There has been quite a bit of noise surrounding the U.S. Marines urinating-on-Taliban-corpses story. Most of the noise has been of the polite disapproval type. You know, 'I support our soldiers killing the terrorists over there, but those brave boys shouldn't be making videos of themselves desecrating dead bodies….that's just not right.'

The typical "condemnations" were issued by all the proper government folks. Kings of Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton both condemned the urinary actions by our fighting-for-freedom Marines and did what these proper government folks always do….announced that there would be an investigation.

Defense Secretary, Kings of Leon Panetta didn't just condemn the urination patrol….

“I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.” Panetta has ordered an investigation into the matter.

"in the strongest possible terms." Well, that makes all the difference in the world then.

Nothing much will come of any "investigation" into this incident…..and that is the exact reason there will be an investigation….so that nothing much will be done about this embarrassing situation.

Or is it an embarrassing situation? At least one CNN contributor thought it was a situation to be very proud of….

Dana Loesch: OK, stop this right here. Stop this right here.

Can someone explain to me if there's supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a Taliban fighter? Someone who was — as part of an organization murdered over 3,000 Americans? I'd drop trou and do it, too. That's me, though. I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say?

Come on, people. This is a war.

The one thing which has changed about the American people since 9-11 is our willingness to embrace the inhumane treatment of those we call our enemies. Our first offshore gulag, Guantanamo, is still proudly open for business, indefinite detention of whomever the president claims is an enemy combatant is now the law in the free country of the U.S., government's warrantless eavesdropping on all U.S. citizens electronic communications continues every single day, the numerous incidents of U.S. military personnel conducting criminal acts of savagery, and the bipartisan enthusiasm for launching hellfire missiles from robotic drones down onto Muslim "militants", including infant, child and mother "militants" in 7 different countries.

Anyone embarrassed by any or all of those realities? Any celebrity Leaders rushing to microphones to declare any or all of those realities "inconsistent with our values?" Of course not. Why not? Because those realities accurately reflect our post 9-11 values. And that explains why Leaders like the conservative darling, Allen West (R-FL) can say to those who might question the urination circle jerk on Taliban corpses…."unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell"……he is only patriotically giving voice to the new American reality.

That new reality claims that America, alone, is entitled to do anything we want, to anyone we want, in any country we want to do it in. Anyone who complains about this new reality, whether it's complaining about U.S. soldiers executing, at pointblank range, an entire family including an infant, mother and grandmother, and then calling in an airstrike to cover their savagery….or it's complaining about U.S. soldiers stalking, and then raping an underage Muslim girl and then killing her and her family…or it's moaning and bitching over funtime videos of fellow U.S. freedom fighters urinating on the corpses of Taliban members…..anyone who complains about any of it is automatically acting unpatriotic just by complaining.

Other Leaders, say, like Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, do what they do best in a post 9-11 American values period…..feign outrage at U.S. Marines circle-urinating on Taliban corpses….by reminding us that such circle-urination, or at least taking videos of said fun, is very much "inconsistent with our values". Which "values" is Hillary referring to, ya' think?. Would urinating on Taliban corpses be inconsistent with our Guantanamo "values?" How about the hundreds and hundreds of Muslim women and children we have blown or burnt up since 9-11? How is urinating on dead Taliban bodies inconsistent with the "values" represented in slaughtering Muslim women and children in multiple countries?

You might think that Endless War in Muslim countries, where Muslim women and children are routinely killed by U.S. actions….you might think that offshore gulags where detainees have been rotting without due process for almost a decade….would prevent people like Hillary Clinton from bringing up anything about American "values"….if only for the sake of self-embarrassment at the obvious dissonance. But you would be mistaken. In post 9-11 America we are also post-hypocrisy, post-shame.

America is a lesser nation post 9-11. We have accepted new values. In this, Bin Laden, though dead, has won out. An insignificant Muslim man has been responsible for changing America for the worse, perhaps permanently. That's how weak America really is. It's a weakness of character, leadership and integrity. We've become a narcissistic nation in love with our own perceived-values reflection. We have become so un-self aware that we refuse to even consider the fact that the rest of the world sees post 9-11 America as an imperialistic, aggressor nation which has lost it's sense of decency and justice, yet continues to sermonize them on the so-called superiority of "American values".

Our nation's new values are the values of savages and tyrants. They are the values of the cowardly and the weak. They are the values of a nation which has fully endorsed the doctrine of "might means right."

What's worse, even though I'm typing this on Martin Luther King Jr Day, a day that celebrates hope, I don't see anything changing for the better anytime soon.

In July of 2010 President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The bill passed the House 237-192 in June, 2010…and the Senate passed the bill 60-39 in July, 2010.

Dodd-Frank was passed in response to the financial sector collapse that began in 2007.

The bill's goal….

To promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end "too big to fail", to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.

Dodd-Frank includes a provision which sets up a consumer financial protection agency.

