“Even the ordinary person on the street can see the absurdity in saying that there is no connection between the Muslim’s anger and the explosions in London’s underground and buses following the UK’s participation in two wars against two Muslim countries in which more than 50,000 people were killed…this is unreasonable”.

“America wants to use Lebanon to add more pressure on Syria and to push it to collapse because of its persistent support of Hezbollah, the Palestinian resistance, its rejection of the foreign occupation of Iraq and its unwillingness to be more vigilant with its Iraqi borders.”

The government's sole purpose seems to be to dismantle every protection the country has, leaving the borders unguarded, splurging on an empire project that sputters even before getting under way, and financing foreign reveries and domestic revelries with borrowed money hiding the bottom of a Hubbardian treasure chest.

From the beginning, we recognized that the pro-CAFTA forces would wield enormous pressure on individual congressmen to obtain a favorable vote. Although rarely mentioned in the news, the reason for the intense pro-CAFTA pressure is that globalists regard CAFTA as an important stepping stone to their even more dangerous Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

In our anguish over this sovereignty-busting vote we must not forget to thank all who voted NO on the CAFTA. Pick up the phone and get busy making thank you calls. And be sure to ask them to vote NO on the forthcoming FTAA. Congressional switchboard number is: 202-224-3121. Special thanks should go to those who were "undecided" and refused to succumb to the offers of funding for bridges, roads, etc. Yesterday's list of the "undecideds" can be accessed by going to thelibertycommittee.org. Find out from today's media coverage which of the "undecideds" held firm in their convictions.

While we complain about NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT and various other alphabet-soup macroeconomic Ponzi schemes, what we really should be concerned about is WFTA. You haven't heard of WFTA? You will: The World Free Trade Agreement.

It's just too bad that Bush and his Democratic enablers learned nothing from CAFTA's ugly cousin, NAFTA, which was signed into law in 1994 by President Clinton. Talk about terrorism. Mexico's economy has all but crumbled, while poverty and unemployment have increased dramatically.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of CAFTA is that it is the essential precursor to the neoliberal's (and now the neo-con's) grand vision of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would attempt to open all borders from Canada to Chile and undermine many labor and environmental laws along the way.

A Briton facing extradition to America for perpetrating "the biggest computer hack of all time" left a message criticising American foreign policy on an army computer, a court heard yesterday.

It was claimed he left a note on an army computer in 2002 saying US foreign policy was "akin to government-sponsored terrorism". The note allegedly said: "It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year. I am Solo. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels."

At 2,400 pages, the Central America Free Trade Agreement isn't really about trade. Frankly, you don't need 2,400 pages to eliminate tariffs and regulations on exports and imports. But, you might need 2,400 pages to smuggle through a new set of transnational corporate rights disguised by complicated legalese. I wonder, how many members of Congress will even bother to read this trade tome before voting?

Republicans vote for CAFTA 202 to 27.

The 217-215 roll call Thursday by which the House approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Mortgage loans are acquired by investment banks and chopped up into various securities where they are sold in mutual funds, hedge funds and pension funds etc. To some extent, this takes the lenders off the hook, but it also means that the shock to the system will be much more widespread when the day of reckoning finally arrives. If we encounter a major glitch in the economy the shock waves will be felt throughout the world. “Investors now hold $4.6 trillion in mortgage backed securities. That’s more than the outstanding value of the US Treasuries.” (NY Times) Think about it.

Once you have a public fixated on this perceived enemy, it is necessary to maintain a constant level of fear and when necessary ramp it up, either though potential events (”not if but when”) or to exploit events that do occur by connecting the elemental enemy to the events, however tenuous the connection. If no real connection can be made, invent the connection. If necessary, invent a multitude of connections that can be announced and discarded at will. Nobody, least of all a complicit media will question why ‘connections’ come and go without explanation, everything is in flux in this world of illusions, where fact and fiction blur one into the other.

Even American sovereignty is being eroded, as the World Trade Organization orders Congress to change U.S. tax and trade laws, and Congress meekly complies.

America can yet turn this around, but we are reaching a tipping point – where a sovereign, independent and self-sufficient American republic will cease to be.

Thirty House Republicans can stop this process cold by just saying no to CAFTA. The Business Roundtable will get over it. After all, they have no place else to go.

