Matt Lauer Might Be Brain-Dead

Well, Matt just raised the bar on stupidity (or would it be considered lowering...) - I will now refer to idiots as Matt Lauers.

But seriously...people wake up in the morning, and they're expected to begin their days with this clueless tool?

He's lucky his head doesn't detach from his neck at night.

Sadly...he's not the first moron to do so.

Maybe he should interview Sarah "Flintstones" Palin...then we can all watch as the interview degenerates into Phil Gramm-style soft pornage. Here's a Mother Jones article on Phil "Whiners" Gramm.

R.F.K. Jr. - you should've said that, "My dad says Thane Eugene Cesar killed me, not the Manchurian Candidate Sirhan Bishara Sirhan".

Really...why, if the officers present were NOT involved in the cover-up of the assassination, would they concern themselves with restraining Jamie Scott Enyart, the PHOTOGRAPHER, rather than Sirhan, the "supposed" shooter, or Cesar, the individual who admitted to pulling his .38, the caliber of bullet which murdered the former senator and aspirant for the office of the President Of The United States?

It's pretty bloody clear to me.

Our Quisling Senators

Alabama Sessions (R) No; Shelby (R) No.

Alaska Murkowski (R) Yes; Stevens (R) Yes.

Arizona Kyl (R) Yes; McCain (R) Yes.

Arkansas Lincoln (D) Yes; Pryor (D) Yes.

California Boxer (D) Yes; Feinstein (D) Yes.

Colorado Allard (R) No; Salazar (D) Yes.

Connecticut Dodd (D) Yes; Lieberman (I) Yes.

Delaware Biden (D) Yes; Carper (D) Yes.

Florida Martinez (R) Yes; Nelson (D) No.

Georgia Chambliss (R) Yes; Isakson (R) Yes.

Hawaii Akaka (D) Yes; Inouye (D) Yes.

Idaho Craig (R) Yes; Crapo (R) No.

Illinois Durbin (D) Yes; Obama (D) Yes.

Indiana Bayh (D) Yes; Lugar (R) Yes.

Iowa Grassley (R) Yes; Harkin (D) Yes.

Kansas Brownback (R) No; Roberts (R) No.

Kentucky Bunning (R) No; McConnell (R) Yes.

Louisiana Landrieu (D) No; Vitter (R) No.

Maine Collins (R) Yes; Snowe (R) Yes.

Maryland Cardin (D) Yes; Mikulski (D) Yes.

Massachusetts Kennedy (D) Not Voting; Kerry (D) Yes.

Michigan Levin (D) Yes; Stabenow (D) No.

Minnesota Coleman (R) Yes; Klobuchar (D) Yes.

Mississippi Cochran (R) No; Wicker (R) No.

Missouri Bond (R) Yes; McCaskill (D) Yes.

Montana Baucus (D) Yes; Tester (D) No.

Nebraska Hagel (R) Yes; Nelson (D) Yes.

Nevada Ensign (R) Yes; Reid (D) Yes.

New Hampshire Gregg (R) Yes; Sununu (R) Yes.

New Jersey Lautenberg (D) Yes; Menendez (D) Yes.

New Mexico Bingaman (D) Yes; Domenici (R) Yes.

New York Clinton (D) Yes; Schumer (D) Yes.

North Carolina Burr (R) Yes; Dole (R) No.

North Dakota Conrad (D) Yes; Dorgan (D) No.

Ohio Brown (D) Yes; Voinovich (R) Yes.

Oklahoma Coburn (R) Yes; Inhofe (R) No.

Oregon Smith (R) Yes; Wyden (D) No.

Pennsylvania Casey (D) Yes; Specter (R) Yes.

Rhode Island Reed (D) Yes; Whitehouse (D) Yes.

South Carolina DeMint (R) No; Graham (R) Yes.

South Dakota Johnson (D) No; Thune (R) Yes.

Tennessee Alexander (R) Yes; Corker (R) Yes.

Texas Cornyn (R) Yes; Hutchison (R) Yes.

Utah Bennett (R) Yes; Hatch (R) Yes.

Vermont Leahy (D) Yes; Sanders (I) No.

Virginia Warner (R) Yes; Webb (D) Yes.

Washington Cantwell (D) No; Murray (D) Yes.

West Virginia Byrd (D) Yes; Rockefeller (D) Yes.

Wisconsin Feingold (D) No; Kohl (D) Yes.

Wyoming Barrasso (R) No; Enzi (R) No.

I guess we can look forward to seeing 74 new Senators come Election Day.

April Gallup: NO AIRLINER DEBRIS AT THE PENTAGON

Someone Sticks Up A Bank They Get A Jail Sentence!

911 Booger - Are There Really People This Stupid?

I'll admit to a failing of mine...I love exposing nitwits, tools and schmendricks. One such individual is the empty head behind 911 Booger.

He has a posting up titled "Pouty 9/11 Truthers Get Upset When Reminded to Increase Medications". More telling, though, are the comments to said posting.

I must take issue with the logic offered in this statement: "He refers to what most sane individuals have accepted as the truth as "a crazy conspiracy theory about a world-wide conspiracy of radical Arabs and incompetent pilots". he then proffers that a blogger called The Existentialist Cowboy should take pharmaceuticals, and all will be well.

So...sane people are the ones ingesting mind-bending pharmaceuticals, right?

Just walk around in a chemically-induced haze, and all will be right with the world, yes?

I am an advocate of RESPONSIBLE USAGE; if you can pay for it without having to resort to crime, and you can handle it, and you don't turn into a massive asshole, you should feel free. This is the United States of America, is it not? You know, that whole bit about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

I do wish to make this point - I hate bloody pharmaceutical drugs.

I actually had a panic attack going to the loo...is that something I should just get used to?

Bugger off with that bunch of nonsense...and as far as "conspiracy theories" go, the biggest one I've heard is that 19 stinky ragheads in a cave circumvented our air defenses, and were able to bring down three buildings, one amazingly without an airplane impact, and strike the nerve center of our defense with a commercial plane!

That's what I would term a drug-induced haze.

I Was Going To Steal That Graphic...

...but I can't do the posting any more justice than has been done...so without further ado, I present to you, from Democratic Underground...The World According to Sarah "Flintstones" Palin!

