Bush-Cheney Usurpation: Wounded Beast

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Bush's claim to dictatorial powers as "commander-in-chief" have been shredded by SCOTUS' Hamden v. Rumsfeld decision and Judge Taylor's ACLU v. NSA decision. The two decisions define many of the Usurpation's actions as felony conspiracies against citizen rights -- in violation of 18 USC 241 -- including years of violating the Geneva Conventions and warantless wiretapping against US citizens. Congress is guilty of nonfeasance in not breaking the obvious DOJ obstruction of justice with a new Independent Prosecutor law. We need to force our Congress to create that law. We also need to force a constitutional amendment to meld fully independent citizen lawmaking with our national rep govt so that the Usurpation and its many corruption machines can be ended. Fully independent citizen lawmaking is the only way for us to resolve many of our critical political problems. It's especially needed to abolish and punish the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous Bush v. Gore decision -- so that we can prevent the recurrence of any such presidential usurpation in the future.

Things are probably more dangersous now than what they seem. The three branches of the Usurpation's powerful fascist thugs have been wounded. A powerful front shoulder has been shattered, and the two-party beast's immense weight needed all four legs for quick maneuvering.

SCOTUS' Hamden v. Rumsfield, 28 March 2006, and Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ACLU v. NSA, 17 August 2006, have told the centrists and the left that they have been right all along. Bush's self-claimed powers beyond the Constitution are delusionally fascist and without legal standing. They are, in a word, criminal -- in violation of the Constitution that the fascist mutt vowed to uphold.

Those two important rulings have steeply tilted the Bush-Cheney Usurpation's politics-as-usual tap-dancing platform toward the same legal arena in which centrists and the left ripped Nixon to shreds.

Many of the felonies of the two-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney Usurpation center on the above-the-law and beyond-the-Constitution arrogation of dictorial power by Bush. Those felonies -- in combination with the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous creation of the Usurpation with SCOTUS' Bush v. Gore in December 2000 -- and Congress' unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous give-away of war powers so that Bush could unconstitutionally declare his very own war of aggression in Iraq -- show a number of truths about whatever the hell it is that is pretending to be our national government.

Hamden and ACLU create a bas relief of Constitution-violating Bush-Cheney crimes. It's now plain for all to see that the Usurpation is more felonies, felons-in-waiting, and criminal accessories-after-the-fact than it is public officials, appointees, judges, and bureaucrats. It is more a collection of fascist thugs in service to the superrich's globalized corporate corruption machines than it is a government of, by, and for we the sovereign people.

Citizen reaction to this criminal government can be dumb indifference, dumber approval, or intelligent anger and rejection. The crys can go out: "Impeach and remove Cheney first" and "Impeach and remove the entire Congressional leadership of both parties for the nonfeasance of not creating an Independent Prosecutor to combat the constant Ashcroft/Gonzales obstruction of justice".

The congressperson's oath of office: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

Clearly, that oath does not say, " -- except when dealing with a tyrannical, three-branch usurpation and wanting to keep my job more than wanting to do the right thing for my nation." It does not say, " -- except when my right-wing, fascist ideology has control of Congress, the federal bench, and the White House, and I really want to stick it to the goddamned liberals". It does not say, " -- except when me and the good-ol'-boys are ripping superrich welfare and corporate welfare out of the public monies so that the central banking cabal can print more fiat money and create more unconstitutional public indebtedness with their sneaky, increased-money-supply inflation."

As soon as it was clear, in December 2000, that the Clinton crew was going to stonewall, whitewash, and coverup SCOTUS' unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous elevation of a presidential usurpation, Congress should have forced through a tough new Independent Prosecutor law. Congress' clear obligation to support and defend the Constitution against the presidential usurpation had no other resolution.

Congress is very much a part of the guilty, wounded beast -- and every congressperson knows it. Sorting out the guilty from the innocent will not be difficult. We've never faced doing anything like it before, but it will not be difficult. The felonies are very clear. The lists of co-conspirators in those felonies will be unambiguous.

We need to criminally prosecute and imprison an overwhelming majority of Congress. We need to start with the 373 who voted to violate the Constitution and the 1935 SCOTUS ruling against Congress giving away essential legislative functions -- such as the war powers for the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous invasion of Iraq. That invasion violated our soldiers' constitutional rights to be sent to war only on the expressed order of Congress. The Iraq invasion violated 18 USC 241. Every combat death in Iraq is a felony murder, per 18 USC 241. Congress' 373 co-conspirators face sentences of up to life imprisonment or death, per 18 USC 241.

