The New York suit named Bush and the heads of national security agencies including Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA), accusing Bush of exceeding his constitutional powers and challenging the NSA's domestic spying without judicial approval or statutory authorization.

Bush acknowledged last month that he had authorized the NSA to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without court warrants in an effort to track terrorist suspects.

The revelation of the program has set off a debate about presidential powers, with both Democrats and Republicans questioning whether the administration had exceeded its constitutional limits.

Bush has sought to justify the program as the legal act of a commander-in-chief in a time of war, saying a congressional resolution passed after the 9/11 attacks authorizing him to use force in the fight against terrorism had allowed him to order the program.

But the CCR suit noted that federal law allows the president to conduct warrantless surveillance during the first 15 days of a war and allows court authorization of surveillance for foreign agents or suspected terrorists.

The lawsuit said Bush "unilaterally and secretly authorized electronic surveillance without judicial approval or congressional authorization."

The ACLU lawsuit in Detroit, which also targeted the NAS and its director, included other plaintiffs such as Greenpeace, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and several individuals.

The ACLU said the spying program violates Americans' rights to free speech and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of prominent journalists, scholars, attorneys, and national nonprofit organizations who frequently communicate by phone and e-mail with people in the Middle East.

Because of the nature of their calls and e-mails, they believe their communications are being intercepted by the NSA under the spying program which has disrupted "their ability to talk with sources, locate witnesses, conduct scholarship, and engage in advocacy."

The New York Times reported last month that Bush signed an order in 2002 allowing the NSA to monitor the telephone and e-mailcommunications of "hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States" with persons abroad, without a court order as the law requires.

The New York suit, filed on behalf of the center and individuals, names President Bush, the head of the National Security Agency, and the heads of the other major security agencies, challenging the NSA's surveillance of persons within the United States without judicial approval or statutory authorization.

It seeks an injunction that would prohibit the government from conducting surveillance of communications in the United States without warrants.

The Detroit suit, which also names the NSA, was filed with the ACLU along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Greenpeace and several individuals.

Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday morning with the National Security Agency and the Justice Department.

Bush, who said the wiretapping is legal and necessary, has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

The program authorized eavesdropping of international phone calls and e-mails of people deemed a terror risk.

The Detroit lawsuit says the plaintiffs, who frequently communicate by telephone and e-mail with people in the Middle East and Asia, have a ``well-founded belief'' that their communications are being intercepted by the government.

``By seriously compromising the free speech and privacy rights of the plaintiffs and others, the program violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution,'' the lawsuit states.

According to Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Abramoff had "a few" such meetings. But the spokesman won't say when or with whom. Nor will he say which interests Abramoff was representing -- or how he got access to the White House.

Abramoff pleaded guilty two weeks ago to mail fraud and tax evasion charges in an influence-peddling scandal that's involved a dozen-plus members of Congress.

Abramoff was also a top fundraiser for Bush's re-election campaign -- and attended two holiday receptions at the White House.

Earlier McClellan promised a "thorough" report on the lobbyist's meetings with White House staff. But now he says he won't go beyond previous comments.

House GOP Outlines Ethics Proposals

House Republicans have unveiled a series of new ethics proposals in the wake of the lobbying scandal.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said members "must be above question."

The GOP proposals include a ban on travel paid for by private groups, like the lavish trips arranged for lawmakers by Abramoff.

The Republican plan would also double, from one to two years, the waiting period before lawmakers and senior staff members can lobby Congress.

Democrats, who have blasted what they call a Republican "culture of corruption," plan to unveil their proposals on Wednesday.

The action by both parties comes after Abramoff agreed to tell prosecutors how he allegedly lavished donations, trips, meals and other favors on members of Congress who provided legislative help.

Al-Jazeera Wants Bush-Blair Records

Lawyers for Al-Jazeera are pushing Britain's government to release part of a transcript of a meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

The Arab television network's London bureau chief told The Associated Press the law firm was hired "to put pressure" on the government because Al-Jazeera "would like to know the truth."

A British tabloid reported that Bush told Blair in April 2004 that Al-Jazeera's headquarters should be bombed.

A spokesman told British media that Blair's office will reply to the freedom of information request within 20 working days. The spokesman said details from private talks between Blair and "any other world leaders" won't be disclosed.

"The memo doesn't refer to bombing the Al-Jazeera television station in Qatar" or anywhere else, the spokesman said.

In a town where money buys influence and access, it would have been highly unusual for one of the top fundraisers for the Bush White House to not have had meetings with the President.

McClellan, in a carefully-worded response to reporters Tuesday, said his personal investigation into the matter revealed that Abramoff may have had two “private staff level meetings” at the White House. This is the same Scott McClellan who claimed he investigated the Valerie Plame leak and told reporters that neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor anyone on his staff had any involvement in that scandal. Then Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, got slapped with an indictment for giving the info to the press.

McClellan, as skilled a liar as anyone who has stood before the press and misled reporters on behalf of a President, fails to mention Abramoff’s frequent visits to the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, the private meetings that the lobbyist arranged with the President on the 2004 campaign trail and at the Republican National Convention that year.

White House visitor logs are not public record and the Bush administration keeps separate logs of visitors to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and other locations like Camp David or the President’s home. In addition, logs can – and often are – revised when scandal erupts.

But Abramoff, who raised more than $100,000 for Bush in the last campaign, promised big time donors face time with the President and delivered on those promises during the convention. In addition, he traveled to Bush’s ranch in Texas with his co-conspirator in crime, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

A former DeLay staffer who is cooperating with the investigation into both Abramoff and the disgraced GOP leader’s activities, has told investigators that Abramoff and DeLay visited Bush at his ranch on at least four occasions in 2003 and 2004.

It is common for big money contributors to get personal meetings with the President. At the GOP’s annual Presidential Dinner in Washington, those who pony up at least $25,000 are hustled into a room before the dinner for time and photo ops with the President.

Abramoff kept a photo of he and Bush, shot at the Crawford ranch, in his office in Washington. The autograph from Bush said “to my great friend Jack.”

Dale Knally, a campaign worker in the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, recalls a meeting between Bush and Abramoff during a campaign stop in Florida.

“He put his arm around Abramoff and told us that ‘this man is one of this administration’s greatest friends,’” Knally recalls. Knally declined a job in the Bush administration and returned to school after the election and remembers some in the campaign privately calling Abramoff a “sleazeball.”

“That campaign taught me that I never wanted anything to do with the Bush administration or politics again,” Knally said. “No matter how many showers I took, I couldn’t wash away the stench.”

Originally Published at and © Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

Gore charged that the administration acted without congressional authority and made a "direct assault" on a special federal court that authorizes requests to eavesdrop on Americans. One judge on the court resigned last month, voicing concerns about the National Security Agency's surveillance of e-mails and phone calls.

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Tracey Schmitt, attacked Gore's comments shortly after address.

"Al Gore's incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as his lack of understanding of the threats facing America," Schmitt said. "While the president works to protect Americans from terrorists, Democrats deliver no solutions of their own, only diatribes laden with inaccuracies and anger. "

Gore's speech was sponsored by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and The Liberty Coalition, two organizations that have expressed concern about the policy.

