I did get a lot of stupid little stuff done today. T came back and re-fixed Ruby's stereo. I picked up the dry cleaning, had Ruby washed, did some cleaning. Got the halogen lamps in the living room replaced. I did some laundry.
Was expecting to spend the day working on Fabulair today. That didn't happen. Hung out with Denny a while today.
Barney spent his day doing his usual; getting into whatever path I thought of taking and then dashing out of the way. At one point tonight, he started screaming with anxiety as I tried to get past him into the kitchen. Uh, hello? If you didn't STAND right where I was heading?
Tomorrow is the only Sunday that I have without speaking obligation until late April. No one else from the board can be counted to be there; this is turning into an obligation for the price of a half tank of gas a week. So far, each Sunday that I arrive, I have to clean up after the Friday morning class, which each week but one has left the coffee pots with stale coffee, grounds in the coffee makers, trash left in the baskets, chairs put wherever they happened to drag them, whatever else put wherever they put them.
Thus, I have to abate the dreadful scent in the air, clean the bathrooms, make fresh coffee, clean the kitchen area, put the chairs back, put whatever the accoutrements moved about back where they were, clean up whatever crap is on the floor, and get ready to greet people as they come in. I have almost no time to get myself centered.
How is it that people STILL act like 13 year olds, expecting someone else to clean up after them? Janitor, planner, speaker, facilitator, thinker, leader, answerer of questions. All this and more for a dollar ninety-nine a day.
When I combine that with the large part of my client base being worthless (except where it involves asking for free advice on how to solve any problem, big or small,) I keep wondering - why should I keep doing any of this? Why should I beat my brains out for the joy of wondering until the last minute whether I'll be able to keep a roof over my head or gas in the car?
It's all without an upside. At least, that's the way it seems to me tonight.
I don't know whether I should stop pushing against things that don't work and find another way, or whether I am supposed to keep working to make things that have never worked happen.
This is a stupid movie about an important topic.
I should have called the WMoP two days ago. I don't know why I can't bring myself to do it.
Psycho Judy started calling today. She's been canned from yet another job, and has landed herself one here in Houston with the new professional soccer team. I predict that's going to last about six and a half seconds before they realize that her resume is fake, and she can't do anything - and can't maintain records that will allow them to function in any reasonable way. She wanted me to put aside our differences, because she has some work for me - meaning that she's in over her head again, and she wants me to rescue her ass by doing her job for her for about $100 a week on sub-contract while she collects the real paycheck and has health insurance.
I didn't call her back. She called again and left a message about putting the past in the past, and basically said that I was the one with the problem.
I reiterate, PJ - when you cough up a FedEx generated airbill from May showing me that you did in fact send me the things you promised for six weeks and prove that you're not a liar of the highest order, I'll talk to you. Until then, don't call me, 'cause I'm not taking the calls.
Chuck (barbie bear) had a proto-date today. He looked awfully cute in his claret jacket and coordinating shirt. I guess it went well, because he was gone for about a week and a half. I was expecting him to go with me to Claudia and Johanna's CD release party at Ovations - and, when he told me he would really RATHER take a nap, but would drink a pot of coffee if I really wanted to go - I had already mentally thrown in the towel and figured that I was again without support, and had decided not to attend.
I can't even figure out how to give this pattern voice - I'm just frustrated and pissed off and feeling like nothing works for me. Which, interestingly enough, is EXACTLY what I told the red headed butt grabbing English practitioner eight years ago when I started this whole process.
Funny that I'm still right there.
I don't quite know what to do with that revelation, but it sure is interesting.
E keeps encouraging me to move to YVR. It sounds more and more appealing, about six and a half seconds after I finish my prac training.
DJHJD
Saturday, February 11, 2006
He doesn't intend to leave quietly
Needless Fear
Worry
We have all had the experience of worrying about something at some point in our lives. Some of us have a habitual tendency to worry, and all of us have known someone who is a chronic worrier. Worry is an extension of fear and can be a very draining experience. In order for worry to exist, we have to imagine that something bad might happen. What we are worrying about has not happened yet, however, so this bad thing is by definition a fantasy. Understood this way, worry is a self-created state of needless fear. Still, most of us worry.
One reason we worry is because we feel like we're not in control. For example, you might worry about your loved ones driving home in bad weather. There is nothing you can do to guarantee their safe passage, but you worry until you find out they have reached their destination unharmed. In this instance, worry is an attempt to feel useful and in control. However, worrying does nothing to ensure a positive outcome and it has an unpleasant effect on your body, mind, and spirit. The good news is that there are ways to transform this kind of worry so that it has a healing effect. Just as worry uses the imagination, so does the antidote to worry. Next time you find that you are worrying, imagine the best result instead of anticipating the worst outcome. Visualize your loved ones' path bathed in white light and clearly see in your mind's eye their safe arrival. Imagine angels or guides watching over them as they make their way home. Generate peace and well-being instead of nervousn! ess and unease within yourself.
Another reason we worry is that something that we know is pending but are avoiding is nagging us-an unpaid parking ticket, an upcoming test, an issue with a friend. In these cases, acknowledging that we are worried and taking action is the best solution. If you can confront the situation and own your power to change it, you'll have no reason to worry.
Needless Fear
Worry
We have all had the experience of worrying about something at some point in our lives. Some of us have a habitual tendency to worry, and all of us have known someone who is a chronic worrier. Worry is an extension of fear and can be a very draining experience. In order for worry to exist, we have to imagine that something bad might happen. What we are worrying about has not happened yet, however, so this bad thing is by definition a fantasy. Understood this way, worry is a self-created state of needless fear. Still, most of us worry.
One reason we worry is because we feel like we're not in control. For example, you might worry about your loved ones driving home in bad weather. There is nothing you can do to guarantee their safe passage, but you worry until you find out they have reached their destination unharmed. In this instance, worry is an attempt to feel useful and in control. However, worrying does nothing to ensure a positive outcome and it has an unpleasant effect on your body, mind, and spirit. The good news is that there are ways to transform this kind of worry so that it has a healing effect. Just as worry uses the imagination, so does the antidote to worry. Next time you find that you are worrying, imagine the best result instead of anticipating the worst outcome. Visualize your loved ones' path bathed in white light and clearly see in your mind's eye their safe arrival. Imagine angels or guides watching over them as they make their way home. Generate peace and well-being instead of nervousn! ess and unease within yourself.
Another reason we worry is that something that we know is pending but are avoiding is nagging us-an unpaid parking ticket, an upcoming test, an issue with a friend. In these cases, acknowledging that we are worried and taking action is the best solution. If you can confront the situation and own your power to change it, you'll have no reason to worry.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Whoopsie!
Source article
Small typo, big headache
By Jeffrey Young and Patrick O’Connor
A typo in the budget-reconciliation bill may give congressional Democrats another shot at making political hay out of the $39 billion deficit-reduction measure President Bush signed yesterday.
Democratic leaders could block an attempt by Republicans to correct the clerical error and use the fight to highlight their fierce opposition to the legislation, which includes spending reductions in healthcare, education and other programs.
By doing so, Democrats would raise from the dead a yearlong fight against the budget cuts at the same time that they prepare to beat back another package of spending reductions called for in the president’s new budget.
Blocking a technical correction to legislation that has already been signed into law would be unusual, but budget battles on Capitol Hill are always partisan and House Democrats believe they have scored political points on fighting the GOP budget cuts.
Democratic objections could force both the House and Senate to vote on the measure yet again, though some sources on Capitol Hill said at press time that they expect another vote on a narrow part of the bill — not the entire measure.
House and Senate aides pointed fingers across the Capitol late yesterday, blaming each other’s clerks for changing the language after the House passed the bill.
Various House leadership aides insisted the bill was altered when it was delivered to the Senate before going to the White House. A Senate aide, meanwhile, maintained that a House clerk was the culprit. The clerks’ offices in both chambers did not respond to calls for comment by press time.
Whatever the cause, the bill signed by the president is not the same bill approved by the House, aides agreed.
At issue is a widely supported provision that was intended to allow Medicare beneficiaries to purchase oxygen devices used in the home rather than pay endless rental fees. Because of a clerical error made during the enrollment of the bill, the new policy would apply to practically all medical equipment, congressional aides explained.
Some form of technical correction is needed, and the GOP leadership is hoping to move it swiftly in both chambers under unanimous-consent agreements, or UCs, said Amy Call, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
“This type of thing happens more often than people realize, but most of the time technical corrections happen pretty quietly,” she added.
But congressional Democrats are wary of being asked to cooperate quietly on matters such as this while feeling shunned by the majority the rest of the time, one Democratic House aide said. Refusing to agree to unanimous consent would be a symptom of their “frustration with the way this place does business,” the aide said.
The error has caused significant tension on the Hill in recent days, with some suggesting that the person responsible for it should be fired.
House Democratic leaders already refused to let the House complete the bill by unanimous consent late last year to force Republicans to vote again on budget cuts after returning from the winter recess.
After getting political pressure at home — and having more time to review the bill — four House Republicans who had backed the bill in late 2005 voted against it last week. It narrowly passed the House, 216-214.
Democrats have long complained that House Republicans move legislation to the floor quickly — so quickly that it is impossible to members to read the entire bill before voting.
Rep. Jim Gerlach (Pa.) was one of the four House Republicans to change his vote from yes to no. In a statement, Gerlach explained that he was surprised to learn what he had voted for in December: “I learned of a number of additional problems with the [bill’s] language relative to mental health, visiting nurses, home medical equipment and medical imaging services. Even the providers of these services weren’t aware of these problems until after the House passed the report in December.”
The House had already approved the conference report but had to vote again because Senate Democrats demanded technical fixes when the upper chamber passed it late last year. Including votes on the original House and Senate versions, the conference report and the revote in the House, the budget bill, known as the Deficit Reduction Act, has been considered five times.
Each vote was decided by a close margin, as GOP leaders in both chambers had to make promises and twist arms to move the legislation, which was a major priority for the White House and fiscal conservatives. Appeals to Republicans facing tough reelection fights or those with home-district interests facing harm as a result of the bill were particularly difficult.
This would not be the first time the oxygen-equipment language threatened budget reconciliation. Republicans from Ohio, home to the oxygen-equipment supplier Invacare Corp., briefly held up the measure in December. Sen. George Voinovich and Rep. David Hobson led a contingent that secured a compromise from Republicans on the conference committee under which Medicare beneficiaries would pay rental fees for a longer period of time before they attained ownership of the equipment.
Susan Crabtree, Bob Cusack and Alexander Bolton contributed to this report.
Small typo, big headache
By Jeffrey Young and Patrick O’Connor
A typo in the budget-reconciliation bill may give congressional Democrats another shot at making political hay out of the $39 billion deficit-reduction measure President Bush signed yesterday.
Democratic leaders could block an attempt by Republicans to correct the clerical error and use the fight to highlight their fierce opposition to the legislation, which includes spending reductions in healthcare, education and other programs.
By doing so, Democrats would raise from the dead a yearlong fight against the budget cuts at the same time that they prepare to beat back another package of spending reductions called for in the president’s new budget.
Blocking a technical correction to legislation that has already been signed into law would be unusual, but budget battles on Capitol Hill are always partisan and House Democrats believe they have scored political points on fighting the GOP budget cuts.
Democratic objections could force both the House and Senate to vote on the measure yet again, though some sources on Capitol Hill said at press time that they expect another vote on a narrow part of the bill — not the entire measure.
House and Senate aides pointed fingers across the Capitol late yesterday, blaming each other’s clerks for changing the language after the House passed the bill.
Various House leadership aides insisted the bill was altered when it was delivered to the Senate before going to the White House. A Senate aide, meanwhile, maintained that a House clerk was the culprit. The clerks’ offices in both chambers did not respond to calls for comment by press time.
Whatever the cause, the bill signed by the president is not the same bill approved by the House, aides agreed.
At issue is a widely supported provision that was intended to allow Medicare beneficiaries to purchase oxygen devices used in the home rather than pay endless rental fees. Because of a clerical error made during the enrollment of the bill, the new policy would apply to practically all medical equipment, congressional aides explained.
Some form of technical correction is needed, and the GOP leadership is hoping to move it swiftly in both chambers under unanimous-consent agreements, or UCs, said Amy Call, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
“This type of thing happens more often than people realize, but most of the time technical corrections happen pretty quietly,” she added.
But congressional Democrats are wary of being asked to cooperate quietly on matters such as this while feeling shunned by the majority the rest of the time, one Democratic House aide said. Refusing to agree to unanimous consent would be a symptom of their “frustration with the way this place does business,” the aide said.
The error has caused significant tension on the Hill in recent days, with some suggesting that the person responsible for it should be fired.
House Democratic leaders already refused to let the House complete the bill by unanimous consent late last year to force Republicans to vote again on budget cuts after returning from the winter recess.
