The Oath...

 If you're reading this and are one of the millions of U.S. military veterans welcome to my blog. As veterans we have the distinct honor of being the sworn guardians of American liberty and protectors of our constitutional form of government. Our numbers make us mighty, we are a force to be reckoned with - in times of both war and peace!

What is a Veteran?

A "Veteran" - whether active duty or discharged is someone who at one point in life signed a blank check, one payable to the United States of America for an amount of up to and including loss of life. Such an act is among the most selfless one can commit, it demonstrates a moral compass which reads true, exceptional character, and strength and commitment of will.

American veterans enjoy a well earned and deserved reputation, we have won the enduring respect of a grateful nation for our service, dedication, and the sacrifices made for it. From the start America has had a proud tradition of patriotism and experience of shared sacrifice by those of all walks of life - but are those days now just fond memory, having become imagery without substance?

All is not well in America, as citizens we've slept too long - and whether one is citizen, soldier, or both we can't rest on our laurels any longer. We cannot afford to base our nations self worth and collective identity on deeds from the past. In contemporary America the burden is now divided unequally, in many cases it has fallen wholly on the less fortunate. While the average citizen fights for a place at an ever shrinking economic table our adversaries enrich and aggrandize themselves at our expense - they rip and tear at Americas flesh as wolves do at the carcasses of prey.

The Founding Fathers wrote the original blank check, in signing the Declaration of Independence they pledged all, up to and including their lives - knowing if they failed all was forfeit. Although the signers were among the most well known, wealthiest, priviledged, well educated, and important men of the land with their signatures they became the same as the least of men - they pledged their lives, honor, and fortune to the cause of Liberty. In doing so they established the greatest nation the world has ever known. With victory in hand and peace made these patriots then blessed us with the most remarkable political documents ever written, our Constitution and Bill of Rights, the establishing documents of this nation which have served us well through the years.

Since September 1789 the Oath has expressed the primary mission of those who receive it - the promise to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic and bear true faith and allegiance to the same" - by reciting it we pledge our all, the same as the Founders. But considering the comparison one sees stark difference, once at peace rather than abandoning their contract the Founders doubled down on their bet, recognizing the merit of union between the citizen and state.
They created the branches and offices of government and required similar contracts for the assumption of a constitutionally mandated office. Now it seems that Americas veterans forget their oath after service ends, the discharge documents I recieved express no release other than expiration of the contracted period of time and being subject to orders of those with constitutionally mandated authority. In my opinion this suggests that unless one has renounced claim to citizenship the central obligation of the oath remains in effect.


Given the current state of our nation unless we veterans quickly organize, recommit ourselves, and honor our obligation to the republic it will soon be lost and be forever irretrievable. We must ensure the Oath again becomes the guiding principle of those who seek or hold public office, rather than being what Americas political class have reduced it to - a quaint notion they pay lip service to and then ignore until the next time they need it as a campaign prop.

We've become complacent, we've allowed ourselves to be distracted from the ideas and principles which made America the envy of all others and greatest of all nations, we've quit asking the questions which really matter, those with real bearing on our national interest and future. We've allowed ourselves to be distracted and sidetracked by futile arguments and irresolvable issues. These issues are used to divide us, to waste time and energy, when we engage in futile debate we lose sight of the truly critical problems we face and short ourselves of the time needed to resolve them.


Is it any wonder that Washington D.C. is dysfunctional given politicians disregard for and dismissal of sworn duty?

How many military members have been dishonorably discharged, sent to prison, or executed for dereliction of duty?

Why are politicians who swear the same oath seemingly exempt from penalty for blatent dereliction of duty and treason?

How many of Americas politicians now holding office volunteered or served in the U.S. military?

How many of their children have chosen to serve at least one term of service?

If I recall correctly currently very few (if any) children of Americas political elite are serving - and is it any wonder given the deplorable role models America's politicians have shown themselves to be? At this point Americas children can see through the clouds of hypocrisy and smell the stench of corruption emanating from Washington, if an honest person turned over every rock in D.C. they would be hard pressed to find even one politician worthy of high office or emulation. We all know this to be true, we just don't want to admit it! Because then we would feel the need to do something about it.


