"True Faith And Allegiance"?

Entangling alliances: Senator Kyl at this weekend's meeting of the U.S.-Israeli Joint Parliamentary Committee

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” (Emphasis added.)

Oath of office for US Congressmen and Senators

Over the weekend, a small delegation of American legislators was shuttled by military plane to Israel to take part in meetings of “a joint Senate-Knesset committee headed by Senator John M. Kyl, who is close to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney." In addition to Senator Kyl, the group included Representatives Jane Harman (D-California), Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), and Steve Pearce (R-Arizona).

Yuval Steinitz, the Likud Party parliamentarian who hosted the American delegation, defined the purpose of the two-day visit in startlingly brazen terms: “We think that it is important that the members of the delegation feel the connection and understand Israel better. They are mostly non-Jewish and we want them to feel some obligation to the country.” (Emphasis added.)

The oath that these elected representatives took, invoking the holiest of Names, precludes them from feeling an “obligation” of any sort to any country other than our own – however laudable, or however infamous, that foreign nation may be.

I hope he's seeking forgiveness for perjuring himself in God's name: Kyl at the Western Wall

Steiniz boasts that the joint committee “has had major achievements and we hope that this visit will lead to additional feats.” The specific “feat” he has in mind is war with Iran, which was to be the focus of briefings the US legislators would receive from the head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan.

In fact, there's reason to believe that this committee – a constitutionally impermissible and morally reprehensible blending of our legislative branch with that of a foreign state – was created for the express purpose of agitating for a war with Iran. It was created in 2003, and since then has left an almost imperceptible paper trail.

One of the few references to the Committee's work that Google was able to scrape up was a Christian Science Monitor account of testimony delivered before the Committee in September 2003 by State Department official Paula DeSutter, who insisted that a nuclear-armed Iran “cannot be allowed to happen.”

The Committee has been stealthily efficient: “In the past, the joint Knesset-Senate Committee helped make hundreds of millions of dollars available for Israel's missile defense shield, Arrow, which is produced in cooperation [with] Boeing in the US. In addition, according to Steinitz, the committee has in the past prevented arms sales to Arab states that would have threatened Israel's unique edge in the region; it also initiated the Iran sanctions law, which makes it illegal for governments to provide arms or aid Iran's nuclear program....”

So the Committee's work has (arguably) been beneficial to Israel, profitable for Boeing, a minor inconvenience to Arab states (who, alas, have the money and means to get arms elsewhere), and an insult to foreign governments that must find it peculiar to be told they have to obey restrictions imposed on them by a law that began as the bastard offspring of an illegitimate bi-national committee.

The question is: What benefit, if any, has this arrangement provided for the people who sent those legislators to Washington, the ones whose taxes have purchased Israel's missile shield, and whose children would likely die in the wars that are being propagated in the Middle East?

That's a question that should be posed – bluntly, forcefully, and often – to Kyl and his companions when they return from their junket.

The Bush Regime has claimed the power to take our country to war with Iran without legislative action of any kind. The Democratic congressional leadership is doing nothing about this, except to trip over its own feet and stumble over its collective tongue in its eagerness to condemn Tehran as a world-historic menace.

Iran's demented executive figurehead, and his American equivalent: Am I the only one who detects a certain ... resemblance?

It says a great deal about our predicament that now, after the public mood has turned decisively against the war in Iraq, and with little public support for expanding the war to include Iran, congressional leaders and presidential aspirants from both branches of the Establishment Party have turned to Israel for support.

This week's visit by Kyl and Company comes just a few weeks after this year's “Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Herzliya Conference on `The Balance of Israel’s National Strength (hosen) and Security,'” which is billed as a summit of “the most influential Israeli and international leaders.” This year's edition included presentations from presidential aspirants Mitt Romney, John Edwards, and Newt Gingrich, all of whom focused on the “existential” threat posed by Iran.

Ironically, the most sensible thing said to the conference was said via satellite by the execrable Alan Dershowitz, to whose tongue and pen truth and wisdom had previously been total strangers.

Alas, to get to Dershowitz's kernel of wisdom we had to pick through the predictable pile of, well, Dershowitz.

Acting as spokesman for the League of the Perpetually Aggrieved, the Dersh played the victim card, insinuating that General Wesley Clark (a Democratic presidential hopeful) was dealing in anti-Semitic stereotypes by hinting “at Jewish involvement in U.S. foreign policy by saying `New York `money people are pushing the U.S. into war with Iran.'”

First of all, given that General Clark is Jewish, the anti-Semite label rubs right off. Secondly, given that there are millions of Jews who are loyal Americans, it's unavoidable that there will be “Jewish involvement” in American foreign policy. What is at issue is Israeli involvement in U.S. Foreign policy – and in light of what we've seen about the blatant co-mingling of legislative power between Washington and Tel Aviv, that case is utterly airtight.

