New York Times accused of Child Endangerment and Treason for divulging Secret Government Terrorist Spying Program.

My great aunt was probably the last true American. She took heart-felt umbrage when banks first had the gall to install security cameras, back in the early ‘60’s. “I don’t want anyone spying over my shoulder when I’m about my private business,” she said. It is a measure of how far we have sunk to a level lower than chickens that my great aunt’s notions strike us, not simply as quaint, but as alien.

Those were the days when Americans held to strange notions like “going about your private business in public.” If your business was private -- which it invariably was -- then it was no body else’s business, not even the government’s -- especially not the government’s.

Those were also the days when people spoke of their bankers in much the same sense and tone that they spoke of their pastors or priests. The bank was where you confided your money and it was insulting, to say the least, that your fiduciary should treat you as some sort of common criminal afoot.

Those days have been swept into the dustbins of history thanks to a people hankering for "safety" and a judiciary whoring itself to executive power.

In California v. Greenwood (1988) 486 U.S. 35, the craven lickspittles on the Supreme Court held that my great aunt had no expectation of privacy in her garbage. Having deposited one’s garbage “in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption,” a person “could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded.”

Of course, they had no expectation of privacy in the non-inculpatory items either since a cop can’t tell which is which until he starts pawing through the mess. The court's toss-in of the word “inculpatory” was one of those slimey sophistical tricks courts resort to when they want to add some emotional weight to an otherwise shaky argument -- in this case, the helpful insinuation that the garbage owners were guilty criminals anyways and so we needn't focus to hard on a rummage-rule that applies just as much to the anyways innocent.

Behind obfuscations for the unwary, Greenwood explained that the true reason my aunt had no expectation of privacy in her garbage was that privacy was lost once the garbage was placed “at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through respondents' trash or permitted others, such as the police, to do so.”

Entrusting garbage, the Court intoned, was no different than dialing telephone numbers; and “we doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial” (Smith v. Maryland (1979) 442 U.S. 735.) Say what ?? When was this!? 1979? Yep.

“All telephone users," the Court pronounced, "realize that they must ‘convey’ phone numbers to the telephone company, since it is through telephone company switching equipment that their calls are completed.” Having “conveyed” their numbers a third party, one can hardly complain when the third party happily conveys it to a fourth party, (government cops), on request and without any warrant. After all, the court went on, “when he used his phone, petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company and ‘exposed’ that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business. In so doing, petitioner assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the numbers he dialed.”

In short, if you don’t want to be exposed, lock yourself in your closet.

The Smith and Greenwood cases stand for two inter related propositions. First, that you have no privacy when you “expose” yourself or your effects to public view; and, second, that you have no privacy in things you “convey” to others even if “the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed.” Why throwing away a packet of old love letters is tantamount to reading them out loud in the park; and as for ringing someone up on a phone, well you might as well walk about naked. As for spy cameras in banks -- well if my great aunt did not want to be spied upon in public, she should have transacted her business by mail.....

But wait! Aren’t letters “conveyed” to a third party on the “assumption” that confidence “will not be betrayed”? Anyone who expects the Supreme Court to protect internet privacy or to prohibit the State Security Services from keeping track of international money wires, ought to check into a sanatorium to have his “assumptions” given the once over by men in white coats.

The underlying and truly stinking perversity of Smith and Greenwood is that they invert the positions of "free space" and "prisons". Your locked closet becomes the place where you are free to left alone; whereas out and open in public you are are subject to at will surveillance, just as if you were in prison.

Dissenting in Greenwood, Justice Brennan wrote, “Scrutiny of another's trash is contrary to commonly accepted notions of civilized behavior. I suspect, therefore, that members of our society will be shocked to learn that the Court, the ultimate guarantor of liberty, deems unreasonable our expectation that the aspects of our private lives that are concealed safely in a trash bag will not become public.”

Alas, the public was not shocked at all. For two months, Brennan wrote, “the police clawed through the trash that ...Greenwood left in opaque, sealed bags on the curb outside his home. Complete strangers minutely scrutinized their bounty, undoubtedly dredging up intimate details of Greenwood's private life and habits. The intrusions proceeded without a warrant, and no court before or since has concluded that the police acted on probable cause to believe Greenwood was engaged in any criminal activity.” But not a peep against this violation of privacy was heard -- not from our guardian press; not from an outraged people. On the contrary, in places like California, the people voted to overturn that state’s rule that a person’s garbage was private and beyond search absent a warrant.