The former vice president said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should name a special counsel to investigate the program, citing the attorney general's "obvious conflict of interest" as a member of the Bush Cabinet as well as the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Gonzales has agreed to testify publicly at a Senate hearing on the program, and he told a news conference recently that the president acted "consistent with his legal authority" to protect Americans from a terrorist threat.

Gore, speaking at DAR Constitution Hall, said the concerns are especially important on the King holiday because the slain civil rights leader was among thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government.

King, as a foremost civil rights activist in the 1950s and 60s, had his telephone conversations wiretapped by the FBI, which kept a file on him and thousands of other civil rights and anti-Vietnam war activists.

Gore said there is still much to learn about the domestic surveillance program, but he already has drawn a conclusion about its legality.

"What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently," the Democrat maintained.

Bush has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

Gore had a different view, contending that Bush failed to convince Congress to support a domestic spying program, so he "secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother."

He said the spying program must be considered along with other administration actions as a constitutional power grab by the president. Gore cited imprisoning American citizens without charges in terrorism cases, mistreatment of prisoners - including torture - and seizure of individuals in foreign countries and delivering them to autocratic regimes "infamous for the cruelty of their techniques."

Gore didn't only criticize government officials. Referring to news reports that private telecommunications companies have provided the Bush administration with access to private information on Americans, Gore said any company that did so should immediately end its complicity in the program.

The revelation of this new information is astounding for two reasons. First, if true, this would mean that four of the key hijackers in the 9/11 plot were in the cross-hairs of our Pentagon one year prior to the attacks during the summer of 2000. Second, it raises credibility issues surrounding the 9/11 Commission since the Commission’s Final Report does not mention—let alone report upon—the Able Danger operation.

Let’s address the concept that DIA had four 9/11 hijackers identified as al Qaeda operatives in 2000. First, why was this information withheld from the FBI when it was allegedly collected by DIA back in the summer of 2000? Second, if this information was not passed to the FBI, was any of this information passed on to the CIA? Third, what difference would it have made if DIA had informed the FBI about these four al Qaeda targets? Fourth, if it indeed exists, where is the Able Danger chart that allegedly contains Atta’s name, and most importantly, have we capitalized on any other information or names contained in that chart?

Withholding from the FBI:

News reports state that the information regarding the 9/11 hijackers was not passed onto the FBI because Pentagon attorneys believed that the targets of the data-mining operation (the four 9/11 hijackers) were green card holders thereby banning the passage of this information to the FBI since laws were in place during the summer of 2000 that banned domestic surveillance of Americans by the FBI. Of course, the DOD attorneys were patently wrong in their interpretation since the four 9/11 hijackers that were identified were merely U.S. visa holders (some of which had already expired and/or were illegal). These men were not U.S. citizens—therefore, the information could have been readily passed to the FBI with no worry of breaking any rules or laws. Nevertheless, the Able Danger information did not get shared with the FBI. (The identities and whereabouts of the DOD attorneys who provided such wrong legal counsel remains unknown—which raises the obvious question as to whether these individuals are still working at DOD and making the same erroneous and deadly decisions.)

It should be mentioned that two of the men mentioned in the Able Danger operation—al Mihdhar and al Hazmi—were already known by the CIA as al Qaeda operatives by late December 1999. Much like DIA and their failure to share information with the FBI, the CIA also failed to share their information about these two men being inside the United States and planning terrorist activities.

In December 1999, CIA was actively investigating and tracking al Mihdhar and al Hazmi as they traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. While in Kuala Lumpur in early January 2000, al Mihdhar and al Hazmi attended a meeting with other known al Qaeda operatives. The meeting was a planning session for the U.S.S. Cole bombing that occurred in October 2000 and for the 9/11 attacks. Our CIA conducted surveillance on this meeting.

After the meeting in Malaysia, Al Mihdhar and al Hazmi arrived in the United States in January 2000. The CIA knew about the two men coming to America, but chose not to tell the FBI about their presence inside the United States on a number of occasions for the 18 months preceding 9/11. Why? Most likely, because the CIA did not want the FBI stepping on their toes while they were conducting an ongoing surveillance operation on these known al Qaeda operatives. At any rate, the record shows that for 18 months prior to 9/11, the CIA conducted surveillance on these two targets while they were in the United States and failed to tell the FBI about it. The question remains whether DIA and CIA were collaborating on their surveillance operations of these al Qaeda operatives or acting independently.

Why does it matter that the FBI was not given the information?

The four men allegedly under surveillance by Project Able Danger, were four key players in the 9/11 plot. They spent from the spring of 2000 through the summer of 2001 coming into regular contact with the other 9/11 hijackers—namely and most importantly, Hani Hanjour and Ziad Jarrah. Additionally, all four of the identified hijackers had contacts at the same flight school that Zaccarias Moussaoui was arrested at by the FBI in August 2001. The hijackers received numerous wire transfers from known al Qaeda operatives—such as Ramzi Binalshibh. They had ongoing contacts with other known al Qaeda operatives including Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They trained in U.S. flight schools. They participated in numerous cross-country practice flights during the summer of 2001. They bought flight control manuals and global positioning equipment, knives and pepper spray. They traveled in and out of this country (sometimes to meet with other al Qaeda operatives) on a number of occasions from the spring of 2000 until the summer of 2001. Had the FBI been told about their presence in the United States, most certainly, the 9/11 attacks would have been prevented. How can I say this with such conviction?

Mohammed Atta was the pilot for Flight 11, the plane that hit WTC 1. Marwan al Shehhi was the pilot of Flight 175, the plane that hit WTC 2. Hani Hanjour was the pilot of Flight 77, the plane that hit the Pentagon. And, Ziad Jarrah was the pilot of Flight 93, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. Let’s look at the details.

Flight 77—al Mihdhar, al Hazmi, and Hanjour

It should be noted that Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, lived with al Hazmi for the 9 months preceding the 9/11 attacks. Recall, that al Hazmi was targeted and identified by CIA and allegedly also DIA by the summer of 2000. Thus, when Hazmi and Hanjour met in December of 2000, surveillance would have been active on Hazmi for approximately 4 months. Both Hazmi and Hanjour attended flight school together in the Phoenix area of Arizona (the same Phoenix that was the subject of the "Phoenix Memo" penned by FBI agent Kenneth Williams in the summer of 2001. Williams’ memo discussed strange patterns of middle-eastern men taking flying lessons in U.S. flight schools but the memo was ignored by FBI Headquarters). In the spring of 2001, both Hazmi and Hanjour moved to the East Coast settling in Virginia and then New Jersey. While on the East Coast, Hazmi and Hanjour came into regular contact with the remaining hijackers—the muscle hijackers--that would help them commandeer Flight 77. From December 2000 until the 9/11 attacks, Al Hazmi and Hanjour were inseparable. Thus, had al Hazmi been under surveillance and identified, it goes without saying that Hanjour would have been likewise identified as an al Qaeda operative.

