Una noche sin dios ní perdón

10% of voters in San Antonio voted in municipal elections. Registered voters number less than half of total population. Sad indeed.

2007-05-14T17:17:00.000-07:00



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	Media Report Bexar County,Texas Amend,Joint,Genl,Spec,&Bond May 12,2007 Run Date:05/12/07 11:15 PM EARLY ELECTION TOTAL VOTES % VOTE DAY PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 624). . . . . 624 100.00 REGISTERED VOTERS - TOTAL . . . . . 853,790 BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL. . . . . . . 86,733 51,931 34,802 VOTER TURNOUT - TOTAL . . . . . . 10.16 State Amendment VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 622 OF 622 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 74,138 87.73 45,415 28,723 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 10,373 12.27 5,238 5,135 ESD #4 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 5 OF 5 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 684 78.53 372 312 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 187 21.47 121 66 ESD #8 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 4 OF 4 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 76 70.37 45 31 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 32 29.63 30 2 COSA, Mayor COSA MAYOR VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 527 OF 527 PRECINCTS COUNTED) R G Griffing . . . . . . . . . 1,524 2.20 908 616 Julie Iris Oldham. . . . . . . . 2,097 3.03 1,308 789 Patrick McCurdy . . . . . . . . 5,611 8.10 3,075 2,536 Michael Idrogo. . . . . . . . . 1,347 1.95 777 570 Phil Hardberger . . . . . . . . 53,553 77.34 32,885 20,668 Rhett R. Smith. . . . . . . . . 919 1.33 558 361 Eiginio Rodriguez. . . . . . . . 4,189 6.05 2,150 2,039 COSA Place 1 COSA SMD #1 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 51 OF 51 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Kat Swift . . . . . . . . . . 1,630 29.48 696 934 Mary Alice Cisneros . . . . . . . 3,454 62.46 1,674 1,780 R. Esmeralda Monreal de Mercado . . . 446 8.07 179 267 COSA Place 2 COSA SMD #2 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 77 OF 77 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Sheila D. McNeil . . . . . . . . 2,370 68.38 1,446 924 Keith A. Toney. . . . . . . . . 372 10.73 221 151 Ron Wright . . . . . . . . . . 724 20.89 376 348 COSA Place 3 COSA SMD #3 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 41 OF 41 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Roland Gutierrez . . . . . . . . 2,493 100.00 1,494 999 COSA Place 4 COSA SMD #4 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 40 OF 40 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Manuel Navarro, Jr. . . . . . . . 1,145 29.40 717 428 Philip Cortez . . . . . . . . . 2,749 70.60 1,540 1,209 COSA Place 5 COSA SMD #5 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 44 OF 44 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Gilbert Gallego . . . . . . . . 210 6.64 130 80 David Medina . . . . . . . . . 712 22.50 434 278 Raymond Zavala. . . . . . . . . 62 1.96 32 30 Don Wilkins Castillo. . . . . . . 45 1.42 22 23 Lourdes Galvan. . . . . . . . . 1,434 45.32 780 654 Ralph Gomez. . . . . . . . . . 701 22.16 369 332 COSA Place 6 COSA SMD #6 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 51 OF 51 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Delicia Herrera . . . . . . . . 3,768 73.48 2,534 1,234 Pete Galaviz . . . . . . . . . 1,360 26.52 935 425 COSA Place 7 COSA SMD #7 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 50 OF 50 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Justin Rodriguez . . . . . . . . 5,978 64.71 3,401 2,577 Elena K. Guajardo. . . . . . . . 3,260 35.29 1,928 1,332 COSA Place 8 COSA SMD #8 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 60 OF 60 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Gloria A. Sanchez. . . . . . . . 1,660 14.28 1,145 515 Diane Cibrian . . . . . . . . . 2,841 24.44 1,696 1,145 Bert Cecconi . . . . . . . . . 1,268 10.91 867 401 Morris A. Stribling . . . . . . . 2,218 19.08 1,419 799 Mario Obledo, Jr.. . . . . . . . 1,440 12.39 885 555 Jacob Dell . . . . . . . . . . 2,196 18.89 1,438 758 COSA Place 9 COSA SMD #9 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 63 OF 63 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Kevin Wolff. . . . . . . . . . 8,624 100.00 5,577 3,047 COSA Place 10 COSA SMD #10 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 50 OF 50 PRECINCTS COUNTED) John Clamp . . . . . . . . . . 6,605 72.33 4,007 2,598 Rey De Los Santos. . . . . . . . 2,527 27.67 1,419 1,108 COSA BOND 1 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 526 OF 526 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 53,437 75.99 32,427 21,010 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 16,880 24.01 9,866 7,014 COSA BOND 2 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 526 OF 526 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 54,003 77.81 32,649 21,354 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 15,403 22.19 9,066 6,337 COSA BOND 3 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 526 OF 526 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 48,057 68.57 28,580 19,477 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 22,025 31.43 13,524 8,501 COSA BOND 4 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 526 OF 526 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 51,790 74.02 31,047 20,743 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 18,173 25.98 11,014 7,159 COSA BOND 5 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 526 OF 526 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 52,815 74.99 31,587 21,228 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 17,616 25.01 10,729 6,887 Harlandale ISD, District 7 HARLANDALE SMD #7 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 6 OF 6 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Doroteo Ted Montelongo . . . . . . 173 45.41 74 99 Jesse "Jay" Alaniz . . . . . . . 208 54.59 120 88 Southside ISD - Position #1 SOUTHSIDE SMD VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 9 OF 9 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Isaac Griego . . . . . . . . . 374 45.11 233 141 Craig Knapp. . . . . . . . . . 455 54.89 275 180 Southside ISD - Position #2 SOUTHSIDE SMD VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 9 OF 9 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Tony E. Luna . . . . . . . . . 404 48.44 244 160 Rick Quebe . . . . . . . . . . 430 51.56 260 170 Northside ISD, Single-Member District 1 NORTHSIDE ISD SMD #1 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 20 OF 20 PRECINCTS COUNTED) George Lynn Britton, Jr. . . . . . 1,344 52.28 802 542 Reese Dorrycott . . . . . . . . 373 14.51 296 77 Rolando Garcia. . . . . . . . . 854 33.22 584 270 Northside ISD, Single-Member District 2 NORTHSIDE ISD SMD #2 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 14 OF 14 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Annie L. Holmes . . . . . . . . 1,980 100.00 1,450 530 Northside ISD, Single-Member District 3 NORTHSIDE ISD SMD #3 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 27 OF 27 PRECINCTS COUNTED) M'Lissa M. Chumbley . . . . . . . 2,820 100.00 1,706 1,114 Northside ISD, Single-Member District 4 NORTHSIDE ISD SMD #4 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 25 OF 25 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Bobby Blount . . . . . . . . . 2,236 76.84 1,547 689 Matt Ninan . . . . . . . . . . 674 23.16 423 251 Northside ISD NORTHSIDE ISD BOND VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 164 OF 164 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 19,969 68.81 13,373 6,596 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 9,050 31.19 5,760 3,290 North East ISD NORTH EAST ISD BOND VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 182 OF 182 PRECINCTS COUNTED) FOR (A FAVOR) . . . . . . . . . 17,713 63.40 10,525 7,188 AGAINST (EN CONTRA) . . . . . . . 10,226 36.60 6,281 3,945 Single Member District One JUDSON ISD SMD #1 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 16 OF 16 PRECINCTS COUNTED) June R. Adair . . . . . . . . . 766 55.11 450 316 Mike Nott . . . . . . . . . . 624 44.89 371 253 Single Member District Four JUDSON ISD SMD #4 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 14 OF 14 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Joan Ohnheiser. . . . . . . . . 254 69.02 131 123 Orlando J. Lopez . . . . . . . . 114 30.98 61 53 Bexar Met Water District 3 METROPOLITAN WATER DIST. # 3 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 16 OF 16 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Rick Carnrick . . . . . . . . . 541 42.87 312 229 Blanche Atkinson . . . . . . . . 589 46.67 400 189 Richard W. Zagrocki . . . . . . . 132 10.46 76 56 Bexar Met Water District 7 METROPOLITAN WATER DIST. # 7 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 16 OF 16 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Debra Eaton. . . . . . . . . . 379 49.74 217 162 Gwendolyn Fuller . . . . . . . . 75 9.84 46 29 James Fenimore. . . . . . . . . 193 25.33 96 97 August Jones . . . . . . . . . 30 3.94 17 13 George Garner . . . . . . . . . 85 11.15 62 23 Live Oak - PLACE 1 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 6 OF 6 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Christian "CJ" Diegel . . . . . . 325 38.46 231 94 Dorothy Scott . . . . . . . . . 217 25.68 138 79 Erin M. Easley. . . . . . . . . 303 35.86 176 127 Live Oak - PLACE 3 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 6 OF 6 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Emilio F. Serrano. . . . . . . . 559 65.08 362 197 Sonny-Peter E. Merrell . . . . . . 300 34.92 187 113 Live Oak - PLACE 5 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 6 OF 6 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Ed Cimics . . . . . . . . . . 204 22.90 132 72 Ann F. Mancillas . . . . . . . . 424 47.59 286 138 Loretta Kusek . . . . . . . . . 263 29.52 158 105 Councilperson, Place 1 HOLLYWOOD PARK VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 2 OF 2 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Bruce Graham . . . . . . . . . 490 100.00 309 181 Councilperson, Place 3 HOLLYWOOD PARK VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 2 OF 2 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Cherie Emick . . . . . . . . . 295 38.87 173 122 Ken Ballard. . . . . . . . . . 464 61.13 277 187 Councilperson, Place 5 HOLLYWOOD PARK VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 2 OF 2 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Bob Moore . . . . . . . . . . 398 54.52 240 158 David Achilles. . . . . . . . . 332 45.48 192 140 ALDERMAN SOMERSET VOTE FOR 3 (WITH 2 OF 2 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Beatrice S. Villarreal . . . . . . 73 16.90 37 36 Roger Gonzales. . . . . . . . . 74 17.13 37 37 Diane G. Cuellar . . . . . . . . 89 20.60 41 48 Dennis M. Scholl . . . . . . . . 108 25.00 54 54 Randy Rosas. . . . . . . . . . 88 20.37 40 48 Terrell Hills - Place 3 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 2 OF 2 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Rick Heydenreich . . . . . . . . 322 32.39 152 170 William Ochse . . . . . . . . . 672 67.61 286 386 Terrell Hills - Place 4 VOTE FOR 1 (WITH 2 OF 2 PRECINCTS COUNTED) Michelle Brady. . . . . . . . . 632 100.00 262 370

Support the resistance in Oaxaca!