We excuse ourselves by expressing internally that we don't have the time, the resources, the power or standing to take on and correct the problem, we tell ourselves we aren't strong enough to go head to head with the miscreants who occupy office or the parasites they provide access and cover to - but all the time we're thinking such thoughts we're lying to ourselves, and deep down we know it.

The actions and majority of "laws" written by Americas political class since September 11, 2001 point to a bleak future for America. Look at the difference only a few generations can make, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor Americans loudly proclaimed "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" - after 9/11 very few public figures were left standing for our traditional values and principles. After a few days those who had remained on their feet and held true were engulfed by the simple minded mantra that "9/11 changed everything" - they were quickly marginalized by those seeking to exploit our wounded nation and bend it to their will.

The gullible American public quickly bought into a dubious and widely disseminated narrative of events served with a side dish of inculcated fear, using these tactics we were quickly bent to the will of the usurpers. Unless we take quick, decisive, and appropriate counter measures those in office will continue to write and pass unconstitutional laws - acts that will reduce our republic to the lowest form of government, absolute despotism.


The clock is ticking...

Greetings from a Native Son of Oklahoma and member of the Occupy movement and the Tea Party.

The following will probably prove to be unpopular but I feel it must be said.

Why are Tea Party members supporting establishment Republican candidates?

Why have Tea Party members allowed Washington insiders to co-opt the Tea Party agenda and movement?

It is said that "the nature of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result." If this axiom is true why are we allowing ourselves to be led down the same road we've traveled since the 1980's?

Why do we continue to accept mere lip service rather than enjoying tangible results?

By allowing the things I've mentioned do we expect any substantial change in how Washington D.C. does business?

Isn't it time to get back to the roots of the Tea Party and reject the paid shills and candidates of the establishment?

Shouldn't we instead be seeking the common ground shared with the Occupy Movement, the goals of both are not antithetical to each other - they are in fact natural allies once a person looks past the false dichotomy of the Left VS. Right ideology with which we have been inculcated.

Are we not Americans, do we not have the capability to work with other Americans regardless of political ideology, wasn't it our tradition of working together in times past which allowed our greatness to shine for the whole world to see and be envious of?

It was not always like this folks, we have the capability to remake America, with the combined might of both movements we have the ability to return the Federal government to it's natural state, to once again make it fear us rather than the opposite.

We are not cattle to be driven, we are not subjects to be dictated to - we are Citizens and Freedom is our birthright, the creatures in Washington are not our masters, they are not better than us, they are our servants and it's time we reminded them of this fact. The narrative they preach is not of our making, it was created to divide us, control us, to make us weak and pliable. Their interests are no longer the common mans.

It's time we throw off the restraints which have been placed upon us since the founding of the Tea Party, we need to re energize ourselves and break away from those who wish to lead us astray or seek to buy us off, we need to join forces with Occupy, they are American brothers and sisters who while thinking differently seek truth, justice, and the American way, if only by a different route.

Our Founding Fathers once sat in a constitutional convention comprised of disparate and different people, those of conflicting political philosophy and religion, their example shows us the way forward, their willingness to put aside the petty and negligible differences of each for the sake of the whole is all we need and the true American narrative.

I hope what I've said will be well received by the reader, it was written with honest, heartfelt emotion, and it is my deepest desire to see this plan bear fruit, my hope is that the members of the two movements will put aside the inculcated ideology that strangles political discourse in this country, that we will seek to build bridges between our movements and find the common ground of which I've written.

It's time to put aside our petty differences and work together as one, rejecting all who seek to co opt these movements to their own ends, it's time for the natural leaders in our midst to step forward and move our combined mass forward, to espouse and execute a sound and sensible plan of action from which we will not be deterred.

We cannot allow any establishment politician or financier to gain a foothold in our organization, we must fund ourselves through a mechanism which protects the movement from the strangling regulations imposed by government and the IRS but still allows us to take political action, we must learn to use the power of the purse to the best of our ability.

We can do this if we try, we are all Americans and have throughout our nations history overcome all obstacles - this one is no more difficult than those previously faced.

We are Americans - if we do not stick together then we shall surely hang separately!

After an extended hiatus I've decided to reactivate this blog. Once the criminal G.W. Bush was hobbled I thought the war was over - I was wrong.














