The mainstream media love showmanship more than they love anything except low corporate taxes, so it isn't much of a surprise that the networks and old media outlets like the Washington Post are on exactly the same page as the unprincipled showman Barack Obama.

Forget about those "FISA Follies," says the Washington Post. Don't worry about what the Senator Chris Dodd called "abandonment of the rule of law" in a great speech announcing his filibuster of the FISA bill.

"Mr. Obama nailed it the other day when he explained his new position -- "that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people," says the Washington Post. And why is Mr. Obama so right about the FISA bill?

Because "no one can claim with certainty that his or her communications were monitored," says the Washington Post.

Harharharhar!!! Those fascist clowns at the Washington Post are incredibly funny! Don't worry about burning the Fourth Amendment and abrogating your right to privacy, because the whole operation is so secret you won't ever know it happened!

So the mainstream media are disappearing the destruction of the Bill of Rights and Google News couldn't even find enough news about it to make the Top 50 stories this morning, but Barack Obama's plan to turn the Democratic National Convention into a political Super Bowl was all over the networks.

Only hours after Obama announced he would make his speech at the 76,000-seat Invesco Field at Mile High instead of the Pepsi Center, executives at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News Channel held a conference call to discuss how it affects their carefully considered plans to pool camera coverage of the event.

There it is! The absolute essence of corporate news in America! Forget about the destruction of the Bill of Rights and get those cameras ready for the humongous spectacle of the coronation of Brack Obama!

But however much Mr. Obama may have already won the nomination in his own mind, it all depends on non-binding expressions of preference by super-delegates, and it isn't absolutely impossible that those same super-delegates might suddenly discover a vestige of reverence for the Bill of Rights in their miserable souls, and insist on nominating a Democrat with real principles like Chris Dodd, instead of Barack Obama, no matter how much all the Obamabots in the peanut gallery may scream when the ring-master of their little circus is passed over.

The neo fascist Roberto Maroni, Italy's interior minister from the neo fascist anti-immigrant Northern League party, coalition partner in neocon Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government, (member in chief of our not so willing anymore coalition of the willing) has a nifty proposal to fight street crime in Italy - -  a census, including the fingerprinting, of every Roma aka "gypsy" in Italy, man, woman and child.  According to Maroni, this will serve "to avoid phenomena such as begging".

Of course, Maroni has taken no action to defend the Roma community  from unwarranted attacks, including those in Naples that forced the evacuation of Roma "after attackers set huts on fire and angry residents in neighboring areas protested against the alleged attempt by a Gypsy woman to kidnap a baby".  Nor did he intervene in response when Roman authorities illegally "raided a camp to check for proper papers".

There was a really nice essay by Cenk Uygar in the Huffington Post this morning. You can read it here.

I sent him this comment:

Cenk's argument is crystal clear and 100% valid...and not likely to change anything with the Conservative Republicans. Too bad.

The Fourth Amendment, which gives us the right of Habeas Corpus and hearkens back to the Magna Carta, is the deepest of American philosophies and, I daresay, if any of the Founding Fathers had to pick and choose among the first 10 entries that make up the Bill of Rights, it is the one they would be least likely to change.

I'm hauling out my flintlock musket, however, to protect my home and property (and wait for the general Militia call). I only hope I don't shoot anyone by accident (my vision is faltering with old age.)

Under The LobsterScope

Cross posted from TortDeform.Com

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."--James Madison

Senator Dodd read this quote during hearing statements last fall over whether telecommunications companies that illegally spied on the American public should be granted retroactive immunity for violating our constitutional right to privacy. Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee's proposed amendment to the FISA bill, which would have eliminated the option of so-called "liability protection" for telecom law-breakers, was tossed out by a 60-34 vote. Next up was the SSCI bill, which would grant retroactive immunity to telecoms. As Senate considered that bill its supporters--a largely Republican group with a hefty sprinkling of Dems in the mix--made every effort to block any amendments that would have addressed its glaring civil liberties concerns. And on this Monday at 4:30 p.m., the Senate will vote on whether to stop considering amendments to the SSCI bill and just move forward with passing it.

