Nomadic Politica

2022-09-26T11:37:00.000+02:00

by Nomad

2022-09-25T19:27:00.001+02:00

by Nomad

A group of women successfully chases away a lone policeman at an anti-mobilisation protest in Dagestan https://t.co/TBCl9khPGK pic.twitter.com/jwJLqVPIcO
— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) September 25, 2022

Women in Makhachkala, Dagestan, are protesting against the war and mobilization: “Why are you taking our children? Who attacked whom? Who attacked Russia? We are the ones who attacked Ukraine. #Russia attacked Ukraine. No to war!"

Tables are turning... “Russia attacked Ukraine, we are not blind. Go fight yourself." At an anti-war rally in Dagestan, people understand and speak correctly.

The war against Ukraine is a shameful, unjust, predatory war unleashed by the Russian Nazis. pic.twitter.com/UINFKYmLhO
— NOËL 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) September 25, 2022 

2022-03-13T11:08:00.002+02:00

by Nomad

An elderly resident hides in a basement for shelter with no electricity, water or food in the center of the town of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, Friday, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

LVIV, UKRAINE - MARCH 09: Vladimir Golyadynets says goodbye to his partner Olga Shmigal before boarding a train to Dnipro from the main train terminal on March 09, 2022 in Lviv, Ukraine. As Ukrainian civilians in the east flee to the relative safety of western cities such as Lviv, and abroad to escape Russia's assault, many military personnel are heading east to help with the war effort. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Ukrainian refugee Elena, left, hugs her five-year old granddaughter Christina, as they wait the train to Warsaw, at the Przemysl train station, southeastern Poland, on Friday, March 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Embed from Getty Images

2021-06-12T16:02:00.002+02:00

by Nomad

Another summer is upon us. Slowly but surely, I feel like we are all emerging from the pit of our collective despair. I mean it was hard to feel optimistic for the future of the nation and the planet with the past administration. The day-to-day outrage and stupidity for four years. Then came the pandemic and all fear and ignorance that came with it. I have never been called a "Pollyanna" but I do feel things are gradually improving. What do you think?

In any event, I thought I would "seal the deal" with a sanity break. Something light but classy and what could be more classy than classics?

Born in the Israeli city of Be'er Sheva in 1978, mandolinist Avi Avital showed exceptional musical ability at a nearly age. By the time he was eight, he was performing with a local orchestra. He studied at both the Jerusalem Academy of Music and the Cesare Pollini Conservatory of Music in Padua, Italy.

He has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center in New York, the National Centre for the Performing Arts and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, and the Berlin Philharmonie.

Here, Avi plays four classical works by the undisputed masters. Enjoy!

Mandolin Concerto in C Major by Vivaldi

Violin Sonata in E minor by Mozart

Gigue from second partita in D minor by Bach

Andante and Variations for Mandolin by Beethoven

The Shocking Murder of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. | Nomadic Politics

2012-04-03T21:50:00.001+02:00

The Shocking Murder of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. | Nomadic Politics

Karl Rove and the Truth about the Hunt for Bin Laden 1/2 | Nomadic Politics

2012-03-30T07:05:00.001+02:00

Karl Rove and the Truth about the Hunt for Bin Laden 1/2 | Nomadic Politics

Supreme Court Reviews Obama's Health Care Reform: A Question of the Character of A Nation | Nomadic Politics

2012-03-30T07:04:00.001+02:00

Supreme Court Reviews Obama's Health Care Reform: A Question of the Character of A Nation | Nomadic Politics

Nomadic Exclusive: An Interview with Dick Cheney’s New Heart | Nomadic Politics

2012-03-30T07:03:00.001+02:00

Nomadic Exclusive: An Interview with Dick Cheney’s New Heart | Nomadic Politics

Obama’s Impeachment: Mr. Jones and the War Powers Act 1/2

2012-03-13T20:33:00.001+02:00

Obama’s Impeachment: Mr. Jones and the War Powers Act 1/2

Announcement to my Friends....

2012-02-28T05:20:00.000+02:00

ANNOUNCEMENT:
This blog is no longer active. However, a new blog (along the same line) has been set up. It is called Nomadic Politics. I know, I know, I got really creative, didn't I?

http://nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com/

Anyway, I have added a lot more posts and essays there and so if you have a chance, please drop in. If you like what you see, why not become a follower?
I will be moving the post from here to there as time allows. Thanks again for all your support.
Nomad

The American Police State

2011-12-30T18:21:00.002+02:00

Here's a link to a new post about the rapid militarization of the police departments throughout the United States.

The Rise of the American Police State

Starting with the war on drugs more and more local police departments are now using SWAT teams to carry out what was once routine police work. Since 911, the Department of Homeland Security has funded these departments with high tech military hardware and equipment to combat the threat of terrorism and its effects. The only problem is this equipment is currently being used to suppress peaceful dissent, as we have seen in the recent Occupy Wall street movement.

SOPA in 2012: The Year They Stole the Internet

2011-12-30T18:02:00.005+02:00

2012 is shaping up to be "interesting times" for the US and probably for most of Europe. The world will probably not end but there certainly seems to be a lot of controversy on its way. The battle for the Internet is just one example. Here is a two-part post I wrote for another blog about the pending bill called SOPA

SOPA: The Trojan Horse of Censorship 1/2

This first part deals with various Constitutional problems with the bill. The past history of corporations and their lawyer abusing the copyright laws to suppress freedom of the press. And the general hypocrisy of the US administrations, past and present, to lecture other countries about Internet openness while proposing what will amount to a "Great Wall of the USA"

SOPA: The Trojan Horse of Censorship 2/2

In the second part of this post, we will examine the impossibility of ever implementing SOPA should it become a law. The legal challenges will present a nightmare for the courts, leaving questions whether there can ever be justice in the decisions of the court given the confusion between copying and stealing. We also reveal how the companies which are now attempting to pressure Congress into new draconian legislation against anti-piracy were for more than a decade exclusively responsible for promoting the very software, like Limewire and Kazzaa, used to download. Is SOPA merely a means to dismantle or at least control the Net? What can citizens do about the threat?

Virginia Thomas Connections

2011-10-26T14:51:00.004+02:00

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has recently come into the spotlight on questions of conflicts of interest. Additionally his wife, Virginia Thomas' lobby efforts have caused many to ask whether this judge is really in any position to make an impartial and unbiased decision on any important matter. Given the fact that many of the cases in the dock are relevant to the activities his wife has been engaged in, many are beginning to question why Thomas has not already recused himself.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-20T21:10:00.001+02:00

Leslie Stahl And Ronald Reagan: Keeping the Secrets

2011-10-14T11:39:00.002+02:00

In Richard Schenkmann and Kurt Reiger's book, "One Night Stands with American History" one can find a lot of amusing, fascinating and strange tidbits from America's past. It's a fun read but, I did find this interesting passage that made me shudder- twice.

"In her book, Reporting Live, former CBS White House correspondent Lesley Stahl wrote that she and other reporters suspected that Reagan was "sinking into senility' years before he left office. She wrote that the White House aides 'covered up his condition' and journalists chose not to pursue it. Stahl described a particularly unsettling encounter with Reagan in the summer of 1986, her 'final meeting' with the president, typically a chance to ask a few parting questions for a 'going-away story.' But White House press secretary Larry Speaks made her promise not to ask anything. Although she'd covered Reagan for years, the glazed-eyed and fogged-up president "didn't seem to know who I was," wrote Stahl. For several minutes, as she talked to him in the Oval Office, a vacant Reagan barely seemed to realize anyone else in the room. Meanwhile, Speakes was literally shouting instructions to the president, reminding him to give Stahl White House souvenirs. Panicking at the thought of having to report on the night's news that the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet." Stahl was relieved that Reagan soon re-emerged into alertness, recognized her, and chatted coherently with her husband, the screenwriter. "I had come that close to reporting Reagan was senile."

It is this kind of insider gossip that really makes me question how seriously Stahl, and so many people in this industry, takes her role as a journalist. She seems to miss a crucial point- a matter of duty and responsibility. She has chosen to reveal the information about her suspicions of Reagan's declining mental health but only for her book and only when that information had become obsolete and the fact was irrelevant.

After all, the state of the president's mind is no small detail. A person with the control of the United States nuclear arsenal at his disposal, whose alertness and mental agility could spell the difference between survival of the the human race or its obliteration. surely the public has a right to know that the person with the very real potential of destroying the world might have come unhinged. It never seems to cross her mind at all. This is a matter of some foolish sexual misconduct, as in Clinton case. None of the reporters had many qualms in pursuing this matter in all its gory unseemly details.

In fact, Reagan's mental state might very well have been a factor in the disasters that befell his second term. The Republican revisionists have done a fairly good job at cleaning up the mess, not unlike the photo-doctors in Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty Four. Reagan's magnificence today goes unquestioned and his legend is in no danger of being exposed as a sham.

People like Palin and Bachmann are scrambling over themselves to attempt to steal some of Reagan's "stardust" no matter how illegitimate the comparison might be. One viewing of Reagan at his best puts paid that comparison in an instant, of course. Even when at his senile Reagan made a lot more sense than either Bachmann's unpredictable ignorant and at times frightening pronouncements or Palin's laughable, meaningless "word salads."

Doubts, Deceptions and Secrets

Using a lot of metaphorical Vaseline and gauze to cover the lens of history, the Republican myth makers have been extremely effective at the creation of Ronald Reagan- Great American President. It helps a lot if you are ignorant of American history and are very un-curious.

Looking over the evidence, I am inclined to disagree with Stahl's assessment of Reagan's mental state, although quite often in the early stages of Alzheimer's, the lapses come and go. Reagan's son, Ronald Reagan, Jr. (not the other one) has confirmed the Reagan's last years as president were affected. The motif of son's keeping their father's secret is a subject for many theatrical productions.

Still this kind of admission is, in some ways, excuse-making for some of the more embarrassing abuses of power that characterized Reagan's second term. Few people who have looked into the history- the true one and not the manufactured one- can deny that Reagan, for whatever reason, deceived the American people repeatedly about the Iran-Contra scandal and, when evidence emerged of the lies, lied about lying.

For example, take this video clip of two Reagan speeches. First the lie and then lie about the lie.

Reagan in 1986

But even that's not accurate. Top secret NSA documents, dated January 17, 1986 prove only that Reagan was aware of the arms trade agreement with Iran but actually gave official authorization - signed by the president himself- for the program.

I hereby find that the following operation in a foreign country (including all support necessary to such operation) is important to the national security and due to its extreme sensitivity and security risks, I determine it is essential to limit prior notice, and direct the Director of CIA to refrain from reporting this Finding to the Congress as provided in Section 501 of the National Security Act of 1947, as amended, until I otherwise direct.

The foreign country mentioned, the document shows, was Iran. and the the president's policy was as follows

The USG will act to facilitate efforts by third parties and third countries to establish contact with moderate elements within and outside the Government of Iran by providing these elements with arms, equipment and related material in order to enhance their credibility of those elements in the effort to achieve a more pro-US government in Iran by demonstrating their ability to obtain requisite resources to defend their country against Iraq and intervention by the Soviet Union..

The final paragraph states that this arrangement applies only to moderate elements and if it could shown that the contacts within Iran were not moderate, the arms deal would close shop. As it turned out, what Reagan, George Bush, Sr, Donald Regan, McFarlane and Poindexter felt was skilled diplomacy turned out to be hopelessly naive, since it was impossible to determine, given the limited independent and verifiable sources, who was moderate and who was radical inside Iran. Because it was conducted in such a incredibly careless way- through a series of con men and shady characters- untold sums were simply pocketed.

At the initial meeting some ten days prior to the signing of the above finding, there had been arguments over the proposed arm shipments. After the whole embarrassing mess became public, Secretary of State George Shultz would later reveal to the Tower Commission, investigating the illegal shipments that George Bush had supported the arms-for-hostages deal at this meeting, as did President Reagan, Casey, Meese, Regan and Poindexter. Shultz reported that he himself and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger both opposed further arms shipments.

This could one of the reasons why as president George Bush, Jr. on November 1, 2001,issued Executive Order 13233 which limited public access to papers of all presidents since 1980. A 1978 law provided for the release of presidential papers 12 years after the president leaves office, so Ronald Reagan’s papers would have been released next year. Reagan issued an order in 1989 that called for disclosure of most of his official papers 12 years after he left office but under the new executive order the papers can be kept secret even if the president in question wants them released. President Bush’s father was vice president during the Reagan administration.

As far as the arm shipment arrangement, there could be, for political and legal reasons,no oversight and this allowed all kinds of chicanery and skullduggery. Still worse, against Congress clear and direct orders, some of the money gained by illegally selling weapons to our enemy was recycled into funding the Contras, a group fighting the leftist government in Nicaragua. The very public investigation reminded viewers of the previous Republican scandal of Watergate and again many were saying this was grounds for impeachment. Hearings were held, careers were ruined.

