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What has happened in this country?

The Pentagon has a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (FISA). The courtroom is in a windowless room on the top floor of the Department of Justice. There are seven rotating judges. The court meets in secret, with no published opinions or public records. No one, except the FISA judge involved and the Department of Justice, knows what is done. No one, except the government and the FISA judge, knows at whom the warrants are aimed. There is no review by anyone. Over 12,000 search warrants permitting eavesdropping, surveillance and break-ins have been sought by the government. Only once has the FISA court denied a warrant. 

The FISA court has issued more warrants than the more than 1,000 district judges in the federal system.

The Pentagon has already expanded its domestic-surveillance activity beyond any previous time in history. It breaks into homes, wiretaps and eavesdrops at will, and builds secret dossiers on citizens while arguing that there can be no judicial review of its activities. President George W. Bush argues that there can be no judicial review of any decision he makes when he decides whether an alien or an American citizen is or is not an enemy combatant. Congress supports this; so does the judiciary.

The expansion of Presidential powers and the expansion of police powers is the single most important issue facing this country. It is safe to say the new Supreme Court and a majority of Congress (both Democrats and Republicans) are prepared to give Mr. Bush a blank check. On Nov. 15, Carl Levin, the liberal Democratic Senator from Michigan and an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, joined his Republican counterpart from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, in supporting legislation validating the President’s Alice-in-Wonderland legal system and the expansion of his police powers. The Senate vote was 79 to 16 in favor. 

What’s more, the Patriot Act had been extended.  For the last three years, the President has justified torture, and Congress will soon give him legal permission to use it.

If or when there’s another terrorist attack, the government will seek more powers, claiming that it shows current laws are inadequate. We will certainly see, as we recently saw in Britain, the head of government ask for 90-day detentions of terror suspects without access to court.  The attempt to end habeas corpus started at Guantánamo; it is now spreading to the rest of America.

Five years after we opened the Guantánamo prison, not one person in that prison has been found guilty of anything. 

The legal system to treat the new prisoners of the war on terror, created out of thin air, disgraces us. No one ever before suggested such a legal system—not during the Civil War, not during World War I or World War II, and not during the Cold War.

We are better than military commissions, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, the Patriot Act and “rendition”—the sending of prisoners overseas to be tortured at C.I.A.-controlled prisons.  

This country is approaching a dangerous turning point. There has long been a desire and a political movement in America for restrictions on democratic rights, for an authoritarian government propelled by a combination of religious and nationalistic fervor.  The helplessness caused by the events of Sept. 11 and the domestic and international war against Muslim “terrorists” deepened this desire. Never before was there such a possibility of such long-term constitutional violations, because there has never before been such an open-ended war.

In Weimar Germany, a feeling of helplessness led to Hitler’s rise and the creation of the ultimate police state. There are similarities—and, of course, very significant differences—between America in the 21st century and Germany in the 1920’s.

Mr. Bush has suggested that he was chosen by God to lead the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The Nazi government, against religion, saw the salvation of the German people in messianic terms.

Many liberals and conservatives are concerned where all of this might lead. Professor Fritz Stern, a professor of German studies at Columbia University, pointed out that Hitler saw himself as “the instrument of providence” who fused his “racial dogma with Germanic Christianity.” Paul Craig Roberts, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former Wall Street Journal editor, writes of the “brownshirting” of American conservatism—he says the hype about terrorism serves little or “no purpose other than to build a police state that is far more dangerous to Americans than terrorists.”

The pressure for fascism comes not just from the top.  Without the people’s support, the Weimar government would not have been overthrown. 

The change here is incremental and harder to see. 

How we conduct the “war on terror” tells the American people who we are and what this country stands for. America has the oldest and most dynamic democracy in the world.  It can right itself if the people want it bad enough to fight harder.

Martin Garbus is a partner in the law firm of Davis & Gilbert LLP and one of the country's leading trial lawyers. Mr. Garbus aggressively represents his clients in the courts and in the media. He has appeared before the United States Supreme Court as well as the highest state and federal courts in the nation. His devotion to ethics, justice and the law has earned him respect among the legal community and beyond as well as prominent awards. Time Magazine has named him "legendary . . . one of the best trial lawyers in the country," while Newsweek , the National Law Journal and other media agree that Mr. Garbus is America's "most prominent First Amendment lawyer," with an "extraordinarily diverse practice." The National Law Journal named him one of the country's top ten litigators.

© Copyright 2005 THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

As America staggers out of 2005, it's time to look back at what hit us. There were five major events: Bush deflation, Republican corruption, Iraq quicksand, American shame, and Mother Nature.

