This oversight is essential to the proper functioning of our constitutional system of government and becomes even more necessary during times of crisis.”

Mike German, an adviser to the ACLU on national security, immigration and privacy and a former FBI agent who resigned from the agency in protest of what he saw as continuing failures in the FBI counter-terrorism program, said, “The Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments and the Mukasey Attorney General Guidelines have vastly expanded the government’s authority to pry into Americans’ private lives, even without suspecting wrongdoing.”

German added, “The American people have the right to know how these powers are being used, and Congress has the duty to find out.”

The guidelines adopted by Bush-era Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008 loosened restrictions on the FBI to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion.

The ACLU charges that “More than seven years after its implementation, there is little evidence to demonstrate that the Patriot Act has made America more secure from terrorists. But there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violated the rights of innocent people and squandered precious security resources.”

According to Daphne Eviatar, senior associate in the Law and Security program of advocacy group Human Rights First, “Given that Congress has just punted on this, nothing has really been fixed. One of the major problems is that the FBI has been claiming in secret sessions with members of Congress that it needs these extraordinary powers to snoop on people who are not even suspected of being terrorists or assisting terrorism, in order to protect national security.”

But, she told Truthout, “It has never demonstrated publicly why it needs those authorities, which would seem to violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures as well as the right to reasonable privacy guaranteed by international law. The FBI has refused to provide information about how it’s used its Patriot Act authority so far, and what we’ve learned from recent IG reports does not inspire confidence.”

She added, “At least some senators, such as Russ Feingold, who have participated in these classified briefings, say the FBI’s justification doesn’t hold up – that it does not support the claim that the FBI needs the power to spy on people who are not even suspected of wrongdoing. (Or, as in the case of the roving wiretap provision, to spy on people that the agency can’t even specifically identify.)

“The FBI is essentially telling the public to ‘just trust us.’ But as the Inspector General reports reveal, the FBI has repeatedly broken the law and violated American citizens’ rights to privacy. That suggests that rather than continue to give the government these extraordinary powers to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans without a reasonable basis, Congress should allow the three provisions to expire and reopen debate on other problematic portions of the Patriot Act, such as the section concerning National Security Letters. Ultimately, Congress should not defer to every FBI request for extraordinary power and require the government to abide by the reasonable privacy protections that the US Constitution and international law provide,” Eviatar said.

Anther advocate, Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told Truthout, “The revelations in the latest Inspector General report of still further FBI abuses and lies regarding National Security Letter authorities under the Patriot Act add to the long list of previous abuses, confirming once again what has been known for centuries: power corrupts.”

He added, “As many of us predicted, the Patriot Act has been applied not just to terrorism cases but a wide range of domestic crimes ranging from credit card fraud to child pornography, an example of mission creep at odds with the justifications and representations made when the law was passed.

“At a minimum, provisions like the roving wiretap and business/library records provision should not be reauthorized without requiring individualized, fact-based suspicion, and provisions not used at all (like the “lone wolf” provision) should be removed. But similar protections should also be added to all other provisions of the law (including the National Security Letters provision). Keeping overbroad, ineffective provisions simply to seem politically responsive to fears of terrorism is counterproductive and damaging to both liberty and security,” Pitts said.

Research related links

1. Dem-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee extends PATRIOT Act provisions
2. Court sides with ACLU, strikes down Patriot Act gag provision
3. Obama Supports Extending Patriot Act
4. Obama Quietly Backs Patriot Act Provisions
5. Obama Recommends Congress ‘Renew’ Patriot Act Domestic ‘Surveillance Methods’
6. FBI Wants to Retain Unconstitutional Power Under Patriot Act
7. Under Obama, feds may still snoop library files
8. FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
9. Bailout is financial equivalent of the Patriot Act
10. Underwear Bomber False Flag to be Exploited to Renew Draconian Patriot Act
11. Law Professor: Counter Terrorism Czar Told Me There Is Going To Be An i-9/11 And An i-Patriot Act
12. RNC Protesters Charged as Terrorists Under Minnesota Patriot Act

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The struggle for average Americans to keep up is largely becoming an act of will power and force in this current grand recession. Now you wouldn’t think that there is a definite war raging against the middle class if you simply follow the mainstream media but the facts speak to a more distilled and corporatized method of debt slavery. Americans are working more hours trying to stay in the same place that they believe would keep them on pace to having the American Dream. And this dream is merely the ability to afford a home, provide your children with a good education (public or private), and save enough to have a retirement that doesn’t require you to eat cat food after a lifetime of working. That is at the root of what most average Americans would want after a full working career.