2007-05-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

Friends: Eric Larson, an IWW member and long-time supporter of the SWU, is in grave danger along with many indigenous workers in a home in Oaxaca. Eric and his companeros could be seriously wounded or worse tonight and they’re asking for help immediately. Eric is a thoughtful, kind, and generous unionist and his comrades are remarkable activists as well. I know you receive many e-mail pleas but I implore you to take the time to respond to this one immediately. The ruling party could lay siege to their home any minute now. We don’t need anymore martyrs ripped from their families and friends in Oaxaca. The call for help from Oaxaca follows.

In Solidarity,

Daniel Gross

Please forward widely

Priistas are planning to remove CIPO [grassroots
indigenous organization] out of the neighborhood by
force!

This part of Santa Lucia is enemy territory. It is
near Barricade Three, the Príista attack of last
Friday, and the site of Brad Will’s murder. It’s also
where the CIPO house is located. When the Príistas
first set up their barricades, some were directly in
front of the CIPO house, one using materials that had
been propped up against the outside wall.

Now, less than a week after Brad Will’s murder, some
of the same Príistas have agreed to “dislodge” CIPO
from the neighborhood. If history, recent and
distant, teaches us anything, their method will be
violence. It is important that they know that acts of violence
will not go unseen, even in this small neighborhood
that they control.

Please contact some or all of those listed below; tell
them that if CIPO is attacked, that the Mexican state
is responsible. And please also keep this in mind as
solidarity actions are planned and carried out.

Contact the State Commission on Human RIghts in Oaxaca
at:
Central Oaxaca – 011 52 (951) 513 51 85
011 52 (951) 513 51 91
011 52 (951) 513 51 97

la Red Oaxaqueña de Derechos Humanos
Tel. 011 52 (951) 5141634
rodhmx@prodigy. net.mx

rodhmx@yahoo. com.mx

Vicente Fox Quesada
Presidente de la Republica
Residencia Oficial de los Pinos Casa Miguel Aleman
Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, C.P. 11850
Distrito Federal, Mexico
Telephone: 011 52 (55) 52772376
Fax: 011 52 (55) 527 723 376
E-mail directory at: http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/directorio/

Contact Nearest Mexican Consulate
Directory at http://mexonline.com/consulate.htm

http://www.StarbucksUnion.org

Historical revision? Thankyou Mr. Boner, ahem, I mean "Republica Leader" Boehner

2007-05-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

At this point, the pro-endless war camp is getting smaller by the day. The republican propaganda masters have had to resort to lying and distortions of the truth to push their funding of the war through congress. Take John Boehner, the "Republican Leader" in the house. Twisting arms to silence opposition to continuation of the Iraq conflict, Mr. Boehner haughtily reminded members of the House that only one congressman voted against the war in 2002. It seems they are addicted to historical revision, because the actual number of votes against the congressional resolution was 133.
Seems like someone needs to go back and re-learn his math and history. Ah, and the one vote against the war.... You silly son of a bitch, THAT WAS WWII. So Mr. Bon'er, why don't you take your lying ass somewhere else and remember, lying on camera can get you burned.

2007-05-08T17:22:00.000-07:00

Conservative Assault On America's Families

Beth Shulman

May 08, 2007

Beth Shulman is a lawyer and consultant focusing on work-related issues. She is the author of The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans. Shulman delivered these remarks at the Failure of Conservatism Conference http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/failure_conservatism_conference on May 3 in Washington, sonored by the Campaign for America's Future and The American Prospect.

Conservatism historically has seen government as a problem to overcome, an albatross. President Reagan stated it succinctly when he said, “we need to get government off our backs.” Conservatives usually justify this negative view of government in the name of freedom. They conflate freedom with unregulated markets, anti-unionism, low taxes and a rabid individualism. Without so-called government interference, people would be free to make their own choices. But what has this restricted view of government and the notion of freedom it embraces meant for America’s families today? In one word—disaster.

The “you are on your own” notion of government and freedom has meant that American families must live with stagnant wages at a time of high profits and productivity without a way to get ahead no matter how hard they try. It has meant health insecurity for workers and their families as fewer and fewer jobs provide health care coverage. It has meant that workers face their older years without the means they counted on to retire, as corporations have slashed traditional pension plans. And it has meant that half of Americans don’t have the fundamental right to take a day off from work when they are sick without losing a job or a paycheck.

It has meant parents having to forgo a child’s high school or college graduation or a PTA meeting because twenty percent of America’s workers do not have any vacation or personal days. It has meant parents tag teaming their shifts to provide their children supervision leading to increased divorce rates because they can’t afford child care. It has meant families who are more stressed out as jobs become more and more insecure. And it has meant more families just struggling to get by with one out of every three workers making less than what it takes to have basic self-sufficiency. All this has been dumped on the already sagging shoulders of working families while government has stood on the sidelines.

And as parents look to provide a better future for their children, it has meant coming up short. Today, it is only the wealthy who have the resources to provide their children the tools required to move up in our society—quality early education, good public schools and a college education. The rest of America’s children just have to do without.

This is a false freedom that forces us to make false choices. Americans aren’t free when they have to choose between paying the rent and providing child care for their children. Parents aren’t free when they must choose between being responsible workers and responsible family members. The elderly aren’t free when they must choose to continue working in their later years because they don’t have pensions. Families aren’t free when they have to declare bankruptcy when they can’t pay their hospital bills. Mothers and fathers aren’t free when they don’t have time to be with their children because they are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. And children aren’t free when they can’t get the basic tools to succeed and fulfill their potential as human beings.

We can make different choices that would ensure that Americans who work hard can support themselves and their families. We are free to choose ways that will give families time to share with each other and acquire the means that they and their children need to succeed in our new global economy. But this involves a very different definition of freedom, one that presents a very different agenda that will move us closer to ensuring that America’s families can thrive.

This definition of freedom eliminates the false choices we are saddled with today. This freedom involves more than being left alone. Instead, it offers the opportunity to build healthy families and healthy communities. It involves an investment in people. It is a freedom that recognizes that no one can be free without the basic necessities of life, that we can’t be free unless we are all treated with the dignity and respect we deserve.

It is a freedom that recognizes the interconnectedness of us all as human beings and the critical role that our government plays as a protector of public values. It recognizes that government is a place where Americans come together to solve our most pressing problems and to determine how to best use our national resources for the common good.

In the past, government has successfully played a role in providing the public structures for all of us to succeed. As a nation, we determined that our elderly should not be impoverished or go without health care, so we created and continue to provide Social Security and Medicare. We determined that all children deserve the tools to be productive citizens, so we have public schools. And as a nation, we determined that it is in the interest of all of us to have a literate population, so we fund libraries. We passed the GI bill that gave millions of Americans the opportunity to go to college and buy their first homes. It is now time for our government to provide the same kind of opportunity supports that families need today.

Government can and must play the kind of role that it so successfully performed after World War II, in creating the largest middle class in America’s history. Only government can set minimum standards for wages, health coverage, health and safety, paid sick days, retirement security, and the right to organize a union that ensure that hard working Americans have the basics of a decent life. Only government can ensure that families can be both responsible workers and caring family members by updating the outdated workplace practices and supports.

Only government can play the pivotal role in leveraging our resources to provide what workers need to succeed in our new global economy, and create the supports for workers and their families as they move across jobs and/or in and out of the labor force as their life and jobs circumstances change over time. And it is government which has an irreplaceable role in ensuring that all children have the tools they need to fulfill their potential and that opportunity is not limited to the wealthiest among us.

The role of government is to ensure that the prosperity of our economy is broadly shared amongst all hard working Americans and their families and that we create a society in which all families can thrive. The conservatives have it wrong. It’s not about getting government off our backs. It’s about getting it back on our sides, the sides of working families.

2007-05-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

EdgeLeft: An Occasional Column

by David McReynolds

Los Angeles saw, this week, a police riot, being covered a bit slowly by the media, but being

covered (hard not to cover it when among those slugged by the cops were TV journalists).

Meanwhile on the East Coast, the May 5th edition of the New York Times had an excellent

and funny column by Jim Dwyer, on the front page of the Metro Section, dealing with

Mayor Bloomberg’s secret police.

What happened in Los Angeles was not an accident - I saw very much the same thing in

Portland, Oregon, several years ago when I took part in a gentle demonstration (it might

have been in May - I’ve forgotten) and was stunned to see the Portland police charge

the demonstrators with special motorized vehicles, and clubs, when there had been

no provocation (I was on the spot and there simply wasn’t - someone in charge of the

police seemed to think it would be a good occasion to try out the newly acquired "military

tactics" which municipal police across the nation have been learning).

Dwyer’s column reported on the Police Department’s Intelligence Division tracking

down an open letter by Jerry Goralnick, self-described as a "pacifist anarchist", as the

police prepared for the GOP 2004 convention. Goralnick’s letter had been a

compelling appeal for nonviolence, In the text of his open letter were suggestions

urging activists not to see the police as adversaries, to "make contact with individual

police officers for the purpose of establishing a meaningful human relationship".

