Linda, the facts speak for themselves....some of the history of the man and the memory of the man they all but worship....ask them.....they admire hid greatness, and his accomplishments...and dontcha know??? William Ayers is "the evil one", in their tiny, tiny, universe;

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reagan/timeline/index.html
1952 Ronald and Nancy March 4: Marries Nancy Davis, an actress under contract with MGM.

October 22: Daughter Patricia (Patti) is born.

( Reagan seems to have engaged in pre-marital intercourse with Nancy Davis....)

1959 During his last term as president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan fights for, and achieves, better benefits and working conditions for actors.

Fidel Castro's "revolution" topples the right-wing Batista government in Cuba.
1960 As a "Democrat for Nixon," Reagan champions Nixon’s candidacy for president, delivering more than 200 speeches in his support.
1962 G.E. fires Reagan as a political liability when he takes on the Tennessee Valley Authority, as an example of "big government." G.E. has contracts worth millions of dollars....

.....1966 January 1: Reagan announces candidacy for governor of California. He promises to reduce the waste in government and to "clean up the mess at Berkeley."

November 8: Reagan elected by almost 1 million votes more than incumbent Democratic governor Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown.....

1967

October 25: Reagan calls for a harder line on war protestors.

1969

Spring: Reagan sends in the National Guard to break up a student strike at University of California at Berkeley. Armed with bayonets and tear gas, the National Guard occupies Berkeley for 17 days. The event establishes Reagan as a peace-restoring hero for some, a trigger-happy extremist for others.

The Reagans: Portrait of a Marriage - Google Books Result

by Anne Edwards - 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 448 pages
She was almost immediately called Patti, and weighed seven pounds three ... make it difficult for anyone to believe that the child was two months premature. ..

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r.../02_kerr.shtml
UC Berkeley Public Affairs | 2 December 2003

BERKELEY – Clark Kerr, a towering figure in higher education, died Monday, Dec. 1 at the age of 92. As president of the University of California, he was chief architect of the master plan that guided California public higher education for four decades and is still a national model.....

.....Students protested a decision by the Berkeley administration to shut down a section of the Bancroft/Telegraph corner because student activities there violated a rule prohibiting the on-campus raising of funds and recruiting of participants for political activities off campus. That sparked a prolonged confrontation that ended with the mass arrest of 800 students who had taken over the administration building, Sproul Hall. Kerr ultimately persuaded the UC Regents to allow political activities and demonstrations on campus.

His actions, however, ran counter to the direction of the conservative leadership of the UC Regents and, in 1966, of the newly elected Republican governor, Ronald Reagan. In January 1967, three weeks after Reagan took office, the Regents dismissed Kerr. Kerr later quipped that he came into the job as president "fired with enthusiasm" and left the same way. But those who knew him said that, even his final years, he was hurt by the way things worked out. ...

snopes.com: Reagan "bloodbath" quote

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...lumnId=1929301

......(After police had used deadly force suppressing a violent protest in Berkeley in 1970, Reagan famously remarked: "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with.").......

Linda, their "hero" built a political career on playing to memes attempted as arguments against yours in this "discussion"...their hero attracted his following by politics of hate and division....it's the core strategy to be competitive in elections, to the present day:  (My point is that "the evil Ayers", was a direct  reaction to what they loved when it came from Reagan, and still rush enthusiastically to support, today!)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...52C1A9619C8B63
To the Editor:

The racial appeal in Ronald Reagan's visit to the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 is unambiguous. It was part of a Republican strategy to win white Democratic converts. Consider a letter that Michael Retzer, the Mississippi national committeeman, wrote in December 1979 to the Republican National Committee.

The national committee was polling state leaders for venues where the Republican nominee might speak, and Mr. Retzer pointed to the Neshoba County Fair as ideal for winning what he called ''George Wallace-inclined voters.''

This was not just a Southern strategy. Throughout his career, Mr. Reagan benefited from divisive appeals to whites who resented efforts to reverse historic patterns of racial discrimination.

He did it in 1966 when he campaigned for the California governorship by denouncing open housing laws. He did it in 1976 by attacking welfare in subtly racist terms. And he clearly did it in Neshoba County in 1980. Joseph Crespino

Atlanta, Nov. 14, 2007

The writer teaches history at Emory University and is the author of ''In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution.''

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1962220
Truth and Reconciliation in Neshoba County
Mississippi Region Grapples with Legacy of Civil Rights Murders

Arecia Steele
Marisa Penaloza, NPR

Arecia Steele, 73, reflects on changes in Neshoba: "I used to hear my granddaddy talk about how to hang them up on the limb. Thank you, Jesus, you don't find that no more."

Summer of 1964

Read historical newspaper accounts related to the Neshoba murders, from 'The Neshoba Democrat':
June 25, 1964: 'Missing auto of trio found by FBI Tuesday'

July 16, 1964: Search Continues for Missing Rights Workers (front-page story)

July 16, 1964: Families Sue Sheriff, Deputy for 'Terroristic Acts'

Aug. 6, 1964: Bodies of Missing Trio Found

All Things Considered, June 17, 2004 · This month marks the 40th anniversary of one of Mississippi's most notorious civil rights murder cases. On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers, in Mississippi for "freedom summer," were killed after traveling to Neshoba County to investigate the burning of Mt. Zion, a black church. No one has ever been charged with murder in the case, even though federal agents identified a local group of Ku Klux Klansmen as the killers.

Most of the suspects are now dead, but some still live in town -- most notably, Edgar Ray Killen, the alleged leader of the Klan klavern that chased down the civil rights workers, took them to a quiet county road and shot them. For years, the history of Neshoba County's racial violence was hushed up -- not taught in schools, or talked about in upstanding white families.

But as NPR's Debbie Elliott reports, a task force of black and white citizens in Philadelphia, Miss., the Neshoba County seat, is trying to come to grips with the community's legacy. The group wants to publicly apologize and is calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.....

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1962220

....Reagan's campaign was on the ropes until the primaries hit the Southern states, where he won his first key victory in North Carolina. Throughout the South that spring and summer, Reagan portrayed himself as Goldwater's heir while criticizing Ford as a captive of Eastern establishment Republicans fixated on forced integration.