After getting political pressure at home — and having more time to review the bill — four House Republicans who had backed the bill in late 2005 voted against it last week. It narrowly passed the House, 216-214.
Democrats have long complained that House Republicans move legislation to the floor quickly — so quickly that it is impossible to members to read the entire bill before voting.
Rep. Jim Gerlach (Pa.) was one of the four House Republicans to change his vote from yes to no. In a statement, Gerlach explained that he was surprised to learn what he had voted for in December: “I learned of a number of additional problems with the [bill’s] language relative to mental health, visiting nurses, home medical equipment and medical imaging services. Even the providers of these services weren’t aware of these problems until after the House passed the report in December.”
The House had already approved the conference report but had to vote again because Senate Democrats demanded technical fixes when the upper chamber passed it late last year. Including votes on the original House and Senate versions, the conference report and the revote in the House, the budget bill, known as the Deficit Reduction Act, has been considered five times.
Each vote was decided by a close margin, as GOP leaders in both chambers had to make promises and twist arms to move the legislation, which was a major priority for the White House and fiscal conservatives. Appeals to Republicans facing tough reelection fights or those with home-district interests facing harm as a result of the bill were particularly difficult.
This would not be the first time the oxygen-equipment language threatened budget reconciliation. Republicans from Ohio, home to the oxygen-equipment supplier Invacare Corp., briefly held up the measure in December. Sen. George Voinovich and Rep. David Hobson led a contingent that secured a compromise from Republicans on the conference committee under which Medicare beneficiaries would pay rental fees for a longer period of time before they attained ownership of the equipment.
Susan Crabtree, Bob Cusack and Alexander Bolton contributed to this report.
White House knew
New York Times article
The New York Times
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February 10, 2006
The Inquiry
White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.
"FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."
Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.
White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.
But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush, on vacation in Texas, was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.
The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck" alarm, the investigators have found.
This chain of events, along with dozens of other critical flashpoints in the Hurricane Katrina saga, has for the first time been laid out in detail following five months of work by two Congressional committees that have assembled nearly 800,000 pages of documents, testimony and interviews from more than 250 witnesses. Investigators now have the documentation to pinpoint some of the fundamental errors and oversights that combined to produce what is universally agreed to be a flawed government response to the worst natural disaster in modern American history.
On Friday, Mr. Brown, the former FEMA director, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is expected to confirm that he notified the White House on that Monday, the day the hurricane hit, that the levee had given way, the city was flooding and his crews were overwhelmed.
"There is no question in my mind that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was," Mr. Brown said in the interview.
The problem, he said, was the handicapping of FEMA when it was turned into a division of the Homeland Security Department in 2003.
"The real story is with this new structure," he said. "Why weren't more things done, or what prevented or delayed Mike Brown from being able to do what he would have done and did do in any other disaster?"
Although Mr. Bahamonde said in October that he had notified Mr. Brown that Monday, it was not known until recently what Mr. Brown or the Homeland Security Department did with that information, or when the White House was told.
Missteps at All Levels
It has been known since the earliest days of the storm that all levels of government — from the White House to the Department of Homeland Security to the Louisiana Capitol to New Orleans City Hall — were unprepared, uncommunicative and phlegmatic in protecting Gulf Coast residents from the floodwaters and their aftermath. But an examination of the latest evidence by The New York Times shines a new light on the key players involved in the important turning points: what they said, what they did and what they did not do, all of which will soon be written up in the committees' investigative reports.
Among the findings that emerge in the mass of documents and testimony were these:
¶Federal officials knew long before the storm showed up on the radar that 100,000 people in New Orleans had no way to escape a major hurricane on their own and that the city had finished only 10 percent of a plan for how to evacuate its largely poor, African-American population.
¶Mr. Chertoff failed to name a principal federal official to oversee the response before the hurricane arrived, an omission a top Pentagon official acknowledged to investigators complicated the coordination of the response. His department also did not plan enough to prevent a conflict over which agency should be in charge of law enforcement support. And Mr. Chertoff was either poorly informed about the levee break or did not recognize the significance of the initial report about it, investigators said.
¶The Louisiana transportation secretary, Johnny B. Bradberry, who had legal responsibility for the evacuation of thousands of people in nursing homes and hospitals, admitted bluntly to investigators, "We put no plans in place to do any of this."
¶Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans at first directed his staff to prepare a mandatory evacuation of his city on Saturday, two days before the storm hit, but he testified that he had not done so that day while he and other city officials struggled to decide if they should exempt hospitals and hotels from the order. The mandatory evacuation occurred on Sunday, and the delay exacerbated the difficulty in moving people away from the storm.
¶The New Orleans Police Department unit assigned to the rescue effort, despite many years' worth of flood warnings and requests for money, had just three small boats and no food, water or fuel to supply its emergency workers.
¶Investigators could find no evidence that food and water supplies were formally ordered for the Convention Center, where more than 10,000 evacuees had assembled, until days after the city had decided to open it as a backup emergency shelter. FEMA had planned to have 360,000 ready-to-eat meals delivered to the city and 15 trucks of water in advance of the storm. But only 40,000 meals and five trucks of water had arrived.
Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the special House committee investigating the hurricane response, said the only government agency that performed well was the National Weather Service, which correctly predicted the force of the storm. But no one heeded the message, he said.
"The president is still at his ranch, the vice president is still fly-fishing in Wyoming, the president's chief of staff is in Maine," Mr. Davis said. "In retrospect, don't you think it would have been better to pull together? They should have had better leadership. It is disengagement."
One of the greatest mysteries for both the House and Senate committees has been why it took so long, even after Mr. Bahamonde filed his urgent report on the Monday the storm hit, for federal officials to appreciate that the levee had broken and that New Orleans was flooding.
Eyewitness to Devastation
As his helicopter approached the site, Mr. Bahamonde testified in October, there was no mistaking what had happened: large sections of the levee had fallen over, leaving the section of the city on the collapsed side entirely submerged, but the neighborhood on the other side relatively dry. He snapped a picture of the scene with a small camera.
"The situation is only going to get worse," he said he warned Mr. Brown, then the FEMA director, whom he called about 8 p.m. Monday Eastern time to report on his helicopter tour.
"Thank you," he said Mr. Brown replied. "I am now going to call the White House."
Citing restrictions placed on him by his lawyers, Mr. Brown declined to tell House investigators during testimony if he had actually made that call. White House aides have urged administration officials not to discuss any conversations with the president or his top advisors and declined to release e-mail messages sent among Mr. Bush's senior advisors.
But investigators have found the e-mail message referring to Mr. Bahamonde's helicopter survey that was sent to John F. Wood, chief of staff to Secretary Chertoff at 9:27 p.m. They have also found a summary of Mr. Bahamonde's observations that was issued at 10:30 p.m. and an 11:05 p.m. e-mail message to Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary of homeland security. Each message describes in detail the extensive flooding that was taking place in New Orleans after the levee collapse.
Given this chain of events, investigators have repeatedly questioned why Mr. Bush and Mr. Chertoff stated in the days after the storm that the levee break did not happen until Tuesday, as they made an effort to explain why they initially thought the storm had passed without the catastrophe that some had feared.
"The hurricane started to depart the area on Monday, and then Tuesday morning the levee broke and the water started to flood into New Orleans," Mr. Chertoff said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Sept. 4, the weekend after the hurricane hit.
Mr. Chertoff and White House officials have said that they were referring to official confirmation that the levee had broken, which they say they received Tuesday morning from the Army Corps of Engineers. They also say there were conflicting reports all day Monday about whether a breach had occurred and noted that they were not alone in failing to recognize the growing catastrophe.
Mr. Duffy, the White House spokesman, said it would not have made much difference even if the White House had realized the significance of the midnight report. "Like it or not, you cannot fix a levee overnight, or in an hour, or even six hours," he said.
But Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said it was obvious to her in retrospect that Mr. Chertoff, perhaps in deference to Mr. Brown's authority, was not paying close enough attention to the events in New Orleans and that the federal response to the disaster may have been slowed as a result.
"Secretary Chertoff was too disengaged from the process," Ms. Collins said in an interview.
Compounding the problem, once Mr. Chertoff learned of the levee break on Tuesday, he could not reach Mr. Brown, his top emergency response official, for an entire day because Mr. Brown was on helicopter tours of the damage.
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the homeland security committee, said the government confusion reminded him of the period surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Information was in different places, in that case prior to the attack," Mr. Lieberman said, "and it wasn't reaching the key decision makers in a coordinated way for them to take action."
Russ Knocke, a homeland security spokesman, said that although Mr. Chertoff had been "intensely involved in monitoring the storm" he had not actually been told about the report of the levee breach until Tuesday, after he arrived in Atlanta.
"No one is satisfied with the response in the early days," Mr. Knocke said.
But he rejected criticism by Senator Collins and others that Mr. Chertoff was disengaged.
"He was not informed of it," Mr. Knocke said. "It is certainly a breakdown. And through an after-action process, that is something we will address."
The day before the hurricane made landfall, the Homeland Security Department issued a report predicting that it could lead to a levee breach that could submerge New Orleans for months and leave 100,000 people stranded. Yet despite these warnings, state, federal and local officials acknowledged to investigators that there was no coordinated effort before the storm arrived to evacuate nursing homes and hospitals or others in the urban population without cars.
Focus on Highway Plan
Mr. Bradberry, the state transportation secretary, told an investigator that he had focused on improving the highway evacuation plan for the general public with cars and had not attended to his responsibility to remove people from hospitals and nursing homes. The state even turned down an offer for patient evacuation assistance from the federal government.
In fact, the city was desperately in need of help. And this failure would have deadly consequences. Only 21 of the 60 or so nursing homes were cleared of residents before the storm struck. Dozens of lives were lost in hospitals and nursing homes.
One reason the city was unable to help itself, investigators said, is that it never bought the basic equipment needed to respond to the long-predicted catastrophe. The Fire Department had asked for inflatable boats and generators, as well as an emergency food supply, but none were provided, a department official told investigators.
Timothy P. Bayard, a police narcotics commander assigned to lead a water rescue effort, said that with just three boats, not counting the two it commandeered and almost no working radios, his small team spent much of its time initially just trying to rescue detectives who themselves were trapped by rising water.
The investigators also determined that the federal Department of Transportation was not asked until Wednesday to provide buses to evacuate the Superdome and the convention center, meaning that evacuees sat there for perhaps two more days longer than necessary.
Mr. Brown acknowledged to investigators that he wished, in retrospect, that he had moved much earlier to turn over major aspects of the response effort to the Department of Defense. It was not until the middle of the week, he said, that he asked the military to take over the delivery and distribution of water, food and ice.
"In hindsight I should have done it right then," Mr. Brown told the House, referring to the Sunday before the storm hit.
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
February 10, 2006
The Inquiry
White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.
"FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."
Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.
White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.
But the alert did not seem to register. Even the next morning, President Bush, on vacation in Texas, was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.
The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck" alarm, the investigators have found.
This chain of events, along with dozens of other critical flashpoints in the Hurricane Katrina saga, has for the first time been laid out in detail following five months of work by two Congressional committees that have assembled nearly 800,000 pages of documents, testimony and interviews from more than 250 witnesses. Investigators now have the documentation to pinpoint some of the fundamental errors and oversights that combined to produce what is universally agreed to be a flawed government response to the worst natural disaster in modern American history.
On Friday, Mr. Brown, the former FEMA director, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is expected to confirm that he notified the White House on that Monday, the day the hurricane hit, that the levee had given way, the city was flooding and his crews were overwhelmed.
"There is no question in my mind that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was," Mr. Brown said in the interview.
The problem, he said, was the handicapping of FEMA when it was turned into a division of the Homeland Security Department in 2003.
"The real story is with this new structure," he said. "Why weren't more things done, or what prevented or delayed Mike Brown from being able to do what he would have done and did do in any other disaster?"
Although Mr. Bahamonde said in October that he had notified Mr. Brown that Monday, it was not known until recently what Mr. Brown or the Homeland Security Department did with that information, or when the White House was told.
Missteps at All Levels
It has been known since the earliest days of the storm that all levels of government — from the White House to the Department of Homeland Security to the Louisiana Capitol to New Orleans City Hall — were unprepared, uncommunicative and phlegmatic in protecting Gulf Coast residents from the floodwaters and their aftermath. But an examination of the latest evidence by The New York Times shines a new light on the key players involved in the important turning points: what they said, what they did and what they did not do, all of which will soon be written up in the committees' investigative reports.
Among the findings that emerge in the mass of documents and testimony were these:
¶Federal officials knew long before the storm showed up on the radar that 100,000 people in New Orleans had no way to escape a major hurricane on their own and that the city had finished only 10 percent of a plan for how to evacuate its largely poor, African-American population.