Title X establishes the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, within the Federal Reserve. The new Bureau regulates consumer financial products and services in compliance with federal law. The Bureau is headed by a director who is appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, for a term of five years. The Bureau is subject to financial audit by the GAO, and must report to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee bi-annually. The Financial Stability Oversight Council may issue a "stay" to the Bureau with an appealable 2/3 vote. Even though the Bureau is placed within the Fed, it operates independently. The Fed is prohibited from interfering with matters before the Director, directing any employee of the Bureau, modifying the functions and responsibilities of the Bureau or impeding an order of the Bureau.

One year after Dodd-Frank's passage, progressives encouraged Obama to nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the new consumer protection bureau. Here's why…

For the first year after the bill's signing, Warren worked on implementation of the bureau as a Special Assistant to the President in anticipation of the agency's formal opening. While liberal groups and consumer advocacy groups pushed for Obama to nominate Warren as the agency's permanent director, Warren was strongly opposed by financial institutions which had criticized Warren as overly aggressive in pursuing regulations and by the Republican members of Congress.

Instead of picking Warren, in July 2011 (one full year after the law's passage) President Obama nominated former Ohio AG Richard Cordray as the bureau's director. Since then, Republicans in the Senate have filibustered any "advise and consent" vote on the president's nomination.

That's where it all stood until yesterday, when in one of his boldest political moves, President Obama appointed Cordray during an official Senate recess. From Obama's speech in Shaker Heights, Ohio yesterday….

"For almost half a year, Republicans in the Senate have blocked Richard’s confirmation. They refused to even give Richard and up or down vote. Now, this is not because Richard is not qualified. There's no question that Richard is the right person for the job. He’s got the support of Democrats and Republicans around the country….

So what’s the problem, you might ask. The only reason Republicans in the Senate have blocked Richard is because they don’t agree with the law that set up a consumer watchdog in the first place. They want to weaken the law. They want to water it down. And by the way, a lot of folks in the financial industry have poured millions of dollars to try to water it down.

That makes no sense. Does anybody think that the reason that we got in such a financial mess, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in a generation — that the reason was because of too much oversight of the financial industry?"

The reason Senate Republicans have been blocking Cordray's nomination is because Republicans don't agree with the Dodd-Frank legislation in the first place. Obstructing the nomination process for Cordray (or anyone Obama appointed) meant that the Consumer Protection Agency part of the law could never go into effect. And of course, that's the point.

The Usual Suspect Republicans, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are oh-so-flabbergasted and offended by Obama's recess appointment of Cordray. Boehner called Obama's move "an extraordinary and entirely unprecendented power grab."

And yet,…

…there is precedent for appointments made during recesses of fewer than three days — President Theodore Roosevelt made more than 160 recess appointments during a Senate break of less than a day in 1903.

Mitch McConnell said yesterday that Obama…"arrogantly circumvented the American people" by appointing Cordray during a Senate recess period. This only makes sense if the "American people" equals "congressional Republicans."

Summary: Before the Civil War, southern state nullification efforts were all in vogue. If Washington passed any laws through the constitutional process, Confederate state representatives believed they had the right to disobey those laws….nullify them. That led to the Civil War where 600,000 Americans died. After the War, nullification was regarded as an illegal act.

In the 1950s, southern states attempted to use nullification and interposition to prevent integration of their schools. These attempts failed when the Supreme Court explicitly rejected nullification in Cooper v. Aaron, again holding that the states may not nullify federal law.

With Republicans seeking to nullify the ACA (ObamaCare) and with Republicans trying their best to nullify Dodd-Frank through obstruction of it's implementation….it's becoming clearer and clearer that the Republican Party is morphing ever closer into a potentially very dangerous Neo-Confederacy.

Good on Obama for punching back. His appointment of Cordray yesterday, plus 3 National Labor Relations Board members Republicans were also obstructing, demonstrates that Obama will not back down from the threats of a Neo-Confederacy.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon ordered his White House thugs to go after Daniel Ellsberg for making public the Pentagon Papers. The Papers were quite an embarrassment to Nixon's White House. Nixon responded by beginning a campaign "against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally." Part of that campaign we know now as the Watergate burglary. Watergate eventually led to President Nixon's resignation.

Today, I feel sympathy for Nixon. Not because he wasn't a deeply disturbed and lawless Republican President…he was….but because, if he were president today, Nixon would have had the liberty to simply 'disappear' Daniel Ellsberg. Watergate would have never been necessary, and Nixon could have finished out his second term without having to resign in humiliation.

Let me explain.

Two weeks ago, President Obama threatened to veto the 2012 Defense Authorization Act if the bill constrained the presidency in any way from…"collecting intelligence, incapacitating dangerous terrorists, and protecting the American people"…..in whatever way the Commander in Chief determined.

Now, Obama has withdrawn his veto threat.

The counterterrorism section of the bill….

…states that the entire world, including American soil, is a battlefield in the war on terror. It expands the U.S. military’s authority to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, even citizens, suspected of aiding terrorists.