(While we're on the subject of foreign influence on U.S. Foreign policy, somebody should corner General Clark and ask him about the role played by the Saudis in promoting NATO's 1999 terror-bombing of Serbia on behalf of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army.)

In defiance of all expectations, Dershowitz somehow came to a sensible conclusion:

“Israel must be prepared to lose American support in the coming years both diplomatically and economically....My message to Israel is ‘be strong’ and be prepared to go it alone.”

Irrespective of its origin, this is splendid advice, for both Israel and the United States. Israeli legislators should look after their nation's best interests, and American legislators should look after ours. At present, neither nation is being well served.

Obiter Dicta

Antiwar.com has linked to my most recent piece for The American Conservative, "Terrorists Chip In," which describes the dangers of the new RFID-"enhanced" passports.

Mark Dankof of the Republic Broadcasting Network informs me that Monday morning's interview will be posted to RBN's website as soon as their archives are up and running again. He was a gracious and very interesting host, and I really appreciated the opportunity to be on his fine program.

Next Monday (how's that for sufficient notice?) I'll be on Chris Arzen's program "Iron Sharpens Iron," on WNYG in New York, from 2:00-3:00 CST.

Last of all, and apropos of nothing, if you have about eight minutes to kill witnessing the casual virtuosity of a living master of his craft, please check this out. It's worth waiting to the end of the clip to hear his rendition of a Marty Robbins tune -- even if classic country ain't your bag.

Be sure to visit The Right Source for news, commentary, Kevin Shannon's daily radio program, and other valuable information.

Iraqi "Justice" : The Shape of Things To Come

Among the nastiest methods of social control employed by Communist regime was the old “ballot box next to the ration cards” trick. Voters in Soviet-dominated Poland, or in Castro's Cuba, were perfectly free to cast their vote as they saw fit, but the proximity of the ration cards helped focus their minds on the need to vote “correctly.”

Laith al-Ani, an Iraqi citizen who was fled his “liberated” homeland for Syria, witnessed a variation on that tactic as he was being prepared for release after more than two years in detention, without charges.

Last January 6, Ani was processed out of a jail near the Baghdad airport. He was given street clothes and had his irises scanned into a biometric database. Then “he was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated,” reported the New York Times.

“I didn't go through any abuse during detention,” read one option, in Arabic.

“I have gone through abuse during detention,” read the other.

Laith al-Ani with his daughter, Al Budur

In the room “stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn,” continued the Times. On one occasion, Ani – as punishment for a perceived violation of some trivial rule – was seized by two guards while a third applied the stun device to his tongue.

“Even the translator told me to sign the first answer,” Ani recounted. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands” as if to say “Who knows?”

“I thought if I don't sign the first one I am not going to get out of this place.”

Not surprisingly, many of those who have been through the system Ani describes have fled Iraq, but intend to return to join the guerrilla campaign against the U.S. Occupation. “The United States through its actions made people hate the Americans much more than before,” observed Ani, who doesn't express any interest in becoming a Jihadi.

The Regime has “disputed” Ani's account, without – of course -- “responding to the specifics” of his case, insisting that “the facts of our detention system belie the themes of this article.” The Bu'ushist spokesdrone dismissed Ani's story as “anecdotal.” But Ani's uncontested account – by refusing to challenge it, the Regime has stipulated to it – was buttressed by a key document he showed the Times: a copy of the form he was handed while being out-processed from detention.

The Bush Regime, not content to inflict a Soviet-style “justice” system on Iraqis, was recently rebuffed in its effort to extradite an American citizen to go on trial in Iraq.

On February 9, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously against the Regime's claim that U.S. Citizen Shawqi Omar, a veteran of the Minnesota National Guard, “has a right to argue for his release before a U.S. Court,” reported the A.P. The same court, by a 2-1 vote, barred the military from binding Omar (who has been detained in US military custody in Iraq) over for trial in an Iraqi court.

“Trials” in the Iraqi court system, even for capital offenses, often consist of a fifteen minute interrogation by a judge followed by a desultory plea for mercy from an inept public defender. Defendants are afforded none of the due process guarantees to which US citizens are entitled. It;'s tempting to think that the Iraqi court system is very close kindred to the system the Busheviks would impose here at home, were they permitted to.

Omar, a dual citizen of the US and Jordan, was detained by the military in 2004 as a suspected insurgent. Displaying the perverse ingenuity for which it has become notorious, the Bush Regime insisted that “Omar's detention could not be subject to judicial review because U.S. forces were holding him under the international authority provided by United Nations Security Council resolutions authorizing their presence,” in the words of a UPI account.

Omar is not the only US citizen facing the prospect of Iraqi “justice.” Mohammad Munaf, a native Iraqi who became a naturalized American citizen in 2000, “ was arrested and charged with taking part in a terrorist plot to kidnap a group of Romanian journalists,” reports the Washington Post. “He was convicted in an Iraqi court and sentenced to death, but before the sentence could be carried out, a U.S. court in October prevented the U.S. military from transferring Munaf to Iraqi custody.” Munaf's case has been scheduled for a hearing before a federal court.