But we are at an inflexion point and the middle class is largely being squeezed out. A recent study from the Commerce Department shed some light on an issue that we already know. Over the past 20 years the middle class has been falling behind:

Everything is relative in this world. Incomes have gone up during this time but the cost of housing, healthcare, and access to education have outpaced income gains in some cases by four to one. Money is only worth what you can buy with it. The grand housing bubble of this decade lured many into buying homes that they simply could not afford. Banks and Wall Street were more than willing to provide access to this dream since they knew if all bets crashed, and they did, that they would call on their connected politicians to bail them out and send the bill to taxpayers for their adventures in finance. Take a look at the chart above closely. Housing price changes have wiped out any gains in income. The relative amount of income needed to buy a home has put many two income households on the brink of bankruptcy. And the 4 million foreclosure filings in 2009 alone tell us that many Americans are unable to hold onto one cornerstone of the American Dream.

The middle class is absolutely vital to having a sustainable and flourishing economy. The massive debt machine coming from the big banks has created a new form of debt servitude. Some would argue that this is a personal responsibility issue and I will be the first to agree with that. People should live within their means. But think of the FICO score that has become like a permanent financial report card. Some employers actually screen for credit scores before hiring applicants. Want to rent a home because you don’t want to over extend and buy a home? You better hope that FICO is up to par. And many insurance companies base their analysis on this score. So even if you never had a credit card or any debt, you would be in a bad spot because so many people rely on this number. This is only one example of how people are actually forced to use debt simply to pursue the avenues of the middle class.

In fact, we have many more people simply trying to stay afloat let alone pursuing the middle class ideal. Over 37 million Americans are now part of the food stamp program, not only is this the highest number ever but also the highest percentage of Americans ever to be on food assistance:

I sometimes read gut wrenching stories from the Great Depression where people would wash and reuse paper towels or have soup for weeks on end just to keep their families fed. 37 million Americans would be one step away from that existence if it weren’t for some basic safety nets. It is troubling to say the least that this patch is what is keeping this great recession from being a profound depression. Yet I think the 27 million underemployed Americans are already in that state of mind. The idea of a middle class life is slowly drifting away as each and every day we realize that our nation is becoming more of a corporatacracy.

The housing nightmare really played on both ends of this middle class dream. Banks were more than willing to lend trillions of dollars to people that really could not afford the homes they were buying. This created the biggest housing bubble the world has ever witnessed and the bursting ramifications are being felt throughout the economy. Yet if you look at the equation, who is really being punished? Average Americans are being punished as they have their homes foreclosed on. Yet banks who are in the supposed position of financial experts, have not only garnered trillions in bailouts but are now back to their speculative ways. This is disturbing because it is highlighting a marked shift and a near game over for the middle class.

Think of the rise of our economy in the 1940s and 1950s. Many returning GIs had access to affordable education through new programs and grants. It is the least you can offer to someone defending this country. Next, it was possible to support a family with one income because we had a strong and sustainable manufacturing base. Now, we have families with two incomes in the service sector trying to piece things together. Throw in a child, and that second income evaporates through childcare costs and educational fees. In other words, just because people have more income their buying power has collapsed.

And this fact is revealed in the data that two-income households are more of an economic necessity:

So of married couples with two children 76 percent have two earners. The average American is simply working to stay on track or face being thrown off the treadmill. Jobs are so important to keeping a solid middle class. This should be obvious but current policy being driven by the corporatacracy is simply focusing on keeping prices inflated for the big ticket items (i.e., housing and healthcare). At this point in the game, housing values have gone up to points that are clearly unsupportable:

This being the biggest budget item for most households, you would assume that lower prices would be welcomed from the government seeing that many Americans are underemployed and those with jobs have seen stagnant wages.