Now, long after the ship has sunk, the New York Times reveals that the Government is keeping track of bank wire transfers made on what the high court will undoubtedly call "the open wires” of the telephone network. In the past several months, the press has also revealed, that the Government is keeping track of whom we mail, access or visit on the internet "highway". A feeble whine of protest arises from the so-called “liberal” flank of the political spectrum, while Thug Staat Bush and its congressional brown shirts go on word-punching offensives. Needless to say, the Times and its half-hearted allies will take all this lying down. They will palaver about the public’s right to know when they should instead excoriate the Administration and call for its impeachment en masse

The people's pipers in the press are at last getting around to questioning the so-called “excesses” of the Bush administration. But where were these folks when the Greenwood and Smith cases were handed down? In the modern world “excesses” do not happen overnight. Tipping thresholds may be reached at any moment; but modern states are huge multifarious bureaucracies. They move slowly and only after millions of memos have been written and thousands of regulations and practices put into place and practice. The destruction of our Liberties and the foundations of a police state began long ago with the Nixon Court.

For close to 40 years, repulsive creepy crawly creatures like inJustice Rankquist have been at work in the dank and dark gnawing away at the Bill of Rights and giving the State the “tools” it needed to “protect us” from crime, drugs, pornography, and now “terrorists”. Where was the press before? Where was there an outcry as, case by case, the courts drove a thousand cuts into the Bill of Rights, while a slithering Congress aided and abetted this real treason by establishing secret courts, national security exceptions and a plethora of other state privileges. Oh... no doubt the Times deemed those stories to be news “fit to print” on some back page crowded into the left margin by trendy Bloomingdale ads; but what was evidently not fit was any manifestation of outrage. Certainly nothing that would have given a voice to my aunt.

My great aunt stood with the Founders of the Republic, because she, like them, was able to see the principle involved in small things. That capacity is something lacking from the over-paid, self-adulating, pea brains in the Murkan press. It is also something lacking from a public whose only principles of action are its gluttonous wants and concocted fears. And extensive industries exist to feed both.

In a few days, we will all be subjected to nauseating spectacles of Murkans indulging their “freedom” and “independence.” By now chronically obese denizens will drag their larded bodies to the Washington Mall to listen to loud, trashy, music and to hear Hollywood’s bimbettes du jour squeal about our great land, our great this-n-that and our great everything. The participants will hug their perpetually “at risk children”, gush over our "valianservicemenanwimin” and puff up their sagging bellies to make like a chest while they sing about living in the land of the brave. And they will do all this once they have been granted access to the fenced-off public mall after being frisked, searched, scanned, and identified by armed safety thugs in state employ.

It would be sad were it not so revolting. In the end, history will shed few tears for Murka’s last generations who, like the Romans of yore, have become a nation of slaves while thinking they were masters of the world.

© Barfo, 2006

Results as planned or not

The News: Webster Tarpley, author of 911 Synthetic Terror; Made in USA, said the Sept 11 attacks were an example of "state-sponsored, false-flag terrorism" designed by rogue CIA elements "to start the war of civilisations." Tarpley said Washington was "gripped by war psychosis" and had used terror as a pretext to turn the United States into a police state. (Reuters / Al Jazeera) [Link

The Note: Well -- the result is indisputable at any rate.

©Barfo, 2006
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FundiCons Launch Wedge Attack on Episcopal Church

Capping years of stealth planning, fundamentalist conservatives this past week fired wedge missiles into the Episcopal Church's tri-annual General Convention in an attempt to rupture the Anglican Communion. Though gussied up as a theological and moral issue concerning the role of homosexuals in ecclesiastical life, the attacks were part of a well-financed, neo-con agenda aimed at destroying the U.S. Episcopal Church and stifling the liberal voice of the country's established religions.

Ostensibly at issue was whether the Episcopal Church -- the U.S. branch of the world-wide Anglican Communion -- should formally confess its error in having approved the appointment of an openly gay bishop. Following the investiture of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, in 2003, conservative Anglicans in the United States, Africa and elsewhere, demanded an official repudiation of such appointments as contrary to Scripture.

In response, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as historical head of the Anglican Communion, commissioned an inquiry to look into the matter and to find "ways forward in this situation which can preserve our respect for one another and for the bonds that unite us." (Aug 2003) A year later (Oct 2004), the so-called Windsor Report found that developments in the Episcopal Church (USA) had strained the "bonds of affection" which united the Anglican Communion. Refraining from "judgement" but looking forward to a process of "healing and reconciliation", the report recommended that the Episcopal Church "express its regret" for the "consequences" of its actions and for having "breached" the "proper constraints" of Anglican unity. The report also recommended that the Church abide a moratorium on such ordinations until a general consensus had evolved, and that the bishops involved in approving Robinson's ordination recuse themselves from further "representative" actions.