News from the Rabbit-Hole...
By: Jody Wenzel
2-15-2012

I was walking to the public library recently, as I turned a corner I saw our flag flying in the breeze, it was beautiful watching it wave, I thought of the beauty of America, our wide open blue skies, the amber waves of grain, our scenic countryside, and our majestic mountains.

I thought of the American people - a good people, a people which are kind, a people which welcome strangers, and a people which come together to help each other in times of need. I thought of the freedom for which the flag stands, the freedom to be who we want, speak what we wish, think what we want, do what we want, and worship (or not) however we choose.

Then the voice of Alice in Wonderland intruded...

Alice laughed: “There's no use trying,” she said; “one can't believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Welcome (back) to the Rabbit-Hole...

Reality came roaring back, the recognition that while those things were once true it's a new day in America, a day in which the Stars and Stripes no longer represents what is great and good about America, but instead stands for the tyranny of a corrupt, reptile minded political class, people which no longer respect the rule of law, or the standards and high ideals on which our Republic was founded. It stands for a nation that exports little more than dollars and death to the rest of the world, it has become the symbol of a war criminal, a rogue state, analogous of the flag which flew over Nazi Germany in the 30's and 40's, and also of the flag which flies over Apartheid Israel today. It's former glory stained with the shit of Americas corrupt political overlords and those who underwrite them.

But those which still believe in and venerate it also own a share of the guilt, I'm speaking of those who think this is still the country of their forefathers, free, blameless and beautiful. America hasn't been that in a long time.They are the blind, soothed and made stupid by propaganda, seduced by false doctrine inculcated by Americas captive media - outlets which disseminate the criminal classes false narrative. America has become a nation of weak and lost souls who've failed to hold onto the power and freedom that was won for them on the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the power to control their own destiny, the freedom to live as the founders envisioned and intended, the ideas they fought and died for in birthing our Republic abdicated by the current generation.

We live in a country where those of the political class are no longer afraid of its somnolent citizenry, a people lulled and sleeping, hypnotized by television and spoiled by plenty. This is the opposite of how America used to be, and was always supposed to work - those of the political class once feared the power of the American people. They realized that they served at our pleasure, they knew if citizens were displeased with their performance they would soon be replaced with able men, true patriots who had America and its peoples best interests in mind.

Now, thanks to the absurd and incomprehensible Citizens United verdict handed down by our corrupt Supreme Court the voice of the people - real, living, breathing human beings cannot be heard above the roar of corporate entities, lifeless but immortal and immoral constructs with nearly unlimited money which gives them the ability to influence the outcome of our elections, they ensure that regardless of which party wins an election their creatures will hold office, they own both parties.

Americas corrupt Supreme Court gave corporations the right to spend as much money as they wanted on elections through political action committees with no disclosure or accountability of any sort - the nations highest court made the decision that Corporations were “persons” with a right to “free speech.” Where is the citizens right to free speech? It is drowned out by the bullhorns and big budgets of the international corporations which hold our politicians and the American people hostage.

On January 20th, 2012 the protest group "Occupy the Courts" gathered at court houses all over the United States and at the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. This was the first anniversary of the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court which removed all accountability for corporate funding of political campaigns - Americas complicit, corporate media didn't say a word, it was as if nothing had happened, there was no coverage of it to speak of.

America slept on, swaddled in its ignorance...

There is one issue that Americas corporate media reports on regularly, the obesity epidemic and the side effects such as diabetes, but even though they speak of it they fail to address the root cause. They divert our attention from the poisoning of Americas food supply by Genetically Modified Organisms. These unholy things are produced mainly by Monsanto, the most evil corporation in the world, one which has patented the genome of most food crops grown and consumed by man and his livestock. The seeds they have created produce plants which are sterile and unable to produce viable seeds for the next generation, this forces the farmer to buy new seed every year and lays the groundwork for possible famine.

The Monsanto crops have also been engineered with Round Up Ready genes, while growing the plants absorb and integrate this poison, meaning that when tested the results show that most Americans are excreting high levels of this poison in their urine.

Farmers who try to produce non-GMO Heirloom crops find their fields pollinated and contaminated by wind borne GMO sources, contamination which Monsanto then uses as evidence to sue farmers for patent infringement, when these farmers are able to produce an uncontaminated crop they are increasingly unable to find a contractor to clean the seed for the next years crop thanks to Monsanto litigation against those with the machinery to do so.