The wounded beast is out there, but the Usurpation is not going to falter yet, of course. Its opponents and enemies can see that Hamden and ACLU define the Usurpation's gross, wide-spectrum illegality. However, Empire Strassemadchenfuhrer Gonzales has all justice obstructed, and the hapless international community is still stuck with this bunch of fascist thugs holding the powers of American national government.

The Usurpation will go right on doing its three-branch, politics-as-usual tapdances, playing to its servile base. It will go right on anchoring Diebold hack-o-matic vote-counting software in every state in which it has a Republifascist Secretary of State, so that the Empire wins Election 2006 no matter what. It will go right on wrapping up the deals that hand the superrich and their corporate sleaze one obscenely excessive profits package right after another, buried in as much secrecey and public money as is possible.

The budding "North American Union" -- to break down national borders, citizen rights, national currencies, and the people's sovereignty in Mexico, the US, and Canada -- is a prime example. Secrecy and public money are its middle name. The Usurpation and the globalized corporate corruption machines are quick-marching the NAU -- and its central banking cabal, national economies-smashing fiat currency, the "Amero" -- into existence before the sovereign peoples of the three countries have any opportunity to stop it.

For NAU development, see especially the essay, "Bush Administration Fast-Tracks Formation of North American Union", by Jerome R. Corsi, 11 July 2006, on the InfoWars site.

For the central banking cabal globalized corruption machine -- a treason to the sovereign people in every nation within which its partnership with politicians results in its legal counterfeiting of debt-based fiat money and its illegal usury of "fractional reserve banking" -- see especially the essay, "The Fed -- Jekyll Island Monster", 07 July 2006, on this blog.

The Usurpation will go right on attacking every attempt to use Hamden and ACLU to limit the frenetic smashing of the nation for profits and power.

Judge Taylor's ruling is under fire. Everyone can see that her ruling and her reasoning are two different things in this fascist-thug government. Her reasoning is timelessly Constitutional and will stand forever. But her ruling is vulnerable to reversal by the fascist thugs of the Bush-packed 6th Appellate and to a nearly-Bush-packed SCOTUS. And those fascist thugs have a track record of overturning any part of the Constitution whenever they want their class-driven, pro-superrich, pro-corporate-sleaze, pro-predator-politician, anti-ordinary-people, anti-democracy, fascist ideology to win the day.

Chief Fascist Thug Roberts will not have to recuse himself from this one, as he was forced to do in Hamden. Fascist Thug Scalia was undoubtedly rooting for Roberts to pull a Scalia/Cheney tapdance to keep himself in the game. However, Roberts was too transparently involved in the fascist thuggery that was the basis of the Hamden appeal to SCOTUS.

No sense drawing attention to Roberts' appellate ruling felony conspiracy against citizen rights in violation of 18 USC 241. No one has forgotten that felony forfeits judicial immunity. No sense setting up a citizen backlash that might decapitate SCOTUS. After all, Empire Pettifogger-General Gonzales and the Empire Recidivist Congress cannot be expected to hold off a new Independent Prosecutor law indefinitely.

But then, in an act of despicable disloyalty to the hard-won Bush-Cheney Usurpation, its SCOTUS father unleashed Hamden, destroying Bush's beloved dictatorial power. In the background, we could hear Scalia screaming I-told-you-so, and loud gnashings of Roberts' teeth.

So, what happens when the fascist thugs of 6th Appellate or SCOTUS reverse Judge Taylor's ruling? How far will that carry a citizen backlash into a national organization of citizen action groups? What will be the objectives of those CAGs?

It's a volatile situation. There are so many games being played by the Usurpation that the effects of possible reality spikes -- pandemics, super-volcano eruptions, terrorist WMDs hammering many population centers simultaneously, global financial schemes gone bad into global depressions, collapse of the US economy, etc. -- are each one wildly unpredictable.

Additional reality spikes aside, the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of this Usurpation have no problem with unconstitutional and illegal operations. They've done those things in multitudes ever since the Bush v Gore decision on 12 December 2000. How much citizen backlash will the Usurpation cause when they make it clear that Bush's powers beyond the Constituton will continue regardless of SCOTUS' Hamden and Judge Taylor's ACLU ?

More importantly, how much will the two-party, three-branch Usurpation stonewall, whitewash, and coverup in the face of citizen backlash? If past performance is any indicator, the Usurpation's SWC ops will continue into infinity.

