Patriot Act Creator Seeks to Slay His Monster

It is the most fascistic piece of law since Hitler’s enabling act. It is the stuff of which tyranny is made. The granting of free reign to the state and its agents to spy, arrest and disappear critics and foes and to justify it all under fighting a very vaguely defined “terrorism”. In an Orwellian fashion that completely suits its name the USA PATRIOT Act was sold to fear-stricken Americans, reeling from the September 11, 2001 attacks under the guise of keeping them safe. As the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin so aptly put it – “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”. The law is the very cornerstone of the modern fascist USA and all of the evils and abuses of the state are dependent upon it. There must be a concerted effort to repeal or otherwise nullify this abomination while the news of the NSA Stasi and its growing list of transgressions against liberty are still able to elicit outrage and protestation.

The enabling act was rammed through congress in the immortal words of General George S. Patton “like shit through a tin horn”, many didn’t even bother to read it. Some who could have opposed it, the at the time Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Judiciary Committee head Patrick Leahy were sent anthrax letters, the envelopes ridiculously and crudely made up to cast aspersions on Muslims, a national scapegoat in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. “DEATH TO AMERICA”, “DEATH TO ISRAEL” and “ALLAH IS GREAT” were among the comments contained in the letters. The message was sent that there would be no opposition to the post-9/11 transformation of The United States of America into The Homeland. The culprits behind the letters have to this day never been sufficiently identified with the exception of the official government patsy, a former Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Ivins who conveniently ended up dead while under investigation. But this is a long and complex story for another time. The point is that the message was received that the USA PATRIOT Act would be the law of the land – forever.

Times do however change and the glimpse into the darkest bowels of the national surveillance state thanks to the revelations of government contractor Booz Allen’s former employee Edward Snowden has allowed for a small window of opportunity. The chink in the juggernaut’s armor may be the last chance to exploit an opening against a hydra what will quickly reconfigure and to fight for changes that will establish accountability and shine light upon secrecy.  While tea party Republicans are currently being vilified by the establishment over the government shutdown and the entrenched opposition to raising the limit on the national credit card it was one Justin Amash, a Michigan Congressman who recently gathered enough support to send the warning shot across the bow of Leviathan with his LIBERT-E act that would have effectively defunded the NSA state voyeurs. This sent the establishment hacks, in a bipartisan manner that united Pelosi and Boehner, Cantor and Hoyer, Reid and McConnell to circle the wagons to defend their financial benefactors within the police state who keep them elected.

While congress has been holding hearings and parading the heads of the NSA surveillance machine, primarily General Keith Alexander a delusional megalomaniac who is infatuated by Star Trek and serial perjurer James Clapper in front of panels it has all been lip service. Just another one of the imperial dog and pony shows scheduled to provide the sheeple with the illusion that they actually live in a functioning democracy – they don’t.

So it is encouraging when someone like Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner who was responsible for the USA PATRIOT Act to come out and try to drive a stake through the heart of the monster that he himself was instrumental in creating. According to a story in The Guardian, Sensenbrenner has had enough of the wanton abuse of what was at least in his mind intended to be a legitimate program to prevent catastrophes like the September 11, 2001 attacks from happening. He was particularly galled by reports that government goons at the NSA were using secretive and highly sophisticated surveillance tools to spy on former spouses and lovers. Sensenbrenner is working on the USA Freedom Act, a nice jab at the duplicitous newspeak of the American fascist Magna Carta. I excerpt from the Guardian piece:

Sensenbrenner has called his bill the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act – or USA Freedom Act, and a draft seen by the Guardian has four broad aims.

It seeks to limit the collection of phone records to known terrorist suspects; to end "secret laws" by making courts disclose surveillance policies; to create a special court advocate to represent privacy interests; and to allow companies to disclose how many requests for users' information they receive from the USA. The bill also tightens up language governing overseas surveillance to remove a loophole which it has been abused to target internet and email activities of Americans.

