In an exclusive report, the New York Times revealed on Saturday that the order to conceal a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years came directly from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Even current CIA Director Leon Panetta did not learn of the program until June 23, more than four months after he took over running the agency. He informed both Congressional intelligence committees the next day.

The Times report came on the same day that former CIA Director Michael Hayden was insisting, in an interview with the Associated Press, that Congressional leaders had been kept consistently informed of the Bush administration’s surveillance programs.

“”One of the points I had in every one of the briefings was to make sure they understood the scope of our activity,” Hayden told the AP. “At the political level this had support.”

According to the AP, Hayden asserted that senior members of the intelligence committees were briefed about four times a year, other Congressional leaders more occasionally, “and he said the meetings nearly always occurred at the White House, with Vice President Dick Cheney in attendance.”

Cheney’s involvement is further underscored by the the inspector general’s report released on Friday, which shows that the vice president’s office played a central rule in limiting awareness of the National Security Agency’s program of warrantless wiretapping to just a handful of officials. Even then-Attorney General John Ashcroft did not receive an accurate description of one program until two years after he had certified it as legal.

UPDATE: Former CIA Director says Congress DID KNOW about what was going on.

From Liberty Pen. 

I give you a 33 year old, Japanese, one-woman-orchestra.

Check out this article in the WSJ, ignore the title, and pay special attention to this: "About half the cost of the bill will come from budget savings from ratcheting down payments that health-care providers receive through programs like Medicare, which covers the elderly..."

Can there be any doubt that that isn't going to immediately affect the availability of services to Medicare patients? 

This is straight out of Tom Daschle's book, which surmised that the costs of health care would have to be trimmed not only by resisting new technology, but by capping services to the sick and elderly.  Setting price caps will create shortages in the markets that can least afford the waits.

The health care system began its economic death-spiral when the government began picking up the bills. It was entirely predictable - economic law dictates that the deeper the pockets, the higher the price.  Our government now pays approximately 50% of the nation's health care tab, and prices rose in almost direct proportion when adjusted for demand, needs of an aging population.  

We can't afford any more "help."  It's time to pick up your phone and make your voice heard.

Toys to play with….

The Federal Government's eager assault of Americans' constitutionally protected freedoms began even before the dust from the attacks of September 11th had settled, according to CNN:

The report was compiled by the inspectors general of the nation's top intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and the Justice Department.

The report, mandated by Congress, provides fresh context to information previously leaked in press accounts and buttressed by both congressional testimony and books written by former officials involved in the surveillance effort.

Nothing will come of this, of course. Just more paper work and more articles in CNN.

Michael Jackson's passing warrants greater media coverage.

The source.

This is a brilliant representation of the debt.

Hat Tip: Cafe Hayek.

Tomorrow we hit the road  on our way up to Ohio for a week of reunion with family and friends. Being from Jersey, it is with all the strength I can muster that I refrain from most sarcasm and jibing - things that are lost, if not totally taken the wrong way, by the friendly folks of the Buckeye State.

I hope I see lots of C4L and Ron Paul signs en route to all of the places to which we'll be traveling. It would certainly be inspiring if that happens.

Lew Rockwell has a new article with the above title and draws the eery similarities between today's politics in the U.S. and those of Nazi Germany. The Nazis were national socialists, although people seem to like to think of their rival republicans as Hitlers and their rival Democrats as Stalins. What a fine distinction that is; two parallel roads to the same hell.

Some of the likenesses between then and now are stunning:

The rules began to change slowly so that enterprise could no longer make decisions in the interest of profitability. The banks were nationalized. The heads of major companies were changed. Hiring and firing became heavily politicized. The courts ruled not on justice but on political priorities.

[...] If you think that the parallels stopped after Bush left power, consider this passage from Reimann:

The totalitarian State reverses the former relationship between the State and the banks. Previously, their political influence increased when the State needed financial help. Now the opposite holds true. The more urgent the financial demands of the State become, the stricter measures are taken by the State in order to compel these institutions to invest their funds as the State may wish.

Be sure to read the rest, including the maddening flow chart of what it took to order 5,000 tires back then in Germany. Such paper-laden exertion reminds me of the hoops that must be jumped through today in the good old U.S. of A - a place where we celebrate liberty.

Can someone build a gas refinery or fire a teacher in this country without applying such Herculean effort as well as spending years of time and money with a good chance of nothing to show for it? Vampire economy, indeed.

LLE

From NewsBusters, we learn:

Not only that, he referred to it as a "counterfeit climate bill" that employs a "Ponzi-like 'cap-and-trade' scheme" setting the nation on a "disaster course" as a result of the 219 members of Congress he accused of voting for it without reading it.

As you might have already deduced, Hansen's complaint is that the bill doesn't go far enough to solve what he believes is a looming cataclysm.

The source.

Politics, in the conception of it that we are being spoon-fed every second, is based on the idea that mankind survives and thrives by recognising and acting on momentous exceptions to the outdated institution of durable rules and principles, that by the same logic are secondary and insignificant considering the dire need of their constant waving by "philosopher kings," who live by the insight that man is evil, unless he forms a powerful government.

Hansen is frustrated by the fact that his totalitarian scheme is not sitting in the driver's seat, while Obananas has been more successful at capitalising on a powerful confusion that has recently changed its name form "global warming" to "climate change." The confusion and the fear, that are supposed to bring us to heel, persist, only that the intimidating noise has been renamed to be even less specific, more open to whatever you care to be panicked about: if the climate does what it is all about - i.e. change - we are in danger and require urgent government action - of the sort Hansen envisages, thinks Hansen.

O(we-are-going)bananas(yes-we-can) and Hansen have us back to bygone times: the sun (a negligible factor compared to man's impact according to climate alarmism) is revolving around the human world, the mechanism of world weather, being much simpler than, and therefore tractable by, the complex, all-encompassing foresight of Comrade President Obananas, and his Central Committee, or an even better circle of sages. This being so, it is of the utmost importance to determine: what pick of appropriately empowered sages will lead us out of jeopardy and into enlightenment and bliss. Hansen endorses Hansen. Who do you support? Let us go vote.

In my post The Dismal Social Sciences, I quoted Arnold Kling, who suggests:

The main science of political economy is the science of obtaining and retaining power. As far as expertise goes, the pollster, the fundraiser, and the media expert are all fundamental to the operation. The public policy expert is for decoration. If you want to be an economic policy adviser when you grow up, then my advice is to learn to rationalize the methods used by leading politicians to obtain power.

• Is health care reform about health care? No, it is about seizing and retaining power. Was the stimulus about stimulus? No, was about seizing and retaining power. Is cap and trade about global warming? No, it is about seizing and retaining power. Was TARP about saving the financial system? No, it was about seizing and retaining power.

The social scientist's role in the political process is to say, "X is a problem. Government must solve X. Here are some solutions." The solutions that rationalize seizing and retaining power will bubble to the top.

[Emphasis added, G.T.]