The Defense Authorization Bill will finally legalize the illegal practices we have been practicing as a nation for over 10 years now. Indefinite detention without due process, even for U.S. citizens…..a "world war" where no corner of the earth is immune from U.S. military attack or invasion, and an expansion of the totally bogus "war on terror" broadening it to include "supporters" of "terrorism"…..and allowing the president to decide what that all means.

For those who generally support President Obama's presidency, as I do, make no mistake……it was President Obama, himself, who fought to include U.S. citizens in his indefinite detention without due process powers. It is President Obama who wanted to include U.S. citizens as possible Gitmo permanent detainees. It is President Obama who fought to include suspected U.S. citizens as potential defendants in military trials.

Listen carefully to what Carl Levin (D-MI) said from the Senate floor….

It was the "White House" who demanded the removal of language in Section 1031 of the bill which would exclude U.S. citizens from indefinite detention without civilian trials. It was President Obama, the same man who repeatedly denounced Bush/Cheney lawlessness before being elected president, who is now responsible for "legalizing" and even expanding that same lawlessness.

Signing this Defense Authorization Bill will be Obama's lowest moment as president and will surely set the stage for a future president to become a full-fledged military dictator, untethered from the clear legal restrictions outlined in the Constitution. Yet another example of how America is giving up on it's 200+ year democracy.

And so today, The Reverend has a bit of sympathy for former President Richard Nixon. You see, if Nixon could have only claimed the powers that President Obama is claiming today, he could have simply declared Daniel Ellsberg and editors of the New York Times as "enemy combatants", or "terrorists". Nixon could have had whomever his political enemies of the 70's were….picked up by military police and sent to Guantanamo or indefinitely detained without trial in some foreign hellhole of a prison…maybe even assassinated.

Watergate would have never happened and Nixon would have never had to resign the presidency…..if only he had boldly demanded the presidential powers which Obama claims today. After all, wasn't the Soviet enemy much more of a threat to the Homeland than box-cutter-wielding, stateless, Islamic extremists?

To Republicans who rejoice in my criticisms of a Democratic president….I would point out the support you gave Bush/Cheney in defending their limitless claims of power in illegally waging their contrived and bogus "war on terror." To Democratic voters who support President Obama….I would challenge any excuses offered up in defense of what is very obviously an unconstitutional power grab by this president.

And finally…..I ask all readers to give some thought to a potential Newt Gingrich presidency. A Gingrich presidency with almost limitless unilateral power to round up, incarcerate without charge or trial, and detain indefinitely in Guantanamo prison…U.S. citizens who a President Gingrich, alone, would declare to be "enemies of the state."

Oddly, all this doesn't look like "liberty" and "freedom" to me…..but one thing is for sure….Nixon would have loved it.

According to the U.S. Senate in a vote of 93-7….the U.S. president has the power to declare any U.S. citizen an "enemy of the state", order the indefinite detention of that U.S. citizen, order the assassination of that U.S. citizen, or place that U.S. citizen in Guantanamo to never be heard from again.
All of these new found presidential powers violate the 5th and 6th amendments…..

"No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

These claims of extra-constitutional powers of the presidency have all been justified since 9-11 on the basis of: "the Constitution is not a suicide compact"…or something similar. Which is supposed to mean that the Constitution, with all its prohibitions on presidential power and guarantees of rights for citizens, is a nice, quaint document and all….but we really can't afford those rights and prohibitions right now. If those rights and prohibitions are continued as outlined by the Framers, it has been claimed repeatedly by our Leaders since 9-11, then those leaders will not be able to guarantee our safety.

Other more cynical and jaded Leaders, like Don Rumsfeld for example, have instructed us that freedoms and constitutional rights are basically meaningless, you know, if you're dead. Translation: constitutional rights and presidential prohibitions are optional during "the long war", "the endless war."

How long will "the long war" continue? How long will Americans be deprived of their rights? How long will the executive branch claim extra-constitutional powers to assassinate U.S. citizens? How long will the U.S. president claim that it's necessary to indefinitely detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, in offshore gulags without rights to due process?

No one knows. That's the benefit of "a long war."

Our permanent military state has arrived….and it's never going away. 10 years and counting and there are no signs that "the long war" is anywhere near over…..Iran, obviously, is our next target. There's much more to destroy in the middle east. There are many more regimes which need changing.

Along similar lines, I was not shocked…but a little surprised….to learn from this Max Blumenthal article that Israeli Border Police and "a unit from the military of Bahrain" assisted the training of U.S. SWAT teams during Urban Shield 2011 held in October in California.

Why were trainers from Israel and Bahrain assisting our civil law enforcers?

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland,…

Although this "training" went on just a few weeks ago….it was not reported anywhere in U.S. media….

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire on protest camps and arresting wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.

I'm not quite sure why the U.S. would want civil law enforcement agencies to imitate the storm trooper tactics of intolerant states, but apparently, we are. Blumentahl calls this "the Israelification of America's security apparatus."

