More Liberty

Reinstate the Draft!

Representative Charlie Rangel (New York):  Reinstate the Draft!  All Youth Must Serve the Glorious Homeland!  Sieg Heil!

According to John Heilprin, Associated Press Writer, Rep. Rangel will seek to reinstate draft:

"Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 under a bill the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee says he will introduce next year.  Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars.

'There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the Administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way,' Rangel said.
....

'If We're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft,' Rangel said."

Rangel is truly living up to the ideal of the Democratic party's mascot. The one thing the neocons don't have enough of is cannon fodder, and this monumental ass of a Democratic "leader" wants to give them just that –- all the cannon fodder they can order up, by enslaving people who otherwise have the good sense to not enlist when our nation's foreign policy is under the control of a cabal of chicken-hawks with a fetish for "pre-emptive" war and empire.  Does Rangel really think a draft would have stopped the neocons from invading Iraq?

As for the notion that politicians will hesitate to go to war with a draft in place because it means kids from their own communities will have to fight, Rangel is presuming that Congress will even be consulted.  Under the 2001 AUMF, and the broad grant of power Bush has claimed it gave him, he does not think he needs a vote from Congress to go to war.  Bush is more likely to send in the troops first, and then ask for Congressional "support" after.  And even if the President did ask Congress what it thinks prior to just starting a war, warhawks in Congress have already demonstrated, with a volunteer military, that they don't give a damn about sending kids from their own communities off to die in some sand-pit.  Why should they care more about draftees?  Does he really think the politician's own children will actually be drafted and sent off to fight and die? What a fool.

So why is Rangel is so hot for a draft?

He said having a draft would not necessarily mean everyone called to duty would have to serve.  Instead, "young people (would) commit themselves to a couple of years in service to this great republic, whether it's our seaports, our airports, in schools, in hospitals," with a promise of educational benefits at the end of service. (Emphasis added.)

Ah, there is Comrade Rangel's real motivation; his real wet dream -- a communist-style nationalization of all us unwashed masses -- the worker bees -- for compelled national "service to this great republic" wherever he and his fellow travelers at Party Headquarters think we are best utilized as their resources. 

Lenin, Stalin and Mao would be so proud.  Of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto, number eight was "Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture" and part of plank ten was the "Combination of education with industrial production." 

Keep your eye on this totalitarian idea of "national service" -- with all of our kids enrolled at eighteen into an American version of the Hitler Youth -- it is not going away anytime soon.  Would-be slave foreman Rangel is not alone in his desire that the federal government own the means of production -- your kids.  As William Grigg noted back in 1997, in a New American article responding to a similar idea during the Clinton Administration, the idea of National Service is a staple of statist regimes throughout history, whether they be communist (international socialist) or fascist (national socialist) in orientation.

Enemy Combatant and the Military Commissions Act

Understanding Enemy Combatant Status and the Military Commissions Act

Part 1:  Enemy Combatant Status, No More Pernicious Doctrine

Note: This article was first published in the Summer 2005 edition of The Warrior, the Journal of Gerry Spence's Trial Lawyers College.  This article serves as a short summary of my research and analysis of "enemy combatant status" as it is being used in the so-called war on terrorism.  The recent Military Commissions Act is simply codification of this doctrine - of the ongoing violation of the Bill of Rights that both the executive branch and the judiciary have engaged in for years. As discussed in this article, the sell-out of the Bill of Rights, as a matter of modern constitutional law, happened in 2004, with the Supreme Court's Hamdi decision.  For a more detailed analysis of the history and case-law that has created this very dangerous legal doctrine, please see my full length research paper, Solving the Puzzle of Enemy Combatant Status, which won the 2004 Yale Law School William E. Miller Prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights. -- Stewart Rhodes, U.S. Army Airborne Class of '83

Introduction: No Greater Threat

No greater threat to our Constitution and our Bill of Rights has ever existed than the current doctrine of "Enemy Combatant Status" (also known as "unlawful combatant" status).  This doctrine is like a toxic, poisonous weed that, if not pulled out by the roots, will grow to choke and kill the tree of liberty.  It threatens to wipe out our Bill of Rights and plunge us into a nightmare of military supremacy over the civilian power and unchecked executive rule by decree, where the courts, rather than serving as defenders of liberty, are mere willing administrators of a new Kafkaesque system of indefinite military detention and trial.  We must fight this doctrine or see our freedoms perish, and with them, the last restraints on the U.S. war machine.  To fight it, we must know the facts of its illegitimate birth and silent nurturing at the hands of politicians, generals, government lawyers and complicit judges.  We must be willing to acknowledge that Lincoln, FDR, the New Deal Court, and now even the liberals on the current Court have all been willing midwives to this monstrosity.  As Patrick Henry said, "Whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, [we must be] willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it."

