Greetings, fellow Freedom Fighters™ and Defenders of Democracy™! While we of The Scallion are still officially on hiatus, we are within a few weeks of returning to our usual weekly schedule of satire and speaking the truth to power. Until then, we shall continue to speak out whenever we reach boiling point on all the corruption, graft, and injustice being wreaked at home and abroad by chimposter and the neoCONs in our government and corporations.

This issue features news to use and political letters from Scallion staffers. Don’t miss a word!

Keep the faith; keep fighting; and let’s continue to work together to put these criminals where they belong: IN JAIL!

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What is a progressive?

A progressive believes that people matter more than money.

A progressive believes that those who create the wealth should enjoy their fair share of that wealth, including the ability to educate their children and advance themselves.

A progressive believes in democratic government that works for the best interests of all the people, not just the wealthy and the corporations.

A progressive believes that cooperation is more beneficial than war: when everyone does well, everyone does well.

A progressive believes in the sanctity of individual choice and the environment.

A progressive believes that only with justice will there be lasting peace.

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We of The Scallion will never give up trying to IMPEACH BUSH NOW!!!!!

George W. Bush has committed the most serious crime possible against our democracy: he lied to Congress and the American people to frighten us into invading Iraq. Bush’s cowardly and abhorrent behavior has short-circuited the democratic process and cost lives and limbs of our military service-people, who are fighting a nonexistent threat. Given the human cost at home and abroad and the enormous debt America now faces, Bush MUST be impeached for committing this fraud.

On December 17, 2005, Bush admitted repeatedly authorizing wire taps without obtaining a warrant. Thousands of calls were monitored and the information obtained widely circulated among Federal agencies. These warrantless wiretaps violate FISA, which requires court approval for national security wire taps. Violation of the FISA is a felony. Recent revelations regarding the warrantless monitoring of millions of emails and phone calls by the NSA under Bush’s authorization are further violations of FISA and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Bush MUST be impeached for committing these felonies.

Bush must also be investigated for his insistence on systematic torture and abuse of detainees. Violating his oath of office, the Geneva Convention, and the War Crimes Act are impeachable offenses.

Upon taking office, George W. Bush took an oath, swearing to execute America’s laws faithfully, yet he flouted that oath for over 700 American laws via signing statements saying that our laws do not apply to him! Bush has been guilty of such gross incompetence and reckless indifference to the nation’s welfare that Americans doubt he ever took his oath of office seriously or is capable of doing so. Congress MUST impeach George W. Bush and his entire administration.

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The NSA's Political Fiction
by Annalee Newitz, AlterNet. Posted May 22, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/36550/

Here's what disturbs me: in light of recent revelations that the National Security Agency has been illegally collecting vast databases of information about every single phone call made in the United States since late 2001, only 53 percent of US citizens polled by Newsweek think the government has gone too far in its efforts to stop terrorism.

That's a majority, but not a very large one. And in the same poll, 41 percent said they thought spying on phone calls made to and from everyone in the country was necessary.

This arouses the same sinking feeling I got many years ago when I was a young graduate student at UC Berkeley, grading my very first set of papers. From that sample, and many others in subsequent courses, I learned that 70 percent of college students in an upper-division English course at a top university cannot construct a coherent argument using evidence taken from books they've read.

That's what convinced me that most people, even highly educated ones, go through their lives without ever examining the way rhetoric works, and the way evidence is used (or abused) in its service. These people weren't stupid by any stretch of the imagination. They simply didn't understand how narrative persuasion works, in the same way that many people who are smart nevertheless don't understand how their car works.

And just as technical naïveté makes you vulnerable when your car breaks down on a deserted road, so too does narrative ignorance when your nation is breaking down right before your eyes. That such a paltry majority is convinced the government has gone too far with surveillance is a perfect example of this. The Bush administration has cited no evidence to justify snooping on innocent people's telephone calls. In fact, government analysts have admitted that the reason they didn't know about the impending Sept. 11 attacks had to do with poor foreign intelligence.

You can't remedy poor foreign intel with domestic spying on the telephone network. Nor do you strengthen your nation's cohesiveness by allowing the government to break the law, gathering private information from corporations like AT&T, Verizon, and Bell South without any court oversight, without any warrants.

Certainly the government can and will argue that certain interpretations of the USA-PATRIOT Act allow the NSA to snoop on my telephone calls in the name of national security. But where is the proof that it's necessary to log my telephone calls? When my fundamental right to speak privately is violated in such an extreme manner, along with the rights of all my fellow US citizens, we deserve some hard facts to back up the claim that this unambiguously totalitarian strategy is for our own good.

Instead of evidence, however, we're given incoherent emotional appeals. We're told that the danger from terrorism is so great that the government should be allowed to do anything it likes -- including emulating the blanket surveillance strategies of the now-defunct USSR. We're told that civil liberties groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation can't sue AT&T for handing over personal information to the government without a warrant because examining the evidence in a court of law would violate national security and endanger us all.

But appeals to fear are not counter-evidence. They do not bolster a logical argument. They simply add punch to what is nothing more than a fictional narrative about how monitoring electronic communications will somehow magically stop terrorism.

Cyberpunk author William Gibson has said that this disastrous episode in our nation's history is about our struggle to deal with the scope of new technologies. Our vast telecommunications network, including cable, phones, and the Internet, has made it easier than ever for telecom companies to expose our private lives to authority figures with the power to punish us severely -- even kill us. What the NSA has done, Gibson argues, is the result of evolved but unregulated computer storage and search capacities that make it possible to record, search, and maintain archives of the whole nation's telephone calls.

Certainly technical evolution has made it easier for the government to place us under surveillance without revealing it -- and without any oversight by the judicial system. But it's not technology that's stoppering the country's outrage. That's a problem as old as recorded communication itself. Most people cannot take apart a piece of rhetoric and tell you whether its component parts are facts and evidence or merely seductive fiction.

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who invented the first argument with interchangeable parts.

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Do you care about upholding the Constitution? Do you value your Fourth Amendment rights? We of The Scallion do. Too bad General Hayden, who has been confirmed to head the CIA despite letters like ours to our elected and selected officials, does NOT.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Look familiar? Yes, this is the text of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of United States--the law of the land. How suspicious is it, then, that, during a challenge to the illegal domestic spying he oversaw for George W. Bush, General Michael V. Hayden denied that “probable cause” appeared at all within the Fourth Amendment to regulate search and seizure? Hayden continued, “Believe me, if there is any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth.”

All of America now knows that the NSA has in fact been monitoring virtually every domestic phone call in the U.S.--even spying on reporters. In doing so, the NSA has gone out of its way to escape the scrutiny of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, which the Bush administration has publicly declared it would flagrantly disregard. Now Bush is pushing General Hayden to take over the already demoralized CIA as well.

Even Republican leaders have admitted this warrantless spying program is “clearly and categorically wrong.”

It is even worse to allow a military takeover of our civilian intelligence agency.

If the Republican Congress cares to maintain any illusion whatsoever of serving the American people, it will oppose Hayden’s appointment to oversee the CIA.