The middle class dream is at risk. This is a question of what we want out of our country. Are we simply obsessed on keeping home values inflated so banking giants could keep gaming accounting rules and claim billion dollar profits? If we want to prosper in the next decade, there will need to be a radical change to preserve what once was envied by the world. Otherwise, you can expect banks and their political allies to keep selling away the middle class of America. On the path we are traveling on the middle class is largely at risk for a big game over in the next decade.

In a move designed to send a message to parents, a Montgomery County, New York, couple were arrested and ticketed for homeschooling their children and failing to register their them with the school district.

News report on couple arrested for home-schooling.

“Richard Cressy, 47, and Margie Cressy, 41, both of the town of Glen, never registered their four children or their home-schooling curriculum with the local school district, said the Sheriff’s Office,” reports WRGB, a CBS affiliate in Albany, New York. “The Superintendent of the Fonda-Fultonville Central School District confirmed the four children, ranging in age from 8 to 14, had not been registered with the school district for the last seven years.”

The couple may lose custody of their children. The case has been turned over to the Montgomery County District Attorney and the Child Protective Unit.

On his radio show today, Alex Jones said the arrest and demand that parents turn their offspring over to the state is like a scene out of Planet of the Apes. In the cult classic, apes hunt humans and intern them in a slave gulag. Police and the CPS are acting like apes on the hunt. Jones pointed out that there is no law in New York criminalizing homeschooling and the arrest was predicated on a color of law regulation.

Local and state governments around the country have moved to criminalize homeschooling and force children to attend dangerous public schools. In 2008 in California, an appeals court ruled that parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children.

Germany’s mandatory education laws are based on Hitler’s ‘Reichsculpflicht Gesetz’ (federal compulsory attendance laws) which were passed in 1938.

Earlier this year, a German couple asked for asylum in the United States after the German government ruled that homeschooling their children was illegal. Uwe Romeike and his family moved to Tennessee after the state threatened to fine him and take away his children. Romeike, an evangelical Christian, objects to German school textbooks containing language and ideas that conflict with his family’s values.

Provisions in the California Education Code require “persons between the ages of six and eighteen” to be in “public full-time day school,” or a “private full-time day school” or “instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught.” The 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles argued that “keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where they could interact with people outside the family.” In other words, that court ruled that parents have no right to decide who their children interact with socially and that decision will be left to the state and bureaucrats.

The ruling dramatically affects more than 200,000 home schooled children in California.

The California educational system is notorious for its pro-homosexual curriculum. Children attending California government schools are taught explicitly to avoid “discriminatory attitudes and practices” toward homosexuals in accordance with state laws that fund revised curriculum and unspecified “tolerance” programs, writes Julie Foster.

In addition to “tolerance” programs, public education emphasizes sex eduction (teaching children how to be promiscuous) and suicide and death education.

A study conducted in 2002 revealed that public schools are infested with drugs. Half of all teens — and 60 percent of high school teens — report that drugs are used, kept, or sold at their schools. Students at these schools are three times more likely to smoke, drink, or use illicit drugs than students whose schools are substance-free, according to the study.

According to officials in New York and California, parents have no right to protect their children from drugs or shelter them from sexual and social brainwashing contrary to their values.

As noted by Michael Farris, chairman and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association, judges around the country are responding to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). “In the 2002 case of Beharry v. Reno, one federal court said that even though the convention was never ratified, it still has an impact on American law,” Farris explained on the LifeSiteNews website. “The fact that virtually every other nation in the world has adopted it has made it part of customary international law, and it means that it should be considered part of American jurisprudence.”

The CRC was adopted by the United Nations in 1989 but not ratified by Congress. If passed, it “would have a negative impact on domestic law and practice in the United States. Article VI of our Constitution makes treaties – and remember, conventions are viewed as treaties – ‘the supreme law of the land.’ The CRC would be treated as superior to laws in every state regarding the parent-child relationship. This would include issues regarding education, health care, family discipline, the child’s role in family decision-making, and a host of other subjects,” writes Michael Smith for The Washington Times.