Reagan lost the nomination to Ford in 1976. But when the former California governor ran for the presidency again in 1980, he began his campaign with a controversial appearance in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers had been brutally killed. It was at that sore spot on the racial map that Reagan revived talk about states' rights and curbing the power of the federal government.

To many it sounded like code for announcing himself as the candidate for white segregationists. After he defeated President Carter, a native Southerner, Reagan led an administration that seemed to cater to Southerners still angry over the passage of the Civil Rights Act after 16 years. The Reagan team condemned busing for school integration, opposed affirmative action and even threatened to veto a proposed extension of the Voting Rights Act (the sequel to the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed a year later and focused on election participation). President Reagan also tried to allow Bob Jones University, a segregated Southern school, to reclaim federal tax credits that had long been denied to racially discriminatory institutions.

The genial Californian Republican denied there was any racism implicit in those policies. Even when he was characterizing poor women as welfare queens driving around in pink Cadillacs, he said it was a merely matter of encouraging people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The America he seemed to envision had no need to deal with racial divisions, and he said his only desire was to encourage self-sufficiency for all Americans and to reduce all Americans' dependence on government programs.

Today it is hard to believe that Reagan had such success using the Civil Rights Act as a whipping boy. The Civil Rights Act is now so widely accepted that it doesn't attract controversy in any region of the country -- including the South. There is no debate about the right of black people, Hispanics or Asians to stay in a hotel, shop in a store or to apply for a job without fear of racial discrimination......

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...+we+can&st=nyt
April 29, 1984
CAN THE MAGIC PREVAIL?
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Steven R. Weisman is chief White House correspondent for The Times.

AMERICANS LIKE HIM.

....."More significantly, Mr. Reagan and his aides perceived the style of the Carter Administration as wrong-headed and doomed to fail. They had altogether new and different ideas about how to present the President to his people.

Every Administration for a generation has spent substantial time and energy seeking to make optimum use of television and the print media in the President's behalf. But as the candidate of the minority party and a President whose legislative plans represented a dramatic break with the past, Mr. Reagan had a special need. And because of the long history of Presidents driven from office or defeated for re-election, White House aides were also determined to use the media to strengthen the institution of the Presidency itself. To an unprecedented extent, Mr. Reagan and his staff have made television a major organizing principle of his Presidency. His day is planned around opportunities for TV coverage. Every effort is made to assure a constant flow of positive visual images and symbols from the White House.

In 1982, as unemployment soared and the President was accused of lacking compassion for those out of work, Mr. Reagan avoided appearing in public and before the TV camera in black tie. Instead, he showed up for events concerned with unemployed teen-agers, dock workers and others being trained for new jobs. When disaster strikes a community, Mr. Reagan doesn't stop at sending relief funds - he makes a detour, as he did to flooded-out Louisiana last year, to be photographed stacking sandbags. When a Presidential journey overseas is in the works, producers from the television networks accompany White House aides on the advance trips. The two groups jointly figure out the best photo angles of the President - staring into the demilitarized zone from South Korea, gazing grimly across the Berlin Wall. Plans for the President's trip to China were similarly television-tailored.

This Administration's exceptional ability to manipulate the media is impressive. One means of assuring that the cameras stay on the President, for example, is a White House policy that has Mr. Reagan himself making important announcements on television. For details and analysis, the news media are handed over to Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger or other top aides - but under ground rules whereby they may not be identified in news accounts. As a result, the only person who can be shown on the 7 o'clock news's coverage of such announcements is the President himself, offering broad, positive precepts.

Another goal is to keep Mr. Reagan's image as far from bad news and negative discussion as possible. Sometimes the President disappears altogether. The momentous announcement of the withdrawal of the Marines from Lebanon was made in a written statement distributed late in the day, minutes after Mr. Reagan had left for his ranch in California. There were no senior officials immediately available to the press to explain why the withdrawal was ordered.

The White House communications staff is nothing if not imaginative. Last year, former Interior Secretary James G. Watt stirred up a hornet's nest of rock-and-roll lovers after he ousted the Beach Boys from their July 4 concert on the Mall. Mr. Watt was summoned to the White House and handed a large plaster foot that had a bullet hole in it, a brilliant device for making light of the incident. Later, it was learned that David R. Gergen, director of communications at the time, had commissioned the making of the foot weeks before, with the thought that it would come in handy if someone in the Administration happened to make a gaffe.

A sense of timing showed up on a more serious topic last December when the White House learned that the Pentagon was about to release a report criticizing the Administration for alleged failures in the massacre of marines in Beirut. White House officials pre-empted the negative impact of the report by leaking Mr. Reagan's reaction to the charges the day before the report was made public.

THE MASTERY OF MEDIA TECHNIQUES HAS been placed in the service of a President with a remarkable approach to political discourse...."

Quote Details: Ronald Reagan: The nine most terrifying... - The ...The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' Ronald Reagan 40th president of US (1911 - 2004 ...
www.quotationspage.com/quote/33742.html

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...AB0894DA484D81
REAGAN TAX EXEMPTION BILL ASSAILED
STUART TAYLOR Jr., Special to the New York Times. Feb 2, 1982. pg. A.18

....The Administration decided Jan. 8 to grant the exemptions to private schools that practiced racial discrimination, revoking an 11-year-old policy initiated by the Nixon Administration. The move was immediately criticized by civil rights leaders and members of both parties in Congress, and four days later Mr. Reagan said he would rescind the change and submit a bill to bar such tax exemptions.

Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, chairman of the Finance Committee, expressed puzzlement over the Administration's handling of the issue, and agreed with a statement by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, who said, ''The fate of this legislation is uncertain.''....

.....But Mr. Schmults received a letter dated Dec. 21 from Mr. Lott that stated, ''The position you report may well be out of line with the President's policy.'' Reagan Memomorandum Attached

Attached was a copy of the ''Presidential Log of Selected House Mail,'' on which Mr. Reagan had written, ''I think we should,'' next to a reference to Representative Lott's request for the Administration to ''intervene'' in the Supreme Court case.  Deputy Treasury Secretary R.T. McNamara received a similar letter from Mr. Lott.

