the/diseased/republik

here is a lil history for you kids out there. and a day planner for the for security minded:

This marked the first time under the new United States Constitution that the federal government used military force to exert authority over the nation's citizens. It was also one of only two times that a sitting President personally commanded the military in the field; the other was after President James Madison fled the British occupation of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812 . The military suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion set a precedent that U.S. citizens who wished to change the law had to do so peacefully through constitutional means; otherwise, the government would meet any threats to disturb the status quo with force. The suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion also had the unintended consequences of encouraging small whiskey producers in Kentucky and Tennessee , which remained outside the sphere of Federal control for many more years. In these frontier areas, they also found good corn-growing country as well as limestone -filtered water and therefore began makin...

Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners. “I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning. Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. “That's it, those three guys,” Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times.

The CIA has dismissed a Council of Europe report alleging that it ran secret jails for terror suspects in Europe after the 11 September attacks. A CIA spokesman said the report was biased and distorted, and that the agency had operated lawfully. Swiss Senator Dick Marty, who wrote the report, said secret CIA prisons "did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania". The charge was denied by both Polish and Romanian officials. Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who served from 1995 to 2005, said on Friday: "There were no secret prisons in Poland." Romanian senator Norica Nicolai, who headed an investigation into the allegations, also denied his country's involvement. The report says Romania "was developed into a site to which more detainees were transferred only as the HVD programme expanded". "The secret detention facilities in Europe were run directly and exclusively by the CIA," the report says. But i...

The Articles of Confederation Agreed to by Congress November 15, 1777; ratified and in force, March 1, 1781. Preamble To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting. Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Article I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America." Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and gene...

How It Works: “Nick,” a top crystal-meth dealer for a decade before getting arrested in 2004, explains the system. Every other month, he’d purchase a pound of meth ($32,000 to $36,000) from producers in the Midwest or the Filipino mob in California, and have it shipped via regular mail or FedEx inside teddy bears, candles, or coffee. In the next 36 hours, he’d sell it in bulk to three or four associates, pocketing a 500 percent profit. The associates in turn would sell to dozens of small-time dealers who’d take to the streets, clubs, and doorsteps of addicts. “If you stay small, there’s not room for profit,” says Nick. “But at the top, I would buy a quarter gram for $5 and sell it for $50. It’s around $65 today.” There are 1,792 quarter-grams in a pound of powder (that’s $89,600 for Nick). SOURCE Nick ascended to the top organically. He began dealing just enough to cover his own addiction. “You outgrow the little guys you buy from,” says Nick. “You want more than they have. So you go t...

Removal from office Article II of the Constitution provides that the president may be removed from office for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors " through impeachment and subsequent conviction. Article I gives the power of impeachment to a majority of the House of Representatives and conviction to two-thirds of the Senate . Two presidents, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, have been impeached. Neither was subsequently convicted by the Senate; however, Johnson was acquitted by just one vote. By Act of Congress, the president may resign if his written resignation is delivered to the Secretary of State . [9] The only president to resign was Richard Nixon , on August 9 , 1974 , facing articles of impeachment being reported on favorably by the House Judiciary Committee and probable subsequent Senate conviction. If the office of President becomes vacant, whether through death, impeachment, or resignation of the sitting president, or throu...

The strike had an immediate effect. By the end of February, all smelters in Colorado were either closed or running part-time. At the beginning of March, the Gold King and Granite mines gave in and resumed the eight-hour day.[ 5 ] Mine owners still holding out for the 10-hour day soon attempted to re-open their mines. On March 14, they obtained a court injunction ordering the miners not to interfere with the operation of their mines. A limited number of strikebreakers were brought in. The WFM initially attempted to persuade these men to join the union and strike. When they were unsuccessful, the WFM resorted to threats and violence. The strikebreakers were so intimidated that few of them reported for work.[ 6 ] An event on March 16 changed the nature of the strike. An armed group of miners ambushed and captured six sheriff's deputies en route to the Victor mine. Shots were fired, and the miners and deputies engaged in a fistfight. Two of the deputies received minor injuries. An Alt...