As I've said before, one case of this sort could be an anomaly, two a coincidence, but three or more represent a trend. To the cases of Omar and Munaf must be added that of Donald Vance, a Navy veteran from Chicago who was detained and abused by U.S. military and security personnel in Iraq last April.

Vance went to Iraq in 2004 to work as a security contractor. He started with a Washington-based company, then joined a small Baghdad-based security company assigned to protect reconstruction workers. Alarmed over the company's corruption and ties to radical militias, Vance contacted the FBI and began feeding it information about what he found. In April, however, Vance and an associate were seized by the military. He was identified as a “threat” because of his association with the very people he was trying to expose.

Vance was released after several weeks in an Iraqi dungeon, where he was subject to relentless and abusive interrogation (although, thankfully, not of the Abu Ghraib variety).

And like Laith al-Ani, Donald Vance – a US citizen and honorably discharged veteran of the US Navy – was given an unambiguous hint that he should keep quiet about his treatment.

“They asked me if I was intending to write a book, would I talk to the press, would I be thinking of getting an attorney. I took it as, `Shut up, don't talk about this place,' and I kept saying, `No sir, I want to go home.'”

To his credit, on his arrival back in Chicago Vance immediately contacted an attorney and filed a lawsuit against former Commissar for Invading and Occupying Small Countries Donald Rumsfeld.

Obiter Dicta

This is rather late notice, but tomorrow morning (Monday, February 19), I'm going to be on "Mark Dankof's America" on the Republic Broadcasting Network from 9:00-10:00 a.m. CST.

Federally-Funded Niche-Market Nazis

Your Federal Government at work: David Gletty, washed-up Roller Derby performer-turned-agent provocateur, addresses a meeting of the National Socialist Movement.

“Remember: Image is important,” David Gletty, leader of the Orlando chapter of the National Socialist Movement, admonished his tiny knot of demonstrators during its February 2006 rally. “We want to stay civilized. Give these police officers the respect they deserve.”

Gletty's professionalism, if not his perceived commitment to an abhorrent cause, impressed James Carlson of the Orlando Weekly, who had embedded himself in the NSM protest.

“Gletty knows what he's doing,” wrote Carlson, who described how the NSM leader shepherded the neo-Nazis through the much larger counter-protest, while keeping their spirits up with regular doses of “anti-Semitic bile.”

What he really wants is to direct: Gletty (center, back to camera) works with the road company of "Springtime for Hitler."

As it happens, Gletty did indeed “know what he was doing.” He once made his living in Roller Derby, a pseudo-sport that is close kindred to professional “wrestling”; this meant that he was possessed both athleticism and theatricality. He knew how to generate “heat” from an audience by performing a convincing “heel turn.” So it was entirely natural for the FBI to recruit him as an informant/provocateur in the NSM.

Appropriately, that fact came out in the course of a trial involving yet another federally funded farce, the "war on drugs."

Gletty's profession didn't change that much; he just switched employers and put the taxpayers on the hook for his livelihood. It's worthwhile to ask how many others in the neo-Nazi movement are drawing federal paychecks. The Minnesota-based NSM itself seems inert, more devoted to a bizarre niche marketing strategy (peddling such things as Ayran-friendly death metal and Nazi-themed “hoodies,” among other things; no, I'm not kidding) than any serious effort to propagate a mass movement devoted to resurrecting the Reich.

Neo-Nazi nebbish Bill White signs a copy of Mein Kampf

For at least four decades, people involved in “direct action” groups – whether of the “left” or the “right” -- have shared a piece of valuable folk wisdom: If someone joins your group and wants to start blowing things up, mark him down as a federal informant. During the heyday of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation, more than a few radical groups (including various Klan factions) owed their very existence to the Feds, whose informants fleshed out chapter rolls of organizations that otherwise would have died through attrition.

The Oklahoma City Bombing represented the zenith – or nadir, depending on how one looks at it – of the FedGov's role as a mole-master for informants and provocateurs. Elohim City, the rural Oklahoma white supremacist commune that served as the womb of the bombing plot, was overrun with informants; its residents could hardly throw a stiff-armed salute without nailing a provocateur in the face. And while on the subject of provocateurs, there's provocative evidence that Timothy McVeigh, rather than being a lethally disgruntled ex-federal employee, may have been a Federal asset at the time of the bombing.

Oddly enough, one of the informants at Elohim City – one-time white supremacist pin-up Carol Howe -- actually collected valuable pre-bombing intelligence that could have been used to prevent the atrocity. The Feds reacted in predictable fashion: They ignored or suppressed Howe's reports, blew her cover, and sent her back into Elohim City, apparently in the hope that she'd be disposed of.

Somehow, I fail to be terrified.

Obiter dicta

Forgive me for writing short today. Sick kids, a chronically ill (but improving -- thanks for the prayers) wife, and overlapping deadlines have combined to rob me of blogging time.