Americans have already been rounded up. Our most important job sectors, ag, industrial and manufacturing, have been destroyed by treaties and Americans who won't stand up and go without if they can't find Made in America. Cowardly politicians at the state and federal level have gotten down on their knees and allowed themselves to be bought like common strumpets by the wacko environmentalists, further destroying and eroding our property rights.

In recent days, senior administration figures have been speaking publicly of "a global struggle against the enemies of freedom", and of the need to use all "tools of statecraft" to defeat them.

CAFTA-DR is the precursor to other, larger Free Trade Agreements such as the Andean Free Trade Agreement and the huge FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas). These two agreements include most South American countries that are not already included in a FTA with the United States. These countries, i.e. Argentina and Brazil, have shown that they are able to produce huge quantities of agricultural goods at a greatly reduced cost of production through everything from government subsidies to cheap land, not to mention the lower pharmaceutical and labor costs.

A recent fundraising letter from NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar blasts "Jerry Falwell and his friends," "hard-right fundamentalists," libertarians, President Bush, Rush Limbaugh, the Heritage Foundation, and the organization for which I work (the Institute on Religion and Democracy).

Actual church members are becoming less and less important to the NCC's survival. Secular foundations and non-religious celebrity donors are more important. With the consequent polemical demands of direct mail aimed at a mostly secular audience, Edgar's rhetoric inevitably will veer even further left and away from any pretense of importance attached to promoting Christianity.

This agreement wouldn't allow workers in Central America to buy prime beef from Nebraska, or cars made in Ohio, or software from Seattle. These countries wouldn't be competing to buy our products, they'd be competing to make them.

Forget about the fantasy of controlling the federal government. It has accumulated so much power and created so many vested interests in that power, that any genuine conservatives or libertarians who become a part of it are immediately targeted, sabotaged, worn down, smeared, and marginalized so that they have no influence whatsoever. The entire apparatus of the centralized state will always view this as its number one priority.

How far Americans have advanced toward the status of contented imperial subjects is indicated by the silly and false assumptions that are taken for granted by millions:

“The Republican Party is the party of conservatism and free enterprise.” In fact, the Republican Party has never, ever opposed any government interference in the free market except those that might benefit labor or harm Big Business. The Republican Party is and always has been the party of state capitalism, whatever its deluded voters might think. In its rise to power it was revolutionary, destroying the political heritage that went before in order to establish the power of state capitalism. By state capitalism is meant highly concentrated private ownership and wealth with government protection and subsidy.

Citizenship “training,” whether in or out of school, wherever and whenever it has been practiced, is nothing more than an organized conspiracy to make children and adults exactly what the state wants them to be: stupid, compliant, tax-paying slaves, easily led to believe that voting makes a difference and serving as cannon-fodder for imperial adventures is a patriotic and moral calling. Trained to do what they are told, not complain, and not ask questions, law-abiding Americans have been aptly honed to be perfect Nazis.

The calculation is that if House Republicans can please anti-trade interests by first casting a vote to whack China, more GOP lawmakers would risk disappointing those interests by supporting CAFTA.

As legislative strategy, it's a brilliant idea. And it might work for CAFTA. But it doesn't change the underlying dynamic. Amid a new wave of global competition, concern about America's ability to generate good jobs is cresting again — and returning economic nationalism from the periphery of the Washington debate.

But why am I arguing that replacing one moderate -- even with a conservative -- would be a step backwards? I am not, quite, saying that. I am saying that if Roberts turns out to be everything that conservatives are hoping for, the new balance will be four liberals, four conservatives and one moderate -- and that puts Kennedy in the hot seat.

Neutrality—a Bush choice of a non-controversial justice—will be, and will be seen by the president’s friends and enemies alike as a stacking of arms, a surrender, a cowardly retreat in the Culture War.

The Judges War is about Bush’s legacy and America’s future. No issue is more crucial. Whether America is kept safe for Christianity is more important than whether Iraq is made safe for democracy.

Those to whom information is presented must deal with their personal unwillingness to hear new facts.

We have to make a serious effort to distinguish between the expression of an unfounded theory and the disclosure of verifiable information and facts.