I've ranted about this issue before. But the Administration's apparently increasing gall and contempt for the law notwithstanding, and its undying commitment to shielding corporate friends from the effect of the law aside, let's focus instead on the lie of so-called "liability protection" and what it really means for the public and our civil justice system.

         Missing from the debate over expanding NSA authority in the war on terror is the simple question, beyond our reflexive desire for privacy: why is expanding it such a bad idea?  We know the Feds do nasty, un-American things like spy on political activists like Martin Luther King and Fresno Peaceworks, but eventually it comes out in the wash, doesn't it?  Did our far-seeing Founders, who took pains to enshrine freedom from "unreasonable search and seizure," without "probable cause," understand what the Stasi, Hitler, and the KGB all understood?  That knowledge is power, and absolute knowledge of peoples' lives becomes absolute power?

          The origin of the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which Congress has been merrily gutting since the Patriot Act, was the hated "general warrant" which allowed British soldiers to enter a colonial's home, barn, and property in search of anything suspicious.  It was a principle cause of the Revolution.   Could the Founding Fathers, a bunch of old white guys versed in the Greek and Latin classics, philosophy, mathematics, and history, have grasped the significance of a monopoly of information in the hands of the government, which already possesses a monopoly of force?

         The Stasi Patriot Act was written long before 9/11.  As Congressman Jim McDermott said, "they had all this on the shelf somewhere, ideas of things they would like to do and they got 9/11 and they said "its our chance, go for it!""

         For those of us not used to thinking like a Machiavelli, try using a little imagination.  Come up up with a list of fun things to do if you were in charge, had no respect for anyone or anything, and had a search and eavesdropping power free of judicial oversight, meaning, basically, no one looking over your shoulder to see what you were looking at, or why, which is what a warrant means.  Let's keep this fun list going, until people realize that the controversy over the NSA is not just pie-in-the-sky liberals squawking over their precious rights in the "new world" in which terrorist are trying to kill us.   Let's get this out of the realm of ideas and push it down to action on the ground.

   1. Spy on all protesters and activists, so you know when they are going to unfurl banners in the gallery of the House of Representatives, then change the schedule to mess them up.

   2.  Get the psychiatric records of anyone who leaks a "classified" document which is only classified because it shows the government continuing to fight a war which it believes cannot be won, oops, been there done that.  Not imaginative.  His name was Daniel Ellsberg, he leaked the Pentagon Papers, and Nixon wanted his deepest darkest confessions to fish through for a smear campaign. Fourth Amendment ideas are already the direct cause one American president being slapped down.

   3.  Find out who that pesky congressman is sleeping with, who wants you impeached, see if homey wants to keep playing at this impeachment stuff.  My personal feeling is that this is exactly what Bush has on half these guys, hence their reluctance to impeach.  When you get a blank check to spy, you don't turn it against pipsqueaks like you or me first; you turn it against the guys who can really hurt you.  In the process you undermine the entire basis of government.  Could this account for Bush's perpetual smirk?

   4.  Give an old frat buddy and staunch supporter, who already has all the money he ever wants, something more important to him now: the chance to settle an old score.  If there is a motivator more powerful than money, it's hatred.  We'll see what we can find on him, old buddy, everyone has some kind of dirt on him somewhere.  And once we find it, that expense account-fudging or out-of-wedlock baby 20 years ago, that fine upstanding pillar of the community will be sticking his head in an oven inside of a week.    

   5.  Keep looking. The Patriot Act says we can go through any records pertaining to you, bank account, car dealer, dentist, lawyer, real estate, telephone company, anything, understand?  The NSA just makes it easier.  Rather than having feds walk in and go through paper records, if any business is transacted electronically through the Internet, we sweep it up and keep it in a "dump."  When we need it, pop in your first-middle-last-social-and-birthday, and BINGO!

   6.  If we find nothing, why not just frame him?  We don't have anything on him, but we do on the AG in that state.  He'll know the truth but he won't say anything.

   7.  Tell that major league asshole of a reporter we're going to fax his girlfriend's abortion records to his wife. The Patriot Act allows government agencies to look into anyone's medical records, remember?

   8.  Allow a black market of tips, payback and blackmail to flourish among the rich and well-connected, the way the Stasi East German Secret Police did, just so long as it doesn't hurt anyone important.