Please visit the updated and revised page for The Right Source. Today I'll be doing the regular Friday gig co-hosting Kevin Shannon's radio program.

The debut of Pro Libertate: The e-zine is nigh on arrival. I've seen the beta version and it looks great; many thanks to Eric Bearly for his terrific work on that project, as well as TRS's new website. Hopefully the debut issue will be on-line soon.

Beginning Monday, I'll be doing a regular daily radio commentary for KBGN radio in Caldwell, Idaho. I'll provide the relevant details as they become available. Bandwidth permitting, we may find room for the commentaries as podcasts on TRS's website -- but don't hold me to that.

Tom Eddlem, a former colleague of mine at The New American and the JBS, is now a colleague at The Right Source and Pro Libertate. In his blog at Dangerous Talk, Tom explains some of the reasons why he has severed his connections with The New American.

The nub of the matter:

"I’ve separated from The New American because I have limited time, and can’t afford to waste any more of my nearly non-existent free time (I have three daughters who are very active) on an organization that is not devoted to the fight for freedom. "

As the freedom-obsessed father of five, I empathize with Tom and share his priorities.

His Name is Genarlow Wilson

Like practically anybody blessed with a modicum of self-awareness, twenty-year-old Genarlow Wilson of Douglas, Georgia is ashamed of many things he did when he was younger. In his case that sorry assortment includes abuse of recreational drugs, chiefly alcohol and marijuana, and early promiscuity.

But unlike most people whose mistakes were limited to moral lapses of that kind, Wilson is in prison, where he may remain for eight more years. His “crime” was to engage in a consensual sex act at the age of 17 with a girl two years his junior who had taken the initiative. The act at issue was the same one made infamous by Bill and Monica; it didn't involve intercourse, and so Georgia's statutory rape law didn't apply.

If he and his “partner” (I despise that term) had committed full-on fornication, Wilson would have been charged with a misdemeanor, and been liable for no more than a sentence of eighteen months. He would not have been required to register as a sex offender. The same penalties would be the most Wilson would face were he to commit the same act today, rather than three years ago.

But due to an eccentricity of Georgia state law at that time, the act was defined as “aggravated child molestation,” a felony for which the mandatory minimum sentence included ten years in prison and sex offender registration.

Wilson was one of six young men arrested after a December 2003 New Year's celebration at a Day's Inn off Interstate 20. The “Douglas Six,” as they immediately became known, had been involved in what I would call, had I no discipline at all, a "Bourbon, Buds, and Booty Bash": They rented a couple of rooms and invited some female schoolmates to spend the night.

One of the girls arrived at the Day's Inn with an overnight bag. She got thoroughly drunk, and was just as thoroughly used. The other girl, a friend of Wilson's from the track team, apparently remained sober the entire time. She was the one who, by her own account, initiated the sexual act with Wilson.

While not minimizing the magnitude of the moral offense committed here, I find myself asking: Where were the fathers of those two girls? This episode splendidly illustrates why my wife and I have no intention of sending our children to a government-run High School.

When the first girl awoke the next morning wearing nothing but socks, her first thought was that she had been raped. A call to her mother resulted in a police investigation that turned up a videotape of the previous night's activities. Soon Wilson and his friends were arrested at school and dragged away in handcuffs.

All five of Wilson's associates had criminal records; his own background was clean. He was an honor roll student and football standout who had been recruited by colleges throughout the region. Unfortunately, he had no father in the home to teach and discipline him, which meant that the State – in the form of the local school system – served as a surrogate step-father.

The results of this relationship are in some ways quite predictable to anybody who studies our State-run school system, the petri dish in which our degenerate culture has grown and flourished. And the depraved behavior of Wilson and his buddies is hardly the only – or the most lurid – example one can find in Georgia's recent history.

A little more than a decade ago, the residents of Conyers – a relatively up-scale and nearly all-white exurb of Atlanta and host of some events in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics – were shocked to learn of a syphilis epidemic among local High School and Junior High School students. Seventeen tested positive for the venereal disease; more than 200 students believed to have been exposed to the disease were treated as well. Of that group, 50 admitted to have engaged in exotic sexual behavior that might have seemed excessive to the proprietors of a brothel in Pompeii.

“It was not uncommon, when all these young people would get together, to engage in group sex,” recalled Claire Sterk, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health, in an interview from the 1999 PBS Frontline documentary “The Lost Children of Rockdale County.” “There was group sex going on in terms of one guy having sex with one of the girls, and then the next guy having sex with the same girl. There was group sex going on in terms of one girl having sex with multiple male partners at the same time, multiple females having sex with each other at the same time. I would say that the only type of group sex that I did not hear about in this overall context was group sex between just guys.”

Some of those involved were as young as 12-13 years of age.