They absolutely refuse to accept even the most convincing proof because they dare not admit to themselves that they have been lied to by officials in whom the placed their trust.

Seven of the nine current Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents, and three of the black-robed, non-litmus-tested, GOP-appointed judges (including Sandra Day "Just Call Me Ms. Weathervane" O'Connor) in 2000 jumped the invisible partisan fence to join two Democrat-appointed judges in order to overturn Nebraska's ban on horrific "partial birth" abortions (i.e., plunging a pair of scissors into the back of a baby's skull).

The majority opinion in Roe was written by Republican President Richard Nixon's appointee Harry Blackmun (ironically, the dissenting opinion was written by Democrat President John Kennedy's appointee Byron White).

A string of recent Republican federal-bench hopefuls have become squidlike before hostile Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee (the only kind of Democrats getting elected recently), inking the waters into opacity with weasel words in a vain attempt to downplay their true, or presumed, feelings on abortion.

The key point of the legislation is that it would authorize the president to withhold 50 percent of U.S. contributions to the United Nations if it does not institute serious changes. Coleman said Thursday that he would think about Gingrich's advice to implement a "checklist" into the legislation where the president could make a measurable assessment of U.N. improvement.

The people who brought you the oil-for-food scandal now want to get their hands on the Internet. On Tuesday, a U.N. organization called the Working Group on Internet Governance proposed that the United Nations take control of regulating the Internet's inner workings. Apparently, U.N. leaders think their failures in global security and humanitarianism qualify them to regulate the engine of the high-tech industry.

No matter how anti-Christian Bush’s actions are, some Christians continue to defend him because he professes to be a Christian. It doesn’t matter how often the lies that got us into the war in Iraq are exposed, many Christians still support this war – they are just upset about the manner in which it has been fought. But the worst thing is that no matter what their opinion of Bush (or any president) or his war (or any war), most Christians persist in their holy sacrosanct reverence for the military.

As the lies and misinformation continue to mount with regard to the London bombings, the corporate media both there and here continue to parrot the official story, regardless of the evidence showing that what happened in London seems to be something entirely different.

Fighting to rescue a troubled trade agreement, the Bush administration on Tuesday pledged $180 million over the next five years to protect workers, farmers and the environment in Central American nations.

One of the kowtowing jurists on the appeals panel was none other than John G. Roberts. Four days after he affirmed Bush's autocratic powers, Roberts was duly awarded with a nomination to the Supreme Court. Now he will be sitting in final judgment on this case - and any other challenges to Bush's peremptory commands. This is what is known, in the tyrant trade, as "a safe pair of hands."

The best news is that if stopping suicide terrorism is a goal we seek, a solution is available to us. Cease the occupation of foreign lands, and the suicide missions will cease. Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Once the U.S., the French, and Israel withdrew their forces from Lebanon, there were no more attacks. The reason the attacks stop, according to Pape, is that the Osama bin Ladens of the world no longer can inspire potential suicide terrorists despite their continued fanatical religious beliefs.

The suicide-bomber is but the full extension of what is implicit in politics: institutionalized violence. In order to expand their reach over the lives and property of people, political systems must continually find new enemies as fear-objects. Frightful enemies coalesce the fear-ridden into obedient and manageable herds. War, then, is the necessary vehicle by which the state mobilizes itself for the infusion of the human energy upon which it depends. Like a vampire, the state nourishes itself on the blood of others.

1) What isn't interstate commerce?
2) How much reverence should be given to precedence?
3) Quick—Recite the Tenth Amendment.
4) Do you agree with United States v. Reynolds, and if so how do you square that agreement with the fact that the federal government, in successfully arguing for what was then a new right to keep secrets from the judicial branch, has been recently shown to have lied its ever-lovin' ass off?
5) You're on a lifeboat, but it can only hold 8 of the original 10 amendments without sinking, killing your whole family. Which ones go?
6) Do you think the 5th Amendment right to a grand jury has been perverted over time to become an enabler of, and not a protection from, prosecutors gone wild?
7) What is your working definition of "public use," as spelled out in the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment?

