by Noel Sheppard

Has the emerging internationalClimateGate scandal changed President Obama’s global warming strategy?

After winning the Nobel Peace Prize last month, expectations were that Obama would not attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen due to it conflicting with the Nobel awards ceremony in Oslo.

This speculation was supported in the past couple of weeks when world leaders meeting in Singapore punted on reaching any firm agreements at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-Nev.) delayed action on cap-and-trade legislation until next spring.

Yet, within days of the ClimateGate scandal breaking, Obama surprisingly announced that he’s going to Copenhagen with a pledge for serious carbon dioxide emissions cuts.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner told FBN’s Charles Payne Wednesday that this is by no means a coincidence:

The following have been added to the Show Archives page here on Free West Radio:

Dale interviews Tom DeWeese (11/24) – An illuminating hour with American Policy
Center’s Tom DeWeese.  (Link pending)

Dale’s monologue (11/24)  on the absurdity of Obama’s Afghan pacification campaign. More torn up American kids (war) don’t seem to bother Barack and Michelle one bit… not that its the “President’s” decision in the first place.

Dale Williams interviews Dr. Wayne Terhune (11/23) – Dale interviews Ron Paul 2008 volunteer Dr. Wayne Terhune for a complete debrief on the Nevada Republican Party’s suppression of Dr. Paul’s victory in that state’s caucus. Bring your own cup of hemlock. Second hour at this link.

by William Fisher

With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms.

And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.

When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.

But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans – and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois – the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.

Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations.

The parts of the act due to expire on Dec. 31 deal with:

National Security Letters (NSLs)

The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people.

The ‘Material Support’ Statute

This provision criminalises providing “material support” to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since Sep. 11, this section criminalises a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organisations.

FISA Amendments Act of 2008

This past summer, Congress passed a law that permits the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents’ international telephone calls and e-mails.

Asked by IPS why committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and other Democrats chose to make only minor changes, Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defence Committee, referred to “the secret and hypocritical lobbying by the Obama administration against reforms – while publicly stating receptiveness to them.” White House pressure, he speculated, “was undoubtedly a huge if lamentable factor”.

He added that some committee members were cautious because of the recent arrests of Najibullah Zazi and others.

Zazi , a citizen of Afghanistan and a legal U.S. resident, was arrested in September as part of a group accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism against the U.S. Zazi is said by the FBI to have attended courses and received instruction on weapons and explosives at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.

Leahy acknowledged that, in light of these incidents, “This is no time to weaken or undermine the tools that law enforcement relies on to protect America.”

Pitts told IPS, “Short-term and political considerations driven by dramatic events once again dramatically affected the need for a more sensible long-term, reasoned, rule-of-law approach.”

“In the eight years since passage of the original Patriot Act, it’s become clear that the escalating political competition to appear tough on terror – and avoid being accused of being “soft on terror” – brings perceived electoral benefits with few costs, with vital but fragile civil liberties being easily sacrificed,” he added.

In contrast to the Senate, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a version of the legislation containing several significant reforms. In a 16-10 party-line vote, the committee’s version curbs some of the government’s controversial surveillance powers.

The Patriot Act, passed by a landslide after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies additional powers to thwart terrorist activities, was reauthorised in 2005.

The legislation has been criticised by many from across the ideological spectrum as a threat to civil liberties, privacy and democratic traditions. Sections of the original act have been ruled unconstitutional, with certain provisions violating protected rights.

Judiciary Chair John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said the goal of the new legislation was to “craft a law that preserves both our national security and our national values”.

The proposed new legislation would permit the so-called “lone wolf” provision to sunset. This authority removed the requirement that an individual needed to be an agent of a foreign power to be placed under surveillance by intelligence officials and permitted surveillance of individuals with a much lower evidentiary threshold than allowed under criminal surveillance procedures.

It was intended to allow the surveillance of individuals believed to be doing the bidding of foreign governments or terrorist organisations, even when the evidence of that connection was lacking.

The Justice Department maintains that the “lone wolf” authority is necessary, even though there is no evidence that it has been used. Its opponents believe that existing authorities are sufficient to achieve the goals of the lone wolf provision while more effectively protecting the rights of innocent citizens.

The proposed new House legislation would also restrict the use of national security letters. According to a Congressional Research Service report, “National security letters (NSL) are roughly comparable to administrative subpoenas. Intelligence agencies issue them for intelligence gathering purposes to telephone companies, Internet service providers, consumer credit reporting agencies, banks, and other financial institutions, directing the recipients to turn over certain customer records and similar information.”