There are no safety valves readily apparent. The fascist thugs own all the old self-correcting mechanisms of Constitutional governance. All of those mechanizms are disabled, if not dismantled. Unless some safety valve self-actualizes out of some unexpected wingnut segment, this presurizing will run up relentlessly until explosion.

Things are probably getting dangerous now. They know that we know that they know, and vicey-versy.

The first thing to notice is that reversal of Judge Taylor's ruling cannot reverse SCOTUS' Hamden. There is a core agreement between the two rulings concerning the unconstitutionality of Bush's claims to powers beyond the Constitution. An editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "Bush's powers get a needed comeuppance", 18 August 2006, got the analysis just right.

"In language that has broad significance, Taylor dispatched brilliantly the Bush administration argument that it has the constitutional power to do almost anything it wants under Article II, which designates the president commander in chief. That article, Taylor said, makes the president commander of only the armed forces. The American people are not part of the military, and the rights they enjoy under the Constitution are beyond the president's reach."

Clearly, angry centrists will lock focus on the easy-to-perceive unconstitutionality and obviously premeditated criminality of the Bush power claims.

From there, it's easy to imagine that anyone defending the Bush-Cheney Usurpation will be angrily painted with the same criminality -- regardless of whether the defender is executive, legislative, or judicial branch, or corporate sleaze, or medieval religious right zealot, or servile secular wingnut fanatic.

Things are probably getting dangerous now. Everything probably depends on how cerebral and organized the centrists can be. Everything depends on how the centrists handle the coming unconstitutional rulings by 6th Appellate and SCOTUS.

Obviously, intelligent handling by the centrists will mean increasing the Constitution's powers for we the sovereign people. As things stand, the sovereign people are powerless to overturn a SCOTUS-issued, unconstitutional ruling, anti-law regime. Until the people have that power within the Constitution, the superrich and their fascist thugs own us -- as they own SCOTUS, a significant portion of the lower federal bench, Congress, most of the executive branch, most of the main stream media, most of the state legislatures, and most of the Diebold hack-o-matic vote-counting software.

We the sovereign people need a short series of Constitutional amendments to help us end the Usurpation, overturn unconstitutional federal bench precedents crucial to Bush-Cheney, and prevent the immediate take-back of power by the remaining fascist thugs. We need amendments to cover an on-going process of dismantling this criminal Usurpation.

That short series of amendments -- one melding fully independent citizen lawmaking with representative government; a second allowing double majorities in a referendum of the national citizenry to deem a particular federal bench ruling as null and void; and a third defining and penalizing the feasance violations (malfeasance, misfeasance, and misfeasance) by public officials and judges against the Constitution -- will require that the Congress and state legislatures be forced to share power with the sovereign people.

This is a very big deal. Except for Switzerland in the 1800s, no elitism-controlled government -- pure representative government or other -- has ever shared power with its sovereign people. Congress especially may use its two-party co-fascists to be particularly viscious. And, of course, Bush and/or his successors will probably pardon every criminal anything in sight, not after the fact, but in anticipation of any future crimes that might be committed, as the spineless dimwit Ford did for Nixon.

Surprise. We have an ace in the hole with Bush pardons. He is not a president. He is a presidential usurper. Every act that he ever has or ever will perform under color of law as president is null and void. Once we have ended the Usurpation, we can line up his criminals, legally prosecute them, convict them, and imprison them.

Still, we don't know how extreme the fascist thugs will be willing to make this fight, or how unbroken their front will be against the sovereign people. This could be the fight of our lives -- with a bloody civil-war/revolution on the horizon. Be forewarned, I always say. As A.E. Hausman has it, "While sun and moon endure, luck's a chance, but trouble's sure. I'd face it as a wise man would -- train for ill, not for good."

The more we know about constitutional republican governance principles, the more likely it is that we will deflect a bloody fight with the entrenched power underpinning the Usurpation's extremism and fanaticism. We will lose too much in a bloody civil-war/revolution, and not gain one iota more than we can in a peaceful revolution.

This is a time for reading about and discussing the principles of good governance. It's a time for organizing nationwide. It is not a time for self-indulgent crap.

Do something. Start today, please.

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Recommended reading for centrists and the left:

"Principles of Tyranny", by Jon Roland, on the Constitution Society's site. "To understand the principles of constitutional republican government, one must understand the principles of its opposite". Roland's timeless principles of tyranny, written in 2000, read like an insightful description of the three-branch Bush-Cheney Usurpation politics of the past five-plus years.

