Levers and Pulleys

On the day US District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that George W. Bush and Michael Hayden violated the constitution with their warrantless wiretapping the press was in a frenzy. Unfortunately, the hysteria was over the arrest of the suspected killer of JonBenet Ramsey, an operation performed with an assist from, oddly enough, Homeland Security. Am I suggesting that the release of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision was a known entity and that the Bush administration let loose an explosive story as a smokescreen? Yes! Read Thom Hartmann's article JonBenet Died - And Bush Lied? over at Common Dreams. for more. 

Be it chance or orchestrated coincidence, this incredible quote from a Washington Post article was buried by a cover-up story:

"It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion. ". . . There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all 'inherent powers' must derive from that Constitution." 

If isolated and unexamined, this specific example may sound a bit paranoid — that’s why I’m leading with it. If one places this alleged abuse of the media in its proper and damning context, as part of a long string of ‘coincidences,’ it’s obvious that it’s not a stretch, it’s business as usual. I recommend you watch Olbermann walk through a long series of these coincidences from 2002 to the near-present over at Crooks and Liars and read this week's Rolling Stone Article, The Phony War, from Robert Dreyfuss. 

The Rolling Stone article includes a timeline that breaks down the administration's past use of terror to divert attention from the real danger, right-wing control of our government. Click below for the charts.

It’s a simple formula, but, like so many corrupt regimes of the past, they are terrifyingly good at it.

August 18^th from whitehouse.gov

Q Mr. President, the federal ruling yesterday that declared your terrorist surveillance program unconstitutional — the judge wrote that it was never the intent of the framers to give the President unfettered control. How do you respond, sir, to opponents who say that this ruling is really the first nail in the coffin of your administration's legal strategy in the war on terror?

THE PRESIDENT: I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live. You might remember last week working with the — with people in Great Britain, we disrupted a plot. People were trying to come and kill people.

The Bush administration has hijacked the media and people are dying. Using terror to advance a monstrous agenda that diverts attention away from legitimate security concerns, dismantles our constitutionally protected rights, and locks us into a never-ending war where everyone loses except the criminals in charge is incomprehensibly monstrous. The Democratic Party needs to run on the war and expose this Republican-controlled administration's failure to keep us safe. The Democratic party has no shortage of plans, they just need to scream so loudly that they break through the right-wing corporate media barricade.