At some point in the middle of Reagan's second term, the signs were pretty obvious that he was losing his touch. He was constantly being caught up in one half-truth after another. And still worse, he seemed to be losing interest. Like Bush Jr., he appeared happiest when he was at his ranch with Nancy. Meanwhile, others were filling the vacuum.

When Reagan spoke in public, you could sense every staff member of the White House holding their breaths, whispering a prayer to what god might be listening, and standing poised to pick up the debris. (But then it was probably like that for all of the eight years of the George Bush's administration and nobody has claimed him to be senile.)

I recall the strangely uncomfortable mix of disgust and despair when in a press conference, Reagan denied four times a certain critical point in the scandal of selling arms to Iran, that Israel, one of the third parties, was involved in the arms shipments to Iran. Reagan stated unequivocally they were not. He was clearly getting flustered and annoyed. He finished the press conference, still clearly baffled and upset, only to have a statement issued to the press twenty minutes later completely revising that adamant denial. He was having trouble remembering what the press already knew and what he had already said he didn't know.

It is clear now that Reagan was stating one policy to the American people- a policy of firmness and strength- while conducting an altogether foolish opposing policy behind closed doors. He reassured them and then he would admit this but not that.. later that but not this. All very embarrassing but it's all forgotten now. The fixers of history have come along and whitewashed all that they could and now everybody emulates America's greatest president.

So, Is all this talk of the president's creeping senility another example of the whitewashing of history?

Suspicion

In any case, Stahl's shrugging of her responsibility to report her suspicion - and not even on the point of discretion, since she was willing to put it in her book- is a mark against her credentials as a respected journalist. Although there was a suspicion that Reagan was becoming detached from reality, nobody had the courage-the strength of character- to step forward and suggest the cause.

More importantly, because she is still a practicing journalist, why should we trust her judgment today? It's only fair to ask, when we watch her rather fawning interview of Speaker of the House John Boehner,

Tell us Lesley, why is this man crying?

in which the man breaks down in tears repeatedly, what does she know that she is not telling us? Does he have some kind of emotional problem because it certainly seems like inappropriate behavior. Especially given that the subject is really quite ordinary. Are we really expected to have confidence in a person who may or may not be on this side of normal? This is, after all, the man who stands third in line to the presidency. Don't we have a right to know, even of suspicions?

What revelation will Lesley keep from us for the sake of her next book?

To Re-tweet:
https://twitter.com/#!/ANomadicView/status/124781065268232192

43 Things Tags: Reagan,Iran-Contra,Politics,Journalism,Boehner

Sarah and Greta and John: The Scientology Connection- Part 3/3

2011-10-14T00:14:00.025+02:00

The Church

Like her husband, Greta Van Susteren's support of Scientology is well-documented. She has told interviewers that she likes “the ethics” Liking Scientology for its ethics is about the same as liking Jerusalem for its barbecued pork rib restaurants.

There are, in fact, a lot of celebrities who follow the doctrines. Many come from the entertainment industry and some are more open about it than others. It might be assumed that many of the celebrities have a casual relationship with their professed religion, no more than a passing curiosity, rather than a commitment.

In the case of Van Susteren and Coale, it is a much more than that. The one-time top accountant at Coale & Van Susteren, Loretta Miscavige, is the mother of the leader of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige. According to one source, Susteren is

"a major donor to the Church, too, although her sizable donations in the late '90s were reportedly listed under the name "Greta Conway." (Conway is her middle name.) Van Susteren and Coale are tight with a number of other high-profile L. Ron Hubbard fans. Tom Cruise once considered making a movie about Coale's legal exploits. And Coale and Van Susteren's firm represented fellow Scientologist Lisa Marie Presley when she divorced Michael Jackson."

Another, more serious charge against Van Susteren is that she has worked behind the scenes to protect the image of the Church. According to one Graham E. Berry, an attorney that has litigated against Scientology:

CNN, the news corporation, decided to expose the Applied Scholastics misrepresentation that it was not part of the church hierarchy. However, one of CNN’s legal commentators, Greta Van Susteran, is a Scientologist. She went to work to convince CNN that they would be subjecting themselves to defamation liability if they published this major exposé on Scientology, and Scientology executives and investigators went to work on the senior management of CNN to convince them that should not publish this major exposé on Scientology.

CNN teams had spent many months talking to people about Scientology. Some of these people being former Scientologists who had never publicly spoken out about Scientology. In doing so, they put their lives at great risk, because Scientology would react through private investigators to disturb and destroy their personal and business relationships. And so they were betrayed and put at great risk when Scientology operatives managed to convince CNN to cancel this exposé, which I have described.

Just in case you’ve never heard of Scientology- (you really do need to get out more, you know) I will try to give you a very quick background summary.

The first Church of Scientology was set up in Camden, New Jersey in 1953 by American science fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard and his wife. His goal was to create a belief system aimed at, as Hubbard stated, "A civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology." Nothing wrong with that. However, after that, things get a little more strange. According to Wikipedia:

Hubbard said that the modern-day science fiction genre of space opera is merely an unconscious recollection of real events that took place millions of years ago. These events include the story of Xenu, the ruler of the Galactic Confederacy who brought billions of frozen people to Earth 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs, creating swarms of disembodied alien souls known as Body Thetans. Xenu is only one element of Scientologist beliefs in alien civilizations. Such doctrines have existed in Scientology virtually since its beginning: In the 1950s Hubbard wrote and lectured about civilizations such as Helatrobus, Espinol and Arslychus, and in the 1960s he introduced Xenu's Galactic Confederacy. He described repeated instances of their using brainwashing implants on hapless beings. He also spoke of alien invasions of Earth, such as that carried out around 6235 BCE by the Fifth Invader Force, who were "very strange insect-like creature[s] with unthinkably horrible hands."

Well, ok..then. Of course, you have to invest a LOT of money and spend a LOT of time inside the organization to prepare yourself to receive that kind of truth.

But you might well ask, is this really a religion or..something else? The United States government apparently thinks it is a religion, equally as valid as the Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
After a crackdown on the Church in 1967, the IRS stripped the Scientology Church of its tax exempt status, deeming it a commercial enterprise. For the next 26 years, the church would sue again and again to regain its tax-exempt status. The case was finally resolved in 1993 at a cost of 12.5 million- reportedly far less than the IRS had intitially demanded. This victory for the Church was seen as proof that Scientology was a accepted religion by the government. As Cliff Kincaid and Sherrie Gossett put it, writing for Accuracy in Media,

The IRS finally granted Scientology its desired status under President Bill Clinton, the recipient of massive donations from the Hollywood glitterati.

Scientology's leader David Miscavige

All of this could be dismissed as just another crazy aspect of American culture. However, as TIME magazine reported back in 1991

In reality the church is a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner. At times during the past decade, prosecutions against Scientology seemed to be curbing its menace. Eleven top Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife, were sent to prison in the early 1980s for infiltrating, burglarizing and wiretapping more than 100 private and government agencies in attempts to block their investigations.

The article goes on to say:

The group, which boasts 700 centers in 65 countries, threatens to become more insidious and pervasive than ever. Scientology is trying to go mainstream, a strategy that has sparked a renewed law-enforcement campaign against the church. Many of the group's followers have been accused of committing financial scams, while the church is busy attracting the unwary through a wide array of front groups in such businesses as publishing, consulting, health care and even remedial education.

Seduction and Infiltration

According to a Gawker story from 2009, back in 1986, John P. Coale was the author behind a plan to infiltrate Washington D.C., using friendly politicians to further the cult’s agenda. And It is not an easily-dismissed conspiracy theory. The memo by Coale carefully lays his methodical approach.

The idea was to launch a political action committee that would attract donations from Scientologists but could be plausibly distanced from the cult, which claims to be a church and therefore barred from engaging directly in political activities....

The PAC was to be called FLAGG PAC, which stood for "Freedom, Liberty, and Good Government Political Action Committee," but would act as a sort of dog whistle for Scientologists, who would hear an echo of "Flag Land Base," the group's international headquarters in Clearwater, Florida.

According to memo released by Gawker, Coale’s plan outlined the lines of influence that would be needed.

Political- any political figure on a state or US level, local or national level. Such as senators, congressmen, local city officials, mayors, governors, members of parliament and councillors etc. It would include government officials, civil servant and tax and immigration officials.

Media- any media terminals such as owners or members of magazines or publishing houses, TV networks or stations, radio and wire services etc.

Judical/Legal - any justice department officials, judges, senior legal officials, senior partners in large or prestigious law firms.

Financial/ corporate- any members of the board or president, vice-presidents or other senior officials/ executives within banks or other financial institutions... Also financiers, stockbrokers and very wealthy individuals.

Entertainment/ Celebrity- any producers, directors etc in stage, motion picture or television.

Coale himself confirmed that he had developed the idea but, he adds, it had never really gotten much of a response. (Of course, he would say that). The question remains whether Coale’s free assistance in setting up her legal defense fund and her SarahPAC was not intended to be some part of this infiltration. Reviewing the list above, one can see how advantageous Van Susteren, through her contacts in Fox News, would be as a well-placed operative for the Scientology agenda.

As frightening (or absurd depending on your own opinion) this plan might sound, it should surprise nobody who has done any research on the Church of Scientology. Infiltration of government agencies has always been a primary goal of the cult. Here is a example from a one report:

In 1973, Hubbard authored a plan.. called "Snow White,"..to gain access to all federal agencies to obtain their files on Scientology. The name of this operation derived from Hubbard's opinion that once these agencies had their files "cleaned," they would be "snow white."

Infiltrating, or "penetrating," these agencies was achieved by having a Scientology agent obtain employment at an agency, then use his credentials to gain access to desired materials in the agency's files.

A report called Compliance Report lists 136 such agencies targeted for penetration, prioritized by a star system, i.e.,

* low priority,

** higher priority, and

*** highest priority.

Some of the ***agencies listed in this report are: the AEC, the CIA, the FBI, the FTC, the FDA, the IRS, the NSA, the US Air Force, the US Army, the US Attorney General, the DEA, the US Coast Guard, the US Department of Justice, the US Department of Labor, the US Department of State, the US Department of Treasury, the US House of Representatives, the US Department of Immigration and Naturalization, the US Marshall's Office, the US Navy, the US Post Office, the US Selective Service, and the US Senate.

In this report, several agencies, such as the IRS, the DEA, the US Coast Guard, and the US Department of Labor are marked: "Done."

And this plan was actually put into action. According to Wikipedia:

This project included a series of infiltrations and thefts from 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations critical of Scientology, carried out by Church members, in more than 30 countries; the single largest infiltration of the United States government in history with up to 5,000 covert agents. The resulting investigation would eventually led to the arrest of eleven highly-placed Church executives, including Mary Sue Hubbard, wife of the founder..

Admittedly that was some time ago and, despite claims to the contrary, the membership has fallen a great deal. However, the extent of the infiltration and their determination makes them a force to take seriously.

Greta and John, Hilary and Bill  ... and John Travolta

Author and filmmaker, Geoffrey Dunn, writing for Huffington Post, has investigated the Scientology connections in some depth and has made these interesting observations.

Coale was a major contributor to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, and then abruptly switched sides when Hillary was denied the nomination. There is an interesting notation in the FEC documents of a "negative" contribution, or withdrawal, from Clinton's campaign on August 28, 2008--the same date that Obama made his historic acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The following day, Palin was named as John McCain's running mate.From that point on, Coale dumped nearly $60,000 into the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee, including a last-hour donation on New Year's Eve of $26,200 to the RNC. In respect to Hillary Clinton, not only did he contribute thousands of dollars to her ill-fated presidential run, he also contributed thousands to her 2000 race for the U.S. Senate.

It is a fair question to ask how a person can suddenly switch from the Left to the Far Right in a matter of a day. What was it about Hilary that attracted him so much that, when it was clear she would not be president, he was ready to switch completely his political allegiance and party? 

After all, most people would agree that, besides being women, Hilary and Sarah have very little in common. And that was the way it was portrayed, that it revolved about feminism and putting women in power. Never mind that Palin was running as vice-president, not president.

Dunn cites another source to explain the possible reasons for the closeness between the Clintons and Coale. It has far less to do with political idealogy and much more to do with being a friend to the space opera cultists.

Dr. Stephen Kent, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton in his well-researched article, Hollywood Celebrity-Lobbists and the Clinton administration's American Foriegn Policy Toward German Scientology, describes how the Church of Scientology had undertaken a long term infiltration of the US government. Following its historic agreement with the IRS in 1993, Church leaders targeted legislators through intensive lobbying efforts.