And don't forget to peruse their prized weekly feature, The Top 10 Conservative Idiots - and please read the preceding offerings, as well - truly some gems in there!

In other news...the S. 1959: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 still presents a danger to WE THE PEOPLE - please keep yourselves apprised of the progress/non-progress of this advent into martial law.

The Senate is working feverishly to obfuscate the truth about the $700 billion dollar ripoff of the American public. Read one man's perspective on this.

Call your senator and tell them that a YES for this "bailout" will be a YES vote for their removal from public office. Call 1-800-828-0498 and make your voice heard.

Interview Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin!

Here's a bit of fun - you can pre-interview the lovely Sarah Palin!

SEVENTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HELP NEEDED - A CALL TO ARMS

16th Amendment - The Sixteenth Amendment Bill Benson Litigation

SEVENTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HELP NEEDED
A CALL TO ARMS

In this historic 16th Amendment litigation, the Government has sued Bill Benson seeking an injunction prohibiting him from "falsely" telling people the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was not ratified and therefore people are not required to file an income tax return. The Government contends it is entitled to an injunction because Benson is promoting an abusive tax shelter, conduct made subject to a penalty per 26 U.S.C. Section 6700. All of the pleadings filed in the case can be found here (quotations around the word falsely added by hANOVER fIST; the only thing being "falsely mentioned" is that the tax burden weighs on WE THE PEOPLE - Bill Benson's research has verified that the fraudulent 16th Amendment was NOT ratified; conversely, the original 13th Amendment was ratified, but was removed in 1860 and replaced with an amendment that places WE THE PEOPLE as slaves to the elected offficials who are OUR representatives).

In 1894 Congress passed an income tax act very similar to the current income tax law. That law was challenged on the basis that a tax on income is a direct tax, the United States Constitution requires direct taxes to be apportioned, and the act passed by Congress was not apportioned. The United States Supreme Court agreed and held the income tax act was unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmer's Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429, aff. reh., 158 U.S. 601 (1895).

In 1909 President Taft called a special session of Congress. Taft asked Congress to propose a constitutional amendment to overcome the Supreme Court's Pollock decision. Congress proposed the Sixteenth Amendment, which was then sent to the states for ratification by Secretary of State Knox. Certificates of Ratification were sent back to Knox, but the language on the certificates differed from the 16th Amendment language passed by Congress. Knox sent the certificates to the Solicitor of the United States and asked for a legal opinion as to whether the states had ratified the proposed Sixteenth Amendment.

The Solicitor noted the differences between what Congress proposed and the states ratified, and presumed, that because states do not have the authority to alter a proposed Constitutional amendment, that none did. He concluded, therefore, that the differences in language were nothing more than minor clerical errors in the preparation of the Certificates of Ratification. Knox then declared the 16th Amendment had been ratified.

The legislative journals conclusively establish, that despite not having the power to do so, several states intentionally modified the language of the proposed amendment. The presumption relied upon by the Solicitor was wrong! Benson discovered other discrepancies too. He wrote and published a book on what he discovered, The Law That Never Was, available on his web site at www.TheLawThatNeverWas.com. Benson contends that less than thirty-six states actually ratified the proposed Sixteenth Amendment.

In the absence of the 16th Amendment, the current income tax is an unapportioned direct tax, and is just as unconstitutional today as it was in 1894. Since 1985 Benson tells everyone who will listen about what he found, and urges people to exercise their First Amendment rights to rectify the situation. Benson's message is gaining acceptance in the marketplace of ideas. The Government now seeks to silence him.

Many people ask why, if the 16th Amendment created no new taxing power, as stated by the Supreme Court in Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916), it is necessary to litigate whether the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified? The Supreme Court ruled in Pollock that the income tax enacted by Congress in 1894 was a direct tax, the act passed by congress wasn't apportioned, and therefore the tax was unconstitutional. The decision wasn't unanimous. The court was split five to four. Those in the minority believed a tax on income was not a direct tax, but an indirect, excise tax. One of the dissenters was associate justice White. Notwithstanding the decision was split five to four, the result was that the constitutional requirement that direct taxes be apportioned was upheld. To overcome the holding of Pollock, Congress proposed the 16th Amendment. It was allegedly ratified in 1913.

Subsequent to the alleged ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court does not agree on exactly what the 16th Amendment did:

* According to the Supreme Court in Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U.S. 189 (1920), the Sixteenth Amendment removed the requirement of apportionment for the direct income tax. That is, direct taxes still had to be apportioned except the direct tax on income.

* According to Brushaber, written by Justice White who by that time had become the chief justice, the 16th Amendment prevented courts from doing what he claimed the Pollock court did--consider the source of the income to take the tax on that income out of the class of excises, to which he claimed it belonged, and placing it in the class of direct taxes. That is, a tax on income, regardless of the source, is an indirect tax; because the tax is not a direct tax, it does not have to be apportioned.

Whether you agree with Brushaber that the tax is an excise tax that doesn't have to be apportioned, or agree with Eisner that the tax is a direct tax that doesn't have to be apportioned, without the 16th Amendment, the law reverts back to Pollock. The serious student will find my book, Judicial Tyranny and Your Income Tax, an in depth study of the history of the income tax, with two chapters devoted to the issue of direct and indirect taxes, and an extensive analysis of the Pollock and Brushaber cases. If you would like a copy, click here.

The issues in Bill Benson's case, however, transcend whether or not the 16th Amendment was ratified. More important is the issue that the government believes it can take a position and punish someone who disagrees with that position, without affording the person any opportunity to prove the government's position is wrong. The government, unable to refute Bill Benson's facts conclusively establishing less than three-fourths of the states voted to ratify the proposed amendment, objected to the facts on the grounds they were irrelevant, immaterial and scandalous. The court agreed, and issued an order that Bill Benson is not to be allowed to defend based upon the truth. If this posture is allowed to stand, every semblance of justice in America will be trashed. It is inconceivable that the Star Chamber becomes again the type of court justice to be utilized to resolve disputes between the people and the government.

Equally disturbing is the position of the federal government that it has the unfettered right to obtain the names and addresses of any person who so much as ordered Benson's material, read it or possesses it. The pleadings, filed by the government, make it perfectly clear the government intends to obtain the names and investigate any person whose name they obtain.