Interestingly enough, even the new torture tactics used by U.S. intelligence officials at the direction of George W. Bush after 9-11 came from Israeli influences…

Karen Greenberg, the director of Fordham School of Law’s Center on National Security and a leading expert on terror and civil liberties, said the Israeli influence on American law enforcement is so extensive it has bled into street-level police conduct. “After 9/11 we reached out to the Israelis on many fronts and one of those fronts was torture,” Greenberg told me. “The training in Iraq and Afghanistan on torture was Israeli training. There’s been a huge downside to taking our cue from the Israelis and now we’re going to spread that into the fabric of everyday American life? It’s counter-terrorism creep. And it’s exactly what you could have predicted would have happened.”

Yes, and The Reverend did predict just such counter-terrorism creep. If constitutional prohibitions on our Leaders can be discarded so easily, if constitutional guarantees to U.S. citizens can be denied so quickly and so easily after 9-11……how can this blatant sense of lawlessness NOT creep into civilian law enforcement.

And so it has.

Not sure about others, but I, for one, do not have any desire to see the U.S. turned into Israel. While Israelis have every right to live in peace in the middle east, as well as elsewhere in the world…..America has no need of Israel's guidance in acting intolerably. And America sure as hell does not need a closed society like Israel's with secretive assassination squads roaming the land in search of enemies. America has no need for occupations of our neighboring countries, America has no need for apartheid.

But it looks like our civilian law enforcers think we do.

Agreement between congressional Republicans and Democrats, authentic bipartisanship, is rarely witnessed today. But there is one part of U.S. policy where the D's and the R's completely agree. Endless war and indefinite detention…even of U.S citizens. Yesterday the Senate passed a $662 billion defense bill 93-7. Nothing passes the Senate by such a wide margin any more. The Senate action is a clear illustration of what our Leadership holds dear. Unquestioned bipartisan approval to fund America's Worldwide Empire…..and to continue, indefinitely, our worldwide "war" against a tactic.

American Leadership stands united on one thing and one thing only….waging endless war against radicalized Islam. "The Long War." A doubling of defense spending has not been enough to bring the unsophisticated and stateless extremists to justice. Ten years of killing, ten years of bombing, ten years of expanding the Empire into many middle eastern nations has not been enough for our Leaders. We must press on to finally destroy the tactic of killing one's self in order to kill and terrify others. An accomplishment that is entirely impossible to attain.

Inside the lengthy defense spending bill, in section 1031, Congress has laid out new detention of detainee guidelines which include indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens without the muss and fuss of constitutional guarantees against depriving U.S. citizens of due process. Guantanamo is not just for foreigners anymore…..

Sen.(Rand) Paul: “My question would be under the provisions would it be possible that an American citizen then could be declared an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely.”

Sen. McCain: “I think that as long as that individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat.”

Here’s what Sen. (Lindsey) Graham said in the Senate on Nov. 17:

“1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

For those who actually still believe that our government Leaders are prohibited from depriving citizens of their constitutional rights….as Ron Paul and I do….here's the Doc's take…

Rep. Ron Paul calls this bill “one of the most anti-liberty pieces of legislation of our lifetime.” He says it’s “destructive of our Constitution.”

And Ron's son…

His son Sen. Rand Paul says, “There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will at the hands of a too-powerful state – our constitution, and the checks we put on government power. Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then the terrorists have won.”

Well, Rand…the "terrorist have won". But really…hasn't that been clear for a long time now? Box cutter wielding international criminals have forced the U.S. to take once-guaranteed rights away from every American citizen. Our Leaders over the last 10 years have convinced us that sacrificing our rights is part and parcel of the way we'll "defeat the enemy."

The Pauls, especially Ron, have given the neo-cons in his party and in the Democratic Party a fit. He's a thorn in the side of Empire Expanding Neo-Cons because he keeps bringing up that "goddamn piece of paper" which used to be the American contract, the American charter. But as yesterday's vote proves, our Leaders no longer view the Constitution as binding.

If the Senate bill is reconciled in the House and signed by Obama (he has threatened a veto, probably won't)….any U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil, who the President deems an enemy combatant, and only on his say so….can be taken into custody and transferred to Guantanamo prison and possibly never heard from again. And that's if the President at the time doesn't order that citizen's assassination first. No trial, no charges, no lawyers, no due process…..nothing. Indefinite detention of a U.S. citizen and without any thread of due process as guaranteed under the "goddamn piece of paper."

So while the Village continues to stoke the bogus argument every day that Obama and the Democrats are orchestrating a huge government takeover of all things involving economics…..Democrats and Republicans are working together to…well…orchestrate a huge government takeover of our Constitutional rights.

If TEA Party supporters were as diligent at protecting citizens from the threat of indefinite detention without due process…as they are about protecting citizens from the threat of taking responsibility for their own health insurance…..maybe the TEAs, the ACLU and OWS could have stood together to fend off yesterday's huge governmental power grab.

