Text 17429, 223 rader
Skriven 2006-01-19 11:15:00 av TIM RICHARDSON (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av JEFF BINKLEY
Ärende: E-Voting
================
On 01-18-06, JEFF BINKLEY said to VERN HUMPHREY:


VH>EH>That's all they have. They wonder why they lose. They think that
VH>EH>their "message" is so wonderful that no one could be against it.
VH>EH>So, it has to be 'voter fraud.'


VH>"I don't understand it.  We've betrayed the country, aided the enemy,
VH>tried to raise taxes, called the average voter seventeen kinds of a
VH>Son-of-a-Bitch, and they STILL won't vote for us." :-)


JB>Well put.  At some point the average voter gets tired of the left
JB>calling them "stupid".



06-01 Digest


TOP OF THE FOLD


Bug 'em and bag 'em!


Eight months after George W. Bush was sworn in as our 43rd President,
al-Qa'ida terrorists, under the direction Osama bin Laden, hijacked four
commercial jets and used them to kill almost 3,000 of our countrymen, all of
them noncombatants in a decades-old asymmetric war between Islamofascists and
liberty.


Three days after that bloodshed, the U.S. Senate and House voted 98-0 and
420-1, respectively, to authorize the President by war resolution "to use all
necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or
persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist
attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or
persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism
against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."


Bin Laden and his terrorist cadre planned the 9/11 attack during the last
three years of Bill and Hillary Clinton's regime, training the cell leaders
and pre-positioning assets in the U.S. Bin Laden's actions were largely
unabated by the Clinton administration, which was more interested in sending
thousands of federal agents to search for a lone abortion-clinic bomber in the
mountains of North Carolina than killing or capturing Osama. Eric Rudolph was
a much more politically attractive target than Bin Laden back in 1998.

Unfortunately, Rudolph evaded capture during that two-year manhunt. In the
same time period, the CIA and military had several opportunities to take clear
shots at Osamaâ€öbut Clinton declined.


Fortunately, since 9/11, there have been no "future acts of international
terrorism against the United States," in large measure because of the vision
and determination of President Bush to implement his Doctrine of Preemption.

Mr. Bush and our Allies dispatched the best fighting forces on earth, to
Afghanistan, Iraq and other locations undisclosed, in an effort to take the
fight to the enemyâ€öthe only way to prevail in The Long War against an
asymmetric threat, particularly in the nuclear age.


Terrorists have not been able to strike again, but there have been plenty of
acts of treason against the United States, most of which have been led by
political opportunists like Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin, John Kerry, Chuck
Schumer, et al.


Insisting they "support our troops," these consummate leftists have emboldened
the enemy by attacking our troops' Commander in Chief, with the insalubrious
goal of gaining political ground. In other words, key Democrats are willing to
use the lives of America's Armed Forces for nothing more than campaign fodder,
going into midterm elections.


The Left's labors to undermine the administration's effort to protect the U.S.
from a catastrophic WMD attack know no bounds.


In recent weeks, the Left attempted to derail the reauthorization of the USA
Patriot Act. As you know, first and foremost, the Patriot Act removes most of
the legal and bureaucratic barriers preventing law enforcement and
intelligence authorities from sharing vital information about terrorists and
terrorist organizations targeting the U.S. and our citizens around the world.


Implementation of the Patriot Act has, according to well placed intelligence
sources, resulted in the prevention of significant terrorist acts on U.S.
soil, including two interdictions of WMD, one of those being nuclear WMD. (For
more details on the latter, see next week's edition.)


As the debate about Patriot Act reauthorization got underway in mid-December,
it became clear that Democrats are making "privacy" a central theme of their
midterm-election campaigns. Concurrent with that debate, but hardly
coincidental, on 16 December The New York Times published a front-page story
accusing President Bush of using the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens without a
court order. As you now know, the story detailed how the National Security
Agency targeted certain communications between known international terrorists
and their U.S. counterparts or supporters.


Of course, the timing of the story not only bolstered the Democrats' privacy
complaints against the Patriot Act, but it was dropped the same week Time's
reporter James Risen released his book ostensibly detailing all kinds of
Patriot Act abuses.


The New York Times knew a year ago that President Bush violated no laws
related to NSA surveillance.


The Times and all their follow-up media claim their articles are "in the
national interest" â€öto determine if President Bush has broken any laws
authorizing the NSA surveillance. However, The Times had already determined, a
year earlier when information about the NSA's surveillance program was first
leaked, that President Bush had not violated any laws related to procedures
outlined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The President's
actions were fully within his prescribed constitutional authority.


"The Constitution vests in the president inherent authority to conduct
warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign
powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that
constitutional authority," wrote Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2002.
General Ashcroft's opinion was similar to that of previous administrations.


Back in 1994, after the first attack on the World Trade Center by Islamists,
Clinton's Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick argued, "The Department of
Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent
authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence
purposes and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority
to the Attorney General."


The only law that has been broken pertains to the illegal release of
national-security information.


In fact, the only law that has been broken in regard to the NSA's activity is
U.S. Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, Section 798, pertaining to the illegal
release of national-security information.


Ironically, when former CIA case officer Valerie Plame was identified by the
press as being with the CIA last year, Democrats were in full protest,
accusing the Bush administration of disclosing the information to The Times as
political retribution and calling for an independent counsel and a full
investigation.


They got that investigation, and it resulted in no criminal charges of a leak,
because Plame was not a covert officer at the time she was identified as being
with the CIA, and her name was mentioned by an administration official only
after her husband, Joe Wilson, wrote an article for The Times about his CIA
mission to determine if Iraq was procuring yellow-cake uranium from North
Africa.


The exposure of Plame's association with the CIA had exactly NO implications
or consequences for U.S. national security. However, the exposure of the NSA's
methods and capabilities in regard to intercepting communications between
terrorists targeting the U.S. has significant and immediate implications for
our national security.


Why? Well, for example, in 1998, as al-Qa'ida was preparing their 9/11 attack,
the NSA was tracking electronic communications from senior al-Qa'ida
operatives, including Osama. When that information was leaked to, and by, the
press, Osama disposed of his old satellite phone system and set up a whole
different set of communication protocols, thus eluding detection of his 9/11
plans.


The same realignment of communication protocols is now taking place as a
result of The Times NSA disclosure.


"It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in
a time of war." â€öPresident Bush


"Our enemies have learned information they should not have," said President
Bush this week. "The unauthorized disclosure of this [NSA] effort damages our
national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified
information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country... It was
a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time
of war." Treasonous, actuallyâ€öand the Justice Department will soon determine
which Democrat operative is the culprit.


More to the point, former NSA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, said last week,
"This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside
the United States." Indeed it has, as we noted above.


So where are the Democrats protesting this traitorous leakâ€öand demanding
investigations? Don't hold your breath... Ironically, the Democrats have made
"intelligence failures" the staple of their criticism of Operation Iraqi
Freedom. Now they seem determined to ensure intelligence failures.


As for The New York Times, to date, it has not even answered its own
ombudsman's inquiry about the timing of its 16 December article. Not to be
outdone by The Times, national media outlets have, in the last two weeks,
published irresponsible headline stories on other intelligence methods,
including secret U.S. detention centers for captured terrorists around the
world and technology used in major cities to detect transit of fissile
material.





---
*Durango b301 #PE* Ex abundancia cordis, os loquitor - From the abundance of
the heart
 * Origin: Try Our Web Based QWK: DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)