The issue of taxation and the Sixteenth Amendment is a political question. We, as Americans, supposedly have an inalienable right to the free debate of these issues without government interference. We, as Americans, supposedly have the right to require the government to answer our questions. We, as Americans, supposedly have the right to require the government to prove its allegations against us in Court. We, as Americans, supposedly have the right, when charged with a crime, to present a defense.

To counter the government's efforts to destroy our First Amendment rights, three people have intervened in the Benson litigation. They intervened as John Doe I, John Doe II and Jane Roe to protect their names from the government. They are demanding a protective order preventing the government from obtaining their names, as well as, the names of anyone else involved in this important political debate on the Sixteenth Amendment.

If we don't take a stand, together, we lose. It's that simple. The Bill Benson litigation is, perhaps, the single most important litigation in the court today. The issues affect YOU, just as much as they affect Bill Benson.

I am representing Bill Benson and the three interveners for free. They do not have funds to prosecute and defend their rights in this 16th Amendment litigation. I am asking for your donations to keep me in housing and with food and supplies while this litigation is pending.

Whether you agree with Bill Benson or not, this litigation is not about one of us being right or wrong. This litigation is about preserving YOUR freedom. It is about your right to even have an opinion and express it without fear of government retaliation. Our country is in serious distress, as we now have East German like checkpoints at our airports, and wholesale government disrespect of, and contempt for, our Constitution.

Ben Franklin said during another time of intolerable governmental action: "We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Please support this litigation and make a donation to support those who have taken a front line position to defend liberty for all of us. Click here to Make a Donation. Also, please pass along the link to this case to your family and friends.

http://jeffdickstein.com/

SEVENTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HELP NEEDED

A CALL TO ARMS

The Bill Benson case is now before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Bill has filed his Opening Brief, the government has filed its Reply and Brief on Cross-Appeal seeking the names of those in association with Bill. Bill has filed his Response and Reply Brief to the Cross-Appeal. The government has filed its Response to Bill's Reply on the Cross-appeal.

The next step is for the Seventh Circuit to set the case for oral argument. Oral argument will be held at the Federal Courthouse, 219 S. Dearborn Street, Chicago, IL 60604. Oral argument will probably be scheduled three to six months from now.

● The critical issues are that the courts are covering up the fact that it has allowed the constitution to be amended by a presumption of the executive rather than actual ratification by the necessary number of states.

● The courts and the executive are attempting to stop the dissemination of public records showing governmental fraud, thereby thrashing the First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech.

● The courts are taking the position that one accused of making false statements regarding government misconduct cannot present evidence in court that his statements are absolutely true, thereby thrashing the Fifth Amendment right to Due Process and the people's right to defend themselves in court.

This conduct will shock the conscious of every American if only it is brought to their attention.

My Call to Arms is to work together to put as much political pressure on the 7th Cir as is humanly possible. To that end, I request your help to accomplish the following:

✓ Distribute Bill's Response and Reply Brief as widely as possible, sending it to everyone you know and publishing it on the Internet on web sites and blogs

✓ Produce and publish YouTube videos

✓ Disseminate the Response and Reply Brief to as many attorneys and CPA as possible

✓ Disseminate the Response and Reply Brief to as many defense bars and First Amendment Groups as possible

✓ Help organize, and attend, a huge protest outside of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals the day before and the day of the oral argument hearing

✓ Make the date of the hearing before the 7th Circuit known and present the issues to radio stations and newspapers and press releases

✓ Call the television stations and urge them to cover the protest

✓ Set up opinion polls where people text their opinion or call them in to a toll number so we can generate funds

✓ Set up on the Internet a service where for a fee, a letter will be faxed to a person's senators and congressman

✓ E-mail this Call to Arms and Bill's Response and Reply Brief to all of the Ron Paul groups

✓ Help finance a newspaper ad in USA Today a week before the oral argument before the 7th Circuit. Donations may be made on line here

This case represents the best shot we will ever have at ridding ourselves, once and for all, the dreaded federal income tax. It is time to take political action and make our voices heard if we are going to continue to have FREEDOM OF SPEECH and the RIGHT TO DEFEND OURSELVES IN COURTS.

PLEASE HELP.

Yours in Freedom,

JEFFREY A. DICKSTEIN

Let Risk-Taking Financial Institutions Fail (kudos to Travis Kelly)

Let Risk-Taking Financial Institutions Fail

The Administration and Congress have felt compelled to do something about the "financial meltdown," so an inefficient and inequitable "bailout plan" has been rushed through the legislature despite harsh criticism from the right and left. That's unfortunate. Both presidential candidates were stalling by qualifying the plan. Whichever candidate had had the courage to reject outright this proposal would have had the better claim to be President.

Do not be fooled. The $700 billion (ultimately $1 trillion or more) bailout is not predominantly for mortgages and homeowners. Instead, the bailout is for mortgage-backed securities. In fact, some versions of these instruments are imaginary derivatives. These claims overlap on the same types of mortgages. Many financial institutions wrote claims over the same mortgages, and these are the majority of claims that have "gone bad."

Follow the money. Average Joes and Janes are not the holders of the other side of complicated, over-the-counter derivatives contracts. Rather, hedge funds are the main holders. The bailout will involve a transfer of wealth — from the American people to financial institutions engaging in reckless speculation — that will be the greatest in history...

Rescuing financial institutions is not the best solution. Yes, banks are needed to provide capital to businesses. But it is not necessary to spend $1 trillion to maintain liquidity. If the government is to intervene, it should pick and choose which claims to purchase; claims that are directly tied to mortgages would be a good start.

Let financial institutions fail, merge or be bought out. The faltering institutions will see their shares devalued and will be likely to be taken over by stronger institutions — as has already started happening. This consolidation of the financial sector is both efficient and inevitable; government action can only delay the adjustment.

The government should not intervene. It should leave overleveraged financial institutions to default on their derivatives obligations and, if necessary, file for bankruptcy. Much of the crisis has arisen from miscalculating the risks involved in a large book of positions in these derivatives. It is only logical that these institutions pay for their poor management.

Rather than bailing out Wall Street, we propose that the government should buy up the actual mortgages in question and do nothing else. The government should not touch any derivatives; that is, claims that do not directly tie into the actual mortgages. If money becomes too tight, then the Fed can certainly increase its loans to financial institutions.