There is also legislation in Congress (Senate Bill S 510 - Food Safety Modernization Act) that would criminalize citizens who attempt to grow their own food - imagine yourself or your neighbor being taken away by the police and thrown in jail, gardens destroyed and the people imprisoned for trying to grow safe, non toxic, and nutritious food for their families.

America sleeps on, stomachs stuffed full of toxic GMO food, their bodies contaminated by Round Up...

Then we come to the destruction of the U.S Constitution and Bill of Rights, since 2001 this has been a high priority for the traitors in the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch. Both George Walker Bush and Barack Hussein Obama are equally guilty of High Treason against the United States, both have requested and signed unconstitutional laws such as the Patriot Act and the NDAA, the former making the Fourth Amendment nonviable, the latter usurps the 5th Amendment provision of due process, essentially allowing for the detainment of American citizens without charge or public trial.

Amidst the political fallout of this legislation the New World Order lackey Obama included a signing statement when he approved the bill stating to the effect that he would only use his newly appointed powers to detain foreign nationals, not Americans - signing statements by the President are absolutely meaningless, once signed the NDAA became the law of the land, Presidents cannot dictate, or pick and choose which laws they will enforce.

The latest constitutionally criminal act is authored by Representative Charles Dent (R-Insane), Senator Joe Lieberman (Z-Asshole) and Senator Scott Brown (R-Traitor) They seek to introduce a small but powerful amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act that outlines a “list of acts for which U.S. nationals would lose their nationality.” This abomination will soon come up for a vote and after being passed will end up on Obama's desk for signature. This crime against the Constitution will give the U.S. government the ability to strip Americans of citizenship, making them effectively "a stateless person" - just like the Nazis did to the Jews, setting them up for inhumane treatment at the hands of the monsters of the Third Reich.

Still America sleeps on, apathetic, uncaring, and too stupefied to see what is being done to them...

I weep for what we have become - how do we find our way back to what the Founding Fathers envisioned? Americas only hope is that its citizens wake up and take action to reverse our decline, I strongly urge the reader to start talking about these issues with friends, family, co-workers, and anyone else who will listen. Don't take my word for it, investigate the issues I've spoken of, verify they are real for yourself - part of Americas problem is peoples ignorance and willingness to believe what they are told, this is the mark of a lazy mind. Once you've investigated and determined the truth for yourself make copies of what you've found and then go join mass movement groups such as the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street - join both of them, build bridges between them, the goals of these groups are not incompatible, they are in fact natural allies once you get past the false Left/Right dichotomy.

Pass on what you have learned to members of these groups, make some noise, work to recapture the leadership of these movements from those who have co opted them, the Sarah Palin's, Michelle Bachman's, Michael Moore's, George Soros, and Rick Perry's of this world - they are corrupt and the enemy of Liberty, if left to their own devices they can and will marginalize these movements.

Will you continue to sleep America, or will you be like the Queen of Wonderland - dreaming of the impossible instead of working toward and reaching for what is? The power to restore America is in our hands, will we be found wanting?

I sincerely hope not...

The author is a native son, a citizen of Oklahoma, a patriot, and a proud veteran of the U.S. Army Military Police Corps.

Defeating the Bill of Rights















Bush's Lone Victory

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

George Orwell warned us, but what American would have expected that in the opening years of the 21st century the United States would become a country in which lies and deception by the President and Vice President were the basis for a foreign policy of war and aggression, and in which indefinite detention without charges, torture, and spying on citizens without warrants have displaced the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution?

If anyone had predicted that the election of George W. Bush to the presidency would result in an American police state and illegal wars of aggression, he would have been dismissed as a lunatic.

What American ever would have thought that any US president and attorney general would defend torture or that a Republican Congress would pass a bill legalizing torture by the executive branch and exempting the executive branch from the Geneva Conventions?

What American ever would have expected the US Congress to accept the president's claim that he is above the law?

What American could have imagined that if such crimes and travesties occurred, nothing would be done about them and that the media and opposition party would be largely silent?