¶Mr. Chertoff failed to name a principal federal official to oversee the response before the hurricane arrived, an omission a top Pentagon official acknowledged to investigators complicated the coordination of the response. His department also did not plan enough to prevent a conflict over which agency should be in charge of law enforcement support. And Mr. Chertoff was either poorly informed about the levee break or did not recognize the significance of the initial report about it, investigators said.
¶The Louisiana transportation secretary, Johnny B. Bradberry, who had legal responsibility for the evacuation of thousands of people in nursing homes and hospitals, admitted bluntly to investigators, "We put no plans in place to do any of this."
¶Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans at first directed his staff to prepare a mandatory evacuation of his city on Saturday, two days before the storm hit, but he testified that he had not done so that day while he and other city officials struggled to decide if they should exempt hospitals and hotels from the order. The mandatory evacuation occurred on Sunday, and the delay exacerbated the difficulty in moving people away from the storm.
¶The New Orleans Police Department unit assigned to the rescue effort, despite many years' worth of flood warnings and requests for money, had just three small boats and no food, water or fuel to supply its emergency workers.
¶Investigators could find no evidence that food and water supplies were formally ordered for the Convention Center, where more than 10,000 evacuees had assembled, until days after the city had decided to open it as a backup emergency shelter. FEMA had planned to have 360,000 ready-to-eat meals delivered to the city and 15 trucks of water in advance of the storm. But only 40,000 meals and five trucks of water had arrived.
Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the special House committee investigating the hurricane response, said the only government agency that performed well was the National Weather Service, which correctly predicted the force of the storm. But no one heeded the message, he said.
"The president is still at his ranch, the vice president is still fly-fishing in Wyoming, the president's chief of staff is in Maine," Mr. Davis said. "In retrospect, don't you think it would have been better to pull together? They should have had better leadership. It is disengagement."
One of the greatest mysteries for both the House and Senate committees has been why it took so long, even after Mr. Bahamonde filed his urgent report on the Monday the storm hit, for federal officials to appreciate that the levee had broken and that New Orleans was flooding.
Eyewitness to Devastation
As his helicopter approached the site, Mr. Bahamonde testified in October, there was no mistaking what had happened: large sections of the levee had fallen over, leaving the section of the city on the collapsed side entirely submerged, but the neighborhood on the other side relatively dry. He snapped a picture of the scene with a small camera.
"The situation is only going to get worse," he said he warned Mr. Brown, then the FEMA director, whom he called about 8 p.m. Monday Eastern time to report on his helicopter tour.
"Thank you," he said Mr. Brown replied. "I am now going to call the White House."
Citing restrictions placed on him by his lawyers, Mr. Brown declined to tell House investigators during testimony if he had actually made that call. White House aides have urged administration officials not to discuss any conversations with the president or his top advisors and declined to release e-mail messages sent among Mr. Bush's senior advisors.
But investigators have found the e-mail message referring to Mr. Bahamonde's helicopter survey that was sent to John F. Wood, chief of staff to Secretary Chertoff at 9:27 p.m. They have also found a summary of Mr. Bahamonde's observations that was issued at 10:30 p.m. and an 11:05 p.m. e-mail message to Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary of homeland security. Each message describes in detail the extensive flooding that was taking place in New Orleans after the levee collapse.
Given this chain of events, investigators have repeatedly questioned why Mr. Bush and Mr. Chertoff stated in the days after the storm that the levee break did not happen until Tuesday, as they made an effort to explain why they initially thought the storm had passed without the catastrophe that some had feared.
"The hurricane started to depart the area on Monday, and then Tuesday morning the levee broke and the water started to flood into New Orleans," Mr. Chertoff said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Sept. 4, the weekend after the hurricane hit.
Mr. Chertoff and White House officials have said that they were referring to official confirmation that the levee had broken, which they say they received Tuesday morning from the Army Corps of Engineers. They also say there were conflicting reports all day Monday about whether a breach had occurred and noted that they were not alone in failing to recognize the growing catastrophe.
Mr. Duffy, the White House spokesman, said it would not have made much difference even if the White House had realized the significance of the midnight report. "Like it or not, you cannot fix a levee overnight, or in an hour, or even six hours," he said.
But Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said it was obvious to her in retrospect that Mr. Chertoff, perhaps in deference to Mr. Brown's authority, was not paying close enough attention to the events in New Orleans and that the federal response to the disaster may have been slowed as a result.
"Secretary Chertoff was too disengaged from the process," Ms. Collins said in an interview.
Compounding the problem, once Mr. Chertoff learned of the levee break on Tuesday, he could not reach Mr. Brown, his top emergency response official, for an entire day because Mr. Brown was on helicopter tours of the damage.
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the homeland security committee, said the government confusion reminded him of the period surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Information was in different places, in that case prior to the attack," Mr. Lieberman said, "and it wasn't reaching the key decision makers in a coordinated way for them to take action."
Russ Knocke, a homeland security spokesman, said that although Mr. Chertoff had been "intensely involved in monitoring the storm" he had not actually been told about the report of the levee breach until Tuesday, after he arrived in Atlanta.
"No one is satisfied with the response in the early days," Mr. Knocke said.
But he rejected criticism by Senator Collins and others that Mr. Chertoff was disengaged.
"He was not informed of it," Mr. Knocke said. "It is certainly a breakdown. And through an after-action process, that is something we will address."
The day before the hurricane made landfall, the Homeland Security Department issued a report predicting that it could lead to a levee breach that could submerge New Orleans for months and leave 100,000 people stranded. Yet despite these warnings, state, federal and local officials acknowledged to investigators that there was no coordinated effort before the storm arrived to evacuate nursing homes and hospitals or others in the urban population without cars.
Focus on Highway Plan
Mr. Bradberry, the state transportation secretary, told an investigator that he had focused on improving the highway evacuation plan for the general public with cars and had not attended to his responsibility to remove people from hospitals and nursing homes. The state even turned down an offer for patient evacuation assistance from the federal government.
In fact, the city was desperately in need of help. And this failure would have deadly consequences. Only 21 of the 60 or so nursing homes were cleared of residents before the storm struck. Dozens of lives were lost in hospitals and nursing homes.
One reason the city was unable to help itself, investigators said, is that it never bought the basic equipment needed to respond to the long-predicted catastrophe. The Fire Department had asked for inflatable boats and generators, as well as an emergency food supply, but none were provided, a department official told investigators.
Timothy P. Bayard, a police narcotics commander assigned to lead a water rescue effort, said that with just three boats, not counting the two it commandeered and almost no working radios, his small team spent much of its time initially just trying to rescue detectives who themselves were trapped by rising water.
The investigators also determined that the federal Department of Transportation was not asked until Wednesday to provide buses to evacuate the Superdome and the convention center, meaning that evacuees sat there for perhaps two more days longer than necessary.
Mr. Brown acknowledged to investigators that he wished, in retrospect, that he had moved much earlier to turn over major aspects of the response effort to the Department of Defense. It was not until the middle of the week, he said, that he asked the military to take over the delivery and distribution of water, food and ice.
"In hindsight I should have done it right then," Mr. Brown told the House, referring to the Sunday before the storm hit.
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
If you want to kill it, put Karen Hughes in charge
source
[Check out to see just what it is that ISN'T working in our government, and tell me if you think that they may be important.]
Part of the message Chimpy wanted to deliver in New Hampshire yesterday was that government programs that are performing poorly should be "eliminated and/or trimmed back". The White House has even established a web site where you can check out their evaluation of myriad programs.
Last four years we've had what we call the President's Management Agenda. Employees have been working to help ensure that the programs are doing what we expect them to do. That's what they do. They spend a lot of time on this. We ask federal managers to achieve good results at reasonable costs, and we measure them. The point is, is that if they can't prove they're achieving good results, then the programs, in my judgment, ought to be eliminated and/or trimmed back. That's why I told you earlier, we found 141 such programs. And we did the same thing in last year's budget, as well.
One of the interesting innovations that we have put forth is a new website, called expectmore.gov. It's a program where -- it's a website where we start to put the measurement results up for everybody to see. Nothing like transparency into the federal bureaucracy to determine whether or not a program is working. And so I think you'll find it innovative -- I do -- that the White House has put this website up. And you'll be able to see whether or not results are being achieved for the money spent.
So this morning I paid a visit to expectmore.gov and clicked on their link to programs that are not performing. What did I find? Listed among those programs judged to be performing poorly was Department of State's Public Diplomacy program headed by none other than Karen Hughes. Let's fire her ass!
Also listed as "Not Performing" are:
Dept of Homeland Security Border Patrol
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Aids to Navigation
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Drug Interdiction
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Polar Icebreaking Program
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Search and Rescue
Dept of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Automation Modernization Program
Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Grants and Training Office Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program
Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Grants and Training Office State Homeland Security Grants Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Infrastructure Protection Cyber Security
Dept of Homeland Security Science and Technology: Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Air Cargo Security Programs
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Aviation Regulation and Enforcement
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Baggage Screening Technology
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Federal Air Marshal Service
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Flight Crew Training
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Passenger Screening Technology
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Screener Workforce
----
Corps of Engineers-Civil Works Coastal Storm Damage Reduction
Corps of Engineers-Civil Works Flood Damage Reduction
----
Federal Election Commission Federal Election Laws - Compliance and Enforcement
----
Office of Natl Drug Control Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
----
Securities & Exchange Comm Enforcement
Securities & Exchange Comm Full Disclosure Program (Corporate Review)
Are we surprised?
[Check out to see just what it is that ISN'T working in our government, and tell me if you think that they may be important.]
Part of the message Chimpy wanted to deliver in New Hampshire yesterday was that government programs that are performing poorly should be "eliminated and/or trimmed back". The White House has even established a web site where you can check out their evaluation of myriad programs.
Last four years we've had what we call the President's Management Agenda. Employees have been working to help ensure that the programs are doing what we expect them to do. That's what they do. They spend a lot of time on this. We ask federal managers to achieve good results at reasonable costs, and we measure them. The point is, is that if they can't prove they're achieving good results, then the programs, in my judgment, ought to be eliminated and/or trimmed back. That's why I told you earlier, we found 141 such programs. And we did the same thing in last year's budget, as well.
One of the interesting innovations that we have put forth is a new website, called expectmore.gov. It's a program where -- it's a website where we start to put the measurement results up for everybody to see. Nothing like transparency into the federal bureaucracy to determine whether or not a program is working. And so I think you'll find it innovative -- I do -- that the White House has put this website up. And you'll be able to see whether or not results are being achieved for the money spent.
So this morning I paid a visit to expectmore.gov and clicked on their link to programs that are not performing. What did I find? Listed among those programs judged to be performing poorly was Department of State's Public Diplomacy program headed by none other than Karen Hughes. Let's fire her ass!
Also listed as "Not Performing" are:
Dept of Homeland Security Border Patrol
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Aids to Navigation
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Drug Interdiction
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Polar Icebreaking Program
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Search and Rescue
Dept of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Automation Modernization Program
Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Grants and Training Office Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program
Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Grants and Training Office State Homeland Security Grants Dept of Homeland Security Preparedness -- Infrastructure Protection Cyber Security
Dept of Homeland Security Science and Technology: Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Air Cargo Security Programs
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Aviation Regulation and Enforcement
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Baggage Screening Technology
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Federal Air Marshal Service
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Flight Crew Training
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Passenger Screening Technology
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Screener Workforce
----
Corps of Engineers-Civil Works Coastal Storm Damage Reduction
Corps of Engineers-Civil Works Flood Damage Reduction
----
Federal Election Commission Federal Election Laws - Compliance and Enforcement
----
Office of Natl Drug Control Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
----
Securities & Exchange Comm Enforcement
Securities & Exchange Comm Full Disclosure Program (Corporate Review)
Are we surprised?
If the Washington Times criticizes the administration ..
source
[So, do you think that the government didn't KNOW that Al-Qaeda was using couriers, and not telephones?]
Wiretaps fail to make dent in terror war; al Qaeda used messengers
The Bush administration's surveillance policy has failed to make a dent in the war against al Qaeda.
U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages. Instead, they employ couriers.
"They have been way ahead of us in communications security," a law enforcement source said. "At most, we have caught some riff-raff. But the heavies remain free and we believe some of them are in the United States."
Several members of Congress have been briefed on the effectiveness of the government surveillance program that does not require a court order.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, who was briefed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the matter, said he plans to hold hearings on the program by February 2006.
"There may be legislation which will come out of it [hearings] to restrict the president's power," Mr. Specter said.
The law enforcement sources said the intelligence community has identified several al Qaeda agents believed to be in the United States. But the sources said the agents have not been found because of insufficient intelligence and even poor analysis.
The assertions by the law enforcement sources dispute President Bush's claim that the government surveillance program has significantly helped in the fight against terrorism. The president said the program, which goes beyond the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, limits eavesdropping to international phone calls.