"Abuses and Usurpations", a collection of five essays on the Constitution Society's site. "It is a fundamental principle that all acts of officials not derived from the delegated powers of the constitution are null and void from inception, not just from the point at which a court may find them unconstitutional." That fundamental principle applies to the Bush v. Gore elevation of Bush to presidential usurper, as well as to every action of his done under color of law since 12 December 2000. See especially the essay, "Law and Anti-Law", one of the five in this collection.

(Modified Saturday, 26 August 2006, at 7:05am, CDT.)

Judicial Independence: Zero Accountability

From the beginning, judicial independence has been more a sophistry of plausible falsehood, underpinned by unethical intent, than a worthy principle of democratic governance. It is described as a device to protect the righteous, impartial judicial power from coercion by powerful individuals in government. But it has always meant zero accountability. And, at too many crucial times, the judiciary has proven itself all too willing to rule in favor of the class-race elite, at the expense of the ordinary people. Behind the lofty-sounding label of 'impartiality', the original intentions for judicaial independence clearly included its providing a corruption machine for ensuring profits and power to the right people, as well as keeping the rabble and their excessive democracy down. The 18th Century "gentlemen" lived the unexamined life of bigoted elitism.

Over time, the sophistry of 'judicial independence' allowed SCOTUS to create the near-zero social justice environment of the Gilded Age -- ensuring obscenely excessive profits and power to the superrich -- and then to repeat that environment through the 1920s and into the Great Depression. FDR rebuilt the Court, reinstituting it for social justice. Now, however, SCOTUS and too much of the lower federal bench again represent the interests of the superrich, their fascist corporate sleaze, and their predator politicians.

Worse, SCOTUS is directly guilty of the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous creation of the Bush-Cheney Usurpation, which is the most criminal, corrupt, and incompetent US national government in our history. Judicial independence is one of our Constitution's systemic problems. It is helping unscrupulous, ideologically-driven judges to destroy our constitutional governance to benefit the superrich, and it must be ended.

Open Letter
to Jenna Kyle,
Policy Assistant,
CivilRights.Org

Jenna --

From it's beginnings, the notion of judicial independence has had twin motives. First to keep the Constitution safe from predator politicians, and, second, to keep the three branches of government safe for the bigoted "gentlemen" of 18th Century predator elitism, in opposition to we the sovereign people, whom the "gentlemen" considered to be contemptible, licentious rabble.

Nothing has changed with regard to those two motives for judicial independence. The corruption machines that judicial independence protects, however, have become much more sophisticated and murderous over time. Just the unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous Federal Reserve -- a fiat-money-producing, fractional reserve banking monster specifically rejected by the Constitution's authors, which now threatens the existence of our country in many ways -- has given us sufficient reason to eliminate judicial independence.

The federal bench is now freely using its power in such ways as to unconstitutionally damage crucial Constitutional provisions, to feloniously violate citizen rights as given in the Constitution and laws, and to treasonously refuse to protect the rights of citizens as given in the Constitution and laws. The federal bench has taken us into a straightforward contradiction of everything for which our Revolutionary War generation fought. It has done those things to benefit the superrich, their corporate sleaze, and their predator politicians -- at the expense of the ordinary people.

At least since Bush v. Gore, the federal bench has proven beyond doubt that we the sovereign people can no longer afford the corruption machine of an independent federal judiciary. SCOTUS' many blantantly unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous rulings will surely cause the people to subordinate the federal bench to the people themselves. We are rapidly, I think, coming to the time when all judges will be elected, in nonpartisan elections, by the citizens of the respective court's jurisdiction and will be subject to recall by those same citizens.

In slow motion, Bush v. Gore will trigger this constitutional adaptation eventually. The ruling violated the Constitution's Article 2, paragraph 2. It violated federal statute 18 USC 241 -- felony conspiracy against the rights of all citizens to have a president elected in accord with the Constitution. Felony forfeits judicial immunity, and all the assenting judges should have been criminally prosecuted for their felony immediately after Bush v. Gore was issued.

Additionally, the Bush V. Gore ruling treasonously failed to protect the rights of all citizens to have a president elected in accord with the Constitution. (This definition of treason was established by the findings against the 1860s seccessionist state legislators.) Separate criminal counts for treason should be a part of any criminal prosecution against any federal judge who engages in a felony conspiracy against citizen rights in blantant violation of 18 USC 241.