The prime lobby that should feel gratified by his nomination is of course Big Business, the protection of whose interests has been Roberts chief concern throughout his career, and the protection of whose interests has always been the prime concern of the US Supreme Court. Listen to the assessment of Boalt law professor and torture-defender, John Yoo: "Roberts is the type of person that business conservatives and judicial-restraint conservatives will like, but the social conservatives may not like. What the social conservatives want is someone who will overturn Roe v Wade and change the court's direction on privacy. But he represents the Washington establishment. These Washington establishment people are not revolutionaries, and they're not out to change constitutional law."

Tancredo said he was greatly alarmed by the report and would seek whatever information he could get from the nation's law enforcement authorities – either in classified or unclassified reports.

Political analysts who see the U.S. mutating into an empire "assume that empire is the only model for a state seeking to project power and influence — ignoring the alternatives from the business world," writes UCLA professor Richard Rosecrance in the Summer 2005 issue of The National Interest. Rosecrance, senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center and (predictably) a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, declares that multinational "merger" is a sensible alternative to unilateral hegemony and its attendant costs.

The discussion of trade blocs and geopolitics is a refreshing advance over the usual rhetoric of "free trade," but is it credible? The political question is whether those making the argument are sincere. The technical question is whether CAFTA would create a trade bloc strong enough to fend off the Chinese. Unfortunately, the answer to both is no.

“A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an ‘undercover agent,’ saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.

This was the first time in the history of the Bilderberg Conferences that a major newspaper has ever scrutinized them in such a fashion. Normally, Bilderberg meetings are not even mentioned in the major media. Bilderbergers are not accustomed to having to provide explanations to anyone, particularly since certain of their members own or control major metropolitan newspapers, newspaper chains and wire services.

Like WTO, CAFTA increases the possibility that Codex regulations will be imposed on the American public. Section 6 of CAFTA discusses Codex as a regulatory standard for nations that join the agreement. If CAFTA has nothing to do with dietary supplements, as CAFTA supporters claim, why in the world does it specifically mention Codex?

As long as the physical security of our borders are a travesty, the time is long overdue to abolish the EOIR and move toward a system of expedited removal—similar to Immigration Act Section 235(b)—for illegal aliens and criminal alien residents.

Congress would also need to expand mandatory detention under Immigration Act Section 236(c), scrap the credible fear charade of turn-‘em-loose asylum screening, and close the candy store of relief from removal that is the current Immigration Act.

Any rational analysis of the CAFTA region will demonstrate that it simply isn’t a significant potential market for U.S. exports. It is, however, a huge potential export market for low-wage labor, and would prove to be an irresistible magnet drawing manufacturing jobs away from the U.S.

Additionally, the logic of the Bush administration’s position – namely, that enacting CAFTA would "reward" to pro-Washington governments in the region with new economic growth – assumes that the agreement would boost exports from the region to the U.S., not the reverse.

But with the baiting of McClellan and the "death watch" of TV cameras outside Rove's home, the press should know it is not perceived here as simply advancing "the people's right to know." Everybody knows this is about what Watergate was about and Iran-Contra was about: bringing down a Republican president the left could not defeat at the ballot box.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has just let the cat out of the bag about what's really behind our trade agreements and security partnerships with the other North American countries. A 59-page CFR document spells out a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter."

Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly said the “people who voted for George Bush would consider that appointment [of Gonzales] a betrayal. We expect President Bush to fulfill his promise to appoint justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.”

Many Americans are so incensed at Bush for fabricating the reasons for invading Iraq that they think they prefer for his ill-fated war adventure to continue until it produces enough rope to hang him and his administration.

Why do Americans think it is heroic and honorable for our troops to massacre Iraqis with bombs, missiles, gunships, tanks, and heavy machine guns, but cowardly and barbaric when our victims fight back in the only way they can? The US and Britain started this fight, not Iraq. We should be ashamed that Bush and Blair deceived us, tricked us into a pointless and unjust war, and that innocent people on both sides are paying with their lives and limbs for Bush's and Blair's lies. Our real anger should be directed at Bush and Blair who are responsible for the deaths and destruction.

I don't believe that Scotland Yard knew diddly-squat about the terror plot, either days or minutes before the bombs exploded, although what seems beyond dispute is that Netanyahu was warned beforehand. The question is, who warned him?

With the "coalition of the willing" showing signs of going wobbly, and the recent announcement that Britain was withdrawing a good portion of its forces from Iraq, the political momentum in Britain (and the United States), which was going against the Iraq war, is suddenly reversed.