Let the poorly managed, overly risk-taking financial institutions fail! Always remember that Wall Street and the real economy are not the same thing.

— Ari J. Officer has completed his master of science degree in financial mathematics at Stanford University. Lawrence H. Officer is a professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Who was involved in 9/11? Documentary reveals shocking facts

Who was involved in 9/11? Documentary reveals shocking facts

"Bailout" Update - Round One Goes To WE THE PEOPLE

the bailout...

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/vote-against-bail-out-supporters-in-congress.html


http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/vote-against-bail-out-supporters-in-congress. html
The following members of the House of Representatives voted FOR the Bail-Out and can be held accountable by voting AGAINST them in the November election:

Ackerman
Allen
Andrews
Arcuri
Bachus
Baird
Baldwin
Bean
Berman
Berry
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Blunt
Boehner
Bonner
Bono Mack
Boozman
Boren
Boswell
Boucher
Boyd (FL)
Brady (PA)
Brady (TX)
Brown (SC)
Brown, Corrine
Calvert
Camp (MI)
Campbell (CA)
Cannon
Cantor
Capps
Capuano
Cardoza
Carnahan
Castle
Clarke
Clyburn
Cohen
Cole (OK)
Cooper
Costa
Cramer
Crenshaw
Crowley
Cubin
Davis (AL)
Davis (CA)
Davis (IL)
Davis, Tom
DeGette
DeLauro
Dicks
Dingell
Donnelly
Doyle
Dreier
Edwards (TX)
Ehlers
Ellison
Ellsworth
Emanuel
Emerson
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Everett
Farr
Fattah
Ferguson Fossella
Foster
Frank (MA)
Gilchrest
Gonzalez
Gordon
Granger
Gutierrez
Hall (NY)
Hare
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Herger
Higgins
Hinojosa
Hobson
Holt
Honda
Hooley
Hoyer
Inglis (SC)
Israel
Johnson, E. B.
Kanjorski
Kennedy
Kildee
Kind
King (NY)
Kirk
Klein (FL)
Kline (MN)
LaHood
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Levin
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (KY)
Loebsack
Lofgren, Zoe
Lowey
Lungren, Daniel E.
Mahoney (FL)
Maloney (NY)
Markey
Marshall
Matsui
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum (MN)
McCrery
McDermott
McGovern
McHugh
McKeon
McNerney
McNulty
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Melancon
Miller (NC)
Miller, Gary
Miller, George
Mollohan
Moore (KS)
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Murphy (CT)
Murphy, Patrick
Murtha Nadler
Neal (MA)
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Pallone
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Peterson (PA)
Pickering
Pomeroy
Porter
Price (NC)
Pryce (OH)
Putnam
Radanovich
Rahall
Rangel
Regula
Reyes
Reynolds
Richardson
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Ross
Ruppersberger
Ryan (OH)
Ryan (WI)
Sarbanes
Saxton
Schakowsky
Schwartz
Sessions
Sestak
Shays
Simpson
Sires
Skelton
Slaughter
Smith (TX)
Smith (WA)
Snyder
Souder
Space
Speier
Spratt
Tancredo
Tanner
Tauscher
Towns
Tsongas
Upton
Van Hollen
Velázquez
Walden (OR)
Walsh (NY)
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Weiner
Weldon (FL)
Weller (Did Not Vote)
Wexler
Wilson (NM)
Wilson (OH)
Wilson (SC)
Wolf

Petition:
We, the undersigned people of the United States, hereby pledge to vote AGAINST any incumbent Senator or Member of Congress who supports the proposed federal government bail-out of the financial system.

This is a new website organized by journalist Dave Lindorff: Throw Them All Out.
http://www.throwthemallout.synthasite.com/


Are You Tired of Being Ripped Off By Congress and the White House?
Is this Wall Street Bailout the Last Straw for You?

The public won the first round! We the People bombarded Congress with calls and emails, actually crashing the Capital website and jamming up the phone system, with "No!" opinions outnumbering backers of a bailout by 999:1.

Now we need to make sure they don't come back and pass the same ripoff handout of $700 billion to the Wall Street gang on Thursday!

Don't let up the pressure! Call Congress today. Call them again tomorrow. Demand that they not be scare-mongered by the Bush administration and the House and Senate leadership (of both parties) or by the two presidential candidates into passing a bill that came to them in the form of two and a half pages of notes from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Demand that before any rescue bill is considered there must be full hearings into the cause and nature of the crisis, and into the most appropriate solutions. The public and members of Congress need to hear from other experts besides self-interested Wall Street bankers and their lobbyists.

Let us and Congress hear from the Nobel Laureate economists like Joseph Stiglitz and others who are warning that this bailout proposal won't work, that it attacks the wrong thing, and that there are better, cheaper ways of addressing the nation's economic crisis than just throwing money at Wall Street and shifting the bad debts onto the backs of taxpayers.

No bailout without full hearings! We've seen what Congress produces when it is pressured into passing legislation without hearings: The Patriot Act and the War on Iraq. Both have been disasters and have helped to undermine the Constitution and to destroy this nation. A $700-billion or $1-trillion handout of borrowed money to Wall Street, and an unprecedented handing over of congressional power to the secretary of the treasury will be a similar unconstitutional and nation-wrecking atrocity.

We can do this! The key is telling each of our elected representatives--House and Senate--that if they pass this legislative ripoff without first holding full hearings, and if all they do is bailout Wall Street and hand us the bill, we will vote them out off office, giving their seats to whoever happens to be running against them this year, or whenever they face the voters next. That threat is the only one they understand.

Pennsylvania residents have shown the way. We learned that the the state legislature--Republicans and Democrats--had connived in the middle of the night to give themselves a raise in violation of the state constitution, which said raises could only be given to the next cycle of elected officials, not to those in a current term. They got around this bar to self-dealing by declaring the pay increases "undocumented expense reimbursements."

The citizenry rose up and in a leaderless grassroots campaign, they swept out off office many long-time members of the legislature who had voted for the measure, as well as a judge who backed the action (the state's judges get whatever the legislators get)!

If Pennsylvania voters can do this, so can the rest of America.

If you are fed up with having your money (and your kids' money, and their kids' money!) stolen and handed to the greedy, crooked bankers, insurance executives and auto tycoons who have been destroying jobs and undermining the US economy for years while enriching themselves at our expense, then make a pledge to yourself to vote against any member of your congressional delegation, whatever the party, who votes for this latest colossal $700-billion Wall Street bailout!

