Dear Cliff

You have been a very good boy... and for such a long time, very ethical, fair, honest and faithful. And I know you feel like things are just not right anymore. Well, Merry Chrismaramadakwanzakkuh errr... Merry XMas. You are not alone in wondering how a President that was naughty with his secretary deserves impeachment while one who took the Nation to war over imaginary evidence presented as fact deserves to remain in office. Well, I have a surprise for you Cliff. Let me dig down in my bag.

At long last someone is asking about the I-word in a nationwide public poll...

"This is a day-show..." not polling only members of the left-wing choir. MSNBC wants to know, "Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?"

• Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
• No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
• No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
• I don't know.

Join the 146,000 people so far that stand united and VOTE Cliff. Then, have a Merry Christmas... and a Happy Holiday Season!

Santa!

Dear Santa

It's been over 50 years since I wrote you. I imagine you know about my being a Marine in Vietnam and my two divorces, but I have tried to be good.

I know you're busy with all the kids, but, Santa, I'm feeling too old to be this sad at Christmas.

Can you help my country be what I thought when I was a kid? I want America to be good, not just strong. I want telling the truth to be really important. I want us to respect our friends and our enemies. I want us not to torture people even if they've hurt us. I want us to be safe because people like us, not because they're afraid of us.

I know I said I didn't believe in you, Santa, but I don't know what to believe anymore. Please bring these things for Christmas; I don't know where else to turn.

Cliff Adams

Bristol

...published yesterday in a small Vermont newspaper called the Addison Independent.

Four Republican rebels

4 GOP Senators Hold Firm Against Patriot Act Renewal
More Safeguards Needed, They Say

The four Republican rebels:

Larry E. Craig (Idaho), 202-224-2752
Chuck Hagel (Neb.), 202-224-4224
John E. Sununu (N.H.) 202-224-2841 and
Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) 202-224-6665

have joined all but two Senate Democrats in arguing that more civil liberties safeguards need to be added to the proposed renewal of the Patriot Act.

Hagel says, "I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president."

"The beauty of Westerners is that we have a healthy distrust of our government," says Sen. Larry Craig, adding that gun owners are particularly leery of laws that give federal agents greater powers to secretly search offices and homes. "Whether they are business records or they are gun dealers' records or whatever, they are records that can be gained" under the law.

Sununu, whose father was a New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff to George H.W. Bush, took issue with Bush's ultimatum. "How can the president justify vetoing the [temporary] extension?" Sununu says. "That suggests that he thinks the country is better off without any Patriot Act provisions in place than with a three-month extension. And that makes no sense at all."

"I think the responsible thing to do at this point is to move forward with a three-month extension" of the current law says Murkowski. She says she has received angry phone calls and e-mails from non-Alaskans. "But I've got to listen to my constituents first," she says, and they have been "very supportive."

Please. take time to call and thank them for their courage in putting the Constitution ahead of party politics.

And then consider sending one more thank you call to Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell at 202-224-3441 for leading a filibuster against the ANWR drilling bill and winning the critical vote against drilling. Senators Kerry, Reid, and Feinstein, among others, also played important roles, but Cantwell has been a consistent leader on environmental and energy issues.

"This is nothing more than a sweetheart deal for Alaska and the oil companies," she says. "That's why I am prepared to use every procedural option available to me as a senator to prevent this language from moving forward."

Check out the centerfold at...

Pentagon officials have been spying on what they call "suspicious" meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel. The story (first reported by Lisa Myers and NBC News last week) noted that Pentagon investigators had records pertaining to April protests at the State University of New York at Albany and William Patterson College in New Jersey. A February protest at NYU was also listed, along with the law school's LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw, which was classified as "possibly violent" by the Pentagon. A UC-Santa Cruz "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" protest, which included a gay kiss-in, was labeled as a "credible threat" of terrorism.

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) condemned the surveillance and monitoring saying, "The Pentagon is supposed to defend the Constitution, not turn it upside down." SLDN executive director C. Dixon Osburn explains, "Students have a first amendment right to protest and Americans have a right to expect that their government will respect our constitutional right to privacy. To suggest that a gay kiss-in is a 'credible threat' is absurd, homophobic and irrational. To suggest the Constitution does not apply to groups with views differing with Pentagon policy is chilling."

The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sought access to FBI files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored. Civil rights advocates say the government is improperly blurring the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One FBI document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third document indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Rumsfeld Spies on Quakers and Grannies. says Progressive's editor Matthew Rothschild.

"You look at these documents," says Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the ACLU, "and you think wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover."

Retro fear of Commies should then come as no surprise...
In New Bedford, Standard-Times staff writer Aaron Nicodemus reports, "A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called 'The Little Red Book'."