There have been, as you well know, many other unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous rulings by SCOTUS and lower courts. Second down from Bush v. Gore in far-reaching effects is probably Gonzales v. Raich, a medical marijuana case. It's ruling provided precedent for the arbitrary suspension of federalism, equity, states rights, the 9th Amendment and the 10th Amendment. All of its violations were directed at increasing the obscenely excessive profits and power of the superrich, their corporate sleaze, and their predator politicians.

Bush v. Gore did not choose a president. It unconstitutionally, feloniously, and treasonously elevated a presidential usurper. Every official act done under color of law by GW Bush is null and void and will have to be purged from our legal fabric. Many of those actions created unconstitutional anti-law regimes of their own, with every enforcement creating new felonies against citizen rights.

We need to bring many impeachments, removals, and criminal prosecutions against the Bush-Cheney Usurpation, in all three branches. And we need to force a new Independent Prosecutor law that can work around the Gonzales/DOJ obstruction of justice. But we also need to eliminate the systemic problem that created the Bush-Cheney Usurpation and its collapse of constitutional checks and balnaces -- the zero accountability of judicial independence.

The shortest line between power and criminality is zero accountability, which is exactly what "judicial independence" means. We have allowed the federal bench to demonstrate the truth of that statement too many times.

It is past time for we the sovereign people to take responsibility for our governance. We need to anchor our Constitution with the founding principles as expressed in the 1776 Declaration of Independence. We need to keep the Constitution's worthy core but eliminate the systemic problems. Any factor that minimizes accountability is a systemic problem. Judicial independence is one of those systemic problems.

We need a constitutional amendment that will (1) dismiss all of the current federal bench judges -- many of whom are fascist thugs only masquerading as judges, (2) establish near-future, nonpartisan primaries and general elections for the replacements, (3) set out specific recall provisions and consequences, and (4) name all blatantly unconstitutional federal bench rulings that are null and void, and provide for the adjudication of all anti-law regimes created by those unconstitutional rulings. (We have the citizen expert groups who can make those determinations.)

I expect the judicial reform constitutional amendment to be in the first wave of citizen reform amendments, after we force passage of a constitutional amendment integrating fully independent I&R-R citizen lawmaking (initiative, referendum, and recall petition processes) with national representative government. The people can speak for themselves in their voting majorities and have no need of the corrupt bicameral's lower house.

The legacy from Reform Era corruption fighters has been twisted unconstitutionally, feloniously, and treasonously by state governments for over a hundred years. But the legacy is still there, locked away in state constitutions where no corrupt politician can go, waiting for we the people to clean it up and use it against today's local, state, national, and globalized mega-corruption.

There are many of us working on the careful crafting of the lead-off, proposed I&R-R constitutional amendment.

In the words of Carl Schurz: "Our country -- when wrong, to be put right."

Constitutional governance cannot tolerate usurpation of the nation's highest office and survive. We have not had constitutional governance since Bush took the oath of office. What we've had has been fascist thuggery masquerading as constitutional governance. For those of you with your heads in sand, crack, meth, pop music and raves, your piece of the corporate pie, or whatever, the fascist thuggeries of judicial independence and its protectorates are steadily enslaving and butchering the ordinary people of this nation for protits and power.

Clearly, the globalized superrich predators of the central banking cabal -- anchored here by their partnership with our politician- and judicially-protected, unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous Federal Reserve -- will use judicial independence along with their other tools to utterly destroy our nation without a second thought, as soon as the profit picture is sufficient. We're already on the edge, and a runaway financial accident could bring down the national economy long before the superrich's profit picture is right for them.

I urge you, Jenna, to help distance your organization from support of judicial independence. We the people are working up a rage. Judicial independence is one of the very large reasons for that rage.

Stephen Neitzke
Direct Democracy League
DD Revival -- The Blog

(© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006)
(Modified Saturday, 19 August 2006, at 7:00am CDT.)

Ex Post Facto War Crimes Act

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Now the War-Criminal-In-Chief, Empire Prince of the Blood, and Wannabe Dictator Bush is flashing his fascist arrogance in ANOTHER direct contradiction and violation of the Constitution. He wants his 2-party, fascist-thug, Criminal Congress to pass amendments to the War Crimes Act of 1996 that EX POST FACTO exonerate him and all his little goosesteppers for the war crimes that they've been blatantly committing for the past four years, in violation of the War Crimes Act of 1996.

Needless to say, Empire Pettifogger General Alberto Nogeneva Gulag, over at Injustice, has been leading the charge for this straightforwardly unconstitutional denial of the Constitution's Ex Post Facto provision: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed".