It should be transparent to anyone who has been paying attention….but I'll say it anyway…. the United States is descending further into an authoritarian militarized country which features separate and distinct forms of justice for the haves…and the have-nots.

The haves….have unfettered and unquestioned rights. Their money is, in actuality, free speech. Their corporations pay cost-of-doing-business fines but are never held accountable and never admit to doing anything wrong….ever. Even though what the haves pay elected officials to do for them does not reflect the will of the American people, compromised elected officials do their utmost, anyway, to fulfill the wishes of the haves. The haves coax the politicians that work for them to pass more legislation which will further enrich them.

The have-nots, increasingly, are marginalized and denied their rights. Right before our eyes, the haves have convinced elected officials that a terrible economic crisis period is the right time for politicians on both sides to take stuff from the have-nots in order for the haves to benefit from even lower tax rates.

In all of this….corporate media have advanced the cause of the haves over the have-nots. This is understandable because corporate media is run by the haves, paid by other haves, for the sake of all of America's haves. In the soon-to-come, waste-of-time argument coming up over unemployment and payroll tax cut extensions….pay attention to how our 4th estate frames the "debate." No doubt, the haves will be pleased.

What media workers don't quite grasp in their urgency to please their haves-masters….is that the haves will turn on them just as they have turned on the 99% have-nots.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently helped to illustrates my premise when he ordered storm troopers to roll up the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zucotti Park.

During the more than six hours we spent at the raid last night, The Observer was unable to get closer than two blocks away from the protest. We assumed this was due to our lack of an official NYPD press badge, however, we also saw credentialed reporters from CNBC, CBS, the Wall Street Journal, NBC, The New York Times, Reuters and a Japanese TV station get blocked at the barricades.

It really would not be surprising in the future to see Have-Mayors, like Bloomberg, establish a new "embed" policy for the press….similar to the "embed" charade during the Iraq invasion and occupation. One of the ways that the haves control our democratic process, or what's left of it, is to control the information to which the have-nots have access.

And so it was that Bloomberg ordered the press away from any eyewitnessing of the Zucotti camp roll up by the Mayor's storm troopers.

Bloomberg went on to give his justification for denying the press access to his para-military invasion of the protester camp….

“The Police Department routinely keeps members of the press off to the side when they are in the middle of a police action. It’s to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect the members of the press,” Mayor Bloomberg said, adding, “We have to provide protection and we’ve done exactly that.”

Just "routine." Denying access to the press, the Authoritarian Have Mayor of New York explains, is simply standard operating procedure. Sure, the press has rights…..but the Have Mayor gets to decide when and how those rights can be exercised…and for how long.

The kicker to me is Bloomberg's explanation that in refusing press access to the storm trooper roll up, he was only acting for the purpose of "protect(ing) the members of the press." Bloomberg, apparently, acting as the Have-Daddy of New York City, must unilaterally deny the press access rights to keep the press safe.

Whatever rights you thought you enjoyed in America are now subject to our Have-Leaders determination of whether we are "safe" or not. You see, rights are fine and all….but when a situation is just "unsafe", then, Billionaire Leaders must insist on limiting or denying those rights for the greater good of "safety."

Allow me to expand. Americans electronic communications have always been guaranteed 4th amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure by the government. But no longer. Why? Because it is no longer "safe".

The right to due process? Another right granted by the Constitution which our Leaders have determined we can no longer safely respect. Sure, the Constitution says that every American citizen has the right to a trial by jury when charged with a crime…..but the President can no longer guarantee "safety" if he doesn't have the right to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without….umm….due process.

Treaties against the use of torture? Virtuous, perhaps, but no longer meaningful to Authoritarian Leaders who must deny rights to keep us all "safe."

As the great "shining city on the hill" sinks into the authoritarian sunset, it will be because safety (fear) wins out over bedrock constitutional rights. After all, if it is the job of our Authoritarian Leaders to keep us "safe"…..what pesky constitutional guarantees can be allowed to get in the way?

President Obama's biggest disappointment, at least to progressives, has been his, I guess, "rebirth", as a neo-conservative.

During Obama's campaign for the presidency, he made political hay out of George and Dick's offshore gulags, torture of detainees, unprovoked military attacks and occupations of countries posing no threat to America, eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, secrecy, and much more. Rightfully so. The Bush years were marked by an expansion of presidential powers in violation of the Constitution….and the worst part is, the Bushies got away with all of it…thus setting a precedent.

But now Obama has made the Bushie doctrine, his doctrine. Now, the lawlessness of the neo-con Bush regime has been made into a bipartisan, and probably permanent, national doctrine.

Obama has continued the neo-conservative and lawless foreign policies of his predecessors. What's more, Obama has expanded those lawless powers….with his shiny new lawlessness theory that the President has the power to order the assassination of U.S. citizens on only his say so.

