Phxkevin said

"I know its a rhetorical question, but yes. A civilian court is morally superior to a military court for a variety of reasons"


Have you seen or heard some of the people that serve on these juries?

I am aware of many who have served on civilian juries. The system could always be improved.

I still stand by the constitution: that during peacetime, a military court does not try civilians. Further, a person held by the US government on US territory (Gitmo) is entitled to due process of law, including among other things, being charged with a crime in a reasonable amount of time, to confront witness and to be tried in open court.

I would argue that you can't be a enemy combatant in a undeclared war. The congress and the president at all times have the power to declare war, but deliberately chose not to do so in our recent endeavors.

Please tell me, what form would this declaration of war take? Can you point me to a historical example of this declaration passed by one of our founding fathers?

Searcy17 wrote..

Please tell me, what form would this declaration of war take? Can you point me to a historical example of this declaration

From wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Stat....

Quote:

An Act Declaring War between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Dependencies Thereof and the United States of America and Their Territories was passed by the United States Congress on 18 June 1812, thereby beginning the War of 1812.

Text of the declaration

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That war be and is hereby declared to exist between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the dependencies thereof, and the United States of America and their territories; and that the President of the United States is hereby authorized to use the whole land and naval force of the United States to carry the same into effect, and to issue to private armed vessels of the United States commissions or letters of marque and general reprisal, in such form as he shall think proper, and under the seal of the United States, against the vessels, goods, and effects of the government of the said United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the subjects thereof.

I have tried and tried to tell some of these so-called "liberty" "limited government" candidates running for office that none of them are worthy of my vote unless they have actively opposed SOPA/CISPA, NDAA, HR 347, the Patriot Act, and DHS and TSA.

In addition, they must honor that last phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance: "liberty AND JUSTICE for all." They must recognize and acknowledge the financial fraud that has been committed and be committed to rectifying the wrongs that have been done. That means investigating and prosecuting fraud - not just downsizing government and issuing pink slips to any fraud perpetrators that may have been involved.

Until I get Congressional and Senate candidates with those qualifications in my district and state, I will vote "None of the Above."

Quote:

On the list of 99 things I worry that may some day kill me, terrorism is in about 5,462nd place.

Jay-Z's new version: "I got 99 problems, but worrying about being blown up by a terrorist ain't one."

Live free or die. It appears that only the second option is currently available. It is truly appalling that the mouthpiece of the 1% should be heralding our slavery on the eve of May Day. When it comes to the fight for liberty and justice, there is not an inch of difference between OWS and the Tea Party. Not an inch. At least the WSJ got that right.

Thanks for "speaking up" Karl. We are living a "bad movie" every damn day now it seems.

The erosion of civil liberties is now like being in a car wreck... you can see it happen, and it's so obvious and stunningly wrong, each fall of the "jackboot" falls seemingly in slow motion...

...but in reality everything happens really fast. It's stunning how much has changed in the last 10 years.

When I was watching the first tower fall... I KNEW it all changed right then, sitting there by myself, I said out loud... "it all changes right here". As soon as I heard the phrase "war on terror", I knew we were in big trouble.

...I also knew, the reason behind the players Bush had picked prior to 9/11. I had commented after the election to a fellow conservative friend... "Look who he's picking to be in his cabinet. Makes you wonder if he's planning on starting a war, doesn't it?"

It's an absolute fact that, at 54 y.o., we now live in a different country than the one I grew up in, in the early 60's... although, unbeknownst to me... the coup d'état happened before me and my parents were even born.

I recently watched the HBO series "John Adams". What stood out the most, was the fight between statism and republican government started before the ink was even dry on the founding documents... and people who seemed to have known better, did really stupid things, incongruent to a constitutional republic. (Alien and Sedition act)

What a long strange trip it has been... and continues to be.

wsj wrote..

The ACLU tea partiers may be well-intentioned but they are woefully uninformed about the war on the terror. Their efforts would undermine executive war-fighting authority and the legitimacy of a terrorist detention and military tribunal system that has been established over many Congresses, endorsed by two Presidents and confirmed by the Supreme Court. \

Woefully uninformed about the "war" on terror eh?

Undermine ex authority for "war" fighting...

I see, anyone who speaks the truth is uninfored and anyone that dissents must be detained inidefinitely...history lessons are a bitch!

Marvinmartian:

Do you believe that is the correct constitutional form for the declaration to take? That the congress who passed it has bound that language on all future congresses? So for example, I just copy and paste Germany/Korea/Iraq in the place of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain"?

I spent most of the previous decade involved in homeland security related things. Mostly on the preparedness side, but I got a pretty good look at the "muscle" involved, too.

Looking back on it, I am struck by how different things were before there was an apparently infinite amount of money available. IMHO, the experienced and motivated people who were involled at the state and local level on 9/10 got up to speed PDQ and did amazing things on the fly. With no money.