Windsor was pretty strong stuff. It basically stated that the Episcopal Church in the United States had breached Anglican unity by approving ordinations and acts which were outside the existing consensus and that the Church should cease and desist from further such actions if it desired to remain within the Communion.

But this was not enough for the conservatives who denounced the Windsor Report as so much namby pamby hogwash. Diane Knippers of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, stated that the report had failed to lay down "clear standards" and that "every delay of sending clear signals simply allows revisionist theology to become more firmly entrenched in the Anglican Communion." Kippers added that "false teaching is an infection, we want to see it quarantined."

The American Anglican Council, an ad hoc grouping of conservative bishops, adopted the role of good cop. It welcomed the conclusions of the Windsor Report but only as establishing a "minimum" threshold of what was needed in the circumstances. It went on to call for the equivalent of a guilty plea by the Episcopal Church to the report's conclusions. This exercise in punitive "healing and reconciliation" was followed by a series of demands for doctrinal pledges of allegiance, acts of conformity and, lastly, that the Episcopal Church, as an institution, withdraw itself from the worldwide Anglican Council. In this way, the AAC deconstructed the Archbishop's call for "ways forward" together with "respect" into a suicide platform for the church errant.

If this battle over doctrine and morals were being waged by individual conservatives stating their points of view in open and candid debate, it could be accepted as a legitimate episode in the systole and diastole of people defining their faith together. However, that is not what is taking place. The so-called conservatives are in fact well-greased, neo-con attack groups funded by the likes of A.H. Ahmanson (Home Savings & Loan heir), Adolf Coors, and the Olin (Winchester Rifles) and Scaife foundations (Mellon banking and oil). The point is not that conservative philanthropists fund conservative causes but rather that their funding of these causes is part of a broader political agenda aimed at instituting obedient, religious conformity as an adjunct to predatory capitalism.

A quick recherche pour le banquier will show what's afoot.

The American Anglican Council was founded in 1996 with the stated purpose of opposing gay ordinations and unions. Former Reagan Justice Department officers Richard Campinelli and James Wooton were among the founders. Ahmanson is a major financial backer of the AAC, contributing half a million dollars in one year alone and listing the AAC as 5th on his list of over 15 principal, charitable recipients. AAC works with a variety of UK and African conservative advocacy missions to which Ahmanson also contributes heavily.

Ahmanson himself favors the creation of a strong, centralized form of church governance, an evangelical approach to Biblical interpretation and the defense of traditional teachings on human sexuality. To this end, he is willing to effect a schism in the Anglican Communion. In the run up to the 2006 General Convention, the AAC and its allies worked to remove the Episcopal Church from the Communion and went so far as to threaten Archbishop Rowan Williams with schism if he refused to de-recognize the Episcopal Church and replace it with the Anglican Network, a grouping of conservative churches also funded by Ahmanson that towed the AAC line.

The American Anglican Council is in fact a retail designer offshoot of the broader scoped Institute on Religion and Democracy, founded 1981 as a counter to the World Council of Churches. The IRD targets all three mainline American denominations: The United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Episcopal Church. The IRD's goal, in its own words, is to "restructure" the governing structure of "theologically flawed" protestant denominations and to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left []".

In fact, the IRD's sights are broader still. Its founders were particularly outraged by liberation theology, the Catholic pastoral movement that sought social justice for the poor in Latin American. The IRD waged a media campaign in favor of Reagan's Contra strategies in Central America. The campaign included spreading false rumors about "left wing" religious charitable missions. These lies, which included allegations that the missisions were US government fronts, put the charity workers at personal risk and ultimately caused the missions to fail.

Richard Mellon Scaife is a major bank-roller of the IRD, donating $1.6 million between 1985 and 2001. In 2002, the Scaife Foundation forked over $225,000 to help launch the IRD's "Reforming America's Churches Project". Among the Project's stated goals is the elimination of the United Methodist Church's General Board, the squelching the church's justice and peace programs and the discrediting UMC pastors and bishops by instigating variously pretexted church heresy trials.

Other bank-rollers of the IRD are the John M. Olin Foundation, which backed the IRD in the amount of $489,000 "to counter the political influence of the Religious Left"; the Coors run Castle Rock Foundation, which donated $90,000 to "challenge the orthodoxy promoted by liberal religious leaders in the U.S."; and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, whose donors are linked to the John Birch Society, and which gave $1.5 million to IRD between 1985 and 2001.

What is critical to note is that the largesse of these reactionary money banks is not motivated by a single "hot button" issue. On the contrary, their targeting of so called "liberal churches" is simply a component part of a wider totalist political strategy.