Indeed, all the ususal-suspect neo-cons,….Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Dick Cheney, many others….have heaped high praise on Obama the Neo-con….especially because Obama ordered the assassination of the U.S. citizen, Awlaki. It's worthy of remark that the only policy with which neo-con renegades from the Bush administration agree with Obama is on Obama's embrace of neo-con lawlessness.

That said….and with the understanding that American neo-cons have long ago targeted Iran for takeover…..it's interesting to see the Obama administration, including Obama and Hillary Clinton, hellbent to make something huge out of the recent allegations of an assassination plot by two Iranians against the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

(AG Eric) Holder called the bomb plot a flagrant violation of U.S. and international law. And Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, "We will not let other countries use our soil as their battleground."

Behold the double standard. Or is it simply a total lack of self-awareness?

Since 9-11-2001, the United States government has declared that the entire globe is a "battlefield" where U.S. military forces have the perfect right to wage war just about any way they see fit. In other words, at the same time that DOJ officials are claiming that "other countries" cannot be permitted to "use our soil as a battleground"….U.S. officials have claimed the unique right among all nations…to "use the soil" of any country as our "battlefield."

Chalk it up to "American exceptionalism"….or blindness….or whatever. The point becomes: do as we say, not as we do.

Two weeks ago, the United States assassinated one of its enemies in Yemen, on Yemeni soil. If the U.S. believes it has the right to assassinate enemies like Anwar Awlaki anywhere in the world in the name of a "war on terror" that has no geographical limitation, how can it then argue that other nations don't have a similar right to track down their enemies and kill them wherever they're found?

Other than simply chanting very loudly…U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A…..in order to drown out those objecting to such an obvious double standard….the U.S. really cannot argue convincingly that we, of all nations, are the only ones who are allowed to use the soil of foreign countries to conduct military adventures against our "enemies."

Why is it that the U.S., alone, should have the power to wage war against alleged enemies anywhere we choose to wage that war…..yet other nations shouldn't also have that power?

The L.A. Times editor finishes with a huge understatement…

The world is unlikely to accept that the United States has a right to behave as it wishes without accountability all around the globe and that other nations do not.

Ya' think?

If you really want to find out what this alleged Iranian plot to off a Saudi ambassador is about….read Glenn Greenwald's excellent take. Here's a description by folks who knew the alleged plotter which describes him as hapless….just like many of the others whom U.S. officials have coaxed into staging a plot against the U.S., and then later, announced how safe those officials had kept us by breaking up a domestic plot they, themselves, nurtured into existence.

But the ass-kicker of the day on this story goes to President Obama,…

“There’s a great similarity between how Iran operates and how North Korea operates, a willingness on their part to break international rules, to flout international norms, to not live up to their own commitments. And each time they do that, the United States will join with its partners and allies in making sure that they pay a price,” Obama said.

If the similarity between how N. Korea and Iran operate is….."a willingness…to break international rules, to flout international norms…"….then, the United States of America operates in a similar fashion to N. Korea and Iran.

What else could violating the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment(s) be called? I mean other than operating similarly to Iran or N. Korea?

How about Guantonomo? Our offshore, secret, prisons? Isn't there a "great similarity" between the U.S. and N.Korea and Iran concerning gulags?

How about the American violation of international norms prohibiting attacking a sovereign nation (Iraq) which poses no threat to the U.S? Hell, Iran doesn't even do stuff like that….only the U.S.

Obama may think he is standing strong by talking all Cheney-like over this most recent ginned-up emergency. But the rest of the world's occupants who heard Obama's words yesterday recognize the gargantuan double standard and lack of self-awareness contained in his words.

I was interested in my blog bud's recent post chastising Indiana Supreme Court members for ruling that citizens in Indiana "have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes."

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.

"We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said.

Da King was incensed that the 4th amendment to the Constitution was being trampled by these Indiana Supremes…..many angels danced on heads of pins in the ensuing discussion in the comment thread.

Yesterday, the Major League Supreme Court issued a new ruling basically putting an exclamation mark to the end of the 4th amendment.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave police more leeway to break into homes or apartments in search of illegal drugs when they suspect the evidence might be destroyed.

The justices said officers who smell marijuana and loudly knock on the door may break in if they hear sounds that suggest the residents are scurrying to hide the drugs.

Stripsearch Supreme, Sammy Alito wrote the majority 8-1 opinion and had this to say….

Residents who "attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame" when police burst in, Justice Samuel Alito said for an 8-1 majority.

Basically the only progressive jurist left, Ruth Ginsburg, said in the lone dissent….

"The court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement in drug cases," Ginsburg wrote. "In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant."

Well….yeah Ruth. Who has time to fool with warrants when the ends justify the means in post-9-11 America? There's not a Dick Cheney second to lose. And hell…..I'm sure that trained law enforcement officers know just what evidence destruction sounds like and would, therefore, never abuse such power…..so, no worries then. After all, police are only concerned about our safety.