(I)t set out to improve its image with politicians and the population at large by undertaking a major public relations effort in the nation's capitol. As part of this public relations effort, a Scientology affiliate in Los Angeles was paying "almost $725,000 to a Washington-based firm [Federal Legislative Associates] to lobby Congress in 1997 and 1996"

It didn't take long for their efforts to bear fruit. President Bill Clinton had developed a special -unusual- relationship with certain Hollywood stars, all of them Scientologists.  

According to this report, certain celebrity Scientologists took their cause directly to President Clinton himself. Their request was that pressure be put on the German government to relax its policies on Scientology. Growing concern by authorities had convinced the German parliament the need to investigate the Church. Additionally there were numerous complaints of infiltration of the business and political structures, and charges of brainwashing (confinement and physical coercion) and harsh “re-education techniques,” which included social and psychological degradations, forced confessions, and hard physical labor. For these reasons, the German government singled out Scientology as a threat. As Kent puts it,

The German government's position, however, that Scientology was both non-religious and a potential threat to democracy brought it into direct conflict with its American counterpart.

German official were unprepared and puzzled by the American reaction on the restrictions.

It soon threatened to become a diplomatic problem between the two countries back in 1997 when:

A German state official raised the issue ... in response to a harsh "open" letter to Chancellor Helmut Kohl that equated the German government's handling of Scientology with Nazis' persecution of Jews prior to World War II. Published as a full page ad in the International Herald Tribune, thirty-four Hollywood personalities signed it, including actors Dustin Hoffman, Goldie Hawn, director Oliver Stone, writer Mario Puzo, and CNN talk show host, Larry King.

According to Kent’s sources, the Church of Scientology found an unlikely ally in the White House. John Travolta - a well-known member of the Church- managed to get the attention of then-president Bill Clinton at an April 1997 summit on volunteerism in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Saturday Night Fever star was there "to present educational materials created by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard." The next day, Travolta met President Clinton who told him,

"Your program sounds great.... More than that..., I'd really love to help you with your issue over in Germany with Scientology"
Clinton informed Travolta that "he had a roommate years ago who was a Scientologist and had really liked him, and respected his views on it. He said he felt we were given an unfair hand in [Germany] and that he wanted to fix it."

And Clinton was as good as his word.

Clinton followed up on this conversation by going "to the extraordinary length of assigning his national security advisor, Sandy Berger, to be the administration's Scientology point person". In September 1997, when Travolta and Chick Corea were in Washington (presumably for their testimony before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe), Clinton "had White House political affairs director, Craig Smith, arrange a meeting between Berger, Travolta, and jazzman Chick Corea, also an avid Scientologist. According to a senior administration official, the straight-shooting Berger briefed Travolta on the administration's efforts in the same manner he would a senior senator.

In fact  when news of this high level meeting broke, the State Department received some criticism and the White House was put into an uncomfortable position in defending Clinton’s decision. Others were not so quick to forgive and forget.

Europeans, ...likely saw the Clinton-arranged meeting in the context of other actions the American president had taken on behalf of Scientology. For example, the section of the State Department's 1996 human rights report that was harshly critical of Germany's actions towards Scientology "was written by the White House...." Its condemnation was so strong that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright apologized to the German government because of it.

So it doesn’t take too much imagination to understand why John Coale would have preferred to see Hilary Clinton in the White House. Anyway, how else can one explain Van Susteren’s defense of Bill Clinton during the long and painful Monica Lewinski scandal? Hadn't she left CNN by dropping off an angry at how badly women and minorities had been treated there? But now, here was, defending a president with a long history of womanizing and philandering. Why shouldn't that have also been "a woman's thing"?

The Seduction of Sarah

The Scientology connection can also explain why debt-ridden Sarah Palin appealed to Coale “charitable nature.” On the surface, it appears that the seduction of Sarah Palin, for one reason or anything, was put on hold. Or was this rejection- "throwing under the bus" as one newspaper called it- of Coale and his wife merely a bit of theater? Certainly, Greta Van Susteren hasn’t been any less fawning.

It's an intriguing question. Perhaps Van Susteren and Coale were drawn to Sarah Palin merely because of shared interests and compatible dispositions. After all, critics of Scientology have claimed that the church leaders are interested in only two things, Power and Money. If so, they might have found their own Joan of Arc.

Besides, it was, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the the Church of Scientology that stated while outlining his training techniques.

"The only way you can control people is to lie to them.. because the second you start telling anybody close to the truth, you start releasing him and he gets tougher and tougher to control."

It appears that's the kind of philosophy would probably have appealed to the Palins.

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If you are interested in learning more about the Church of Scientology, here is a fascinating BBC Panorama documentary on this subject. This is what good journalism is all about.

LIFE Magazine Examines Wall Street and Banking in 1946

2011-10-13T09:26:00.004+02:00

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The most amazing thing about a casual look through the back pages of LIFE magazine is how relevant the articles can sometimes be. For example, take the January 7 1946 issue about Wall street "the Citadel to US Capitalism." One of the side articles details the more conservative approach to banking following the world war and its origins. The story provides quite an education in the varied aspects of banking.

On Wall Street there are two principal kinds of bankers: Commercial bankers and investment bankers. The commercial banks, such as Chase and National City, make loans, accept deposits, finance foreign credits, buy government and state bonds. They also usually have a trust department which executes wills and acts as trustee. The investment bankers, such as Morgan Stanley and Kuhn, Loeb underwrite and distribute new security issues for corporations. They also have a brokerage department which buys and sells securities.

The Banking Act of 1933 made it illegal for one firm to act both as a commercial act and investment banking house. Until then, the two were often combined. In his triumphant days, J.P. Morgan, a banker, merged railroads and steel companies into nationwide corporations. In the 1920s, Wall Street made idols of men like Charlie Mitchell, chairman of National City Bank, who was also the greatest securities salesman in history and an adroit market manipulator. The 1929 crash exposed the dangers of these dual functions, With one hand, banks were taking deposits. With the other, they were financing new securities. When the business they were promoting failed, the depositors, security holder and the bank itself were in trouble.

Today the very nature of Wall street bankers has changed. In place of the speculators and market manipulator there are sound, deliberate investors who by choice as well as by law are more interested in government bonds than in a flier in market.

The Banking Act of 1933, also known as the Glass-Steagall Act, introduced banking reform and safeguards on deposits following the crash of 1929. Many of the provisions were also designed to reduce the amount of wild market speculation which was thought to be contributing factor to the collapse.

The Glass-Steagall Act passed after an ambitious former New York prosecutor, collected enough popular support for stronger regulation by bringing bank officials before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee to answer for the role in the crash.

In addition to the Banking Act of 1933, the Bank Holding Company Act was passed in 1956 and extended the restrictions on banks. According to this, bank holding companies owning two or more banks could no longer engage in non-banking activity and could not buy banks in another state.

Altogether, an impressive bit of banking regulation. The Banking Act of 1933 reduced the amount of free-wheeling risk-taking- with depositor's assets, I mean. And the Bank Holding Company Act clearly defined the role of banks and kept bank holding companies from becoming "too big to fail."

And you know something? It actually worked. Nations, which adopted such regulations and stuck to them when the rest of the world began to de-regulate, such as China and Turkey, have emerged from the latest crash, jolted but not devastated.

Another Fine Mess

So what happened? How did we come back in a full circle? Through a careful whittling away of the legislation through intensive and sustained lobbying by special interest groups, starting as far back as 1980 with the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act.

This allowed banks to merge. Subsequent decisions by the Federal Reserve Board in 1986 and 1987, after the Board heard proposals from Citicorp, J.P. Morgan and Bankers Trust advocating the loosening of Glass-Steagall restrictions, further undermined the regulatory effects of the the Banking Act of 1933. For a full account of the various steps, see HERE.

The record shows a Federal Reserve Board, at the very least, flawed by its willingness to accept the demands of institutions to circumvent the laws were designed to regulate and control precisely those sectors.

Finally- perhaps inevitably- the Banking Act of 1933 was repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999. From there, it was a slow predictable march to the sorry mess of 2009.

Greed is Good?

What on earth could have persuaded, sensible people with all the wisdom a chastising experience as the Great Depression, to lift restrictions and to deregulate and repeal? The only answer seems to be the temptation of tremendous profits that de-regulation allowed financial institutions. In short, greed.

Much to their credit, Republican Senator McCain of Arizona and Democratic Senator Cantwell of Washington made a proposal for a return to the Glass-Steagall Act, specifically the distinction between commercial and investment banking. Ironically this regulation rollback to the 1930s is being called " Obama's banking reform", making it sound untested and potentially risky when a stronger case of risk by deregulation of the banking industry in the 1980s could- and should- have been made at that time.

Banks which, despite the latest crisis continue to rake in vast profits, have, not surprisingly, been strongly opposed to a return to the restrains of the Banking Act of 1933.

As The New York Times reports:

The outlines of the Volcker Rule, one of the flagship provisions of the sweeping financial regulatory overhaul passed last year, will begin to take shape this week as regulators propose rules to limit the ability of most banks and Wall Street firms to use their own funds to buy and sell stocks, corporate bonds and derivatives.

For more information about the Volcker Rule, NYT gives a concise explanation of the reform.
Wall Street will simply have to choose between being a source of dependable investment or a free-wheeling casino, but, it is a shame that we have to learn these lessons twice.

Sarah and Greta and John: The Scientology Connection 2/3

2011-10-13T00:00:00.022+02:00

Part 1 http://goo.gl/p6tY9

Champions Greta and John

Now let’s take a small step back and examine the husband and the wife.

Born in Appleton, WI in 1955, Greta Van Susteren came from a family immersed in local politics. In fact, her father, Urban Van Susteren, was a County Judge in Wisconsin and was also a close friend of Sen Joseph McCarthy. And according to a biography, “he served as a campaign manager for McCarthy's smear-filled 1946 campaign that won the Senate seat from Sen Robert M. La Follette, Jr., who killed himself several years later. While McCarthy was a Senator, he roomed in the Van Susteren house when he was not in the nation's capitol.” (Van Susteren addressed this issue in a blog post in which she correctly states that she was not even born when her father worked with McCarthy and she was just three when he died. Fair enough.)

Ms. Van Susteren’s academic background is impressive, at least, for a television show host. This is a summary from her Wikipedia bio.

Van Susteren graduated from Xavier High School in Appleton in 1972 and the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1976, where she studied geography and economics. She later earned a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1979 and prior to the start of her television work returned to Georgetown Law as an adjunct faculty member in addition to her full-time legal career.

She began her journalist career working for CNN as a legal analyst, first covering the William Kenney Smith trial in 1991 and the O.J. Simpson trial. Later she became a co-anchor on the legal affairs news show, Burden of Proof, with political analyst Roger Cossack. According to a New York Times article, relations with CNN soured when, according to an angry letter written by Coale to CNN 's chairman, Walter Isaacson, Van Susteren “accused new network executives of putting corporate interests above journalistic ones and slighting women and minorities while revamping the network -- accusations they denied.”

The letter said Ms. Van Susteren was treated as a "second-class citizen." As an example, it points to the the network's failure to secure an invitation for her to the White House Christmas party, which, Mr. Coale wrote, is an important gathering for forging relationships with administration officials.

After a bidding war in 2002, she left CNN to join Fox News.

Even before her immigration to Fox News, Van Susteren’s lawyerly approach- in which all facts are equal- was considered, by one observer, as “dishonest.”

Jonah Goldberg in his article, Regrettable Van Susteren, strongly criticized Van Susteren about her bias in the coverage of both the O.J. Simpson trial and Bill Clinton’s sex scandal. (Rather surprisingly, throughout the Bill Clinton scandal, Van Susteren strongly and repeatedly defended the president.)

Goldberg goes on to declare:

Greta Van Susteren, co-host of CNN's Burden of Proof and ubiquitous CNN legal analyst.. ... is, thanks to CNN's global presence, the international poster girl for all that is wrong with American political commentary.

So perhaps it wasn’t such a surprise that Van Susteren would eventually wind up at Fox News. As an anchor at Fox Van Susteren, reportedly commands a seven figure salary annually according to at least one source .

For his part, John P. Coale, not unlike Sarah Palin, likes to think of himself as a crusader for the little guy. This mystique is primarily based on his multi-billion-dollar anti-tobacco lawsuits against Big Tobacco, which made him both wealthy and famous.
He has taken on other high-profile cases such as the Ritalin fraud and conspiracy against Novartis Pharmaceutical. (That trial would later turn out to be a fiasco when judges threw out the three of the five case, leaving the other two to be withdrawn quietly.)

Coale represented victims in the Bhopal chemical accident in India as well. Attorneys noted that Coale could be found wherever there was a disaster. From the Du Pont Plaza Hotel fire in San Juan, to the 1996 Valuejet crash in the Everglades or an Amtrak crash in Maryland, Coale could be found, advising victims to hold out for the highest compensation.