Except for a few columnists, who are denounced by "conservatives" as traitors for defending the Bill of Rights, the defense of US civil liberty has been limited to the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. The few federal judges who have refused to genuflect before the Bush police state are denounced by attorney general Alberto Gonzales as a "grave threat" to US security. Vice president Richard Cheney called a federal judge's ruling against the Bush regime's illegal and unconstitutional warrantless surveillance program "an indefensible act of judicial overreaching."

Brainwashed "conservatives" are so accustomed to denouncing federal judges for "judicial activism" that Cheney's charge of overreach goes down smoothly. Vast percentages of the American public are simply unconcerned that their liberty can be revoked at the discretion of a police or military officer and that they can be held without evidence, trial or access to attorney and tortured until they confess to whatever charge their torturers wish to impose.

Americans believe that such things can only happen to "real terrorists," despite the overwhelming evidence that most of the Bush regime's detainees have no connections to terrorism.

When these points are made to fellow citizens, the reply is usually that "I'm doing nothing wrong. I have nothing to fear."

Why, then, did the Founding Fathers write the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

American liberties are the result of an 800 year struggle by the English people to make law a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of government. For centuries English speaking peoples have understood that governments cannot be trusted with unaccountable power. If the Founding Fathers believed it was necessary to tie down a very weak and limited central government with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, these protections are certainly more necessary now that our government has grown in size, scope and power beyond the imagination of the Founding Fathers.

But, alas, "law and order conservatives" have been brainwashed for decades that civil liberties are unnecessary interferences with the ability of police to protect us from criminals. Americans have forgot that we need protection from government more than we need protection from criminals. Once we cut down civil liberty so that police may better pursue criminals and terrorists, where do we stand when government turns on us?

This is the famous question asked by Sir Thomas More in the play, A Man for All Seasons. The answer is that we stand naked, unprotected by law. It is an act of the utmost ignorance and stupidity to assume that only criminals and terrorists will stand unprotected.

Americans should be roused to fury that attorney general Alberto Gonzales and vice president Cheney have condemned the defense of American civil liberty as "a grave threat to US security." This blatant use of an orchestrated and propagandistic fear to create a "national security" wedge against the Bill of Rights is an impeachable offense.

Mark my words, the future of civil liberty in the US depends on the impeachment and conviction of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

The Democrats & Civil Liberties
Will They Turn A Blind Eye To The
Destruction Of The Bill Of Rights?
By Paul Craig Roberts

Unless November's new blood improves the Democratic Party's civil liberties pedigree, the Democrats will have failed even before they are sworn in next January.

In its disregard for truth, public opinion, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, the US Constitution and statutory law, the Bush administration has been more of a regime than an administration. The Bush/Cheney executive branch has operated independently of all the constraints that provide accountability and prevent despotism.

The Bush regime was able to evade these restraints, because Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and because Republicans wielded 9/11 as a weapon to forestall political opposition.

With signing statements and other unilateral declarations of presidential authority, the Bush regime asserted executive branch powers beyond the reach of Congress and the judiciary.

The Bush regime was a coup d'etat against the Bill of Rights and the jurisdictions of Congress and the courts. Unless Democrats roll back this coup, Americans have seen the last of their civil liberties.

Judging by Democrats' statements in the flush of their electoral victory, Democrats have little, if any, awareness of this critical fact. Democrats are anxious to get on with their agendas and have shown no recognition that the first order of business is to repeal the legislation that permits torture, warrantless detention and domestic spying.

If Bush threatens to veto the resurrection of US civil liberty, the Democrats can impeach Bush as a tyrant as well as for pushing America into an illegal and catastrophic war on the basis of lies and deception.

Bush is the most impeachable president in American history. However, the incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has declared impeachment to be "off the table." Obviously, this means that Bush will not be held accountable and that the Bill of Rights is a casualty of the vague, undefined, and propagandistic "war on terror."

Do Pelosi and the incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have the intellect and character to deliver the leadership required for Americans to remain a free people? Instead of bemoaning the damage Bush has done to civil liberty, Democrats are up in arms over one child in five being raised in poverty. The more important question is whether children are being raised as a free people protected by civil liberties from arbitrary government power.