Once identified, the FBI would have learned that Hanjour did not attend school after entering this country on a student visa in December 2000, thereby violating his immigration status and making him deportable under 8 USC 1227 (a)(1)(B). Necessarily, if deported, Hanjour would have been unable to pilot Flight 77 into the Pentagon. As an aside, al Hazmi would have also been deported since he overstayed the terms of his admission, a violation of immigration laws rendering him deportable under 8 USC 1227 (a)(1)(B).

Flight 93—Ziad Jarrah

Ziad Jarrah, the pilot of Flight 93, was a roommate with Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi while they lived in Hamburg, Germany. Once in the United States, Jarrah attended flight school in Venice, Florida from the summer of 2000 until the summer of 2001. Likewise, during the summer of 2000, Atta and al Shehhi arrived in Florida to take their flight lessons in Venice, Florida. All three had ongoing and continued contacts with one another for the year preceding the 9/11 attacks, and during the summer of 2001 they came into regular contact with the other muscle hijackers that would help them commandeer each of the flights they piloted on the day of 9/11.

It seems likely that if our CIA and DIA had identified both Atta and al Shehhi, they would have likewise identified Jarrah as an al Qaeda operative. Notably, Jarrah left and returned to the United States six times between the summer of 2000 and the 9/11 attacks. Jarrah also made hundreds of phone calls to his girlfriend who remained overseas in Germany during this time period and he also communicated frequently by email. Thus, there were ample opportunities to gather the kinds of information that both DIA and CIA could capitalize upon while Jarrah was living inside the United States.

Jarrah attended flight school in June 2000 without properly adjusting his immigration status, thereby violating his immigration status and rendering him inadmissible under 8 USC 1182 (a)(7)(B) each of the subsequent six times he re-entered the United States between June 2000 and August 5, 2001. Thus, Jarrah could have been either denied entry or deported had our FBI been aware of his identification as an al Qaeda operative. Whether arrested and deported or barred entry into the country, Jarrah clearly would have been unable to pilot Flight 93 on the morning of 9/11.

Flight 11—Mohammed Atta

Mohammed Atta was the pilot of Flight 11—the plane that flew into the first Tower of the World Trade Center. Atta is widely considered the ringleader of the 9/11 plot. He had ongoing contacts with Ramsi Binalshibh. He received regular wire transfers from known al Qaeda sources like Binalshibh. He traveled abroad at least twice and met with other known al Qaeda operatives throughout the time period of the summer of 2000 until the summer of 2001. He took flight lessons in Venice, Florida along with Marwan al Shehhi (another hijacker allegedly identified by Able Danger). Atta visited and made inquiries to the same flight school that Zaccarias Moussaoui was arrested at by the FBI in August 2001. Had lead-hijacker Atta been under surveillance by the FBI, there is absolutely no plausible way the 9/11 attacks could have been carried out.

Atta failed to present a proper M-1 visa when he entered the United States in January 2001. He had previously overstayed his tourist visa and therefore was inadmissible under 8 USC 1182(a)(7)(B). If he had been arrested and deported, Atta would not have been able to pilot Flight 11 into WTC 1 on the morning of 9/11.

Flight 175—Marwan al Shehhi

The final person allegedly identified by DIA was Marwan al Shehhi. As it turns out, DIA was not the only agency in the U.S. intelligence community that was aware of "Marwan" because in 1999, the German government had provided CIA with the name "Marwan" along with his telephone number. German intelligence had received his name and number as a result of their own surveillance of the Hamburg cell—the same cell that Atta and Jarrah were members.

From the summer of 2000 until the summer of 2001, Al Shehhi took his flight lessons in Florida alongside of Atta. They were inseparable. They opened joint bank accounts and received wire transfers from Binalshibh--a known al Qaeda operative. Together, they came into regular contact with the other hijackers particularly throughout the summer of 2001 when they all were located on the East Coast and making final plans for the 9/11 attacks.

The legality of al Shehhi’s presence in the United States remains questionable. The discrepancy surrounds whether al Shehhi was considered a "student pilot" or a full-blown pilot. If he was considered a "student pilot", his admission as a business visitor was erroneous, and he therefore, could have been barred entry to the country when he re-entered from a trip abroad in January 2001. If barred entry, clearly al Shehhi would have been unable to pilot flight 175 that flew into WTC 2 on the morning of 9/11.

Did Able Danger exist? And, if so, where is the chart that supposedly identifies Atta?

If the Able Danger chart exists, I think our government and its intelligence agencies had best locate it. It would seem that the chart might hold the names of other terrorists bent on murdering Americans. Why would such a chart go missing? Why wouldn’t our intelligence agencies want to utilize the wealth of information contained in that chart? In other words, shouldn’t we want to follow up on the other names listed on the chart? I know I would feel a lot better if I knew as a fact that every name on the chart was investigated, wouldn’t you? Or, if we do have the chart, I wonder if any of the other names on the Able Danger chart match any of the individuals’ identities in Gitmo? Why hasn’t anyone in our government given an accounting of where this chart is and whether the information held within the chart has been properly capitalized upon? Where is the urgency to locate this valuable document that contains another approximately 200 terrorists’ names? (As an aside, I find our entire government’s handling of this issue extremely uncomfortable. If the chart did not exist, then a clear, emphatic statement should have been issued by each entity: the Pentagon, the 9/11 Commission, and the Administration. Think about it. If you genuinely know that something never existed, then you can flatly deny its existence. Unless, it turns up, and then you're on the record denying its existence. It seems to me, that the deafening silence and hedging comments made by all those involved—comments along the lines of "well, if it turns out the chart exists, then…"— are very suspicious and quite disturbing. Its like nobody wants to get caught lying to the American public, but yet, nobody wants to confirm the Able Danger chart’s existence because the implications of the existence of such a chart is so damning. So now we have all of our government leaders and experts clamming up and acting like a bunch of potential criminal teenage boys in Aruba.)

Additionally, some questions have been raised about the ability of DIA to label or "identify" Atta as an al Qaeda operative as early as 2000. To me, it would seem logical that DIA was able to do so, after all, in 2000 Atta was living in Hamburg, Germany and having regular contacts with other known al Qaeda operatives namely Ramzi Binalshibh, Said Bahaji, Zakariya Essabar, Muhammed Zammar, Mounir Motassadeq, Abdelghani Mzoudi, and Mamoun Darkazanli. We know that the German government had Atta’s cell—the Hamburg cell—under surveillance and we also know that our CIA was conducting parallel surveillance during the same time period. Information surrounding the Hamburg cell and the surveillance is documented throughout the German trials of Mzoudi and Mottasedeq—two of the al Qaeda operatives that were prosecuted for their ties to the 9/11 attacks but eventually released after the United States refused to cooperate with the German courts by sharing intelligence evidence linking the men to the 9/11 plot. (Both men are walking the streets of Germany today as free men because our government refused to share evidence linking them to the 9/11 plot—something that frustrates many of the 9/11 families since we have yet to hold one terrorist accountable for the 9/11 attacks.) The surveillance of the Hamburg cell is also mentioned in overseas news reports from both London and Germany. One account even goes so far as to say that the CIA attempted to "flip" one of Atta’s comrades (Darkazanli) into being an informant for the CIA. Clearly, by December 2000, the CIA knew at least that Atta was a person of interest, so why should it seem so hard for the agency and others in our government to understand how DIA was able to do so, too?