Many found Coale’s methods, particularly his method of hunting down clients questionable.

In fact, both Coale and Van Susteren were found guilty of “ambulance chasing” by a bit too eagerly soliciting the families of coal-mine accident victims and were barred from practicing in West Virginia for a year.

"As of April 1996, Coale, his wife Greta Van Susteren - who is also his partner in a law firm, and the law firm were all the subject of serious bar disciplinary proceedings in West Virginia, whose state bar's discipline board was seeking to suspend their right to practice law in West Virginia for a year as a result of soliciting prospective clients in ways prohibited by bar rules, generally referred to by the public as "ambulance-chasing"; in Coale's case, the term seems particularly appropriate because one of the incidents that landed him in trouble was his law firm's employee allegedly trying to chat up a severely-burned man in an intensive-care unit."

And there’s more from the Goldberg article:

American Lawyer magazine called him "a symbol for everything wrong with the plaintiff's bar."

Echoes of the comments made about Van Susteren.

In 1987 the same magazine awarded Coale its Most Frivolous Suit Award: He had sued his tailor, on the grounds that the sub-par work on his shirts had subjected him to "public humiliation . . . severe emotional distress, and embarrassment."
On the surface, Coale is something of a political contradiction . He was considered to be a big Democrat player and was a huge supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton during the Democratic Primary. In fact, at one point, Coale proposed the idea that Palin's political action committee—the creation of which Coale had master-minded— make a symbolic $5,000 donation to the Clinton campaign to help her retire her debt. (It was a drop in the ocean.) He later attempted to arrange a meeting between Palin and Bill Clinton. (Imagine that if you can.)

The whole idea understandably sent shivers up the collective spine of Republican Party officials. Politico noted

Coale conceded that he urged Palin and her advisers to consider helping Clinton, but he said it was part of a larger campaign to align the Alaska governor with prominent women in politics, including Republicans Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, both of whom are prospects for elective office in California. “It was a women thing and not a Hillary thing,” said Coale, who was angered at what he saw as sexism aimed at Clinton during last year’s campaign and who has long taken an interest in promoting female politicians.

Basically, Coale was saying to the Republicans, “it’s a woman thing. You wouldn’t understand.” He also claimed that he was trying to tone down the rhetoric by bringing both sides together.

“With these people from the opposite side, I’m trying to turn down the volume a bit on the attacks,” Coale said. “The more people meet each other and actually talk to each other, the volume will come down.”

Strange idea, since most of the inflammatory rhetoric- the volume- was coming from the Palin side. Another reason Coale gave for this most unlikely pairing was... connecting people.

Pam Pryor, a Washington-based Palin adviser, defended Coale, calling him a “networking hound” who was only trying to help connect friends.

Whether Palin was shy about becoming pals with Hilary, or whether she simply did not want to part with her earnings, the meeting- nor the kind act of charity for Hilary- never occurred. The former president also declined a meeting with Palin, according to Clinton spokesman Matt McKenna.

After repeated nudging by Coale,...Palin directed a staffer to turn him down via e-mail:

"While we appreciate your efforts and recognize that a friendship with the Clintons is appropriate, the governor believes (and I concur) that using SarahPAC to pay down Hillary's debt is not a prudent use of the money. Contributors who chose between heating their homes and sending in a contribution because they believe in Sarah would be crushed."

The image of freezing Palin contributors is a remarkable contrast to the Republican National Committee spending more than $150,000 on clothing and make-up for Gov. Sarah Palin, her husband, and even her infant son.

But of course, that wasn’t her money.

Palin had other reasons, perhaps, for wanting to distance herself from too much contact with Coale.

Scientology was quickly becoming political poison.

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Part 1 - All about Sarah and Greta
Part 3 - All about the Church, John and the Clintons

Sarah and Greta and John: The Scientology Connection - Part 1/3

2011-10-12T02:13:00.005+02:00

While I was perusing one of the many ethics complaints filed against Sarah Palin while she was Alaska’s governor, I stumbled upon an interesting bit of news that I hadn’t heard before. Among the many charges in the complaint filed by fellow Republican Andree McCleod, there was the a familiar name, Greta Van Susteren, host of Fox News’ On the Record.

Intimate Relations

The Palin- Van Susteren relationship is strikingly more intimate than most political figures have ever had with journalist. At times, it seemed as though Van Susteren was more of a press agent for the former governor, rather than a “fair and balanced” journalist. As Andrew Halcro writes:

Van Susteren landed Palin's first interview after she returned home from her Vice Presidential run in November and this past week Van Susteren landed the first public media appearance by the governor's daughter and grandson.From snowmobiling and cooking moose hot dogs in Wasilla, to greeting racers at the end of the Iron Dog in Fairbanks, Van Susteren has had more one on one face time with Palin than most State commissioners.Perhaps even more that Todd.

In a competitive industry like cable news broadcasting, in which exclusive access is like hitting a home run in the ninth inning, Greta’s relationship with Sarah is a definite advantage. For Palin, it is just as much of an advantage. Media Matters supplies an example regarding Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life :

Van Susteren hyped Palin's memoir throughout the first segment of her November 13 program, saying that the "entire country is buzzing" about the book and that "no one -- and we mean no one -- can stop talking about her." She also asked, "What is it about this governor that's got everybody talking?"

Even in our hype-filled age, that sounds a bit over the top. Although, when Greta’s gushing finally subsided, the guest makes some very interesting observations, it’s hard not to read a bit of sarcasm in the guest’s remark, “Nobody has been more fair to her than you, Greta.”

In an online article, Think Progress lists the many not-so special specials that Van Susteren has hosted on Palin.

During the presidential campaign, Van Susteren had perhaps the best access to Palin of any journalist, hosting a one-hour “documentary” on “Governor Sarah Palin — An American Woman.” She also scored an exclusive interview with Todd Palin, in which she grilled him “on everything from the story behind the name ‘First Dude’ to how he feels about the name ‘First Dude.’”After the election, Palin chose Van Susteren for her first national television interview. Since then, Van Susteren has consistently covered Palin, keeping an eye out for any potential slights to the governor and gushing over her popularity.

It appears that Van Susteren, as Palin’s private cheerleader for Fox News, has decided that it is her job to keep the entire country buzzing about Palin, even when no one- and we mean no one- really finds her as enthralling as Greta does. If Greta isn’t interviewing Palin then she is interviewing somebody who is talking (favorably) about Palin, her potential run for the presidency, and all things Palin. On Aug 18, 2010, When Fox News devoted three days to a Van Susteren hosted a special on oil drilling in Alaska, Greta was able to turn the “inside story” into a piece about Palins. The broadcast was summed up in this way by Media Matters, the special “basically boil[ed] down to a three-day infomercial of Palin touting her positions on ANWR and her record of ‘play[ing] hardball’ with oil companies as governor.”

Of course, this is what most people have come to expect from Fox News, really just business as usual. Still, such intimate relations might explain why comments highly critical of Palin made by Karl Rove on Van Susteren’s show were censored .

During the Van Susteren interview, Rove was responding to a remark made on her SarahPAC site condemning professional pundits with so called “inside information” about her decision to run or not to run. The statement concluded with, “This is more of the "politics-as-usual" that Sarah Palin has fought against throughout her career.”

Rove, taken aback somewhat, defended himself and then observed,

Well look, it came from her PAC and I assume that since it’s a small group of people who run the PAC and run her operation and I assume that she was aware that they were going to go out there and say things in her name, SarahPAC, that basically said ‘Don’t speculate about me and if you are then you are an establishment elitist with no inside information.’

He continues with this comment,

And I mean I just thought that it was a very odd way to react and and frankly you know - OK fine: If you don’t want us to speculate about you, don’t be doing the things you are doing. By showing up in a surprise appearance at the Iowa State Fair and running a television ad saying “I’m looking forward to being back in Iowa” and then going and speaking at a big rally in Iowa. I thought that part of that was that she wanted to get more attention to herself but I guess, I guess that’s wrong. I guess that she wanted less attention so she did those things. I don’t know. It’s weird. Very odd.

Mind you, these statements by Rove were deleted in the official transcript. In any case, there is, in this dialogue, a bit more than meets the eye and a bit more to the story than the usual unbalanced news reporting so typical of Fox News.

Big Deal

According to the ethics complaint I mentioned earlier, starting in 2008, Palin, while still governor, received free professional consulting and legal advice on how to deal with lawsuits, ethics complaints and unfair attacks by the media. The complaint charged that these services constituted an gift which were not disclosed, in violation the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. The provider of this gift was none other than Van Susteren’s law partner and husband, John P. Coale.

When a Politico story broke about the Van Susteren-Coale connection, eventually Van Susteren admitted that her husband had indeed assisted Palin, in an article . In a blog post on her website GretaWire, she writes:

Yes, he advised her - after the election - how to set up a PAC (big deal - it is common - routine - for politicians to set up a PAC - virtually every politician has one set up and there is nothing wrong with them.And incidentally, the PAC was created to pay travel bills she had accumulated and would accumulate in the future and to contribute to other candidates .and the Pac was not to be her chief political advisers which is what the article accuses.) And yes, he thought it wrong the way she was attacked in the media.As a matter of fact, so did I think she was treated unfairly by the media (I don't like gratuitous attacks.issues, yes..but not gratuitous attacks) and I am not the only one who thought that in the media. My husband helped with the PAC - I did not - AFTER the election when she was not running for office but trying to dig herself out from lawsuits, ethics complaints and unfair attacks by the media. Big deal. So he was nice to her and wanted to help her and did help her.

Don’t bother checking the link, though. She apparently had some second thoughts about being THAT open and scrubbed the post not long after this was written. .

The fact that there might be a small conflict of interest involved never seems to cross her mind. By listing other female new personalities with politically active spouses, Van Susteren goes to great pains to show that it is possible to remain objective and ethical. Possible in theory, perhaps. This dismissal rings rather hollow, given the fact that Van Susteren has treated no other politician in quite the same way as she treats Palin. When the subject of favoritism and Palin comes up, Van Susteren like to dismiss the claim by saying “Oh, we’ve had Hilary Clinton here a lot of times too.”

To an outsider, it would appear that the fee for Coale’s legal advice was access to Sarah Palin. It was a very nice arrangement for all parties concerned.

Other Fox News staff are equally blase, as the New York Times reports:

Bill Shine, the senior vice president for programming, expressed little concern about the ties. “There are always some sort of, let’s just say, unique relationships that happen when you live in Washington,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s the culture of that town.”He said Ms. Van Susteren did “not necessarily” have to disclose on television that her husband had worked with Ms. Palin.

Not what you would call an adamant statement. Other opinions were a bit less bland.

Some critics have accused Ms. Van Susteren of playing favorites with Ms. Palin. David Zurawik, a longtime television critic for The Baltimore Sun, wrote that she had conducted “cotton-candy interviews” of Ms. Palin. In an interview, he called Mr. Coale’s work “an extension of what Greta’s doing on the air.”“They’re her champions or her defense attorneys,” Mr. Zurawik said.

When the subject of favoritism and Palin comes up, Van Susteren likes to dismiss the claim by saying “Oh, we’ve had Hilary Clinton here a lot of times too.” In an interview, Van Sustern said she thought Hilary Clinton was the most powerful woman in the world. Be that as it may, later we shall see the other possible reasons why Susteren and her husband have worked hard to cultivate a good relationship with the Clintons.

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Part 2- a closer look at Greta and John

Part 3 - All about the Church, John and the Clintons

Related articles

Karl Rove: Palin Has 'Enormous Thin Skin' (newser.com)
Fox News Cuts Off Rove After He Calls Palin Thin-Skinned (crooksandliars.com)

Palin's Fake Pregnancy Rumors

2011-10-10T20:27:00.003+02:00

Ever since the 2008 presidential campaign, there have been strange rumors flying around about Sarah Palin and the birth of her fifth child, Trig.

The rumor, in its most basic form, is that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy and then lied to almost everybody about giving birth. In the beginning, I have to confess to finding the whole thing preposterous. My first reaction was to laugh and dismiss the idea pretty quickly. Wouldn't somebody from the press have picked up on this? Isn't that their job, to smell out something fishy, investigate and report what they have found?

But it seemed like nobody wanted to talk about it but there was certainly a lot of talk about Obama's birth certificate flying around.

Another thing I recall running through my head, was how could she even attempt to fake a pregnancy for the full term? I mean, Sarah was not a shut-in, but was governor of Alaska and surrounded by people. The funny part was the people she worked with had no idea she was pregnant until well into her pregnancy. Still, nothing seemed all that extraordinary. She kept her pregnancy a secret. That's not my business.