Much of the 4th amendment has long ago been sacrificed in the so-called war on drugs. A fictitious "war" with no end and no purpose other than to maintain a bloated law enforcement-prison industrial complex. With this latest ruling, the Supremes are simply tying up any loose ends.

At this juncture I would ask the Kiefer Sutherland-Dick Cheney question……'if there's a one percent chance that the rustling sound I'm hearing inside that house could be "terrorists" destroying documents….or WMD….or even maybe some hashish….AND if there's even the slightest chance that the people making that rustling sound inside that house have information about an imminent threat to American lives….anywhere…..wouldn't you want police officers to just bust the door down to keep us safe?'

Immediately after 9-11….Americans responded with a resounding 'Hell, yes.'

There's no sense in looking back and second guessing now.

When the fictitious war on terror was announced by the, as yet, unindicted war criminals, Bush and Cheney….Americans had their 4th amendment rights rescinded. It was no longer safe for Americans to not have their federal overlords spying on all their communications. After all, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Sometimes safety must come before fidelity to a "goddamn piece of paper", as the Decider put it.

In particular, neo-con Americans felt so unsafe after 9-11 that when W's illegal-wiretapping-of-all-electronic-communications program was leaked they wanted to arrest the New York Times writers who spilled the beans….still do. Our Protectors were so concerned about our safety that it wasn't safe for us even to know how safe they were keeping us…..too risky.

Anyone who is troubled or experiencing mild forms of second guessing over the means by which our Protectors, you know, protect us…..and are just now wondering about 4th amendment protections……and what happened to those protections…..I insist that you read the latest from The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, "The Secret Sharer." It is most definitely a must read.

If you are a person who says you are concerned at all about Big Gub'mint taking away your rights….and particularly if you are one whose libertarian feathers were ruffled recently over erosion of 4th amendment rights…..then you need a good, hard-hitting, refresher course on how we arrived at where we are today.

Where we are….is exactly where neo-con worry warts and pearl clutching libertarians wanted to take us.

After almost 10 years of battling a stubborn grassroots insurgency financed by shadowy anonymous donors here at home, a somber U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that the United States of America would surrender it's rule of law, effective immediately, and await further orders from the insurgency's leadership.

The announcement was not unexpected.

In November of 2009, I announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other individuals would stand trial in federal court for their roles in the terrorist attacks on our country on September the 11th of 2001.

….

Had this case proceeded in Manhattan or in an alternative venue in the United States, as I seriously explored in the past year, I am confident that our justice system would have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over two hundred years.

Unfortunately, since I made that decision, Members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue.

…..

Members of Congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments. Yet they have taken one of the nation’s most tested counterterrorism tools off the table and tied our hands in a way that could have serious ramifications.

Congress and American voters have been waffling on whether there is any further need for a rule of law after the 9-11 event. Critics of the centuries-old U.S. legal framework have relentlessly argued that our federal courts are no longer safe venues for trials…..with reliable guilty verdicts no longer guaranteed. These same critics have said that trials by juries post 9-11 are too high profile, too expensive and unsafe from jihadist attacks.

Furthermore, Congressional insurgents maintain that our stateside maximum security prisons…..the so-called SuperMax prisons, from which no one has ever escaped…..would be easy lock-picking, escape-hatches for our new superhuman enemy.

Even though the U.S. defeated the mighty Axis powers of WW2 without sacrificing it's rule of law…..even though our most dangerous and powerful enemy, the Soviet Empire, was successfully worn down without offshore secret torture prisons or newfangled systems of jurisprudence…..today's shoe and underwear bombing enemy, today's box-cutter-equipped jihadists, pose too much of a threat today for us to rely on some dusty, outdated rule of law.

Holder's announcement yesterday is the natural progression for a nation which has been successfully propagandized by shadowy donors and Congressional insurgents over nearly 10 years. It is most definitely a truth that if something is repeated enough times, that something is eventually believed by a majority. A majority in the U.S. now fully embrace the lie that since 9-11, "everything has changed."

I am embarassed for my country. It is neither "free" any longer, nor "brave."

And so, with Holder's capitulation to homegrown, insurgent political forces…..we proudly acknowledge that we now try international criminals in undisclosed torture centers outside the U.S., in secrecy, by military tribunals akin to those of banana republic dictatorships. Guantanamo stays open…..and America's proud fearmongers celebrate our new symbol of exceptionalism.

With yesterday's announcement to America and to the world…..the often-cited American "winning hearts and minds" slogan enters permanent retirement. Osama has won the battle of the slogans…..a win which will have repercussions for a very, very long time.

First they came for our private electronic communications. It was, indeed, illegal for them to eavesdrop without warrants…..but we allowed it. Then they came for our freedom to travel. Passports required, shoes and belts removed, crotches groped, scanners scanning. And then they gave new powers to the Commander Guy. Powers to order the assassination of U.S. citizens, powers to declare anything and everything a state secret, powers to wage war anywhere, anytime and without the approval of anyone.