Vote for a third party candidate, or vote for the incumbent's challenger (a better option if you really want to oust him or her).

No exceptions! It doesn't matter of your senator or representative has done some good things. Voting for this bailout is a travesty that outweighs any other act.

Next (and this is critical!) send this website address:
www.throwthemallout.synthasite.com
to everyone you know.

And talk to everyone you know and get them to join this viral campaign to clean out the Capitol of the thieves and corporate whores who are wrecking the country.

Massachusetts Proposal Would Repeal Income Tax

Great headline - Massachusetts Proposal Would Repeal Income Tax.

Let's get into it...many of the opponents begin with the usual caveats..."oh, we would have to cut services to the elderly and for the poor...", or, "school funding will be disrupted"...to which I say, not if the CORPORATIONS do their bloody job!

The so-called "income tax" that you and I have been paying was not our burden...this tax was rightfully the burden of corporations.

But in 1913, something wicked occurred...in 1913, treasonous legislators went behind the backs of Americans for their thirty pieces of silver, and passed the Federal Reserve Act, the treasonous 16th Amendment, and Woodrow Wilson gave corporations the rights of a "person".

The Federal Reserve Act was the third iteration of a central banking system; the first two were run out of town by Americans - from 1787 to 1913, the United States of America knew unbounded prosperity.

That all changed with the advent of the Federal Reserve.

In 1934, Major Smedley Darlington Butler caught wind of a plan to take over the United States; he turned on those treasonous scumbags and saved America.

Do we not make patriots of that stripe anymore?

The 16th Amendment did NOT provide for any new laws of taxation to the government...so, if the government was NOT able to tax individuals before 1913, why were they then able to tax individuals AFTER 1913?

One word - COLLUSION.

The bankers colluded with the corporate heads and lawyers to remove the tax burden from their shoulders, and then to place that burden upon WE THE PEOPLE.

One thing that would have forestalled this was the Original 13th Amendment, also referred to as the Titles Of Nobility Amendment.

The gist of this amendment is that no one with loyalties other than to the United States of America would be allowed to take employment within the United States Government.

Pretty sound idea, yes?

Obviously, the scumbags who wished to ruin our way of life didn't think so...and so the 13th Amendment was replaced in 1860...though there are researches that state that the original 13th Amendment was ratified, and this would therefore nullify the current 13th Amendment, which, if you read carefully, relegates WE THE PEOPLE to being SERVANTS of our elected officials.

If you don't believe this information, ask yourselves:

Why do our elected officials have FULL HEALTH CARE?

Why are practically all of our elected officials MILLIONAIRES?

Why would one need to contact their elected officials to notify them of the job they were elected to perform? When you shook their hands on the street as they pandered for your vote, you expressed your desires to them...did they WRITE THEM DOWN? Why would you believe that after speaking to hundreds of people a day, that they will remember ANYTHING you said? Hand them a note, or a flyer, make sure that they put it in their coat, or their briefcase, and ask that those issues be addressed...or they can look forward to your vote going to their opponents next election cycle.

There are many more questions that one can come upon, but the point here is...THEY LIVE...WE SLEEP.

They SPEND...We TOIL.

I was listening to Earl Caldwell on Friday's Caldwell Chronicle - he had a number of guest speakers on the show, and one of the topics discussed was that of the financial status of Americans. According to the information presented, the average American's standard of living stagnated at 1970, then began to reverse. Employers were able to get more out of employees, without having to increase compensation.

Of course...this does not account for outrageous golden parachutes offered to corporate heads...wouldn't you love a gig that provided you thirteen billion dollars after three weeks?

Yes...it's true.

I can go on all day...but you get the point. Once this is realized, some action can be taken; until then - ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO THEM.

Trojan Horse - How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the US Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security - Christopher Ketcham

Trojan Horse - How Israeli Backdoor Technology Penetrated the US Government's Telecom System and Compromised National Security
by Christopher Ketcham

Since the late 1990s, federal agents have reported systemic communications security breaches at the Department of Justice, FBI, DEA, the State Department, and the White House. Several of the alleged breaches, these agents say, can be traced to two hi-tech communications companies, Verint Inc. (formerly Comverse Infosys), and Amdocs Ltd., that respectively provide major wiretap and phone billing/record-keeping software contracts for the US government. Together, Verint and Amdocs form part of the backbone of the government's domestic intelligence surveillance technology. Both companies are based in Israel – having arisen to prominence from that country's cornering of the information technology market – and are heavily funded by the Israeli government, with connections to the Israeli military and Israeli intelligence (both companies have a long history of board memberships dominated by current and former Israeli military and intelligence officers). Verint is considered the world leader in "electronic interception" and hence an ideal private sector candidate for wiretap outsourcing. Amdocs is the world's largest billing service for telecommunications, with some $2.8 billion in revenues in 2007, offices worldwide, and clients that include the top 25 phone companies in the United States that together handle 90 percent of all call traffic among US residents. The companies' operations, sources suggest, have been infiltrated by freelance spies exploiting encrypted trapdoors in Verint/Amdocs technology and gathering data on Americans for transfer to Israeli intelligence and other willing customers (particularly organized crime). "The fact of the vulnerability of our telecom backbone is indisputable," says a high level US intelligence officer who has monitored the fears among federal agents. "How it came to pass, why nothing has been done, who has done what – these are the incendiary questions." If the allegations are true, the electronic communications gathered up by the NSA and other US intelligence agencies might be falling into the hands of a foreign government. Reviewing the available evidence, Robert David Steele, a former CIA case officer and today one of the foremost international proponents for "public intelligence in the public interest," tells me that "Israeli penetration of the entire US telecommunications system means that NSA's warrantless wiretapping actually means Israeli warrantless wiretapping."