Surveillance of the Hijackers—the proof.

The speed by which our government was able to accumulate such a vast amount of information immediately following the 9/11 attacks (in less than 24 hours) is the most persuasive proof that our government had the hijackers under its surveillance. FBI agents descended upon the very flight schools (out of the thousands of flight schools in our country) that the hijackers attended within two hours of the attacks. They were seen removing files from the flight schools buildings. Furthermore, photos of the hijackers and details about their activities in the final days before the attacks were also immediately presented to the American people. I mean you are talking about an intelligence apparatus that according to official accounts was completely in the dark about the plotting and planning of the 9/11 attacks. They — our intelligence agencies — knew nothing about the operatives living in this country—the operatives that were fully imbedded and openly training in our flight schools, partaking in practice flights across this country, receiving wire transfers from al Qaeda sources, and repeatedly traveling in and out of this country to visit other terrorists and terrorist facilities. Yet, for a group of agencies caught completely flat-footed on the day of 9/11, they certainly were able to get their act together at a time when most—if not all-- of this nation’s citizens were brought to their knees.

Additionally, when one carefully reads the 9/11 chronology and information provided in the public record, it becomes increasingly clear that the CIA’s repeated failure to share information with the FBI about two of the 9/11 hijackers—al Mihdhar and al Hazmi-- was purposeful. There exists at least seven instances between January 2000 and September 11th, 2001, that the CIA withheld vital information from the FBI about these two hijackers who were inside this country training for the attacks. Once, twice, maybe even three times could be considered merely careless oversights. But at least seven documented times? To me, that suggests something else. (To read about these instances, I suggest you read 9/11 materials relating to the "watchlisting issue" involving al Mihdhar and al Hazmi which is a story so detailed, that it deserves its own lengthy blog.)

The 9/11 Commission

At a bare minimum, the 9/11 Commission is not being honest with the American people. First, the Commission feigned total ignorance about Able Danger. Then, they admitted that they remembered hearing something about it. Next, they acknowledged that they were briefed about the program but found a discrepancy in the dates provided by the Able Danger informant, and therefore decided that the information was irrelevant to their investigation. Convenient excuses. But, wrong. Because, I happen to be one of the 9/11 widows that received personal commitments from each of the 9/11 Commissioners that they would track down every lead, and turn over every rock so as to provide the most thorough and definitive account of the 9/11 attacks to the American people. Last week’s revelations about Able Danger prove that the Commission has not been above-board with their investigation. Nor has their investigation been anywhere near exhaustive.

Now, legally speaking, the 9/11 Commissioners were mandated to provide a full accounting of the 9/11 attacks to the American people. If the Able Danger operation and its accompanying information turn out to be true, then necessarily each Commissioner has broken the law in that they failed to fulfill their legislative mandate in providing a full and just accounting of the 9/11 attacks to the American people. However, if we also come to learn that Atta’s or any of the other hijackers names were mentioned in the Able Danger chart, I think this nation will have bigger problems to deal with than accusing the 9/11 Commission of not following their mandate in providing a full accounting to the American people. As with most things in life, only time will tell.

If it looks like a government, stands behind a podium with a government seal, wears a suit and speaks in an authoritative voice, then everything must be okay. Ask any successful thief or terrorist what the key to the grift is: try to blend in. When I traveled in Europe in the ‘80s, my friends and I were occasionally hassled at borders because we “looked the part”: sort-of-scruffy, beat up car, long hair, etc. My German friend scoffed: “Guys with bombs in the trunk are certainly wearing suits and driving Mercedes.”

No cover works forever, and though many of us warned that the veneer was never very convincing to begin with, the paint seems to be chipping more and more on the right wing’s menagerie of talking dolls that is the Bush administration. Of course, Alito’s presence alone is evidence of the mask falling away. When Baby Doc Bush tried to appoint his own lawyer, his christofascist paymasters seethed with rage and responded with one voice: “You shut up, you dumb monkey, and remember why we put you in office in the first place.” The swaggering phony cowboy (well, the Boy part is real at least) obediently caved, and Harriet Myers made way for Raymond, aka Sam Alito.

So here he sits, the klieg lights melting the carefully crafted Rovian image of a real honest-to-goodness judge. First line of defense is always the blatant lie, of course; and to their barely deserved credit, the Democrats on the panel let loose with a much deserved chorus—to paraphrase—of “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Why was Alito so proud of his membership in the racist Concerned Alumni of Princeton, whose original goal was to keep blacks and women out of the Ivy League school? He had “no specific recollection.” Thank you, Mr. Haldeman-North-Dean-McNamara. Why did he agree with a case where a farm family was evicted at gunpoint? They may have had weapons. What about his well documented statements that there is no constitutional protection for abortion? That was then, this is now. His unabashed adulation of Robert Bork, whom he called the most qualified Supreme Court nominee in this century? Out of context.

For all their impotence, the Democratic minority managed to hone in on the real dangers that tipping the court might hasten: the final nail in the coffin of reproductive freedom, and an uberpresidency resting on unrestrained executive power. Not entirely to their credit, of course. Anyone who wasn’t awakened by the scandal of the NSA wiretapping is comatose. And those who hide behind “protecting Roe v. Wade” as the benchmark of protecting women’s rights are a few years too late. Casey is not the super-precedent that enshrines the 1972 Roe decision as untouchable: on the contrary, it is the open door that has invited states to impose restrictions on abortion, so that, at this date, 87% of the counties in the US have no health care providers who will perform abortion. Alito is merely the icing on the cake—the real fight is all but over, and the right wing has won. Anyone who doubts this should see the alarming Frontline documentary “The Last Abortion Clinic.”

And the Democrats, by playing their scripted part, are slowly but surely sowing the seeds of their own demise. Since the parties largely eschew any activity outside the electoral arena—strikes, mass rallies, mobilizations—there is little for them to do “between cycles” but play the role. The peculiarities of the Senate do allow them to filibuster; but their complicity in the war and their addiction to propriety will probably prevent them from doing so. And their predicament can be summed up in the simple phrase “No filibuster—no future.”

Simply sending Alito’s wife home sobbing (the meme currently being shopped by Fox News) isn’t enough. And as for that, Sammy & Martha, I’ll save my tears for some real victims, starting with the maimed and murdered children around the globe who are subject to the unrestrained authority of US presidents, past and present. Just beneath the mask, the ugliness of the agenda of these wackos is revealed by their own statements, in moments of clarity, and those of their heroes. Robert Bork, rightfully rejected as a radical nutbag, once said, in his dissent from a major case on the legality of contraception, that there is no explicit or implicit right to reproduction in the constitution. Yikes. This fits nicely with the theocracy Bush’s base would like to establish; but it’s a far cry from the mainstream.