But then the rivers of $ began to flow, and oddly enough, the spectrum of potential threats began to grow. And the beaurocrats involved from Congress on down knew that they would never be criticized for spending too much money to protect the public, even if we took a serious hit again. But if they spent too little, they would be crucified.

Their dance partner was basically their old flame: the Military Industrial complex, who now had a whole new market to pitch their products and services to. It was a job creator, right? Of course there needed to be serious threats, so everybody made sure there were.

But as Gen describes, there weren't.

When I look back at all the terrifying federal "intel" that was being "shared" with responders every day, and compare it with what is now known about the reality at the time, it shames me that I was snookered by it all. A lot of good people gave up time with their families and bore unrelenting stress for many years becasue they genuinely wanted to protect their neighbors, only to find that the threats were almost entirely bull****. Perhaps a million more people got fed into the maw of war due to a mixture of arrogance, incompetence and greed.

I have no love for Bush the Younger or his team, but I think it is important to remember that the forces that created the current Homeland Security Industry were systemic, and I suspect the play would have unfolded very simlarly even with different actors playing the parts. Yes, I think Al Gore would have followed a similar script. The political and economic forces involved who would benefit from greater authority and profits are not people- they are institutions with long experience as puppeteers.

So here we are with a gigantic Homeland Security edifice that has an innate need to sustain itself, and even grow. The defence industry during the Cold War became something simliar. Only the highly visible suicide of the Soviet Union brought their importance into question for a while. That was close.

Gen raised the point of how this is an undeclared war, which is true. However historically "War" is used to describe hostilities between States. So after 9/11, who would we have declared war on? IMO, the non-state actor is the ideal enemy from the perspective of those who seek power and wealth. The threat can be persuasively presented to taxpayers as being whatever, wherever and whenever they want it to be. (To be fair, I do think this was a novel situation, so I have no idea what the "right" answer is regarding a declaration of war.)

Meh. You people know all this.

We are left now with laws that we shouldn't have and never really needed, and authorities who will righteously wield any tool they are given to do what they think they must do to those they think deserve it. And public officials who will never risk dismantling any of it because it points out their own ineptitude and their opponents will paint them as too weak to govern. And the salemen continue to pitch new toys.

Guess we'll need some new threats here pretty soon, eh? How about "Anarchists"? Those SOBs are up to something, I bet. Whoever they are.

I still have my house wrapped w/ saran wrap & duck tape. Surely they'll let know when it's safe to undo that?

Quote:

Gen raised the point of how this is an undeclared war, which is true. However historically "War" is used to describe hostilities between States. So after 9/11, who would we have declared war on? IMO, the non-state actor is the ideal enemy from the perspective of those who seek power and wealth.

There were state actors involved in 9/11 and the events leading up to it. We just refuse to name and prosecute a war against them.

No, Widg, they probably won't. ;)

I had to chuckle recently when I read that there was a plan afoot to offer Anthrax vax to First Responders. Yea, right. Because we needed the Smallpox vax we got so badly...

While there were certainly elements within some governments who provided aid and comfort, I really don't think their activities constituted the belligerent actions of a State in any historical context. In any event, there wasn't much evidence of it at the time, iirc. Afghanistan was where most of the bad guys were, but there was no government to declare war on for all intents and purposes.

Just saying it was (and is) unclear how a declaration of war fits in when we are done serious harm by non-state actors. The only similar case I can think of is the Barbary Pirates, but I don't recall if war was declared.

Anyway, it's a bit moot now. We learned in Vietnam that we don't actually need to do all the paperwork if we really want to go to war. That will be the routine from now on, I suspect, and the discussion about who is an actual Enemy Combatant will probably get murkier and murkier.

We invaded two sovereign nations (Iraq & Afghanistan) and forcibly removed their government. That is the very definition of war.

We sort of invaded another sovereign (Pakistan) to eliminate threats, without the permission of the host country. Perhaps that isn't war, but its close.

We chose not to invade another sovereign nation who's citizens were very involved in 9/11.

I don't disgree these were wars, PK. I think Gen's original point had to do with what the US Constition says about when and how we go to War, and the effect on civil liberties, vs. recent events.

Somehow I don't think what happened is what the Founders had in mind. (Or could have even concieved of, perhaps.) Not formally declaring War gives the actors a great deal more room to improvise, for good or ill.

Phxkevin wrote..

We chose not to invade another sovereign nation who's citizens were very involved in 9/11

Do you mean SA?

Uh huh.

I read that the wives of Bin Laden were transported to SA a few days ago so they were not in Pakistan on the anniversary...

Seems like they would have had some useful info, they were apparently interrogated by the Pakistani .gov?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/arti....

Quote:

The family largely distanced itself from the late al-Qaida leader years ago.