The case concerned Bob Jones University in South Carolina and Goldsboro Christian Schools in North Carolina. Today, Mr. Schmults contended that the Justice Department's subsequent advice to the Treasury Department and the revenue service that segregationist schools were legally entitled to tax exemptions ''was made solely on the basis of objective legal analysis.''

The attacks on the Administration's position have continued. William Billings, President of the National Christian Action Coalition, called Mr. Reagan's proposal, ''The most dangerous piece of legislation ever considered affecting religious freedom,'' and vowed ''an all-out effort'' to defeat it."

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...A80894DA484D81
ABROAD AT HOME; SHUCKS, IT'S ONLY THE LAW; [Op-Ed]
Lewis, Anthony. New York Times. Jan 21, 1982. pg. A.23

A three-judge Federal court, in an opinion by a distinguished judge, decides an important question of Federal law. The Supreme Court affirms the decision. Other courts follow it. The Federal Government incorporates it in rules, and three Presidents enforce them over a 10-year period.

Then a new President reverses the rules. He explains to a press conference that he did so because they had ''no basis in the law.'' That is what President Reagan said at his press conference Tuesday by way of explaining his decision to give tax exemptions to schools and colleges that discriminate against black Americans. The only thing more amazing than his explanation was the reaction of the reporters in the room. Nobody laughed.

Presidents say a good many foolish things, and I have heard them for 30 years. But I do not think I have heard anything more preposterous, lame, cynical or outrageous than what Ronald Reagan had to say about ''the law'' and racist schools."

http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu...-20-CBS-7.html
CBS Evening News for Monday, Apr 20, 1981
Headline: Charlotte / Busing
Abstract: (Studio) Report introduced
REPORTER: Dan Rather

(Charlotte, North Carolina) Success of busing for school desegregation here examined. [November 11, 1980, Ronald REAGAN - calls busing a failure.] Beginning of busing concept for United States recalled occurring here; details given. [1971 school board member Jane SCOTT - thinks city was committed to making it work.] [Civil rights attorney Julius CHAMBERS - praises leaders] Current situation outlined; carryover of busing into integration of neighborhoods noted. [William POE - thinks city has adjusted well.] Poe's opposition to busing 10 years ago recalled. [POE - praises program.] Continued hope of antibusing proponents discussed. [Senator Jesse HELMS - calls busing a folly.] [Dr. Carlton WATKINS - responds.]
REPORTER: Ed Rabel (WBTV file film)

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archive...84/100884a.htm
Remarks at a Reagan-Bush Rally in Charlotte, North Carolina

October 8, 1984
The President. Thank you all very much.

Audience. Reagan! Reagan! Reagan! ......

....They favor busing that takes innocent children out of the neighborhood school and makes them pawns in a social experiment that nobody wants. We've found out it failed. I don't call that compassion....

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...57C0A964958260
Busing Is Abandoned Even in Charlotte

By PETER APPLEBOME,
Published: April 15, 1992

...Charlotte, or the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, as the city-county district is known, holds a distinctive place in American public education. During two decades when court-ordered busing was fiercely opposed in many places, this was a community that took enormous pride in the racial harmony and integrated schools that its busing produced.

Dead Silence for Reagan

"I remember when Ronald Reagan made a speech here and described busing as a social experiment that has not worked, and he was met with dead silence," said Jay M. Robinson, the school superintendent from 1976-86. "What happened in Charlotte became a matter of community pride." ...

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8479694.html
The Boston Globe
Date:
April 14, 1998
Author:
Michael Grunwald, Globe Staff
More results for:
"charlotte reopens book" on court ordered busing

See more articles from The Boston Globe

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- This is not just the city where court-ordered busing began. Charlotte is also known as the city that made court-ordered busing work.

When Boston's busing wars were raging, students from Charlotte came north to spread the word that peaceful integration was possible. In a federal study of the nation's 125 largest school systems, Charlotte-Mecklenberg was rated the most integrated. When President Reagan attacked busing during a campaign speech in Charlotte, his own supporters responded with stony silence. The next day, the Charlotte Observer replied with an editorial titled "You Were Wrong, Mr. President," calling school desegregation the city's "proudest achievement.".....

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.c...95bc5ee207d189
Case key to magnet schools' future

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
April 20, 1999

"...Presiding over the trial will be Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Potter, a Reagan appointee.

A public opponent of busing before his appointment to the bench, Potter unsettled black parents
during a court hearing last month. He said, on his own initiative, that he would consider releasing
the school system from all court supervision if he found that the lingering effects of segregation
are gone. His announcement was unusual because none of the parties had requested such action. ...."

....and Linda...I'll bet you are the only one still reading this line, and the least likely needing to read it.

Of course, as the comments of this Bank CEO clearly show, Reagan was devisive and wrong, because he decided, as always to play to his base....What does that speak of them, or of him?

http://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/in...eches&item=138

Remarks at the Governor's Emerging Issues Forum
Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America
“What Is, and What We Hope For”
February 24, 2000
Raleigh, North Carolina

...Finally, I'd like to say a few words about why diversity matters ... and how racial discord continues to haunt our children's educational experience.

I believe public school desegregation was the single most important step we've taken in this century to help our children. Almost immediately after we integrated our schools, the Southern economy took off like a wildfire in the wind. I believe integration made the difference. Integration -- and the diversity it began to nourish -- became a source of economic, cultural and community strength.

That said, our experience with desegregation has not been entirely without struggles, missteps and bad feelings......

....In Charlotte, we recently reopened these wounds in our court case on busing. In that case, some argued that the benefits of neighborhood schools now outweigh the benefits of racially diverse classrooms. Others argued that de facto "separate but equal" schools are inherently unjust, and that busing should continue. No one argues that neighborhood schools are inherently bad. Nor does anyone argue that diversity is inherently bad. But we seem resigned to the idea that we can't have both.

This is what I want to know: if diversity is such a great thing, why do we put the burden on our children to achieve it? Why should a seven-year-old sit on a bus for 45 minutes to go to school in the name of diversity when the adults in her life won't buy a home in a racially or economically diverse neighborhood? Is diversity more important for children than for adults?