And the demonstrations were peaceful. I was present when the first group, organized

by Ed Hedemann and others of the War Resisters League, stepped off from the site

of the World Trade Center for a walk to mid-town. True, some of those who had

gathered did plan, when they got close to the convention site, to stage a sit-down.

I repeat - some of those gathered. Most of those gathered for that march had no intention

of sitting down. I was baffled to see the marchers delayed for by the police. I went over

to talk to Carmen Trotta, one of the organizers, to ask why the march hadn’t started.

He said he didn’t know - the police had asked them to stop for a bit.

But soon we had our answer - the police arrested the entire group for "refusing to move"!!

(I should add that while I took photos of the event, showing the group peacefully awaiting

for permission to march, I hadn’t joined that part of the demo because I didn’t feel like

walking from the WTC site to Madison Square Garden and planned to join the demo later,

by subway, which I did).

The whole problem of the illegal mass arrests is now before the courts, but it was an example,

though a less violent one, of the new "pre-emptive defense" being adopted from Portland to

Los Angeles to New York.

Back in my youthful days on the staff of War Resisters League, the New York "red squad"

was called "BOSSI" - the Bureau of Special Services. I got to know some of the BOSSI

officers as we worked with them explaining the demonstrations then being organized.

Later the city announced that BOSSI had been dissolved, though everyone in the radical

movement knew this was not true - every police department in a major city has some

kind of intelligence agency and as we learned, under Mayor Bloomberg, the name has

changed, the tactics have become laughable, but the reality is the same.

It is a delicate matter, since there are real threats (I’m not even thinking of our current

concern with terrorists) that involve groups on the political margin. Some have been

racist groups, some have been groups such as the Jewish Defense League which used to organize

"direct action" against Soviet officials. (I remember the famous pledge by Meir Kahane

of the JDL that Yasir Arafat, who was then visiting the UN, would not leave New York City

alive. Wehn I went to the Arafat reception at the UN I saw a couple of the old faces from

BOSSI standing guard to protect Arafat. Ironically, Kahane himself was assassinated

later by a gunman while at a Zionist conference in NYC). It is almost certainly true that

if the Socialist Party was elected to run New York City, it would assign some officers

to keep an eye on extremists oriented to violence.

In the case of the Los Angeles police earlier this week, the occasion was a peaceful

immigrant rally. It is possible there were some "black bloc" folks who may have

been involved - but the footage I saw on CNN showed no provocation, just stunned,

angry people being hit with clubs and fleeing rubber bullets, several of which found

their targets, leaving badly bruised flesh.

A continent apart, the same evidence of police out of control. The New York example

would have been funny if it hadn’t been serious. Our tax money being waste on monitoring

an open letter by a nonviolent anarchist urging demonstrators to treat the police in a gentle

manner!

First, there needs to be some kind of control over the police (one thinks at once of the long

over-due civilian review board) which can monitor all police actions. Whether we like it

or not, we need police. We have the routine problems of traffic, we have the problems of

legitimate crowd control at large events, and we have, regrettably, the reality of crimes of

various kinds. To make the matter concrete, what are we supposed to do if a strange man

is wandering the halls of our building knocking on doors? Or if we hear loud and agonized

screams coming from down the hall?

Clearly, however, as Mayor Bloomberg’s handling of the New York Police Department shows,

we need some agency that has an independent status and real clout.

Second, the more serious problem, and the one demonstrated this week in Los Angeles,

is the very deliberate militarization of our police departments, both in tactics and in weapons.

This trend began prior to 9.11 and certainly has increased since then, and the objective is

not simply to contain some terrorist act, but much more disturbing, to curb the legitimate

right of the people to assemble and to petition. The direction the police are taking -

with not nearly enough public concern - is toward eliminating public demonstrations.

(In New York, a year or so ago, the police tried to basically close down a mass

demonstration against the war - a demonstration that was entirely peaceful,

posed no threat of disorder, but the handling of which did show that Mayor Bloomberg has

no deep understanding of, or interest in, the Bill of Rights).

These trends can only be reversed by a broad public concern. And these trends will

inevitably repeat over time. We had the same problems during the Vietnam War, during the

Civil Rights movement, the anti-nuclear movement - it has always been necessary to fight

the various branches of government every ten years or so to restore some kind of balance.

Los Angeles and New York both suggest that it is past time for a wide range of groups,

conservative as well as liberal, to move to demilitarize the police and remind them

that their job is to maintain public order, not to suppress peaceful dissent.

- 30 -

David McReynolds was on the staff of War Resisters League for nearly forty years and was the Socialist Party’s candidate for President in 1980 and 2000. He is retired and living with two cats on the Lower East Side. This column may be reprinted and circulated without permission.

Rightwing Xenophobia & Fascism

2007-05-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

Convention ends with Satan and immigrants

CALEB WARNOCK - Daily Herald

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants.

The group was unable to take official action because not enough members stuck around long enough to vote, despite the pleadings of party officials. The convention was held at Canyon View Junior High School.

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people" and "are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won't do."

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said.

At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as "Joe," said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because "they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. ... If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do."

Senator Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, spoke against the resolution, saying Larsen, whom he called a "true patriot and a close friend," was embarrassing the Republican Party.

"I agree with 95 percent of this resolution but it has some language that is divisive and not inspiring other people to its vision," he said. "This only gives fodder to the liberal media to give negative attention to the Republican Party."

Joel Wright, a member of the Cedar Hills City Council, was booed as he opposed the resolution.

"This might be the most divisive issue in the Republican Party," he said. "I support President Bush but he needs to support this issue harder."

When Wright said "the economic benefit (of illegal immigration) outweighs the downside" he was jeered. He warned that the Republican Party of California had "killed themselves" by taking a hostile stance against illegal aliens.

He also said the LDS Church has studied the issue and tried to determine whether illegal aliens could be given temple recommends and allowed to serve missions but "gave up" because the issue was too complex. He ended by saying "President Bush needs to fix this now" and was booed again.

Larsen was allowed to finish the debate with a one-minute speech.

"If the Democrats take over the country, we will be dead, and we will have abortion and partial-birth abortion and the Republican Party will go into extinction," he said. "Nancy Pelosi and the ACLU would oppose this (resolution)."

A member of the audience moved that the convention suspend its rules to allow the "objectionable part" of Larsen's resolution to be stricken, retaining only the final paragraphs of the resolution, which condemn illegal immigration. Eventually party officials counted all delegates in attendance, only to discover that, with 299, they were about 30 short of a quorum and could take no action.

"I did ask people to stay so we could have this discussion," said Senator Curt Bramble, R-Provo, who chaired the convention. Bramble had earlier asked those gathered not to thwart a discussion on the resolution, saying it would be "good for the party."

In other business, those gathered voted against removing some of the party's leadership.

Letters supporting the re-election of party chairwoman Marian Monnahan and secretary Susan Bramble were mailed in envelopes bearing the party's return address, causing delegate Russell Sias to demand they be removed from office. A spokesperson for Alexander's Print Advantage, which handled the mailing, spoke at the convention, saying employees had mistaken put the address on the envelopes and the company took full responsibility for the snafu.

In a speech, Enid Greene, state Republican Party chair, announced to applause that she will remarry in a few months. Greene's first marriage came to an infamous end during her tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives when her husband, Joe Waldholtz, who was her campaign manager, was charged with embezzling. He eventually pled guilty to campaign fraud and other charges.

Greene said she was disappointed in BYU professors who protested Dick Cheney's visit to campus, calling them "self-appointed intellectuals."

"I'm not calling for BYU to fire them but if no one signs up for their classes ..." she said. "If they say the Vice President doesn't have anything to say we want to hear, I'm not interested in having my daughter learn from them."

All of the speakers praised those gathered. Lt. Governor Gary Herbert said Utah County Republicans are "guided by correct principles" and are the "best of the best" of the Republican Party.

Bramble assailed those who would called the local Republican Party "broken," saying the party was accountable and accomplishing good work, including the approval of school vouchers and granting UVSC university status.

Congressman Chris Cannon and Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff both received a standing ovation from some members of the audience. Cannon said Democrats have just as many corrupt party members as the Republicans but the media does not report Democratic ethics violations.

Shurtleff said that while Americans are divided on the war in Iraq, Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson should not refer to President Bush as a war criminal.

Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or cwarnock@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B1.

Police brutality in Los Angeles against non-violent protesters (and journalists)

2007-05-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

Authorities Probe Police Response

By PETER PRENGAMAN

The Associated Press
Thursday, May 3, 2007; 8:23 AM

LOS ANGELES -- Investigators will review hundreds of hours of video of an immigration rally where police clashed with the crowd, wielding batons and firing rubber bullets to break up the demonstration, the police chief said Thursday.

Chief William J. Bratton said in an appearance on CBS's "Early Show" that he was "not happy" when he watched videotape of the events at MacArthur Park late Tuesday, when officers fired 240 nonlethal rounds to clear demonstrators.

He said police and news media video would aid investigations into whether the officers' tactics were appropriate.

"We have to really try to determine exactly what happened. We're fortunate in this instance that we have a lot of video to look at," Bratton said. "We have literally hundreds of hours of video to review to make our decisions."

News images showed police hitting a television cameraman to the ground, shoving people who were walking away from officers and injuries from the rubber bullets.

Rally organizers denounced the police action as brutal.

"They were pushing children, elderly, mothers with their babies and beating up on the media" said Angela Sanbrano, an organizer.

The clashes started around 6 p.m. Tuesday, when police tried to disperse demonstrators who moved into a street, according to rally organizers and reporters. Authorities said several people threw rocks and bottles at officers, who used batons to push the crowd back to the sidewalk and then cleared the park.