Under current law, intelligence agencies have few restrictions on the use of NSLs, and in numerous cases, have abused the authority. An FBI inspector general report in 2007 “found that the FBI used NSLs in violation of applicable NSL statutes, Attorney General Guidelines, and internal FBI policies”. The reform provisions seek to create greater judicial scrutiny of NSL use.

The bill approved in the Senate contains much more modest reforms. It would retain the lone wolf provision, and is, in general, much more in line with the wishes of the administration. Should both bills pass and go into conference to be reconciled, it is unclear which approach would prevail.

House and Senate versions still need to be voted on by each body separately and then reconciled into a single bill to send to the president for signature.

Pitts told IPS, “President Obama’s flip-flop on Patriot Act issues does as much damage as did his flip-flop on the FISA Amendments Act and telecom immunity last year. But it’s imperative that we fight, while we still can, to comprehensively reinsert requirements for fact-based, individualised suspicion, checks and balances, and meaningful judicial review prior to government intrusions.”

In a report on the Patriot Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, “More than seven years after its implementation there is little evidence that the Patriot Act has been effective in making America more secure from terrorists. However, there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violate the rights of innocent people and squander precious security resources.”

by Ted Rall, Yahoo! News

Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush secretly signed twoexecutive orders. Both violated basic constitutional protections as well as U.S. obligations under international treaties, yet both carried the force of law.

They still do.

The first order grants the president (and other officials, including thesecretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security and presumably certain postal clerks) the right to declare anyone–including an American citizen–an “unlawful enemy combatant.” A person so declared has no redress, no way to appeal, no ability to challenge that designation. Once a person has been named an enemy combatant, according to the Bush Administration–and now to the Obama Administration–he has no rights. He can be held without charges forever, tortured, you name it–well, actually, the president or the secretary of defense names it.

In the second covert executive order, Bush authorized the CIA to target and assassinate said “enemy combatants“–again, including American citizens.

These two documents first came into play on November 3, 2002, when a CIA-operated Predator drone plane violating Yemeni airspace fired a Hellfire missile at a car containing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, supposedly Al Qaeda’s #1 man in Yemen at the time.

U.S. officials didn’t know that an American citizen, Kamal Derwish, was riding along. (You know what they say about hitchhiking.) “The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal…this is legal because the president and his lawyers say so–it’s not much more complicated than that,” CBS News reported at the time. “I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here,” said Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, after the CIA assassinations. “He’s well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority.”

It’s right there in the Constitution between the right to tax and the repeal of Prohibition.

Anyway, Congress tried to clarify matters in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, part of which–the section that eliminated the writ of habeas corpus–got struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. But the rest of the MCA remains in force, including a passage that defines an enemy combatant as anyone who provides “material support” to the “enemy.” And who is the enemy? The enemy is anyone the president says it/he/she/they is.

Again, there is no distinction between foreigners and U.S. citizens.

Jose Padilla, the so-called would-be “dirty bomber” held in a Navy brig since 2002, was tried and convicted of such “material support” charges in 2007. (The government couldn’t prosecute Padilla for their original dirty bomb charges because they had tortured him so severely that he had been reduced to mental mush.)

Now that times have supposedly changed, it’s time to ask: why hasn’t President Obama abrogated Bush’s controversial executive orders? If Obama truly seeks a break with the lawlessness of the prior administration, what better way to enact it?

Simply put, no one man–not even a nice, articulate, charismatic one–ought to claim the right to suspend a person’s constitutional rights. Not in America. Certainly no one man–not even a young, handsome, likeable one–should be able to have anyone he wants whacked. Even in dictatorships, the right of life and death is reserved for judges and juries operating under a system purportedly designed to support impartiality and a search for the truth.

But that’s not the case here in the United States. In 2002 Scott Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University asked: “Could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C., under [the Bush] theory? The answer is yes, you could.”

Nothing much has changed since then. Obama has eliminated the use of the phrase “enemy combatant,” but The New York Times reported that the change is merely meant to “symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies.” The words may have changed, but Obama attorney general Eric Holder’s definition of who can and cannot be held, said the Times, is “not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration.”

These days, Obama has ramped up the assassination of political opponents of the U.S. and the U.S.-aligned authoritarian regime in Pakistan, deploying more Predator drone plane attacks than Bush. But that’s just for now. Obama could still personally order a government agency to murder you.

Which is weird. But not nearly as weird as the fact that you probably don’t care enough to do something about it.

by Rev. Ted Pike (10/27/09)

After 11 years and five defeats, the Anti-Defamation League’s federal hate crimes bill will be signed into law by President Obama. A representative of the Senate Armed Services Committee told me this morning that the White House has communicated its intention to pass the defense/hate bill. Homosexual and civil rights leaders are now being invited to witness the signing at 4:45 p.m. EST, followed by a reception to commemorate the occasion.