These are questions we must ask ourselves, and, frankly, I don't think the economic excuse holds water. Sure, our neighbors at the very bottom of the ladder have limited choices about where to live. But the rest of us segregate ourselves at every income level.

My own judgment is that diversity is vitally important, and that we should continue busing as long as it is the only way to achieve diverse schools. But I also believe that when adults choose to self-segregate based on race, our rhetoric rings hollow, and we reveal ourselves to be less enlightened than we think.....

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/polit...gan90_2-6.html
THE REAGAN LEGACY

February 6, 2001

....I also think he had a brilliant political strategy. It was really quite simple. There was conservatism, tax cuts, anticommunism -- the kind of a Goldwater conservatism. Then he brought in his persona kind of a nostalgia for the pre-60s America, which sat very well with a lot of conservatives, and then he also brought with him a lot of antiblack populism, which is very popular, worked for him, kept his party together but I think was quite bad for the country.

JIM LEHRER: Antiblack populism what do you mean?

ROGER WILKINS: Well, every once in a while Reagan would just send out these laser beam signals that were crystal clear. His first speech in his campaign in 1980 was in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which nobody outside of Mississippi had ever heard of except for one thing and that was that three civil rights workers were killed there in 1964. Reagan said then I'm for states rights. If you say I'm for states rights in Mississippi, everybody knows what you're talking about. Some years later he went to Atlanta and he said Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine. Everybody knows what you're talking about then, too. He went to Charlotte, North Carolina, where the first federal court ordered the first bussing remedy and he said, I'm against bussing. So....

JIM LEHRER: So your point is that he believed this -- he wasn't in it for political reasons or he was --

ROGER WILKINS: I think he believed it. He opposed the Martin Luther King holiday, yeah. I think these were things... they worked for him....."

Linda, William Ayers is the "evil terrorist", and YOU are the "bigot", from their tiny, suffocatingly insulated POV....and Reagan will forever live in their memories as one of the great ones, if not the greatest....it's so simple, so obvious (to them)....and soooooo "good" or "evil"...."us" or "the other".... Imagine if one were to attempt to advance the idea that Reagan was a bigger political "terrorist" than Ayers....and a much more ambitious and dangerous one....and could back the idea up, rather thoroughly....with facts....

You are very welcome, Linda. Most of the information I have posted here was taken from material I found and posted in prior online discussions with conservatives over the past four years. Almost to a man (or woman...) they either cannot or will not look too deeply into "how they know what they know"....if they reapond at all, they'll post objections to the sources...."liberal" NY Times and NPR.... even as they "visit" NRO and townhall.com, or posts links to reports from worldnetdaily.com, washingtontimes.com, or foxnews ....

I put the effort in to post in detail because William Ayers politics were the mirror opposite....reactionary, to the racism, violence, and support for war that  so many folks who brand Ayers as "evil", don't recognize in Reagan's and in their own politics. They post with so much certainty about the log in Ayers eye, and they have no sense of the log sticking out of their own eye.

They have no empathy.....no ability to put themselves, even for a moment, in Obama's place. I am not an Obama supporter, I see him as the candidate of the less right wing faction of the one US party with two right wings....the "property party". I can empathize with him, though.....if I, a caucasian, am sensitive to the outrages Reagan intentionally employed to achieve his ambitions, what do you suppose Obama's opinion of Reagan is, in his heart of hearts. Ayers must seem a welcome relief to keep company with, compared, for instance, to the angry conservative white men who seem to dominate this site.

They see absolulutely nothing absurd about their own resolute opions, and Obama has chosen to walk a tightrope in this campaign, because even moving to the right to pander for votes, will never fool these guys...they know Obama is bad, and Ayers is "evil".... and they, the angry men here, are the victims of injustice....the persecuted, as Palin is somehow a victim of a "liberal" news media, owned by, and the propaganda organ for, the interests of the elite who could care less which of their two approved "property party" candidates wins the coming election.

The irony is, that all of the disagreement and what passes for discussion here and in this campaign season is superfluous....everybody is a member of the same "one party", or they are positioned in the 19th century libertarian "movement". While I have France as an example to show anyone who will listen, of what voters can accomplish as far as a measure of social justice and security in their employment, health, vacation time, retirement, and distancing themselves from the prospect of poverty, libertarians have no example to show me, and the "one party" members and voters in the US have this mess, with it's shrunken currency valuation not even stemming declining foreign tourism or boosting exports....it's 13 percent in poverty, rising unemployment and failing or failed financial institutions,,,it's stock market levels held up only by the prospects of an absurdly expensive and bound to fail bailout, even as both wings of the party in congress prepare to vote passage of annual military expenditures 12 times as large as the next largest military's.....

Nothing unusual about this, is there?

"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

—  Paul Weyrich, at a 1980 training session for 15,000 conservative preachers in Dallas.

YouTube - Paul Weyrich - "I don't want everybody to vote ...

Paul Weyrich, "father" of the right-wing movement and co ...
40 sec

Paul Weyrich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1973, with the financial backing of Coors, Weyrich and Ed Feulner founded the Heritage Foundation as a think tank to counterbalance prevailing sentiment on taxation and regulation, which they considered to be anti-business. While the organization was at first only minimally influential, it has grown into one of the world's largest and most respected public policy research institutes and has been hugely influential in advancing conservative policies.....

.....Over the next two decades, Weyrich founded, co-founded, or held prominent roles in a number of other notable conservative organizations. Among them, he was founder of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of state legislators; a co-founder of the Council for National Policy, a strategy-formulating organization for social conservatives; co-publisher of the magazine Conservative Digest; and national chairman of Coalitions for America, an association of conservative activist organizations. The CSFC, reorganized into the Free Congress Foundation (FCF), also remained active....."

Sorry Jon, I just saw your comments and question.....

This is what you posted to open this discussion:

".....Give us the facts and we will deduct the truth... The assumption behind this is that facts are equal to truth.

Sorry guys, but facts are... just facts. About 200 hundred years ago Friedrich Hegel said that without the trend facts are dead (pretty free translation). Facts do not equal Truth. They do not hold absolute value....."

Jon, I wasn't the one who posted the above, and I wasn't the one who posted that William Ayers was "evil". The "trend" of the times that infliuenced Ayers...and Obama for that matter.....needed to be presented, especially since Ayers claim is that his politics were in reaction to "racism" and "war". Who was a champion of racism and war, to attract votes, during that period, the most successful at it, in that period, Jon?

