The filing said President Barack Obama has authorized access to classified information on a 'need-to-know' basis and argued that the government 'cannot be sanctioned for its determination that plaintiffs do not have a need to know classified information.'

The Al-Haramain case has been a focal point for civil liberties groups questioning the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program, and has become one of several instances where the current administration has taken its cue from the Bush administration in citing national security as justification for keeping secrets.

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

Labels: The Failed Obama Presidency

Labels: fascism on parade, The Failed Obama Presidency

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Labels: statism, The Failed Obama Presidency, watching the skies

Labels: felicity and jocularity

Labels: blogospheric navel-gazing

Labels: San Pedro homestead

"One of the simplest explanations is that it’s a laboratory escape,” Gibbs said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today.

Labels: fascism on parade, financial ponderings, statism

But I have a sickeningly familiar feeling in my stomach, and the feeling deepens with every interaction with the Obama team on these issues. They want them to go away. They want us to go away.

Labels: politics, The Failed Obama Presidency

Labels: financial ponderings, personal responsibility, preparedness, society and culture, statism, watching the skies

Adrian Salbuchi writes: A good doctor is one who will tell his patient what ails him, no matter how bad the news... A good doctor begins by making a correct diagnosis of his patient's condition. A bad doctor, however, either cannot make a proper diagnosis (because he lacks expertise) or, worst still, he hides the truth afrom his patient...

When a dread disease patient is told what he is suffering from, before actually accepting the envitable he first goes through the stages of disbelief and denial. There's disbelief when we hear the patient say "this is not right: the doctor's made a mistake!". But when the dignosis of his illness is confirmed, then in dispair he goes info full denial saying "Impossible! This can't be happening to me!!".

A good doctor helps his patient weather this painful process, guiding him towards acceptance of his predicament. Only then can the healing begin. Something similar happens - albeit more abstractly -, when the People are hit by social turmoil as a consequence of severe crises arising from what Carl G. Jung called "epidemics of the mind and soul".

Below, we address some key issues that we feel reflect the fact that a cycle is coming to an increasingly abrupt end in the whole world, even though the global media may be looking the other way (i.e., hiding the truth and generating smoke screens), most politicians hardly understand what is going on (on account of their ignorance), the bulk of the population in all countries see and feel this but cannot rationalize what's happening (disbelief), and some intelectuals may actually understand what's going on and where we're being dragged, but find it too hard to accept (i.e., denial).

In our communiqué No. 52 of October 3, 2008 dealing with the Global Financial "crisis" that had then just broken out, we said that there was no such "crisis". Rather, what began Monday, September 15, 2008 was the beginning of a terminal and irreversible collapse of the global financial system, which is part of a controlled Model through which other objetives will be achieved.

Labels: conspiracies, financial ponderings, watching the skies

"Capital must protect itself in every possible manner by combination and legislation. Debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages must be foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through a process of law, the common people lose their homes they will become more docile and more easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of government, applied by a central power of wealth under control of leading financiers. This truth is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of Capital to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance. Thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished." USA Banker's Magazine, August 25 1924

Labels: conspiracies, fascism on parade, financial ponderings, liberty, statism

Labels: art appreciation

Labels: firearms, misanthropy

Labels: blogospheric navel-gazing, The Failed Obama Presidency

Labels: conspiracies

Labels: financial ponderings

COLLEGE PARK, Ga. -- A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.

"Apparently, his intent was to rape and murder us all," said student Charles Bailey.

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.

"They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’" said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. "The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough," said Bailey.

That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

"Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window," said Bailey.

Labels: armed citizen

Mindful of his predecessor, Barack Obama seems to be trying harder to make sure he hears all sides. On the night of April 27, for instance, the president invited to the White House some of his administration's sharpest critics on the economy, including New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz. Over a roast-beef dinner, Obama listened and questioned while Krugman and Stiglitz, both Nobel Prize winners, pushed for more aggressive government intervention in the banking system.

Labels: financial ponderings, The Failed Obama Presidency

Labels: felicity and jocularity, financial ponderings, preparedness

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.

Officials who work on the Guantánamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts.

"The more they look at it," said one official, "the more commissions don’t look as bad as they did on Jan. 20."

Labels: The Failed Obama Presidency

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The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.

Labels: health and lifestyle, not-laws, politics, society and culture

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