Still, when you watch her on tape- she was after all a governor- , she wears heavy jackets and scarves and, while I have never been pregnant myself, I have it on good authority, that Sarah Palin sits and crosses her legs in a way that no woman in her seven-month could possibly do.

Photos from her previous pregnancies show a robustly heavy woman with a baby bump as big as a beach ball. With Trig, there's nothing until the last month and even then, her face never changes. Her walk never changes. To many people, the only explanation is .. a pillow.

Allegedly, (not proved) she went for a massage when she was pregnant. NOT a wise idea.She hadn't told anybody she was pregnant and the woman giving her a massage didn't see anything whatsoever to give her any indication she was going to have a baby.

Apart from whatever evidence there was , I asked myself, why? Why would anybody go to all that trouble? Why not just adopt? Was there some reason that faking it all was preferable to going through all the paperwork of adoption? Well, it does take time.

Maybe there's just some other reason we cannot know about. Yet. If she had heard rumors that she was under consideration for the vice presidential post, perhaps she didn't feel inclined to wait it out. So, Instan -a-Baby!

Still I wasn't convinced. What kind of person would do that? But then, as far-fetched as that theory seemed, Palin's own story was even stranger and harder to accept.

The Wild Ride

On April 22, 2008, in an interview about the birth of Trig, Sarah Palin said:

Palin: And, uh, he wasn’t due for 4 or 5 weeks later and um, while I was at energy conference I felt perfectly fine but uh, had thought maybe a few things were starting to progress a little bit that perhaps there was an idea there that he might come early.
So I called my doctor at about uh four in the morning in Texas and um I said ya know I’m gonna stay for the day here at the energy conference - have a speech that I was determined to give at one o’clock that afternoon and, um, had Todd check on a couple of flights that were earlier than we had scheduled. I decided it would be ok to, um, skip the reception that night that we’d already by that time have taken care of our meetings and my speech. So Todd checked on flights. A flight allowed us to get out a little earlier than we had planned. Skipped the reception and, um, called my doctor before I got on the plane to say, ‘Yea, we think that we will come home a few hours early,’ and, uh, she said ‘OK call when you land and I’ll check you out.’
But none of my babies had been early and being my fifth child I know what labor feels like (laughing) and if I had felt at all that I was really engaged in uh, labor activities I would not have desired to fly and, um, get back uh, to deliver in Alaska. But anyway, so no real huge labor signs. Landed in, uh, in Anchorage at about 10:30. Got out to the valley at 11:30 and she met us at the hospital, checked me out and said, ‘Um, Yea you look, you may have it um tonight or in the morning.’ And it was smooth, it was relatively easy, in fact it was very easy, the easiest of all of them because he was so tiny. And, um, it’s just been absolutely wonderful. It was all, it just all seemed meant to be… the logistics and everything else just worked out so perfectly and to us he’s absolutely perfect, too.

Reporter: Of course you’re back to work already today and actually signed a bill that day, right?

Palin: That day, yeah, staff came out to the hospital and I signed a bill there so I could uh make sure we transmitted that in time and then uh here today also yeah, we have some energy updates I didn’t want to miss so that was good look and at him he’s just doing so well and it’s been easy and relaxing and again all it seems just meant to be this way.

Reporter: You said you felt some signs of labor, what were those signs?

Palin: Well not contractions so much because I had Braxton Hicks contractions for months as every pregnant woman does, and nothing real painful but just knowing that, um, it was feeling like, I may not um, be ale to be pregnant a whole nother four or five weeks knowing that it would be not a bother to call our doctor and let her know. And um she’s delivered how many babies over the year did she say?
Todd: Lots.
Palin: A lot. It’s been a couple of decades of her delivering babies. We knew to call her and just get her advice and, um, from there we again decided to skip the energy conference reception and come on home and get checked out.

Later in the interview she makes it clear that the labor had started in Texas.

Reporter: So did your water break?

Palin: Well, if you must know more of those type of details, but, um…

Reporter: Well, your dad said that and I saw him say it so that’s why I asked.

Palin: Well that was again if, if I must get personal, technical about this at the same time, um, it was one, it was a sign that I knew, um, could lead to uh, labor being uh kind of kicked in there was any kind of, um, amniotic leaking, amniotic fluid leaking, so when, when that happened we decided OK let’s call her.

So, what she appears to be saying is that she was in Dallas about to give a speech, feels labor pains, calls the doctor, makes the speech, her water breaks, and then, instead of going to any of the reputable state of the art hospitals in Texas, she boards a long-haul flight (with a stopover in Seattle, mind you) then she asks you to believe that she lands in Anchorage, Alaska and bypasses other hospitals, in order to go to a small town clinic. Get on a plane travels 10 hours to get back to Wallisa hospital knowing they are not equipped to handle a special needs child?Later, she said her baby was born in Anchorage!

She says she called her doctor, so why hadn't her doctor advised her to go to a local facility in Dallas instead of risking the life of your unborn baby, her own life, let alone the possibly forcing an emergency landing of the plane.

This version is also confirmed by an article in Alaska Daily News

Palin was in Texas last week for an energy conference of the Republican Governors Association when she experienced signs of early labor. She wasn't due for another month.
Early Thursday -- she thinks it was around 4 a.m. Texas time -- she consulted with her doctor, family physician Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, who is based in the Valley and has delivered lots of babies, including Piper, Palin's 7-year-old.
Palin said she felt fine but had leaked amniotic fluid and also felt some contractions that seemed different from the false labor she had been having for months.
"I said I am going to stay for the day. I have a speech I was determined to give," Palin said. She gave the luncheon keynote address for the energy conference.
Palin kept in close contact with Baldwin-Johnson. The contractions slowed to one or two an hour, "which is not active labor," the doctor said.
"Things were already settling down when she talked to me," Baldwin-Johnson said. Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said.

What kind of doctor would tell a pregnant woman- one who had already had a miscarriage- that it was a sensible idea to travel on a long haul flight?

In her book, Palin has heavily dramatized the story and dried it up.

The next month, Todd and I checked into a hotel in Dallas. The following day I was scheduled to keynote another oil and gas conference. My pregnancy was going fine, and with five weeks to go, I felt great. But at 4 a.m., a strange sensation low in my belly woke me and I sat up straight in my bed.
It can’t be, I thought. It’s way too early.
Moments later, I shook Todd awake. “Something’s going on.”
He sat up in bed, instantly alert. “I’m calling CBJ.”
“No, don’t do that. It’s one a.m. in Alaska.”
I didn’t want to call anyone yet. I just wanted to take stock and see whether this baby was really coming. I also wanted time and pray and asked God silently but fervently to let everything be okay. Desperation for this baby overwhelmed me.
Please don’t let anything happen to this baby.
It occurred to me, once and for all. I’m so in love with this child, please God, protect him! After all my doubts and fears, I had fallen in love with this precious child. The worst thing in the world would be that I would lose him. God knew what He was doing.
Over my protests, Todd called CBJ. I told her that I felt fine and absolutely did not want to cancel my speech and disappoint the folks at the conference, including my cohost, Texas Governor Rick Perry. We agreed that I would stay in contact with CBJ through the day, I’d take it easy, give my speech, then catch an earlier flight back to Alaska. I still had plenty of time.
Later that afternoon we entered a packed house at the energy conference, where I’d speak on the urgent need to tap conventional supplies and innovate on stabilizing renewable sources.

In this version, the water stays put.

It is not plausible that a doctor would have allowed this. For one thing there is such a thing as malpractice. This goes against most medical advice: According to this link

"Generally, women who are having a healthy, normal pregnancy are free to come and go as they please. However, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends women don’t fly after their 36th week of pregnancy. Women who are having any sort of complications associated with their pregnancy or who are considered to be ‘high risk’ should not travel .

She hadn't told anybody at the airlines she was pregnant and none of the airline staff even noticed.

Caroline Boren, Alaskan Airlines representative said of the incident, “Governor Palin was extremely pleasant to flight attendants and her stage of pregnancy was not apparent by observation as she didn’t show any signs of distress,”

Now, before I continue, I will honestly admit to working with a woman who told me, with tears in her eyes that she wouldn't be coming to work the following week because she was going to have a baby. I was kind of stunned. But sure enough, the baby came. Of course, that woman had a large belly anyway so there is some room for plausibility. At this point.

There was also this unverified report that adds to the strangeness. According to one report Palin was observed in the lounge in Seattle airport ( eating pistachios and reading a novel) by an AK state employee. He spoke with Todd but not with her. He was completely unaware that she was supposedly hurrying back to AK because labor had purportedly begun early that morning in TX.

But….why? What does she have to gain? Perhaps it's all about image.

In August of 2009 Sarah Palin posted the following comment on her Facebook:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Of course, the whole death panel thing was a fabrication meant to scare people to vote against their own best interests. But this shows she has not hesitated to use her baby to serve her own aims.

She has spoken for organizations for children with special needs. She was paid for it but the speaking fees were not disclosed.

Palin: "To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."

Sarah Palin might have changed her mind on this one recently. However, a comment here notes that Palin actually slashed funding for schools for special needs kids by 62%. Budgets: FY 2007 (pre-Palin), 2008, 2009 (all pdfs).

Still you can't argue with success. Listen to this from a New York Time "fluff piece" on Palin

But her son has given Ms. Palin, 44, a powerful message. Other candidates kiss strangers’ babies; Ms. Palin has one of her own. He is tangible proof of Ms. Palin’s anti-abortion convictions, which have rallied social conservatives, and her belief that women can balance family life with ambitious careers. And on Wednesday in St. Paul, she proclaimed herself a guardian of the nation’s disabled children.
“Children with special needs inspire a special love,” Ms. Palin said

For what it's worth, the article does give a good excuse why she tried to hide it. Not a good one. Not one that is corroborated by her later actions, but an excuse.

The couple decided to keep quiet about the pregnancy so they could absorb the news, they told people later.

And there were political factors to consider. “I didn’t want Alaskans to fear I would not be able to fulfill my duties,” Ms. Palin told People magazine last week.

Isn't this the same governor that decided to quit half-way through her term of office? Looks like Alaskans had every reason to be afraid.

Chose A or B

In the past couple of weeks, mainstream media reporters have taken a rather bland interest in the matter. One went so far to say, "Who cares?" Well, for a journalist to say such a thing, just shows the present sinking state of corporate news. It is a journalist's job to show us, first of all, why it is important and he/she should go out and find news, not wait for it to come walking in the front door so he can decide if it is really news or not. That's pretty damn lazy.

Meanwhile Palin or her staff/ followers have been busily "scrubbing" –deleting- as many of the incriminating photos and videos as they can. One day there is a long lost photo, the next day, it vanishes.

Still, there are some things that do not go away.

In the end, you have two equally strange scenarios. One, a reasonably intelligent person, holding a position of trust and responsibility has gone to great lengths to fool people. And badly. Later she made a selfish, inexplicable decision to that risked the life of her baby. That version, the one she says is true, has changed repeatedly and even now the details don't seem to match.

Or, the altogether peculiar theory that she has, for some reason, faked her pregnancy and continues to this day, telling one lie after another, each one to cover the flaws of the previous lie. That scenario forces us to consider why on earth anybody would feel the need to be so dishonest to the public about the matter.

Of course, the more you investigate the woman, the more you see that, in nearly every aspect of her life, she has confabulated, exaggerated and just plain lied to enhance her image. A baby with special needs would certainly have done that and we have seen how often she has been willing to exploit her own children for the sake of her career.

In either case, Palin has disqualified herself as a candidate for the highest office in the United States. Now she is a cartoon politician leading a strange bunch of gullible followers who say things like, "She'll make a great president… She's so gorgeous."

Dueling Authority Figures

Prof. Bradford W. Scharlott, of Ph.D.Northern Kentucky University has recently written a brilliant piece about this strange person with her strange stories and why the media aids and abets her. It makes fascinating reading and goes into wonderful detail. The whole case is laid out logically.

Her press secretary blustered and sent email to all of the officials of the university where Scharlott works, attempting to get him fired for his writing. McAllister threatened – get this-to slap Scharlott if they ever came face to face and mentioned that in another age, he would invite the professor to a duel.

Yes, a duel. At dawn. On a hill.

Unfortunately for Palin, it only served to shine a brighter line of the article, making even harder to ignore. Good job.

PROFESSOR SCHARLOTT Talks About Palin's Campaign To Stop His Investigation Of The Alleged Pregnancy HoaxTrig Palin Birtherism just won't die

The American Malaise

2011-10-10T20:11:00.000+02:00

I have lately been reading “The Limits of Power” by Bacevich and the author makes a compelling argument about the sources of the American malaise. The basic contention is that sometime in the 1980s, American changed from “an empire of production” to an “empire of consumption” and this very American desire to have more without even considering the possibility of sacrifice and reform has led to a severe weakening of our national independence.