The Bradley Foundation's stated objective is none other than to return the U.S. to the days before government regulated business and corporations were required to negotiate with labor unions. You know, the days when Pinkerton Guards and local police gunned down, truncheoned and imprisoned people for demanding such outrageous things as a 12 hour work day.

Mellon Scaife is a tad tonier. Over a 30 year period as of 1999, Scaife foundations have donated an approximate $620 million to conservative causes and institutions, including: the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, the Free Congress Foundation, the Hudson Institute, Judicial Watch, American Spectator, and National Empowerment Television the ultraconservative cable network.

Ahmanson, Olin, Scaife, Bradley, and Coors are also heavy contributors to the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, and right wing polemicists like Dinesh D'Souza and Charles Murray (The Bell Curve). Last but not least in the beneficiary list, is PNAC, the zio- and neo-con think tank that gave us info-war in cyberspace, preemptive aggression, shock and awe and Action Democracy in Irak.

The IRD itself can hardly be characterized as a bona fide religious organization but is rather a political organization that targets religious groups. The IRD's efforts, alone or in tandem with collaborators, include: pressing the Bush administration to take a harder line on North Korea (2003), supporting Republican tax cuts for the rich (2001), slashing of government services for the poor and disabled (2003), defunding reproductive choices, opposing land mine treaties (2001) and working to roll back environmental protections. The IRD was virtually the only "religious" group in America that backed the idea of a preemptive war on Iraq.

Ahmanson, who is himself a nominal Episcopalian, is a believer in Christian Reconstructionism, a hard-line Calvinist movement that advocates replacing American democracy with a fundamentalist theocracy under strict biblical codes. In this vein, Ahmanson, funds the promotion of Intelligent Design and has advocated stoning as penalty for adultery and homosexuality. Needless to say, as always, there is a silvery lining: Ahmanson also asserts that minimum wage laws go against Bible

There is an idiotic tendency in the United States to think that political views are "OK" when they are personally and sincerely held. Somehow, the fact that Ahmanson may truly believe that Deuteronomy should be incorporated into the United States Code makes it alright. But this is to confuse the right to say what one wants with the merits of what is said; and this confusion simply serves to avoid examining the merits. Hitler may truly and sincerely have believed in his Aryan theories; he may even have had a legal right to advocate them in the "market place of ideas" -- but that certainly does not mean that the rest of us should ignore the defects of the idea or the role it played in a larger political (and military) agenda.

Ahmanson's Christian Deconstructionism is not simply a "personal religious choice" or a "personal opinion about gays". It is the religious wedge of a broader and truly reactionary geo-political and economic agenda. Ahmanson and his fellow FundiCon bank-rollers have set out to destroy the Episcopal Church, and bring the Methodists and Presbyterians to heel in order to promote a totalitarian christo-capitalist state -- in short, in order to destroy Liberalism.

This destructive agenda brings us to a political crucible; for, at bedrock, the United States is a liberal nation. Over the past 40 years fundamentalists and neo-cons have so successfully distorted that foundational political fact that people have been brainwashed into thinking of "liberal" as a mere life-style or policy option. This is absolutely wrong. Liberalism is not an option within a system; it is the system.

Once it is accepted that the United States can be not-liberal, as an option, then the United States as we have known it ceases to be. The way is then clear for the United States to become a fundamentalist, conservative corporate police state rigidly adhering to "authoritative" truths and marginalizing anyone who does not fit the approved mold.

To understand why these groups are gunning for the Episcopal Church, it is necessary to recount what it means to say that the Episcopal Church is a bastion of liberalism and how the Episcopalian brand of liberalism is interwoven into America's very constitutional fabric.

Throughout its 200 year history, the Episcopal Church has been a key voice of liberalism in the United States. This liberalism was less a position on any given topic than a necessary concomitant to the Anglican tradition of accommodation and tolerance. The Church of England --- from which the Episcopal Church derives -- was built on theological and political compromises which sought to still the blood stained waters of the Protestant Reformation. Thus, while its ceremonial and organization remained evocatively Catholic, it gave explicit recognition to Calvinist doctrines on predestination while yet striking a middle and equivocal ground on the theologics of the Eucharist. Although the English Reformation was not without violence and upheaval, the overall and commendable attitude was that it was better to mince words than people.