The sources provided guidelines to how the administration has employed the surveillance program. They said the National Security Agency in cooperation with the FBI was allowed to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of any American believed to be in contact with a person abroad suspected of being linked to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
At that point, the sources said, all of the communications of that American would be monitored, including calls made to others in the United States. The regulations under the administration's surveillance program do not require any court order.
"The new regulations don't require this because it is considered an ongoing investigation," a source familiar with the program said.
The sources said the Patriot Act was based on the assessment that al Qaeda had established cells in Muslim communities in the United States.
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union confirm that the FBI has monitored and infiltrated a range of Muslim and Arab groups, including the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
But despite the huge amount of raw material gathered under the legislation, the FBI has not captured one major al Qaeda operative in the United States. Instead, federal authorities have been allowed to use non-terrorist material obtained through the surveillance program for investigation and prosecution.
In more than one case, the sources said, a surveillance target was prosecuted on non-terrorist charges from information obtained through wiretaps conducted without a court order. They said the FBI supported this policy in an attempt to pressure surveillance targets to cooperate.
"The problem is not the legislation but lack of intelligence and analysis," another source said. "We have a huge pile of intercepts that never get translated, analyzed and thus remain of no use to us. If it [surveillance] was effective, that's one thing. But it hasn't been effective."
[So, do you think that the government didn't KNOW that Al-Qaeda was using couriers, and not telephones?]
Wiretaps fail to make dent in terror war; al Qaeda used messengers
The Bush administration's surveillance policy has failed to make a dent in the war against al Qaeda.
U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages. Instead, they employ couriers.
"They have been way ahead of us in communications security," a law enforcement source said. "At most, we have caught some riff-raff. But the heavies remain free and we believe some of them are in the United States."
Several members of Congress have been briefed on the effectiveness of the government surveillance program that does not require a court order.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, who was briefed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the matter, said he plans to hold hearings on the program by February 2006.
"There may be legislation which will come out of it [hearings] to restrict the president's power," Mr. Specter said.
The law enforcement sources said the intelligence community has identified several al Qaeda agents believed to be in the United States. But the sources said the agents have not been found because of insufficient intelligence and even poor analysis.
The assertions by the law enforcement sources dispute President Bush's claim that the government surveillance program has significantly helped in the fight against terrorism. The president said the program, which goes beyond the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, limits eavesdropping to international phone calls.
The sources provided guidelines to how the administration has employed the surveillance program. They said the National Security Agency in cooperation with the FBI was allowed to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of any American believed to be in contact with a person abroad suspected of being linked to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
At that point, the sources said, all of the communications of that American would be monitored, including calls made to others in the United States. The regulations under the administration's surveillance program do not require any court order.
"The new regulations don't require this because it is considered an ongoing investigation," a source familiar with the program said.
The sources said the Patriot Act was based on the assessment that al Qaeda had established cells in Muslim communities in the United States.
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union confirm that the FBI has monitored and infiltrated a range of Muslim and Arab groups, including the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
But despite the huge amount of raw material gathered under the legislation, the FBI has not captured one major al Qaeda operative in the United States. Instead, federal authorities have been allowed to use non-terrorist material obtained through the surveillance program for investigation and prosecution.
In more than one case, the sources said, a surveillance target was prosecuted on non-terrorist charges from information obtained through wiretaps conducted without a court order. They said the FBI supported this policy in an attempt to pressure surveillance targets to cooperate.
"The problem is not the legislation but lack of intelligence and analysis," another source said. "We have a huge pile of intercepts that never get translated, analyzed and thus remain of no use to us. If it [surveillance] was effective, that's one thing. But it hasn't been effective."
Leaky pipes
Source
Leaks
Bush then:
But I want to tell you something -- leaks of classified information are a bad thing. And we've had them -- there's too much leaking in Washington. That's just the way it is. And we've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them and I want to know who the leakers are.
And now we have:
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
Leaks
Bush then:
But I want to tell you something -- leaks of classified information are a bad thing. And we've had them -- there's too much leaking in Washington. That's just the way it is. And we've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them and I want to know who the leakers are.
And now we have:
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
Well, Phooey
The black on black Phaeton 4 seat is gone, it seems. That makes me cranky. The black with beige with only 8000 miles is still in Stafford.
Blarg.
I had a great class tonight; I need to integrate it some more. In the meantime, I'm going to dump a whole bunch of interesting blog posts and an article from tomorrow's New York Times into the site - seems that GW knew about the levees' breach during Hurricane Katrina, but then he went back to reading his children's book.
Blarg.
I had a great class tonight; I need to integrate it some more. In the meantime, I'm going to dump a whole bunch of interesting blog posts and an article from tomorrow's New York Times into the site - seems that GW knew about the levees' breach during Hurricane Katrina, but then he went back to reading his children's book.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
hump day wrap up
Watching the Paul Newman movie "Cool Hand Luke." I'm not sure I yet understand the point.
Been working on my home work. I have to write the 100 things I like to do best. What if I can reach 100? I'm up to about 38. the purpose of the list is to winnow it down to 50, then to 25, then to 12 or 10 or something. I can easily see what my favorite ten things are - but, is there a point to working up to 100 things? I'm not sure that there ARE 100 things that I can commit to writing.
Does anyone know where my self-actualization went? I'm fried.
Been working on my home work. I have to write the 100 things I like to do best. What if I can reach 100? I'm up to about 38. the purpose of the list is to winnow it down to 50, then to 25, then to 12 or 10 or something. I can easily see what my favorite ten things are - but, is there a point to working up to 100 things? I'm not sure that there ARE 100 things that I can commit to writing.
Does anyone know where my self-actualization went? I'm fried.
They only give hints
Local Scaife Rag Comes Out For Withdrawal
The Pittsburgh-Tribune Review just ran an odd 250-word pro-withdrawal editorial that positively compares the paper's new position to that of Jack Murtha.
It's something of a big deal because the Tribune Review is a prototypical cog in the rightwing slime machine -- it probably participated in the Murtha smear a few months ago. The Trib is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, a delightful fellow whose hobbies include funding the "Arkansas Project" and calling The Nation's Karen Rothmeyer a "fucking communist cunt".
This paper habitually regurgitates undigested White House talking points: it calling for withdrawal means something is up. There was a lot of talk about this sort of thing, even among Republicans in the fall, which led many commentators, including me, to speculate that BushCo might announce some sort of fake withdrawal during the State of the Union address. I wonder if such an idea is back on the table.
Alarmingly, Scaife's paper argues that it may be necessary to strike Iran and such an attack requires a withdrawal from Iraq:
That said, the world situation has changed dramatically since November. The nuclear saber-rattling of neighboring Iran is heading for a showdown. To meet that threat should diplomacy fail, the United States must begin the six- to nine-month logistical process of drawing down its Iraqi force and repositioning it to respond, if need be, to the Iranian threat.
The above implies that the troops in Iraq will be needed to invade Iran, which is nonsense -- the US is considering an airstrike on Iran not a ground invasion; however, such an airstrike probably would necessitate a withdrawal from Iraq. If the US bombs Iran -- with it's own bombs or with Israel's -- Iraq will explode. The US's unlikely alliance with Iraqi Shiites will be over, to say the least, and the occupation of Iraq will become untenable unless perhaps the bombing of Iran is accompanied by a massive air campaign in Iraq as well. Needless to say what I am discussing here is absolute madness -- it is very frightening that the chatter about an attack on Iran seems to be becoming increasingly serious.
It will be interesting to see if the Weekly Standard runs a piece like the little note in the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review.
The Pittsburgh-Tribune Review just ran an odd 250-word pro-withdrawal editorial that positively compares the paper's new position to that of Jack Murtha.
It's something of a big deal because the Tribune Review is a prototypical cog in the rightwing slime machine -- it probably participated in the Murtha smear a few months ago. The Trib is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, a delightful fellow whose hobbies include funding the "Arkansas Project" and calling The Nation's Karen Rothmeyer a "fucking communist cunt".
This paper habitually regurgitates undigested White House talking points: it calling for withdrawal means something is up. There was a lot of talk about this sort of thing, even among Republicans in the fall, which led many commentators, including me, to speculate that BushCo might announce some sort of fake withdrawal during the State of the Union address. I wonder if such an idea is back on the table.
Alarmingly, Scaife's paper argues that it may be necessary to strike Iran and such an attack requires a withdrawal from Iraq:
That said, the world situation has changed dramatically since November. The nuclear saber-rattling of neighboring Iran is heading for a showdown. To meet that threat should diplomacy fail, the United States must begin the six- to nine-month logistical process of drawing down its Iraqi force and repositioning it to respond, if need be, to the Iranian threat.
The above implies that the troops in Iraq will be needed to invade Iran, which is nonsense -- the US is considering an airstrike on Iran not a ground invasion; however, such an airstrike probably would necessitate a withdrawal from Iraq. If the US bombs Iran -- with it's own bombs or with Israel's -- Iraq will explode. The US's unlikely alliance with Iraqi Shiites will be over, to say the least, and the occupation of Iraq will become untenable unless perhaps the bombing of Iran is accompanied by a massive air campaign in Iraq as well. Needless to say what I am discussing here is absolute madness -- it is very frightening that the chatter about an attack on Iran seems to be becoming increasingly serious.
It will be interesting to see if the Weekly Standard runs a piece like the little note in the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review.
Summer, 1962 on Brokeback Mountain
Weekly Grocery Lists for Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist,
Summer, 1962 on Brokeback Mountain
WEEK ONE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey
WEEK TWO
Beans
Ham
Coffee
Whiskey
WEEK THREE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey
K-Y
WEEK FOUR
Beans
Pancetta
Coffee (espresso grind)
Sky vodka (cranberry flavor)
WEEK FIVE
Fresh Fava beans
Jasmine rice
Prosciutto, approx. 8 ounces, thinly sliced
Medallions of veal
Porcini mushrooms
1/2 pint of heavy whipping cream
1 Cub Scout uniform, size 42 long
5-6 bottles good Chardonnay
1 large bottle Astro-glide
WEEK SIX
Yukon Gold potatoes
Heavy whipping cream
Asparagus (very thin)
Eggs
Lemons
Gruyere cheese (well aged)
Walnuts
Arugula
Butter
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
6 yards white silk organdy
6 yards pale ivory taffeta
Case of Chardonnay
Large tin Crisco
Summer, 1962 on Brokeback Mountain
WEEK ONE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey
WEEK TWO
Beans
Ham
Coffee
Whiskey
WEEK THREE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey
K-Y
WEEK FOUR
Beans
Pancetta
Coffee (espresso grind)
Sky vodka (cranberry flavor)
WEEK FIVE
Fresh Fava beans
Jasmine rice
Prosciutto, approx. 8 ounces, thinly sliced
Medallions of veal
Porcini mushrooms
1/2 pint of heavy whipping cream
1 Cub Scout uniform, size 42 long
5-6 bottles good Chardonnay
1 large bottle Astro-glide
WEEK SIX
Yukon Gold potatoes
Heavy whipping cream
Asparagus (very thin)
Eggs
Lemons
Gruyere cheese (well aged)
Walnuts
Arugula
Butter
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
6 yards white silk organdy
6 yards pale ivory taffeta
Case of Chardonnay
Large tin Crisco
Bush's Social Security Sleight of Hand
source article
If you read enough numbers, you never know what you'll find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts.
Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.
President Bush didn't mention a new proposal for privatizing Social Security in the State of the Union, but it's in his budget.
President Bush didn't mention a new proposal for privatizing Social Security in the State of the Union, but it's in his budget. (By Charles Dharapak -- Associated Press)
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His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.
If this comes as a surprise to you, have no fear. You're not alone. Bush didn't pitch private Social Security accounts in his State of the Union message last week.
First, he drew a mocking standing ovation from Democrats by saying that "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security," even though, as I said, he'd never submitted specific legislation.
Then he seemed to be kicking the Social Security problem a few years down the road in typical Washington fashion when he asked Congress "to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," adding that the commission would be bipartisan "and offer bipartisan solutions."
But anyone who thought that Bush would wait for bipartisanship to deal with Social Security was wrong. Instead, he stuck his own privatization proposals into his proposed budget.
"The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social Security modernization," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an interview Tuesday, but "the president still cares deeply about this. " Duffy asserted that Bush would have been remiss not to include in the budget the cost of something that he feels so strongly about, and he seemed surprised at my surprise that Social Security privatization had been written into the budget without any advance fanfare.
Duffy said privatization costs were included in the midyear budget update that the Office of Management and Budget released last July 30, so it was logical for them to be in the 2007 budget proposals. But I sure didn't see this coming -- and I wonder how many people outside of the White House did.