Our desire to have more and more without limit but completely on credit and from outside sources has led to a dangerous inability to remain “masters of our fates” as a nation. We cling to the boast of being the last superpower while at the same time and we have begun to use our fading but expensive military might to obtain our presumed entitlements. And worst of all, whether you choose to disregard the dubious morality of it all, it simply isn't working.

The break, according to author, could be clearly charted between the presidencies of Carter and Reagan. While Carter was attempting to re-think the American values- is there no limit to our entitlement as a nation, a world power? Should we always continue to expect more and more? To even question this idea was dangerous ground to step for any president wishing to remain in power; it seemed to go against the very core of the “American Dream.”

Reagan on the other hand, appealed to our national vanity and many of our long held but essentially mythic national beliefs- that America is somehow divinely inspired to spread its influence and its domination in the name of freedom to all parts of the world-. That Americans are, for this reason, a blessed and deserving to have a brighter future based on material wealth.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we ‘re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice. - Ronald Reagan

Here is an example of Reagan’s sense of logic that could never be refuted in a proud nation of the popular vote . If you are poor in America, it is because you choose to be. America is, after all, the land of opportunity and intelligence and hard-work are rewarded. America is the greatest nation in the world and if you are poor, it is because you are too lazy or ignorant to seek out those advantages open to every citizen. It was a heady mix of patriotism and wishful thinking.

The dark side, however, was intolerance and bigotry, a sense of privilege and arrogance and lack of sympathy or understanding to the poor, the unfortunate or defenseless and the ill. (And if we choose to treat out OWN citizens in such a manner, is it surprising the abuses of power that went on in Iraq?)

I remember seeing a tape of Reagan speaking in California from that era. He said that he had heard that some asserted there was hunger in America. He said it sarcastically. He said, "Sure there is; they're dieting!" or words to that effect. This handsome Hollywood millionaire making fun of people so poor they sometimes went to bed hungry seemed to me monstrous. I remember his wealthy audience of suburbanites going wild with laughter and applause. I am still not entirely sure what was going on there. Did they think Harrington's and similar studies were lies? Did they blame the poor for being poor, and resent demands on them in the form of a few tax dollars, to address their hunger?
Ronald Reagan, De-Mythologized By Juan Cole

Under Reagan, how did this attitude express itself in practical terms? One example that quickly comes to mind is the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s. ( There are numerous examples of course, from school lunch programs, to cutting funding for state run hospitals housing mentally disturbed patients) If government had chosen to address the AIDS problem at its earliest stages, instead of blaming the victims If resources had been spend attempting to cover the humanitarian ( as opposed to a judgmental and heartless) way, we might not have only saved our nation millions of young lives, we might also have heroically prevented the disease from becoming a world-wide disaster. Tragically, however, it did not.

Instead, the Reagan administration acted with slowness and inefficiency, denying the problem even existed. The president did not make even one public address of the epidemic until 4 or 5 years. Eventually, a response came to meet the needs despite and not due to, government policy and usually from within the minority community with grudging and inadequate national funding .

There was talk that this was a manufactured illness created to wipe out the homosexual community, or the black minority, or the poor. In fact, there was no need to create any such diseases in a lab. The triplet evils were more than sufficient: a lack of conviction and seriousness to address an emerging problem that some in government found too distasteful (or expensive) to think about , a cold lack of empathy for those in need of help and finally a confused sense of priorities when it came to spending our financial resources. This was much more effective at wiping out neglected populations than any disease.

A significant source of Reagan's support came from the newly identified religious right and the Moral Majority, a political-action group founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. AIDS became the tool, and gay men the target, for the politics of fear, hate and discrimination. Falwell said "AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals." Reagan's communications director Pat Buchanan argued that AIDS is "nature's revenge on gay men." Reagan's AIDS Legacy by Allen White

And this attitude can now become entrenched into the American psyche. That somehow there are some people who deserve more and some people who deserve nothing and we have no impetus to change that basic truth. It is social Darwinism on its most cruel level. Mind you, it was not as though, Reagan and the administrations that followed were actually saving money. Quite the opposite is true, while Reagan was boasting of the need to cut spending on social spending , over the course of his two terms in office, between 1981 and 1989, Reagan cut taxes, slashed government programs and ran up huge deficits with a 35 per cent increase in military spending.

Katrina. If one wishes any further evidence on how far America has slipped from its highest values as a nation, if only in terms of what we wish to believe about our system, then one needs only to look at the events surrounding Katrina. How much clearer could those images be? The poor, the elderly and ill, the children and the underclass all were herded into a stadium and, all but abandoned by police and emergency services and simply left to fend for themselves against flooding and storms while the national government dithered and looked the other way. This was the ultimate legacy from the Reagan era, and the question remains, what have we really learned? Anything?

It calls to mind A.J.Toynbee’s “A Study of History”, admittedly heavy reading indeed, but many of his ideas arise from viewing history with a telescope as opposed to a microscope. He took a survey of the 26 civilizations and analyzed the causes of their rise from a primitive collection of tribes or proto-nations to a great and influential dominating civilization. Toynbee, in the second half of the work, broke down the causes for the civilization to crumble.

There are so many fascinating concepts that I am sure I could never do justice to them all but I can try to summary. An empire/civilization begins its decline much earlier than presumed and often its golden age is in reality its Indian summer. The rise of Militarism within a civilization is usually the signs of its own decay. ( the suicidal rise of Militarism is how he depicted it) When the creative minority, its artists and promoters of the Arts, turn away from the long established cultural values of the empire, then the collapse is usually not far behind. When a lingua franca is established then the civilization has peaked and when that universal language begins to dissolve then for obvious reasons, the civilization it begins to weaken. The causes of the decline are usually a result of its own inherent hypocrisies. Finally, there is the three and half beat rule, that is, in civilizations, there are a series of challenges and how its citizens and leaders respond to those challenges, either effectively or ineffectively, determines the viability of the empire. By the time the third unanswered challenge occurs the civilization has fallen.

And all of Toynbee’s signs are with us if we wish to examine ourselves without fear. The three beats: Would that be the AIDS epidemic, 9/11 and Katrina? The inherent hypocrisy of spreading freedom and American values by imposing U.S sponsored dictatorships upon the people we wish to liberate, or worse, by American military might directly? The hypocrisy of professing to believe in a fair and just legal system and yet denying even the most basic and long established right to a fair trial and habeas corpus, as well as the right to confront your accuser in a court of law? Can there be one law for Americans and another law for the rest of humanity? If so, then our right to establish free and just systems around the world is in serious doubt. It seems to be only a cover for the right to impose our will on other countries in order to loot them of the resources we feel we deserve as our divine right. If not, then we must take time for serious reflection and reevaluation of our supposed mission. Surely, we are not so arrogant to think we cannot live in a world that is both good for Americans and good for the other nations we share this planet with.

In his book, Bacevich is very careful to state that this is not a problem with one party or the other and it is not a problem of a single decade. This has been a metastasizing cancer for the last 30 years, perhaps longer. Like a cancer, it does not spread in a completely random fashion. Some parts of the body are more vulnerable than others, but eventually the life of the patient is threatened.

There is an immense and systematic failure going on in the last superpower and this can only be solved through pragmatism, honesty and the sacrifice of presumed entitlements.

Roosevelt Takes on the Supreme Court

2011-10-10T20:07:00.000+02:00

A recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States appears to allow unprecedented interference by private corporations into the political process. The court struck down as unconstitutional a key part of the bipartisan campaign reform which prohibited corporations from using its vast funds to criticize a candidate for federal office within thirty days of a primary election or sixty days of a general election.

It was argued that, since all news outlets are now corporations and the Constitution forbids the restriction of a free press in the first Amendment, this feature of the reform could be used to silence free speech. Not surprisingly, "fair and balanced" Fox News saw this decision as a victory for unrestricted free speech, one which the founding fathers would have applauded.

Unfortunately, the funds that corporations have at their disposal, especially when one or more corporations gather behind particular candidates can easily outweigh any pooled resources by individuals. By focusing on the incidental and potential dangers to freedom of speech- of groups, unions and corporations-instead of weighing the necessity for campaign reform to prohibit the corrupting influence of corporations, the Supreme Court has created a threat to democracy as a whole.

Ruth Marcus writing for The Washington Post- (also a news corporation, by the way) opines," Under federal election law before the Supreme Court demolished it, corporations and labor unions were free to say whatever they wanted about political candidates whenever they wanted to say it. They simply were not permitted to use unlimited general treasury funds to do so. Instead, they were required to use money raised by their political action committees from employees and members. This is hardly banning speech."

Battle Between the Branches

This event would not be the first time the Supreme Court has been accused of activism and overstepping its prescribed powers. This isn't the first time a crisis has developed between the Judicial and the Executive branches of the United States Government.

On March 9, 1937, Franklin Roosevelt, speaking by radio to the nation in a "fireside chat," described the problem of an obstructionist Supreme Court, and the need for a drastic re-evaluation of the process. Roosevelt stated the problem very directly "The Court" he claimed,"has been acting not as a judicial body, but as a policy-making body." He went on to cite, with quotes of dissenting opinions from other High Court judges, instances after instance in which the Court went beyond its duty.

I want - as all Americans want - an independent judiciary as proposed by the framers of the Constitution. That means a Supreme Court that will enforce the Constitution as written, that will refuse to amend the Constitution by the arbitrary exercise of judicial power - in other words by judicial say-so. It does not mean a judiciary so independent that it can deny the existence of facts which are universally recognized.

His proposal was that " hereafter, when a Judge reaches the age of seventy, a new and younger Judge shall be added to the Court automatically."

The words of the speech might well have been written yesterday.

If we learned anything from the depression we will not allow ourselves to run around in new circles of futile discussion and debate, always postponing the day of decision. The American people have learned from the depression. For in the last three national elections an overwhelming majority of them voted a mandate that the Congress and the President begin the task of providing that protection - not after long years of debate, but now. The Courts, however, have cast doubts on the ability of the elected Congress to protect us against catastrophe by meeting squarely our modern social and economic conditions.

He described the government in terms the average farmer or laborer could well visualize.

Last Thursday I described the American form of Government as a three horse team provided by the Constitution to the American people so that their field might be plowed. The three horses are, of course, the three branches of government - the Congress, the Executive and the Courts. Two of the horses are pulling in unison today; the third is not. Those who have intimated that the President of the United States is trying to drive that team, overlook the simple fact that the President, as Chief Executive, is himself one of the three horses.
It is the American people themselves who are in the driver's seat.
It is the American people themselves who want the furrow plowed.
It is the American people themselves who expect the third horse to pull in unison with the other two.
We have, therefore, reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself. We must find a way to take an appeal from the Supreme Court to the Constitution itself. We want a Supreme Court which will do justice under the Constitution and not over it. In our courts we want a government of laws and not of men.

Roosevelt was fully prepared to answer the charge of "Court-packing"

Let me answer this question with a bluntness that will end all honest misunderstanding of my purposes.
If by that phrase "packing the Court" it is charged that I wish to place on the bench spineless puppets who would disregard the law and would decide specific cases as I wished them to be decided, I make this answer: that no President fit for his office would appoint, and no Senate of honorable men fit for their office would confirm, that kind of appointees to the Supreme Court.
But if by that phrase the charge is made that I would appoint and the Senate would confirm Justices worthy to sit beside present members of the Court who understand those modern conditions, that I will appoint Justices who will not undertake to override the judgment of the Congress on legislative policy, that I will appoint Justices who will act as Justices and not as legislators - if the appointment of such Justices can be called "packing the Courts," then I say that I and with me the vast majority of the American people favor doing just that thing- now.

Strong words indeed. In any case, this kind of "court-stacking" has become a common practice in modern American politics and is usually checked- at least, in some degree- by the nomination process.

On the potential accusation that the proposal was radical or unprecedented, he assured the people.

Is it a dangerous precedent for the Congress to change the number of the Justices? The Congress has always had, and will have, that power. The number of justices has been changed several times before, in the Administration of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson - both signers of the Declaration of Independence - Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

Modern Revision

Interestingly, Wikipedia's entry on Roosevelt's proposal reads:

..his plan, usually called the "Court-packing Plan", failed in Congress and proved a political disaster for Roosevelt.

And yet, upon further investigation, the text cited in this Wikipedia is not as clear cut. Calling the proposal "a political disaster" is misleading and an opinion of the contributor, not supported by the citation itself.