Congressional Republican leadership, and their co-fascist Democrats, all suddenly pretend that they've never read the Constitution. They're stumping all over the country, demanding that passing this ex post facto law is the only righteous thing to do under the circumstances.

Just look at all the things that are wrong with that stupid War Crimes Act. See, we just pass this one little statute and it does what's best for everyone. Sure, some will say that you are kissing the rule of law goodby, but, pooh-pooh, they're just a bunch of radical liberals who don't know what they're talking about. Bush the Usurper has the vision, and he will lead.

They don't really mean it, of course. They can't really mean it, can they? Passing ex post facto law is unconstitutional. It's against the law. Heaven knows that this glorious 2-party, 3-branch, fascist despotism would never do anything unconstiutional. Right?

They're just floating another trial balloon. Bush the Usurper is just testing how much Constitutional stupidity and ignorance the traffic will bear. He'll only complete this Constitutional demolition if he can get away with it cleanly. Right?

Any resistance at all -- any few citizens jumping up and down, quoting the Constitution's Article 1, section 9, paragraph 3 -- and the whole 3-branch despotism will just drop this unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous attempt like a hot potato. Right?

Oh, shit. Some of them have already read the Constitution's Article 1, section 9, paragraph 3? How did they find that? My lawyers just told me about it this morning. And a whole bunch of the contemptible liberal fanatics already know that we can't pass ex post facto law?. Oh, shit. That means we'll have to find some other unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous trick to get our guilty asses off the hook. OK, get that war in Syria and Iran cranked up asap. Perpetual war is the only way out now.

Just kidding! I'm the commander-in-chief here. I am the law. The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper. You morons get that ex post facto War Crimes re-wite on my desk by next Wednesday or my buddies at Diebold will see to it that you never work in this town again. Let Leiberman be a lesson to all of you. Diebold does what I say.

Wikipedia -- "An ex post facto law (from the Latin, 'from something done afterward') or retroactive law, is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of acts committed or the legal status of facts and relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law. In reference to criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed .... Conversely, an ex post facto law may decriminalize certain acts or alleviate possible punishments ... retroactively."

See especially --

• "The New Gonzales Standard For Torture", by Col. Dan Smith, Counterpunch, 04 August 2006.
  
• "Retroactive War Crime Protection Proposed", by Pete Yost, Forbes, 09 August 2006.
  
• "Criminal, Immunize Thyself", by John Sifton, Slate, 11 August 2006.

The law as it stands now -- War Crimes Act of 1996 -- 18 USC 2441. Passed as Public Law 104-192, 21 August 1996. Includes the circumstances of, as well as the penalties for, felony murder of detainees. There is no statute of limitations on felony murder.

--------------------------

Update: Sunday, 13 August 2006 --

Pettifogger General Gonzales, over at Injustice -- and a bunch of fascist thugs masquerading as congressmen and senators -- have now mounted many vacuous arguments, convoluted polemics, and outright lies to seemingly make Bush look as innocent as new-fallen snow. The tangled descriptions and distortions of reality have been horrendous. Clarity required. I posted this last night on the Capital Hill Blue blog --

Bush can't escape the parallels with Hitler Germany because Bush is a fascist. But this fascist parallel is a corker.

The Nazi torture and murder of Jews and minorities during WW2 was done by ordinary people indoctrinated by the Nazi regime. That indoctrination, as with Bush's torture orders to his military and intel minions, told the ordinary people going into Nazi formations that the Jews and other "criminal" minorities had NO RIGHTS. That every torture and murder was lawful because the Fuhrer had ordered it.

Hitler and his policy chiefs tried to make RIGHTS politically relative to the regime's orders. Sounded good to millions of Germans at the time. Just as Bush's orders must have sounded good to millions of Americans.

And then the shooting war ended. And the Nuremberg Trials began.

Surprise. Rights that the Nazis had declared irrelevant and unlawful were still in place, and, in fact, had never ceased to exist. Those rights were there at every torture, at every murder, no matter the teachings of the Nazi regime.

Bush and his goosesteppers will learn this one the hard way. Rights are not what politicians say they are. Rights are not politically relativistic.

Rights are humanly absolute. Once a right is established, it lives forever. As long as the right is remembered or rediscovered by any one human being, it is still alive and can be made whole again. No retroactivity. It never ceased to exist. It lives on a higher plane than any political decree that denies it.

The rights established by the Geneva Conventions have never ceased to exist. Bush's orders to his nazis did not kill those rights.