In ecclesisastical parlance, this accommodating attitude became known as latitudinarianism. This latitudinarian propensity was so intrinsic that there even emerged three flavors of Anglicanism: low, broad and high. Those parishes which were "low church" hewed to such Protestant norms as sermonizing, simplicity of style and only an occasional eucharist. High churches were at the other end of the spectrum, offering a more elaborate liturgy and frequent communion. There were even "spikey" Anglo-Catholics who were more Catholic than the Pope, except for the fact that they didn't have one. Under this wide tent, people were content to call themselves "Anglicans" without too much inquisition and recognizing that they somehow shared a common ground. The fact that this common ground was something felt in the heart rather than explainable from the head was seen as a plus rather than a minus.

Particularly in the United States, this latitudinarianism has significant political implications that lie at the root of our constitutional system of government. From a purely historical point of view, the compromises that went into the making of the Church of England went hand in hand with a complex of political accommodations that went into the making of post feudal Britain. Broadly speaking, these compromises formed part of what the English call "The Settlement" -- that unwritten arrangement of Things English that has provided inexhaustible grist for the likes of Evelyn Waugh and Monty Python. In fact, Waugh's son once wrote that England was not divided into classes, really, but into those who understood "The Total Joke" and those who didn't. The pillars of this joke, according to Waugh, were the Monarchy, the House of Lords, the Tory Party and the Church of England -- all of which was a way of saying that the English Constitution (unwritten) was an intricate array of "Yes, buts" followed by "and anyways..."

Politically speaking, the Settlement of 1688, which established a constitutional monarchy within a restricting framework of individual rights, independent courts and a popularly elected parliament , ultimately became the point of departure for the "Great Compromises" that went into the making of the U.S. Constitution. But what counted more than the pieces of the puzzle -- those "three branches" and two parties everyone learns about in grade school -- was the by then established habit of puzzling together over things in common.

More than the Settlement, what the English are most proud of is English -- the pleasure and use of that sonorous, infinitely malleable, majestic language that gave us the Cloverdale Psalms, Shakespeare, the Bill of Rights and the Gettysburg Address. Beneath the Settlement's arrangement of the pieces, lay a cultivated habit of compromising and a willingness not simply to "talk things out" but to understand ourselves as "we who talk about things in a certain kind of way." This more than anything else, is the salient essence of English and American liberalism.

Let us ask, on what basis we call ourselves Americans? What do Catholics and Buddhists, Republicans and Democrats, football lovers and bridge players have in common? What is it that enables us to say we are "one" notwithstanding the vast catalogue of our often vehement differences?

The essence of "being American" is not some diminished lower common denominator of the few, unimportant things we all agree upon or do. Nor is it a trite and phantasmagorical "celebration of diversity". What unites us is that we have agreed to talk about things in a certain way through our press, from our pulpits, in city councils, legislatures, congress and in our courts. There are rules about how we talk. There are stock phrases, buzz words and fudgy terms that we use to signify importance, urgency, patience or the need to agree while not being quite sure we do.

Viewed this way, it can be seen the Constitution is not simply an organizational chart for government but, more profoundly, the organizational chart for an ongoing conversation. It is a conversation that is necessarily latitudinarian because were it not it so, it would be no more than the responsive cadences of those self trumpetting "people's democracies" that define themselves by their unity of mind and purpose. In contrast, our Constitution (not unlike Anglican doctrine) was not the singular product of a triumphant party that had won the day but the cobbling of a multitude of factions neither of whom could accomplish anything on its own.

Perhaps the most salient political example of this latitudinarian tradition can be seen in the judicial custom and practice of publishing dissenting opinions. Why should dissenting opinions be published at all given that by virtue of being dissents they do not reflect what the law is? Why in the world do we go to the expense and confusion of publishing what the law is not?

We do so because if the Anglican tradition adheres to any one operative directive it is that "there are many witnesses to what The Word is". One man's view may be out of synch. It may even be crazy....or, who knows, one day it may be seen to have been correct after all. "We see now darkly" and so we make room for dissenters, rather than cast them out. Is this logical? Not in the least. But as Justice Holmes said, "the life of the Law is not logic but experience." The historical experience that molded the Church of England and, at the same time, give birth to the English Constitution was the practice and habit of finding ways to accommodate; and this custom and practice became the true fundament of the American Experience.

The one time, we failed to accommodate was during the terrible time of the Civil War when the country was unable to heed Lincoln's appeal not to "break our bonds of affection" or to forget "the mystic chords of memory" that held us together. As Lincoln warned, if we could not continue our conversational disagreement as one nation we would necessarily split and become enemies, which is what happened. But for all that and although the passions stirred were the deepest and most violent our nation has experienced, two institutions were not torn asunder: the Post Office and the Episcopal Church.