Reagan, in a Aug, 1980 campaign speech:

" ..... For too long, we have lived with the “Vietnam Syndrome.” Much of that syndrome has been created by the North Vietnamese aggressors who now threaten the peaceful people of Thailand. Over and over they told us for nearly 10 years that we were the aggressors bent on imperialistic conquests. They had a plan. It was to win in the field of propaganda here in America what they could not win on the field of battle in Vietnam. As the years dragged on, we were told that peace would come if we would simply stop interfering and go home. It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause. "

Reagan, Hoover and the UC Red Scare

Pg.1 Uncensored

......." According to the memo, Ellingwood said that the Reagan Administration planned to "hound" the protest groups and was considering using tax investigations and "psychological warfare" against them. The uncensored memo also reveals that Ellingwood asked the FBI for "intelligence" information to use against protest groups, that the FBI had secretly given the Reagan Administration such assistance in the past, and that Hoover approved Ellingwood's request by writing "O.K." at the end of the memo.

I don't have a blog, Jon, because I am afraid of the right and it's state secuirty apparatus,  I don't own any weapons, just a keyboard. I don't want to end up on a "no fly list", or have the IRS auditing me, simply because I object to the "one party system", and the one sided view of the history of American politics that I have eperienced during my lifetime. It must be nice to have little or no problem with any of it. I live in a country where the most admired men are and were proponents of a police state that caters to and carries out the agenda of the elite top few percent of all households, as it's top priority. Mix in the religious element that is intertwined in the support of all of this dysfunction, and I'm looking for a new home address in....say....Costa Rica?

Jon, your last post is touching and thought provoking. I cannot presume to know how your "journey" resulting in you living in the US, beginnning 17 years ago, has shaped your thinking about politics and wealth inequity. If you grew up in an eastern bloc or a Soviet state, I cannot anticipate how or why you come by your opinion of Reagan and his accomplishments. Here are some influences on my thinking:

This is an interview with the son of the first director of the US Defense intelligence agency: 

Gen. Joseph F. Carroll Dies at 80; Led Defense Intelligence Agency

American Exceptionalism Meets Team Jesus - Tom Engelhardt ...

....Unbuilding the Pentagon

...TD: And isn't the all-volunteer Army itself becoming a part-mercenary army, because they're having to pay and pay and pay to lure in reluctant recruits? My question is: Do you see a way to begin to unbuild the Pentagon? Are we stuck with the Department of Homeland Security forever?

Carroll: If any nation was ever stuck with an all-powerful, untouchable military establishment, it was the Soviet Union. By 1987, 1988, the only institution in Soviet society that was working, the only one that was funded, was the military; and it was the most reactionary wing of society.

If the Russians could get out from under that, there's no reason in the world why we can't get out from under our version of the same. But it takes a Gorbachev. Who knows when such a figure will come here?

Two things happened that enabled [General Secretary of the Communist Party Mikhail] Gorbachev to defeat his own military and dismantle the Soviet system. One was the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, a massive, horrendous public mistake – and the mistake wasn't just the nuclear meltdown, but the way in which the militarized establishment dealt with it. They sent hundreds of people in to shut down a poisoned reactor, saying there was no threat to their health. They were mostly all poisoned. Dead very quickly. And then the militarized establishment told the people of Ukraine and the eastern Soviet territories that there was no radioactive threat to them, and hundreds of people later came down with serious illnesses and cancers. That happened in 1986, within months of Gorbachev's coming to power. It prepared the people for a different kind of power.

And then there was that second, wonderful incident, forgotten today. An absolute fluke, pure serendipity. These things happen in life. A young German kid named Mathias Rust flew a piper cub plane from Germany to Moscow and landed in Red Square, untouched. He had demonstrated in the most graphic way possible that the best-funded, most vaunted system in the Soviet Empire, the anti-aircraft defense system, a supposedly unbreachable set of defenses, could be totally fooled by a prankster. It was madness.

Anybody else would have executed that kid! But Gorbachev had him sent right home to Germany. Then he fired his entire military establishment – army and air ministers, a hundred generals – his reactionary nemesis. Rust's flight was such an embarrassment that he could do it...."

Please consider, Jon that this article came from "inside" the US military establisment:

Strategic Insights -- Did Reagan Win the Cold War?

Strategic Insights, Volume III, Issue 8 (August 2004)

by Jeffrey W. Knopf

Strategic Insights is a monthly electronic journal produced by the Center for Contemporary Conflict at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The views expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of NPS, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

.....The achievement of both objectives is what made the end of the Cold War such a cause for celebration. It is important to assess the Reagan legacy in relation to both these aspects of the end of the Cold War.

Reagan's admirers do not claim that he alone was responsible for winning the Cold War, but they do tend to see his policy of "peace through strength" as the single most critical factor and his personal leadership as indispensable. Critics of this perspective often argue that Reagan made little difference because communism's internal weaknesses had become so pronounced that the Soviet Union would have collapsed no matter what. In this account, George Kennan's original vision of containment had come true, and Reagan was simply the lucky beneficiary of long-term trends that led the Soviet Union to implode.[1] Some analysts even believe Reagan's hard-line policies were counterproductive because they made it harder for Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to pursue his reform agenda.[2] My own conclusion is that Reagan was neither decisive nor irrelevant. Reagan contributed positively to the end of the Cold War, but his role was just one of several essential factors and his positive contributions were not always the result of taking a hard-line stance.

To support this conclusion, the following analysis proceeds in three steps....."

...and here, Jon, is support for the idea that the fall of the Soviet Union was largely due to pre-Reagan era social "stresses"....this reporting is of events that happened afer a new Pope was appointed and Carter was still US president:

Poland's Angry Workers

Monday, Sep. 01, 1980.....

Nicholas, would it be possible for you to see that your views....the "antidote" for the "evils" of socialism, are worse than the "disease"?

 In the height of the depression, in 1934, Upton Sinclair won the democratic gubernatorial primary in California....this is what happened next..... the elite financed and directed destruction of the left in the US.....Sinclair's win in that primary turned out to be the "high water mark" of the left oriented political activism in the US...