The War Crimes Act of 1996 clarified the rights in US statute law that had already been granted by the Geneva Conventions in US constitutional law. (Confirmed treaties are a part of the Constitution's "fundamental law of the land".) The War Crimes Act locked US statute law into sync with US Constitutional law.

Bush and his regime have violated Constitution and statute from the first of their systematic tortures and murders of detainees. The ordinary people following Bush's orders created murderous guilt for Bush and his regime.

And then SCOTUS ruled in Hamden v. Rumsfeld, making it crystal clear that Bush and his goosesteppers had in legal fact violated Constitution and statute.

Now the Bush Rush is on. The crisis management team is all over the map, trying to convince everyone that an ex post facto re-write of the War Crimes Act will get the little ordinary people off the legal hook for torture.

But that is not what is going on here. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., etc., are not one bit concerned about getting soldiers and CIA operators off the torture hook. They are concerned about getting themselves off the felony murder hook.

From Bush down, a long way down, they are on the hook for conspiracy leading to the documented felony murders of many detainees. Those felony murders are defined by 18 USC 2441, the War Crimes Act of 1996. And there is no statute of limitations for felony murder. Punishments, per 18 USC 2441, include life imprisonment or death.

As with Hitler, Bush made his fatal mistake when he tried to make rights politically relative to his orders.

Rights are humanly absolute.

Stephen Neitzke
Direct Democracy League
DD Revival -- The Blog
http://ddrevival.blogspot.com

(Modified, Sunday, 13 August 2006, at 2:40pm CDT.)

The Diebold Congress

© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006

Do you get this? Congress is simply not acting as though it is facing general elections in November. It is behaving as though its Republifascist majority and co-fascist wing of Democrats are already reelected.

Diebold hack-o-matic vote-counting software -- ditto ES&S and Sequoia -- is the only imaginable reason that politicians standing for reelection would continue the abject irresponsibility that this pack of predatory fascist criminals displays.

Harold Meyerson's op-ed in the Washington Post this morning, "Minimum Wage, Maximum Gall" spotlighting another Congressional moral bankruptcy for our national financial bankruptcy, is an elegant commentary.

Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid has taken to invoking Harry Truman's line about a "do-nothing Congress," and with ample reason. In dealing with the major issues of our time (global warming, immigration, the diminishing benefits and stagnant wages that characterize today's economy) or in discharging its oversight duties over administration policies that have failed (the war in Iraq) or were stillborn (the rescue of New Orleans), the Republican-controlled Congress has been nowhere to be found. In inverse relation to the seriousness of the challenges that America confronts, this Congress is well on its way to spending the fewest days in session of any in modern memory.

Still, the one thing that should engender more fear than the current Congress's doing nothing is the current Congress's doing something. Every time congressional Republicans are compelled by public pressure to address a serious issue, they retreat to their laboratory and emerge with Frankenstein-monster legislation designed primarily to reward their campaign donors and stick it to the Democrats ....

Read more of Meyerson's op-ed.

The catch here is the huge cut in estate taxes that was bundled with the microscopic increase of the minimum wage. Over the next three years, the minimum wage will go from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour in three steps.

Estate tax reduction cost to the public coffers is a bit more overwhelming. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, on their page, "House Estate Tax Proposal Has Essentially The Same Large Long-Term Cost As Earlier Version" --

In the first ten-year period in which the costs of estate-tax repeal would be fully felt (2012-2021), we estimate that repeal [of all estate taxes] would cost $808 billion — or $1.0 trillion when the associated increases in interest payments on the debt are included. Over that same ten-year period, the new House proposal would cost $599 billion, or $753 billion when the interest costs are included. ...

Against the background of financial bankruptcy that this Criminal Congress has already driven the country into, this $753 Billion is beyond irresponsibility. Fitted with today's national debt of $8.5 Trillion, growing at alarming rates -- incurred by the Congressionally protected Federal Reserve's unconstitutional and usurous debt-based money supply -- this does not look good. It looks awfully much like evidence of a continuing setup for the push-pull destruction of the national economy to benefit the globalized superrich. And whatever the true intention of this estate tax rip-off -- leaving the abomination of the "alternative minimum tax" to rip-off an increasing number of ordinary people -- it benefits the superrich and hurts the ordinary people again.

Politicians cannot win fair elections when they constantly harm the ordinary people. The rat-bastards of our Criminal Congress are obviously relying on UNfair elections, namely, Diebold.