Nevertheless, it's here. Unlike Bush's generalized privatization talk of last year, we're now talking detailed numbers. On page 321 of the budget proposal, you see the privatization costs: $24.182 billion in fiscal 2010, $57.429 billion in fiscal 2011 and another $630.533 billion for the five years after that, for a seven-year total of $712.144 billion.
In the first year of private accounts, people would be allowed to divert up to 4 percent of their wages covered by Social Security into what Bush called "voluntary private accounts." The maximum contribution to such accounts would start at $1,100 annually and rise by $100 a year through 2016.
It's not clear how big a reduction in the basic benefit Social Security recipients would have to take in return for being able to set up these accounts, or precisely how the accounts would work.
Bush also wants to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated for most people by adopting so-called progressive indexing. Lower-income people would continue to have their Social Security benefits tied to wages, but the benefits paid to higher-paid people would be tied to inflation.
Wages have typically risen 1.1 percent a year more than inflation, so over time, that disparity would give lower-paid and higher-paid people essentially the same benefit. However, higher-paid workers would be paying substantially more into the system than lower-paid people would.
President Bush didn't mention a new proposal for privatizing Social Security in the State of the Union, but it's in his budget.
President Bush didn't mention a new proposal for privatizing Social Security in the State of the Union, but it's in his budget. (By Charles Dharapak -- Associated Press)
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This means that although progressive indexing is an attractive idea from a social-justice point of view, it would reduce Social Security's political support by making it seem more like welfare than an earned benefit.
Bush is right, of course, when he says in his budget proposal that Social Security in its current form is unsustainable. But there are plenty of ways to fix it besides offering private accounts as a substitute for part of the basic benefit.
Bush's 2001 Social Security commission had members of both parties, but they had to agree in advance to support private accounts. Their report, which had some interesting ideas, went essentially nowhere.
What remains to be seen is whether this time around Bush follows through on forming a bipartisan commission and whether he can get credible Democrats to join it. Dropping numbers onto your opponents is a great way to stick your finger in their eye. But will it get the Social Security job done? That, my friends, is a whole other story.
Sloan is Newsweek's Wall Street editor. His e-mail issloan@panix.com.
If you read enough numbers, you never know what you'll find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts.
Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.
President Bush didn't mention a new proposal for privatizing Social Security in the State of the Union, but it's in his budget.
President Bush didn't mention a new proposal for privatizing Social Security in the State of the Union, but it's in his budget. (By Charles Dharapak -- Associated Press)
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His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.
If this comes as a surprise to you, have no fear. You're not alone. Bush didn't pitch private Social Security accounts in his State of the Union message last week.
First, he drew a mocking standing ovation from Democrats by saying that "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security," even though, as I said, he'd never submitted specific legislation.
Then he seemed to be kicking the Social Security problem a few years down the road in typical Washington fashion when he asked Congress "to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," adding that the commission would be bipartisan "and offer bipartisan solutions."
But anyone who thought that Bush would wait for bipartisanship to deal with Social Security was wrong. Instead, he stuck his own privatization proposals into his proposed budget.
"The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social Security modernization," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an interview Tuesday, but "the president still cares deeply about this. " Duffy asserted that Bush would have been remiss not to include in the budget the cost of something that he feels so strongly about, and he seemed surprised at my surprise that Social Security privatization had been written into the budget without any advance fanfare.
Duffy said privatization costs were included in the midyear budget update that the Office of Management and Budget released last July 30, so it was logical for them to be in the 2007 budget proposals. But I sure didn't see this coming -- and I wonder how many people outside of the White House did.
Nevertheless, it's here. Unlike Bush's generalized privatization talk of last year, we're now talking detailed numbers. On page 321 of the budget proposal, you see the privatization costs: $24.182 billion in fiscal 2010, $57.429 billion in fiscal 2011 and another $630.533 billion for the five years after that, for a seven-year total of $712.144 billion.
In the first year of private accounts, people would be allowed to divert up to 4 percent of their wages covered by Social Security into what Bush called "voluntary private accounts." The maximum contribution to such accounts would start at $1,100 annually and rise by $100 a year through 2016.
It's not clear how big a reduction in the basic benefit Social Security recipients would have to take in return for being able to set up these accounts, or precisely how the accounts would work.
Bush also wants to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated for most people by adopting so-called progressive indexing. Lower-income people would continue to have their Social Security benefits tied to wages, but the benefits paid to higher-paid people would be tied to inflation.
Wages have typically risen 1.1 percent a year more than inflation, so over time, that disparity would give lower-paid and higher-paid people essentially the same benefit. However, higher-paid workers would be paying substantially more into the system than lower-paid people would.
President Bush didn't mention a new proposal for privatizing Social Security in the State of the Union, but it's in his budget.
President Bush didn't mention a new proposal for privatizing Social Security in the State of the Union, but it's in his budget. (By Charles Dharapak -- Associated Press)
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Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
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Most Blogged About Articles
On washingtonpost.com | On the web
This means that although progressive indexing is an attractive idea from a social-justice point of view, it would reduce Social Security's political support by making it seem more like welfare than an earned benefit.
Bush is right, of course, when he says in his budget proposal that Social Security in its current form is unsustainable. But there are plenty of ways to fix it besides offering private accounts as a substitute for part of the basic benefit.
Bush's 2001 Social Security commission had members of both parties, but they had to agree in advance to support private accounts. Their report, which had some interesting ideas, went essentially nowhere.
What remains to be seen is whether this time around Bush follows through on forming a bipartisan commission and whether he can get credible Democrats to join it. Dropping numbers onto your opponents is a great way to stick your finger in their eye. But will it get the Social Security job done? That, my friends, is a whole other story.
Sloan is Newsweek's Wall Street editor. His e-mail issloan@panix.com.
Source article for detention camps
Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers
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By RACHEL L. SWARNS
Published: February 4, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.
KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.
The contract with the Corps of Engineers runs one year, with four optional one-year extensions. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder.
A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jamie Zuieback, said KBR would build the centers only in an emergency like the one when thousands of Cubans floated on rafts to the United States. She emphasized that the centers might never be built if such an emergency did not arise.
"It's the type of contract that could be used in some kind of mass migration," Ms. Zuieback said.
A spokesman for the corps, Clayton Church, said that the centers could be at unused military sites or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people.
"When there's a large influx of people into the United States, how are we going to feed, house and protect them?" Mr. Church asked. "That's why these kinds of contracts are there."
Mr. Church said that KBR did not end up creating immigration centers under its previous contract, but that it did build temporary shelters for Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
Federal auditors rebuked the company for unsubstantiated billing in its Iraq reconstruction contracts, and it has been criticized because of accusations that Halliburton, led by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, was aided by connections in obtaining contracts. Halliburton executives denied that they charged excessively for the work in Iraq.
Mr. Church said concerns about the Iraq contracts did not affect the awarding of the new contract.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, who has monitored the company, called the contract worrisome.
"With Halliburton's ever expanding track record of overcharging, it's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," Mr. Waxman said. "With each new contract, the need for real oversight grows."
In recent months, the Homeland Security Department has promised to increase bed space in its detention centers to hold thousands of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. In the first quarter of the 2006 fiscal year, nearly 60 percent of the illegal immigrants apprehended from countries other than Mexico were released on their own recognizance.
Domestic security officials have promised to end the releases by increasing the number of detention beds. Last week, domestic security officials announced that they would expand detaining and swiftly deporting illegal immigrants to include those seized near the Canadian border.
Advocates for immigrants said they feared that the new contract was another indication that the government planned to expand the detention of illegal immigrants, including those seeking asylum.
"It's pretty obvious that the intent of the government is to detain more and more people and to expedite their removal," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami.
Ms. Zuieback said the KBR contract was not intended for that.
"It's not part of any day-to-day enforcement," she said.
She added that she could not provide additional information about the company's statement that the contract was also meant to support the rapid development of new programs.
Halliburton executives, who announced the contract last week, said they were pleased.
"We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract," an executive vice president, Bruce Stanski, said in a statement, "because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency management support."
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By RACHEL L. SWARNS
Published: February 4, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.
KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.
The contract with the Corps of Engineers runs one year, with four optional one-year extensions. Officials of the corps said that they had solicited bids and that KBR was the lone responder.
A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jamie Zuieback, said KBR would build the centers only in an emergency like the one when thousands of Cubans floated on rafts to the United States. She emphasized that the centers might never be built if such an emergency did not arise.
"It's the type of contract that could be used in some kind of mass migration," Ms. Zuieback said.
A spokesman for the corps, Clayton Church, said that the centers could be at unused military sites or temporary structures and that each one would hold up to 5,000 people.
"When there's a large influx of people into the United States, how are we going to feed, house and protect them?" Mr. Church asked. "That's why these kinds of contracts are there."
Mr. Church said that KBR did not end up creating immigration centers under its previous contract, but that it did build temporary shelters for Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
Federal auditors rebuked the company for unsubstantiated billing in its Iraq reconstruction contracts, and it has been criticized because of accusations that Halliburton, led by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, was aided by connections in obtaining contracts. Halliburton executives denied that they charged excessively for the work in Iraq.
Mr. Church said concerns about the Iraq contracts did not affect the awarding of the new contract.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, who has monitored the company, called the contract worrisome.
"With Halliburton's ever expanding track record of overcharging, it's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," Mr. Waxman said. "With each new contract, the need for real oversight grows."
In recent months, the Homeland Security Department has promised to increase bed space in its detention centers to hold thousands of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. In the first quarter of the 2006 fiscal year, nearly 60 percent of the illegal immigrants apprehended from countries other than Mexico were released on their own recognizance.
Domestic security officials have promised to end the releases by increasing the number of detention beds. Last week, domestic security officials announced that they would expand detaining and swiftly deporting illegal immigrants to include those seized near the Canadian border.
Advocates for immigrants said they feared that the new contract was another indication that the government planned to expand the detention of illegal immigrants, including those seeking asylum.
"It's pretty obvious that the intent of the government is to detain more and more people and to expedite their removal," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami.
Ms. Zuieback said the KBR contract was not intended for that.
"It's not part of any day-to-day enforcement," she said.
She added that she could not provide additional information about the company's statement that the contract was also meant to support the rapid development of new programs.
Halliburton executives, who announced the contract last week, said they were pleased.
"We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract," an executive vice president, Bruce Stanski, said in a statement, "because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency management support."
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Zeee real deal
3D86k9 $100,800
GGT $ 3,000
PCM $ 1,790
4F6 $ 500
FL1 $ 2,000
7X2 $ 700
Color 9010
Interior TC
$106,990
Two weeks left
GGT $ 3,000
PCM $ 1,790
4F6 $ 500
FL1 $ 2,000
7X2 $ 700
Color 9010
Interior TC
$106,990
Two weeks left
Monday, February 06, 2006
Monday Monday
Monday, Monday – ver. 671.01
Okay, so I started strong today and have run out of steam. I amended four tax returns (which was very complex) and did a bunch of clean-up and mail-out. I suppose that I could recover myself and get more done, but one of those tasks is going to be copying the materials for tomorrow night’s class and binding them. Urk.
“As the insider Nelson Report pointed out recently: Since 2001, in current dollars, the Pentagon budget has experienced "a 41% increase, exclusive of the supplemental allocations for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the [Global War on Terror].")”
And, just so we keep everyone on the boil:
“Club Homeland Detention: Halliburton, the first corporation into Iraq, contractually speaking, and the biggest financial winner in the "reconstruction" sweepstakes for that deconstructed country, fortuitously also found itself perched right atop the list of post-Katrina New Orleans reconstruction contractors. Now, through its subsidiary KBR, known for building military bases to last, as well as Guantanamo's infamous "cages," Halliburton gets a shot at the real American thing - actual emergency detention centers for "immigrants" - or, hey, in a crisis, for whomever. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded it a contract last month - though the story only oozed out this week - worth up to $385 million (not including the near-obligatory overcharges) for, according to the New York Times, "an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." It's those "new programs" that give special pause.”
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020606M.shtml
So, back at Shrub’s inauguration, when I was in tears and said (snapped, actually) to the husband of my employer’s general manager that “no one’s going to shove me into an oven” – I may not have been far off the mark?
Private contractors – among the largest corporations in Germany – built the concentration camps and the ovens. And, the German Volk neatly ignored the information – just as we will here.
For six years, people have been telling me that the Holocaust couldn’t happen here. However, I’m seeing the signs – GW in his SotU address had two boogey men – gay marriage and genetically engineering human/animal combinations. So, which do you think the concentration camps are for? As with the Nazis, they’re for:
What if there were no more general elections? If the Bushies can ignore the Constitution vis a vis warrantless searches – why should they concern themselves with elections?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Note that FISA dispenses with this important element of our constitution – the place to be searched and the things to be seized are NOT required for a FISA warrant. Probably cause is also dispensed with – and, yet – the current administration has determined that FISA is too burdensome and that they don’t have to follow it.
