Politics & Government

Lew Rockwell | Whether it's correctly called a movement, a backlash or political theater, state declarations of their rights – or in some cases denunciations of federal authority, amounting to the same thing – are on a roll.

New York Post | On Nov. 28, 1953, Frank Olson, a bland, seemingly innocuous 42-year-old government scientist, plunged to his death from room 1018A in New York's Statler Hotel, landing on a Seventh Avenue sidewalk just opposite Penn Station.

Open Congress | One of Congress’s most notoriously hawkish duos, Sen. John McCain [R, AZ] and Sen. Joseph Lieberman [I, CT], recently introduced legislation in response to President Obama’s decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day airplane bomber, in a criminal court.

Black Listed News | In their quest for the truth over 60,000 infuriated Greek citizens take to the streets in central Athens because the cash strapped government faces a financial reckoning. The Obama administration has prepared itself for eventually the same demands for the truth with HR 645 which is, in essence, militarized FEMA internment camps: Allen L Roland

Raw Story | Many law enforcement officers called up to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding it difficult to readjust to their jobs once home, bringing back heightened survival instincts that may make them quicker to use force and showing less patience toward the people they serve.

Sacramento Bee | Arriving at Harv's Metro Car Wash in midtown Wednesday afternoon were two dark-suited IRS agents demanding payment of delinquent taxes. "They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending," says Harv's owner, Aaron Zeff.

PR News Wire | Declassified files detailing an FBI investigation targeting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee are now available on the Internet.  AIPAC was investigated after it acquired and circulated classified government information provided in strict confidence by US industry and worker groups opposed to AIPAC sponsored economic legislation.

KUDA | Concerns about an Oregon Department of Transportation employee who purchased several guns after being placed on leave prompted law enforcement across Southern Oregon to step in.  Negotiators and a SWAT team from Medford police safely took a man — whose name wasn’t released — into protective custody Monday morning in the 500 block of Effie Street, Medford police said in a news release.

Telegraph | Almost 1,700 people, also including car park attendants and dog wardens, already have powers to hand out a string of fines and even take photographs of low level offenders under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme.

Twin Cities Indymedia | Which is funnier - the anarchists' goal of "social reform" or the "various affinity groups such as the National Lawyers Guild"?  Read it yourself and decide!  Despite his misunderstandings and obsession with poop, Greelis' book is still a valuable, interesting read to say the least.

Truth Dig | There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners.

Spingola | In 1989 President George H. W. Bush began the multi-billion dollar Project Hammer program using an investment strategy to bring about the economic destruction of the Soviet Union including the theft of the Soviet treasury, the destabilization of the ruble, funding a KGB coup against Gorbachev in August 1991 and the seizure of major energy and munitions industries in the Soviet Union.

Southern Avenger | When the Charleston City Police Department warned recently that alcohol was forbidden from any tailgating activities prior to the Dave Matthews Band concert on the Fourth of July at The Joe, many fans were not happy and justifiably so.

Wikipedia | The ruling upheld a Texas recidivism law requiring a minimum punishment for a third felony offense committed within a fifteen year time span to be life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. On his third offense Rummel refused to return money received as payment for unsatisfactory repairs of an air conditioning unit.

ABC | Officer Polanco says One Police Plaza's obsession with keeping crime stats down has gotten out of control. He claims Precinct Commanders relentlessly pressure cops on the street to make more arrests, and give out more summonses, all to show headquarters they have a tight grip on their neighborhoods.

KOIN | The Martins said they buy their stock from Taiwan because the merchandise is less expensive. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seized a shipment of 30 in October. That shipment is worth around $12,000 and the ATF is promising to destroy the entire shipment. 

House.gov | ongressman Ron Paul has continued to run his Congressional office in a frugal manner, and was able to return more than $100,000 from his allotted office budget to the Treasury this year, an increase over the $90,000 returned last year. 

Alternet | It's been only a month that a union for the unemployed has come into existence through an ingenious grassroots organizing campaign. In case you haven't heard about it, the union's name is "UR Union of the Unemployed" or its nickname, "UCubed," because of its unique method of organizing.

United States House of Representatives | Madame Speaker, I would like to enter into the record the following letter from Professor Robert D. Auerbach, a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.  This letter provides additional information regarding remarks I made at yesterday's Financial Services Committee Humphrey-Hawkins hearing, remarks which Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke categorized as “bizarre.”

MSNBC | Democrats have retreated from adding new privacy protections to the primary U.S counterterrorism law, stymied by Senate Republicans who argued the changes would weaken terror investigations.

CNN | In the name of improved security a hacker showed how a biometric passport issued in the name of long-dead rock 'n' roll king Elvis Presley could be cleared through an automated passport scanning system being tested at an international airport.

LA Times | Reporting from Washington - A crime suspect who invokes his "right to remain silent" under the famous Miranda decision can be questioned again after 14 days, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. And if he freely agrees to talk then, his incriminatory statements can be used against him.

Times Online | The proposals were met with relief from both the present embassy’s Mayfair neighbours and the residents and developers of the Battersea wasteland where the vast crystalline cube, surrounded by a moat, will be built.

