Though Newt Gingrich is still playing coy games about rumors he’s created himself about whether he’ll for President in 2012, he’s busy promoting himself in other ways, creating a propaganda organization that’s dedicated to the theocratic goal of “restoring our Judeo-Christian heritage” – a private, non-governmental heritage that’s shared by only by a diminishing number of Americans. As part of this mission, Gingrich is now calling for the government to prohibit Muslim worship in certain Islam-free zones in the United States.

“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” Gingrich says. Of course, no one is proposing building a mosque near “Ground Zero” (a term which used to refer to the place where an American nuclear bomb detonated over Hiroshima) in New York City. The building that’s being proposed is an interfaith community center.

I wouldn’t want to live in Saudi Arabia, where Islam is strictly enforced, but that’s because I don’t think any religion should be strictly enforced. The Gingrich model for dealing with Saudi theocratic tyranny is to impose a similar theocratic tyranny here in the United States.

It’s a fine approach, if your goal is to have Christianity win over Islam. If your goal is to have American liberty prevail over efforts to restrict religious freedom, however, Newt Gingrich’s plan looks a lot like surrender.

Dear Sarah Palin:

You have repeatedly issued declarations online asking that “Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan” and that New York issue “a decision not to allow the building of a mosque.”

Let’s make a quick check of the facts:

1. It’s not “a mosque.” The Cordoba Center will be an inter-religious community center dedicated to inter-faith outreach, open to people of all faiths in New York City. It will have an auditorium, a swimming pool, exhibition spaces, meeting rooms, stores, restaurants and a mosque inside.
2. It’s not at Ground Zero. It’s three blocks away. A lot of things are within three blocks of other things in Manhattan.
3. There are 14 Christian and Jewish churches and synagogues that are also close to Ground Zero.

Anyone who exerts herself or himself can verify these facts.

You write this week with frustration of your call to ban the Cordoba Center that “This is nothing close to ‘religious intolerance,’ it’s just common decency.” But here’s a helpful hint: if you don’t want to attract accusations that you’re engaged in “religious intolerance,” you might not want to write an essay based on arguments about “sacred ground,” and you might not want to give your essay the title: “An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground.” It’s crazy, but people might get the idea that you were using religion to be intolerant.

Also helpful on that point would be not asking New York to use its power to ban a building because it is associated with a religion you don’t like. Some Americans are a little touchy about that kind of thing; apparently it has something to do with some sort of “Amendment” thingamabob.

The Maine Democratic Party, the Maine Democratic Party Facebook Page, and the Maine College Democrats have called for GOP gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage to account for his apparent support for legalized discrimination:

Tuesday, Maine Democrats called on Paul LePage to clarify his controversial statements on human rights and to reject his Party’s ultraconservative platform. Following the GOP convention in May, LePage was one of only two Republican Candidates for Governor who refused to even reject planks of the platform. Mayor Paul LePage, has openly called for the repeal of the Maine Human Rights Act. The Act prohibits discrimination based on one’s race, color, sex, sexual orientation and religion. The sexual orientation clause was an amendment to the Act that passed with broad support from Maine voters in 2005. Yet Mr. LePage has said, “My thinking would be it clearly needs to be brought back and reformed. It should be challenged and brought back to the legislature.”(http://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss52956.xml)

The problem is, as of this evening the text of that quote can only be found on those three Maine Democratic Party websites and nowhere else. I always like to see the full context of a quote, and that context is unavailable in written form.

What about that hyperlink http://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss52956.xml? Well, it isn’t a direct link to the transcript of Paul LePage’s remarks, the audio of Paul LePage’s remarks, or the video of Paul LePage’s remarks. Unfortunately, it’s a link to a big, long xml file: a list of dozens and dozens of shows of the Aroostook Watchmen, each lasting about an hour. A large number of them might feature remarks by Paul LePage.

In the interest of getting a proper source and context for this quote as quickly as possible, let’s declare a contest.