"The parents were off and gone," observed middle school guidance counselor Peggy Cooper. "And they said they were watching the Playboy Channel in the girl’s bedroom. And there would be, like, 10 or 12 of them up there." One young boy described to Cooper the "game" their group had devised in which "you have to imitate what the Playboy people are doing." Another boy told her that "there may be three or four of us at one time. And it doesn’t matter if you’re two guys or two girls or a girl and a guy. It doesn’t matter. You just have to do what they’re doing."

One girl recalled a party at which another girl, equipped with "the bag of condoms we got from the health department," undertook to have sex with every boy in the room. The boys at the party were "lined up … it was like they were from the [bedroom] door to the front door.... And then she came out. She … thought it was the coolest thing."

Health officials learned of at least one 14-year-old Conyers girl who had sexual liaisons with up to 100 different “partners.” Other students attested on-camera for PBS that “a lot of people” they knew from school were involved in group sex.

How many of the acts carried out by these teenagers could have led to prosecutions like the one that landed Genarlow Wilson in prison? We'll never know, because Rockdale County prosecutors -- unlike Douglas District Attorney David McDade and prosecutor Eddie Barker – had a sufficient sense of proportion not to pursue the matter.

Behold my mighty jowls of justice! Douglas DA David McDade, the Pecksniffian prosecutor behind Genarlow Wilson's needless imprisonment.

Each of the “Douglas Six” was offered a plea bargain in which the “mandatory” ten-year sentences would be radically reduced if they agreed to register as sex offenders. All but Wilson – the only one who had never actually committed a crime – accepted the deal.

Being a registered sex offender is a life sentence of sorts. Wilson points out that had he accepted the deal, he would have been forbidden to share a home with his young sister, and that he wouldn't be permitted to take part in church or school activities involving children. So he stood trial on charges of false imprisonment, statutory rape, and aggravated child molestation.

The jury acquitted him of everything but the last charge, which – according to the prosecution – was the only legally valid description of the consensual acts documented in the videotape. Not aware that a guilty verdict meant ten years in prison, the jury found Wilson guilty of molestation.

DA McDade insists that Wilson “put himself in [his] predicament,” that the young man craves the status of a “martyr,” and that his hands were tied by state statute – which has since been changed. But he chose to ignore several opportunities to exercise reasonable discretion that would have avoided prison time for a young man whose actions, while morally repulsive, did not involve a crime of violence or seduction (remember – the girl who serviced him admitted that she had been the aggressor).

McDade could have followed the example of Rockdale County prosecutors and simply not prosecuted Wilson's “offense.” That course of action would have been compatible with a similar (but not identical) case involving Marcus Dixon, an 18-year-old Georgian who had sex with a 15-year-old. Dixon's ten-year prison sentence was overturned on appeal.

McDade could have urged the trial judge to grant First Offender status to Wilson, which would have been appropriate in the case of a young man with a bright future and no criminal record. McDade insists that he doesn't “believe” in offering First Offender status in sex cases as a matter of “office policy.” But this didn't prevent his office from offering that status to 26-year-old George Tsimpides, who lured a 15-year-old girl to a shopping mall for the purpose of having sex with her.

Tsimpides, an actual sexual predator, served 20 days in jail.

At the same time Wilson's trial was underway, a local high school teacher who enticed a student more than a decade her junior was found guilty of sex crimes. She served a total of 90 days in jail.

Genarlow Wilson, who engaged in consensual immoral behavior with a peer, has thus far served two years in prison.

McDade's office could set aside Wilson's sentence. In fact, the Georgia legislature changed the law under which Wilson was prosecuted, although for reasons that defy understanding it didn't make the changes retroactive. So as things stand right now, there is no legal, practical, or moral reason for Genarlow Wilson to remain in prison – where before there had merely been no practical or moral reason to send him there.

The only impediment to Wilson's freedom is the omnivorous vanity and malodorous arrogance of McDade and Barker, who insist that the young man has to submit to their will by admitting that he is a child molester.

Displaying the cruel, perversely distorted paternalism we'd expect from a particularly depraved antebellum plantation owner, both McDade and Barker insist that Wilson has to be punished for not “taking his medicine” like the five other defendants who were successfully intimidated into accepting sex offender status.

As a report from ESPN summarizes the matter: “If Wilson would only admit to being a child molester, he could stop receiving the punishment of one. Maybe.”

“The one person who can change things at this point is Genarlow,” smirks Barker. “The ball's in his court.”

To which the appropriate reply would be this:

Wipe that smirk off your overfed, tax-fattened face, Eddie. His name is Mister Wilson. For all of his admittedly loathsome behavior, the character he's displayed by refusing to submit to your extortion makes him more of a man than you will ever be.

It shouldn't be necessary to say so, but I'll say it anyway: Wilson's behavior was horrifying and inexcusable. But the State isn't in the business of redemption, and it shouldn't be in the business of abetting, facilitating, and subsidizing sexual depravity, and then selectively prosecuting some of those who behave more or less as they're been encouraged to by their government-approved tutors.

For more about the Genarlo Wilson case, go here.