Despite heavy email protest to this moment, the President has been forced by Congress to go back on his promise to veto an excessive national defense authorization act, with hate bill attached. It is now clear Congress would simply have overridden his veto. With scores of Republicans supporting the defense/hate bill, the necessary two-thirds majority required for override could be easily marshaled.

America is now following hate law countries such as Canada, England, and Australia in erecting a bias-oriented justice system existing parallel to traditional law. The government will now become especially attuned to the question of whether bias has motivated a crime on the state level. If they decide it has, the federal government will have complete jurisdiction to enter the case, forcing states to obtain the verdict the government wants. If the state fails to do so, the government can force it to re-try the case until federal prosecutors are satisfied. Thus, federal law enforcement will be uniting tomorrow afternoon with local law enforcement in a seamless unity of jurisdiction and power — the definition of a police state. The 10th Amendment of the Constitution, reserving generous rights and protections to states, especially in law enforcement, will become irretrievably shattered.

Tomorrow, the 14th Amendment will suffer the same assault. The federal government will be empowered to discriminate against most Americans, granting initial law enforcement favoritism at least three levels higher to every form of sexual deviant (547 kinds of such deviancy are listed by the American Psychological Association). The majority of Americans will descend three levels lower in our rights and protections in the face of the accusation, “Hate crime!” Blacks, Jews, Latinos, and Muslims will enjoy the same federal preference in hate crimes law enforcement over the majority as will homosexuals.

As indictments are handed down by the government against alleged hate criminals in the months and years ahead, these cases will be appealed. Predominantly liberal judges will broaden this legislation, protecting minorities not only from physical hate crimes but from “verbal violence,” e.g., Biblical “hate speech.”

Thus, as of tomorrow at 4:45 p.m., despite ostensible safeguards of free speech within the hate law, including the Brownback amendment, the great momentum of this law will descend toward an end of free speech.

How could This Have Happened?

How could it be that legislation so destructive of our Constitution is now becoming reality? In the broadest perspective, it began when, with the rise of the Zionist movement a century ago, evangelical Christians made the unbiblical, heretical decision that there would be no allowance of inquiry into or criticism of matters Jewish that might instill controversy. This allowed the Jewish Anti-Defamation League in 1913 to begin a universal and systematic attempt, through media, the justice system, education, and government, to erode and tear down the pillars of Christian society and western civilization. (See, Who’s Behind the ‘Pedophile Protection Act?’)

If a parent grants immunity from scrutiny or criticism to a child, then within a year they will have created a spoiled brat and in five years a psychopath. It is not surprising then that, by granting anti-Christ Jews such immunity for at least a century, evangelicals have created a monster which now, through its empowerment to manufacture Orwellian legislation, is free to devour the hand that has fed it as well as the civilization which has given it protection.

Such protections provided by the Christian right have allowed ADL to not only create the whole idea of hate laws but to proliferate them uncontested to nearly 45 U.S. states during the 1990s. To this very moment, upon the threshold of passage of ADL’s federal hate crimes bill, this vilest of all political and religious organizations remains entirely unresisted and unexposed by Christian conservatism. Over the past century, the evangelical movement has laid out a red carpet and rolled it right into the Oval Office for delivery of ADL’s freedom-destroying hate crimes agenda.

Recently interviewed on a Christian talk show, I was asked by the host how evangelical leadership groups regard me. I replied that both they and ADL are terrified by my message. Having played a pivotal role in defeat of the hate bill four times over the past eight years, I am an obvious threat to ADL. But I also bring with me a testimony against misguided evangelical leadership over the past century. I bear witness that they and their fathers carry a heavy burden of guilt for having bidden Godspeed to those of whom Christ and the New Testament repeatedly warn Christians to beware: “the synagogue of Satan,” “those who say that they are Jews, and are not, but lie” (Rev. 2:9). Evangelicals have coddled, flattered, and sided with those whom Paul warns are “enemies” (Rom.11:28) “who both killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they are not pleasing to God, but hostile to all men, hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved; with the result that they always fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them to the utmost” (I Thess. 2:14-16).

Not only have evangelical leaders unleashed the ADL juggernaut responsible for hate laws, but they have also assisted the rise of a Judaic one-world order, beginning in Israel, which will ultimately be presided over by Antichrist in Jerusalem. It will eventually change all times and laws and reduce to rubble all that Christ and true Christianity made possible (Dan. 7:25).

Do I regret that I have fought on, and led countless others to fight, months after all other major Christian “watchdog groups” went silent, waiting for the axe to fall?

Considering the staggering threat of this legislation, I could not live with myself or stand before God if I had not pursued every conceivable opportunity to defeat it until the bitter end.