Only weeks into his second term, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took on the U.S. Supreme Court--which had invalidated a series of New Deal programs--by offering a plan to ease the load of the “aged, overworked justices,” whom critics derided as the “nine old men.”
The plan would have allowed the president to nominate an additional justice whenever one over age 70 did not resign, until the court had 15 members. And it just so happened that six of the nine justices were already over 70.
The proposal was roundly denounced, going down to defeat in Congress. But soon the court began upholding New Deal programs, muting calls for its radical restructuring. Seven justices left the bench over the next four and a half years, allowing Roosevelt to remake the court through traditional means.
PRECEDENTS February 5, 1937 FDR Unveils Court Packing Plan

The proposal was, indeed, soundly defeated in Congress and yet, before the end of the same year, before the end of his second term as president, Roosevelt had accomplished what he had desired. His threat to reform the court, specifically the retirement age seems to have had the desired effects.

For whatever reasons, the radical restructuring of the court system proved unnecessary. By the end of 1937, with the retirement of Willis Van Devanter and the confirmation of Hugo Black the balance of the court had changed. This trend continued and by the end of 1941, Roosevelt had appointed seven Supreme Court justices. Therefore calling the proposal "a political disaster" is misleading and an opinion of the contributor and not supported by the citation itself.

Again Wikipedia's entry on the the bill is slightly misleading and, at least, conjectural.

Ultimately, Roosevelt's proposed legislation failed when the U.S. Senate voted 70–20 to recommit the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee following the sudden death of Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson, whose efforts would have been essential to the bill's passage. In recommitting the bill, the Senate explicitly instructed the Judiciary Committee to strip the bill of its court-packing provisions. The entire episode garnered several negative consequences for Roosevelt that lasted through the rest of his administration, leading many scholars to conclude the President's victory was a Pyrrhic one.[7]

In this passage, "many scholars" are cited but only one is actually given. (William Leuchtenburg, professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at Chapel Hill and the leading scholar of the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) The "negative consequences are also unlisted and calling the president's victory a "Pyrrhic"- a win that causes additional problems- is debatable. Franklin Roosevelt's goal was achieved. By eliminating the obstructionist court, Roosevelt's plan for the rebuilding of the economy and the re-establishment of a court based solely on constitutional interpretation can hardly be deemed "Pyrrhic." (The citation, itself, is inconclusive and somewhat unconnected to the text shown, referring only to the problem of labeling judges by political views.)

Beyond the Age of Competence

Last week, many felt, from both parties, that the Supreme Court judges misused- or at least, stretched beyond the limits of credibility the intention of the Constitution and went beyond their Constitutional powers in doing so. In the minority dissenting opinion, other Supreme court judges agreed, "The court, on its own volition, decided to render a sweeping decision, although nothing required it to do so."

Be that as it may, what exactly is wrong with prescribing a retirement age for Supreme Court Judges? Why, except for the fact that it has not been considered seriously, is it so unusual? In what other profession would a person be allowed to work, unsupervised and unquestioned, beyond all age of competence? At present, there are five Supreme Court judge past the age of 70 with the oldest, John Paul Stevens aged 89 was appointed to the Court by President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Larry Sabato, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, director of their Center for Politics, and a political analyst wrote: "The insularity of lifetime tenure, combined with the appointments of relatively young attorneys who give long service on the bench, produces senior judges representing the views of past generations better than views of the current day."

Ironic, isn't it? It is precisely the views of the past, that of Roosevelt, in this case, which can ultimately provide insight into the problems we face today.

Technorati Tags: US politics,Obama,Supreme Court,FDR,Roosevelt

The Republican Party and The Celebration of Death

2011-10-10T15:24:00.001+02:00

I never thought I would see the day when a crowd would applaud capital punishment. In the past the excuse was that this form of punishment was a deterrent to crime. Now it seems like it is merely blood lust.

I wonder where they found this crowd- left overs from the Jerry Springer show or the World Wrestling Federation? More importantly, Governor Perry's cheered record for executing the most convicts is somewhat tainted by the facts

Perry, however, continues to voice his confidence despite widespread evidence that the system is flawed. Anthony Graves spent 14 years on death row before being exonerated and released in 2010. He’s not the only one: Ernest Willis, Michael Toney, Michael Blair, and Robert Springsteen are just a few of the others who have been released from death row during Perry’s tenure. Maybe Perry has a good reason for believing that these are Texas’s only mistakes, but if he has such a reason, I don’t have any idea what it is.
Then there’s Cameron Todd Willingham, whose case suggests we probably don’t catch errors all in time. He was executed in 2004–on Perry’s watch–for killing his three children by setting fire to their house. The problem is, every national arson expert to have reviewed the facts (there have been at least four) has concluded that the fire was accidental. A committee investigating the case was preparing to hear from the nation’s leading arson expert who intended to explain why there was no evidence that Willingham had committed any crime. On the eve of the expert’s testimony, Perry dissolved the committee.

http://goo.gl/C2l7N

In the last debate, another candidate came under the spotlight regarding the uninsured. He was asked what happens to the people who fall through the cracks. It's not our problem, appears to be Ron Paul's answer. It isn't government's responsibility to protect its own people, according to his explanation.

More importantly is the reaction of the audience. Who would cheer at this notion? What has happened to the American public?
So in honor of this celebration of mortality (other people's) I submit for your approval this Tea Party promotional poster.

Tornadoes and Koch Industries: An Elegant Solution

2011-10-10T15:09:00.000+02:00

A Declaration of Emergency

Yesterday, tornadoes swept through the south of the United States, killing 128 people in Alabama and 32 others in Mississippi and leaving long trails of destruction. Homes and businesses were left as piles of rubble. Towns were plowed down the middle and many residents, having lost all they owned, felt lucky just to be alive. My sympathies go out to the survivors and my condolences to the families that have lost loved ones.

This all came after a week in which storms have torn through a half a dozen states in what meteorologists have called the deadliest season in nearly four decades. Republican Governor Robert Bentley of Alabama declared a state of emergency and said he was deploying 2,000 National Guardsman.

Similarly, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour declared a state of emergency for 39 counties. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones or property in these devastating spring storms,” Gov. Barbour said. “A large section of our state has been impacted, and our emergency responders are doing an excellent job in helping communities. This State of Emergency declaration will allow the state to offer aid to begin recovery efforts.”

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency coordinates with the Federal emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA in administering disaster recovery. Federal sources contributes at least 75% of damage repair costs while while state and local entities share the remaining 25 percent or less of repair costs.

Nobody can blame the governor for requesting money when it is urgently needed. However, there's a ugly, hypocritical side to Barbour's requests. Like numerous Republican politicians of late, Gov. Haley Barbour last March chastised Obama for "limitless government" and out of control spending. His stand against Big Government has made him something of a "politician of note" in the Republican party.

Mind you this is the same governor who easily took $15 billion in aid following Hurricane Katrina, which critics of Barbour have charged, was mishandled. Timothy J. Burger, writing for Bloomberg notes, the use of those funds has raised many questions.

No evidence has surfaced that Barbour violated the law; at the same time, the pattern that emerges from public records and interviews raises ``many red flags,'' said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group in Falls Church, Virginia, that investigates the investments of government officials. ``At the minimum, the public is entitled to a full explanation of the facts,'' he said.

Exactly what Boehm is referring to is illustrated in an article from the website, The National Corruption Index :

The wife of Barbour’s nephew, Rosemary Barbour, was one of the biggest Mississippi-based winners of Katrina contracts. Her company, Alacatec LLC, picked up nearly $300 million in contracts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the General Services Administration, the bulk of it for trailer maintenance. The FBI began an investigation in 2007.

Of course, there's' nothing particularly remarkable about a politician being hypocritical. Of course, in Babour's case, in terms of hypocrisy, it is a little above the usual standard.

Should We Talk About The Weather?

But first of all, let's take a small step back and examine what on earth is going on with the weather. Most meteorologists have already declared this year to be something special in terms of storm activity and indeed, records seem to show an overall increase in the number of tornadoes from decade to decade. A 2011 preliminary count from all National Weather Service reports for the month of April is an eye-opening 654 tornadoes, compared to 2010 count of 139 and 2009 count of 226.

So what is the cause? NOAA 's answer is somewhat guarded.

Does "global warming" cause tornadoes? No. Thunderstorms do. The harder question may be, "Will climate change influence tornado occurrence?" The best answer is: We don't know. According to the National Science and Technology Council's Scientific Assessment on Climate Change, "Trends in other extreme weather events that occur at small spatial scales--such as tornadoes, hail, lightning, and dust storms--cannot be determined at the present time due to insufficient evidence."

Many researchers feel the evidence suggests a more direct influence.

Research Meteorologists found that the temperature changes brought on by global warming are significant enough to cause an increase in the occurrence of severe storms.
"What we found is that increases in human-induced greenhouse gases will lead to more frequent severe storms in the United States," Jeff Trapp, Ph.D., a meteorologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said.

Based on the models, the researchers believe the number of days that favor the formation of severe storms could more than double in places like Atlanta and New York. These added storms will likely hit areas during already heavy storm seasons and extend wet weather seasons.

"This obviously impacts people in terms of potential hazards to their life and property," Dr. Trapp said.

Purdue University scientists are not alone in that assessment. NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms.

"..[T]he model suggests that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common with warming.'

Clouding the Issue

This kind of research isn't universally accepted, especially by climate change deniers. According to a Greenpeace report, one of the largest private corporations in the country has spent a veritable fortune in undermining climate change research by funding organizations that spread inaccurate and misleading information about climate science and clean energy policies.

This report documents roughly 40 climate denial and opposition organizations receiving Koch foundation grants in recent years, including:

• More than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) for its nationwide “Hot Air Tour” campaign to spread misinformation about climate science and opposing clean energy and climate legislation
• More than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of misinformation on climate and environmental policy issues.
• Over $1 million to the Cato Institute, which disputes the scientific evidence behind global warming, questions the rationale for taking climate action, and has been heavily involved in spinning the recent ClimateGate story.
• $800,000 to the Manhattan Institute, which has hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years. Lomborg is a prominent media spokesperson who challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.
• $365,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) which advocates against taking action on cliimate change because warming is “inevitable” and expensive to address.

Additionally the report cites the tremendous political power that the Koch brothers have used to defeat carbon-limiting regulatory legislation, through direct federal lobbying and campaign contributions.

• Spent $37.9 million from 2006 to 2009 for direct lobbying on oil and energy issues, outspent only by ExxonMobil ($87.8 million) and Chevron Corporation ($50 million).
• Spent $5.74 million in PAC money for candidates, committees, and campaign expenditures since the 2006 election cycle.
• Contributed at least $270,800 to federal political party committees since the 2006 election cycle.

Flexing Muscles

It shouldn't surprise anybody that Koch Industries should be willing to invest a fortune to derail any legislation that might negatively affect its ability to do business, much of which involves the petro-chemical sector.

Koch Industries would certainly have a lot to lose if carbon emission industries were more carefully regulated.

According to SourceWatch, for example, Koch Carbon trades and transports petroleum coke, coal, cement, pulp and paper, sulfur and other commodities, the Koch Exploration Company acquires, develops and trades petroleum and natural gas properties in the United States, Canada and Brazil. Flint Hills Resources operate crude oil refineries in Alaska, Minnesota, and Texas and petrochemical plants in Illinois, Michigan and Texas. The Koch Pipeline Company owns and operates approximately 4,000 miles of pipelines used to transport crude oil, refined petroleum products, natural gas liquids and chemicals while the Koch Alaska Pipeline Company owns an approximate 3 percent interest in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Koch Industries also owns a 28% interest in the Colonial Pipeline Company which it describes as the "owner and operator of the world’s largest-volume refined products pipeline.

That's capitalism in action and with an estimated of $100 billion (2008 figures) Koch Industries can afford to flex its muscles.

And another way that the Koch brothers have flex their political muscle is through the funding of political organizations like Americans for Prosperity (mentioned above) which has been, among other duties, useful in campaigns against any legislation involving cap and trade or carbon emissions.

Purporting to be a grassroots group, AFP, founded and chaired by David Koch, is the "third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations, behind the Cato Institute and the George Mason University Foundation,according to DeSmogBlog.

AFP is a non-profit organization who does not to disclose its donors. However, the Media Transparency project shows from 2003-2006, Americans for Prosperity received $1,181,000 from conservative foundations. $1 million of that funding was given by the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation--one of the Koch Family Foundations.

In the past years, the AFP has organized various Tea Party events throughout the nation. Koch was reported to have said at a Americans for Prosperity Conference in 2009 that in creating AFP:

"'we envisioned a mass movement, a state-based one, but national in scope, of hundreds of thousands of American citizens from all walks of life standing up and fighting for the economic freedoms that made our nation the most prosperous society in history.'"

In other words, the birth of the Tea Party.

A Fair Solution

Last year there was a string of weather related disasters, such as flooding in Nashville, tornadoes in the Midwest, extensive blizzards throughout the nation and powerful hurricanes in the southern states. The problem is simple: If Tea Party members wish to limit the role of big government and also wish to reduce taxes, who then is going to pay for clean-up and rebuilding? Not to mention preparedness training and search and rescue. Who is going to build the levies and the dikes that keep the waters back? Who is going to keep the snow off the streets if nobody is paying taxes?