Larry Flynt | They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible?

Counterpunch | In the past 4 years 22 universities across the U.S. have quietly taken the CIA’s dollars and agreed to become spy-factories for student spooks. David Price breaks the story, identifies the campuses, details secret faculty protests and charts the strategy for resistance.

Slate | It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City's Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear:

Alternet | We can start with the crimes found in the three articles of impeachment contained in H Res 333 in the 110th Congress:  Cheney has purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests, to wit:

Center for a Stateless Society | At The Washington Times (!), Cato’s Daniel Griswold comments:  “Despite complaints from critics on the left, such as Ralph Nader, and even a few libertarians, such as Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, membership in the World Trade Organization serves Americas national interest.”

Lew Rockwell | A little after 6:00 p.m. on January 28, Rourke, a 59-year-old man widely respected among residents of Doylesburg for his generosity and service to others, learned of a car crash involving his 19-year-old son Freddy.

Anti War | Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

Maxim | Moments later two red lights broke through the low clouds, heading almost directly toward the ground. It was a light aircraft, and for a second, as it descended below the tree line, the man thought it would climb back up.

Infowars | Self-described “conservative” Jonathan Kay invokes Obama regulation czar Cass Sunstein in railing against ideas he describes as “dangerously detached from reality” by labeling vehemently proven facts as “conspiracy theories” and thereby exposing himself as the only person dangerously detached from reality in his article, Black Helicopters Over Nashville.

Bloomberg | Also, 75 percent disapproved of the job Congress is doing, the highest level since 74 percent said they disapproved in October 2008. Congress’s job approval rating was 15 percent in the current survey; it was 12 percent in October 2008.

Bloomberg | President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.  Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Washington Post | After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Blackwater rose to become the largest of the State Department's private security contractors and has since been paid billions of dollars to protect diplomatic employees in Iraq and Afghanistan and for other agencies' security missions. The company became a major source of anti-American sentiment in Iraq because of repeated, deadly shootings involving its guards.

From the Old | Not only were they called in to help because of the snow disaster but they will start patrolling the streets. The humvees rolled in yesterday after the mayor also told people on a live broadcast that “be advised that you will begin to see National Guard Humvees in some of your neighborhoods beginning this evening.”

Conspiracy Archive | Prompted by a new book release, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research has received a confidential inquiry from the office of Erard Corbin de Mangoux, head of the French intelligence agency, Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), concerning a recent account of American government complicity in a mysterious 1951 incident of mass insanity in France. The DGSE is the French counterpart of the CIA.

Libertarian Viewpoint | Governor Nixon is directly responsible for operating the fusion center and has been confirmed to be one of the nominees for this new panel, likely to head the p[panel. It does not bode well for Americans when police are instructed to look for citizens who are concerned about abortion, gun restrictions, FEMA, IRS, the Federal Reserve etc.

Birmingham News | Sold by Shelby County to U.S. Steel subsidiary Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co., Cottenham served his sentence in shackles, alongside more than 1,000 convicts at TCI's Pratt mines, digging coal with a pick in the dark and damp

Salon | The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people."

Wired | The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

Empty Wheel | Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

Daily Caller | The State Department has refused to answer basic questions about an accident that took place in Washington on Wednesday night, in which a U.S. Diplomatic Security Service vehicle struck Daily Caller employee Sean Medlock as he was crossing the street.

CNN | While grateful to have the information -- Isabel received further testing and she doesn't have the disease -- the Mankato, Minnesota, couple wondered how the doctor knew about Isabel's genes in the first place. After all, they'd never consented to genetic testing.

Washington Examiner | Yet in Obama's State of the Union address, Obama claimed, "We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs."  Did Obama speak falsely?  Well, it depends on what the definition of "excluded lobbyists" is.

New York Times | Following the Supreme Court decision implicitly granting corporations the right to free speech (by determining that political spending is a kind of speech), a corporation has decided to take what it believes to be “democracy’s next step”: It is running for Congress.

Wired | Last year, that budget grew to more than $50 billion – ”the largest-ever sum,” according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, a longtime black-budget seer. A few more billion were added for wartime operations, for a total of $54 billion. This year’total would be $2 billion higher, a 3.7 percent increase.

New York TImes | Mr. Letten said that after consulting with Justice Department officials, and “in consideration of various relevant factors,” he was allowing his first assistant attorney to handle the case. Ms. Landrieu, a Democrat, has requested that Mr. Letten, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, be reappointed.

Toke of the Town | Initial reports that the President had ignored the marijuana questions were inaccurate; YouTube took pot, the top vote getter, out of the running.  President Obama never even got an opportunity to answer the most popular question of all.

Reason.com | Around 3 in the morning on January 7, 2009, a 22-year-old college student named Anthony Smelley was pulled over on Interstate 70 in Putnam County, Indiana. He and two friends were en route from Detroit to visit Smelley’s aunt in St. Louis. Smelley, who had recently received a $50,000 settlement from a car accident, was carrying around $17,500 in cash, according to later court documents. He claims he was bringing the money to buy a new car for his aunt.