"Oh yes, I'm the great pretender, pretending that I'm doing well."
Shortly after being reelected in November 2004, George Bush bragged about his new political capital. The President promised Republican donors that they would see new tax cuts and entitlement reductions. He promised to "reform" Social Security. One of the big stories of the year was the scuttling of Bush's ambitious agenda. Congressional Democrats united and the President's political capital evaporated. By the end of the year, congressional Republicans were abandoning battleship Bush. Separating from the Administration on torture, renewal of the Patriot Act, and his economic legislation. Dubya lost so much face that he was forced to do what previously had been unthinkable - admit making a mistake.

"Even the President must sometimes stand naked."
This was the year when America's worst fears about the Bush Administration were confirmed: The Republican congressional leadership - Tom DeLay and Bill Frist - was accused of financial improprieties; Delay was indicted. Veteran Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham was convicted of accepting bribes and numerous other Republicans are being investigated. The "Plamegate" scandal resulted in the indictment of Presidential adviser Scooter Libby and placed Bush guru, Karl Rove, under a cloud of suspicion. The accumulated evidence of Republican malfeasance constituted the worst Washington corruption in over 100 years.

"We were waist deep in the Big Muddy and the damn fool kept yelling to push on."
President Bush remained upbeat on prospects for "victory" in Iraq. He insisted the US will not withdraw until there are viable Iraqi security forces. However, these troops seem unable to fight without the support of U.S. forces. There were three elections during the year and millions of Iraqis voted. Nonetheless, the civil war intensified and the number of insurgent attacks dramatically increased. While two-thirds of Iraqis oppose the presence of US forces in their country, only 26 percent want us out "now." Americans are similarly divided about withdrawal. Some feel we should stay as long as it takes to defeat the insurgency. Others want us to withdraw at once. In November, hawkish Democratic Congressman, John Murtha, announced he had changed his opinion on the war and now felt that we should withdraw our troops within six months. This galvanized Democratic opposition. As a result almost all Washington Dems favor a timetable for withdrawal. George Bush opposes this, saying that reduction of forces should be "condition based." At year-end, only he knew what these were.

"Louisiana, they're trying to wash us away."
The years' most shameful event was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Thousands of New Orleans residents, mostly poor and black, were abandoned when the city was evacuated. For days the nation watched as old folks, women and children waded through flooded streets searching for food and water. The dreadful response of the Federal Government proved what many had been warning about - the Bush Administration learned nothing from the 9/11 attacks. The nation was woefully unprepared for disaster. The desperate circumstances of Gulf Coast residents also reminded Americans that we have become a deeply divided nation - one where the rich prosper, while the plight of the poor become ever more desperate.

"Crazy mama, where you been so long?"
While Time magazine named the "person" of the year as philanthropists Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates, the award should have gone to Mother Nature. However, she was far too busy to sit still for a picture. This was a year that big mama cut loose. In the United States these were horrendous hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. In Asia there were tsunamis and earthquakes. While some of these events had nothing to do with global climate change, the ferocious hurricanes were almost certainly the products of elevated seawater temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. Throughout the world there was mounting evidence of the reality of global warming. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration continues to insist that the jury is still out on climate change. As a result they resisted all efforts to change national policy or to join international treaties. For most Americans, 2005 proved that it's not smart to mess with crazy mama.

"He's a real nowhere man. "
This was the year when a majority of Americans realized that they could not trust George Bush. Unfortunately, he was elected to a four-year term and will be with us for three more years - unless impeached. While there were encouraging signs at the end of the year, Democrats have yet to mount an effective opposition. As a result, America is leaving 2005 a deeply divided nation without a clear sense of direction. Adrift on a sea riled by an increasingly irascible Mother Nature.

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

If evil were to take over America, it would have to do it with a smiling face and postures of righteousness.

Most of the evil rulers in history made no pretense to moral virtue. Maintaining their power through terror, they simply intimidated people into submission.

But in a democracy, evil can rise to power only with the people’s consent—at least in the first stage. And this means that deception replaces brute force as evil’s route to the throne.

Evil has thus ascended to power in America disguised as the good.

This is why the partnership between George W. Bush and Karl Rove has proved so fatefully dangerous for America, for the two men bring profoundly complementary talents to the theater of moral deception.

Rove As Dramatist of the Moral Lie

From the beginning, Karl Rove has been drawn to the staging of morally deceptive theater to gain political power.

Twenty years ago, according to James Moore, et al., the authors of Bush’s Brain, he faked the wiretapping of his own office—a gesture that made his candidate appear the victim of dirty tricks from the other side.

And he’s apparently orchestrated the smearing of George W. Bush’s opponents in one campaign after another—from a whisper campaign in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial race to insinuate that Gov. Ann Richards was a lesbian, to the behind-the-scenes injection into the South Carolina primary in 2000 that Sen. John McCain had fathered a black child, to the character assassination employed against both Gore and Kerry in Bush’s two presidential campaigns.