As early as 1999, the National Security Agency issued a warning that records of US government telephone calls were ending up in foreign hands – Israel's, in particular. In 2002, assistant US Attorney General Robert F. Diegelman issued an eyes only memo on the matter to the chief information technology (IT) officers at the Department of Justice. IT officers oversee everything from the kind of cell phones agents carry to the wiretap equipment they use in the field; their defining purpose is secure communications. Diegelman's memo was a reiteration, with overtones of reprimand, of a new IT policy instituted a year earlier, in July 2001, in an internal Justice order titled "2640.2D Information Technology Security." Order 2640.2D stated that "Foreign Nationals shall not be authorized to access or assist in the development, operation, management or maintenance of Department IT systems." This might not seem much to blink at in the post-9/11 intel and security overhaul. Yet 2640.2D was issued a full two months before the Sept. 11 attacks. What group or groups of foreign nationals had close access to IT systems at the Department of Justice? Israelis, according to officials in law enforcement. One former Justice Department computer crimes prosecutor tells me, speaking on background, "I've heard that the Israelis can listen in to our calls."

Retired CIA counterterrorism and counterintelligence officer Philip Giraldi says this is par for the course in the history of Israeli penetrations in the US He notes that Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage" – Israel is second only to China in stealing US business secrets. The 2005 FBI report states, for example, "Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel's sizable armaments industry." A key Israeli method, warns the FBI report, is computer intrusion.

In the big picture of US government spying on Americans, the story ties into 1994 legislation called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, which effected a sea-change in methods of electronic surveillance. Gone are the days when wiretaps were conducted through on-site tinkering with copper switches. CALEA mandated sweeping new powers of surveillance for the digital age, by linking remote computers into the routers and hubs of telecom firms – a spyware apparatus linked in real-time, all the time, to American telephones and modems. CALEA made spy equipment an inextricable ligature in our telephonic life. Top officials at the FBI pushed for the legislation, claiming it would improve security, but many field agents have spoken up to complain that CALEA has done exactly the opposite. The data-mining techniques employed by NSA in its wiretapping exploits could not have succeeded without the technology mandated by CALEA. It could be argued that CALEA is the hidden heart of the NSA wiretap scandal.

THE VERINT CONNECTION

According to former CIA officer Giraldi and other US intelligence sources, software manufactured and maintained by Verint, Inc. handles most of American law enforcement's wiretaps. Says Giraldi: "Phone calls are intercepted, recorded, and transmitted to US investigators by Verint, which claims that it has to be ‘hands on' with its equipment to maintain the system." Giraldi also notes Verint is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its R&D costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. According to Giraldi, the extent of the use of Verint technology "is considered classified," but sources have spoken out and told Giraldi they are worried about the security of Verint wiretap systems. The key concern, says Giraldi, is the issue of a "trojan" embedded in the software.

A Trojan in information security hardware/software is a backdoor that can be accessed remotely by parties who normally would not have access to the secure system. Allegations of massive Trojan spying have rocked the Israeli business community in recent years. An AP article in 2005 noted, "Top Israeli blue chip companies…are suspected of using illicit surveillance software to steal information from their rivals and enemies." Over 40 companies have come under scrutiny. "It is the largest cybercrime case in Israeli history," Boaz Guttmann, a veteran cybercrimes investigator with the Israeli national police, tells me. "Trojan horse espionage is part of the way of life of companies in Israel. It's a culture of spying."

This is of course the culture on which the US depends for much of its secure software for data encryption and telephonic security. "There's been a lot discussion of how much we should trust security products by Israeli telecom firms," says Philip Zimmerman, one of the legendary pioneers of encryption technology (Zimmerman invented the cryptographic and privacy authentication system known as Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, now one of the basic modern standards for communications encryption). "Generally speaking, I wouldn't trust stuff made overseas for data security," says Zimmerman. "A guy at NSA InfoSec" – the information security division of the National Security Agency – "once told me, ‘Foreign-made crypto is our nightmare.' But to be fair, as our domestic electronics industry becomes weaker and weaker, foreign-made becomes inevitable." Look at where the expertise is, Zimmerman adds: Among the ranks of the International Association for Cryptological Research, which meets annually, there is a higher percentage of Israelis than any other nationality. The Israeli-run Verint is today the provider of telecom interception systems deployed in over 50 countries.

Carl Cameron, chief politics correspondent at Fox News Channel, is one of the few reporters to look into federal agents' deepening distress over possible trojans embedded in Verint technology. In a wide-ranging four-part investigation into Israeli-linked espionage that aired in December 2001, Cameron made a number of startling discoveries regarding Verint, then known as Comverse Infosys. Sources told Cameron that "while various FBI inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years," the inquiries had "been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks." Cameron also noted a 1999 internal FCC document indicating that "several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system." Much of this access was facilitated through "remote maintenance."

Immediately following the Cameron report, Comverse Infosys changed its name to Verint, saying the company was "maturing." (The company issued no response to Cameron's allegations, nor did it threaten a lawsuit.) Meanwhile, security officers at DEA, an adjunct of the Justice Department, began examining the agency's own relationship with Comverse/Verint. In 1997, DEA transformed its wiretap infrastructure with the $25 million procurement from Comverse/Verint of a technology called "T2S2" – "translation and transcription support services" – with Comverse/Verint contracted to provide the hardware and software, plus "support services, training, upgrades, enhancements and options throughout the life of the contract," according to the "contracts and acquisitions" notice posted on the DEA's website. This was unprecedented. Prior to 1997, DEA staff used equipment that was developed and maintained in-house.

But now Cameron's report raised some ugly questions of vulnerability in T2S2.

The director of security programs at DEA, Heidi Raffanello, was rattled enough to issue an internal communiqué on the matter, dated Dec. 18, 2001, four days after the final installment in the Cameron series. Referencing the Fox News report, she worried that "Comverse remote maintenance" was "not addressed in the C&A [contracts and acquisitions] process." She also cited the concerns in Justice Department order 2640.2D, and noted that the "Administrator" – meaning then DEA head Asa Hutchinson – had been briefed. Then there was this stunner: "It remains unclear if Comverse personnel are security cleared, and if so, who are they and what type of clearances are on record….Bottom line we should have caught it." On its face, the Raffanello memo is a frightening glimpse into a bureaucracy caught with its pants down.