Please visit our freedom-focused news site, The Right Source.

Attention, Rep. Walter Jones: The Constitution is Calling

I desperately want to support HJ Res. 14, a bill sponsored by Representative Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) that is intended to pre-empt the Bush regime's plans for war with Iran.

The resolution consists of two brief clauses:

“No provision of law enacted before the date of the enactment of this joint resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of military force by the United States against Iran.”

This statement is obviously true, and should thus be unnecessary. However, various representatives of the Regime – including but not limited to Commissarina for External Affairs Condoleeza Rice – have brazenly and repeatedly claimed that Bush has the innate authority to order a military attack on Iran, or any other nation, at his discretion.

In fact, as Republican Senator Charles Hagel pointed out in a recent interview with GQ magazine, in late 2002, when the Bush Regime was maneuvering the nation into war with Iraq, it submitted a draft resolution to Congress that would have authorized a war against the entire Middle East.

The White House's proposed resolution, Hagel recalled, would have permitted them to “go anywhere in the region.... They could go into Greece or anywhere. Is central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything. It was literally anything. No Boundaries. No restrictions.”

The Regime has never permitted something as trivial as the Constitution or the law to impede its objectives, and it has proceeded -- in its demented, power-enraptured, reality-aversive way – as if its original resolution had been passed.

How do we know this?

The Regime has said as much in congressional testimony.

In an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October 2005, Ms. Rice was asked whether the Bushling would circumvent congress in ordering a military strike against Iran or Syria.

“I will not say anything that constrains his authority as commander-in-chief,” replied Rice, a non-responsive answer that assumes the president has the authority to launch a war against either country without a congressional declaration. When pressed by Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) as to whether congressional authorization would be sought before military action was ordered, Rice continued in the same vein: “The president never takes any option off the table, and he shouldn’t.”

In a tidy phrase, the Busheviks assume that all power resides in the executive, including the unilateral power to expand the war into Iran.

(For a stunning illustration of how widespread this doctrine is in the totalitarian death cult that was once the Republican Party, watch this clip of Virginia Representative Eric Cantor insisting – with a dutiful subservience one usually sees in Pyongyang – that the president didn't need congressional authorization to attack Iraq, and needs none to expand the war to Iran. It's understandable if you entertain the fleeting thought that Cantor is another of Stephen Colbert's satirical creations.)

Rep. Jones' amendment restates the obvious: Bush has never been authorized to prosecute a war against Iran. We have reached the stage in our nation's descent into full-orbed despotism that stating the obvious about such matters is not only necessary, but courageous.

It is in its second clause that Rep. Jones' resolution breaks down:

“Absent a national emergency created by an attack by Iran, or a demonstrably imminent attack by Iran, upon the United States, its territories or possessions or its armed forces, the President shall consult with Congress.”

Well ... no.

Trying to arrest the Regime's drive to war with Iran with this language is a bit like trying to lasso a locomotive with linguini. This formulation leaves the initiative with The Great And Glorious Decider and his handlers. It is that pack of felons who would determine whether Iran poses the threat of a “demonstrably imminent attack.” And as presently written (read it carefully), this provision would permit Bush and his handlers to start a war without so much as consulting with Congress if they can contrive a suitable rationale.

Only Congress can declare war. It's not a matter of the president “consulting” with Congress, or Congress issuing some anodyne resolution allowing the president to make the call. That power is vested in Congress by the Constitution, and anything other than a formal, explicit declaration of war by that body is inadequate and improper.

This is certainly not to say that all wars declared by Congress are morally defensible, since most of the declared wars in our nation's history were not. It is to say that an undeclared war is facially unconstitutional, illegal, and morally impermissible.

The fatal problem with Rep. Jones' resolution is this: As things stand right now, the Busheviks are already claiming that Iran has attacked our occupation forces in Iraq.

That was the point of last weekend's highly classified, double-secret-probation, one step removed from the Cone of Silence briefing by anonymous officials who offered an “assessment” that Iran has been smuggling “explosively formed penetrators” to Iraqi insurgents for use against U.S. Personnel. Without adducing anything resembling, you know, evidence or proof or stuff, the “official” insisted that this plot involves officials at the “highest levels” of the Iranian regime.

As Patrick Cockburn points out, what this mystery-enshrouded guy was describing are improvised explosive devices of a sort that have been used by every guerrilla army for the past century. And it seems a touch unlikely, at least to rational people, that Iran's Shiite regime, which has been handed Iraq on a platter thanks to the U.S. Invasion, would undermine that achievement by supporting a largely Sunni insurgency.

The purpose behind the Bush Regime's “revelation” is utterly transparent, its evidence just as palpably false – so why was the charade of secrecy necessary? My guess is that this was a requirement imposed by whatever “official” was used as the aperture for the Regime's disinformation cloaca. The last fellow who was used thus was Colin Powell, and his reputation has never recovered.

Freedom-obsessed information junkies are invited to visit The Right Source for news, commentary, and Kevin Shannon's radio program.