Liberalism, as we have understood it for 200 years, presupposes differences as a fact of life. Fundamentalism aims to eradicate them. In the wake of the Windsor Report the Episcopalian "liberals" wanted to continue talking about differences, preferably in as fuzzy terms as possible. To the fundi-con wedge groups this was a weasling, delaying anathema. The fundi-cons are absolutely wrong. Fuzzy talking is the very core of Anglicanism.

Likewise, factional and disputatious talking is also the very core of Americanism. As Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 10, one would no sooner abolish liberty because people wrangle loudly and stupidly over trivial things than one would abolish air because it also gives life to a conflagration.

Our history of accomodating talk within sensed but indefinable bounds is the common essence of both Anglicanism and Americanism. In non-English speaking countries, the word "liberal" refers to the political economy of capitalism with a secondary meaning of "generous" and "tolerant". In the United States the meanings are just the reverse: "liberal" primarily means lax, tolerant, giving and forgiving. It was the homiletics of this usage, rather than the dialectics of social democracy, that Franklin Roosevelt, himself an Episcopalian, used to build what once passed for the U.S. social safety net. Unfortunately, his identification of liberalism with a specific policy, also gave Reaganites, fundamentalists and neo-cons the excuse they needed to launch a war of defamation against the one word that most truly defined what America is. They twisted meanings in order to equate "liberal" with loose, libertine, wacky and perverse. That accomplished, it was easy enough to attack social programs as crazy, indulgent, give-aways to the undeserving. In so doing they struck lethal blows not simply at social programs or cultural fads, but at the words and concepts that are absolutely indispensable to understanding what America is truly about.

The view I have propounded, sees the defining essence of American Liberalism, as having its historical roots in the accommodating, conversational process that gave form to Church of England. However, the view that a Faith is defined by the evolving customs and usages of the faithful together is itself an idea firmly rooted in Thomist theology, which holds that the Traditions of the Church over time are a source of divine unfolding co-equal with Sacred Scripture itself. This view, transposed to the secular sphere, is equally the essence of Anglo-American law. The Constitution may be a quasi-sacred scripture of sorts, but constitutional law is a certain ongoing, adversarial, conversation about it.

This living and peremuting traditionalism is utterly rejected by fundamentalist Protestants. They reject any source of faith or truth or justice that is not in a written text; and in lieu of an experience, with all its lack of clarity, conflicts and fudging, the life of the Church is reduced to a collection of mandates. Of course few words under the sun are unambiguous in the manner of "1" or "3" and so what the Bible "demands" must be pronounced by someone. Far from being any foundation to a conversation, that "biblical demand" leaves someone dictating and the rest obeying. To live that kind of faith is anyone's personal choice, but as a public matter and as a political paradigm it is as antithetical to American Liberalism as those self-proclaimed "democracies" of one folk, one mind, one leader.

As presented by the mainstream media, the controversies over the ordination of a gay bishop and the blessing of homosexual unions appear to be routine and almost clich?d protests by morally rigid, conservative, traditionalists versus morally lax, liberals. However, to accept that contextualization is to tacitly accept the very fundamentalist intellectual construct at issue. The Episcopal Church is fundamentally a liberal institution that has always rejected the persecution and exclusion which inevitably attends biblical literalism and doctrinal finality. What is really at issue is not the ordination of a gay man as a bishop or the blessing of gay unions, but whether the Episcopal Church will remain a bastion of liberalism or be reduced to a redundant conservative, fundamentalist tag-along.

Sadly enough, the FundiCon wedge attack launched at the General Convention comes close to being a win/win strategy for them. If the so called "liberals" knuckle under, they are destroyed. If they fight back aggressively, they risk further painting themselves into a corner as caricature, flakey, out-of-bound liberals. It will take skill and dogged determination to shift the debate away from specific issues on to the true question of Anglicanism's essentially liberal nature.

While the proximate outcome of this battle is of concern to Episcopalians, the rest of us should harbor no illusions. The Episcopal Church stands as an impediment to the FundiCon agenda for America, and the attack at the Convention should be seen in its true political light as a proxy attack on America's essential liberal nature. America is Liberal or it is not.

©Barfo, 2006.

Some Links of Interest

http://thewitness.org/agw/webster101504.html (Power Money Control)
http://www.post-gazette.com/printer.asp 99/23/2003 (Region Funds Episcopalian's Move to Divide)
http://www.zionsherald.org/Jan2004_specialreport.html
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004/
Episcopal News Service (May 2006) "Following the Money"

How Much of Lethal is OK?

The American Heart Association has published new dietary guidelines in which it is recommended that ingestion of trans-fats "not exceed 1%" of daily caloric intake.

