STEPHEN C. WEBSTER, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This is the shadow side of the Obama Administration, and it arises from the fear engendered by the Bush Administration to achieve its policies. A bureaucracy created and set in motion for one purpose develops a momentum and self-justification that makes it very difficult to kill. Its entire being is focused on striving for something, even it that something is bad. This is an example.
In the case of former National Security Agency (NSA) executive Thomas A. Drake — indicted last April and accused of funneling documents to an unnamed reporter at an unnamed newspaper, for stories that have not been identified — the president’s lawyers have made a unique and potentially unprecedented claim.
With less than a month before Drake’s trial begins, the Obama administration has filed a memo with the court claim the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) gives courts the right to censor and withhold material that is ‘unclassified.’
‘It is simply incorrect to argue that CIPA is a rigid set of procedures that precludes this Court from simultaneously considering the admissibility of classified information as well as other information, whether protected or unclassified,’ they wrote (PDF).
The argument effectively hinges on earlier court cases which interpreted CIPA as less of a rulebook for judges and more of an advisory. The president’s lawyers took that a bit further, suggesting it actually just ‘provides the tools’ needed for the judiciary to decide what information should be protected from the prying eyes of defense attorneys. They also claim the National Security Agency Act of 1959 (NSAA) allows courts to redact any and all information pertaining to the […]
No Comments
KAITLYN MOORE, - Natural News
Stephan: Please note that this piece is fully sourced and URLs are provided to back up the facts -- and we are dealing here with facts. See this as an expression of ultimate contempt by the social psychosis placing profit above all. The task of the 21st century is going to be how to permit the benefits of the profit system while, as the same time, placing human values first.
Soy, once touted as a medical miracle, has been outed. Ninety-one percent of the soy we consume is tainted by the filth of the GMO machine, literally the most quietly kept epidemic of our lifetime. Soy makes up a large portion of the diet for the chickens, pigs, and cows some of us eat. Even the vegetarian/vegan community is exposed as a number of meat substitutes list soy as a main ingredient. Soy and soybean oil have wiggled their way into a wide array of processed foods including salad dressings, peanut butter, tamari, mayonnaise, crackers, baby formula, baked good mixes, textured vegetable protein, and the list goes on. So unless you are eating an organic version of any of the above, there is a good chance you are exposing yourself to GMO soy.
Genetically engineered crops are destroying the environment, the health of indigenous communities, and ultimately our health as end of the chain consumers. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has reported a number of studies. Their results? Frightening. Think major issues like infertility (http://www.responsibletechnology.or…), immune problems, accelerated aging, and even changes in the cellular structure of major organs (http://www.responsibletechnology.org/). Also, as a result of the antibiotic resistant genes within […]
No Comments
DANIEL DENVIR, - AlterNet
Stephan: Willful ignorance expressed as political strategy results in policies that are catastrophic, because they are based on fact-free assumptions. We are, and it is only partially metphorical, returning to an earlier darker age.
Earlier this year, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) introduced legislation ‘repealing the…[EPA’s] scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are endangering human health and the environment.
No Comments
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), - Washington Post
Stephan: I think John McCain is more interested in remaining a senator than anything else. I find his constantly changing positions sad and corrupt. But on this issue his authority and the accuracy of his statements cannot be contested. He was tortured, he knows whereof he speaks. Consider his words in light of the pro-torture media blitz by former Bush Administration officials.
Osama bin Laden’s welcome death has ignited debate over whether the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on enemy prisoners were instrumental in locating bin Laden, and whether they are a justifiable means for gathering intelligence.
Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all of these methods constitute torture. I believe some of them do, especially waterboarding, which is a mock execution and thus an exquisite form of torture. As such, they are prohibited by American laws and values, and I oppose them.
I know those who approved and employed these practices were dedicated to protecting Americans. I know they were determined to keep faith with the victims of terrorism and to prove to our enemies that the United States would pursue justice relentlessly no matter how long it took.
I don’t believe anyone should be prosecuted for having used these techniques, and I agree that the administration should state definitively that they won’t be. I am one of the authors of the Military Commissions Act, and we wrote into the legislation that no one who used or approved the use of these interrogation techniques before its enactment should be prosecuted. I don’t think it is helpful or wise to […]
No Comments
SAHIL KAPUR, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The contempt for ordinary Americans implicit in this budget cannot be denied. One has to ask, how could anyone vote for such people?
WASHINGTON — The House-approved Republican budget could leave as many as 44 million more Americans without health insurance over ten years, according to a new nonpartisan report.
The debate surrounding the blueprint has focused on the plan to replace Medicare with a system of subsidies to buy private insurance. But that wouldn’t happen for 10 years, and in that time, the proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act and turn Medicaid into a program of block grants for states could significantly grow the ranks of the uninsured.
A Kaiser Family Foundation study, conducted with the Urban Institute, concluded that those two elements of the plan would leave between 31 and 44 Americans uninsured, depending on various state scenarios that consider eligibility laws and efficiency gains, if the GOP blueprint becomes law. ‘Most of the people who would lose Medicaid coverage would become uninsured,’ the study says.
The report gives Democrats another political weapon to attack the Republican plan, which they intend to hang around the party’s neck in the 2012 elections.
A spokesman for Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who drafted the plan, questioned the Kaiser-Urban study’s assumptions, telling The Associated Press that the proposal would allow Medicaid to grow ‘at a sustainable rate, so […]
No Comments