A police order to disperse was in English and from a police helicopter, a likely ineffective tactic because of the noise and because many at the protest were Spanish-speakers, Bratton said at a news conference Wednesday.

Bratton said police were initially trying to deal with 50 to 100 "agitators."

"The individuals were there to provoke police," Bratton said. "Unfortunately, they got what they came for."

Police union leaders urged against a "rush to judgment."

"Our officers gave a legal dispersal order and were met with violence. In the coming days it will become clear what transpired," said Los Angeles Police Protective League President Bob Baker in a statement.

Seven officers suffered minor injuries, and another was pushed off his motorcycle, Bratton said. About 10 other people were treated for minor injuries, though authorities expected the number to rise.

The investigations already under way include an overall departmental review of tactics, an internal affairs investigation into the behavior of the officers and commanders on the scene, and an independent review by the Inspector General, the investigative arm of the Police Commission, which sets policy for the Police Department.

John Mack, president of the five-member Police Commission, said he was "deeply disturbed and very disappointed" by the news images.

"This was not a pretty picture. This incident raises serious concern regarding the use of force by some individual officers," said Mack, who is one of Bratton's bosses.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, who represents the park district, also asked Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley to launch an independent investigation into the officers' actions.

He said police deliberately led troublemakers back to the peaceful marchers before beginning their assault.

"The only logical conclusion I can come to is that somebody wanted it to bleed into the march so that they can do some target practice on some of the immigrants that were marching," Nunez said.

News organizations also condemned the Police Department for its use of batons and riot guns against members of the media.

"We are sorry for what happened to our employees and find it unacceptable that they would be abused in that way when they were doing their job," said Alfredo Richard, spokesman for the Spanish-language network Telemundo, whose anchor and reporter were hurt.

Bratton promised to investigate the treatment of reporters.

"I'm not seeking to defend it at all," he told the "Early Show." "That's why we're having investigations."

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Don Thompson in Sacramento and Jeremiah Marquez and Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles.

Fascist xenophobe blames immigrants for crime

2007-05-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

Buchanan blamed VA Tech murders on immigrant "invasion," claimed immigrants "are going berserk here"

In a May 1 syndicated column, conservative pundit and MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan blamed the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech on lax U.S. immigration policies, stating that gunman Cho Seung-Hui "was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people." In the column -- titled "The Dark Side of Diversity" -- Buchanan claimed: "Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would [be] heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation." He added: "What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what's been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores."

Buchanan suggested that Cho's actions were not an isolated phenomenon, asserting that "in numbers higher than our native born, some [immigrants] are going berserk here." He cited only anecdotes to support this claim. A 2007 study conducted for the pro-immigration American Immigration Law Foundation by University of California, Irvine sociology professor Rubén G. Rumbaut found that "for every ethnic group, without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated and the least acculturated." His research showed that over the last three censuses for blacks, Hispanics, whites, and Asians, "[a]mong men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the 3.5 percent incarceration rate of the native-born in 2000 was 5 times higher than the 0.7 percent incarceration rate of the foreign-born."

Buchanan wrote that, due to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, "[t]hirty-six million [immigrants], almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst." He later declared: "Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions of strangers arrive every year."

During the August 24, 2006, edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, Buchanan described illegal immigrants as a "fifth column" within the United States and claimed that immigration could make the "Southwest" become "like Kosovo is to Serbia" because the Mexican government is "pushing" its citizens into the United States as part of a "reconquista." In his August 25, 2006, syndicated column, Buchanan compared illegal immigrants to the Goths, a group of Germanic tribes who ravaged the Roman Empire in the centuries preceding the collapse of its western half. Buchanan has also stated that immigration will result in "the balkanization of America," warned that the Southwest "is going to secede from this country," and claimed that the influx of illegal immigrants into the United States is "not immigration" but "an invasion" that is "coming not only from Mexico," but "from the whole world."

In 2006, Thomas Dunne Books published Buchanan's book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. As Media Matters for America documented, the book contains a number of similar claims about the alleged danger of immigration:

"This [immigration] is an invasion, the greatest invasion in history." [Page 5]
"We are witnessing how nations perish. We are entered upon the final act of our civilization. The last scene is the deconstruction of the nations. The penultimate scene, now well underway, is the invasion unresisted." [Page 6]
"Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents have made clear their intent to take back through demography and culture what their ancestors lost through war." [Page 12]
"[W]e are in the midst of a savage culture war in which traditionalist values have been losing ground for two generations." [Page 28]

From Buchanan's May 1 column:

Since the massacre of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech, the mainstream media have obsessed over the fact the crazed gunmen was able to buy a Glock in the state of Virginia.

Little attention has been paid to the Richmond legislators who voted to make "Hokie Nation," a Middle American campus of 26,000 kids, a gun-free zone where only the madman had a semi-automatic.

Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation.

What was Cho doing here? How did he get in?

Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.

Cho was one of them.

[...]

What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what's been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores, even as the old bonds of national community began to disintegrate and dissolve in the social revolutions of the 1960s.

[...]

Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions of strangers arrive every year. And as Americans no longer share the old ties of history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth or morality, how can immigrants share those ties?

Many immigrants do not assimilate. Many do not wish to. They seek community in their separate subdivisions of our multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual mammoth mall of a nation. And in numbers higher than our native born, some are going berserk here.

—M.G

2007-05-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of thousands march across US for immigrant rights

By a WSWS reporting team
2 May 2007

Hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their supporters took part in marches and protests in Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Chicago, Denver, Detroit and other major cities across the United States on May 1 to protest the growing number of raids and deportations and to press for basic democratic rights. The actions included demonstrations, consumer boycotts and school walkouts.

This year’s protests were smaller than a similar immigrant “boycott” that took place last May Day in which millions of workers participated. This was due in part to stepped-up harassment and intimidation of immigrant workers by federal authorities. Also, in 2006, masses of people were spurred to action by a piece of legislation in Congress that would have turned undocumented immigrants—as well as anyone who rendered them assistance—into criminals.

In the past year, the US government deported 221,664 undocumented workers, 37,000 more than the previous year, an increase of 20 percent.

In a crackdown called Operation Return to Sender, US immigration officials have arrested more than 23,000 people nationwide. While supposedly targeting felons, most of those caught up in the sweeps have no criminal records. Immigration officers have not only targeted workplaces, but they have raided private homes without warrants and even rounded up people off the streets. In Chicago, immigration police with assault rifles reportedly closed off a mall parking lot in a Latino neighborhood and began asking everyone for papers, hauling off those without proper documents.

In many cases, the deportations have resulted in the splitting of families, with US-born children separated from their parents. The raids have been so provocative that local officials in a number of cities have issued protests.

The escalating repression is aimed at terrorizing immigrants, who are being scapegoated for the falling living standards and job insecurity facing millions of working people. At the same time, while seeking to channel anger over the failures of the profit system into anti-immigrant sentiments, the dominant sections of big business want to ensure continued access to the cheap supply of labor provided by undocumented workers.

A conflict between those right-wing Republicans in Congress who favor the mass roundup and deportation of undocumented immigrants and the Bush administration, which favors a slightly less draconian approach, has prevented the enactment of new legislation for the past year.

The legislation supported by Bush is harshly punitive. It calls for increasing the number of immigration police and requiring undocumented workers seeking permanent residency to endure long waiting periods and pay hefty fines. The guest workers program contained in the bill endorsed by Bush recalls the infamous Bracero program. It is designed to put workers completely at the mercy of corporate employers while stripping them of the few rights they currently enjoy.

As part of its crackdown on immigration, the government is contracting for the building of privately run detention centers along the US-Mexican border.

The liberal and church groups sponsoring the May 1 protests have sought to orient their protests to pressuring the Democratic Party, depicting the dispute in Congress over immigration as that between reform and anti-reform factions. In fact, the Democrats and Republicans are united in their hostility to granting basic democratic rights to immigrant workers.

Typical is the position of Senator Hillary Clinton. When asked her opinion on granting amnesty to undocumented workers at the recent debate between contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, she replied, “Well, I’m in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, which includes tightening our border security, sanctioning employers of undocumented immigrants, helping our communities deal with the costs that come from illegal immigration.... After 9/11 we’ve got to know who’s in this country. And then give them a chance to pay a fine, pay back taxes, learn English and stand in line to be eligible for a legal status in this country.”

Among the tens of thousands who joined the march through downtown Los Angeles were many young people, including students from Roosevelt High and Wilson High Schools in East Los Angeles as well a large number of workers.

Quiroz, an immigrant construction worker who has won legal status in the US, told the World Socialist Web Site, “When I compare my own experience with recent immigrants, it is like night and day. Immigrants today live in fear; they can be taken at any time. When they try to find work, they have to produce documents. Everyone hopes for an amnesty. There is a rumor that if there is a guest worker program like Bush wants, there will be a $10,000 fee for immigrants to become legal. That will be beyond the reach of most immigrants. “It does not make sense for workers to be divided on this issue. Immigrant and US workers work in the same jobs, shoulder to shoulder.”

Jessica, a 20-year-old garment worker, told the WSWS, “I am angry because I think that the government must stop threatening people and carrying out raids in factories or against immigrants, like the one in that Chicago shopping center a few days ago. People live in fear, and are often afraid to leave their homes to go shopping and to go to school.”

Leyla and Claudio, who came to the United States 20 years ago, fleeing the civil war in El Salvador, also marched. “We saw terrible things and fled our country with little more than our lives,” said Claudio. “I reject the demand for guest workers; there must be a generalized legalization.”

Leyla added, “Conditions for immigrants are scandalous. Like us, many immigrants are part of the so-called informal economy because getting a job is difficult. We peddle things in the street. Undocumented immigrants suffer a lot of unemployment.”