My Amerika (first in an occasional series)

"America's Sheriff," Mike Carona, poses with America's Feliks Dzerzhinsky -- Tom Ridge, founder of our Cheka, the Department of Homeland Security.

Several decades ago, Latvian filmmaker Albert Jekste produced a documentary entitled “My Latvia” depicting the Soviet conquest and occupation of the Baltic States. The most memorable sequence in that film presented, in deadpan, roll-call style, a roster of Soviet-appointed civic officials and their previous occupations.

Without exception, each had been a career criminal, generally in the same field as his new “legitimate” profession: The new head of the central bank had been an armed robber, the police chief had been the local underworld boss, and so on.

A similar amalgamation of the criminal underworld and political “over-world” is taking place as America descends into an abyss of Soviet-style corruption and tyranny in the name of Homeland Security. But we have to take note of a very important distinction: We're doing it to ourselves.

As occasion warrants, I'll present case studies illustrating what we could call the “My Latvia Syndrome.” I suspect that we'll suffer from a crisis of abundance rather than one of scarcity in this respect.

Today's example focuses on Mike Carona, a self-professed Christian Republican from Orange County – the Mecca of modern conservatism – who has been designated “America's Sheriff” by Larry King. (Here is a gallery of photos, letters, and other keepsakes from King and other celebrities from the "I Love Me" page of Carona's re-election campaign website.)

A balding man in his early 50s with a swimmer's build and the earnest, buck-toothed demeanor of the world's oldest Boy Scout, Carona is a key homeland security adviser to George W. Bush and California Governor Schwarzenegger. He is also a serial adulterer (click here and scroll down to see a photo of Carona during a Russian junket cradling his, ahem, interpreter, who is depicted in another photo wearing the Sheriff's uniform). To this can be added the fact that he's a bosom chum of at least one significant Mafia figure.

The official certificate naming Carona a "senior adviser" on homeland security affairs.

Several years ago Carona filled his campaign war chest was filled with illegal contributions from a felonious businessman as part of a kickback scheme involving a proposed system called High-speed Avoidance Laser Technology (HALT), which could be used by police to disable automobiles by remote control.

HALT is described in the patent (number 6411217) as “a remotely operable vehicle disabling system where a remote command transmitter transmits a command to a receiver capable of terminating vehicle operation and situated within a vehicle to be so disabled.... The system comprises, first of all, a remotely operable transmit unit for transmitting a command shutdown message which may preferably be an infrared beam. Second, the system comprises a command-receiver vehicle unit capable of responding to the command and physically situated at a site of the vehicle such that a shutdown message from the transmit unit can reach the vehicle unit.”

HALT was to be produced by CHG Safety Technologies, whose founder and CEO, Charles H. Gabbard, had applied to become a California police officer in the late 1950s. After being found unsuitable for such service, Gabbard embarked on a career on the other side of the law, building a criminal resume that included armed robbery, attempted robbery, embezzlement, sundry parole violations, and a murder charge.

In 2000, after “going straight,” Gabbard met Sheriff Carona (who was a little more than a year into his first term) by way of a mutual friend: Lobbyist Bob Levy, a retired U.S. Marshal hard-wired into California's vast network of law enforcement unions and pressure groups.

Gabbard enlisted Levy, Carona, and other influential figures in a scheme to give HALT a monopoly by having the legislature mandate its installation in all automobiles state-wide. The felon-turned-police state profiteer handed out tens of thousands of dollars in bribes (in the form of illegal campaign donations) to then-Governor Gray Davis and various state legislators. His most generous gifts were bestowed on Sheriff Carona.

In February 2000, Carona, Levy, and Gabbard worked out an arrangement through which the Sheriff would promote Gabbard's technology in exchange for campaign cash. In fulfillment of his end of the deal, Carona “spent untold thousands of taxpayer dollars to hold a HALT demonstration at El Toro [a former Marine Corps base] on March 16, 2000, and six days later sent a glowing product-endorsement letter to state officials considering a plan, Senate Bill 2004, to mandate Gabbard's products on all California vehicles,” reported the Orange County Weekly (which has produced Pulitzer-caliber exposes of the myriad law enforcement scandals afflicting that community).

Even more shocking was Carona's offer to provide “certain inmates” at the County Jail to help Gabbard manufacture his product.

On May 18 of that year Gabbard came through with the quo for the Sheriff's quid, in the form of $40,000 in donations from CHG executives during a “birthday party” for Carona at Villa Nova restaurant in Newport Beach.

When the dirty deal became public knowledge, Carona reacted by blaming the entire affair on his second-hand man, Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo.

Both Jaramillo and his wife received tens of thousands of dollars in “consulting fees” from Gabbard to promote the HALT technology. On January 30 Jaramillo was given a year in jail and three years of probation as part of a plea agreement. He had faced the prospect of 13 years in prison on bribery, misuse of county property, and lying to a grand jury.