Then medieval torture techniques, techniques ruled illegal and unacceptable for over 200 years, were declared useful tools to be used, with doctors standing at the ready naturally, in our new Long War.

And finally, with Attorney General Holder's announcement yesterday, our overlords have declared that the rule of law in the United States has become fully optional. As a citizen of this United States it is no longer true that you have a guarantee to not be cruelly and unusually punished. You no longer have a guaranteed right to a trial by a jury of your peers. You no longer have a right to privacy in your possessions, your papers, or your most intimate of communications.

Regardless of whether Osama Bin Laden is ever brought to justice, America has already lost the ridiculously named "war on terror." The very virtues and values once-cherished by a patriotic people have been freely given up over the last ten years in exchange for some fantastical "24" perception of security.

The insurgents of fear have won.

What's in a name, right?

Terrorists, insurgents, rabble-rousers, freedom fighters…..how about let's call them…rebels. Yeah, that's it. And so it was in the Village.

Americans have not one clue who these Libyan "rebels" are, what they stand for, what they will do if Qaddafi is overthrown, how they regard the U.S. and the West, how many of them exist…..we don't know anything at all. And yet, almost half of Americans approve of President Obama's hellbentness to defend them and assist them in their efforts.

But these Libyan fighters are not just "rebels" mind you….but "rag tag" "rebels"….which, I guess, is supposed to be a reminder to Americans of our own "rag tag" bunch of 1700's patriots who successfully overthrew those British colonialists. Which is a reminder to me to remind readers that Libya is the world's 9th largest oil producing nation. Draw whatever applicable inference you'd like.

What else do we know about these rag-tag Libyan rebels?

….the rebels now are starting to show their combat fatigue,……Outgunned and often outflanked in the field, they lack any sort of military strategy or leadership. They are eager to take ground, but are quick to flee when they face any real fighting. The reality is that a rebel military victory seems increasingly unlikely.

Sounds a bit like those fierce fighters we've been propping up in Afghanistan for….let me see…..2011 minus 2001 equals….10 years now. But hey, we're making progress because General David Petreaus would never, you know, betray us. So let's MoveOn.

From, Al-Qa'ida Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records…..we find that after Saudi Arabia (shocker), Libya was the next most common country of origin in producing anti-American jihadists to the Iraq conflict. 18.8% of foreign jihadists entering Iraq to fight against western forces were from Libya, a total of 112 fighters.

Benghazi, the northeastern Libyan equivalent of, I guess, Lexington and Concord….sent 21 jihadists into Iraq.

The vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their hometown in the Sinjar Records resided in the country’s Northeast, particularly the coastal cities of Darnah 60.2% (53) and Benghazi 23.9% (21).

Moreover, these "rebels" have tried taking on Qaddafi before….

Both Darnah and Benghazi have long been associated with Islamic militancy in Libya, in particular for an uprising by Islamist organizations in the mid‐1990s. The Libyan government blamed the uprising on “infiltrators from the Sudan and Egypt” and one group—the Libyan Fighting Group (jamaʹah al‐libiyah al‐muqatilah)—claimed to have Afghan veterans in its ranks. The Libyan uprisings became extraordinarily violent. Qadhafi used helicopter gunships in Benghazi, cut telephone, electricity, and water supplies to Darnah and famously claimed that the militants “deserve to die without trial, like dogs.”

As we already know, it is impossible for U.S. leaders to learn from history…..the proof being that we're not (by god) bogged down in a long, long quagmire in Aghanistan like the Soviets foolishly found themselves in before they gave up, went home, and ended their Union. No sir….not the United States of Jesus.

So, naturally, as President Obama secretly planned weeks ago to put CIA agents on the ground inside Libya to mark locations for our deficit-busting missles to hit….and as President Obama now secretly plots to arm these rag tag rebels with the proper firepower to overthrow Libya's "evil-doer"….we can rest assured that everything will work out just peachy.

Just in case you don't buy the river of deceptive bullsh*t flowing from our leadership, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made everything clear in a classified briefing on Wednesday…..

The White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a classified briefing to House members Wednesday afternoon.

Clinton and Obama are, I think wrongfully, relying on a provision in the War Powers Resolution of 1973 granting the President a window of up to 90 days to wage war in the case of "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."

Of course, Libya has not created a national emergency for America, nor attacked our armed forces or any of our territories or states….but hell, why quibble over, as W. put it, "a goddamn piece of paper", right?

In summary: Perhaps everything will work out fine. Maybe Qaddafi will simply leave, or be killed. Maybe Libya will break out in democracy like daisies in the spring…..what the hell would I know?

But I'm extremely skeptical. And with good reason. Just yesterday I read of 58 people being blown up in Iraq…..our last "America is different" experiment in spreading freedom. Afghanistan is not simply a quagmire…..it's a hopeless and embarassing quagmire of mass American destruction.

Those who believe that the United States leadership is doing the right thing in Libya, like Obama-defender Ed Shultz in the video below, are simply basing their opinions on faith alone. And that's way too superstitious for me.