Mr. Peabody set the Wayback Machine to the year 1974 to the final days of Richard Nixon...
The AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an alliance of over 100 grassroots organizations, has launched the Censure Bush campaign in order to support new legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

Doris "Granny D" Haddock, says it plainly, "Isn't it odd that a fellow can provide such poor administrative leadership that we lose part of New York and a big part of New Orleans, he can get away with leading a nation to war on falsified evidence resulting in the death of thousands of our young soldiers and tens of thousands of people abroad, he can get away with rigging elections and he can get away with destroying the environmental protections for our air and water and wild places, and he can get away with putting people in jail indefinitely without recourse to lawyers or fair judges, and he can get away with reneging on the Geneva Convention and actually torturing people in secret prisons--all of that--and still survive politically, but he can't get away with admitting to a little old felony back home. It will be like sending Capone up for tax evasion, but if that'll work, let's do it. We owe this to ourselves, our children, and the people of the world. Oh, that the Germans in the 1930s were as resolute in standing up for their higher values as we must do now!" ImpeachTheSonofabitch.com!

Here in Wisconsin...
State Republican leaders are trying to rush through the constitutional ban on civil unions and marriage. Action Wisconsin would like you to Ask Lawmakers to Vote NO on the Amendment. "While the state Senate voted 19-14 on Dec 7 to pass the amendment, we still have time to contact our lawmakers in the state Assembly."

Tricky Dick...

"After years of researching Richard Nixon, which has often been met with amusement by friends, I exhume from my database the following nugget," writes Nixonbuff, Gregory. "David Frost interviewed Nixon in the late 1970's, and as a result there are many hours of tape providing much information. The following though, should make Bush nervous, as the White House meets the outrage from a troubled nation over illegal activities against Americans."

FROST:
So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, here the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

NIXON:
Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

FROST:
By definition.

NIXON:
Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is ne that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they're in an impossible position.

"And we all recall that Nixon fared so well with the American people too..."

Click to read more excerpts from an interview with David Frost that exposed Nixon's views on Presidential power which aired on television May 19, 1977.

Mad King George...

The Washington Post reports:
"Beginning in October, The Washington Post published articles describing a three-year-old Pentagon agency, the size and budget of which are classified, with wide new authority to undertake domestic investigations and operations against potential threats from U.S. residents and organizations against military personnel and facilities. The Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, began as a small policy-coordination office but has grown to encompass nine directorates and a staff exceeding 1,000. The agency's Talon database, collecting unconfirmed reports of suspicious activity from military bases and organizations around the country, has included "threat reports" of peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations.

Yesterday's acknowledgment of warrantless NSA eavesdropping brought the most forthright statement from the president that his war on terrorism is targeting not only "enemies across the world" but "terrorists here at home." In the "first war of the 21st century," he said, "one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front."

On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as "plenary" -- a term defined as "full," "complete," and "absolute."

In a Sept. 25, 2002, brief signed by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, the Justice Department asserted "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

The brief made no distinction between suspected agents who are U.S. citizens and those who are not.

United States Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) made the following statement on Saturday, December 17, 2005 in response to President Bush's weekly radio address:

“The President's shocking admission that he authorized the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens, without going to a court and in violation of the Constitution and laws passed by Congress, further demonstrates the urgent need for these protections. The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king."

Fact Sheet on Domestic Intelligence Wiretaps
December 17, 2005

• The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted in 1978 to provide a statutory framework for eavesdropping on individuals within the United States, including U.S. citizens, who are not suspected of having committed a crime but who are likely to be spies or members of terrorist organizations.
• FISA established a secret court that could issue wiretap orders if the government showed probable cause that the individual to be tapped is an “agent of a foreign power,” meaning he or she is affiliated with a foreign government or terrorist organization. This is an easier standard to meet than the criminal wiretap standard, which requires that there be: (1) probable cause that the individual to be tapped has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, and (2) probable cause that communications concerning that crime will be obtained through the electronic surveillance.
• In the 27 years since it was established, the FISA court has turned down only a handful of applications for wiretap orders. The number of approved FISA wiretap orders has jumped since September 11, 2001, with 1,754 FISA orders issued last year, up from 934 such orders in 2001.
• FISA already addresses emergency situations where there is not time to get pre-approval from the court. It includes an emergency exception that permits government agents to install a wiretap and start monitoring phone and email conversations immediately, as long as they then go to the FISA court and get a court order within 72 hours.
• FISA makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conduct electronic surveillance except as provided for by statute. The only defense is for law government agents engaged in official duties conducting “surveillance authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order.” [50 U.S.C. § 1809]
• Congress has specifically stated, in statute, that the criminal wiretap statute and FISA “shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . and the interception of domestic wire, oral, and electronic communications may be conducted.” [18 U.S.C. § 2518(f)].
• The target of a FISA wiretap is never given notice that he or she was subject to surveillance, unless the evidence obtained through the electronic surveillance is ultimately used against the target in a criminal trial.