Fear not, I come with what I consider a brilliant and fair solution to this problem. Why shouldn't Koch Industries pay for the clean up and rebuilding? The Koch Brothers do not seem at all hesitant about spending their fortunes on lobbying against climate change and cap and trade; they don't seem to worry about the vast sums of money for setting up fake grass roots organizations, or sponsoring phony science. After all, they are the ones that are making enormous sums of money by dumping more and more carbon into the environment which seems to be causing more and more dangerous weather.

Let's just drop the middle men. The government officials, the regulatory busy-bodies, and the corrupt politicians asking for their piece of the action.

With that problem solved, let's take a moment and return to Mississippi Governor Barbour. By decrying the sins of Big Government while happily taking federal emergency funds again and again, Barbour seems to want his cake and eat it too. but that's not all of it.

During the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill Barbour said he was not sure it was a good idea for the federal government to make BP put $20 billion into escrow to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Barbour said that BP needed to use its money to drill oil wells and produce revenue.

So, making the government pay for cleaning up tornadoes and hurricanes is okay, even while you are condemning Big Government spending.. but making oil companies clean up after their own spill is a question?

It's not all that remarkable really, I suppose. ThinkProgress points out:

Barbour raised significant amounts in campaign contributions from the industry, and from 1999 to 2003, was a lobbyist for various energy interests. Even as oil was touching Mississippi shores in the summer of 2010, Barbour downplayed the effects of the catastrophic spill. A ThinkProgress review of IRS documents revealed that with Barbour at the helm, the RGA r eceived over $5 million in contributions from the oil and gas industry – including four of the Big Five oil companies – in just one year:
• $1,000,000 from David Koch, $25,000 from Koch Industries
• $625,000 from Exxon Mobil
• Over $150,000 from Chevron
• $50,000 from Shell
• $25,000 from ConocoPhillips

So, Koch Brothers, let's get those angry Tea Party members out there, let them burn off some of that anti-government fury. I imagine many of the people who have lost everything already belong to the Tea Party.

Just like Michele Bachmann, that popular Americans for Prosperity event speaker, said, “Do you see what we can do when we all work together?”

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Republican Faust: The Rise and Fall of Mike Connell -3

2011-10-10T15:03:00.003+02:00

Accident or Conspiracy?

The timing of Mike Connell's sudden death in a plane crash was. given the situation he was involved in, remarkably coincidental, to say the least. It is the kind of event that naturally creates speculation about conspiracy.

Of course, planes all too often do fall out of the sky. In the year of Connell's death, there were 156 other crashes and 884 other deaths. And the most likely scenario- as opposed to sabotage- would be problems with ice on the wings.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report speculates that the most probable cause of the crash was a combination of pilot error and weather conditions. Connell was faulted for deciding to conduct the flight into "known icing conditions."

Glenn Pew writing for AVweb, an aviation news source, summarized the report in this way:

The NTSB's early findings are subject to change and may contain errors but state that "no anomalies were noted with the flight control system that would have precluded normal operation." The report notes that damage to the propeller is consistent with a power-on impact and the landing gear was extended. The NTSB found that the instrument-rated Connell had received radar vectors that provided an intercept to the ILS approach for Runway 23, about two miles from the outer marker. The report states that, as the plane was inbound from the outer marker, "ATC advised [the aircraft] that it was left of course." After that, things -- including already poor weather conditions -- got progressively worse.

Connell responded to ATC with "correcting." The report states he was at that time still flying the 3,200-foot intermediate segment altitude for the approach. ATC then advised the pilot he was "well left of the localizer" and asked the pilot if he would like to be re-sequenced. The pilot responded with "like to correct" and at 2.5 miles from the airport asked to execute a 360-degree turn. Weather at the airport at this time was deteriorating. It was reported two minutes prior to the crash as visibility 9 miles, broken at 500 and overcast at 1,000 with a two-degree temperature/dewpoint spread hovering near freezing.

Approximately 15 minutes after the crash, visibility had dropped to 2 1/2 miles in mist with overcast at 400 and 1,000. While flying the approach, Connell had inquired about reports of icing and ATC responded it had none. After requesting the 360-degree turn, ATC directed the aircraft to climb and maintain 3,000 feet. Connell responded, providing confirmation and a heading, then declared an emergency. A witness saw the aircraft descend out of the clouds in a nose-down attitude with the engine "roaring" [emphasis mine] and lost visual contact when the plane descended below the tree line. The trail of wreckage was about 290 feet long. Connell earned his private certificate in 2006, held an instrument rating, and had a total reported flight time of 510 hours.

The idea, which has been suggested by experienced pilots is that Connell may have overestimated his abilities and decided to fly in conditions he was not experienced with. Because of a scheduled Christmas party that evening, Connell could very well have felt some degree of psychological pressure to return to Akron which might have affected his decision not to cancel the flight.

From an outsider's point of view, sabotaging a plane, as means to murder certainly seems very unreliable method. Like a lot of conspiracy theories, the more you look at the complications, the harder it is to believe. For example, how exactly could it be done? How could you remove traces of tampering? Above all, aren't there easier ways to "off" a person?

For a plausible theory of sabotage, these are questions that would need to be resolved. Otherwise, the death of Connell can only, at best, be considered highly suspicious and dreadfully ill-timed.

However in researching the case, Rebecca Abrahams, a documentary film and television producer, surprisingly found that the possibility of foul play by plane sabotage is not exactly so far-fetched. When she interviewed former CIA operative John Perkins about the plausibility of murder by plane crash, Perkins told her that plane crashes have always been a weapon of choice among Jackals, that is professional hit-men. He pointed out the advantages.

"It's so easy to cover it up. The evidence is destroyed and everybody knows airplanes are fragile anyway, small airplanes in particular. So it's a very clean type of assassination in terms of ways to do it because the area where the plane crash happens can be quickly cordoned off . . . and the evidence can be cleaned up very quickly and most of it is destroyed anyway. But if there's anything left, it can be disposed of very, very quickly."

No matter what you might think about the validity of the sabotage theory, there were several unusual things that occurred. Things that need to be explained.

First, there was the unexplained "lockdown" on information about the flight that denied first responders timely information about the number of persons on the flight.

According to Captain Lorin Geisner of the Greentown Fire Department, Connell’s personal items recovered from the crash site included a passport, a driver's license, a rosary and a laptop computer. One item, however, was conspicuously missing. His Blackberry. This, according to his family, would normally have been found in his backpack. The backpack was found zipped, the ear-piece also located but the Blackberry, with hundreds, possibly thousands, of sensitive files and e-mails relating to Karl Rove and the Bush administration was never recovered.

According to sources cited in the Simon Worrall piece, The Mysterious Death of Bush's Cyber-Guru, there were other anomalies. Normally, a night crash scene would be roped off and investigated in daylight. In this case representatives of the NTSB and FAA used light towers to photograph and document the scene. Connell’s plane was hastily removed to a secure hangar under cover of darkness. Who made this decision and why?

Court records related to the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell and filed by attorney Clifford Arnebeck refer an investigative report (by Kyle Hence of RAW STORY).

The reporter's notes Hence took while investigating the crash events are very interesting indeed.

Of particular interest is his observation of military personnel at the crash.

Hence was curious to learn more about two soldiers in green uniforms who were at the crash site and, in fact, climbing through the wreckage that night and filmed on local television news coverage. He was interested to know why the official police report, detailed in every other way, had failed to mention the pair.

Hence was told that it was not uncommon for the the CAP to be used in search and rescue. According the highway patrol officer that Hence spoke to, the pair had arrived, offered help and were quickly turned away. When shown stills of the soldiers climbing through the plane wreckage, the officer back peddled on his original statement and told the reporter the pair were asked to help locate the electronic tracking device.

The local deputy sheriff in the area, also a Civil Air Patrol captain and Public Affairs Officer for nearby squadron, told Hence that he was not aware of any CAP involvement. He offered a few names of people it might have been. The highway patrol had not asked for credentials of the soldiers on the night of the crash.

There is this from an interesting article provided by RAW STORY:

According to the incident report prepared by the state highway patrol and examined by Raw Story on site, Sgt. Leo Shirkey was the first law enforcement officer on the scene at 6:22. Off duty Post Commander Lt. Eric Sheppard and Trooper McCarthy, a plain-clothed investigator from the Canton Post, arrived within an hour.
The incident report lists the Stark County Examiner Harry Campbell as arriving at 7:03 PM to collect the body.
An FAA Aviation Safety Inspector arrived at the scene several hours later, and a clean up crew worked through the night to prepare the plane for transport and storage.
By midnight that evening the site had been cleared and by sunrise the wreckage had been moved to a hanger at Akron-Fulton airport.

Despite this notable efficiency in cleaning up the plane wreckage, widow Heather Connell reported that, to her horror, she found body parts of her husband at the crash scene six days later. She told an interviewer "How is that a proper investigation? How is that acceptable? How dare they leave pieces of my husband lying there!”

On Dec. 20, the plane wreckage was moved by Belden Village Towing to a hangar owned by Summit Aviation at Akron-Fulton International, a non-commercial airport which houses a large Lockheed Martin facility. The State Highway Patrol said that hangar space at nearby Akron-Canton Regional Airport was not available.

Kyle Hence later visited Summit Aviation on Dec. 24 and located the wreckage, which was being held in a building without gated security or security camera surveillance. NTSB officials had examined the wreckage the day before.

Thus, according to this information, the wreckage was apparently left unattended and unsecured for three days.

After-Action
Coincidentally, the day before the Connell crash marked the death of a famous whistle-blower,Mark Felt, better known as "Deep Throat". Felt played a key role in secretly supplying journalists with information during the Watergate scandal. That name would suddenly- and shockingly- materialize once again in the Connell case.

According to an article in The Brad Blog, the Connell mystery took a very disturbing turn when the family received a memo penned by someone using the name "Mark Felt." The memo was a kind of after-action report and copies were also sent to, among others, the FBI 's supervisory special agent in Cleveland.

According to this report, Mike Connell was targeted for assassination by a team that was tasked to eliminate an "NST" or a national security target. According to the accompanying letter, the author writes that the after-action report "is not supposed to exist." In addition to the FBI in Cleveland, the document was sent to five other parties.

The details of the report explain how at least three members of the team were involved in sabotaging the aircraft at College Park Airport just prior to Connell's flight.

The after-action report stated that the area was "sanitized" and the team exited College Park airport via Indian Creek Park at 0557. The team was reported to be OOA (Out of Area) at 0642.In fact, since the 9/11 attacks, and owing to the airport's proximity to the national capital, the operations of the airport have been severely restricted by the Transportation Security Administration in the interest of national security.

Hoax? Stephen Spoonamore reportedly thinks so. Whether or not it was somebody's attempt to play a sadistic hoax on the family and the investigators in the Connell case, it would have certainly taken a lot of gall (and stupidity) to send the memo to FBI offices. With all of the sophisticated lab testing at their disposal, it would have required a great deal of arrogance and confidence that the memo would not be traced to its origins.

Unresolved
Attorney Cliff Arnebeck has spoken bluntly about his opinions of Karl Rove in this interview:

Rove is a common criminal, and his technique is to suppress the targeted classes of voters, defame the Democratic candidate, and then tamper with the votes, preferably using electronic voting machines. He creates the appearance that the defamatory attack worked and reversed the pre-election polling, and then he attacks the exit polling as being not accurate.

When asked by the interviewer how he thought Rove could have gotten away with stealing the 2004 Presidential election, he replied,

In that case, Rove used the Iraq War as cover. He could paint people as unpatriotic for daring to question the integrity of the wartime commander in chief. I believe Rove destroyed emails that would have revealed his role in extending that war.

Thus, you have a story of a religious man whose reported mission to "saved innocent babies" allowed him to be corrupted to a point that he helped put people in power that wished to prolong a needless war. Heavy stuff but I somehow doubt Hollywood will be making the film anytime soon.

On December 22, 2009, one year after Connell's death, nearly to the day, Judge Algenon L. Marbley denied a motion for re-consideration, effectively closing the case.

There is a lot more to the story. There always is. Certainly more research should be done on SMARTech, the company that owns the servers in Chattanooga, Tennessee and its owner and former friend of Connell, Jeff Averbeck. I'll save that for another time.

Like many events during the Bush-Cheney years, the mystery behind the inopportune death of the man who knew so much about the GOP computer secrets will sadly remain unsatisfactorily unresolved. That is regrettable, I think. The corruption case was fairly strong but without a few more pieces of key evidence it was to be unsupportable in any court.

For his part, Connell, like Icarus paid the price for flying too high, and like Faust, came to regret his bargain with dark powers.

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