The first person to post a comment to this post that directly links to the full text, video or audio of Paul LePage’s comments regarding the Maine Human Rights Act wins the contest. The winner gets a free political button direct from me: either the anti-LePage button you see here, any of the other buttons we sell, or even a completely new button that we’ll design and ship for you.

No matter who finds the source for this quote first, we all win. Let’s hop to it!

The City of London appears to have offered a new motto that defines the way of life there for residents and visitors alike: CCTV Surveillance in Operation.

It’s unnerving how pervasive these CCTV cameras are. On every street in the center of town there are multiple cameras aimed in multiple directions, making it impossible to have a moment of privacy. Along with the cameras come signs announcing the surveillance.

On the particular sign you see here, the viewer is warned, “CCTV Images are being recorded for the Prevention and Detection of Crime and for the Promotion of Public Safety”. I note how the phrases “Prevention and Detection of Crime” and “Promotion of Public Safety” are capitalized – as if they’re the names of some sort of unique institutions, instead of actual ordinary prevention, detection and safety.

It seems that the people installing CCTV systems throughout London are aware that they’re creating an institution in the name of crime prevention and safety that isn’t actually synonymous with crime prevention and safety.

My attention was grabbed by this anti-environmentalist poster today. It expresses its opposition to environmental policies in rather stark terms, accusing environmentalists of being the tools of fascism.

Is it a fair description? I looked to an official definition of the word fascism and found the following at the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

“a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition”

Some leftist writers will contend that fascism necessarily involves corporate influence over government. For the sake of argument, I’ll not make that claim at present.

Simply looking at the Merriam-Webster definiton, it’s clear that environmentalism can’t reasonably be equated with fascism. The factor of racial pride isn’t strong within environmental circles, and neither is nationalism. Focus is generally on responsibility that transcends national boundaries and divisions between ethnicities.

Social regimentation isn’t a goal of environmentalists. The dictatorial leader is straight out too. Environmentalists don’t call for dictatorships in order to achieve their goals.

Finally, there’s the question of “forcible suppression of opposition”. I can’t think of a single environmental government policy that has involved the use of force to suppress opposition.

The right wing link of environmentalism to fascism seems to rest upon the idea of severe economic regimentation. I suppose that what counts as severe is a subjective judgment. I don’t find it credible to suppose that the creation of regulations that would lead to the eventual reduction of CO2 emissions counts as severe.

Environmentalist policies are fascist in the sense that traffic laws are fascist, or librarians who charge late fees are fascist. If you’re going to stretch the term fascism in that way, well then, I guess you can go putting up these posters, reading “Save The Planet Is The Rallying Cry Of Fascism”, all over town.

Of course, if paste these posters up in public places, authorities may decide to to take them down… the fascists.

Personally, I prefer a poster that’s a little less strident: I Don’t Just Hug Trees. I Kiss Them Too.

The National Organization for Marriage kicked off its anti-gay bus tour against marriage equality in Augusta, Maine three days ago — and was outnumbered by people showing up to show their support for marriage equality.

If you can’t get actual people to come out and support your cause, you can always pay stock photographers to create a Potemkin village on wheels:

Choose your stock photos wisely and you can take a stand against interracial marriage, too.

The United States of America is falling behind in marriage rights. Once, our nation set the example of liberty for others to follow. Now, the USA is a laggard.

Early this morning, Argentina became the latest nation to grant equal marriage rights to heterosexual and homosexual couples. The vote in the Argentine Senate wasn’t even very close: 33 to 27.

Yet, in the United States, our President and Congress have refused to even consider such equality. It seems that they don’t think that marriage is important enough to protect, ensuring that all consensual adult couples have access to the institution. If Argentina can legalize same-sex marriage, why can’t we?

Antipathy to marriage equality has transformed the USA from an exemplar to a cultural backwater, lowering our nation’s status in the world.