Carona insists that he was deceived by Jaramillo, a one-time close friend whom he was grooming as a successor. ("He is not only like a brother to me, he is my brother," Carona once insisted.) But there is a solid evidentiary trail connecting Carona himself to the kickback scheme, and besides, as Sheriff he should bear much of the blame for a scandal involving his second-in-command.

But Carona – or “Calamity Mike,” as the OC Weekly refers to him – appears to be immune to accountability in any form.

*A few years ago, “America's Sheriff” was photographed (wearing his uniform) in a boozy embrace with Rick Rizzolo, a Las Vegas “adult entertainment” mogul who has been identified by the FBI as a Mob associate.

*In September 2003, Carona issued a memo granting Joseph M. Medawar, a con man-cum-filmmaker, access to Orange County's Emergency Operations Center (EOC), a high-tech crisis headquarters center intended for use in the event of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. The EOC hosts classified training exercises involving most federal and state law enforcement and emergency response agencies.

The Lebanese-born Medawar, who has close ties to Saudi Arabia, claimed that he was filming a pilot for a television series to be called DHS, which would “celebrate federal agents and President Bush.” (He had paid Orange County Congressman Dana Rohrabacher $23,000 for an old script.) A federal indictment described Medawar's enterprise as a scam that defrauded investors of more than $5.5 million.

Thumbs up for evil! Carona poses with demented GOP presidential aspirant John McCain (left), and with McCain's rival Mitt Romney (right).

It's tempting to perceive Carona as a reality-based version of Chief Wiggum, the spectacularly corrupt and heroically inept Police Chief from The Simpsons. As Greg Hall can testify, Carona is more commissar than clown.

Hall, a 40-year-old businessman, was involved in a fender-bender on July 17, 2005. Upon their arrival the police gave him two Breathalyzer tests, both of which revealed a blood alcohol level of 0.00. Hall was cooperative, telling the officer that he had consumed a single beer and was taking Paxil, a prescription antidepressant. For no particular reason, Hall was arrested on suspicion of DUI and taken to the Orange County Jail.

Following a drug test, Hall was left to stew for what he was told would be no longer than an hour. When a group of Carona's deputies appeared on the scene, Hall politely complained that his handcuffs were too tight.

This mild complaint provoked the knot of deputies – a five-man gang referred to in Carona's department as the “Psycho Crew” -- to treat Hall “like a pinata.”

The handcuffed businessman, who had done nothing wrong and wasn't suspected of a violent offense, was subjected to a three-minute beating. He was dragged down a corridor, had his face repeatedly shoved into cell bars and slammed into the concrete floor, and received countless punches and kicks to his ribs.

Hall was left with “a concussion, broken ribs, a gash in his leg, an eye contusion, broken veins in his feet, a shattered front tooth, lacerations and bruises over his body, contusions to the knee, neck pain, a fractured right wrist and nerve damage to his left hand,” recounts OC Weekly, citing medical records. “The handcuffs were locked so tightly that the steel sliced his hands and caused dangerous swelling. An imprint of a deputy's boot could be seen on the back of his leg for days.”

The intensity of the assault made the terrified businessman lose control of his bowels, causing him to evacuate in his pants; his assailants, taking sadistic glee in their handiwork, derisive calling their victim a “sh*t monkey,” and left him in a cell to bleed. Some of them returned later to tie a black mesh hood over his head – a fitting coda to a performance straight out of Abu Ghraib.

Hall was left bleeding, with his hands cuffed behind his back, sitting in his own feces, for more than twelve hours. Deputies denied him food and water or access to a telephone. Eventually his leg wound was stitched up – without anesthetic – and he was permitted to stagger out of the jail without apology or explanation for the treatment he'd received.

This isn't the first time Carona's goon squad has tortured a jail inmate. In December 1999, four deputies assaulted a 20-year-old inmate in an isolated corner of the facility, torturing him by crushing his testicles. Prosecutors conceded that the torture had occurred, but insisted that they were stymied by a “code of silence” within the Sheriff's Department.

A class-action lawsuit brought against Carona's department was dismissed in April 2005 by now-retired federal judge Gary L. Taylor, who was appointed by the George Bush (the elder). Taylor stipulated to the abuses, and acknowledged that there was “room for improvement” -- and then offered the written equivalent of a shrug by saying that “the county and the sheriff show every indication they will perform that high duty.”

Sheriff Carona, predictably, described Taylor's ruling as a “great victory.”

Just a few weeks later, his deputies, entrusted with the “high duty” to maintain professional standards of inmate safety literally beat the sh*t out of an innocent businessman, just because they could.

For maintaining standards of conduct worthy of a Soviet satrap, Mike Carona, “America's Sheriff” and senior national security adviser to George W. Bush, has earned the distinction of being the first figure profiled in our “My Amerika” series.

For news and commentary from a freedom-focused perspective -- as well as Kevin Shannon's no-holds-barred radio program -- please visit The Right Source.