Do Democrats share the delusion of Bush supporters that it is only Middle Eastern terrorists who are deprived of the protection of the US Constitution? One can understand the reluctance of Americans to extend constitutional protection to terrorists who are trying to kill Americans. However, without these protections, there is no way of ascertaining who is a terrorist.

Currently, a "terrorist" is anyone given that designation by any of a large number of unaccountable government officials and military officers. No evidence has to be provided in order to detain a designated suspect. Moreover, designated suspects can be convicted in military tribunals on the basis of secret evidence not made available to them or to any legal representation that they might be able to secure. In other words, you are guilty if charged.

As the case of US citizen Jose Padilla makes clear, these gestapo police state proceedings apply to Americans. Padilla was declared to be an "enemy combatant." He was held in a US prison for three and one-half years with no charges and no warrant. He was kept in isolated confinement, tortured, and denied legal representation.

In order to avoid US Supreme Court jurisdiction over the case, the Bush regime filed charges after stealing three and one-half years of Padilla's life. However, the charges have no relationship to the Bush regime's original allegations that Padilla, an Hispanic-American, was an al Qaeda operative who was going to set off a radioactive dirty bomb in an American city. The US government no longer designates Padilla as an "enemy combatant." The dirty bomb charge has disappeared, and US Federal District Judge Marcia Cooke has criticized the government's indictment as vague with sketchy evidence "weak on facts."

The reason that the Bush regime wants to detain people indefinitely without evidence is that it has no evidence. The reason the Bush regime passed torture legislation is in order to produce the missing evidence by torturing a suspect into self-incrimination. "Evidence" procured by torture has been illegal in civilized societies for centuries. But the Bush regime has resurrected the medieval rack and substituted it for the Bill of Rights.

If Democrats cannot bring themselves to rectify the inhumane and barbaric practices that now pass for US justice, then they, too, have failed the American people.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolutin (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholar journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.

Joe Weaselman

Lieberman - Stooge of Israel retains seat.

























I'm sure AIPAC is pleased, myself and others are not - way to go Connecticut.

Idiots...and another raspberry goes out to Doug Thompson for (again) deleting commentary on his website.

Why is rational discussion about American/Israeli relations forbidden in our country?

Like Cornered Rats...
















GOP Losers More Dangerous Than Ever


RALL 11/7/06



NEW YORK--"My fellow Americans," assured incoming president Gerald Ford hours after the Watergate scandals forced Richard Nixon to resign, "our long national nightmare is over."

I'm tempted, in the aftermath of the widest and most stunning electoral repudiation of Republicanism since Watergate, to mark the Democratic recapture of governorships, the House of Representatives (and probably the Senate) as the beginning of the end of Bush's fascism lite, and thus a long overdue vindication of what I've been saying about him since his December 2000 coup d'état.

Back in 2001 and 2002, state-controlled media called me radical. Now, with most Americans seeing things my way, I'm mainstream. Yet I'm more scared now.

"Iraq," I wrote a week before the 2003 invasion, "will probably be Bush's Waterloo." And so it has been: Exit polls found voters more motivated by opposition to the war than any other issue. "There was general revulsion in the country, particularly among Democrats and independents, against the conduct of the war in Iraq," said pollster John Zogby. "This was, at the grass roots, a referendum against the war and the president. For Republicans, there was significant disappointment about opportunities lost through enormous budget deficits, threats to civil liberties, a failed social agenda, and the war." Although Democrats failed to nationalize the election, Iraq succeeded: a pitiful seven percent of respondents to the latest Gallup survey still want to "stay the course."

A White House controlled by an unpopular, highly partisan lame duck, a rival party majority without enough votes in Congress to override his veto, and the early start of a highly anticipated 2008 presidential campaign add up to one likely result: gridlock. Bush's legislative and military agendas are dead. But our long national nightmare has just begun.

A Frightening New Security State

We'll be cleaning up Bush's mess long after his scheduled abdication on January 20, 2009. But the trillions of dollars in national debt he has run up and his two losing wars will drain our economy for decades to come. We've provoked a new generation of terrorists. Yet even more damaging and nearly impossible to unravel will be the threats to Americans posed by the neofascist national security apparatus the Bushists will leave behind--unless they use it to remain in power.