Beginning January 2006, a movement to revive the SDS took shape. A small group of SDS veterans (Robert Alan Haber, Tom Good, Paul Buhle) have joined with high school students, Jessica Rapchick and Pat Korte, to call for a new formation of SDS in to build a multi-issue organization that could re-envision a student movement in the United States. Several chapters at various colleges were subsequently formed. On Martin Luther King Day of 2006, these chapters banded together to issue a press release that stated their intentions to reform the national SDS organization.[4] In the press release, the SDS called for the organization's first national convention since 1969 to be held in the summer of 2006 and to have it preceded by a series of regional conferences occurring during the Memorial Day weekend. These regional conferences would not also be the first of their kind to be held since 1969, however, as on April 23, 2006, the SDS held a northeast regional conference at Brown University. F...

The AP is reporting that a military judge has thrown out terrorism charges against Omar Khadr, a detainee at Guantanamo that could undo the whole War Crimes trials system. However, what may be more stunning is that this ruling could throw out THE ENTIRE WAR-CRIMES TRIAL SYSTEM. And how? Because of a technicality which appears to have been caused by circumventing the Constitution and other deceptive practices. The Geneva Convention, which is US law, requires a legal entity (e.g., a court) to first determine that a prisoner is an UNLAWFUL enemy combatant before we can abandon the military-POW-specific elements of the convention. In that case, however, the prisoner should be tried according to international or civilian (e.g., US, or local) law. If the prisoner is a LAWFUL combatant, then the Geneva Convention's POW provisions apply. There are only those two options, and BushCo had to choose one or the other. They chose neither. Bush has so far only vaguely claimed these men are unlaw...

FTA: The Bush administration has changed the rules over record-keeping to prevent access to visitor records. They've usurped the role of the Secret Service, covered by the Freedom of Information Act. Bush / Cheney claim visitor records are under their jurisdiction, thus exempt from FOIA. CREW is not accepting that determination, hence our lawsuits. The Bush administration has changed the rules over record-keeping to prevent access to visitor records. They've usurped the role of the Secret Service, which is covered by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Instead, Bush and Cheney claim visitor records are under their jurisdiction, thus exempt from FOIA. CREW is not accepting that determination, hence our lawsuits. The first paragraph of the latest AP article sums it up: A newly disclosed effort to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's visitor records secret is the latest White House push to make sure the public does not learn who has been meeting with top officials in t...

The Republican Party’s only anti-war candidate (so far) tells Jon Stewart it’s the other candidates who have lost touch with conservative values. As Stewart points out, that could be a problem: “You appear to have consistent, principled integrity. Uh ... Americans don’t usually go for that.” Watch it here .

A few years ago, I heard someone call into a right-wing radio show to rail against the feminists, the homosexuals, the atheists, and other usual suspects. The host enthusiastically agreed. The caller then voiced the hope that the host would join him in supporting the establishment of Islamic law in America, a twist that left the host sputtering incoherently. 'These days, the idea of conservative Christians aligning themselves with radical Muslims is not a prank caller's gag but the subject of heated debate on the right. Dinesh D'Souza sparked the argument with his controversial book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 (Random House).' (Reason article ).

OK...going postal in russia loses something in the translation... as posted over at Hack a DAY : Apparently our Russian brethren have some issues ordering things online. Their shipping solution? A bit of remote social engineering. Thanks to the nature of Russian addresses - that is, the language is pretty easy to recognize - they've found that putting down their address in Russia along with a Canadian zip code will usually result in the package being forwarded along thanks to the thoughtful Canadian postal workers. Spacebo... read original and another poster had this tidbit: As a Libertarian I especially Hate Socialists disguised as Democrats. So I started signing up to a couple of campaigns of some really pinko types . I donate $1 Dollar and Letters will start POURING in. I think they all trade lists etc. Anyhow once the letters start coming to me from say candidate X. I take the generic Pre-Paid envelopes they usually supply and Clear Tape it to a Brick that I have wrapped to loo...

Postdialectic libertarianism in the works of Rushdie Steven M. Stryker, esq. Department of Sociolinguistics, Miskatonic University, Waukegan, Il 1. Rushdie and postdialectic libertarianism If one examines capitalist theory, one is faced with a choice: either reject submodernist dialectic theory or conclude that the purpose of the participant is deconstruction, but only if Baudrillard’s critique of objectivism is valid; if that is not the case, expression is created by the masses. Therefore, Bataille uses the term ‘postdialectic libertarianism’ to denote the difference between class and consciousness. “ Class is meaningless,” says Lacan; however, according to Tilton [1] , it is not so much class that is meaningless, but rather the rubicon, and subsequent failure, of class. The characteristic theme of von Ludwig’s [2] model of dialectic capitalism is the fatal flaw, and therefore the futility, of subcapitalist language. In a sense, if objectivism holds, we have to choose betw...