Gee.... if it's that bad, why intake it at all?

©Barfo, 2006
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Supreme Court Drives Dagger into Corpse of Fourth Amendment.

In a 5-4 decision, with Justice Scalia in the lead, the Republiscam majority of the Supreme Court held today that non-compliance with constitutional “knock notice” rules did not require suppression of subsequently seized evidence. In practical effect, this means that Am'urkans have now attained the same status as Iraqis under U.S. liberation.    [continue reading]

Supreme Court Drives Dagger into Corpse of Fourth Amendment.

In a 5-4 decision, with Justice Scalia in the lead, the Republiscam majority of the Supreme Court held today that non-compliance with constitutional “knock notice” rules did not require suppression of subsequently seized evidence. In practical effect, this means that Murkans have now attained the same status as Iraqis under U.S. liberation.

A little background for those who may have been ignoring the Fourth Amendment for the past decade or two. The amendment requires a judicially issued warrant before government agents can forcibly enter your home, make a mess of it, and seize what they say is evidence of a crime. After all, we all can remember the melodramas of Wehrmacht soldiers stomping around in hobnailed boots, kicking down doors, and we wouldn’t want that in God’s Country now, would we?

As ancillary to the warrant requirement (have-warrant-can-enter), the high court held, in Wilson v. Arkansas, (1995) 514 U. S. 927, that police are also required to knock and give notice of their entry before kicking in doors. The reason is as simple as it is obvious: a warrant to search for evidence of crime is not a license to act like a thug. For this reason, the Court has held that the “reasonableness” of a search and seizure depends as much on the “method of an officer’s entry” as it does on the grounds for entering at all.

As most people have heard, at least from the raving hysterics on Fox News, a violation of the Fourth Amendment requires suppression of the illegally seized evidence. This has been the rule since Weeks v. United States, (1914) 232 U. S. 383. The reason is also as simple as it is obvious: Why have a constitution at all if it can be violated with impunity?

The Constitution requires a president to be 36 years of age when elected. If a 12 year old were elected would it be so absurd to say he should be excluded from taking office? What is not constitutional simply ought not to be, and ought not to be recognized “in contemplation of law” as the quaint but incisive phrase used to have it.

However, in the 1960’s, when the high court was all gaga with this thing called sociology, it invented more scientific sounding reasons for the exclusionary rule. It held that exclusion of illegally seized evidence was required because by loosing otherwise good evidence, cops would be taught an object lesson in good behavior. The prospect of loosing their case because they failed to comply with the constitution would act as an incentive to follow the law.

Of course not only is that sort of heteronomous reasoning a lot of stuff and nonsense, it is also a sword that cuts both ways. Needless to say court conservatives, in lockstep with their boys-in-blue, were quick to argue that evidence should be suppressed only “where its remedial objectives” would be “most efficaciously served,” United States v. Calandra, (1974) 414 U. S. 338, 348) and “where its deterrence benefits outweighed its ‘substantial social costs.’” (United States v. Leon, (1984) 468 U. S. 897, 907.) What these marbles in-the-mouth meant was that if judges could think of some plausible sounding reason why cops did not need to have their knuckles wrapped, the evidence need not be suppressed.

So now we come to today’s decision in Hudson v. Michigan (June 15, 2006) No. 04–1360. Looking to maximum efficaciousness, the Republiscam majority held that suppressing evidence on account of police failure to give knock notice was outweighed by the “social costs” of doing so.

Hudson was not a case involving terrorism. Why it was not even a case involving code purple Kiddie Porn. It was a garden variety drug seizure case. If the social costs of loosing a routine drug case outweigh unconstitutional behavior, it is hard to see what kind of misbehaviour the cops have to commit in order to warrant a constitutional sanction.

The majority was evidently troubled by the subjectivity of this how high is too high approach; and so it fashioned a test which was just as bad. It held that evidence should not be suppressed unless the illegality complained of was the “but for” reason for the seizure. In plain language, if the cops lied in order to get the warrant and if the warrant was the basis for seizing the evidence, then the exclusionary rule would take effect. On the other hand, if the police used a SWAT team to blast away the front of a house as the method for serving the warrant, that misbehaviour would not call for a constitutional sanction. How the warrant is served is something different from why the warrant was served, and the Bill of Rights protects only the “why” not the “how”. At least, thus sprach Scalia.

Every day, Iraqis are subjected to having their homes burst into without so much as a knock... at least not that kind of knock that doesn’t come from the heel of a boot. Without an effective deterrence on thug-behaviour, Murkans can expect little more from the Kevlar Boys patrolling their streets.