Solving the Puzzle of "Enemy Combatant" Status

Introduction to Paper
Linked below is the extensive research paper on enemy combatant status which I wrote over the winter of 2003 and finished by May, 2004, while a student at Yale Law School.  This paper won the Yale Law School Judge William E. Miller Prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights.

For a shorter summary of this research, see "Understanding Enemy Combatant Status and the Military Commissions Act, Part 1:  Enemy Combatant Status, No More Pernicious Doctrine."  That shorter paper is also available on this site under the subject heading "Enemy Combatant Status."

The doctrine of enemy combatant status has formed the basis for all of the Bush administration's extreme claims of unlimited executive war powers: from his claim to be exempt from the constraints of the Bill of Rights, and thus free to spy on Americans without warrant, detain them without indictment or trial, and to be free to try them before his own hand-picked military tribunals; to his claims to be able to black bag anyone in the world and use extraordinary rendition to have them spirited off to secret CIA prisons and "pressured" into talking; and to his claims of exemption from the Geneva Conventions, which lead directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

The recent enactment of the Military Commissions Act is merely legislative support and codification of this same sweeping doctrine that holds that anyone on this planet may be placed into a new, second category of "the enemy" in a war that is not against a state, but against a tactic - terrorism.

Turn Iraq Over to the Arab League

A Rational Alternative to the Nutty-Neocon Stark Choice of an American "Total Victory or Total Defeat"

Way back in President Bush's December 18, 2005 address on the Iraq War, he declared that "now there are only two options before our country:  victory or defeat."  By "victory," Bush meant our troops staying until the Iraqi military and police are strong enough to defeat the insurgency/resistance, however long that takes, and by
"defeat," Bush meant withdrawing before that point.  The president declared that such withdrawal "would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us...."  To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor, and I will not allow it."

Such a black and white, all or nothing decree from The Decider is what we have come to expect.  True to neocon form, there was no room whatsoever for the involvement of anyone else in that decision, other than the president and his unitary executive cabal. Also true to neocon form, in that stark choice there was no room on the ground in
Iraq for anyone else other than the U.S. (and its Western allies) and the fledgling Iraqi puppet "government."  The message to the Arab world was "stand back, swarthy brown people, we Anglo-Saxons will sort this out for you!"  This is precisely the plan the U.S. had for winning in Vietnam (and we all know how well that turned out).

Bush has stubbornly stuck to this all-or-nothing plan ever since.  But now many of the neocon rats have jumped from the sinking U.S.S. Bush, or, in the case of Rumsfeld, have been forced to walk the plank, and the G.O.P. has been sent a pretty clear message from the voters – in the form of a boot out the door for many of them – that the voters are not at all amused.

And so, there has been a "softening" of that stark choice, and Bush is now turning to the pragmatists from that band of old-school insiders known as the Iraq Study Group for a way out of this mess.  The Iraq Study Group is headed up by Republican former Secretary of State James Baker, and Democrat vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton.  Other insiders in the group include Lawrence Eagleburger, Edwin Meese III, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, and even former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.  In fact, Bush appointed a member of the group, former Director of Central Intelligence Robert M. Gates, to replace Rumsfeld as secretary of defense.

Attack of the Neocon Water Carriers

Newsflash!  Rush Limbaugh reveals he is still a real conservative.  He was only pretending to be a neocon.  Turns out that Rush was just lying to his audience.  He was "carrying the water" for the G.O.P. these past five years for the good of America.

Speaking of liars, Rush Limbaugh has finally come clean after the elections and admitted he has been lying to his listeners for years by defending as "conservative" actions by Republicans that Rush himself knew were anything but.

I feel liberated, and I'm going to tell you as plainly as I can why.  I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried.  Now, you might say, "Well, why have you been doing it?"  Because the stakes are high.  Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me they represent a far better future for my beliefs and therefore the country's than the Democrat Party and liberalism does.

....

There have been a bunch of things going on in Congress, some of this legislation coming out of there that I have just cringed at, and it has been difficult coming in here, trying to make the case for it when the people who are supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves -- and to have to come in here and try to do their jobs.  I'm a radio guy!  I understand what this program has become in America and I understand the leadership position it has.  I was doing what I thought best...."