Let’s look at another area that the Bushies have abrogated the Constitution without a comment from the peanut gallery:
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power
To declare War
There has been no declaration of war. Congress has given Bush extraordinary emergency powers to fight the “war” against terrorism, and the Bushies are actively and aggressively promoting their expansion of powers and using the language of treason to attack anyone who objects to the “war.” The administration has utilized “war powers” to hold prisoners incognito, to “render” “enemies” – they have circumvented the fifth amendment in any way that they could structure. Yet, those who question this behavior are called out for being unpatriotic. We are distracted with gay marriage and with moral arguments; the fundamentalists beating the drums of dissonance for the administration while they disassemble the Constitution and any rights guaranteed us.
Six years ago, my arch-conservative friends told me that they wouldn’t ever let happen to me what happened to the Jews in Germany.
Three months ago, every single one of them voted in favor of writing discrimination against gays into the Constitution of Texas.
Recently, I watched “Kindertransport,” a movie about the few hundreds of Jewish children who were shipped to England in the year before the attack on Poland. In this movie, one of the most disturbing moments was one woman’s recollection that, the morning after the Anschluss (she lived in Vienna, which was unified into Greater Germany by military threat and manipulated elections on March 12, 1938) ALL of her friends turned on her. Spat on her.
March 11, 1938 – she’s a popular girl in school. March 13, 1938 – she’s reviled like a homeless dog in the street.
So, if in a few months, the Federal government orders that all identifiable gay people have to report to camps – how many of them are going to shrug off and go? How many of the gay people who voted Republican these last six election cycles are going to slink off and obey orders because “they know what they’re doing?”
If the Democrats can’t whip up a decent response to Alito’s nomination, how will they respond if the Federal Government unilaterally siezes all the funds of gay people using electronic means? If they order us to report to camps based on some public health risk? Do you think for a moment that Joseph Liebermann is going to object? Do you think that John Kerry will do anything more than send out a mass email asking for contributions to the Democratic party?
The NSA and the government has ALREADY been demanding the cell phone records and internet access histories for unnamed persons.
What if they just tweaked this campaign slightly, and nailed EVERYONE who visited gay websites? Identified them through the compliant agreement of the major telecomm companies, and then shut down their ability to run or exist?
How much warning will we have that it’s too late? The “liberal bias media” is already wont to leaving out anything that could actually validate the screed that they are, in fact, liberal. None of the information about these camps is being disseminated broadly by the media. They’re not giving out an ongoing critique of the winnowing of our constitutional rights. In fact, aside from reporting things that are so blantant and “in your face” that they cannot be ignored, the mass media is far more concerned with the breakup of hollywood stars and Amber Alerts than they are telling us what our government is doing.
How much attention did my conservative friends and the “liberal bias media” pay to Clinton’s penis as compared to the Bush administrations’ stripping us of our Constitution?
If Clinton’s penile behavior was worth spending some 100 times the money that we spent on investigating the 9/11 terror attacks, what happened to the prosecution? If it was a crime while he was president, then why did it no longer become an offense once he was out of office? Why is it reasonable to have invested so much time, money and energy into Clinton’s blowjob – but, no one can even discuss that we’ve circumvented about 1/3 of the Bill of Rights in five years without being called unpatriotic and, now, treasonous?
I think that in this case, one in my shoes may be much safer observing from within the borders of a country that won’t ever give up its freedoms. This isn’t the place anymore.
Okay, so I started strong today and have run out of steam. I amended four tax returns (which was very complex) and did a bunch of clean-up and mail-out. I suppose that I could recover myself and get more done, but one of those tasks is going to be copying the materials for tomorrow night’s class and binding them. Urk.
“As the insider Nelson Report pointed out recently: Since 2001, in current dollars, the Pentagon budget has experienced "a 41% increase, exclusive of the supplemental allocations for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the [Global War on Terror].")”
And, just so we keep everyone on the boil:
“Club Homeland Detention: Halliburton, the first corporation into Iraq, contractually speaking, and the biggest financial winner in the "reconstruction" sweepstakes for that deconstructed country, fortuitously also found itself perched right atop the list of post-Katrina New Orleans reconstruction contractors. Now, through its subsidiary KBR, known for building military bases to last, as well as Guantanamo's infamous "cages," Halliburton gets a shot at the real American thing - actual emergency detention centers for "immigrants" - or, hey, in a crisis, for whomever. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded it a contract last month - though the story only oozed out this week - worth up to $385 million (not including the near-obligatory overcharges) for, according to the New York Times, "an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." It's those "new programs" that give special pause.”
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020606M.shtml
So, back at Shrub’s inauguration, when I was in tears and said (snapped, actually) to the husband of my employer’s general manager that “no one’s going to shove me into an oven” – I may not have been far off the mark?
Private contractors – among the largest corporations in Germany – built the concentration camps and the ovens. And, the German Volk neatly ignored the information – just as we will here.
For six years, people have been telling me that the Holocaust couldn’t happen here. However, I’m seeing the signs – GW in his SotU address had two boogey men – gay marriage and genetically engineering human/animal combinations. So, which do you think the concentration camps are for? As with the Nazis, they’re for:
- The global gay conspiracy (replacing World Jewry)
- Immigrants (replacing Gypsies)
- Liberals (replacing .. well, liberals)
- People who generally get in our way (ibid.)
What if there were no more general elections? If the Bushies can ignore the Constitution vis a vis warrantless searches – why should they concern themselves with elections?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Note that FISA dispenses with this important element of our constitution – the place to be searched and the things to be seized are NOT required for a FISA warrant. Probably cause is also dispensed with – and, yet – the current administration has determined that FISA is too burdensome and that they don’t have to follow it.
Let’s look at another area that the Bushies have abrogated the Constitution without a comment from the peanut gallery:
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power
To declare War
There has been no declaration of war. Congress has given Bush extraordinary emergency powers to fight the “war” against terrorism, and the Bushies are actively and aggressively promoting their expansion of powers and using the language of treason to attack anyone who objects to the “war.” The administration has utilized “war powers” to hold prisoners incognito, to “render” “enemies” – they have circumvented the fifth amendment in any way that they could structure. Yet, those who question this behavior are called out for being unpatriotic. We are distracted with gay marriage and with moral arguments; the fundamentalists beating the drums of dissonance for the administration while they disassemble the Constitution and any rights guaranteed us.
Six years ago, my arch-conservative friends told me that they wouldn’t ever let happen to me what happened to the Jews in Germany.
Three months ago, every single one of them voted in favor of writing discrimination against gays into the Constitution of Texas.
Recently, I watched “Kindertransport,” a movie about the few hundreds of Jewish children who were shipped to England in the year before the attack on Poland. In this movie, one of the most disturbing moments was one woman’s recollection that, the morning after the Anschluss (she lived in Vienna, which was unified into Greater Germany by military threat and manipulated elections on March 12, 1938) ALL of her friends turned on her. Spat on her.
March 11, 1938 – she’s a popular girl in school. March 13, 1938 – she’s reviled like a homeless dog in the street.
So, if in a few months, the Federal government orders that all identifiable gay people have to report to camps – how many of them are going to shrug off and go? How many of the gay people who voted Republican these last six election cycles are going to slink off and obey orders because “they know what they’re doing?”
If the Democrats can’t whip up a decent response to Alito’s nomination, how will they respond if the Federal Government unilaterally siezes all the funds of gay people using electronic means? If they order us to report to camps based on some public health risk? Do you think for a moment that Joseph Liebermann is going to object? Do you think that John Kerry will do anything more than send out a mass email asking for contributions to the Democratic party?
The NSA and the government has ALREADY been demanding the cell phone records and internet access histories for unnamed persons.
What if they just tweaked this campaign slightly, and nailed EVERYONE who visited gay websites? Identified them through the compliant agreement of the major telecomm companies, and then shut down their ability to run or exist?
How much warning will we have that it’s too late? The “liberal bias media” is already wont to leaving out anything that could actually validate the screed that they are, in fact, liberal. None of the information about these camps is being disseminated broadly by the media. They’re not giving out an ongoing critique of the winnowing of our constitutional rights. In fact, aside from reporting things that are so blantant and “in your face” that they cannot be ignored, the mass media is far more concerned with the breakup of hollywood stars and Amber Alerts than they are telling us what our government is doing.
How much attention did my conservative friends and the “liberal bias media” pay to Clinton’s penis as compared to the Bush administrations’ stripping us of our Constitution?
If Clinton’s penile behavior was worth spending some 100 times the money that we spent on investigating the 9/11 terror attacks, what happened to the prosecution? If it was a crime while he was president, then why did it no longer become an offense once he was out of office? Why is it reasonable to have invested so much time, money and energy into Clinton’s blowjob – but, no one can even discuss that we’ve circumvented about 1/3 of the Bill of Rights in five years without being called unpatriotic and, now, treasonous?
I think that in this case, one in my shoes may be much safer observing from within the borders of a country that won’t ever give up its freedoms. This isn’t the place anymore.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Watch the balloon burst
Settle in, this is going to be a long one. At the very end, I’ve thrown in a question that should give one great pause – IF you read this whole diatribe. It’s huge, but it’s something that people should be aware of -
Sometimes, an email that is received provokes a need to respond with great depth – it challenges the soul and calls forth the truth, rather than just an unwitting “me too.” That was my reaction this morning, when I received an email from a friend which was, I can only assume, meant with all good intentions to continue and ongoing, friendly debate about government.
In essence, this email purported to represent that the United States is a nation founded and built on the principles of the Christian (not Catholic) faith. The salient elements of the email are:
The steps to the Supreme Court, and the doors to the main courtroom of the Supreme Court building have Moses and the Ten Commandments emblazoned on them; inside the courtroom, Moses overlooks the bench at which the Justices of the Supreme Court sit; there are bible verses all over government buildings in Washington (but, no detail about which buildings and which verses,) a “quote” from James Madison that this country was founded on the principles of the Ten Commandments, that Patrick Henry stated that these United States were founded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that fifty-two of the fifty-five “founders” (which is a typo; they are called “framers,”) of the Constitution were “members of established orthodox churches,” that Thomas Jefferson was afraid that the courts would begin making law instead of interpreting law, that the first Supreme Court Justice John Jay said that “Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rules”
The point of this email is that the United States is a nation founded on Christian (not to say Catholic) principles, and that any effort to turn away from those principles is to turn against the United States itself. With a little dig on activist judges thrown in. The entire email was presented with “agree or delete” as the subject line, as if one was to state that one is a patriot or anti-American based on the content of the email.
I just love emails that have some negative hook in them; I normally hit “reply all,” and send back a torrent of facts and history that utterly disproves such nonsense, except in the cases of some “angel” coming to visit me in an email that will pester me with bad luck and even more hair in my ears if I don’t IMMEDIATELY send it to the next 643 people in my address book WITHIN THE NEXT TWO MINUTES.
I digress. And, I am made crazy by people who choose not to think.
With respect to the inclusion of Moses and the Ten Commandments on the Supreme Court building of the United States, and with deep appreciation for snopes.com:
Weinman's training emphasized a correlation between the sculptural subject and the function of the building and, because of this, [architect Cass] Gilbert relied on him to choose the subjects and figures that best reflected the function of the Supreme Court building. Faithful to classical sources, Weinman designed for the Courtroom friezes a procession of "great lawgivers of history," from many civilizations, to portray the development of secular law.
Thus, Moses’ appearance in the structure of the building is part of a THEME of great lawgivers, which includes CHINESE people, and GREEK people. This entire line of reasoning fails utterly.
Next point - James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of Our Constitution" made the following statement "We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
So, we get to the dead LAST assertion of this long email of made-up nonsense before we get to a single point that has a shred of validity. Not that it’s true, nor that it supports the argument advanced, just that it has a modicum of truth to it. It’s just taken out of context. And people say that the liberal “bias” media is a new thing.
While we’re here, let’s take up a few more favorites in the “hit parade” that is the lunacy asserting assailment against God and Christianity in this country.
The pledge of allegiance contains the phrase “under God,” which was a late add-on to a school statement written in celebration of the 400th of the discovery of America by Columbus. On Flag Day June 14, 1954, the words “under God” were added. This to assuage the McCarthyists, who were running rampant over our nation’s Bill of Rights. Read the original words of the pledge, and its three recorded changes here:
http://www.flagday.org/Pages/StoryofPledge.html
How about “In God We Trust” on our coin and currency? From the US Mint’s website:
From Treasury Department records it appears that the first suggestion that God be recognized on U.S. coinage can be traced to a letter addressed to the Secretary of Treasury from a minister in 1861. An Act of Congress, approved on April 11, 1864, authorized the coinage of two-cent coins upon which the motto first appeared.
The motto was omitted from the new gold coins issued in 1907, causing a storm of public criticism. As a result, legislation passed in May 1908 made "In God We Trust" mandatory on all coins on which it had previously appeared.
