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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector-The Homeland Security Leviathan (Excerpt)
by William Norman Grigg
April 3, 2006Immense, expensive, pervasively corrupt, the Department of Homeland Security is rapidly becoming a militarized menace to American liberties.
Bellows Falls, Vermont, population 3,024, has eight full-time police officers -- and 16 24-hour surveillance cameras. This is just three fewer than operate in "the District of Columbia, which has 181 times Bellows Falls's population," observes the Washington Post.
That New England community of 3,024 people is just one of many "Mayberry-sized places" now under constant surveillance, thanks to federal homeland security grants, and "similar networks have gone up in places such as Baltimore, Chicago, and New York," continues the Post.
While millions of dollars have been lavished on major communities, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent much more, proportionately, on grants to smaller communities. For instance: Nevada City, California, has received nearly $500,000; Owyhee, Nevada, a town so small it doesn't have a stoplight, pulled in $225,000.
The arrival of the Homeland Security gravy train hasn't been an unalloyed blessing, of course. States and municipalities that receive the grants "must select from specific items on an approved list" and buy them through federally approved vendors, noted the Hampton (New Hampshire) Union. Communities that applied for the grants had until last October 1 to "adopt a resolution stating they will comply with the Department of Homeland Security's National Incident Management System … in order to qualify," added the St. Paul Pioneer-Press.
Once they have had a taste of DHS largesse, cities are willing to do anything it takes to keep the money flowing in. On January 3, the department announced a revised grant policy, with some cities slated to get a little more, others to receive a little less. "Cities are either jubilant that they've been designated high-risk targets for terrorism, because that means more dollars, more jobs, more shiny riot gear … or else they're resentful that they're lower-risk targets, because there's fewer [dollars] in it for them," wrote Pierre Tristam of the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Those who take the federal nickel must take the federal noose, as well. In this case, grant recipients have to display what Tristam calls "unquestioned submission to homeland security dogma," the central tenet of which is that regimentation and constant surveillance are necessary because it is the public at large that constitutes the real enemy.
"Code Red"
If the national terrorism threat level were ever to go to "Code Red," the country would "go into lockdown mode," related a March 30, 2003 Scripps-Howard story. "Planes could be grounded, trains could stop running, and bridges and tunnels could be closed. US borders might be sealed off, and roadblocks might be set up on interstates and major highways."
A Code Red alert would also serve "as an advisory to state and local officials, who then must decide whether to put in place protective measures," continues the account. As of last October 1, every community receiving DHS funds has pledged to implement the federal homeland security strategy. Former FBI Special Agent Sid Caspersen, New Jersey's state homeland security czar, explains how that strategy would affect the public. "You must adhere to the restrictions announced by the authorities and prepare to evacuate, if instructed," he told the March 16, 2003 Camden, New Jersey Courier-Post. "You literally are staying home, is what happens, unless you are required to be out."
Under a Code Red, summarizes the Courier-Post, "you will be assumed to be the enemy if you so much as venture outside your home." In prison parlance, this condition is known as a "lockdown."
A foretaste of the U.S. in lockdown mode was offered by New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. National Guardsmen and troops from the 82nd Airborne were deployed in the city to deal with looting and other disturbances. Their first priority, chillingly, was to disarm private citizens and evict those who resisted evacuation orders.
"No one is allowed to be armed," declared superintended of police P. Edwin Compass III. To carry out that decree, the rump NOPD, supplemented with elements of the National Guard from Louisiana and Oklahoma, as well as agents of the U.S. Marshals Service, began "breaking into homes at gunpoint, confiscating their lawfully-owned firearms, and evicting the residents," reported Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute in Reason magazine.
In addition to being a constitutional outrage, this confiscation of firearms at the point of a bayonet is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of military personnel as law enforcement officers within the United States. That prohibition has become honeycombed with "exceptions" in recent decades, due to the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror." In New Orleans, a new and ominous wrinkle was added to the increasingly familiar militarization of law enforcement: The use of mercenaries on contract with the DHS.
"The men from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Katrina hit," wrote Jeremy Scahill in an on-site report for The Nation. "Some patrolled the streets in SUVs with tinted windows and the Blackwater logo splashed on the back; others sped around the French Quarter in an unmarked car with no license plates." When asked by what authority they were operating in New Orleans, one armed Blackwater operative replied: "We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.... We can even make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary." A separate contingent of 164 Blackwater operatives received a separate contract to provide security for FEMA reconstruction projects.