In 2005, Irregular Times responded to the Bush administration’s plans for lifetime detention without criminal charges or trial, writing an essay calling George W. Bush “The Quiet Dictator”:

It was revealed this week that the Bush Administration is planning to keep people as prisoners for their entire lives, even though there is no evidence that those people have committed any crime against the United States. The lack of evidence against these people is so striking that the American government does not even have enough grounds to bring them before a form of military tribunal that has been set up by George W. Bush precisely for the purpose of evading the standards of justice set by the United States Constitution….

In the old, pre-Homeland, United States of America, a person had to be convicted of murder, by a jury of peers, in a public, open trial, on the basis of evidence without a reasonable doubt, and with the opportunity for fair representation and appeal to the justice system to rule out mistakes and prosecutorial fraud. Oh, but that was before The Homeland was created, and as we’re told over and over again, in the Homeland, everything changed.

At first, it was a scandal that the President of the United States had claimed the power to set up his own courts, outside of the judicial branch of government, to force people through military tribunals that would be little more than kangaroo courts. Now, it appears that Mr. Bush, the Master of our Homeland, has decided that he does not have to give prisoners any trial at all, ever. He can just lock them up, forever….

It is a sad day for those Americans who actually care about freedom, to see the American President give himself the power to convict people and punish them with life sentences without any need of evidence or even the formality of a show trial. This power is at the heart of totalitarianism, and now that George W. Bush has seized it, he is nothing more than a dictator….

The saddest thing of all is that most Americans just don’t care. So long as they are not taken prisoner, they don’t care if other people are. So long as they are not tortured, they don’t care if other people are. So long as they are able to live safely in their homes, they don’t care if other people, in other countries, are killed in their homes.

There is a new nonchalance in America about the withering of freedom. Freedom has now become an abstract concept for most Americans, something that is to be given only to some people, but not to others. Now, under the shadow of The Homeland, Americans seem to like the idea that only good people that the government approves of have the privilege of freedom. Gone are the days when freedom was regarded as a universal human right. Americans seem to want only security and vengeance.

It’s five years later and George W. Bush is no longer in the White House. But have matters changed? Barack Obama, the new Master of our Homeland, has agreed with the old Master that he does not have to give some prisoners any trial at all, ever. He, too, can just lock them up forever.

On what basis does Barack Obama justify his seizure of dictatorial powers? The Obama Administration says that the people it is imprisoning are suspected of providing support to “terrorist organizations.” But at the same time, the Obama administration’s own task force declared in 2010 that:

Notably, the principal obstacles to prosecution in the cases deemed infeasible by the Task Force typically did not stem from concerns over protecting sensitive sources or methods from disclosure, or concerns that the evidence against the detainee was tainted. While such concerns were present in some cases, most detainees were deemed infeasible for prosecution based on more fundamental evidentiary and jurisdictional limitations tied to the demands of a criminal forum….

Generally these detainees cannot be prosecuted because either there is presently insufficient admissible evidence to establish the detainee’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in either a federal court or military commission, or the detainee’s conduct does not constitute a chargeable offense in either a federal court or military commission.

In plain English, what does this mean? It means that the Obama administration is maintaining the Bush administration practice of detaining people without end when there is not sufficient evidence to actually convict them of terrorist acts, or terrorist support, or even terrorist affiliations.

The Guantanamo Review Task Force, consisting of officials from six branches of the Obama administration, was unanimous in making these declarations. In its unanimous report, the Guantanamo Review Task Force approvingly placed the following fig leaf over the indefinite detention of people who have insufficient evidence of guilt and whose conduct does not constitute a chargeable offense:

Significantly, the Executive Order does not preclude the government from prosecuting at a later date someone who is presently designated for continued detention. Work on these cases continues. Further exploitation of the forensic evidence could strengthen the prosecution against some detainees. Other detainees may cooperate with prosecutors. If either the Department of Justice or the Department of Defense concluded in the future that prosecution of a detainee held without charges has become feasible in a federal court or in a military commission, the detention decisions made in the course of this review would permit the prosecution to go forward.

