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Jim over at Irregular Times points out a huge coincidence between the legislation of the Protect America Act, as crafted by the Bush White House in cooperation with Congress, and the language being used by the White House legal team that is fighting efforts by the Electronic Freedom Foundation, and by the governments of Vermont, Missouri, Connecticut, Maine and New Jersey to make public the extent to which the federal government is using the National Security Agency to spy on Americans’ online activities.

Both the Protect America Act and the Bush legal effort to block exposure of its giant Internet espionage database are focused on the effort to redefine the meaning of “electronic surveillance” in order to legally protect people in the Bush White House.

Why is the Protect America Act so strikingly parallel with the effort to block the lawsuits from the state governments and EFF, if there is not a relationship?

The combination of the chronological coincidence and the strategic coincidence of these two efforts to push electronic spy programs is quite odd… unless the Protect America Act is really about an attempt to keep the American people from finding out about the new equivalent of a fully operational Total Information Awareness program.

One thing is for sure - the more I look at the Protect America Act, the more clear it becomes that there’s something truly dark and rotten lying underneath it - and it isn’t terrorism.

The more you take a look at the Protect America Act, the less it makes sense. There is no impending threat of terrorist attack. The Bush White House admits that. Yet, George W. Bush all of a sudden says that he needs huge new spy powers to be legalized, and he needs these spy powers now, not a month from now.

Well, if there is no impending terrorist threat of attack this summer, what are these new spy powers for, and why did he need them within less than a month?

The mystery of the Protect America Act is this: What is happening during the scheduled recess of Congress that George W. Bush needed extraordinary newly legalized spy powers for?

One possible answer: The new law is about a resurrection of Total Information Awareness, a program that was supposed to have been stopped years ago, designed to bring private electronic information from multiple resources, including intercepted Internet traffic, into one gigantic computer database.

Originally, that database was to be housed at DARPA, in an office run by John Poindexter, of Iran Contra infamy. However, when the Total Information Awareness project was discovered, it was moved over to the National Security Agency.

Put one and one together, now. Who has been doing the warrantless “wiretapping” partially exposed within the Bush Administration? The National Security Agency.

The Protect America Act is designed to legalize just the sort of electronic surveillance that was planned by John Poindexter in the form of Total Information Awareness. Furthermore, just such a program has been partially exposed by AT&T employee Mark Klein, who alleges that he personally observed a huge system for diverting electronic information into National Security Agency computers in a communications center in California.

What kind of information was going through that center? Web traffic, email, telephone calls, and a lot of it. Klein explained in an interview with Frontline: “…billions of bits of data going in and out every second every day. So all the Web surfing you’re doing, whatever you’re doing on the Internet — the pictures, the video, the Voice over Internet — all that stuff’s going in and out of there. And then of course there’s also the traditional phone switch, which is doing what it’s been doing since before the Internet.”

This web page you’re reading now is likely routed through that center, or another one like it, possibly with another National Security Agency splitter like the one that Mark Klein saw. Welcome to the NSA.

It just so happens that about two dozen lawsuits are going through the courts trying to force the Bush Administration to reveal the extent to which it is using the National Security Agency to spy on Americans’ Internet use.

Right before George W. Bush started his desperate push to force Congress to pass the Protect America Act, the government’s effort to block one of those cases was denied. That was July 24. There is no mention of a need to revise the FISA regulations on electronic spying against Americans until the day after that.

Search Google News on July 22 or 23rd for FISA. You’ll come up with news about the FISA World Rowing Competition. It’s around noontime on July 25th, the day after the case brought by 5 state governments’ to get information about the NSA supercomputer Internet spy network was advanced a vital step forward in the courts, that we see the start of the push to pass the Protect America Act.

The headline on July 25th from United Press International: Boehner backs bill to beef up FISA. The article refers to the first draft of the Protect America Act, introduced by Heather Wilson… on July 24th, the same day that the court judgment against the Bush Administration came down.

The timing is too coincidental to avoid suspicion. We don’t know what goes on in secrecy. That’s why it’s called secrecy. However, what we can see is enough to judge that there’s a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to the passage of the Protect America Act.

It started out with the horse whisperer, the guy who could tame wild horses just by interacting with them according to their natural behaviors. Then we got Cesar Milan, the dog whisperer, who trains dogs in a similar way. A Walt Disney TV show brought us the Tiger Whisperer, who had a telepathic connection to a big cat. Now, we’re getting news of Martin Hof, a Dutch man who likes to hang out with water birds in a park.

All this is well and good, but what we really need is a Bush Whisperer. Obviously, speaking in logical, reasonable terms doesn’t work with President Bush. Let’s not keep trying that failed tactic over and over again. America needs someone who can ease in gently alongside George W. Bush and learn to communicate with him in the ways only a Bush can understand, finally getting the message through that the Iraq War isn’t working, and it’s time to change, or be put out to pasture in Kennebunkport.

The Bush Whisperer needs to be someone who understands the natural history of the Bush family, someone who’s been around the wealthy children of oil tycoons, or the political son of a former President.

Any suggestions for who that might be?

The Wayne Madsen Report is saying that it has three independent sources at high levels in the Pentagon and the CIA, each source saying the same thing: Dick Cheney’s telephone number is on the list of calls to Deborah Jeane Palfrey to receive erotic services from her escort service. In other words, it is now being alleged that Dick Cheney hired a prostitute.