Rove’s now significant role in American history thus rests on his genius in dramatizing lies to persuade people to see his political enemies as morally worse than they really are. These moral lies are the democratic equivalent of assassination in regimes where swords rather than votes lead to power.

But Rove’s strategy of dramatizing moral lies to slander his enemies becomes really powerful when combined with its other half: the lie that presents his side as morally better than it is.

So the great dramatist of the moral lie also needed a talent for casting. And it should thus come as no surprise that the partnership with George W. Bush was formed at the initiation of Karl Rove.

In Bush, he recognized that he’d found an actor who was not only heir to great power but also adept at pretending to a righteousness really quite foreign to his true nature.

Bush as the Great Pretender

However George W. Bush became adept at pretending to be a better man than he is, we know that putting himself together in an effective way took him a very long time—a time marked by many failures covered over by bravado and anaesthetized by alcohol.

And we can see still in his body –in his posturing like some sort of gunslinger, arms out from his side; in his swagger and strut; in the unnatural puffing out of the chest—powerful signs that this is a man who really does not know who he is. He seems constantly seeking the pose of the man in the white hat, an imitation of the heroes of movie westerns.

His infamous call to the insurgents to “Bring it on!” early in the conflict, as if it were he and not the soldiers he’d sent into battle who would carry the brunt of the fight, is one indication of this President’s deep lack of self-awareness.

This same profound estrangement from the reality of his role in his falsely righteous dramas was displayed back when the hunt for Osama bin Ladin was still on. On this occasion, the President stood before microphones on the White House lawn mocking bin Ladin for cowardice in sending other men off to face death while he remained protected in some hidden cave. This from the most protected man in the world, who’d just sent his countrymen’s sons and daughters to fight his war!

How many of the lies this president enacts before the world are lies he tells himself?

The best liars are those who believe their own lies.

With Bush, as in human affairs generally, it is hard to know where to draw the line between “really doesn’t know” and “doesn’t want to know.” Bush’s Brain author James Moore says about the Bush-Rove partnership:

“The President is oblivious, and chooses to stay oblivious, to the things that Karl does, and the contradictions about morality that Karl does. The whole concept, and it works in all of his campaigns, is the candidate or the officeholder takes the high road -- talks policy, talks moral clarity, and honor, and principle -- while the operative does all the dirty work down in the ditch, and splashes the mud, and spreads the scurrilous smears and rumors and whisper campaigns that have the desired political effect to keep the candidate elected.”

Right now in America the buck stops with a man who talks about restoring integrity to the Oval Office while the “architect” he hires is a specialist in perpetrating moral fraud.

He’s someone who talks about how we’re fighting for “Freedom,” but arranges political events from which people wearing T-shirts favoring his opponent are excluded, and has his Pentagon use the “Patriot Act” to treat peaceful protesters against his policies as a “threat.“

He parades his devotion to a culture of life, but sows the seeds of death at home, around the world, and in the biosphere.

He talks about “compassion” but can mock the pleas for mercy he rejected from the woman –born again, like himself—whom he’d put to death in Texas.

He promised to be a uniter, not a divider, but has used divisiveness as his primary political tactic.

He arranges photo ops with his friendly arm around some black child or another, but fights hardest for policies that further weaken the disadvantaged.

He campaigned saying that the United States should be a “humble” nation, but is now reviled around the world as an arrogant bully.

In this dangerous period of the moral lie, regrettably, this list of discrepancy between the saying and the doing could be expanded almost indefinitely.

The Need to Spread the Moral Truth

It is through such moral hypocrisy that evil could gain a foothold in a democratic society like America. These rulers could not shoot their way into the White House. They had to sell themselves to a willing public.

And so it is that the takeover of America by evil forces has been achieved by such outstanding dramatists of the moral lie as these two. But unless the false righteousness of these moral liars can be exposed, this can be but the first stage.

For when evil is combined with power, it can spread its ways, destroying the structures of good order that stand in its way. So we see these forces now tearing apart the foundations of our democracy—degrading the discourse on which democratic deliberation depends, dismantling the protections against the abuse of power, polarizing Americans into warring groups.

So if evil can advance far enough through the moral lie it can gradually remove the mask. Behind this presidency, there are forces with no ingratiating smiles, forces ready to show their true faces should the time come when power has no need for such pretense.

The stakes could not be higher.

At present, we in America can talk about these things without worrying about the jackboots at the door. But unless we can awaken our deceived countrymen to the truth about these rulers –unless this country is moved to repudiate fully not only these present leaders, but also the ruthless forces for whom they are the phony public face—that may not always be true.

Andrew Bard Schmookler has recently launched his website - NoneSoBlind.org - devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press), Out of Weakness, Healing the Wounds that Drive Us To War (Bantam Books), and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states. Schmookler can be reached at andythebard@comcast.net