Many lawmakers have agreed that some new legislation is required in the wake of the collapse in public trust that followed Snowden's disclosures, which revealed how the NSA was collecting bulk records of all US phone calls in order to sift out potential terrorist targets.

In July, a temporary measure to defund the NSA bulk collection programme was narrowly defeated in a 217 to 205 vote in the House, but Sensenbrenner said the appetite for greater privacy protections had only grown since.

"Opinions have hardened with the revelations over the summer, particularly the inspector general's report that there were thousands of violations of regulations, and the disclosure that NSA employees were spying on their spouses or significant others, which was very chilling," he told the Guardian in an interview.

Instead, the main opposition to Sensenbrenner and Leahy's twin-pronged effort is likely to come from the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, who is supportive of the NSA but who has proposed separate legislation focusing on greater transparency and checks rather than an outright ban on bulk collection.

Sensenbrenner and other reformers have been scathing of this rival legislative approach, calling it a "fig leaf" and questioning the independence of the intelligence committee. "I do not want to see Congress pass a fig leaf because that would allow the NSA to say 'Well, we've cleaned up our act' until the next scandal breaks," he said.

Additionally he is calling for the prosecution of Obama’s Stasi commandant James Clapper for lying to congress about the extent of the NSA’s warrantless collection of the telephone records of millions of law abiding Americans. Again, I excerpt from the Guardian story:

"Oversight only works when the agency that oversight is directed at tells the truth, and having Mr Clapper say he gave the least untruthful answer should, in my opinion, have resulted in a firing and a prosecution," said the congressman.

Clapper has apologised for the incident, but reformers expect a fierce backlash to their proposals to rein in his powers in future. "I anticipate a big fight, and Senator Feinstein has already basically declared war," said Sensenbrenner. "If they use a law like Senator Feinstein is proposing, it will just allow them to do business as usual with a little bit of a change in the optics."

He is absolutely correct, Feinstein is one of the most disgustingly corrupt and two-faced member of a loathsome congress as well as a perfect example of why the legislative branch is only slightly less popular than genital herpes. There will be fierce resistance at any attempt to derail the big money gravy train of surveillance, domestic oppression and militarism and Feinstein, the impenetrable firewall of cellulite will be a reliable bulwark for the fascist state. Any reforms or restraints of these cancerous surveillance programs will be a huge struggle and the state-corporate media along with the usual foreign lobbies will go after their opponents with extreme prejudice. There will be some cosmetic changes out of the need to preserve the smiley face of friendly fascism but any real change will be painful, slow and costly. Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com provided his usual on the mark commentary in his most recent column about the very subject of reigning in the surveillance colossus entitled NSA ‘Reform’: The Limits of Legislation. I excerpt the following from Raimondo:

“Furthermore, I would add, the success of this phony "reform" effort is virtually assured, since the conditions that led to the NSA’s usurpation of the Constitution have yet to be ameliorated, or even widely understood.

The official response to the revelations of Edward Snowden, as reported by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others has been, as Greenwald puts it: "THE TERRORISTS!!!" Twelve years have passed since the 9/11 attacks, an entire generation has grown up in the shadow of endless war, and yet waving the bloody shirt is still effective enough to ward off attempts to rein in the Surveillance State. That’s because hanging over even the most convinced civil libertarian in the Senate is the looming question of what happens if another 9/11-type attack occurs, perhaps on an even greater scale. In that event, if the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act passes – an unlikely outcome, see below – won’t its supporters be blamed for purportedly blinding the NSA to the next incoming threat?”

The establishment always holds the trump card – the control of their media to propagandize and brainwash the lemmings into submission with their never ending supply of alerts, plots, attacks and swarthy Muslim fiends. They hate us for our freedom will be the message repeatedly hammered home by the disinformation organs of the state – and few will ever stop to realize that we truly are no longer as free as it is advertised. We will never live in a free country again as long as the decidedly anti-American USAPATRIOT Act is allowed to stand and the ongoing militarization of the police permitted to continue unopposed.  The deck is stacked against those who believe in the principles upon which this country was established and they are few in number compared to their fellow Americans whose idea of a crisis would be running out of cheese dip in the middle of Dancing With the Stars.

