Organizing Notes

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....

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Location: Brunswick, ME, United States

The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. We must all do more to help stop this western corporate arrogance that puts the future generations lives in despair. @BruceKGagnon

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

HOUSE BLOCKS PARTS OF PATRIOT ACT EXTENSION

The House GOP leadership allowed only 40 minutes of debate on the extension of certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act today, and brought the bill up for a vote under a rule allowing no amendments and requiring two-thirds of the body to vote YES in order for it to pass.

The House measure which was sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) failed on a 277-to-148 vote. Twenty-six Republicans voted with 122 Democrats to oppose the measure, while 67 Democrats voted with 210 Republicans to back it. Ten members did not vote.

The measure would have extended three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire on Monday, Feb. 28, unless Congress moves to reauthorize them. One of the provisions authorizes the FBI to continue using roving wiretaps on surveillance targets; the second allows the government to access “any tangible items,” such as library records, in the course of surveillance; and the third is a “lone wolf” provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act that allows for the surveillance of targets who are not connected to an identified terrorist group

Republican leaders vow to bring it up again soon to try to pass these key provisions. Some of the new Tea Party Repubs in the House helped defeat these provisions indicating they might follow the Ron Paul libertarian line on these issues.

Here are those that voted No.

Amash
Andrews
Baldwin
Bartlett
Bass (CA)
Becerra
Berman
Bishop (UT)
Blumenauer
Brady (PA)
Braley (IA)
Broun (GA)
Brown (FL)
Campbell
Capps
Capuano
Carson (IN)
Chu
Cicilline
Clarke (MI)
Clarke (NY)
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Conyers
Costello
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
DeLauro
Deutch
Dingell
Doggett
Doyle
Duncan (TN)
Edwards
Ellison
Engel
Eshoo
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Fitzpatrick
Frank (MA)
Fudge
Garamendi
Gibson
Gonzalez
Graves (GA)
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Hanabusa
Heller
Himes
Hinchey
Hirono
Holt
Honda
Hultgren
Jackson (IL)
Jackson Lee (TX)
Johnson (GA)
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones
Kaptur
Kildee
Kingston
Kucinich
Labrador
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Loebsack
Lofgren, Zoe
Luján
Mack
Maloney
Marchant
Markey
Matsui
McClintock
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Meeks
Michaud
Miller, George
Moore
Moran
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Olver
Owens
Pallone
Pastor (AZ)
Paul
Payne
Pelosi
Pingree (ME)
Polis
Price (NC)
Rangel
Rehberg
Richardson
Richmond
Roe (TN)
Rohrabacher
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schilling
Schrader
Schweikert
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sherman
Slaughter
Stark
Sutton
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Tonko
Towns
Velázquez
Visclosky
Walz (MN)
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Weiner
Welch
Wilson (FL)
Woodall
Woolsey
Wu
Young (AK)

11 Comments:

Anonymous Ray Moore said...

It has been said that the constitution is not a suicide pact, maybe these folks should be reminded of that.

2/9/11, 8:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is good, but it just proves that 277 still don't get it or are idiots.

2/9/11, 11:42 AM  
Anonymous Brother Jonah said...

Without Rule of Law, all you have is Rule.
And you won't get to choose who wields that Rule. It was the Bush administration who declared openly that the government being made to obey the Constitution was suicidal. That torture and murder and publicly funded illegal wars of Private Conquest were all acceptable and any Constitutional restrictions or prohibitions of those crimes should be ignored.

They gambled that they could consolidate the Empire into a global power for a century or more to come, before being reined in by the people and by the utter economic destruction their policies would bring.

They lost.The full scope of their defeat hasn't yet been accomplished, but it's coming down, and coming hard.
If you know how to organize, organize people who will stand against dictatorship, and if you're willing, add a prayer as well.

I noticed one TeaBag name absent, Doug Lamborn, an Imperialist Fascist in Constitutionalist clothing. Even part owner and contributing editor for a newspooper put out by the TeaTards called "The Constitutionalist".

2/9/11, 5:35 PM  
Anonymous Ray Moore said...

Jefferson offered one of the earliest formulations of the sentiment, although not of the phrase. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson's ambassadors to France arranged the purchase of the Louisiana territory in conflict with Jefferson's personal belief that the Constitution did not bestow upon the federal government the right to acquire or possess foreign territory. Due to political considerations, however, Jefferson disregarded his constitutional doubts, signed the proposed treaty, and sent it to the Senate for ratification. In justifying his actions, he later wrote: "[a] strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means."[1]
[edit] Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus

Under the United States Constitution, habeas corpus can be suspended pursuant to the constitution in cases of rebellion or invasion. See United States Constitution. The Confederacy was rebelling, thus suspension of habeas corpus was both legal and constitutional—but only if done by Congress, since the Constitution reserves this power under Article I, which pertains solely to congressional powers; Lincoln, meanwhile, usurped the power under his own executive order. After habeas corpus was suspended by General Winfield Scott in one theater of the Civil War in 1861, Lincoln did write that Scott "could arrest, and detain, without resort to ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to public safety." After Chief Justice Roger B. Taney attacked the president for this policy, Lincoln responded in a Special Session to Congress on July 4, 1861 that an insurrection "in nearly one-third of the States had subverted the whole of the laws . . . Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"

Later in the war, after some had criticized the arrest and detention of Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, Lincoln wrote to Erastus Corning in June 1862 that Vallandigham was arrested "because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops, to encourage desertions from the army, and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress it. . . . Must I shoot a simple-minded deserter, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?" Lincoln did not comment on the proper channels of due process regarding such "agitation."