The Powers That Be - Google Books Result

by David Halberstam - 2000 - History - 792 pages
Sinclair was then running for governor in a passionate and heated ... But that was the way Kyle Palmer operated, masterminding the Republican cause, ...

The media anf the FBI/CIA went on, in their right wing zeal to orchestrate and carry out;

Operation Mockingbird - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Operation Mockingbird

John K. Singlaub

.....Singlaub now joined forces with Ted Shackley, Ray S. Cline and Richard Helms to get Jimmy Carter removed from the White House. In December, 1979, Singlaub and retired General Daniel Graham headed a delegation from the American Security Council, a private right-wing organization, on a trip to Guatemala. Singlaub pointed out that Ronald Reagan "recognizes that a good deal of dirty work has to be done" in order to destroy communism in Guatemala. "death squad activity in Guatemala increased dramatically following the trip." Upon his return to the United States Singlaub called for "sympathetic understanding of the death squads" (The Iran Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era)....."

Robert E. Wood

.....In a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, Charles A. Lindbergh claimed that the "three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration". Soon afterwards Gerald Nye argued "that the Jewish people are a large factor in our movement toward war." These speeches resulted in some people claiming that the America First Committee was anti-Semitic.

The America First Committee influenced public opinion through publications and speeches and within a year had 450 local chapters and over 800,000 members. The AFC was dissolved four days after the Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbor on 7th December, 1941.

In 1954 Wood established the right-wing Manion Forum. The following year he joined forces with Robert R. McCormick, the owner of the Chicago Tribune, to establish American Security Council (ASC). Wood and McCormick started the ASC because they believed that the United States had lost the Korean War because of communist infiltrators. Early members included Douglas MacArthur, Sam Rayburn, Ray S. Cline, Thomas J. Dodd, W. Averell Harriman, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Eugene V. Rostow, John G. Tower, John K. Singlaub, Lawrence P. McDonald and Patrick J. Frawley.

The ASC was behind the establishment of the Mid-America Research Library (MARL). The objective of this organization was to compile files on suspected communists who might apply for jobs in the private sector. This blacklist, that included 6 million names, was provided to 3,500 companies. ASC/MARL worked very closely with the FBI and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

The ASC target those individuals who advocate disarmament and lower defence spending as it believes these people are victims of left-wing disinformation or are in the pay of communist states. In the 1950s the Soviet Union posed the main threat to capitalism. Therefore ASC members argued that it was important for the United States to achieve military superiority so that the Soviet Union would not dare launch a military attack.

The American Security Council was extremely powerful during the McCarthyism period in the United States. However, in the 1960s there was a decline in interest in the ASC as ideas about detente and disarmament became popular."

Nicholas, it has cost the elite a ton of money to shape the thinking/mindest you exhibit in your posts, and the consequences of this thinking have bankrupted us and our grandchildren. I just listened to a shill on CNN praise the bailout bill because a result of it would be to "free up" credit, to make things like student loans available. In France, student loans are not needed, because univeristy tuition is not charged. Why, Nicholas, is the right wing dominance of the last  60 years in the US brought us to the point where the dollar is a shattered currency, the national debt has doubled since 2001, 50 million have no health insurance, and exports and foreign visits have not increased appreciably because of cheap dollars, as they were oredicted to? Wjy the condemnation of the left, Nicholas? Who enjoys model, government provided healthcare, low poverty, and unemployment comparable to the rate in the US....a strong currency, lower deficits, a higher reninvestment rate than in the US, worker protections, 5 weeks paid vacation, early retirement and generous pensions, envious levels of foreign visitors and exports vs. imports, and with a strong currency that should discourage these results, Nicholas?

Which country is about to be fleeced by a huge taxpayer borrowiing to shore up the bond holdings of the elite, and which voters have nothing to show for their midguided voting of the past 60 years, and which ones have a sustainable, popular system with good medical care, tuition, etc...... It ain't the US, Nicholas, it is the filthy leftists in France who now prove your entire political belief system to be irrational !

What is with you, Nicholas, are your fearful the French, by their leftist oriented votes, could end up as "have nots", as so many Americans are now ending up?

Can you see why I posted that I am afraid of you? People views sympathetic to yours are clearly irrational, but in control of the apparatus of state, the legal means of political oppression in the US, and, as Reagan....are not afraid to use it to silence people who make rational arguments,.,,,like, me...

Nicholas posted: >Jon ~ Your post has been hijcked by Marxists and socialists. You have a great mind Jon, and I enjoy your posts, and most of the people who comment are rational anf thoughtful people. But the liberal mindset has taken people over the edge. You can't rationalize with people who are afraid to post a blog for fear of the thought police? And how about the bigot police. Anything contrary to anything resembling the liberal message is thought to be hate speech now. I am afraid if Obama gets elected, even churches and synagogues will have to watch what they say because of the thought police. It is coming, sooner than later.<

Wall Street Journal

• MARCH 10, 2008

NSA's Domestic Spying Grows
As Agency Sweeps Up Data

Terror Fight Blurs
Line Over Domain;
Tracking Email

....Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency's mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected....

On Friday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a letter warning colleagues to look more deeply into how telecommunications data are being accessed, citing an allegation by the head of a New York-based computer security firm that a wireless carrier that hired him was giving unfettered access to data to an entity called "Quantico Circuit." Quantico is a Marine base that houses the FBI Academy; senior FBI official Anthony DiClemente said the bureau "does not have 'unfettered access' to any communication provider's network......."

Permalink

September 23rd, 2008

Internal DHS Documents Detail Expansion of Power to Read and Copy Travelers' Papers

Quiet Changes in Policy Allow For Searches Without Suspicion of Wrongdoing

San Francisco - Recently obtained documents show that last year the Department of Homeland Security quietly reversed a two-decades-old policy that restricted customs agents from reading and copying the personal papers carried by travelers, including U.S. citizens. The documents were made public today by the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain policies governing the searches and questioning of travelers at the nation’s borders.