What a relief!  Rush was just a water carrier!  I was beginning to think Rush was actually a true believer, Jack-Booted, Big-Government neocon.  Turns out that Rush was still a small-government conservative all along, though he defended every big government, anti-liberty measure that came down the pike.

This explains how Rush could dismiss the Abu Ghraib torture, murder, and sexual humiliation as equivalent to fraternity hazing pranks.  Rush did not actually believe that nonsense.  He was simply pursuing an ingenious long-term plan to preserve true conservative values by temporarily carrying Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld's neocon water.  Such a long-suffering patriot!  Such a good actor!  He gave a true Oscar performance.  It must have been so very difficult for Rush to "get into character" as a Big Government neocon before each show.  I can picture him pacing back and forth, shaking out his hands, taking deep breaths, talking to himself, "OK Rush, you can do this, you can do this...you're a radio guy!  That is what you do!" as he turns frantically to ask an assistant "what's my motivation?"  No wonder Rush was popping so many pills.  Such pressure.  Such performance anxiety.

On Election Day . . .

Remember, remember, this 7th of November,
Why of our freedom they cared not;
In this political season, we know the reason
Their souls by power were bought.

Stewart Rhodes

Neocon Rats Jumping Ship!

Video of Cheney on ABC News

As reported on Rawstory.com by Mike Sheehan and David Edwards on November 3, 2006, the arch-neocons behind the throne are starting to turn on the Bush administration:

Vice President Dick Cheney appeared tonight in an exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, in which he appeared perplexed when told of new neocon criticism of the Iraq war and the Bush administration. 

Stephanopoulos told Cheney of criticisms from key neoconservatives Richard Perle, Ken Adelman and others that had just appeared in a new Vanity Fair article released that afternoon, in which they said, among other things, that "they would not have supported the invasion if they knew how incompetent the administration would be in handling it."

This comes as no surprise.  The neocons, originating as former Trotskyites who then defected from the Democratic Party during the Cold War, have no permanent allegiance to the Republican Party, as I noted back in March, 2006 here, and as Congressman Ron Paul warned Congress back in 2003.  Rep. Paul explained very thoroughly how neocons are not conservatives at all, how they loath libertarians and thus also loath all constitutionalists and have utterly no respect for the Constitution of the Founders.  But Congress did not listen, and was truly neo-conned.   

The neocons now realize that the Bush administration is going down in Iraq, with Bush blissfully standing at the helm, like a demented Mr. Magoo, "staying the course" though the rudder has long since sheered off.   

But the neocons are not going down with the ship.  Those crafty rats are now jumping off, blaming the incompetence of the Bush administration rather than the stupidity of their own crazy ideas.  Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of military history who was not blinded by a will-to-power ideology would have known that invading Iraq would lead to a guerilla war of resistance against foreign occupiers and then to a civil war.  But then perhaps that was what the insidious neocons wanted all along, to further some dark, Machiavellian long-term strategy.  Either that, or they are monumentally stupid.  In any case, the neo-crazies are obviously at least smart and sane enough to know when it is time to jump off a sinking stinker and swim for dear life.   

The real question is when will conservatives wake up from the neocon wormtongue trance and become real conservatives again, who actually give a damn about the Constitution and limited government?  Likely not until they are completely out of power.  Then perhaps they will rediscover the virtues of those checks and balances, those limits on federal power, and that dusty old Bill of Rights.  And perhaps, just maybe, they will realize that the Constitution is not just some damn piece of paper, even though we live in a "post-911 world."  I hope.

Stewart Rhodes

John Yoo: Neocon Treason and Plot

John Yoo and the Neocon Treason and Plot -- A Freedom-Lover's Version of the Guy Fawkes Poem

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Remember, remember the 29th of September
Military Commissions Act, assault on the Bill of Rights by a vile lot;
I see no reason why the Neocon Treason
Should ever be forgot.

John Yoo, John Yoo,
'Tis his intent
To give us a King and a Parliament.
By stroke of a pen or by rubber stamp, his Leader will throw
you into a camp.
Complicit judges and Congress in tow
Our Constitution to overthrow.

John Yoo, John Yoo,
He goes to bed,
With visions of crushing children’s testicles in his head.
Enemy combatants all around,
Grab them, bag them, board them till they drown.

You’re an enemy combatant!
I’m an enemy combatant!
We're all enemy combatants if his Leader says so;
We the People are We the Enemy don’t you know!

But this is land of the free, home of the brave
Not land of the scared, home of the slaves;
Weimar Germany, Russia, or China this is not
We won’t forsake the Republic our forefathers wrought.

