{"id":1526,"date":"2007-10-21T04:29:08","date_gmt":"2007-10-21T04:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/senate-and-neocons-agree-to-carve-up-bill-of-rights\/1526\/"},"modified":"2007-10-21T04:29:08","modified_gmt":"2007-10-21T04:29:08","slug":"senate-and-neocons-agree-to-carve-up-bill-of-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/senate-and-neocons-agree-to-carve-up-bill-of-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate and Neocons Agree to Carve Up Bill of Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

ADE<\/font><\/a><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

It\u2019s now official, the entire Senate is criminally complicit in undermining the Fourth Amendment.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cSenate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government\u2019s domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources,\u201d reports the CIA\u2019s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

In standard doublespeak fashion, the Post is attempting to put the best face on the fact the Senate has dealt the telecoms a get out of jail free card. It is, as well, typical that the Post characterizes the legislation as a \u201ccontrol\u201d mechanism when in fact it is a blank check. Of course, this hardly matters, as the NSA has worked with the telecoms for decades to subvert the constitutional rights of Americans, who are basically none the wiser when it comes down to the fact the government is a police state, long engaged in snooping of the sort Germany\u2019s Stasi employed.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cDisclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.\u201d In other words, Democrats, who are a Senate majority, disrespect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to the same disgusting degree as the neocon Republicans, and are thus as criminal. Naturally, this is nothing new, as you can turn your garden variety Democrat upside down and he or she will look identical to a Republican, never mind the corporate media turning somersaults in an effort to get us to buy into supposed differences, the very framework of the phony left-right paradigm on Capitol Hill. Millions of Americans\u2013from your Rush Limbaugh Republican to your MoveOn Democrat\u2013buy into this nonsense, apparently unable to break free of the voodoo trance of the corporate media buttressed fiction of ideological differences.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Said neocon traitor and so-called House Minority leader John A. Boehner: \u201cThere is absolutely no reason our intelligence officials should have to consult government lawyers before listening into terrorist communications with the likes of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and other foreign terror groups.\u201d Translation: there is no reason the neocons should have to follow the Constitution and rule of law when snooping the phone calls and internet communication of millions of Americans. As we know, Osama is dead and \u201cal-Qaeda and other foreign terrorist groups\u201d are covertly\u2013or not so covertly\u2013organized, financed, and unleashed by the CIA, MI6, Mossad, indeed the entire \u201cintelligence\u201d monolith, legendary for spinning off useful terrorist groups. Moreover, as a well-read tenth grader might tell you, the NSA engages in the vacuum cleaner approach to \u201cintelligence gathering,\u201d not pinpoint monitoring of \u201cal-Qaeda\u201d phone calls made from a pay phone in Ship Bottom, New Jersey.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

More than anything, this \u201cagreement\u201d (criminal conspiracy) was reached in order to protect multinational telecoms, open to \u201cpending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants.\u201d Of course, the Senate and House were long ago turned into whorehouse parlors for transnational corporations, so this really is not surprising. Question is, how long will the government continue the charade there is actually legal recourse for Americans when the Constitution is so egregiously violated? How long before we are pitched into full-fledged decider-commander guy fascism?<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cSenate Democrats successfully pressed for a requirement that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court review the government\u2019s procedures for deciding who is to be the subject of warrantless surveillance,\u201d the CIA\u2019s favorite fish wrapper continues. \u201cThey also insisted that the legislation be renewed in six years, Democratic congressional officials said. The Bush administration had sought less stringent oversight by the court and wanted the law to be permanent.\u201d<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

In other words, treasonous Democrats want to continue the illusion that the \u201cconstitutional compromise\u201d FISA Court is legal, when in fact is it is a long-standing violation of the Fourth Amendment, as all surveillance must follow probable cause with a court order. But then bogus \u201cspecial needs\u201d categories, mutating from the unconstitutional province of drunk driving checkpoints and random drug tests to the federal government as a whole, are the rule of the day. As previously noted, \u201chighly intrusive and wholly discretionary warrantless wiretapping\u201d is nothing new, as the NSA has worked with the telecoms since at least the 1940s.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Even so-called \u201ccivil libertarians\u201d are not dedicated to the original principles held in the Bill of Rights, preferring to play footsy with \u201cconservatives,\u201d i.e., fascist corporatists (an admitted redundancy), and sell the Constitution out lock, stock, and barrel. \u201cMost Democratic lawmakers and party members\u2013backed by civil libertarians and even some conservatives\u2013wanted the new legislation to ensure for example that future domestic surveillance in foreign-intelligence-related investigations would be overseen by the foreign surveillance court. The court was created in response to CIA and FBI domestic spying abuses unmasked in the mid-1970s.\u201d Of course, these exposed \u201cspying abuses\u201d were an aberration\u2013a sign of the times, part of the outrage over Watergate and government criminality\u2013and the CIA and FBI are feeling much better now, knowing that there are few if any people in government willing to unmask current abuses, that is to say long term and ongoing and endemic abuses.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u201cBut conservative Democrats worried about Republicans\u2019 charges that the Democratic bill extended too many rights to suspected terrorists,\u201d that is to say the American people, a few who actually believe they have an intact Constitution, as there are no \u201csuspected terrorists\u201d on phone lines, or rather no genuine terrorists, simply government plants and clueless patsies, programmed to exude an air of terrorist scariness, no matter how absurd as it emanates from remote caves (complete with kidney dialysis machines and internet servers) and MI6 sponsored mosques or ISI facilitated religious schools.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Finally, in order to better understand the fascistic character of our rulers, consider Rep. Louie Gohmert, who blathered: the supposed Democrat horse trading compromise \u201cextends our Constitution beyond American soil to our enemies who want to cut the heads off Americans.\u201d Of course, this is ridiculous, and what Gohmert intended to say is that the Constitution itself is no longer required, is in fact dangerous, as it provides black op terrorists with an excuse to cut off our heads, a colorful if entirely fallacious allusion.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

But never mind, none of this matters, as the average American is wholly bereft of any sense of loss, and in fact it can be argued he or she does not need the Fourth Amendment as more than likely they will chime \u201cI don\u2019t got nothing to hide,\u201d so why all the fuss? It was like this when Martin Niemoeller supposedly made his famous claim in Nazi Germany. \u201cFirst they came for the Jews,\u201d and then everybody else, but then it was too late.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Dare I say it is too late in America? Our once cherished, now ignored and largely unknown, Constitution and Bill of Rights are dead numbers. The NSA, CIA, FBI, et al, may snoop on us at will, without legal or moral hindrance, not that it matters to the masses. Most will not receive visits by the Ministry of Homeland Security, receive national security letters, or be sent packing to a FEMA camp, if it ever comes to that. Most will, however, suffer the results, as did the people of Germany\u2013roundly fire-bombed, defeated, and reviled around the world for years to come.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ADE It\u2019s now official, the entire Senate is criminally complicit in undermining the Fourth Amendment. \u201cSenate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government\u2019s domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}