The documents show that in 2007, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) loosened restrictions on the examination of travelers' documents and papers that had existed since 1986. While CBP agents could previously read travelers' documents only if they had "reasonable suspicion" that the documents would reveal violations of agency rules, in 2007 officers were given the power to "review and analyze" papers without any individualized suspicion. Furthermore, whereas CBP agents could previously copy materials only where they had "probable cause" to believe a law had been violated, in 2007 they were empowered to copy travelers' papers without suspicion of wrongdoing and keep them for a "reasonable period of time" to conduct a border search. The new rules applied to physical documents as well as files on laptop computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.

In July 2008, the Department of Homeland Security made public a new policy on examining travelers' papers and electronic devices that finalized many of the changes first implemented in 2007. The agency did not disclose,....

Permalink

September 18th, 2008

EFF Sues NSA, President Bush, and Vice President Cheney to Stop Illegal Surveillance

New Legal Challenge to Unconstitutional Domestic Spying

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance.

The lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.

That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit filed by EFF in 2006 to stop the telecom giant's participation in the illegal surveillance program. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law attempting to derail that case by unconstitutionally granting immunity to AT&T and other companies that took part in the dragnet. Hepting v. AT&T is now stalled in federal court while EFF argues with the government over whether the immunity is constitutional and applies in that case -- litigation that is likely to continue well into 2009.....

Again, Nicholas....your "cure", right wing politcal orientation is worse than the "disease". Right leaning voter domination of the politics in the US and UK have turned both into debt ridden police states, while left leaning voters and politics in France, result in true gains and higher quality of life for the folks residing there.

Nicholas, how do you trust this man....or take him at his word, after this pathetic history:

President's Radio Address

July 28, 2007

......To stop them, our military, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals need the best possible information about who the terrorists are, where they are, and what they are planning.

One of the most important ways we can gather that information is by monitoring terrorist communications. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- also known as FISA -- provides a critical legal foundation that allows our intelligence community to collect this information while protecting the civil liberties of Americans. But this important law was written in 1978, and it addressed the technologies of that era. This law is badly out of date -- and Congress must act to modernize it.        Today we face sophisticated terrorists who use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate with each other, recruit operatives, and plan attacks on our country. Technologies like these were not available when FISA was passed nearly 30 years ago, and FISA has not kept up with new technological developments. As a result, our Nation is hampered in its ability to gain the vital intelligence we need to keep the American people safe. In his testimony to Congress in May, Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, put it this way: We are "significantly burdened in capturing overseas communications of foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside the United States." To fix this problem, my Administration has proposed a bill that would modernize the FISA statute. This legislation is the product of months of discussion with members of both parties in the House and the Senate -- and it includes four key reforms: First, it brings FISA up to date with the changes in communications technology that have taken place over the past three decades. ..... "

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...pt_072407.html
U.S. Senate Judiciary Commmittee Hearing on Oversight of the Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez Testifies

JULY 24, 2007

....GONZALES: ....In my brief remarks this morning, I want to focus on the department's number one priority, keeping our country safe from terrorists and the urgent need, quite frankly, for more help from Congress in this fight.

As the recent National Intelligence Estimate has -- as well as the attempted car bombings in London and Scotland demonstrate, the threat posed to America and its allies by Al Qaida and other terrorist groups remains very strong.

To respond effectively to this threat, it is imperative that Congress modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, known as FISA. Doing so is critically important to intelligence gathering, and it really just makes plain sense.

When Congress drafted FISA in 1978, it defined the statute's key provisions in terms of telecommunications technologies that existed at that time. As we all know, there have been sweeping changes in the way that we communicate since FISA became law and these changes have had unintended consequences on FISA's operation.

For example, without any change in FISA, technological advancements have actually made it more difficult to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and other subjects of foreign intelligence surveillance overseas.

In April, at the request of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the director of national intelligence transmitted a comprehensive FISA modernization proposal to Congress. The proposal builds upon thoughtful (ph) bills introduced during the last Congress, and the bill would accomplish several key objectives. Most importantly, the administration's proposal restores FISA's original focus on protecting the privacy of U.S. persons in the United States."

Nicholas, here is what he told us one year earlier, in 2006:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060907-2.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 7, 2006

President Bush Discusses Progress in the Global War on Terror
Cobb Galleria Centre
Atlanta, Georgia

......Last year, details of the Terrorist Surveillance Program were leaked to the news media, and the program was then challenged in court. That challenge was recently upheld by a federal district judge in Michigan. My administration strongly disagrees with the ruling. We are appealing it, and we believe our appeal will be successful. Yet a series of protracted legal challenges would put a heavy burden on this critical and vital program. The surest way to keep the program is to get explicit approval from the United States Congress. <b>So today I'm calling on the Congress to promptly pass legislation providing additional authority for the Terrorist Surveillance Program, along with broader reforms in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (Applause.)

When FISA was passed in 1978, there was no widely accessible Internet, and almost all calls were made on fixed landlines. Since then, the nature of communications has changed, quite dramatically. The terrorists who want to harm America can now buy disposable cell phones, and open anonymous e-mail addresses. Our laws need to change to take these changes into account.......

Nicholas, ten months before Bush made that 2006 statement, his Atty General, Gonzalez said:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0051219-1.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
December 19, 2005

Press Briefing by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and General Michael Hayden, Principal Deputy Director for National Intelligence
James S. Brady Briefing Room
......Q General, can you tell us why you don't choose to go to the FISA court?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, we continue to go to the FISA court and obtain orders. It is a very important tool that we continue to utilize. Our position is that we are not legally required to do, in this particular case, because the law requires that we -- FISA requires that we get a court order, unless authorized by a statute, and we believe that authorization has occurred.

The operators out at NSA tell me that we don't have the speed and the agility that we need, in all circumstances, to deal with this new kind of enemy. You have to remember that FISA was passed by the Congress in 1978. There have been tremendous advances in technology -- ......"

But the problem, Nicholas......were these statements, made way back in Oct., 2001:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0011026-5.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
October 26, 2001

Multi-front Operation, 2001 Video & Timeline President Signs Anti-Terrorism Bill
Remarks by the President at Signing of the Patriot Act, Anti-Terrorism Legislation
The East Room

... The changes, effective today, will help counter a threat like no other our nation has ever faced. We've seen the enemy, and the murder of thousands of innocent, unsuspecting people. They recognize no barrier of morality. They have no conscience. The terrorists cannot be reasoned with. Witness the recent anthrax attacks through our Postal Service.