   9.  If you are the beneficiary of such a black market, and you, as someone connected, knows someone else connected who owes you a favor, get the full text of your smart-ass competitor's marketing strategy for the next product cycle, so he'll shit his pants that you are on top of him each step of the way, but never able to prove a thing.

   10.  Always, always, make sure you are spying on your own people.  Patriotic whistleblowers are among the most credible sources when they go to reporters.  Everyone knows they have nothing to gain and everything to lose.  Declare him enemy combatant before he talks and have him waterboarded, the punk.

          Add your own to the list!  Then send this to your congressmen, and to your friends!  Dirty tricks are a game to these guys!  Why shouldn't we have fun too?

          Remember, what we are talking about is not the power to spy on terrorists.  The government already has that.  They can flip the switch immediately if they think anything is going down.  They just have to get a warrant within 48 hours.  That's after the fact.  Bush lies when he implies the Constitution is outdated because sometimes there's no time to get a warrant.  It shows what he really wants: no one looking over his shoulder whatsoever.

         Before the Stasi Patriot Act of 2001, in recognition that intelligence agents shifted through massive amounts of data, a wall was erected that forbade evidence obtained by intelligence agents without a warrant from being used in normal criminal prosecutions, since that came perilously close to what judges call "fishing expeditions."  With the Patriot Act, this wall was broken down, and anything found on you in any way can be used against you.

         In 2003 federal agents in Las Vegas used the no-warrant provisions of the Patriot Act to bring charges in run-of-the-mill money laundering and political corruption cases not related to terrorism.  Justice Department spokesman Mark Corrallo said: "The Patriot Act was not meant to be just for terrorism.  A lot of the uninformed criticism was obviously misplaced."

         What the Founders understood is, if you make one branch of the government Big Brother, able and ready to prosecute every hint of wrongdoing it sees, it will not sometimes be abused and applied unequally; it will always be abused and applied unequally.  The requirement for searches to be approved by a judge upon the showing of "probable cause" was an outgrowth of inherent distrust of centralized authority.   George Bush's  mantra that "this is not a law enforcement problem" is not accidental. It is carefully crafted and deliberate.  It is meant to foster a contempt for the law, and to extend the rules of the battlefield, where the word of the Commander-in-Chief is law, to Americans and American soil.

         Even Neo-con Republicans should fear this.  We're not talking about the power of the Bush administration.  We're talking about a permanent change to a Stasi culture benefitting whomever holds the reins of power, and their minions, be they contributors, congressmen, or call girls.  The Founders, whose incredibly bleak view of human nature led them to place checks and balances into the very core of the Constitution, put a brake on human nature with the Fourth Amendment.  Boy, those sure were some smart white guys.

Ralph Lopez is a co-founder of YaliesForImpeachment.org  He is a sometimes geek/IT consultant in his day job.

If someone asked you to name a country today that can arrest people, torture them, keep them incarcerated without a charge for an indefinite time, without legal representation, without any contact to the outside world, where that country's citizens could be spied upon without any legal warrant, then which country would it come to mind? That government would also argue that the courts have no jurisdiction or that questioning its actions would "weaken the country" and that the "state secrets doctrine" should prevent judicial review!

The media (infotainment) headlines the arrest in the Ramsey case and burries this most important decision by a federal judge to declare Bush's warrantless eavesdropping as unconstitutional. But in my estimate, the Ramsey case doesn't merrit national attention when we have other serious matters to deal with and should have a national discussion on.

Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?  

This is the question that I heard as a litany in my childhood.  One by one I watched people of great integrity being nailed on this and other questions.  They were given a choice, to out their friends, or lose their ability to live and work in the United States.

Lindsey Beyerstein of Majikthise agrees with Steven Spruiell of Nat.Review.Online that outing a prominent anonymous blogger was newsworthy.  She says, "I'm sorry that Armando of Daily Kos got outed, but there was a real story there: Wal-Mart lawyer front pager at major liberal blog."  However, Beyerstein notes that malicious outing is not cool:  "Some bloggers, like T of M-C, have been outed for purely frivolous malicious reasons. Piss off the wrong person and put your career in jeopardy."