Legislation approved July 11, 1955, made the appearance of "In God We Trust" mandatory on all coins and paper currency of the United States. By Act of July 30, 1956, "In God We Trust" became the national motto of the United States.
Several years ago, the appearance of "In God We Trust" on our money was challenged in the federal courts. The challenge was rejected by the lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of the United States declined to review the case.
Thus, it’s only been since (gasps) the MCCARTHY time that “In God We Trust” appeared on currency, and on coins the face of which had not been previously marred by a violation of the establishment clause. One Hundred Seventy-One years of observance of the United States Constitution, followed by Fifty-One years of its violation in response to an unfounded scare tactic deployed by an otherwise irrelevant and unaccomplished bully who never once proved that a single Communist occupied a position of authority or power in Washington. Can you say “Al-Qaeda?”
There is no mention of God or Jesus Christ in the United States Constitution. There is but one mention of “God” in the Declaration of Independence. The Founding Fathers were quite openly Deists, not traditional Christians. The United States was founded on principles that were intended and designed to prevent the religious persecutions that had been so recently experienced in England and France. The whole line of reasoning is utter nonsense (I felt like using a much stronger word here, but knowing that a lot of people are going to read this caused me to temper my typing.)
Now, I’m going to REALLY spin you.
These Ten Commandments – how confident are you IN them? The Bible itself, and the various VERSIONS of the bible are inconsistent with what the Commandments are, and in which order they appear. If they were the word of God, then, shouldn’t we be using the word of God delivered to his Servant closest in time to the actual telling? Not the modified versions presented by the later interpreters of God’s word? What if what we think of as the Ten Commandments aren’t really the Ten Commandments at all?
Which Ten Commandments?
Positive Atheism Magazine www.PositiveAtheism.org
The Second Tables
of Stone (Ex. 34)
(“the words that were on the first”)
1. Thou shalt worship no other god (For the Lord is a jealous god).
2. Thou shalt make thee no
molten gods.
3. The feast of unleavened
bread shalt thou keep in the
month when the ear is on the
corn.
4. All the first-born are mine.
5. Six days shalt thou work,
but on the seventh thou shalt
rest.
6. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, even of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.
7. Thou shalt not offer the
blood of my sacrifice with
leavened bread.
8. The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the
morning.
9. The first of the first fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring
unto the house of the Lord thy God.
10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
K. Budde, History of Ancient Hebrew Literature
The First Tables
of Stone (Ex. 20)
(later smashed by Moses)
1. I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the
land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for
yourself a graven image. You
shall not bow down to them or serve them.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your
mother.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit
adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false
witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet.
Adapted from Microsoft Bookshelf 98
Ten Punishments
1. He that sacrificeth
unto any god, save unto the
Lord only, he shall be utterly
destroyed.
2. And he that blasphemeth
the name of the Lord,
he shall surely be put to death.
3. Whosoever doeth
any work in the Sabbath day,
he shall surely be put to death.
4. He that smiteth his
father, or his mother, shall be
surely put to death.
5. He that curseth his
father or his mother, shall surely be put to death.
6. Whosoever lieth
with a beast shall surely be put to death.
7. If a man lie with
mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death.
8. And the man that
committeth adultery with another man’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.
9. He that believeth
not, shall be damned.
10. And now, O ye
priests, this commandment is
for you. If you will not hear,
and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name,...behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.
Jyoti Shankar, Bubbles Online Magazine
So, which is it? None of these look too familiar – especially since none of them represent the Bill of Rights as it’s honored in our Supreme Court building. (sorry, I just couldn’t HELP myself.)
Let’s talk for a moment about the Founding Fathers.
The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy."-George Washington
"The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels."-The Rev. Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister and historian (lamented in an 1831 sermon)
So, if Rev. Bird Wilson, so close in time to our Founding Fathers, spoke of them as Infidels (meaning, that they were without God,) how can we NOW be parroting their virtue as good Christians, who intended that we all of us pray in schools, at government meetings and be good little believers in the Ten Commandments? It’s inconsistent.
Following are a number of quotes from the most famous “Founders” of our Constitution
(I just can’t help myself – if someone’s going to get all worked up and write this crap, can they at least use the correct terminology?)
Read ‘em and weep, Commandment Slaves –
George Washington
George Washington to Tench Tilghman, (March 24, 1784):"I am a good deal in want of a House Joiner and Bricklayer, (who really understand their profession) and you would do me a favor by purchasing one of each, for me. I would not confine you to Palatines. If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, Jews or Christian of an Sect, or they may be Atheists."
John Adams
From a letter to Charles Cushing (October 19, 1756):“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’”
A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787–88:“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. … It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [forming the U.S. government] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. …Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery… are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind”
Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11: Written during the Administration of George Washington and signed into law by John Adams.
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, (July 16, 1814):"Cabalistic Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires."
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, August 10, 1787"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moore, August 14, 1800"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law, & ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man. They are still so in many countries & even in some of these United States. Even in 1783, we doubted the stability of our recent measures for reducing them to the footing of other useful callings. It now appears that our means were effectual."
Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800“[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”
Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801, First Inaugural Address"And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803"I will never, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, January 19, 1810"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."
Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own”
Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, January 10, 1816"You judge truly that I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying & slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West, and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance of those on whom their interested duperies were to be plaid off. Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develope itself. If it does, they excite against it the public opinion which they command, & by little, but incessant and teasing persecutions, drive it from among them. Their present emigrations to the Western country are real flights from persecution, religious & political, but the abandonment of the country by those who wish to enjoy freedom of opinion leaves the despotism over the residue more intense, more oppressive. They are now looking to the flesh pots of the South and aiming at foothold there by their missionary teachers. They have lately come forward boldly with their plan to establish " a qualified religious instructor over every thousand souls in the US." And they seem to consider none as qualified but their own sect."
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, May 5, 1817"I had believed that [Connecticut was] the last retreat of monkish darkness, bigotry, and abhorrence of those advances of the mind which had carried the other States a century ahead of them. ... I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character. If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, 'that this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.'
Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823"One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
Jefferson's Autobiography“[A]n amendment was proposed by inserting ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that [the preamble] should read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion’; the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination”
James Madison
Letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774:"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise"
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Section 7, 1785:“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”
Ibid, Section 8:“What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries”
James Madison, introducing the Bill of Rights at the First Federal Congress, Congressional Register, June 8, 1789:"[The] civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed."
James Madison, Detached Memoranda, believed to have been written circa 1817."The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship against the members whose creeds and consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics and Quakers who have always had members in one or both of the Legislative branches. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the evil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers. or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor."
James Madison, letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819"The Civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State."
James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822:"I observe with particular pleasure the view you have taken of the immunity of Religion from civil jurisdiction, in every case where it does not trespass on private rights or the public peace. This has always been a favorite principle with me; and it was not with my approbation, that the deviation from it took place in Cong[ress], when they appointed Chaplains, to be paid from the Nat[ional] Treasury. It would have been a much better proof to their Constituents of their pious feeling if the members had contributed for the purpose, a pittance from their own pockets. As the precedent is not likely to be rescinded, the best that can now be done, may be to apply to the Const[itution] the maxim of the law, de minimis non curat."
Benjamin Franklin
From Franklin’s autobiography:“Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself ”
“...Some books against Deism fell into my hands....It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”
Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin: London, 1757 - 1775"If we look back into history for the character of present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England, blamed persecution in the Roman church, but practised it against the Puritans: these found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England."
Ethan Allen
From Religion of the American Enlightenment:“Denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.”
From "Reason: The Only Oracle of Man""Though 'none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection,' yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of."
Thomas Paine
Excerpts from The Age of Reason:
"My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
"Whenever we read the obscene stores (of the Bible), the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the Word of God."
"...when I see throughout the greater part of this book (the Bible) scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by calling it by His name."
"(The Christian) despises the choicest gift of God to man, the Gift of Reason; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls if 'human reason' as if man could give reason to himself."
“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity”
Thomas Paine, Answers to Friends regarding The Age of Reason, Paris, May 12, 1797
"As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible is not the Word of God, that it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask you your reasons for believing the contrary; but I know you can give me none, except that you were educated to believe the Bible; and as the Turks give the same reason for believing the Koran, it is evident that education makes all the difference, and that reason and truth have nothing to do in the case. You believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the Turks believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other infidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case, the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or from the New."
"It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say, the Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet, do you believe that too? No. Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it; and so because you do, and because you don't is all the reason you can give for believing or disbelieving except that you will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor?"
If you’re read this far – I applaud your interest in expanding your knowledge. And, I have a question for you:
If the Founding Fathers of our Country felt that Christianity was a dangerous thing that MUST be kept out of government, then, aren’t the “Strict Constructionist” judges like Scalia, Alito, and Thomas who are trying to force this crap down our throats the “Activist Judges” that Jefferson warned us about?
Sometimes, an email that is received provokes a need to respond with great depth – it challenges the soul and calls forth the truth, rather than just an unwitting “me too.” That was my reaction this morning, when I received an email from a friend which was, I can only assume, meant with all good intentions to continue and ongoing, friendly debate about government.
In essence, this email purported to represent that the United States is a nation founded and built on the principles of the Christian (not Catholic) faith. The salient elements of the email are:
The steps to the Supreme Court, and the doors to the main courtroom of the Supreme Court building have Moses and the Ten Commandments emblazoned on them; inside the courtroom, Moses overlooks the bench at which the Justices of the Supreme Court sit; there are bible verses all over government buildings in Washington (but, no detail about which buildings and which verses,) a “quote” from James Madison that this country was founded on the principles of the Ten Commandments, that Patrick Henry stated that these United States were founded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that fifty-two of the fifty-five “founders” (which is a typo; they are called “framers,”) of the Constitution were “members of established orthodox churches,” that Thomas Jefferson was afraid that the courts would begin making law instead of interpreting law, that the first Supreme Court Justice John Jay said that “Americans should select and prefer Christians as their rules”
The point of this email is that the United States is a nation founded on Christian (not to say Catholic) principles, and that any effort to turn away from those principles is to turn against the United States itself. With a little dig on activist judges thrown in. The entire email was presented with “agree or delete” as the subject line, as if one was to state that one is a patriot or anti-American based on the content of the email.
I just love emails that have some negative hook in them; I normally hit “reply all,” and send back a torrent of facts and history that utterly disproves such nonsense, except in the cases of some “angel” coming to visit me in an email that will pester me with bad luck and even more hair in my ears if I don’t IMMEDIATELY send it to the next 643 people in my address book WITHIN THE NEXT TWO MINUTES.
I digress. And, I am made crazy by people who choose not to think.
With respect to the inclusion of Moses and the Ten Commandments on the Supreme Court building of the United States, and with deep appreciation for snopes.com:
- The United States Capitol does not house the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court has met in its own building since 1935.
- The Supreme Court building was constructed in 1932 through 1935; more than 151 years after the “founders” (sorry, I just couldn’t help myself) of the Consititution wrote that learned document. http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc78.htm
- Thinking that the predecessor building may have also contained such religious icons lionizing Moses and the Commandments? Think again: Since no provision had been made for a Supreme Court building, Congress lent the Court space in the new Capitol building. The Court convened for a short period in a private home after the British had used Supreme Court documents to set fire to the Capitol during the War of 1812. Following this episode, the Court returned to the Capitol and met from 1819 to 1860 in a chamber that has been restored as the Old Supreme Court Chamber. Then from 1860 to 1935, the Court sat in what is now known as the Old Senate Chamber.
- Capping the entrance is the pediment filled with a sculpture group by Robert Aitken, representing Liberty Enthroned Guarded by Order and Authority. NOT Moses.
- Cast in bronze, the west entrance doors sculpted by John Donnelly, Jr., depict historic scenes in the development of the law. NOT Moses.
- The doors of the Supreme Court courtroom don't literally have the "Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion" — the lower portions of the two doors are engraved with a symbolic depiction, two tablets bearing only the Roman numerals I through V and VI through X. As discussed in the next item, these symbols can represent something other than the Ten Commandments.
Weinman's training emphasized a correlation between the sculptural subject and the function of the building and, because of this, [architect Cass] Gilbert relied on him to choose the subjects and figures that best reflected the function of the Supreme Court building. Faithful to classical sources, Weinman designed for the Courtroom friezes a procession of "great lawgivers of history," from many civilizations, to portray the development of secular law.
- Note that Moses is not given any special emphasis in this depiction: his figure is not larger than the others, nor does it appear in a dominant position. Also, the writing on the tablet carried by Moses in this frieze includes portions of commandments 6 through 10 (in Hebrew), specifically chosen because they are not inherently religious. (Commandments 6 through 10 proscribe murder, adultery, theft, perjury, and covetousness.)