Francisco, a young construction worker who has been in the US for 11 years, told the WSWS “, There has been an increase in raids, in Ontario, in Orange County and in the fields. That has to stop. People are afraid that they will be separated from their families. My deepest hope is that all immigrants will be legalized. However, I don’t think that this will happen; we have a long struggle ahead.

“I came from Guatemala. There are few jobs, and many people are forced to come to the United States. It is an arduous trip that can take weeks, months sometimes. More and more, the Mexican police tries to interfere with the immigrants from Central America.”

Concepción, 55, is a garment worker and a Mexican Indian from Veracruz Province. She told the WSWS that her cousin is being deported in three weeks. “She has a 14-year-old son who was born here,” she said. “She pleaded with the immigration people to let her stay. It was no use. Her son had broken his leg, and ICE allowed her to stay until the cast came off. Now they told her she has to leave because her child can get therapy in Mexico.

“If people get deported, there will be more families split up. The children will suffer most. I came from Mexico 20 years ago and became a garment worker. It is hard in the factories because the boss is constantly trying to cut costs by firing the workers with seniority and hiring new sewing machine operators at a lower wage, below minimum wage. Workers do not get more for working overtime. A lot of us become independent. We pick up cloth and sew it at home. I make tablecloths. “

Thousands also joined a march in Detroit that began in Patton Park. Among them was Carlos, who told the WSWS, “If you look at it, every person in this country is from another country, except the Native Americans. If it is not you, it is your parents or your grandparents. I don’t understand why some people are not for the immigrants in this country. It is bad. Families are being separated from each other. There is a family in San Diego with three children, all under 18 years old, and their mother and father were deported and sent to Mexico. I think the children were 16, 13 and 10. It reminds me of the time they took the Cuban boy and would not return him to his father. These people, say they are for families and rights, but there they did not care for the family at all.”

Patricia Palmino, also on the Detroit march, condemned the growing deportations of immigrants. “These are workers who are here to work, not to take someone’s job. They are here just to make a better life. You know that many of the Mexican workers work very hard and they do jobs other people do not want to do. Yet they receive much less money. Now, there is a new policy that if you are an undocumented, you can’t go to university. I believe you should have the right to go.

“I have a sister-in-law who has a son that did not have a Social Security number. He was only nine years old and needed to go to school, but they would not let him in the school. Hs dad went to the Mexican consul and did all kinds of things, and finally they got him a PIN number. A nine-year-old kid should be in school, whether they have a PIN number or not. The children are our future.”

Mindy Melete Lares, who is Puerto Rican, said she came to the march in Detroit to support immigrant rights. “I am opposed to what this government is doing. Bush, I think he is a direct descendent of the Nazis. He doesn’t care. I came here 50 years ago. When I came, they were looking for more workers and brought immigrants into the country. Now, look at how they treat immigrants.”

Ramon Antonio, who came to the march with his young daughter, told the WSWS, “I work two jobs to make ends meet. I am doing this for my kids. There is nothing in Mexico for decent jobs. That’s why we are here.”

George and Carlos are middle-school students who attended the march and rally. Both of them said most of their friends did not go to school today in order to attend the rally.

George said, “I think it is not right to send all the immigrants back. I believe they should have rights just like everyone here. They work and pay taxes like everyone. I think they should be treated the same.

Carlos agreed: “I think we should have the right to stay. I have been here since I was nine years old.”

One of the largest demonstrations in the country took place in Chicago, where hundreds of thousands marched through downtown to Grant Park.

Abundio Ramirez, a practicing immigration lawyer in Chicago for the last four years, said that he had joined the march to support his clients.

“They’re not here for amnesty,” he said. “There’s a lot of anger about IRAIRA [Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996], which brought reinstatement and a 10-year permanent bar. This destroys families. There’s a build-up of anger and frustration, and they are here to change policy. It’s like Prohibition in the 1920s. The moment they allowed alcohol to be sold and bought, it stopped the breaking of that law. The same can go for immigration.”

Secret Order By Gonzales Delegated Extraordinary Powers To Aides

2007-05-01T07:48:00.000-07:00

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Monday, April 30, 2007

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison "the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration" of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department's political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

An original draft of Gonzales's delegation of authority to Sampson and Goodling was so broad that it did not even require the two aides to obtain the final approval of the attorney general before moving to dismiss other department officials.

A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that -- as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements -- the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.

As was the case with the fired U.S. attorneys, the employees targeted for dismissal would never know that they had been selected by the White House or the Justice Department aides, according to records and interviews. Most of the eight fired U.S. attorneys were given the news by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; by McNulty's chief of staff, Michael Elston; or by Michael Battle, another senior Justice official, typically with no mention of any role by anyone else.

The department's Office of Legal Counsel feared that such an unconditional delegation of authority was unconstitutional, the documents show. As a result, the original delegation was rewritten so that in its final form the order required "any proposed appointments or removals of personnel" be "presented to the Attorney General... for approval, and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."

The senior administration official who had firsthand knowledge of the plan said that Gonzales and other Justice officials had a "clear obligation" to disclose the plan's existence to the House and Senate Judiciary committees -- but the official said that, as far as he knew, they had not done so. When the committees began to inquire into the firings of the U.S. attorneys, the official said, Congress had a right to know that the firings were part of an ambitious effort to install administration loyalists throughout the department. The official spoke on the condition that neither his position nor agency be identified, because he feared retaliation from his superiors and the White House for disclosing aspects of the program.

Referring to the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the broader plan targeting other Justice employees, the senior official said, "You cannot separate one from the other. They were one and part of the same plan by the White House."

The official added, "The president of the United States has said it was imperative for the attorney general, and the attorney general alone, to re-establish trust with the Congress to keep his job … and you have, even after the president has said that, the attorney general and his men stiffing Congress."

Once the order went into effect, the extent to which Sampson, Goodling, and the White House played roles in the hiring and firing of various officials in the upper reaches of the Justice Department is unclear.

Sampson And Goodling
The roles that Sampson and Goodling played in removing U.S. attorneys and selecting new ones drew fire from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who cited their youth, their scant prosecutorial experience, and their lack of law enforcement credentials. Goodling was a 1999 graduate of televangelist Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law and had worked at the Republican National Committee as an opposition researcher. Sampson had tried one criminal case while at Justice and had worked as a counsel for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and then for the White House counsel's office before rapidly ascending to become Gonzales's chief of staff.

Sampson has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the U.S. attorney firings, but Goodling resigned on April 6, after her attorney asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for declining to testify. The House Judiciary Committee voted on April 25 to grant Goodling limited immunity from prosecution to compel her testimony about the U.S. attorney firings.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that Gonzales's order "simply gives the chief of staff and the White House liaison the authority to execute certain decisions related to the hiring and termination of some noncareer employees with -- as the memo states -- the 'approval of the Attorney General.' The constitutional issues were explicitly resolved in the order."

Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto said it was "unremarkable" that Sampson and Goodling would be involved in the hiring and firing of Justice Department officials.

"The job of a chief of staff is to work with the White House liaison to hire qualified people," he said. "That is fairly standard practice in any large Cabinet department or agency." Fratto added, "The White House has full authority in hiring and firing presidential appointees" and "can choose to delegate that authority. There is no need for written authority to exercise that power."

Asked why, if the process is routine, Gonzales issued the confidential order, Fratto responded, "I don't know why anyone would force the need to write such a memo." He referred further inquiries to the Justice Department.

John Dowd, an attorney for Goodling, said in an interview that it was "absolutely untrue" that his client was ever delegated the authority outlined in the confidential March 1, 2006 order signed by the attorney general. "She had no authority," Dowd said, "My God, she was an assistant to the chief of staff to the attorney general. She was an assistant to the assistant." An attorney for Sampson, Brad Berenson, said that his client was not available for comment for this story.

Robert Litt, who served as a deputy assistant attorney general under former President Bill Clinton, said in an interview that during the Clinton presidency "it was routine that senior appointments in the department would be vetted by the White House. Appointees were often placed by the White House." Such a process is typical under most presidents, Litt said, because they "want to ensure that their administration's policies and priorities are carried out."

But Litt also called Gonzales's secret delegation of authority to Sampson and Goodling unprecedented. It was distressing, he said, that many of the most sensitive appointments at the highest levels of the Justice Department were to "be made by these two people with no law enforcement experience... that this extraordinary authority was being delegated to these two young puppies," and apparently without much input by more-experienced and less-partisan officials.

Even though the White House played a major role in filling Justice Department positions before and during the Clinton administration, Litt said, "there was always a bit of tugging and pulling" between the White House and career department officials in selecting top aides: "Typically, a deputy attorney general might really like someone and the White House might not, or vice versa."

In the end, however, Litt and current and former Justice Department officials said that a balance is often brokered between the policy and political imperatives of an administration and the desire of career federal law enforcement officials to protect the integrity of the criminal-justice process. When Gonzales delegated such authority, and in secret, to Sampson and Goodling, he risked tipping that balance, Litt and other officials said.

Under the plan and delegation of the authority, even the second- and third-highest-ranking political appointees in the Justice Department -- the deputy attorney general and the associate attorney general -- would no longer have final authority to staff their own offices.

Justice Department records indicate that while the order was being drafted, McNulty and other senior department officials were at times purposely kept out of the loop.

A correspondence record from Gonzales's own files indicates that when Paul Corts, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for administration, transmitted a memo regarding the then-draft plan to Gonzales, information regarding the plan was ordered to be withheld from McNulty. A "control sheet" of the department's Executive Secretariat, which tracks sensitive records as they move among senior Justice officials, includes this notation regarding the transmission of the Corts memo to Gonzales: "Per instructions received from JMD [the Justice Department's Management Division], ODAG [the office of the Deputy Attorney General] is to bypassed on the package."