Furthermore, it is being alleged that ABC News knew that Dick Cheney was on the list of Palfrey clients, and kept the list secret in order to cover it up.

I’m not a Washington D.C. insider, so I don’t know if these allegations are true.

However, they certainly are of interest. Keep your eye out for more information on this story.

Last night, I posted an article criticizing the Military Commissions Act. The article pointed out that the Military Commissions Act legalizes torture, revokes habeas corpus, ends enforcement of the Geneva Conventions, gives amnesty to war criminals, allows Bush to imprison people he calls “enemy” without criminal charge, and sets up kangaroo courts with medieval standards of justice.

This morning, that article is gone.

Here’s a graphic of the article’s listing, as it was registered by Technorati:

Gone.

Is it a glitch, or is it Homeland Security?

The grassroots movement to impeach Bush is getting whipped up into high energy, and a lot of people in the movement are getting intensely angry. The unrelenting attacks against our basic liberties are fueling a strong backlash across America.

The strength of this backlash against George W. Bush is necessary to push the complacent Democrats in Congress to finally do something to stop the terrible criminal activities of the Bush Administration. However, as we experience this rush of energy, let’s make sure that we don’t allow the surge to consume our reason.

I was handed a Fraudulent Event Note, worth one deception, with 9-11 in the corners, and a sneering portrait of George W. Bush, with Dick Cheney and Karl Rove in the background. Scrawled on the fake bill was the phrase impeach the terrorists, and web addresses for September 11 conspiracy sites were placed all over the mock money.

I’m all for impeaching George W. Bush, but I’m realistic enough to recognize that accusing Bush of “terrorism” is not the easiest path in this struggle. Oh, it feels good for some of us, a way to vent our anger, to call Bush a “terrorist”, but this language will turn off all but the most hard core anti-Bush activists.

Furthermore, we don’t need conspiracy theories alleging that George W. Bush somehow was behind the attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. These charges just aren’t necessary to bring impeachment. There’s more than enough substantiated in the public record to put George W. Bush in prison, where he belongs. There is no reason shoot for a slam dunk when a simple bank shot will do the job.

Peter Hoekstra, the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee of the United States House of Representatives, has written a letter to the White House saying that President George W. Bush has likely broken the law by refusing to reveal a large number of additional extra-constitutional spy programs to Congress. You heard that right. There are yet more Bush White House programs in place to spy against American citizens that we have not been told about yet.

What are these additional illegal programs George W. Bush has created to spy against Americans? We don’t know. The White House is keeping them secret from us, and secret from Congress.

This violation of the law is such an extreme challenge to the rule of law in the United States of America that even the Republicans in Congress are scared. Congressman Hoekstra wrote to President Bush:

“I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed. If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies.”

Peter Hoekstra is no moderate Republican. He has supported the Bush White House’s spy programs up until now, and has been a proponent of other illegal activities organized by George W. Bush, including torture of prisonsers.

Now, Representative Hoekstra is accusing George W. Bush of “a violation of the law”. Peter Hoekstra is saying that he knows of yet more illegal programs to spy against you and me. These additional secret spy programs would be on top of:

- Air Force programs to recruit American citizens to spy against their neighbors
- CIA, FBI, and Pentagon programs to infiltrate and spy on political dissidents
- The FBI program to grab information about what kind of web sites Americans are searching for
- The NSA program to listen to the private telephone conversations of people making international telephone calls
- The NSA program to gather information about who tens of millions of Americans are calling within the United States and when they are making those calls
- The program to spy on private financial transactions through banking networks
- The Homeland Security program to open and read random letters that Americans are sending overseas
- The program to enter private American emails into a giant computer database
- The program to gather personal information from Americans’ private records in libraries, hospitals, and stores without ever telling people that they have been searched
- Total Information Awareness
- And on, and on… I can’t even remember off the top of my head all the illegal spy programs that the Bush Administration has already been caught using against the American people

And now, from Peter Hoekstra’s unwittingly exposed letter to George W. Bush, we learn that there are even more illegal spy programs that Bush has been keeping secret from Americans.

Have we not heard enough?

What more will it take before the people demand that they stop being watched by their own government? When will Congress stand up and demand that the integrity of the Bill of Rights be restored?

The time to hold George W. Bush accountable to the law is not now. That time came a long time ago, and now, President Bush may be so far along his path of illegal activity that no one can stop him.

We have to try. We have to make the attempt to bring back the rule of law, or we will lose our freedom forever.

Censure Bush. Impeach Bush. Imprison Bush.

The blogs are buzzing with the news that National Security Agency staff member Russell Tice will be testifying before a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee next week, revealing to senators the details of three additional, previously unknown programs the National Security Agency is using to spy against American citizens. These three programs include, rumors say, a program to spy on Americans using satellites in outer space.

I’ve learned to be suspicious of such rumors. Remember last week’s gush from Truthout that Karl Rove had been indicted on Friday?

Still, I’m sick and tired of not knowing what the government is doing to track my private information. If there really are three more programs that the NSA is engaged in to spy on Americans, I don’t care what the national security implications are. I deserve to know about them. No little shred of security that might, theoretically be lost can compensate for the liberty that America is already losing.

This government of secrecy needs to end, and we need to start by impeaching and imprisoning George W. Bush.