But not all hope is lost. The Republiscam majority did continue to recognize that the primary reason for the “knock notice” rule “is the protection of human life and limb, because an unannounced entry may provoke violence in supposed self defense by the surprised resident.” Supposed? There is little to “suppose” about a smashing sound at the door. The court recognizes that people who smash down doors court the risk of being blown away by people on the other side who have a natural, human and constitutional expectation of security in their own homes.

©Barfo 2006.

Meanwhile Back At Camp I-Rock

Marines held a hoot n' hodown singing and laughing over their exploits in wasting iraqi women and children. According to BBC News (14 June 06), a video of the performance was posted on the web. Needless to say, the Marine Korps was investigating....

Will Any Senator speak out against Torture?

The world cries out in protest against US brutality at Guantanamo, but Congress lies supine and silent.

Dear Senator,

In March of 2004, before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, I wrote you a letter calling your attention to the abuse of detainees at Guantanamo. I noted that information leaking out from the camp plus reports of attempted suicides coupled with the officially admitted facts and decrypted government double-talk, all pointed to the conclusion that people who had never be shown to be guilty of anything were being institutionally and routinely abused and tortured.

Since then you have said nothing... not even on your web site, not even read into the Congressional Record at 3.45 a.m. The International Red Cross has broken its 100 year tradition of non-comment and has condemned the mistreatment of the Guantanamo detainees; but you have said nothing. The United Nations has called for the closure of this infamous torture center; but you have said nothing. Our own and only ally in this sordid affair has called for the release of the detainees; but you have said nothing. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has condemned the illegality of the detentions; but you have said nothing. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, scores of NGOs, legal organizations and the Holy See itself have cried out against the infamy taking place at Guantanamo; but you and your supine colleagues in Congress have remained silent.

It now turns out that after five long years of degradation, torture and hopelessness three detainees have committed suicide; and, in a shocking statement that bespeaks the moral putrefaction that rots throughout the United States Government, Rear Admiral Harris has dismissed these suicides as “acts of war.” The Government has called them a “PR” move that shows “no regard for life”. The depravity and perversity of these remarks is without rival in the annals of history, except perhaps for the SS guards who may have laughed at Auschwitz prisoners who electrocuted themselves on the barbed wire while trying to escape.

Suicide horrifies because it goes against the most fundamental grain of all living things, which is to live. Suicides are not “playing games” nor are they “attacking” anyone. They are simply and pathetically ending a life that has been filled only with the certainty of pain and despair.

As the Vatican statement reminds us, even criminals and even enemies are human beings that warrant fair and humane treatment. Even more, detainees who have never been charged must less shown to be guilty of anything.

Ignoring these fundamentals of decency, the United States tortures people to suicide all but openly in the global forum. It does so indifferently to the universal outcry against it. It shrugs off the suicides with a moral depravity and lack of humanity that is beyond belief.

When are you and your supine colleagues going to show some impulse other than craven ambition and political cowardice? When will you recover a sense of shame? When will rise up and speak out against the depravity of this Administration and the culture of thuggery that has seized Washington?

©Barfo, 2006

The News: For many months, the Israelis have been pounding away at open areas such as fields and orchards in an effort to prevent Palestinian militants using them to fire their home-made missile into crudely made missiles into nearby Israeli territory. (BBC)

The Note: “Prevent” ...? I.e. they are doing it pre-emptively, routinely destroying orchards and fields so that no one will think of using them. Of course that also means that no one can farm them. It also means that crops are destroyed. We know that this is preemptive because “for many months” there have been virtually no missile attacks on Israel from Gaza.

They are also bombing beaches. Clearly this is an attempt to intimidate the civilian populace.

©Barfo, 2006
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Preventive Pacification

The News: For many months, the Israelis have been pounding away at open areas such as fields and orchards in an effort to prevent Palestinian militants using them to fire their home-made missile into crudely made missiles into nearby Israeli territory. (BBC)

The Note: “Prevent” ...? I.e. they are doing it pre-emptively, routinely destroying orchards and fields so that no one will think of using them. Of course that also means that no one can farm them. It also means that crops are destroyed. We know that this is preemptive because “for many months” there have been virtually no missile attacks on Israel from Gaza.

They are also bombing beaches. Clearly this is an attempt to intimidate the civilian populace.

©Barfo, 2006
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Making Clear Points

Item: "I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it." -- Ariel Sharon to Shimon Peres, October 3rd, 2001, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.

Item: We will bring you back to the pre-industrial age", James Baker to the Iraq's Deputy Premier Tariq Aziz on January 9, 1999 in Geneva)

©Barfo, 2006
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