You read that right: the Obama administration wants to keep these people locked up because one day some new evidence might come up that connects these people to prosecutable crimes, and just in case the government wants to keep them handy.

It is another sad day for Americans who care about freedom but see the American President give himself the power to punish people with a life in detention without any need for evidence, without even the formality of a show trial. Such power is still at the heart of totalitarianism, and now that Barack Obama has taken that power, we might as well call him what he is: a dictator.

American liberals long warned that George W. Bush was leading America toward dictatorship. But Barack Obama has taken the same dictatorial powers for himself. Bush may be gone, but the dictatorship is still here.

It’s now been 535 days since Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. Since a time before Obama’s inauguration, federal law has required President Obama to appoint a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. This board is charged with the responsibility of tracking the compliance of the executive branch of government with the provisions of the Constitution. The board is granted the ability to subpoena members of the government to testify and supply documentation, and it is granted access to classified information in order to carry out its work. Finally, the board is tasked with making regular reports to the U.S. Congress and the American public on the constitutionality of activities by a presidential administration.

This board and these powers do not fill a hypothetical need. Just yesterday, the National Security Agency acknowledged the existence of a program called Perfect Citizen in which the United States Military is putting surveillance devices in computer networks across the domestic USA to snoop on Internet traffic. Of course, the National Security Agency denies that the Perfect Citizen program is planning to spy on Americans using these devices — which is odd, considering that they are being deployed domestically — and proclaims that its efforts are purely for purposes of “research and development.” The military-industrial corporation assigned the $100 million Perfect Citizen contract, Raytheon, tells the media that “We have no info on this” — which again is odd, considering that the Wall Street Journal obtained a Raytheon e-mail in which the corporation declares that “Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”

What does the operation called Perfect Citizen have to do with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board? A lot. First of all, the NSA didn’t even acknowledge the existence of Perfect Citizen until Wall Street Journal investigators uncovered details about the program. If the Wall Street Journal hadn’t stumbled across the information, we might never have known about this domestic military surveillance program. But since the NSA is under the authority of the executive branch and the President of the United States, then the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would have had the power to uncover this program and report on its activities to the Congress and the public. It doesn’t stop there. In 2010, after the disclosure of the program’s existence, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would have had the power to assess the claims of the NSA that Perfect Citizen is just a hypothetical program.

The board would have been able to do these things if it had been constituted as it should have been in 2009. But for 535 days now, Barack Obama has ignored federal law and failed to nominate even one member to sit on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board. The Board remains nonexistent. The Board’s oversight functions are going undone. Because the board has not been filled and does not exist, it cannot carry out these investigative and reporting functions on programs like Perfect Citizen. We’re lucky we even know that the program exists. We have no idea what other Obama administration programs are out there that may be violating our constitutional rights. And when programs like Perfect Citizen do come to light, there’s no way to assess the accuracy of the NSA’s protestations that this is all just “research” and we don’t have to worry our purty little heads none.

The ongoing lack of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is not only a violation of federal law, but is also a violation of the trust placed in a candidate who told us on the campaign trail that unlike his predecessor, he would restore the rule of law and obey the Constitution. This is not the Change we were promised.

Yesterday, Republican Governor of Hawaii Linda Lingle vetoed a bill allowing couples of different races to have the same legal rights as couples of the same race. “I have been open and consistent in my opposition to marriage rights for gooks marrying negroes, or gooks marrying white folks, or white folks marrying negroes,” explained Lingle an an official statement.

“The subject of this legislation has touched the hearts and minds of our citizens as no other social issue of our day,” Lingle continued. “And while ours is a system of representative government, it also is one that recognizes that from time to time there are issues that require the reflection, collective wisdom and consent of the people, and reserves to them the right to directly decide those matters. Letting people of different races marry one another is one such issue that should be decided by a majority of voters.”

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Update: It appears a correction is in order. I have made a pair of factual errors in writing this post. Governor Linda Lingle did not actually use the word “gooks” or “negroes” or “white folks.” Also, the bill refers to discrimination in legal rights according to sex, not discrimination in legal rights according to race.