Years ago like when many of them were handed the only plane tickets issued on 9/12/01???

RE Cleavland bomb plot

When the FBI actively encourages illegal behavior (but for the fake explosives provided by the FBI, they did not take any meaningful steps, they just talked)

...Explosive devices provided to the suspects by an undercover FBI employee were inoperable to ensure there was no threat to the public, the complaint says. ... Two of the men are accused of placing two devices at the base of a concrete support pillar for the bridge on Monday night. The FBI said the pair tried to remotely detonate the devices from a safe distance...

Quick, give the FBI a bigger budget because they are creating the bad guys.

Its true that they appear to be unsavory characters and are probably guilty of something, but this appears to be bending the rule of law so they can protect their budget.

I'm probably lucky I didn't get arrested, but about 15 years ago at the airport,dropping my mother off, I raised hell about fooling with the security. I told her we would be better off if a few of us got blown up on a plane than to go through this crap every where we went. Now you get searched when you go to the court house. Is it because the terrorist are coming in or are they already there?

One of the first posts I put here mentioned the war and emergency power law codified as 12USC95a and 50USC5b. One is banking, the other is miltary or war and they read the exact same thing. One would do well to read Dr. Eugene Schroeders works on this subject. An executive order has the effect of law and Bill Clinton declared war on Osama Bin Laden in 1998 or 1999. I know this because the Art Bell show had a guy on who was talking about executive orders and he mentioned at that time the most recent one was Bill Clinton declaring an emergency involving Osama Bin Laden, who I believe had been involved in the USS Cole incident or maybe it was the embassy attack. The guy said that only 2 of them at the time had been successfully challenged, one being the seizure of the steel plants by Truman in the late 1940's and the other, something Clinton attempted to do early in his administration. Congressmen couldn't issue a challenge, but had to actually legislate against the rules. These are orders of the commander in chief, empowered by Congressional act.

This begs the question, why is a war statute in the banking Code? Well, for one, a primary power of the act is to interrupt trade and freeze the assets of the enemy. In 1933, it was used to cancel all contracts payable in gold and seize the gold as well. Also, the term emergency was inserted in the law to make it applicable to the domestic economy. FDR stole our gold and gave us notes we owed back to the Fed who could only give us back our own debt, which we could then enforce on ourselves. Who the hell did they think they were and what the hell were we doing taking this crap then? Just think, people are 10 times as brainwashed today.

The rule of necessity is that necessity knows no rule. The debts weren't payable in gold, so they took the gold and cancelled the gold clause. Of course, they weren't payable in paper either. But, you could print more paper. The act of purely paying debt with debt was started in the US as an emergency act. There are supposed to be no titles of nobility in the US and this isn't a bill of rights act, but the base of the Constitution itself. I believe it was the Montana Freeman that attempted to do what the bankers and the government allow themselves to do. It wasn't pretty when the government was through with them, but what is the difference between us writing notes we can't pay and the government and bankers doing the same? That is what a title of nobility is, a granted privilege. Is there any greater privilege than writing debts you never have to pay?

My hats off to the State of Virginia. Their constitution gives this protection and I don't believe the Federal Government has the power to step over the constitutional protections in a state. To have a law and to have standing to enforce the law are two different things. If the state doesn't recognize the emergency, I don't believe the Federal government can force them to recognize it. The Fed has no authority in the States other than its designated areas. I believe this principal was outlined in Justice Thomas' opinion in a case involving prosecution of a kid who had a gun in a Federal No Gun School Zone in or around 1996. It was a state issue.

nelstomlinson wrote..

Seaterk, don't look at the Third Reich in 1940, look at the Third Reich in 1933 or 1934. I'd say we're about there now. The Third Reich ran from 1933 to 1945. I wonder how long the First American Tyranny will last?

Out of curriousity, I looked up entries for H.L. Mencken on the mises.org site. This publication came up, a 1937 copy of a publication known as the American Mercury. Mencken talks of the Nazi's then as if it is know what they are. There were groups in the US in love with fascism at that time and it appears they are still in large supply.


http://mises.org/journals/americanmercur....

Anyone w/ their eyes open knew who the Nazi's were in 1937. That's why many German's (esp. Jews) were leaving in droves.

Re. Cleveland. Looks like the FBI is good at convincing some 85-90 IQ unemployed kids to go create trouble.

Widgeon, I think the Jews have had a long history of people where they live suddenly wanting to get them, as in burn them out. Thus they have a louder radar than the rest of the population. FDR set up the corporate state along with the actions of the Federal Reserve during that period of time, as described by Cleveland Federal Reserve historian Walker F. Todd, who worked with Eugene Schroeder on the emergency powers study I mentioned above. Fascism is a central planning type of capitalism that is socialistic. They let us own it while they ruin/run it.