To give Sampson and Goodling hiring and firing authority, the Justice Department first had to place that authority directly under Gonzales. The department published regulations in the Federal Register on February 7, 2006, stating that the final authority would be reserved for the attorney general. In the past, the deputy attorney general, the associate attorney general, and other senior Justice Department officials had been able to staff their own offices.

Once Gonzales had the final authority, however, another barrier stood in the way: The Office of Legal Counsel believed that an unconditional delegation of authority by Gonzales to his aides would be unconstitutional. Corts so informed Gonzales in a February 24, 2006, memo: "The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) advises that permitting the Attorney General's delegates to approve [some] appointments … would be inconsistent" with the appointments clause of the Constitution. The "excepting clause" of the Constitution requires the president alone to exercise the appointment power, or his Cabinet officers, who are appointees themselves.

The draft was rewritten to address that concern, and Gonzales on March 1, 2006, signed the final order, which read: "Under the authority of this delegation, any proposed appointments or removals of personnel who are 'inferior officers' within the meaning of [the] Excepting Clause of the Constitution shall be presented to the Attorney General... and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."

At the bottom of the delegation order, this note appeared, in all capital letters, referencing the Federal Register: "INTERNAL ORDER-NOT PUBLISHED IN F.R."

Politics And Perception
A senior Justice Department official, who did not know of Gonzales's delegation of authority until contacted by National Journal, said that it posed a serious threat to the integrity of the criminal-justice system because it gave Sampson, Goodling, and the White House control over the hiring of senior officials in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, which oversees all politically sensitive public corruption cases, at the same time that they held authority to hire and fire U.S. attorneys.

"If you are controlling who is going to be a U.S. attorney and who isn't going to be,... firing them outside the traditional process... and the same people are deciding who are going to be their supervisors back in Washington... there is too much of a potential for mischief, for abuse," the official said.

Even if there is no interference or politicization of public corruption investigations, the same official said, "you are just going to have people questioning every prosecutorial decision, when all of the people in place have been put there for political reasons."

Typically, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division has five deputies who oversee political corruption cases and nearly all other federal criminal prosecutions. The assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division is a political appointee of the president and is subject to Senate confirmation. But two of the division's five deputies are not subject to Senate confirmation. Under the order signed on March 1, 2006, their fate was delegated to Sampson and Goodling.

Based on a review of the delegation order, the official said, the Criminal Division chief's principal deputy, his counselor, any of his special assistants, and a score of other aides were also among those who could be fired and replaced by Sampson and Goodling, and then subject to final approval by Gonzales.

"It would be an act of insanity and, frankly, implausible that the attorney general would grant authority to Kyle [Sampson] and Monica Goodling to make these decisions," the official said, "But it would be frightening if they were serving as proxies for the White House. You do not want to allow for the possible politicization of your Criminal Division like that."

Three of the fired U.S. attorneys have said that Republicans in Congress inappropriately approached them about politically sensitive investigations. Testimony by two of the U.S. attorneys, Sampson's testimony, and documents made public by the House and Senate Judiciary committees indicate that complaints by Republican lawmakers and White House officials may have played a role in the dismissal of two of the U.S. attorneys. Four of the federal prosecutors were involved in politically sensitive investigations at the time of their firings.

"What you have is U.S. attorneys saying they were being interfered with, people coming at them trying to influence them inappropriately, and then being fired," said the senior Justice Department official. "If we are learning now that the same people who are firing U.S. attorneys and replacing them with friendlier faces also were doing the same with their supervisors, with the people who ran the Criminal Division, then that is very serious."

Gonzales and Sampson both adamantly denied, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that any U.S. attorneys were fired to interfere with politically sensitive investigations.

But David Iglesias, the fired U.S. attorney from New Mexico, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 6 that he felt improperly pressured by Republican members of Congress regarding a then-ongoing criminal investigation under his supervision. Iglesias testified that Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., called him on October 16 to ask whether his office had returned sealed indictments against Democratic officeholders alleged to have taken kickbacks in a courthouse construction project. At the time, Wilson was locked in a tight race for re-election, and criminal charges against the Democrats would have aided her campaign. Wilson narrowly won re-election.

Ten days later after Wilson's call, Iglesias testified, he received a phone call from Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a political mentor to Wilson, also inquiring about possible pending indictments. Domenici asked him, "Are they going to be filed before November?" Iglesias testified. When Iglesias answered that no charges would be filed any time soon, Domenici responded, "I'm sorry to hear that," and the line went dead.

"I felt sick afterward," Iglesias testified, "I felt leaned on. I felt pressured to get these matters moving."

Domenici and Wilson have acknowledged making the calls but have said that they did not intend to influence Iglesias's handling of the kickback investigation.

Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Domenici called him after the November 2006 election and complained to him that Iglesias hadn't aggressively pursued voter-fraud allegations against Democrats in New Mexico. Domenici also passed along similar complaints in conversations with President Bush and senior White House adviser Karl Rove, and the complaints were relayed to Gonzales.

Not long after, both Gonzales and Sampson have testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iglesias's name was added, at the last minute, to the list of U.S. attorneys slated to be fired that was being compiled by Sampson and the White House. Asked during his Senate testimony whether Domenici's complaints played a role in Iglesias's firing, Sampson said that Deputy Attorney General McNulty commented to him, "Senator Domenici won't mind if he stays on the list."

A second ousted U.S. attorney, John McKay of Washington state, testified that the-then chief of staff to Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., called him to inquire about potential voter-fraud charges against Democrats. Later, during an interview about a possible appointment as a federal judge, then-White House counsel Harriet Miers asked McKay why he had "mishandled" the charges concerning the governor's race, McKay testified.

Most recently, it was reported that a senior aide to Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., telephoned Arizona's then-U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, to inquire about a criminal investigation into allegations that Renzi used his office to arrange a land deal that benefited a former business partner. The former partner then paid Renzi $200,000. After the FBI raided his wife's insurance business on April 19, and it was reported that Renzi himself was a target of the probe, Renzi temporarily stepped down from his seats on three House committees. Renzi has denied any wrongdoing, saying that the $200,000 payment from his former business partner was to settle a debt unrelated to the actions Renzi had taken to arrange the land deal. Renzi has also said that his aide called Charlton's office simply to inquire about whether Renzi was going to be criminally charged.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reported last week that prosecutors in Arizona charged that their superiors in Washington slowed their investigation and that the prosecutors suspected it was because the superiors wanted Renzi to win re-election. Conflicts between U.S. attorneys' offices and the Criminal Division typically stem from routine disagreements regarding the law and the strategy for handling an investigation.

But Charlton's firing, the delay in the Renzi investigation, and disclosures about the role of the White House in the firings of U.S. attorneys has created a climate where suspicions abound among career prosecutors, a senior Justice Department official said in an interview.

"Under ordinary circumstances, with something like the Renzi case," the official said, "everyone would assume that this was just an honest disagreement between a U.S. attorney and main Justice. But the presumption in the current environment is that everybody's motives are suspect-and for good reason. There really has to be a housecleaning and a coming clean to Congress, the public, but perhaps most of all, the rank-and-file line prosecutors."

Health-care for all Americans

2007-04-30T17:23:00.000-07:00

Kucinich touts his independence

April 16, 2007

Dennis Kucinich doesn't seem to age. Maybe it's the vegan diet. Maybe it's the meditation. Perhaps it's his young wife. In the four years since the Democratic congressman last visited The Des Moines Register, he doesn't seem to have aged a day.

Kucinich is slightly built, with an easy smile and flecks of gray in his dark hair. He has his eye on the White House again. He sat down with Register editors and writers last week and jumped right into talk about Iraq. He wanted to remind us that he had been right from the beginning about the mess that would ensue if the United States went to war.

"Everything I laid out about the war turned out to be 100 percent correct," he said. Kucinich not only voted against the authorization to go to war, but also has voted against every war appropriation.

"That's what distinguishes me this time from all the other candidates," he said.

That's not all that sets him apart.

Kucinich has bold ideas.

He supports a single-payer, national health-care system. More than 14,000 doctors support his health plan, he said.

He not only is ready to end the war in Iraq today; he wants to reorient our society to focus on peace, not war. He would cut waste to reduce the Pentagon's budget by 15 percent and establish a Department of Peace, dedicated to disarmament and nonviolence. In addition to work abroad, the department would address child and spouse abuse and community conflicts at home.

Some money from military cuts would go to education. He wants to offer free preschool for all children 3 to 5, a critical time for cognitive development.

Some Americans may think Kucinich has some radical ideas for reforming the country, but after an hour in a conference room with him, it's clear this self-proclaimed "straight-talker" is just passionate about making changes. That's apparent from his Web site, too. Similar to the sites of most candidates, it offers his positions on 10 key issues. But his site also includes statements on 90 additional issues.

Kucinich wants to improve the lives of average Americans. Other candidates say that and insist they won't be beholden to special interests. Kucinich says it with confidence. He told us he considers himself independent in his thinking, someone who can't be "intimidated" or "bullied" or "bossed" into doing anything he believes wrong.

He proved that, he said, after he was elected mayor of Cleveland at age 31. The city's banks demanded that the city sell its municipally owned electric system before it would extend credit. Kucinich refused. That led to the city's bankruptcy and his defeat as mayor. He remains proud of his stand, and years later was honored by the city for his foresight in refusing to sell.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Kucinich is something he didn't talk much about Thursday: His personal history.

The oldest of seven children, his family lived in 21 places during his childhood in Cleveland. His father was a truck driver and had an eigh-grade education, but was "wise to the streets" Kucinich said.

The congressman said he picked up some of that "street wisdom" himself, which gives him the "ability to see through the lies."

There might be something to that. He was, after all, right about Iraq.

