April 26, 2005

Response To Our Open Letter
By Ed Henry

Suppose you dialed 911 and instead of a human you got a recorded message. You listened to an advertisement for donations to the police fund that ran for five or ten minutes. No assurances that help was coming, not even a menu of options. Would you be upset?

This is almost what happened to 66 of us from across the nation that signed an "Open Letter" to the President and the Honorable Members of Congress and emailed it to our Representatives, Senators and the White House.

We fully expected that our letter would merely fall into the hands of minions who work for these well shielded dignitaries and not be read by the person to whom it was addressed, probably glanced at then tossed in the circular file, and only a letter from a voting constituent would even get that far. At most we would probably receive one of those "thank you for writing" form letters that invites you to breakfast the next time you're in Washington . (Read the rest here)

Evidence that the U.S. May Be Losing the Global War on Terror
By Ivan Eland

The Bush administration is attempting to suppress key data showing that its Global War on Terrorism (or GWOT as government bureaucrats have dubbed it) likely has been counterproductive. According to Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who still has many sources within the intelligence community, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office is suppressing data showing that the number of major terrorist attacks worldwide exploded from 175 in 2003 to 625 in 2004, the highest number since the Cold War began to wane in 1985. U.S. officials said that when analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center declined the office of the secretary’s invitation to use a methodology that would reduce the number of terrorist attacks, her office terminated publication of the State Department’s annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report.

No matter what else George W. Bush does in office, historians will define his presidency primarily by his GWOT, initiated after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Yet the Bush administration is trying to hide important data that might very well lead historians and the American public to conclude that the GWOT has been disastrous for U.S. and global security. (Read the rest here)

Don't Forget Roosevelt's Attack on the Judiciary
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Republican attacks on the judiciary bring to mind what unquestionably was the fiercest attack on the independence of the federal judiciary in American history — the infamous “court-packing scheme” of Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

While there certainly had been instances of government regulation and welfare prior to FDR’s presidency, the long-established American tradition had been based on free enterprise (that is, free from government regulation), wealth accumulation (especially prior to the enactment of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913), and private charity (as compared to government welfare). (Read the rest here)

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