Our country is grateful for the courage the Postal Service has shown during these difficult times. We mourn the loss of the lives of Thomas Morris and Joseph Curseen; postal workers who died in the line of duty. And our prayers go to their loved ones.

I want to assure postal workers that our government is testing more than 200 postal facilities along the entire Eastern corridor that may have been impacted. And we will move quickly to treat and protect workers where positive exposures are found.

But one thing is for certain: These terrorists must be pursued, they must be defeated, and they must be brought to justice. (Applause.) And that is the purpose of this legislation. Since the 11th of September, the men and women of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been relentless in their response to new and sudden challenges.

We have seen the horrors terrorists can inflict. We may never know what horrors our country was spared by the diligent and determined work of our police forces, the FBI, ATF agents, federal marshals, Custom officers, Secret Service, intelligence professionals and local law enforcement officials, under the most trying conditions. They are serving this country with excellence, and often with bravery.

They deserve our full support and every means of help that we can provide. We're dealing with terrorists who operate by highly sophisticated methods and technologies, some of which were not even available when our existing laws were written. The bill before me takes account of the new realities and dangers posed by modern terrorists. It will help law enforcement to identify, to dismantle, to disrupt, and to punish terrorists before they strike.

For example, this legislation gives law enforcement officials better tools to put an end to financial counterfeiting, smuggling and money-laundering. Secondly, it gives intelligence operations and criminal operations the chance to operate not on separate tracks, but to share vital information so necessary to disrupt a terrorist attack before it occurs.

As of today, we're changing the laws governing information-sharing. And as importantly, we're changing the culture of our various agencies that fight terrorism. Countering and investigating terrorist activity is the number one priority for both law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Surveillance of communications is another essential tool to pursue and stop terrorists. The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law that I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet, and cell phones.

As of today, we'll be able to better meet the technological challenges posed by this proliferation of communications technology. Investigations are often slowed by limit on the reach of federal search warrants.

Law enforcement agencies have to get a new warrant for each new district they investigate, even when they're after the same suspect. Under this new law, warrants are valid across all districts and across all states. ......

....... It is now my honor to sign into law the USA Patriot Act of 2001. (Applause.)

(The bill is signed.) (Applause.)

END 10:57 A.M. EDT"

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20011027.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
October 27, 2001

Radio Address of the President to the Nation

.....The bill I signed yesterday gives intelligence and law enforcement officials additional tools they need to hunt and capture and punish terrorists. Our enemies operate by highly sophisticated methods and technologies, using the latest means of communication and the new weapon of bioterrorism.

When earlier laws were written, some of these methods did not even exist. The new law recognizes the realities and dangers posed by the modern terrorist.  It will help us to prosecute terrorist organizations -- and also to detect them before they strike....

..... Intelligence operations and criminal investigations have often had to operate on separate tracks. The new law will make it easier for all agencies to share vital information about terrorist activity.

Surveillance of communications is another essential method of law enforcement. But for a long time, we have been working under laws written in the era of rotary telephones.  Under the new law, officials may conduct court-ordered surveillance of all modern forms of communication used by terrorists.

In recent years, some investigations have been hindered by limits on the reach of federal search warrants. Officials had to get a new warrant for each new district and investigation covered, even when involving the same suspect. As of now, warrants are valid across districts and across state lines.......

...... These measures were enacted with broad support in both parties. They reflect a firm resolve to uphold and respect the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, while dealing swiftly and severely with terrorists.

Now comes the duty of carrying them out. And I can assure all Americans that these important new statutes will be enforced to the full.

Thank you for listening."

http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2006...t-he-says.html

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

What Bush Said Then vs. What He Says Now

In his weekly radio address on October 27, 2001 (a full six weeks after Congress passed the AUMF), President Bush told the nation the following:

The bill I signed yesterday [the Patriot Act]
gives intelligence and law enforcement officials
additional tools they need to hunt and capture
and punish terrorists. Our enemies operate by
highly sophisticated methods and technologies,
using the latest means of communication and
the new weapon of bioterrorism. When earlier
laws were written [FISA], some of these
methods did not even exist. The new law
[which amends FISA] recognizes the
realities and dangers posed by the
modern terrorist. It will help us to
prosecute terrorist organizations--and also
to detect them before they strike. . . .

Surveillance of communications is another
essential method of law enforcement. But for a
long time, we have been working under laws
[FISA] written in the era of rotary telephones.
Under the new law [which amends FISA],
officials may conduct court-ordered
surveillance of all modern forms of
communication used by terrorists. . . .

These measures were enacted with broad
support in both parties. They reflect a firm
resolve to uphold and respect the civil
liberties guaranteed by the Constitution,
while dealing swiftly and severely with
terrorists.

Now comes the duty of carrying them out.
And I can assure all Americans that
these important new statutes will be
enforced to the full. Thank you for
listening.

Within months after making this assurance to the American people, President Bush authorized the NSA to ignore the requirements of the law he had just signed and which he assured the American people would be "enforced to the full." Now that he's been caught, what is his stated reason for disregarding the law? He tells us the law was too "old" and "outdated" and not designed to deal with the realities and dangers posed by the modern terrorist.

And for some reason which I cannot begin to fathom, the press simply ignores all of his previous statements to the contrary."

Nicholas, when I read the sentiments expressed in your posts, and I consider the evidence on display on this blog entry, and I compare what the French "every man" voted for himself and his family, compared to what the Elite in the US persuaded you to oppose, your right wing memes seem much worse than the "disease" of the "liberal left".....your rhetoric is scary, and it is bankrupt, like so many US finanical firms, and I can't even tell if you're pointing a gun at me....but I am not the one who should be making you angry, Nicholas...you should be asking why you've closed your eyes to all of your upside down frame of political reference....the Wall Street CEO's still have their 2nd homes in the Hamptons or on the shores of Jupiter Island....but what do you and your grandchildren have for following their political POV in lockstep, besides an "iffy" business, and a boatload of public debt, with $700 billion more, "comin' right up" !!!