"This is a trend," one Blackwater mercenary told Scahill. "You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."....
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_3614.shtml
~~~
Land of the Free? (Excerpt)
by William Norman Grigg
April 3, 2006Under legal theories currently being developed and deployed, any individual can be imprisoned, tortured, or even executed on a presidential whim.
The U.S. Constitution was designed to prevent the emergence of a tyrannical government by delegating specific, limited, revocable authority to the central government, and then allocating that power among three contending government branches. That power is limited by law; those who exercise it are accountable to the people; and all but a very few government functions are to be carried out by state and local governments.
Our Constitution is still largely intact, and the institutions it created have not been utterly demolished. But our constitutional system has been under siege for decades, and confronts its most severe threat in the legal doctrines being devised by the Bush administration to conduct the "war on terror."
President as Living Constitution
During his January 26 press conference, President Bush was pressed to defend his administration's use of warrantless wiretaps, a policy that violates both the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Bush recited the now-familiar claim that when Congress enacted the September 14, 2001 "Authorization to Use Military Force" (AUMF) against those responsible for 9/11, it effectively alienated to the president plenary authority to do whatever he considers necessary in the anti-terrorism struggle.
"There is an act passed by Congress in 2001 which said that I must have the power to conduct this war using the incidents of war," stated Mr. Bush. "And I'm intending to use that power.... Congress says, go ahead and conduct the war, we're not going to tell you how to do it...."
In fact, as former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has pointed out, the AUMF resolution was drafted in a fashion intended to deny the administration's request for open-ended domestic powers -- such as the ability to subject Americans to warrantless wiretaps. The Bush administration, however, has asserted that the president has the right to sign a bill into law and then use a "signing statement," a declaration by the president permitting him to interpret the bill as he sees fit -- even if in so doing he blatantly violates the explicit letter of the law.
The issue here isn't whether the president has a different "understanding" of the technical details of a bill, but whether he can sign a bill into law and then ignore it if he so chooses. When Mr. Bush signed a bill banning the use of torture, for example, he issued a "signing statement" reserving the option of waiving the ban as he saw fit. This means that the president announced his intention to violate that law even as he attached his signature to it. And this was hardly the first time that Mr. Bush had employed this tactic. Although he has yet to cast a single veto, Mr. Bush issued 435 signing statements in his first term alone. This eclipses the total number of signing statements issued between 1817 and the beginning of Mr. Bush's presidency in 2001.
In 95 of Mr. Bush's signing statements, mention is made of the doctrine of the "unitary executive," a phrase that has traditionally referred to the president's sole power to manage the affairs of the executive branch. As used by the Bush administration, however, the phrase refers to the claim that in wartime the president's powers are not subject to checks or limits by the legislative and judicial branches.
For the Bush administration and its followers, it is an article of faith that George W. Bush can and must be entrusted with essentially limitless powers. This was made explicit during a debate at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington between former Congressman Bob Barr and former Justice Department attorney Viet Dinh, a co-architect of the so-called USA Patriot Act.
"Do we truly remain a society that believes that … every president must abide by the law of this country?" asked Barr during his opening statement. Dinh replied by insisting that although conservatives have always displayed "a healthy skepticism of governmental power," there are times when "that healthy skepticism needs to yield." Referring to the administration's use of warrantless wiretaps as a specific case, Dinh declared: "None of us can make a conclusive assessment as to the wisdom of that [wiretapping] program and its legality, without knowing the full operational details. I do trust the president when he asserts that he has reviewed it carefully and therefore is convinced that there is full legal authority."
For decades, conservatives have properly assailed liberals for their belief in a "living Constitution" that can be reworked by activist judges to advance leftist social causes. Today, GOP-aligned conservatives treat the president as a living Constitution, free to exercise power in any way he sees fit.
In his book The Powers of War and Peace, former Justice Department official John C. Yoo, who wrote several key legal memoranda on presidential war powers, contends that the president in wartime is free to do anything Congress permits him to do. In a December 1 debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel, Yoo went even further, insisting that the president's wartime powers are his alone to define.
Yoo's legal handiwork includes an August 2002 memo (signed by former Deputy Attorney General Jay Bybee, who is now a federal judge) asserting that the president has a right to authorize torture. In the Chicago debate, Cassel inquired of Yoo: "If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" Yoo agreed, emphasizing that "no treaty" could restrain the president's supposed power to authorize such measures. "Also no law by Congress," Cassel continued. "That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo." "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that," Yoo responded....
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_3613.shtml
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