American law enforcement was not alone in suspecting T2S2 equipment purchased from Comverse/Verint. In November 2002, sources in the Dutch counterintelligence community began airing what they claimed was "strong evidence that the Israeli secret service has uncontrolled access to confidential tapping data collected by the Dutch police and intelligence services," according to the Dutch broadcast radio station Evangelische Omroep (EO). In January 2003, the respected Dutch technology and computing magazine, c't, ran a follow-up to the EO scoop, headlined "Dutch Tapping Room not Kosher." The article began: "All tapping equipment of the Dutch intelligence services and half the tapping equipment of the national police force…is insecure and is leaking information to Israel." The writer, Paul Wouters, goes on to discuss the T2S2 tap-ware "delivered to the government in the last few years by the Israeli company Verint," and quoted several cryptography experts on the viability of remote monitoring of encrypted "blackbox" data. Wouters writes of this "blackbox cryptography":

"…a very important part of strong cryptography is a good random source. Without a proper random generator, or worse, with an intentionally crippled random generator, the resulting ciphertext becomes trivial to break. If there is one single unknown chip involved with the random generation, such as a hardware accelerator chip, all bets are off….If you can trust the hardware and you have access to the source code, then it should theoretically be possible to verify the system. This, however, can just not be done without the source code."

Yet, as Wouters was careful to add, "when the equipment was bought from the Israelis, it was agreed that no one except [Verint] personnel was authorized to touch the systems....Source code would never be available to anyone."

Cryptography pioneer Philip Zimmerman warns that "you should never trust crypto if the source code isn't published. Open source code means two things: if there are deliberate backdoors in the crypto, peer review will reveal those backdoors. If there are inadvertent bugs in the crypto, they too will be discovered. Whether the weaknesses are by accident or design, they will be found. If the weakness is by design, they will not want to publish the source code. Some of the best products we know have been subject to open source review: Linux; Apache. The most respected crypto products have been tested through open source. The little padlock in the corner when you visit a browser? You're going through a protocol called Secure Socket Layer. Open source tested and an Internet standard. FireFox, the popular and highly secure browser, is all open source."

THE CALEA CONNECTION

None of US law enforcement's problems with Amdocs and Verint could have come to pass without the changes mandated by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which, as noted, sought to lock spyware into telecom networks. CALEA, to cite the literature, requires that terrestrial carriers, cellular phone services and other telecom entities enable the government to intercept "all wire and oral communications carried by the carrier concurrently with their transmission." T2S2 technology fit the bill perfectly: Tied into the network, T2S2 bifurcates the line without interrupting the data-stream (a T2S2 bifurcation is considered virtually undetectable). One half of the bifurcated line is recorded and stored in a remote tapping room; the other half continues on its way from your mouth or keyboard to your friend's. (What is "T2S2"? To simplify: The S2 computer collects and encrypts the data; the T2 receives and decrypts.)

CALEA was touted as a law enforcement triumph, the work of decades of lobbying by FBI. Director Louis Freeh went so far as to call it the bureau's "highest legislative priority." Indeed, CALEA was the widest expansion of the government's electronic surveillance powers since the Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, which mandated carefully limited conditions for wiretaps. Now the government could use coercive powers in ordering telecom providers to "devise solutions" to law enforcement's "emerging technology-generated problems" (imposing a $10,000 per day penalty on non-compliant carriers). The government's hand would be permanently inserted into the design of the nation's telecom infrastructure. Law professor Lillian BeVier, of the University of Virginia, writes extensively of the problems inherent to CALEA. "The rosy scenario imagined by the drafters cannot survive a moment's reflection," BeVier observes. "While it is conventionally portrayed as ‘but the latest chapter in the thirty year history of the federal wiretap laws,' CALEA is not simply the next installment of a technologically impelled statutory evolution. Instead, in terms of the nature and magnitude of the interests it purports to ‘compromise' and the industry it seeks to regulate, in terms of the extent to which it purports to coerce private sector solutions to public sector problems, and in terms of the foothold it gives government to control the design of telecommunications networks, the Act is a paradigm shift. On close and disinterested inspection, moreover, CALEA appears to embody potentially wrong-headed sacrifices of privacy principles, flawed and incomplete conceptions of law enforcement's ends and means, and an imperfect appreciation of the incompatible incentives of the players in the game that would inevitably be played in the process of its implementation." (emphasis mine)

The real novelty – and the danger – of CALEA is that telecom networks are today configured so that they are vulnerable to surveillance. "We've deliberately weakened the computer and phone networks, making them much less secure, much more vulnerable both to legal surveillance and illegal hacking," says former DOJ cybercrimes prosecutor Mark Rasch. "Everybody is much less secure in their communications since the adopting of CALEA. So how are you going to have secure communications? You have to secure the communications themselves, because you cannot have a secure network. To do this, you need encryption. What CALEA forced businesses and individuals to do is go to third parties to purchase encryption technology. What is the major country that the US purchases IT encryption from overseas? I would say it's a small Middle Eastern democracy. What we've done is the worst of all worlds. We've made sure that most communications are subject to hacking and interception by bad guys. At the same time, the bad guys – organized crime, terrorist operations – can very easily encrypt their communications." It is notable that the first CALEA-compliant telecom systems installed in the US were courtesy of Verint Inc.

THE AMDOCS CONNECTION

If a phone is dialed in the US, Amdocs Ltd. likely has a record of it, which includes who you dialed and how long you spoke. This is known as transactional call data. Amdocs' biggest customers in the US are AT&T and Verizon, which have collaborated widely with the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping programs. Transactional call data has been identified as a key element in NSA data mining to look for "suspicious" patterns in communications.