That’s why it has to be covered by lies and hypocrisy so deep and so twisted that it blows our brains apart. The country that drenched southeast Asia in a warm bath of dioxin has the balls to talk about chemical weapons—Saddam’s most egregious crime, remember, was that he “gassed his own people,” while the generations of deformed Agent Orange babies in Vietnam deserve no parallel treatment. “Useable” nukes will somehow help us prevent nuclear proliferation, even as other countries scared to death are scrambling to get nukes to avoid become the US’ next victim. Meanwhile, nuclear war is already here: the Persian Gulf has been saturated with depleted uranium munitions not once, but twice, with all the vigor of elites whose kids are not sent to war. More than half of the soldiers of the first Gulf War are on some form of disability, and the coming DU crisis will engulf US society as it has already done to Iraq. Widespread torture will keep us safe, and somehow quell the rage of those who oppose our policies. Spying on nonviolent peace groups will preserve our civil liberties. Quakers, for God’s sake! I thought everyone pretty much knew that Nixon was the only dangerous Quaker. No wonder a recent internet sendup claimed that George Orwell’s estate was suing the Bush Administration for stealing his ideas.

But lies, of course, can’t hurt without a complicit audience. Vichy Democrats don’t help themselves or the country by abetting the pretense that this band of corrupt thugs clinging to power is Business as Usual. The timid debate over the horrors of the Iraq war won’t ring true to the rest of the world until they include a war crimes tribunal, reparations to the invaded, and restructuring of the process that made the war hysteria possible. Instead, the drumbeat toward war on Iran is already ramping up—sound familiar?—without the visceral response one might expect from such a truly insane proposition, and one from which the US and the world will not recover. And the press, who would love the ratings, can be counted on to continue the Orwellian spin: Pope John Paul is mourned as a reformer and a man of progress; the Abramoff corruption scandal is a bipartisan affair; and Ariel Sharon is recast as a Man of Peace. Meanwhile, the march toward the abyss can’t be overstated, and is being eased into fast forward. Bush may be an ignorant puppet, but The League of Shadows around him is neither stupid nor benign. And with control over the bloated military, they have the very real power to accelerate the world toward nuclear war and environmental devastation. Resistance begins with calling them on their lies; otherwise we risk being drawn into the flames.

© 2006 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to http://danielpwelch.com.

Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School (http://www.greenhouseschool.org). Translations of articles are available in up to 20 languages. Links to the website are appreciated at danielpwelch.com.

If impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate, Bush would simply go before the Supreme Court and claim that the radical "Unitary Executive Theory," combined with his supposedly "Inherent Powers" as Commander in Chief of the Military, together give him the Constitutional Authority to do whatever he wants to do in time of perpetual war, which is forever. And if Samuel Alito is a member of this Court, it seems very likely that he might be the deciding vote in a 5 to 4 majority voting in favor of Bush and against Congress and the People. Alito is a strong supporter of the Unitary Executive Theory ("Fuehrerprinzip," as Hitler called it), as is Chief Justice Roberts. As a Reagan Administration lawyer years ago, Alito helped develop the "Signing Statement" technique which Bush has been using to claim authority to disobey the Laws. Then why shouldn't he vote to uphold the very practices which he helped to create?

So how did we get to this terrible place where we now find ourselves? How did the Bush Power Grab get this far? And why hasn't it been stopped before now? Let's try to see . . .

In the space of a few short years, here's what has happened:

1. BUSH HAS COMPLETELY CAPTURED THE "BIG BUSINESS" AND "FAT CAT" WINGS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Bush is their long-time dream come true. He actively tries to give them everything they have always wanted from the Federal Government, but never could get before, namely: To reduce taxes at the upper end, which immediately pays them off for their support; To try for flat-rate taxes wherever possible, which always helps the upper end most; To reduce all kinds of Government Regulation on business, which helps profits by reducing expenses; To deny the obvious reality of Global Warming, which avoids expensive pollution controls; To undermine the effectiveness of all Government agencies, which reduces their usefulness and importance, as a prelude to their total elimination; To seek Privatization of everything Public, which transfers ownership and control from the Public to the Private Investors; To undermine Public Education, which is part of the Privatization effort mentioned above; To try to destroy Social Security as we know it, which would reduce business expenses and force people to "invest" (gamble) in the stock market, where the biggest guys usually win; To work for unrestricted Free Trade everywhere, which allows Private Investors to move jobs from expensive labor markets (like the USA) to cheap ones (like India and China), and also to buy up the property and natural resources of other countries in order to gain private profits from them in the future.

The "Big Business" and "Fat Cat" Republicans are the natural heart of the Republican Party - always have been, since Lincoln's death; always will be. And they provide the massive flow of money which finances the Republicans in all important elections. "You help me with money, I'll help you with money." Thus the Bush power grab is always well financed.

2. BUSH HAS ELIMINATED ALL SERIOUS CRITICISM IN THE MAJOR NEWS MEDIA, BECAUSE THE "BIG BUSINESS" AND "FAT CAT" REPUBLICANS NOW OWN AND CONTROL THEM. Earlier Federal restrictions on Corporate ownership have been lifted, and the Corporations have gobbled up all the news media. The heart of Journalism has been cut out and replaced with entertainment and fluffy features. American Corporate Journalism is now a bad joke. Nobody should take it seriously because it does almost no serious work. Its true purpose is to make money for the owners and to keep the Republicans in power. The so-called "Liberal bias in the Media" is pure illusion. Sure, the owners let a few coo-coos on the left rant and rave, just to make it look like we have "Freedom Of The Press For All People." But that is just a useful fantasy, and not the truth. "See! We have Freedom of the Press! Look at that hippie over there calling us bad names. See, we let him express himself. We have Freedom!" But when push comes to shove, the dissident voices are not heard, because the owners won't allow it to happen. And many of the so-called reporters are now wealthy celebrities themselves, with no motivation to rock the boat for any reason.

By Corporate policy, the voting Public is kept insulated from any de-stabilizing truth, and sedated on Pablum and candy bars pretending to be news. When is the last time you saw ANYTHING on the news which seriously threatens the Republicans? NEVER! If you want to see the murdered bodies of thousands of innocent Iraqis caught in our "military operations," you have to watch Al Jazeera or some other foreign news source. You won't get it on Nightly News, for sure. There is a huge scandal brewing with electronic voting machines which can be rigged by their Republican Corporate manufacturers to always provide the desired results, untraceable. (Like in Ohio and Florida in 2004?) And a Republican committee chairman has been single-handedly blocking any serious investigation. Do you hear about it in the news? No. There is about 20-25% of the population which wants Bush to be impeached today, and maybe go to jail tomorrow. Do you hear anything about that? No. Al Gore makes a serious, excellent speech identifying the criminal behavior of our President. And the corporate media dutifully report that "Gore is grandstanding once again."

So the Republicans are never seriously criticized in the Media, and voters are kept in the dark. Thus the Bush Power Grab always gets the favorable news coverage it needs to continue and expand.