- The wall "right above where the Supreme Court judges sit" is the east wall, on which is displayed a frieze designed by sculptor Adolph A. Weinman. The frieze features two male figures who represent the Majesty of Law and the Power of Government, flanked on the left side by a group of figures representing Wisdom, and on the right side by a group of figures representing Justice. According to Weinman, the designer of this frieze, the tablet visible between the two central male figures, engraved with the Roman numerals I through X, represents not the Ten Commandments but the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights.
Thus, Moses’ appearance in the structure of the building is part of a THEME of great lawgivers, which includes CHINESE people, and GREEK people. This entire line of reasoning fails utterly.
Next point - James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of Our Constitution" made the following statement "We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
- Actually, this statement appears nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of James Madison and is completely contradictory to his character as a strong proponent of the separation of church and state.
- Another spurious quotation. These words appear nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of Patrick Henry.
- Congress has indeed retained paid (Christian) chaplains since 1789 (not 1777) to open sessions with prayer and to provide spiritual guidance to members and their staffs upon request. This practice was strongly opposed by James Madison at its inception.
- The constitutional propriety of Congressional chaplains has been challenged in an August 2002 lawsuit filed in federal district court by Michael A. Newdow (the California man who won a federal appellate court decision against the use of the phrase "under God" in public school-led recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance). The case is still pending.
- The diverse beliefs and religiosity of America's founding fathers is a complex subject, one which cannot be so neatly encapsulated by an (inadequately substantiated) statement such as the one quoted above. (See, for example, this critique of the above-quoted statement and similar material.)
- Yes, Thomas Jefferson was concerned about courts overstepping their authority and making (rather than interpreting) law, as was James Madison, who said: "As the courts are generally the last in making the decision, it results to them, by refusing or not refusing to execute a law, to stamp it with its final character. This makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended, and can never be proper." However, this issue really has nothing to do with the subject at hand (the endorsement of Judeo-Christian tradition by the federal government), other than in the tangential sense that some people feel one of the areas in which U.S. courts have overstepped their bounds is the body of decisions prohibiting the use or display of religious symbols and references in state-operated institutions.
- John Jay, one of the framers of the Constitution, was appointed by George Washington in 1789 to be the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (and later served two terms as governor of New York). He wrote, in a private letter (1797) to clergyman Jedidiah Morse:
So, we get to the dead LAST assertion of this long email of made-up nonsense before we get to a single point that has a shred of validity. Not that it’s true, nor that it supports the argument advanced, just that it has a modicum of truth to it. It’s just taken out of context. And people say that the liberal “bias” media is a new thing.
While we’re here, let’s take up a few more favorites in the “hit parade” that is the lunacy asserting assailment against God and Christianity in this country.
The pledge of allegiance contains the phrase “under God,” which was a late add-on to a school statement written in celebration of the 400th of the discovery of America by Columbus. On Flag Day June 14, 1954, the words “under God” were added. This to assuage the McCarthyists, who were running rampant over our nation’s Bill of Rights. Read the original words of the pledge, and its three recorded changes here:
http://www.flagday.org/Pages/StoryofPledge.html
How about “In God We Trust” on our coin and currency? From the US Mint’s website:
From Treasury Department records it appears that the first suggestion that God be recognized on U.S. coinage can be traced to a letter addressed to the Secretary of Treasury from a minister in 1861. An Act of Congress, approved on April 11, 1864, authorized the coinage of two-cent coins upon which the motto first appeared.
The motto was omitted from the new gold coins issued in 1907, causing a storm of public criticism. As a result, legislation passed in May 1908 made "In God We Trust" mandatory on all coins on which it had previously appeared.
Legislation approved July 11, 1955, made the appearance of "In God We Trust" mandatory on all coins and paper currency of the United States. By Act of July 30, 1956, "In God We Trust" became the national motto of the United States.
Several years ago, the appearance of "In God We Trust" on our money was challenged in the federal courts. The challenge was rejected by the lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court of the United States declined to review the case.
Thus, it’s only been since (gasps) the MCCARTHY time that “In God We Trust” appeared on currency, and on coins the face of which had not been previously marred by a violation of the establishment clause. One Hundred Seventy-One years of observance of the United States Constitution, followed by Fifty-One years of its violation in response to an unfounded scare tactic deployed by an otherwise irrelevant and unaccomplished bully who never once proved that a single Communist occupied a position of authority or power in Washington. Can you say “Al-Qaeda?”
There is no mention of God or Jesus Christ in the United States Constitution. There is but one mention of “God” in the Declaration of Independence. The Founding Fathers were quite openly Deists, not traditional Christians. The United States was founded on principles that were intended and designed to prevent the religious persecutions that had been so recently experienced in England and France. The whole line of reasoning is utter nonsense (I felt like using a much stronger word here, but knowing that a lot of people are going to read this caused me to temper my typing.)
Now, I’m going to REALLY spin you.
These Ten Commandments – how confident are you IN them? The Bible itself, and the various VERSIONS of the bible are inconsistent with what the Commandments are, and in which order they appear. If they were the word of God, then, shouldn’t we be using the word of God delivered to his Servant closest in time to the actual telling? Not the modified versions presented by the later interpreters of God’s word? What if what we think of as the Ten Commandments aren’t really the Ten Commandments at all?
Which Ten Commandments?
Positive Atheism Magazine www.PositiveAtheism.org
The Second Tables
of Stone (Ex. 34)
(“the words that were on the first”)
1. Thou shalt worship no other god (For the Lord is a jealous god).
2. Thou shalt make thee no
molten gods.
3. The feast of unleavened
bread shalt thou keep in the
month when the ear is on the
corn.
4. All the first-born are mine.
5. Six days shalt thou work,
but on the seventh thou shalt
rest.
6. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, even of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.
7. Thou shalt not offer the
blood of my sacrifice with
leavened bread.
8. The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the
morning.
9. The first of the first fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring
unto the house of the Lord thy God.
10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
K. Budde, History of Ancient Hebrew Literature
The First Tables
of Stone (Ex. 20)
(later smashed by Moses)
1. I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the
land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for
yourself a graven image. You
shall not bow down to them or serve them.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your
mother.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit
adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false
witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet.
Adapted from Microsoft Bookshelf 98
Ten Punishments
1. He that sacrificeth
unto any god, save unto the
Lord only, he shall be utterly
destroyed.
2. And he that blasphemeth
the name of the Lord,
he shall surely be put to death.
3. Whosoever doeth
any work in the Sabbath day,
he shall surely be put to death.
4. He that smiteth his
father, or his mother, shall be
surely put to death.
5. He that curseth his
father or his mother, shall surely be put to death.
6. Whosoever lieth
with a beast shall surely be put to death.
7. If a man lie with
mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death.
8. And the man that
committeth adultery with another man’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.
9. He that believeth
not, shall be damned.
10. And now, O ye
priests, this commandment is
for you. If you will not hear,
and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name,...behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.
Jyoti Shankar, Bubbles Online Magazine
So, which is it? None of these look too familiar – especially since none of them represent the Bill of Rights as it’s honored in our Supreme Court building. (sorry, I just couldn’t HELP myself.)
Let’s talk for a moment about the Founding Fathers.
The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy."-George Washington
"The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels."-The Rev. Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister and historian (lamented in an 1831 sermon)
So, if Rev. Bird Wilson, so close in time to our Founding Fathers, spoke of them as Infidels (meaning, that they were without God,) how can we NOW be parroting their virtue as good Christians, who intended that we all of us pray in schools, at government meetings and be good little believers in the Ten Commandments? It’s inconsistent.
Following are a number of quotes from the most famous “Founders” of our Constitution
(I just can’t help myself – if someone’s going to get all worked up and write this crap, can they at least use the correct terminology?)
Read ‘em and weep, Commandment Slaves –
George Washington
George Washington to Tench Tilghman, (March 24, 1784):"I am a good deal in want of a House Joiner and Bricklayer, (who really understand their profession) and you would do me a favor by purchasing one of each, for me. I would not confine you to Palatines. If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, Jews or Christian of an Sect, or they may be Atheists."
John Adams
From a letter to Charles Cushing (October 19, 1756):“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’”
A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787–88:“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. … It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [forming the U.S. government] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. …Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery… are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind”
Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11: Written during the Administration of George Washington and signed into law by John Adams.
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, (July 16, 1814):"Cabalistic Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires."
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, August 10, 1787"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moore, August 14, 1800"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law, & ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man. They are still so in many countries & even in some of these United States. Even in 1783, we doubted the stability of our recent measures for reducing them to the footing of other useful callings. It now appears that our means were effectual."
Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800“[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”
Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801, First Inaugural Address"And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803"I will never, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, January 19, 1810"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State."
Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own”
Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, January 10, 1816"You judge truly that I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying & slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West, and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance of those on whom their interested duperies were to be plaid off. Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develope itself. If it does, they excite against it the public opinion which they command, & by little, but incessant and teasing persecutions, drive it from among them. Their present emigrations to the Western country are real flights from persecution, religious & political, but the abandonment of the country by those who wish to enjoy freedom of opinion leaves the despotism over the residue more intense, more oppressive. They are now looking to the flesh pots of the South and aiming at foothold there by their missionary teachers. They have lately come forward boldly with their plan to establish " a qualified religious instructor over every thousand souls in the US." And they seem to consider none as qualified but their own sect."
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, May 5, 1817"I had believed that [Connecticut was] the last retreat of monkish darkness, bigotry, and abhorrence of those advances of the mind which had carried the other States a century ahead of them. ... I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character. If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, 'that this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.'
Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823"One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
Jefferson's Autobiography“[A]n amendment was proposed by inserting ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that [the preamble] should read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion’; the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination”
James Madison
Letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774:"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise"
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Section 7, 1785:“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”
Ibid, Section 8:“What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries”
James Madison, introducing the Bill of Rights at the First Federal Congress, Congressional Register, June 8, 1789:"[The] civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed."
James Madison, Detached Memoranda, believed to have been written circa 1817."The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship against the members whose creeds and consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics and Quakers who have always had members in one or both of the Legislative branches. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the evil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers. or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor."
James Madison, letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819"The Civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State."
James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822:"I observe with particular pleasure the view you have taken of the immunity of Religion from civil jurisdiction, in every case where it does not trespass on private rights or the public peace. This has always been a favorite principle with me; and it was not with my approbation, that the deviation from it took place in Cong[ress], when they appointed Chaplains, to be paid from the Nat[ional] Treasury. It would have been a much better proof to their Constituents of their pious feeling if the members had contributed for the purpose, a pittance from their own pockets. As the precedent is not likely to be rescinded, the best that can now be done, may be to apply to the Const[itution] the maxim of the law, de minimis non curat."
Benjamin Franklin
From Franklin’s autobiography:“Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself ”
“...Some books against Deism fell into my hands....It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”
Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin: London, 1757 - 1775"If we look back into history for the character of present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practised it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England, blamed persecution in the Roman church, but practised it against the Puritans: these found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England."
Ethan Allen
From Religion of the American Enlightenment:“Denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.”
From "Reason: The Only Oracle of Man""Though 'none by searching can find out God, or the Almighty to perfection,' yet I am persuaded, that if mankind would dare to exercise their reason as freely on those divine topics as they do in the common concerns of life, they would, in a great measure, rid themselves of their blindness and superstition, gain more exalted ideas of God and their obligations to him and one another, and be proportionally delighted and blessed with the views of his moral government, make better members of society, and acquire, manly powerful incentives to the practice of morality, which is the last and greatest perfection that human nature is capable of."
Thomas Paine
Excerpts from The Age of Reason:
"My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
"Whenever we read the obscene stores (of the Bible), the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the Word of God."
"...when I see throughout the greater part of this book (the Bible) scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by calling it by His name."
"(The Christian) despises the choicest gift of God to man, the Gift of Reason; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls if 'human reason' as if man could give reason to himself."
“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity”
Thomas Paine, Answers to Friends regarding The Age of Reason, Paris, May 12, 1797
"As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible is not the Word of God, that it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask you your reasons for believing the contrary; but I know you can give me none, except that you were educated to believe the Bible; and as the Turks give the same reason for believing the Koran, it is evident that education makes all the difference, and that reason and truth have nothing to do in the case. You believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the Turks believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other infidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case, the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or from the New."
"It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say, the Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet, do you believe that too? No. Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it; and so because you do, and because you don't is all the reason you can give for believing or disbelieving except that you will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor?"
If you’re read this far – I applaud your interest in expanding your knowledge. And, I have a question for you:
If the Founding Fathers of our Country felt that Christianity was a dangerous thing that MUST be kept out of government, then, aren’t the “Strict Constructionist” judges like Scalia, Alito, and Thomas who are trying to force this crap down our throats the “Activist Judges” that Jefferson warned us about?
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