Over the last decade, Amdocs has been the target of several investigations looking into whether individuals within the company shared sensitive US government data with organized crime elements and Israeli intelligence services. Beginning in 1997, the FBI conducted a far-flung inquiry into alleged spying by an Israeli employee of Amdocs, who worked on a telephone billing program purchased by the CIA. According to Paul Rodriguez and J. Michael Waller, of Insight Magazine, which broke the story in May of 2000, the targeted Israeli had apparently also facilitated the tapping of telephone lines at the Clinton White House (recall Monica Lewinsky's testimony before Ken Starr: the president, she claimed, had warned her that "a foreign embassy" was listening to their phone sex, though Clinton under oath later denied saying this). More than two dozen intelligence, counterintelligence, law-enforcement and other officials told Insight that a "daring operation," run by Israeli intelligence, had "intercepted telephone and modem communications on some of the most sensitive lines of the US government on an ongoing basis." Insight's chief investigative reporter, Paul Rodriguez, told me in an e-mail that the May 2000 spy probe story "was (and is) one of the strangest I've ever worked on, considering the state of alert, concern and puzzlement" among federal agents. According to the Insight report, FBI investigators were particularly unnerved over discovering the targeted Israeli subcontractor had somehow gotten his hands on the FBI's "most sensitive telephone numbers, including the Bureau's ‘black' lines used for wiretapping." "Some of the listed numbers," the Insight article added, "were lines that FBI counterintelligence used to keep track of the suspected Israeli spy operation. The hunted were tracking the hunters." Rodriguez confirmed the panic this caused in American Intel"It's a huge security nightmare," one senior US official told him. "The implications are severe," said a second official. "All I can tell you is that we think we know how it was done," a third intelligence executive told Rodriguez. "That alone is serious enough, but it's the unknown that has such deep consequences." No charges, however, were made public in the case. (What happened behind the scenes depends on who you talk to in law enforcement: When FBI counterintelligence sought a warrant for the Israeli subcontractor, the Justice Department strangely refused to cooperate, and in the end no warrant was issued. FBI investigators were baffled.)

London Sunday Times reporter Uzi Mahnaimi quotes sources in Tel Aviv saying that during this period e-mails from President Clinton had also been intercepted by Israeli intelligence. Mahnaimi's May 2000 article reveals that the operation involved "hacking into White House computer systems during intense speculation about the direction of the peace process." Israeli intelligence had allegedly infiltrated a company called Telrad, subcontracted by Nortel, to develop a communications system for the White House. According to the Sunday Times, "Company managers were said to have been unaware that virtually undetectable chips installed during manufacture made it possible for outside agents to tap into the flow of data from the White House."

In 1997, detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department, working in tandem with the Secret Service, FBI, and DEA, found themselves suffering a similar inexplicable collapse in communications security. LAPD was investigating Israeli organized crime: drug runners and credit card thieves based in Israel and L.A., with tentacles in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and Egypt. The name of the crime group and its members remains classified in "threat assessment" papers this reporter obtained from LAPD, but the documents list in some detail the colorful scope of the group's operations: $1.4 million stolen from Fidelity Investments in Boston through sophisticated computer fraud; extortion and kidnapping of Israelis in LA and New York; cocaine distribution in connection with Italian, Russian, Armenian and Mexican organized crime; money laundering; and murder. The group also had access to extremely sophisticated counter-surveillance technology and data, which was a disaster for LAPD. According to LAPD internal documents, the Israeli crime group obtained the unlisted home phone, cell phone, and pager numbers of some 500 of LAPD's narcotics investigators, as well as the contact information for scores of federal agents – black info, numbers unknown even to the investigators' kin. The Israelis even set up wiretaps of LAPD investigators, grabbing from cell-phones and landlines conversations with other agents – FBI and DEA, mostly – whose names and phone numbers were also traced and grabbed.

LAPD was horrified, and as the word got out of the seeming total breakdown in security, the shock spread to agents at DEA, FBI and even CIA, who together spearheaded an investigation. It turned out that the source of much of this black Intel could be traced to a company called J&J Beepers, which was getting its phone numbers from a billing service that happened to be a subsidiary of Amdocs.

A source familiar with the inquiries into Amdocs put to me several theories regarding the allegations of espionage against the company. "Back in the early 1970s, when it became clear that AT&T was going to be broken up and that there was an imminent information and technology revolution, Israel understood that it had a highly-educated and highly-worldly population and it made a few calculated economic and diplomatic discoveries," the source says. "One was that telecommunications was something they could do: because it doesn't require natural resources, but just intellect, training and cash. They became highly involved in telecommunications. Per capita, Israel is probably the strongest telecommunications nation in the world. AT&T break-up occurs in 1984; Internet technology explodes; and Israel has all of these companies aggressively buying up contracts in the form of companies like Amdocs. Amdocs started out as a tiny company and now it's the biggest billing service for telecommunications in the world. They get this massive telecommunications network underway. Like just about everything in Israel, it's a government sponsored undertaking.

"So it's been argued that Amdocs was using its billing records as an intelligence-gathering exercise because its executive board over the years has been heavily peopled by retired and current members of the Israeli government and military. They used this as an opportunity to collect information about worldwide telephone calls. As an intelligence-gathering phenomenon, an analyst with an MIT degree in algorithms would rather have 50 pages of who called who than 50 hours of actual conversation. Think about conversations with friends, husbands, wives. That raw information doesn't mean anything. But if there's a pattern of 30 phone calls over the course of a day, that can mean a lot. It's a much simpler algorithm."

Another anonymous source – a former CIA operative – tells me that US intelligence agents who have aired their concerns about Verint and Amdocs have found themselves attacked from all sides. "Once it's learned that an individual is doing footwork on this [the Verint/Amdocs question], he or she is typically identified somehow as a troublemaker, an instigator, and is hammered mercilessly," says the former CIA operative. "Typically, what happens is the individual finds him or herself in a scenario where their retirement is jeopardized – and worse. The fact that if you simply take a look at this question, all of a sudden you're an Arabist or anti-Semitic – it's pure baloney, because I will tell you first-hand that people whose heritage lies back in that country have heavily worked this matter. You can't buy that kind of dedication."

The former CIA operative adds, "There is no defined policy, at this time, for how to deal with this [security issues involving Israel] – other than wall it off, contain it. It's not cutting it. Not after 9/11. The funeral pyre that burned on for months at the bottom of the rubble told a lot of people they did not need to be ‘politically correct.' The communications nexuses [i.e. Amdocs/Verint] didn't occur yesterday; they started many years ago. And that's a major embarrassment to organizations that would like to say they're on top of things and not co-opted or compromised. As you start to work this, you soon learn that many people have either looked the other way or have been co-opted along the way. Some people, when they figure out what has occurred, are highly embarrassed to realize that they've been duped. Because many of them are bureaucrats, they don't want to be made to look as stupid as they are. So they just go along with it. Sometimes, it's just that simple."

--

Here's where someone could say: "Well, if you aren't doing anything illegal, what do you have to worry about?"

The problem is that YOU don't get to decide what is legal and what is NOT.

In other news, Paul Newman passed away from cancer at the age of 83.

In tribute to Paul Newman, here's the egg scene from Cool Hand Luke (I recommend the Sting if you've never seen it):