3. BY KEEPING INTEREST RATES ARTIFICIALLY LOW, PLUS MASSIVE SPENDING ON THE WARS, THE ECONOMY HAS BEEN ARTIFICIALLY BOOSTED IN THE SHORT RUN. Housing prices have soared and spending has been strong, giving a false and temporary illusion of prosperity to millions of people. Meanwhile, the National Debt has increased by $2.508 trillion dollars, or 44%, since Bush came into office in January of 2001, from $5.662 trillion at the end of 2000 to $8.170 trillion at the end of the year 2005. (See http://www.loveallpeople.org/publicdebt.html for details. And Consumer Credit Outstanding has risen by $.336 trillion, or 33% from 1.021 trillion in November, 2000 to $1.357 in November, 2005 (the latest figures available today - seasonally adjusted.). Source: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/hist/cc_hist_sa.html So we are living way too high off borrowed money. Some writers are even predicting total collapse of our economy because of this excessive debt. (Search Google.com for "United States debt") But the media are asleep again, and most most people do not recognize the problems ahead. And the Bush Power Grab continues.

4. BY ALWAYS FAVORING ISRAEL OVER ITS ENEMIES, BUSH HAS AVOIDED SOME OF THE CRITICISM HE MIGHT OTHERWISE HAVE RECEIVED. Many of our finest intellectual, political, and religious leaders are emotionally attached to the state of Israel, for one reason or another. They feel warmly toward Bush because he always seems to support their favorite foreign country, no matter what kind of trouble it faces. Thus the Bush Power Grab receives less opposition than would be expected from these key Leadership individuals in both parties.

5. THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION HAS HURT THE MORALE OF THE ECONOMIC LEFTISTS AND GREATLY HELPED THE MORALE OF THE LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISTS. Marxist economics was always the intellectual heart of the anti-Capitalist forces in the world. It was Karl Marx who invented the word "Capitalism," and it was he who explained what it was and how it worked. Marxism provided an organized way of understanding the world, a way in which Capitalism, by its very nature, was seen to be inherently evil: it unfairly exploited the workers, created great social and economic injustice, and always led to war. So they had a fairly strong case for opposing Capitalism. But unfortunately for the Marxists, Communism doesn't work very well, and it failed in head-on competition with the Capitalist economies. Did you know that one of the main causes of household fires in the Soviet Union was exploding television sets! That's right, exploding television sets! (This supposedly from Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976 - "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100) To me, that says everything you need to know about Communism: it just doesn't work. (P.S. The Chinese aren't Communists any more; they're Fascists. But that's another story for another day.)

So American Capitalists were invigorated with victory, and their harshest opponents were left with a theory that had failed the reality test. And all the Soviet money that had been funneled into American leftist organizations suddenly stopped coming. When I was in school forty years ago, the Economics Departments were filled with big-Government Keynesians plus a few outright Marxists. Now, they are filled with messianic supporters of free-trade, laissez-faire Capitalism. So when Bush began his Power Grab, the institutional forces against him were weaker and more disorganized than before.

6. "CULTURE OF LIFE, SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE, BELIEF IN GOD, THE OWNERSHIP SOCIETY" vs. "BABY KILLERS, SEXUAL PERVERTS, ATHEISTS, AND WELFARE RECIPIENTS." You tell me which sounds better. So the Democrats got branded with some very unfortunate names, and the Republicans easily claimed the moral high ground.

7. 9/11/2001 - THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 HAVE PROVIDED BUSH WITH THE APPARENT REASON HE NEEDS TO JUSTIFY HIS POWER GRAB: "TO KEEP AMERICANS SAFE!" Never mind that it was Bush himself who made America unsafe by his negligence in disregarding repeated warnings of terrorist trouble ahead, before 9/11. And never mind that the way in which Bush responded to these attacks has ignited anti-American hatred throughout the Muslim world, boosting the number of willing terrorists maybe ten to twenty times more than before 9/11, thus making us less safe than we were before. And never mind the total disaster of this idiot war in Iraq. And never mind the fact that Iran is no longer restrained by a strong Saddam in Iraq. No. All of these things are covered over by the oft-repeated need to Keep Americans safe."

So where will it end? Will Samuel Alito be confirmed and take his place on a Bush-Majority Supreme Court? Will it become impossible to remove Bush from office, no matter what he does? Will his political enemies such as myself start to disappear mysteriously, for "National Security" reasons? I don't know. It's up to you, the readers, and your elected Representatives in the United States Senate, who will soon be voting to confirm or reject Samuel Alito.

Blessings to you. May God help us all.

Rev. Bill McGinnis, Director - www.LoveAllPeople.org

A reference copy of this page is located at www.loveallpeople.org/bushpowergrab.html - PUBLIC DOMAIN

www.LoveAllPeople.org

Rev. Bill McGinnis is an Internet Christian minister, writer and publisher. He is Director of LoveAllPeople.org, a small private think tank in Alexandria, Virginia, and all of its related websites, including InternetChurchOfChrist.org,CommitteeForTheGoldenRule.org,CivicAmerican.com, and AmericanDemocrat.net. His agenda is to help maximize the happiness and well-being of all people

(PRWEB) January 17, 2006 -- There is significant controversy about whether the 2004 presidential election was conducted fairly and its votes counted correctly. According to results of the major national election exit poll conducted for the National Election Pool by Edison/Mitofsky (E/M), Kerry won Ohio's pivotal vote, though the official tally gave the state, and thus the presidency, to Bush. The conduct of Ohio's election was formally debated by Congress in January 2005.

The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) is the first mathematical team to release a valid scientific analysis of the precinct-level 2004 Ohio presidential exit poll data "The Gun is Smoking: 2004 Ohio Precinct-level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount" available at http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/OH/Ohio-Exit-Polls-2004.pdf. NEDA's analysis provides significant evidence of an outcome-altering vote miscount.

The analysis is based on the most accurate statistical method yet devised for determining whether exit poll error, random variations, or vote count manipulation cause the discrepancies between exit polls and official vote tallies. This analysis method was made public recently by NEDA in "Vote Miscounts or Exit Poll Error? New Mathematical Function for Analyzing Exit Poll Discrepancy" available at http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit-Poll-Analysis.pdf

Exit Polls were conducted in 49 of Ohio’s 11,360 precincts. At least 40% of Ohio's polled precincts show statistically significant differences between Kerry’s exit poll percent and official vote count percent. 35% of these exit polls overestimated the Kerry official vote share. This is five times the number expected. Three of the most glaring examples are:

1. In E/M precinct 27, with an estimated 100 respondents, Kerry’s official vote count was 29% less than his exit poll share, creating a 58% difference between Kerry and Bush exit poll and official vote margins. There is less than a one in 867,205,500 chance of this occurring due to chance.

2. In E/M precinct 25, with an estimated 62 respondents, Kerry’s official vote count was 28% less than his exit poll share, creating a 56% difference between Kerry and Bush exit poll and official vote margins. There is less than a one in 234,800 chance of this occurring due to chance.

3. In E/M precinct 48, with an estimated 100 respondents, Kerry's official vote was 16% less than his exit poll share, creating a 32% difference between Kerry and Bush exit poll and official vote margins. There is less than a one in 17,800 chance of this occurring due to chance.

There are also two precincts where the Bush official vote count is significantly less than the Bush exit poll share. The number of significant discrepancies and the pattern of Ohio's discrepancy shown in the NEDA report provide strong support for the conclusion that vote count errors converted a Kerry win to a Bush win.