We remember their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Where once the embattled farmers stood;
and fired the shot heard round the world.
The same defiance burns in us till our last breath
Their battle cry still echoes
Give us Liberty or Give us Death!

Holloa boys, Holloa boys, let the bells ring
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, We have no King!
Hip hip Hoorah!
Hip hip Hoorah!

A stale MRE to feed ol' Yoo,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the shrubbery too.
A session of water boarding to rinse it down,
A lit cigarette to burn them.
Put their nuts in a vice,
Don’t make us ask twice!
Confess! Confess! Tell us their crimes,
What they knew, when they knew, and why;
But before we find out the reason,
We will give them what they deny us
A jury trial for their high Treason.

© 2006 E. Stewart Rhodes

About the Poem

This poem is loosely based on the Guy Fawkes poem.  But whereas the original poem was about a man who plotted to blow up Parliament, this poem it is about a man, and his neocon co-conspirators, who are plotting to destroy our Constitutional Republic.  This is my second version of such a poem.  You can read the first version here.  This second one is closer in style to the original.

George Allen's Thugs, pt. 2

Mike Stark, the man who was wrestled to the ground by Senator George Allen's campaign staff, writes to NBC 29 News of Charlottesville, Virginia:

My name is Mike Stark.  I am a law student at the University of Virginia, a marine, and a citizen journalist. Earlier today at a public event, I was attempting to ask Senator Allen a question about his sealed divorce record and his arrest in the 1970s, both of which are in the public domain.  His people assaulted me, put me in a headlock, and wrestled me to the ground.  Video footage is available here, from an NBC affiliate.

I demand that Senator Allen fire the staffers who beat up a constituent attempting to use his constitutional right to petition his government.  I also want to know why Senator Allen would want his staffers to assault someone asking questions about matters of public record in the heat of a political campaign.  Why are his divorce records sealed?  Why was he arrested in the 1970s?  And why did his campaign batter me when I asked him about these questions. 

George Allen defends his support of the Iraq war by saying that our troops are defending the ideals America stands for.  Indeed, he says our troops are defending our very freedom.  What kind of country is it when a Senator's constituent is assaulted for asking difficult and uncomfortable questions?  What freedoms do we have left?  Maybe we need to bring the troops home so that they can fight for freedom at George Allen's campaign events.  Demanding accountability should not be an offense worthy of assault. 

I will be pressing charges against George Allen and his surrogates later today.  George Allen, at any time, could have stopped the fray.  All he had to do was say, "This is not how my campaign is run.  Take your hands off that man."  He could have ignored my questions.  Instead he and his thugs chose violence.  I spent four years in the Marine Corps.  I'll be damned if I'll let my country be taken from me by thugs that are afraid of taking responsibility for themselves. 

It just isn't the America I know and love.  Somebody needs to take a stand against those that would bully and intimidate their fellow citizens.  That stand begins right here, right now. 

W. Michael Stark

Stewart Rhodes

George Allen's Thugs

Candidate Thomas Rankin should consider himself lucky that Congresswoman Barbara Cubin of Wyoming does not have her own cadre of Brownshirts to punish wayward constituents as does Senator George Allen of Virginia.  Apparently, Allen is a more sophisticated politician -- he has someone else do the slapping.  And thus, the media blandly notes that Allen was safe, while the condition of the "troublemaker" is unknown.

Video

Stewart Rhodes

The Treason of September

Below is a poem (loosely based on the Guy Fawkes poem) written the day after Congress sent the Military Commissions Act to President Bush.  That bill is but the codification of the treasonous doctrine both the executive branch and the judiciary have been asserting for years – that even U.S. citizens can be declared “enemy combatants” and stripped of their ancient right to jury trial, and of the rest of the protections in our Bill of Rights.  Click the hyperlinks for a multi-media experience.  Pass it along to others.  Then resolve to do your utmost to stop anyone, from any political party, who would destroy our Constitutional Republic.

Stewart Rhodes

Reinstate the Draft!

Reinstate the draft!  So says Edward Bernard Glick in his commentary published by the Christian Science Monitor on September 5th.

Mr. Glick, where are we?  Ancient Sparta?  The USSR?  Nazi Germany or the ant hills of Maoist China?  What is happening to this nation? Where has the land of the free gone?

Where in our Constitution was Congress, or any part of the national government, given the power to use our children as literal national resources, for military or domestic "service?"  The answer is no where.