And so the attack described today as being beyond the sensibilities of all civilized people, and thus warranting an amplified campaign of Anglo-American aggression against Arabs and Muslims, may tomorrow be shrugged off nonchalantly as the price great Empires must pay in the blood of "their" subjects for the benefit of leading the world to a Brave New future.

I don't know about you, but I have had enough. Enough intrusion. Enough taking. Enough government, which has insinuated itself into every nook and cranny of my life. We have to do something. We have to stop them. Already, we have gone beyond mere slavery and become commodities. The time has come to do something about our totally out-of-control government!

Whenever the Supreme Court hands down a nakedly unconstitutional opinion, I always wonder what protects these lawless judges, besides the usual sluggishness, inattention, and fear of people who aren't yet ready to address tyranny. Nothing in principle would seem to protect lawless judges, for their own rulings tell the American people that the law is nothing more than the will of whoever has the most nerve to seize it.

There was a time when Americans could expect better from the Supreme Court. In Calder v. Bull (1798), the high court declared that a "law that takes property from A and gives it to B" is "against all reason and justice" and is "not a rightful exercise of legislative authority." Too bad Justices Stevens, Souter, Breyer, Kennedy and Ginsburg didn’t embrace that wisdom.

The Left gets it. Liberals smeared Nixon nominees Haynesworth and Carswell as racists and tried to derail Rehnquist. They gave Reagan’s moderate nominee, O’Connor, a pass, while savaging conservative Robert Bork. They let Bush I’s stealth candidate Souter through, but attempted the “high-tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas.

But Republicans often do not get it. Clinton nominees Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg sailed through without resistance. Though Ginsberg was a card-carrying ACLU activist, she got every GOP vote but those of Jesse Helms and two others.

Live 8 undermines both the anti-globalization and anti-war movements. It diverts public opinion and distracts media attention from the G8 protest movement. It also serves to undermine the articulation of more radical voices against the New World Order.

To defend the American idea in the face of this novel threat, every last American must be willing to risk death rather than let our ideals be trampled in a rush for "security." For most of us, the risk is infinitesimal, less than we accept when we merge onto the Schuylkill or board an airliner. But it's there. Bravery isn't just for soldiers anymore.

Weep for the lost dreams of our forefathers who tried an experiment called Democracy, where governments were run for the benefit of the people; where elected leaders represented the interests and needs of the common folk; where our rights and freedoms were guaranteed under rule of law.

This July 4th, that experiment has run its course, and it has failed. Goodbye, America, land of the free. Make way for Amerika, land of Homeland Security.

In truth, the case against Gonzales revolves around one question: Is he a judicial activist?

The answer? Yes! was delivered by none other than Justice Priscilla Owen, whom Bush has nominated twice for an appeals court seat, and with whom Gonzales served on the Texas Supreme Court.

"The question in this case is not whether this court would have ruled differently when confronted with all the evidence that the trial court heard," wrote Owen. "The question is whether legally sufficient evidence supports the trial court's judgment. The answer to this later question is yes. Longstanding principles of appellate review and our Texas Constitution do not permit this court to substitute its judgment for that of the trial court and or to ignore the evidence, as it has done."

The bottom line: illegal aliens and foreign criminals have been given free rein over the Untied States—with no end in sight.

Until the time comes when Americans look out of their windows one morning and see vans, trucks, buses and trains filled with illegal aliens and criminal alien residents streaming outbound toward the border, or to the nearest airport out of the country . . . ONLY THEN will we know that something is being done.

I simply cannot resist dropping in this quote from the Kelo decision, either: "(O)ur jurisprudence has recognized that the needs of society have varied between different parts of the Nation, just as they have evolved over time in response to changed circumstances." In other words, the Supreme Court actually admits that it no longer interprets the Constitution, but merely issues fiat law in response to "the needs of society." Judicial relativism.

Criminal aliens—non-citizens convicted of crimes—are a growing threat.

In 1980, our Federal and state facilities held fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. But at the end of 2003, approximately 267,000 non-citizens were incarcerated in U.S. correctional facilities, as follows

46,000 in Federal prisons

74,000 in state prisons

147,000 in local jails