Drones Along the Fruited Plain

The all-seeing eye of the surveillance state took a couple of good pokes last week, a welcome occasion. It is long past time that someone took a stand and challenged the ongoing dismantling of what was at one time, at least theoretically a free country. The aftermath of Rep. Justin Amash’s amendment, the LIBERT-E Act to reign in Obama’s NSA secret police has the establishment desperately circling the wagons. In a show of bipartisanship unseen in recent history the toadies of the war machine and the oligarchs that it makes billions for are in a foaming at the mouth frenzy to put down the insurrection before it spreads. The risk of the somnolent, television lobotomized masses being roused from their apathy and stories of royal babies, brides killed in boating mishaps and a shameless wiener wagging Big Apple mayoral candidate and being roused and freed from their pods in the Matrix scared the hell out of the power structure. If there is one thing that really pisses people off that is having their privacy invaded, especially by an out of control, corrupt and contemptuous big government.

The reverberations of the too close for comfort defeat of Amash’s amendment and the rage over having Senate newbie Rand Paul (who unlike popular house-pet Marco Rubio does not know his place) speaking out cannot be tolerated. The House vote exposed a good number of self-proclaimed Republican enemies of big gubmint as the rank pack of opportunists, frauds and charlatans that they have always been. Fric and Frac, otherwise known as John Boehner and Eric Cantor were always as suspect as they are historically unprincipled but it was a shock to see Michelle Bachmann out herself as a full blown protector of the state and fascism.  It is now apparent that she has been playing her base for fools, schmucks and suckers for years with her bombastic demagoguery, she has always been in the bag for Leviathan and there are many, many others. Despite their now obviously staged political dog and pony shows these three in particular threw in with Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and other so-called liberals in defending Obama’s war on America. Now there is yet another outrageous revelation, that the Obama regime has been pressuring web firms for encrypted user password information.

Now emboldened, the 205 members of the House who voted to revoke the American Stasi’s impunity will guarantee that more challenges are coming and coming soon. We now have New Jersey Representative Rush Holt proposing a bill to repeal the USAPATRIOT Act, that insane enabling legislation that domestic enemies of the republic rolled out and crammed down the throats of shocked Americans while bodies were still being dug out of the World Trade Center rubble. The eradication of the USAPATRIOT Act would be a damned good place to start when considering taking the country back, a national movement to gather and burn copies of this gospel of fascism would get the attention of the bastards, especially were it to take place annually on September 10^th.  Such an idea would instantaneously shatter the left-right division that is exploited by the criminals running this country and doomed the Tea Party and Occupy alike, a broad-based coalition to roll back the usurpers of power and hold them accountable terrifies the establishment and this is why the savage pushback against Amash, Paul and the ongoing vilification of Edward Snowden has now been ratcheted up in intensity. There will also be hearings in Congress this week on NSA abuses that will include an appearance by journalist Glenn Greenwald who broke the stories on the mass surveillance, inducing many including the loathsome David Gregory, a loyal foot soldier in Obama’s war on the free press to suggest that he be arrested and tried.

The latest salvo was spearheaded by state media favorite and much ballyhooed lap band surgery recipient  Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey. The obese loudmouth who could have played Tony Soprano’s long lost cousin Porky threw his substantial bulk around like the proverbial bull in a China shop in launching a sleazy attack on the recent and growing libertarian, pro-civil liberties, anti-interventionist cadre within the GOP. In his best channeling of Rudy “Mr. 9/11” Giuliani he bellowed:

“Listen, you can name any number of people who have engaged in it, and he’s one of them. These esoteric, intellectual debates—I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have.”