New electronic voting equipment without voter verified paper ballots, implemented under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, makes it easier for a small number of people to manipulate vote counts and nearly impossible to independently audit vote count accuracy. Virtually every county in America today publicly reports its vote counts in a way that hides evidence of miscounts. This allows those with access (whether authorized or not) to manipulate or make mistakes in vote counting with negligible possibility of detection.

Without accurate elections, America is not a democracy. NEDA urges the media to publicize the results of this report and its recommendations, in order to return to the American people their right to determine the country’s leaders.

About the National Election Data Archive
The National Election Data Archive is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to scientifically investigate the accuracy of elections through the creation and analysis of a database containing precinct-level vote-type election data for the entire United States. By making detailed election data publicly available NEDA furthers its goal of providing the means for independent analysts to evaluate the accuracy of vote counts in time to ensure that properly elected candidates are sworn into office following future elections.

Web writer Kurt Nimmo wrote an article questioning Rosenbaum's death, and then Kurt Nimmo suddenly terminated his own long-standing website due to death threats. Mr Nimmo seems to have put his web archives back up for a short time, but in any case the Nimmo article does appear on the Jeff Rense website:

Was NYT's David Rosenbaum Assassinated?

The brutal murder of journalist Rosenbaum, needs to be considered in the light of other mysterious violent deaths, such as that of journalist Gary Webb, and that of other people who wound up dead after daring to oppose the Bush gang or the US government and its corruption.

The criminal influence of US judges is indeed the most forbidden and taboo topic in US media.

The murder of journalist Rosenbaum, directly after he wrote a critical article about the Bush regime and a federal judge, is also relevant to the US death threats against myself, in revenge for my exposing other scandals involving the Bushes and federal judges.

David Rosenbaum was murdered after criticising Bush's US Supreme Court nominee Alito. In my own journalism, I have criticised Bush's Supreme Court candidate J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who was interviewed by President Bush, and then dropped (after publication of my article) in favor of candidate and now Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Judge Harvie Wilkinson was involved in the cover-up of bribery, fraud and extortion involving 4th circuit federal Judge Robert Payne, in a scheme to benefit the flow of bribery and campaign cash to the George Bush family. Payne ("Judge Robert Payne is my name, Federal bribery is my game"), himself a nominee of the first President Bush, staged a fake legal proceeding to ban my freedom of speech, with Payne's own friends posing as my lawyers. Judge Payne, his thugs and Bush's friends, backed their scheme with threats of jail and murder that were made under the cover of Payne's order banning my freedom of speech, which all forced me to take political refuge in the Netherlands.

For more information on this other scandal with Bush and the federal judges (also involving the neo-fascist celebrity author Patricia Cornwell, a longtime friend of the Bushes), see links here.

What a ridiculous situation! And yet, as I discussed yesterday, this is exactly what happens to Democrats when they are 'swiftboated' by Republicans. To stop 'swiftboaters' from destroying the candidacies of more and more top notch Americans running for office, Democrats must take the initiative now to make sure that these candidates can set and stay on their own stage--in their own frame.

The key to cracking down on the swiftboaters is to reframe the entire political system in moral terms. They key is to start describing the swiftboaters as 'gangs.'

But before we do that, a few things need to be in order...

Step 1: Democrats Must Appoint a 'Stage Manager' to Deal With Swiftboating

Any Democrat who does not recognize and acknowledge that the radical wing of the GOP will use brutal defamatory 'swiftboat' tactics to destroy the reputation of anyone who challenges them, has not yet faced the reality this nation faces.

As I discussed in yesterday's Frameshop post the dark threat of a 'swiftboat' campaign is that it shifts the focus from the policies in question to the false charges against the politician critiquing those policies. The only way to avoid the damage of a 'swiftboating' campaign, therefore, is to avoid being drawn into that distraction--to hold the debate by holding the frame.

This means that no Democratic candidate under attack can fight this battle by sheer force of fact or rhetoric. Every actor needs a director and a stage manager, and the Democrat being attacked by a swiftboat campaign is no different.

So, step one is for Democrats at a national and local level to appoint someone to be the front person--the face of the Democratic response to the 'problem' of radical GOP groups that defame candidates, particularly military veterans.

Al Gore would be a fantastic person for this job. Jimmy Carter would be a great as well. This person would establish a commission with one job from now until 2008: to pre-empt every swiftboat-style smear campaign by the radical right in this country by leading the nation in a national discussion about the dangers of threatening good Americans away from political participation.

Step 2: Set the Pre-Emptive Frames: 'Moral Accounting' and 'Gangs'

Why are swiftboat campaigns immoral? They are not immoral because they question the qualification of a candidate to hold office. That, like it or not, is what political campaigns are about.

Swiftboaters are immoral because they are organized by gangs that use threats to intimidate and silence Americans, to drive good citizens from the public square back into their homes. These 'gangs' are not new to American history. The classic American movie Shane is the story of one family that overcomes the intimidation of a brutal gang to protect his family, his home and his town.

Gangs succeed by disrupting the moral accounting of American life. When we work hard and play by the rules, we deserve to have our voices heard. Instead of hard work, gangs use the power and money of others to threaten good people and snatch away opportunity.

Once appointed, the Democrat Party lead in charge of pre-empting the swiftboat smear campaigns of 2006 and 2008 should work hard to establish this broad frame of the 'Moral Accounting of American Life,' and to define the swiftboat gangs working to destroy this fair American system as a very real threat to the lives of every American.

Moral Accounting and Gangs.

Step 3: Americans Don't Debate 'Gangs,' We 'Monitor' and 'Crack Down' on Them

Once we are inside the frame of moral accounting as the basis for American life (e.g, hard work, fair play deserves to have its voice heard), then the logical solution is not to debate with threats to that morality, but to prevent them from getting in the door.

Americans do not debate gangs. We 'monitor' their activities and 'crack down' on them using prevention, vigilance and wherever possible: the legal system.

The Democrat in charge of pre-empting the swiftboat attacks from the GOP is not in charge of reacting to attacks, but of 'monitoring activity' and 'mobilizing authorities' to 'crack down' on gangs that are 'taking over areas' and 'intimidating locals.'

When the Democratic Party steps up to deal with the problem of swiftboaters gangs destroying campaigns, they do so not for the sake of candidates, but for the sake of America's families.

Step 4: Those Who 'Paid the Price' Deserve Protection

Ultimately, every single political victim of radical GOP swiftboat techniques--whether they are a Democrat like John Murtha or a Republican like John McCain--their efforts to defend themselves will fail unless they make defending the American people from swiftboating a key part of their broader political efforts.

This is not about 'honorable' campaigning---although that is an admirable goal. The job of monitoring and cracking down on the gangs that are intimidating Americans on the political landscape will not go down easily. They will put up a fight that is as brutal and as dangerous as any gang in history. The gangs that tried to dominate the American west had to be put down forcefully by the law. The gangs that threatened to destroy America's cities during prohibition had to be broken before they released their grip hold on the nation. The gangs that launch swiftboat campaigns, today, are no different. They will not go down easily.

But those of us who pay the price--who work hard, play by the rules, care for our families, invest in our future, and believe in the prospects of America--we deserve to be protected from these gangs. We deserve to listen and to participate in the political process without gangs riding into town, guns firing in the air, dragging out of town any American who expresses his or her views.