-Andie Dominick

Rudy Giuliani: Opportunistic, fear-mongering fascist

2007-04-29T00:46:00.000-07:00

Olbermann: Rudy Giuliani Exploits Fear for Power and Personal Gain

By Keith Olbermann, Countdown. Posted April 28, 2007.

This is the text of Keith Olbermann's special comment about Rudolph Giuliani's remarks at a Lincoln Day dinner in New Hampshire, where Giuliani said that if a Democrat were elected president in 2008, America would be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

Since some indeterminable hour between the final dousing of the pyre at The World Trade Center, and the breaking of what Sen. Barack Obama has aptly termed "9/11 fever," it has been profoundly and disturbingly evident that we are at the center of one of history's great ironies.

Only in this America of the early 21st century could it be true that the man who was president during the worst attack on our nation and the man who was the mayor of the city in which that attack principally unfolded would not only be absolved of any and all blame for the unreadiness of their own governments, but, moreover, would thereafter be branded heroes of those attacks.

And now, that mayor -- whose most profound municipal act in the wake of that nightmare was to suggest the postponement of the election to select his own successor -- has gone even a step beyond these M.C. Escher constructions of history.

"If any Republican is elected president -- and I think obviously I would be best at this -- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what (the terrorists) will do and try to stop them before they do it."

Insisting that the election of any Democrat would mean the country was "back ... on defense," Mr. Giuliani continued: "But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have. If we are on defense, we will have more losses and it will go on longer."

He said this with no sense of irony, no sense of any personal shortcomings, no sense whatsoever.

And if you somehow missed what he was really saying, somehow didn't hear the none-too-subtle subtext of "vote Democratic and die," Mr. Giuliani then stripped away any barrier of courtesy, telling Roger Simon of politico.com:

"America will be safer with a Republican president."

At least that Republican president under which we have not been safer has, even at his worst, maintained some microscopic distance between himself and a campaign platform that blithely threatened the American people with "casualties" if they, next year, elect a Democratic president -- or, inferring from Mr. Giuliani's flights of grandeur in New Hampshire -- even if they elect a different Republican.

How ... dare ... you, sir?

"How many casualties will we have?" -- this is the language of Osama bin Laden.

Yours, Mr. Giuliani, is the same chilling nonchalance of the madman, of the proselytizer who has moved even from some crude framework of politics and society, into a virtual Roman Colosseum of carnage, and a conceit over your own ability -- and worthiness -- to decide who lives and who dies.

Rather than a reasoned discussion -- rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications -- you have bypassed all the intermediate steps and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right ... but as an act of suicide.

This is not the mere politicizing of Iraq, nor the vague mumbled epithets about Democratic "softness" from a delusional vice president.

This is casualties on a partisan basis -- of the naked assertion that Mr. Giuliani's party knows all and will save those who have voted for it -- and to hell with everybody else.

And that he, with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, is somehow the messiah-of-the-moment.

Even to grant that that formula -- whether posed by Republican or Democrat -- is somehow not the most base, the most indefensible, the most un-American electioneering in our history -- even if it is somehow acceptable to assign "casualties" to one party and "safety" to the other -- even if we have become so profane in our thinking that it is part of our political vocabulary to view counter-terror as one party's property and the other's liability ... on what imaginary track record does Mr. Giuliani base his boast?

Which party held the presidency on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Giuliani?

read on

Remember May Day?

2007-04-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

Mass amnesia makes Americans forget the story behind May Day
Rudolph J. Vecoli, Barre Montpelier Times Argus, April 26, 2007

May Day: The holiday of the workers. In days gone by, when men, women
and children often worked 10 or more hours a day, seven days a week, May
Day was an assertion on the part of wage-slaves that they were sovereign
human beings with control over their own lives and destinies. They
celebrated the day with marches of tens and hundreds of thousands
throughout the world.

May Day was an expression of the international solidarity of the working
class. "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your
chains," was not just a slogan. It was a battle cry in the war between
classes. Their marches and rallies, with fiery speeches, impassioned
poetry and stirring anthems, gave them a sense of their collective
strength. It was an act of defiance of the combined forces of employers
and public authorities. Often their gatherings were brutally attacked by
police or thugs with clubs and guns.

Many of us have grandparents or great-grandparents who participated in
these observances. Few of us acknowledge or are even aware of this
inspiring part of our family histories. We Americans suffer from mass
amnesia of the remarkable and some times glorious history of workers'
struggles for liberty of expression and social justice. Who now
remembers May Day?

Although not often taught in American history classes, May Day
originated in the United States during the campaign for an eight-hour
day. The Knights of Labor, the nascent American Federation of Labor and
various anarchist groups designated May 1, 1886, for nationwide
demonstrations for the eight-hour goal. An incident which occurred
several days later in Chicago made this the beginning of a global
workers' movement. Following a clash between strikers and police in
which several workers were killed, a protest meeting was held in
Haymarket Square.

When police attacked the gathering, a bomb was thrown, killing several
officers. In the trial of anarchists (who were not accused of the
bombing, but for advocating violence) which followed, eight were found
guilty and four subsequently executed. These "Haymarket martyrs" quickly
became revered heroes of labor movements throughout the world.

With this tragic episode in the class war in mind, the International
Socialist Congress meeting in Paris in 1889 designated May 1, 1890, as
an eight-hour holiday to be observed by workers in all countries. An
increasingly conservative Samuel Gompers and AF of L had by the
mid-1890s distanced themselves from May Day and embraced the legally
sanctioned Labor Day, which was observed the first Monday in September.
Coming from radical backgrounds, Finns, Slavs, East European Jews,
Italians and other immigrants found their cherished May Day opposed not
only by capitalists but often by American workers as well. Despite being
denounced as "foreign born reds," they kept the torch of May Day
idealism burning for another generation.

The response of the "bosses," political and economic, was twofold: to
allay the anger of the workers, measures were taken to ameliorate the
worst abuses of the capitalist system; while extreme repression was used
to silence the most vocal and active labor advocates. The case of Nicola
Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchist immigrants,
electrocuted on Aug. 23, 1927, following a blatantly biased trial, is
the most heinous example of the latter.

However, the ideal of May Day had already been shattered by the
collision of international solidarity of the "proletariat" with the
fervid nationalism resulting from World War I. Patriotism trumped class
consciousness, and millions of workers killed each other in the name of
the fatherland. Meanwhile, the Bolshevik Revolution which appeared to
fulfill the vision of a collective republic turned out to be a Trojan
horse in the socialist camp. The Leninist-Stalinist regime proved to be
a ruthless dictatorship presiding over state capitalism. Among the
earliest and most passionate opponents of Communist Russia were
socialists and anarchists whose comrades were being liquidated by the
Bolsheviks.

The aspiration for the unity of workers was shattered by these developments.

In the United States, the Great Depression of the 1930s did not usher in
communism but the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which saved
capitalism and laid the basis for a welfare state.

May Day was hijacked by the Soviet Union with its displays of military
prowess in Red Square. The association of May Day with Soviet Communism
has given it a bad name to this day.

In this age of globalization, when workers are pitted against each
other, across oceans and continents, we have returned to conditions of
pitiless exploitation of human beings. If greed ever was constrained by
patriotism, it certainly is not today. The quest for profits knows no
inhibitions by national ideologies or loyalties. Yes, we are involved in
a class war, a war of oil companies, the military-industrial complex,
the corrupted political institutions, against the workers and consumers.

We, the American working people, remain beguiled by symbols, the flag,
the Fourth of July, the Thanksgiving turkey. It is time to revisit May
Day in the spirit in which it was conceived over a hundred years ago.
Only an international labor movement can hope to match the prowess of
the amoral trans-national capitalist system. Freeing ourselves from the
sordid history which stained the banner of May Day, we need to raise a
cleansed, purified standard on which is emblazoned once again: "Workers
of the World Unite!"

Rudolph J. Vecoli is professor emeritus of history and former director
of the Immigration History Research Center University of Minnesota-Twin
Cities. He lives in St. Paul, Minn.

Conservatives become nervous due to Bush's steady consolidation of power

2007-04-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

Working for the Clampdown

What might the president do with his new power to declare martial law?

by James Bovard

How many pipe bombs might it take to end American democracy? Far fewer than it would have taken a year ago.

The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist “incident,” if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of “public order,” or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations.

The media and most of Capitol Hill ignored or cheered on this grant of nearly boundless power. But now that the president’s arsenal of authority is swollen and consecrated, a few voices of complaint are being heard. Even the New York Times recently condemned the new law for “making martial law easier.”

It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from “Insurrection Act” to “Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act.” The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition”—and such “condition” is not defined or limited.

These new pretexts are even more expansive than they appear. FEMA proclaims the equivalent of a natural disaster when bad snowstorms occur, and Congress routinely proclaims a natural disaster (and awards more farm subsidies) when there is a shortfall of rain in states with upcoming elections. A terrorist “incident” could be something as stupid as the flashing toys scattered around Boston last fall.

The new law also empowers the president to commandeer the National Guard of one state to send to another state for up to 365 days. Bush could send the Alabama National Guard to suppress antiwar protests in Boston. Or the next president could send the New York National Guard to disarm the residents of Mississippi if they resisted a federal law that prohibited private ownership of semiautomatic weapons. Governors’ control of the National Guard can be trumped with a simple presidential declaration.

The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the administration clearly signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it.

The Katrina debacle seems to have drowned Washington’s resistance to military rule. Bush declared, “I want there to be a robust discussion about the best way for the federal government, in certain extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets for the good of the people.” His initial proposal generated a smattering of criticism and no groundswell of support. There was no “robust discussion.” On Aug. 29, 2006, the administration upped the ante, labeling the breached levees “the equivalent of a weapon of mass effect being used on the city of New Orleans.” Nobody ever defined a “weapon of mass effect,” but the term wasn’t challenged.

Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision along with committee chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). Sen. Ted Kennedy openly endorsed it, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent.

Every governor in the country opposed the changes, and the National Governors Association repeatedly and loudly objected. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on Sept. 19 that “we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law,” but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: “Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy.” Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it “was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals.”

Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article in December on how the provision became law with minimal examination or controversy. A Republican Senate aide blamed the governors for failing to raise more fuss: “My understanding is that they sent form letters to offices. If they really want a piece of legislation considered they should have called offices and pushed the matter. No office can handle the amount of form letters that come in each day.”

Thus, the Senate was not guilty by reason of form letters. Plus, the issue was not on the front page of the Washington Post within the 48 hours before the Senate voted on it. Surely no reasonable person can expect senators to know what they were doing when they voted 100 to 0 in favor of the bill? In reality, they were too busy to notice the latest coffin nails they hammered into the Constitution.

This expansion of presidential prerogative illustrates how every federal failure redounds to the benefit of leviathan. FEMA was greatly expanded during the Clinton years for crises like the New Orleans flood. It, along with local and state agencies, floundered. Yet the federal belly flop on the Gulf Coast somehow anointed the president to send in troops where he sees fit.

“Martial law” is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. Perhaps some conservatives believe that the only change when martial law is declared is that people are no longer read their Miranda rights when they are locked away. “Martial law” means obey soldiers’ commands or be shot. The abuses of military rule in southern states during Reconstruction were legendary, but they have been swept under the historical rug.

Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation—something that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree. The Bush team is rarely remiss in stretching power beyond reasonable bounds. Bush talks as if any constraint on his war-making prerogative or budget is “aiding and abetting the enemy.” Can such a man be trusted to reasonably define insurrection or disorder? Can Hillary Clinton?

Bush can commandeer a state’s National Guard any time he declares a “state has refused to enforce applicable laws.” Does this refer to the laws as they are commonly understood—or the laws after Bush fixes them with a signing statement?

Some will consider concern about Bush or future presidents exploiting martial law to be alarmist. This is the same reflex many people have had to each administration proposal or power grab from the Patriot Act in October 2001 to the president’s enemy-combatant decree in November 2001 to the setting up the Guantanamo prison in early 2002 to the doctrine of preemptive war. The administration has perennially denied that its new powers pose any threat even after the evidence of abuses—illegal wiretapping, torture, a global network of secret prisons, Iraq in ruins—becomes overwhelming. If the administration does not hesitate to trample the First Amendment with “free speech zones,” why expect it to be diffident about powers that could stifle protests en masse?

On Feb. 24, the White House conducted a highly publicized drill to test responses to IEDs going off simultaneously in ten American cities. The White House has not disclosed the details of how the feds will respond, but it would be out of character for this president to let new powers he sought to gather dust. There is nothing more to prevent a president from declaring martial law on a pretext than there is to prevent him from launching a war on the basis of manufactured intelligence. And when the lies become exposed years later, it could be far too late to resurrect lost liberties.

Senators Leahy and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) are sponsoring a bill to repeal the changes, but it is not setting the woods on fire on Capitol Hill. Leahy urged his colleagues to consider the Section 1076 fix, declaring, “It is difficult to see how any Senator could disagree with the advisability of having a more transparent and thoughtful approach to this sensitive issue.”

He deserves credit for fighting hard on this issue, but there is little reason to expect most members of Congress to give it a second look. The Section 1076 debacle exemplifies how the Washington establishment pretends that new power will not be abused, regardless of how much existing power has been mishandled. Why worry about martial law when there is pork to be harvested and photo ops to attend? It is still unfashionable in Washington to worry about the danger of the open barn door until after the horse is two miles down the road.

Bush pledges to continue the madness

2007-04-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

Bush vows to veto Iraq pullout plan

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush pledged on Friday to veto -- and go on vetoing -- legislation that includes a timetable for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq but Democrats urged him to sign it.

Defying the veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Congress this week approved a $124 billion war spending measure that would require U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq by Oct. 1 at the latest.

"I'm sorry it's come to this," Bush told reporters. "I'm sorry that ... the issue evolved the way it has. But nevertheless, it is what it is, and it will be vetoed."

Senate Democrats, at a New York retreat, urged Bush to back off his threatened veto and consider the measure carefully.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he thinks, even in the event of a veto, the president is open to a negotiated compromise.

"If you look at the president's statements the last few days, I think they've been very promising," Reid said, pointing to remarks by Bush indicating he would discuss the issue further with lawmakers.

"At least as far as I'm concerned, the president has changed his tune," Reid added. "This is just a lot of swagger, and he should stop swaggering and sign the bill."

A retired general who was the Army's senior intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. William Odom, also called on Bush to sign the bill, saying it would be a "rare act of courage" by the president.

In the Democrats' weekly radio address, Odom said Bush had been "absent without leave," ignoring accumulating evidence that his Iraq strategy had failed, but that the legislation offered him the opportunity to change course.

With no compromise in sight, Bush, at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Camp David, said the Democrats' bill would tie the hands of U.S. generals and that he would veto a second bill if it had a pullout timetable.

"So if they want to try again that which I have said was unacceptable, then of course I'll veto it. But I hope it doesn't come to that. I believe we can work a way forward. And I think we can come to our senses and make sure that we get the money to the troops in a timely fashion," he said.

Democrats promised to send the bill to the White House on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of Bush declaring aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended." The aircraft carrier was decorated with a large "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Iraq has since been riven by violence and the death toll of U.S. troops has passed 3,300. The increasingly unpopular war was a major factor in Republicans' loss of control of Congress to the Democrats in last November's mid-term elections.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Bush invited Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress to meet him at the White House next Wednesday to talk about "making sure we get the funding to our troops."

Congress is expected to send the bill to Bush by Tuesday.

Republicans quickly accepted, and Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said they would attend. Reid also said he had met with the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and planned to do so again on Monday.

The eight Democratic contenders to succeed Bush in the November 2008 election agreed at their first debate on Thursday on the need to quickly pull U.S. troops out of Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and by Ellen Wulfhorst in New York)

Coca Growers Shake the Andes Once Again

2007-04-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

Struggles Heat Up in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia

By José Arenas
Former Colombian Congressman

April 26, 2007

During the last few days, coca growers, especially in Peru and Colombia, have been in the news again, as their actions have given the media something to talk about.

On the one hand, we have the Peruvian cocaleros of the Tocache region and the cities of Tingo Maria and Huanuco regions who are opposed to the government’s plans to eradicate their crops. President Alan García has even promised to bomb the clandestine airstrips and the wells where the coca leaves are soaked before being processed into the pasta base(“base paste”) for cocaine. Faced with the government’s plans for eradication, the coca growers’ federation forced the government into signing a declaration several days ago, which suspends the eradication until farmers are able to register themselves as coca growers and alternative development programs are begun. On the other hand, in another part of the Peruvian Amazon, a more radical coca producers’ federation has said that it will not allow any form of eradication or registration. Thousands of farm workers have mobilized and are now blocking the highways in and out of the city of Huanuco, under the banner of “coca or death.”

Meanwhile, in Colombia, nearly 4,000 coca growers are in a “permanent mobilization” in the town of La Dorada, in the San Miguel region of Putumayo department. They are proudly proclaiming that they grow coca and make their living from it, and that the fumigations, which the Uribe government is applying, are starving them to death as even the basic subsistence crops that their families eat are being destroyed. Nearby, in Nariño, the residents of the El Charco and La Tola municipalities located on the Pacific coast and predominantly Afro-Colombian, have been forced into displacement due to the violent clashes between the Colombian Navy and the guerrilla fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in its Spanish initials). The farms allege that the battles are an expression of a chemical war: the fumigations that left them starving on their small plots of land. To make the situation worse, two rightwing paramilitary groups – led by old militia lieutenants now demobilized under Colombia’s “Justice and Peace” law and serving time in the far-away Itaguí prison – have also entered the area, seeking to take control of the coca business and secure routes to the Pacific.

In other parts of the country, more and more organizations are appearing that represent coca-cultivating peasants and are not afraid to state their trade openly – for instance, the ACARIGUA association in the Macarena National Park, and the cultivators in the Catatumbo region. In all these cases, the farmers are not just complaining about the fumigations, but also reject so-called “manual eradication,” as they feel this leads to even more human rights abuses. Such ground operations occurred in Macarena in 2006 and included raids and arrests without warrants, food blockades, torture, and even theft from the local farmers, according to complaints lodged in early 2007 by the population of the savannahs of Puerto Concordia after police operations there.

Finally, the Bolivian cocaleros are working in the coca commission of that country’s Constitutional Assembly, and are close to getting the coca leaf recognized by the new constitution as part of the national symbols and culture, thus pushing for a reevaluation of the ancient plant’s significance. It remains a paradox that our Bolivian brothers are achieving such recognition – thanks to the presence of cocalero leaders, beginning with Evo, in the political sphere – while elsewhere in the neighborhood, the governments of Peru and Colombia are hardening the measures taken against coca growers. A recent example is the ridiculous prohibition that one Colombian government institute has passed against coca-derived products.

Coca has been in the Andes since time immemorial and we can be sure that those who design and apply coercive policies against it will not be able to remove it. The peasant farmers are human beings of flesh and bone, who in most cases are in the coca business because it is the only way they can earn any kind of income that allows them make ends meet. Ignoring these realities is like ignoring the fact that, under the protection of anti-drug laws, the U.S. has increased its presence in the region, exacerbated the passions and concerns of the local people and further militarized the nation’s rural armed conflicts.

Pedro José Arenas Garcia is the president of Colombia’s Communal Movement. From 2002 to 2006 he represented his district, Guaviare (one of the country’s most fumigated) in the Colombian Congress. Read the first and second part of his 2003 interview with Narco News.

Originally published in Spanish April 23

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