So now we are back to exploiting 9/11 for political means and even dragging the poor bereaved families of the victims into the slop, nice job lardass. The Neocons hate libertarians, they are their bête noire for they exemplify all that the war freaks led by that smirking little shitball William Kristol and his propaganda machine detest. A libertarian-progressive alliance would be the worst nightmare for the preening imperialists that used the events of September 11, 2001 as their winning lottery ticket for which to cash in and enrich themselves, justify their lunatic ideology and hit the reset button on over two centuries of American democracy. Christie, with his eye on the 2016 GOP nomination as though it were the buffet table at Golden Corral is just demonstrating his chops as the chosen one to assume the keys to Obama’s fascist machine. With Christie and Hillary it is a win-win scenario for the PNAC bunch and their wet dreams of Middle East conquest.

Joining in piling on Paul  was the deranged Congressman Peter King who surfaced on CNN Sunday morning to launch another of his trademark attacks, this time on Rand Paul. “I thought it was absolutely disgraceful that so many Republicans voted to defund the NSA program, which has done so much to protect our country”. King, his jowls quivering like jello also vomited up a fine morsel of the Neocon think tank provided tripe that has for so long poisoned the discourse as our descent into wars on half the planet and tyranny at home –

“When you have Rand Paul actually comparing Snowden to Martin Luther King or Henry David Thoreau ,this is madness, this is the anti-war Democrats in the 1960s that destroyed their party for almost 15 years”

King of course has zero moral authority considering his support for the terrorist IRA and his McCarthyite anti-Muslim hearings but he has always been a reliable go to guy for the fascists. It is this pathological love of state sanctioned murder, oppression, occupation and torture that is what is destroying this country. Guys like King and his ilk are corrupt reprobates, government gangsters and psychopaths with no qualms about gutting the last vestiges of the constitution in this once great country. You can throw in Christie and King with the other GOP phonies for their praising of Obama’s wars and domestic oppression programs.

It is notable that for a change neither Senators John McCain nor Lindsay Graham were on the tube this morning jacking off the likes of David Gregory and George Stephanopoulos, a welcome and refreshing respite. The duo have been the foremost spokesmen for murder inc. or Ike referred to it “the military industrial complex”. The two are always descended upon by hordes of media bottom-feeders whenever an outrageous quote is needed to bolster the case for more war. McCain is after all McCain, a self-promoter who may be bi-polar or just plain batshit crazy, how else to explain his erratic personality and ever shifting stances. He is also at war with the libertarian wing of the party, like the grouchy old man and the kids on his block, a veteran tantrum thrower, McCain's act only serves to turn him into a parody. Then there is Graham, the Senator most likely to be discovered in an I-77 truck stop restroom with someone’s crank in his mouth. Another staple of bloviation day talking head propaganda shows, Graham is a reliable hysteric and Pentagon congressional embed who in his shrill but syrupy Gomer Pyle twang always manages to float the most screwball of trial balloons. Most recently his stumping for an October war on Iran. There is never any money to fix anything in this sorry country, to address the looming economic collapse rather than speed it up but there is always money for more war, arming of flesh-eating terrorists, torture centers and mass spying. I just wonder what the NSA has found over the years trolling through this guy’s emails and phone records. Man, have our national priorities ever become terminally fucked up since the day that those buildings fell.

Finally, it yet another sardonically humorous bit of news the Obama administration on Friday sent a letter to Vladimir Putin stating that the United States would not torture Edward Snowden if the Russian leader only collaborates with his terrorist regime and sends the heroic whistleblower off to his doom. Now I may be getting up there in years but it used to be pretty much a given that the U.S. did not have to give a non-torture guarantee but that was before Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and every other CIA torture black site were revealed to be present although obscured by red, white and blue bunting. I look forward to hearing what Putin has to say after he stops laughing over this latest self-inflicted national humiliation by the Nobel Peace Prize winner who draws up kill lists with his orange juice in the morning.