Those of us who pay the price--who may disagree, but still listen to each other, pitch in to help a neighbor in need--we deserve to be protected from these gangs.

Those of us who pay the price--who fought when our nation called us to fight, who watched our friends die on the battlefield, and who came back home still believing in America--we deserve to be protected from these gangs.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.

During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.

And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.

In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.

The Department of Education's Office of Federal Student Aid opened in 1998, a time of "reinventing government," as President Clinton often reminded the nation.

"The intent of Congress in creating our office was to get politics out of the agency and focus on improving service for students," says one former FSA insider, who agreed to talk only on condition of anonymity. But during his tenure, he would see just the opposite— a program that might have saved taxpayers billions was instead buried by the Bush administration.

Bill Clinton campaigned in 1992 to end the federally guaranteed student loan program, in which banks lend the money and profit from government subsidies while insured against default. He proposed a simpler system: The Department of Education would get money from the U.S. Treasury at minimum cost and loan it to students. After meeting stiff resistance from the banking lobby, officials settled for phasing in the Direct Loan initiative alongside the guaranteed loan program, rather than replacing it, in 1993. Lower-income students especially liked the income-based repayment option that comes with Direct Loans, with its provision that the debt can be wiped away after 25 years instead of clinging on forever. By the 1997–98 school year, Direct Loans had grown to 33 percent of all student borrowing, or just over $10.9 billion.

Sallie Mae CEO Albert Lord vowed to win back the schools that had left for the Direct Loan program and to triple the company's share price by moving into making, as opposed to just buying, loans. Lord also moved to diversify and privatize the company— a process completed in 2004, four years ahead of schedule. Sallie Mae began discounting its loans and stepped up its lobbying efforts.

Along with other student lenders, Sallie Mae sued Richard Riley, then secretary of education, in 2000, for offering discounts on interest rates and fees for Direct Loans in an attempt to keep the program competitive.

The case became moot, though, after the 2000 election. President George Bush appointed William Hansen, the CEO of the Education Finance Council, another plaintiff in the suit, to be the deputy secretary of education. Bush's election, says the official, was the beginning of a war of attrition in the Office of Federal Student Aid, and by extension, the Direct Loan program. "The people Bush brought in told us we were no longer allowed to give speeches, talk to colleges, publish any brochures or reports, make any hires," he says. "The annual Direct Loan conference was canceled. Our communications person wasn't allowed to talk to the press without a [Bush] appointee in the room. You almost had to ask permission to go to the bathroom, and you never, ever got it."

Gregory Woods, the head of the FSA, died of cancer in 2002, and half of Woods's staff was dismissed. Woods's replacement was Theresa Shaw, a former senior vice president and chief information officer for Sallie Mae. At least seven former employees, attorneys, or lobbyists for Sallie Mae have received high-ranking federal appointments to the Department of Education since 2000.

Ten years of government data now show that the guaranteed student loan program costs the government 10 times as much as Direct Loans, including administrative expenses. Yet since 1998, Direct Loans have dropped to just 23 percent of all student loans—a proportion that, in today's larger student loan market, translates to not quite $14.8 billion.

Besides simply not promoting the Direct Loan program, the Bush-era Department of Education has taken concrete steps to dismantle it. In 2001, FSA officials saw a memo from Peter Fischer, assistant secretary of the treasury, to William Hansen. Hansen had proposed selling off the Direct Loan portfolio to Sallie Mae and other private lenders. Fischer called the idea illegal and compared it to the recent Enron scandal, because private companies stood to profit from the deal while taxpayers assumed the risk. FSA employees were threatened with firing if they made the memo public. In the most recent education legislation, a student's right to consolidate her bank loans into the direct loan program, in order to take advantage of income-contingent repayment, was taken away. In 2004, Sallie Mae's market share beat that of the Direct Loan program for the first time.

And now he is visiting disease and death on tens of millions of our elderly and ill with a botched Medicare/Medicaid drug plan that has plunged the nation's pharmacies into total chaos while driving the states even closer to bankruptcy. As you read this, millions of Americans are without medications that may be life-sustaining because of what Bush has done to "improve" their pharmaceutical plan.

One can only shudder at what might come next.

There have, of course, been lesser catastrophes, or ones whose long-term devastation is primarily political.

Bush's No Child Left Behind program has utterly poisoned our national educational system and gutted state budgets.

Bush's economic programs have taken a national surplus and turned it into a gargantuan debt, almost incalculable in its devastating implications for our future.

Bush's "War on Terror" has in fact been a war on civil rights and liberties, stripping the US of its basic democracy while leaving us more vulnerable than ever to terror attacks on nuclear plants, chemical facilities, our ports and air lanes.

Bush's "Homeland Security" agency is by all accounts a fetid swamp of corruption, mismanagement and ineptitude.

Bush's Patriot Acts I & II have shredded our most sacred document, the Bill of Rights, and opened the door to full-scale dictatorship while defiling everything the men and women who founded this country stood for.

Bush's embrace of torture has cast the US into the role of a sordid, sadistic demon wallowing in the very "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by its own Constitution.

Bush's universal spy program has turned a nation founded on reverence for privacy, free speech and due process into a cynical Big Brother with utter contempt for individual rights or liberties.

Bush's theft of two consecutive presidential elections has turned the right to vote into a tragic joke. Team Bush-Rove has gutted the ideal of free and fair elections while giving the GOP a death grip on the nation's electronic voting machines, creating a permanent one-party franchise.

There is, of course, much much more.

This new pharmaceutical crisis has yet again exposed an administration that is amazingly incompetent by any and all non-partisan measures of basic management skills.

One can have an opinion about the war in Iraq. But no one on any side of the issue can argue that the effort has been run with anything but complete arrogance, idiocy and incompetence.

One can have an opinion about New Orleans. But even an administration overtly intent on killing the city could hardly have done a more thorough job.

And now we watch Bush lay utter waste to a Medicaid/Medicare program defined by red tape and inequity, but which has at least delivered pharmaceuticals to people who rely on them.

Bush's "reform" is a gratuitous, greed-based scheme to pour still more billions into drug company coffers. And now millions of poor, sick Americans are being turned away from pharmacies because Bush's plan is incomprehensible, unworkable, and has left them unable to pay for the medicines that are keeping them alive.

To their credit, many states are trying to pick up the slack. But some are not, or cannot.

One could say that this relentless injection of chaos and confusion into the body politic fits a conspiratorial pattern for utterly demoralizing the nation. One could argue that it's a conscious shot at total social deconstruction, provoking the End Times so fervently embraced by the fundamentalist fringe of Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson, the most unChristian men in America.

But at this point, even conservative Republicans are scrambling to distance themselves from the utter, astonishing incompetence of a national leader so obviously unfit to handle the job on the most basic administrative levels.

Nothing could be more indicative of the utter contempt Team Bush harbors for average Americans than the concept, design and execution of this latest catastrophe.

Except for the one that will come next…..

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HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at www.freepress.org, along with HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, co-written with Bob Fitrakis.