Many believe under Obama the treaty will eventually be signed and legally binding for millions of parents in the United States.

Article 29 of the CRC limits the right of parents and others to educate children by requiring that all such schools support both the charter and principles of the United Nations and a list of specific values and ideals (for instance, the “principle” of world government, the demonstrably bogus climate change agenda, population reduction, in short the entire globalist program).

“Every conceivable sphere of human activity is being analyzed and then planned for so that it will come under the ultimate control of the United Nations. It is becoming a world legislature, world court, world department of education, world welfare agency, world planning center for industry, science and commerce, world finance agency, world police force, and world anything else anyone might want — or might not want,” wrote Ezra Taft Benson in An Enemy Hath Done This.

The Copenhagen summit on climate change revealed that the United Nations is a front organization for the global elite and its transparent humanist facade will be done away with after world government is established. The United Nations, by and large, is a debating club for leaders and dictators of impoverished third world nations.

Charlotte Iserbyt, who served as Senior Policy Adviser in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration, has documented how public education is designed to dumb down children and prepare them for “socialism,” that it is to say a world government dictated by an elite who are not “socialist” in the commonly held sense of the word. For the elite, socialism is the perfect control mechanism.

Charlotte Iserbyt describes the role of public education.

As the late Antony C. Sutton noted, socialism is the most inefficient way to run a society ever conceived by man. It has come to the United States only because it is very much in the interest of the global financial elite to obtain total control of society and the world.

“Only a dumbed down population, with no memory of America’s roots as a prideful nation, could be expected to willingly succumb to the global workforce training planned by the Carnegie Corporation and the John D. Rockefellers,” Iserbyt notes.

Iserbyt cites Rowan Gaither, who wrote that foundations, agencies, especially Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford use their “grant-making power to so alter life in the United States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union,” that is to say a global authoritarian government employing the ruse of socialism to control and manage billions of people.

Millions of people now understand the globalist agenda and are actively removing their children from the brainwashing and social conditioning – in addition to violence and drug addiction – factories known as public schools.

New York and California, operating under the color of law, are attempting in a feeble manner to intimidate home school parents. In order for the CRC and the globalist agenda to work, future generations must be reduced to non-thinking and irrational jellyfish capable of only following orders. The elite are in the process of organizing and formulating a huge planetary Borg Hive. The Endgame is eugenics and a massive culling of the herd. This can only be done if humanity is reduced to a condition of thoughtless slavery.

As Alex Jones said on his radio show today, government is a cult and they want to force you to join. In order to do this, they are turning our children into little Manchurian candidates.

27.04.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-american_capitalism-0

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin

The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor — and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be — That we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks — for His kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation — for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of His Providence which we experienced in the tranquility [sic], union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed — for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One [capital O] now lately instituted — for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions — to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually — to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed — to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn [sic] kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord — To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease [sic] of science among them and us — and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York
the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789
George Washington

“Net neutrality, as I see it, is the fairness doctrine for the Internet,” she said. The creators “fully understand what the Fairness Doctrine would be when it applies to TV or radio. What they do not want is the federal government policing how they deploy their content over the Internet and they want the ISPs to manage their networks and deploy the content however they have agreed on with ISP. They do not want a czar of the Internet to determine when they can deploy their creativity over the Internet. “They do not want a czar to determine what speeds will be available….We are watching the FCC very closely as it relates to that issue.”

When it comes to broadband expansion, she said, she wants to make sure “all individuals’ rights are respected and that we look at the freedom of all broadband participants.” She said Congress needs to make sure the groups receiving stimulus funds for broadband expansion are able to deploy reasonable and effective network management tools so they can be helpful in tracking down illegal activity.”

“We shouldn’t look at technology as how do we punish and impede, but how do we encourage innovation,” she said. “That needs to be a key thought as we move forward… How do we encourage that innovation and not impede it?”

Blackburn: Net neutrality is 'Fairness Doctrine for the Internet' By Kim Hart - 10/20/09 12:07 PM ET