The one thing wrong with Meyerson's commentary, as is wrong with every other MSM pundit's commentary, is its seeing everything from the top-down point of view and very little, too little, from the bottom-up point of view.

What? The consequences of this fascism harms the people? How absurd. Who cares? Perceive anything from the people's POV? How absurd. The people don't make news. The politicians and the government make news. Governance is not about the people. Governance is about politicians and government. You must be really out of touch. This is not some populist pure direct democracy where the people are sovereign. This is a representative democracy where the representatives are sovereign.

This is inside-the-box pundit propaganda. It helps the predators keep everything inside the box of the massively failed governance of the Constitution's status quo. They know that their corruption engine can overpower anything the people throw at them, as long as they can keep the people inside the corruption box.

They also know that if the people get outside the box with their direct democracy I&R citizen lawmaking -- as they did a hundred years ago in the Reform Era -- that the whole corruption engine could be turned off in a blink.

Goodby Federal Reserve usury and treasons. Goodby political party corruptions-treasons and hello nonpartisan government. Goodby SCOTUS fascist thugs and hello elected federal bench. Goodby every member and senator in Congress who feloniously voted to give Bush his very own unconstitutional war powers, making all 373 of them co-felons in the conspiracy to violate our soldiers' rights to be sent to war ONLY on the expressed order of Congress (felony forfeits legislative immunity, and the penalties for this one's felony murders include life imprisonment or death, per 18 USC 241). Goodby Bush-Cheney and about a thousand of their minions for a multitude of felonies. Goodby private corporations as we know them for decades of treasons.

It should be clear to everyone that our Criminal Congress has glimpsed the possibility of such a future. The grinding rage building behind the Bush-Cheney Usurpation and its unconscionable crimes against the American people make some sort of revolution highly likely.

HAVA of 2003, well after Congress had time to see the future possibilities brought on by the crimes and treasons of Bush-Cheney and themselves, opened the door to Diebold and the end of democratic elections. The Criminal Congress has spared no effort to ensure that Diebold controls the field. And most state and local politicians down to the dog-catcher level are stumbling all over each other -- in the parasitic and cooperative MSM, and in phony-to-the-rafters hearings -- making sure that Diebold keeps its fascist franchise as long as is corruptly, feloniously, and treasonously possible.

Not only are felonies being commited and constitutions violated, but the rat-bastard politicians are not protecting the people's rights under the constitutions and laws -- and that is treason.

Whew. Massive house-cleaning needed here. Every Diebold software package is a felony conspiracy violation of citizen rights -- to fair elections -- as defined by 18 USC 241. Felony forfeits all immunities -- executive, legislative, and judicial. Every politician who has been a part of any of the many vote-fraud conspiracies, country-wide, can be criminally prosecuted while in office, convicted, fined and sentenced to up to ten years in federal prison.

Way past time to take names and imprison political criminals from coast to coast.

The mega-corrupt predator politicians now have everything just the way they want. They are protected from criminal prosecution by the collusions within the government. Sure, there will be losses of Republifascist and Demofascist seats here and there, but the Republicrat fascist majority will retain power. Diebold and your toothy-grinning political criminals guarantee it.

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UPDATE -- Wednesday, 02 August 2006 at 12:30pm. Congress has done nothing about any of these substantial reports. The parasitic-fascist MSM hides everything related to these reports in their blackhole.

"Group identifies new flaws in Diebold e-voting machines", The Raw Story, Monday, 31 July 2006. This one is about the newly-discovered switch inside the no-paper-trail Diebold touch-screen machines that allows the hacker-operator to load different operating systems from different sources within the machine. The OS in the EPROM is the certified software. The OS in the FLASH is uncertified and and hackable in minutes to produce whatever vote count the hacker wants. Switching back to the EPROM leaves no trace of what happened, but it does leave the hacked-in votes.

"The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World", Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law, Tuesday, 27 June 2006. This is a report based on a year-long study, which concludes "that all three of the nation’s most commonly purchased electronic voting systems are vulnerable to software attacks that could threaten the integrity of a state or national election".

"Diebold voting systems critically flawed", by Robert Lemos, Security Focus, Friday, 12 May 2006.

"Analysis of an Electronic Voting System", by Avi Rubin, et.al., Johns Hopkins University, Information Security Institute, Technical Report TR-2003-19, 23 July 2003. Published over 15 months ahead of Election 2004, this report showed that Diebold vote-counting software is absurdly easy to hack, even in its first iteration. Congress did nothing.

Modified Thursday, 03 August 2006, at 8:20am CDT.