The remainder of the post remains correct.

Does that make it better?

It’s flashback time. Remember 2003? What a year that was. George W. Bush was lying to us about weapons of mass destruction, John Ashcroft was lying to us about the presence of terrorist plots, and then there was Republican Senator Rick Santorum sharing his ideas about “man on dog” with the nation. This is the part of the interview that most Americans remember:

Rick Santorum: In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality —

Associated Press reporter: I’m sorry, I didn’t think I was going to talk about “man on dog” with a United States senator, it’s sort of freaking me out.

Ha, ha, a Senator talking about man on dog action. Isn’t that funny? What Rick Santorum said in the rest of that same interview is not that funny:

Rick Santorum: Again, it goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it’s in the privacy of your own home, this “right to privacy,” then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it’s private, as long as it’s consensual, then don’t be surprised what you get. You’re going to get a lot of things that you’re sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don’t really care what you do….

I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s homosexual. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. and I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations?…

We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn’t exist…

The idea is that the state doesn’t have rights to limit individuals’ wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we’re seeing it in our society.

You heard it from the Senator’s mouth: even if sexual behavior is consensually agreed upon between two people in their bedroom, he’d like the government to interfere and ban it. He’d like to ban homosexual activity. He’d like to ban “sodomy” (look it up). He’d like to ban multiple relationships and adultery, using the power of the government to back up his personal tastes and impose them upon everyone else.

But oh, you may be thinking, that was so 2003. Why, in the last seven years we have evolved as a society, haven’t we? Besides, that was just one Republican senator speaking.

The thing is, when Rick Santorum opened his mouth to advocate for the criminalization of Americans’ consensual sex lives, he wasn’t just speaking as a plain old senator. At the time, Santorum was Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the number three position in the leadership of the Republican Party. Far from being a GOP outsider, Senator Santorum was at the center of his Party.

And then there’s this little tidbit from the 2010 Texas Republican Party policy platform:

Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, refuse to recognize, or grant special privileges including, but not limited to: marriage between persons of the same sex (regardless of state of origin), custody of children by homosexuals…

Texas Sodomy Statutes – We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.

Even in 2010, the Republican Party of Texas is still trying to make homosexuality unacceptable in policy, to prohibit gay and lesbian Americans from having custody of their children, and to ban consensual sex acts they don’t like.

Then (tip of the pen to the Gaytheist agenda) there’s the Montana Republican Party Platform of 2010:

Homosexual Acts: We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal.

Don’t tell me the Republican Party is the party of freedom. From 2010 back to 2003 and long, long before that, leaders of the Republican Party have pinned the slick and shiny badge of the Sex Police on their lapels. It makes them feel tingly inside.

The first sign that things aren’t right with the draft National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is that it’s being organized through the Department of Homeland Security. Who thought of trying to combine the concepts of “trusted” and “Homeland Security”?

The idea of the NSTIC is that the Internet isn’t trustworthy and secure, and so people need to have a means for engaging in online activities. So, there will be created an Identity Ecosystem which will allow just one login procedure to access a broad number of services ranging from email to bank accounts and health records.

Howard Schmidt, Cybersecurity Coordinator for President Obama, introduced the NSTIC last Friday, writing:

“The NSTIC, which is in response to one of the near term action items in the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review, calls for the creation of an online environment, or an Identity Ecosystem as we refer to it in the strategy, where individuals and organizations can complete online transactions with confidence, trusting the identities of each other and the identities of the infrastructure that the transaction runs on. For example, no longer should individuals have to remember an ever-expanding and potentially insecure list of usernames and passwords to login into various online services. Through the strategy we seek to enable a future where individuals can voluntarily choose to obtain a secure, interoperable, and privacy-enhancing credential (e.g., a smart identity card, a digital certificate on their cell phone, etc) from a variety of service providers – both public and private – to authenticate themselves online for different types of transactions (e.g., online banking, accessing electronic health records, sending email, etc.). Another key concept in the strategy is that the Identity Ecosystem is user-centric – that means you, as a user, will be able to have more control of the private information you use to authenticate yourself on-line, and generally will not have to reveal more than is necessary to do so.”