The closest thing to a draft power in the Constitution is the power “To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions” but even that is not a power to forcefully induct people into a standing army. The militia were state military forces, made up of the people of each state, under officers of their own choosing, and they would fight as such, and here at home, not abroad, for the limited purpose of enforcing the laws of the union (which were very few) suppressing rebellions and repelling invasions.

Founders on Warrantless Searches

Further evidence that the Founding Generation thought warrantless searches were inherently unreasonable, oppressive, and contrary to liberty can be found in the 1776 Virginia Bill of Rights and in Virginia's proposed amendments to the Constitution of 1787.  These documents speak for themselves in the face of the current "conservative" legal sophists who are trying to destroy our legacy of liberty.

Stewart Rhodes

"That general warrants, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted." -- Virginia Bill of Rights, June 12, 1776

"Fourteenth, That every freeman has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches and siezures [sic] of his person, his papers and his property; all warrants, therefore, to search suspected places, or sieze [sic] any freeman, his papers or property, without information upon Oath (or affirmation of a person religiously scrupulous of taking an oath) of legal and sufficient cause, are grievous and oppressive; and all general Warrants to search suspected places, or to apprehend any suspected person, without specially naming or describing the place or person, are dangerous and ought not to be granted." -- Amendments Proposed by the Virginia Convention, June 27, 1788

"The Freedom of One's House"

There is no better renunciation of the outrageous idea that our government may secretly spy on us or ransack our homes without a warrant than the fiery words of Founding Patriot James Otis who spoke against the NSA spying of his time; the Crown's use of similar searches without a showing of probable cause before a judge, known as writs of assistance or general warrants.

Take a few minutes to step back in time and read an account of one of the chief causes of our forefathers taking up arms against their own government in defense of inalienable rights, in the words of one of this nation's greatest patriots.  And then resolve to do your utmost, even at risk of YOUR life, YOUR fortune, and YOUR sacred honor in defense of those same inalienable rights against our own King George.

Stewart Rhodes

James Otis before the Superior Court of Massachusetts, Feb. 24, 1761:

"It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book...a kind of power, the exercise of which in former periods of history cost one king of England his head and another his throne...one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house.  A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle.  This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege...officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry.  Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire.  Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient."

Bush and Neocons: President is King

re:  "Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement  In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding"   The Boston Globe,  3/24/06 

With Bush's approval ratings hovering around 35% and Republican candidates running from him as quickly as they can, the neocons, who pull this lame duck's strings, are conducting a constitutional scorched earth policy.  This policy is driven by the neocons' perverse fetish for unlimited unitary executive power, even if it means handing over such unlimited power to a Democrat in 2008 (Heil Hillary! anyone?).

Why would the neocons do that?  Because neocon loyalty is not to party or even ideas or principles.  They loyalty is to power.  The neocon dream legacy is to fully destroy the Founders' Constitution and to insert the Fuhrer Principle into the American system of government.  Period.

Killing Children

"U.S.-led raid kills civilians north of Balad"
CNN, 3/15/06

This is outrageous!  Just because they suspect there might be al Qaeda in the house, and just because they get some fire, they flatten the whole place, killing women and children?  Whatever happened to attempts at avoiding civilian deaths?  It seems the U.S. military doesn't even try.

That is like a SWAT team being too worried about being hurt to go into a house where there is a violent suspect and his family, and just flattening the house, killing the man's wife, her sisters and five kids, rather than risk going in.  How is that just?

There is no more sure-fire way to make all Iraqis and all Arabs hate Americans than to kill entire families like this.

The U.S. is acting as if it was culling a herd of animals because some are suspected of being diseased, but rather than determine which are, they just shoot all of them from the air, not caring whether they hit young or old, sick or well, because that is more efficient and safe.

If they will do that to others, they will do it to us eventually.  Just ask the Branch Davidians in Waco how that works.

Stewart Rhodes

Government Supremacists

Neocons:  The National Security New Dealers

Dana Milbank's recent article "A War of Words:  'Declare' vs. 'Make' and Its Allies" correctly points out how John Yoo and the rest of the neo-conservative cabal, masquerading as originalists, are engaged in a thinly veiled rewriting of our Constitution to turn Congress into a mere debating society and, at most, a rubber stamp.

But like most such commentators and like all of the post 9/11 federal court decisions, Milbank ignores the full scope of the pending destruction of our liberty by acting as if the only constitutional principle that is in danger is the separation of powers.  From the Padilla and Hamdi cases (U.S. citizens declared enemy combatants) right down to the NSA spying controversy, the mainstream political and legal talking heads only debate whether Congress needs to give its approval before the president can act in these ways, and then whether Congress has given that approval.