Shortly after 9/11 Bush began the first of a long series of power grabs that have transformed him from the leader of a country beholden to its people to an authoritarian despot. He signed a secret executive order granting himself the right to declare anyone in the world, including a U.S. citizen, an "enemy combatant"--without proof--and order him assassinated. Violating federal law and privacy rights, Bush authorized the NSA to listen to our phone calls and read our e-mail. FBI, CIA and HomeSec goons "disappeared" thousands of people into a horrible new matrix of concentration camps and secret prisons.

On October 17, 2006 Bush signed the Military Commissions Act. The new law, scarcely mentioned in the media, is breathtaking for the breadth of its attack on basic rights. Under the MCA either the president or the secretary of defense may declare you an "enemy combatant"--as usual, without proof. Under that designation you may be jailed, without the right to an attorney, for the rest of your life. You can even be tortured. Your U.S. citizenship can't protect you. And it's all "legal."

Concentration Camps

In January 2006 HomeSec awarded a $385 million contract to Kellogg, Brown and Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton Co., to build "temporary detention and processing capabilities"--internment camps--"in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

The question, asks Progressive magazine editor Ruth Conniff, "is what is the government planning to do with mass roundups of people?" After all, Bush and other Republican leaders have spent five years calling Democrats and others who disagree with them traitors and terrorists. Following so much hateful rhetoric, you can't blame liberals for wondering whether they too are about to be declared "enemy combatants." They're not paranoid; they're just paying attention.

And Now, Martial Law

About a week ago some left-wing bloggers began circulating rumors that Bush had secretly signed something called the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" that "allows the president to declare a 'public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to 'suppress public disorder.'" I couldn't find the text of the law at the time, formerly H.R. 5122, or a reliable media account, so I decided not to report on it.

I can now confirm the bloggers' account. Bush signed the JWDAA hours after the MCA, in a furtive closed-door White House ceremony. There is, buried deep down in Title V, Subtitle B, Part II, Section 525(a) of the JWDAA, a coup. The Bush Administration has quietly stolen the National Guard away from the states.

Here's the relevant section of Public Law 109-364:

"The [military] Secretary [of the Army, Navy or Air Force] concerned may order a member of a reserve component under the Secretary's jurisdiction to active duty...The training or duty ordered to be performed...may include...support of operations or missions undertaken by the member's unit at the request of the President or Secretary of Defense."

The National Guard, used to maintain order during natural disasters and civil disturbances and the sole vehicle available under U.S. law to enforce a declaration of martial law, has previously been controlled by state governors. They have now been stripped of that control. Thanks to the JWDAA, Bush or Rumsfeld can now deploy National Guardsmen in American cities without obtaining permission from state governors.

Section 526 of the Warner Act goes further still. It states that the "Governor of a State...with the consent of the [military] Secretary concerned, may order a member of the National Guard to perform Active Guard and Reserve duty..." The key word is "may." A governor can no longer deploy the Guard in his or her state without first getting Rumsfeld's permission.

Patrick Leahy (D-VT) sounded the alarm during senatorial debate, but U.S. state-controlled media ignored him. The Warner Act, he said, "includes language that subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law...We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the states, when we make it easier for the president to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."

Only one governor, Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, made a fuss over the Warner Act. A spokesman for the National Governors Association requested a wimpy "clarification" concerning what circumstances might prompt Bush to impose martial law. As far as I can determine this column marks the first time the JWDAA has been mentioned in the mainstream media.

Now the dark men who engineered America's post-9/11 police state have watched the public reject their policies. The incoming Democratic majority Congress will be able to hold hearings and launch investigations that could lead to their indictments and removal from office. John Dingell, the liberal incoming chairman of the Commerce Committee did nothing to dissuade GOP fears of "a blizzard of subpoenas": "As the Lord High Executioner said in 'The Mikado,'" Dingell recently joked, "I have a little list."

A year of crisis commences.

As ugly secrets surface, Bushists will turn desperate. Democracy has failed their grand schemes; token resignations like Rumsfeld's come too little, too late. Only tyranny can save their skins. Will the beleaguered neocons led by Cheney and Bush, cornered like rats, unleash their brand-new police state on their political opponents? Or will they tough it out and suck up the fines and prison sentences to come? The next year or two could go either way.

The nightmare is not over.