The Department of Homeland Security is accepting comments for the draft version of effort to centralize online information… but there’s a catch: You need to log in and create an account in their system before you can leave a comment.

Here’s the comment I would have left about the proposal, if it weren’t for the requirement to give Homeland Security my email address:

“Remembering different account information is a privilege, not a problem. It’s a security protection to individuals, both from hackers and from government surveillance, to have highly idiosyncratic, decentralized, personally improvised systems of multiple sources upon which online identity is founded.

‘Spoofed web sites’ are not ‘symptoms of an untrustworthy computing environment’. They’re manifestations of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

It is a profound threat to our liberty to create any system, public or private, that threatens individual control of online identity. Let’s not forget that the government has already been caught grabbing huge online databases of information. If you want to talk about establishing trust, start with a plan to stop these unconstitutional seizures of Americans’ electronic ‘papers’. I worry less about fraud by private hackers than I do about electronic surveillance by Homeland Security.

The proposed system may, strictly speaking, be voluntary, but only in the sense that a driver’s license is voluntary. A driver’s license is now required for access to a huge number of places and services, and isn’t just about driving any more. Please, let’s work on methods to make individually-controlled, multiple and separate online identities more secure.”

(Tip of the pen to qs)

The Defense Department calls its new unit FICOR — the Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operation Records. But the military group describes the data it will collect through intelligence and data mining operations:

“Social Security Number (SSN), address, citizenship documentation, biometric data, passport number, vehicle identification number and vehicle/vessel license data… [from] Federal, state, local, and tribal entities, foreign intelligence agencies, educational and research institutions, foreign governments and open source literature.”

Data collected from “federal, state, local, and tribal entities” including a person’s “Social Security Number (SSN)”? How foreign does that sound to you?

Military spying on Americans? No, that’s not Change I Can Believe In. It’s more of the same. Read up on the Bush-era TALON program, a military program that spied on law-abiding American citizens without their knowledge and without a warrant, solely on the basis of their political activity (For the younger among you who may not have heard of this thing called a “warrant,” see the increasingly quaint document known as the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 4. See also “freedom of assembly and petition,” Amendment 1). Read especially the part of the 2007 Defense Department brief in which the military explicitly indicates it will keep the data and restart the program in the future:

DoD to Implement Interim Threat Reporting Procedures

DoD’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) will close the TALON Reporting System effective Sept. 17, 2007, and maintain a record copy of the collected data in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements.

To ensure there is a mechanism in place to document and assess potential threats to DoD resources, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs will propose a system to streamline such threat reporting and better meet the Defense department’s needs.

In the interim, until this new reporting program is adopted, DoD components will send information concerning force protection threats to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Guardian reporting system.

It was hiding there in plain sight: no, the military never planned on keeping TALON shut down at all. But the military has a new Commander in Chief. Barack Obama could have stopped this domestic military surveillance. But he went right along with it. That’s not Change. It’s more of the same.

You may recall that in February of 2010 the U.S. Congress voted to reauthorize three key surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act for one year. House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers declared that such a reauthorization was necessary because the Congress needed some more time to work out some really good Patriot Act legislative reform.

Four months have passed since then. Has John Conyers or any member of Congress introduced new legislation to reform the Patriot Act? Search the THOMAS legislative database and you will see that they have not. Has John Conyers’ Judiciary Committee even held a hearing to consider Patriot Act reform since that vote? No, it has not. The Judiciary Committee has held its third hearing in less than a year’s time on the problem of head injuries in football, but it has not commenced its work on Patriot Act reform.

A third of the Patriot Act extension has already expired since the passage of its reauthorization. Time’s wasting away and nothing is being done.