2/11/11, 7:03 AM  
Anonymous Ray Moore said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

2/11/11, 7:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

2/11/11, 7:06 AM  
Anonymous Ray Moore said...

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2/11/11, 7:08 AM  
Anonymous Ray Moore said...

You accuse Bush of "publicly funded illegal wars". What about Vietnam and Korea, Can you say Truman or Kennedy?

2/11/11, 7:37 AM  
Anonymous Brother Jonah said...

And Eisenhower/Nixon, Dulles, Goldwater, Nixon again, Ford... You know, history. My grandpa was part of that, Eisenhower was sending "advisers" to VietNam as soon as the partition was effective.
The VietNamese didn't attack us, in the Gulf of Tonkin "incidents" the U.S. Navy attacked a North Vietnamese naval vessel, and then attacked a pair of salvage vessels trying to reclaim THEIR national property. In international waters.
But pointing out that Imperialism has been the order of the day for a LONG time, good on ye, then lad.

The War in Afghanistan and Iraq was planned and PUBLISHED by the NeoCons specifically as a war of Economic Conquest since 1992. With signatories such as Karl Rove, Bill Kristoll, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld...
And they publicly declared that they would permanently errr... "indefinitely" suspend any constitutional protections against their scheme. In order to make the U.S. economic and military Dominant (their word) for the next century.

They also said they would use any terrorist act to inflame public support of such actions. Guess when they say that Americans are stupid enough to fall for that they're right at least some of the time.
Incidentally, the Panty Bomber and the Times Square "bomb"? Staged. FAKE.

But it gets enough people afraid of the Islamic Boogieman enough to run and hide behind the Warmongers. Offer the Warmongers our national treasures, both monetary and human, even sacrificing their yet unborn grandchildren to the Military Industrial Complex<--Eisenhowers Words in the war that's scheduled to last until when? The paternalist errr "fraternalists" tell us it's OK to have freedom again?

According to their schedule, the publicly touted one, that will be only after two generations of Americans have grown up without freedom. Oh, excusez moi, "with SUSPENDED Freedoms" which our Elder Siblings will tell us when that can be done. Meanwhile, just give all your freedoms and our economy over to them because they're ever so much smarter than us.

Bush and his cronies have proven nothing of the sort. They mistake a willingness to defraud as Intellectual Superiority instead of Moral Deficiency.
Like other thieves they consider themselves so far above their victims that they're actually entitled to rob them.

2/11/11, 2:38 PM  
Anonymous Brother Jonah said...

Did condemnation of one war of conquest somehow excuse every other war of conquest?

PROVE, unequivocally, that dissent against the Wars of Conquest are actually illegal and worthy of punishment.
PROVE it.
PROVE the other statements from the cowardly pack of thieves who started the war and suspended the Constitution to do so, were actually correct.

Show us the WMDs.
I've seen the bumper stickers that say God is leading these wars,
But I'm a Christian, so I have a religious right and duty to question such asinine statements too.

Is God so weak that He would need chickenhawk scum like les freres Bush, and Rumsfeld and Rove and Cheney to LIE in order to accomplish His purpose?

Since Bush and Cheney and now Obama are the aggressors in these wars, it is not just words on paper which demand PROOF that they were right.
The Army and Air Force can't even prove, or just don't want to prove, the exact number of those who they have killed in these campaigns, or even their names, yet they insist that every one killed was an "illegal combatant".

2/11/11, 2:52 PM  
Anonymous Ray Moore said...

View more History, Politics, Society videos

Oxford Companion to US Military History:
Gulf of Tonkin Incidents
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Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > US Military History Companion

(1964)

In 1964, under OPLAN (Operations Plan) 34A, the United States was sending small vessels with Vietnamese crews into the Gulf of Tonkin on convert raids against the North Vietnamese coast. On the afternoon of 2 August, the U.S. Navy destroyer Maddox, on what was called a DeSoto patrol, was gathering various information, including electronics intelligence (elint) about the coastal radar defenses, and signals intelligence (sigint) from intercepted radio messages. North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the Maddox, unsuccessfully, near an island that had been shelled in an OPLAN 34A raid three nights before. U.S. aircraft briefly pursued the retreating torpedo boats attempting to sink them, but otherwise there was no retaliation.

A second incident was reported on the night of 4 August. The men on the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy who described torpedo boats attacking them certainly believed this at the time. Many later decided they had been shooting at ghost images on their radar. Many others who were there, and some later historians like Marolda and Fitzgerald, believe there was a genuine attack. The preponderance of the available evidence indicates there was no attack.

In retaliation for the supposed second attack, U.S. aircraft attacked North Vietnamese naval vessels at several locations along the coast 5 August, plus a fuel storage facility at Vinh. On 7 August, the House of Representatives passed 416–0, and the Senate 98–2, the so‐called Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving the President Lyndon B. Johnson a blank check for further military action in Vietnam.

[See also Commander in Chief, President as; Vietnam War, U.S. Naval Operations in the; Vietnam War: Causes.]

Bibliography

* Edward Marolda and Oscar Fitzgerald, From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959–1965, 1986.
* Edwin Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (1996)

A

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/gulf-of-tonkin-incident#ixzz1DrYN5XPn

2/13/11, 12:56 PM  

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