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America has entered its third great era: the post constitutional one. In the first, in the colonial years,van cleef and arpels fake necklace, a unitary executive, the King of England, ruled without checks and balances, allowing no freedom of speech, due process, or privacy when it came to protecting his power.In the second, the principles of the Enlightenment and an armed rebellion were used to push back the king abuses. The result was a new country and a new constitution with a Bill of Rights expressly meant to check the government's power. Now, we are wading into the shallow waters of a third era, a time when that government is abandoning the basic ideas that saw our nation through centuries of challenges far more daunting than terrorism. Those ideas enshrined in the Bill of Rights are disarmingly concise. Think of them as the haiku of a genuine people's government.Deeper, darker waters lie ahead and we seem drawn down into them. For here there be monsters.The Powers of a Police State DeniedAmerica in its pre constitutional days may seem eerily familiar even to casual readers of current events. We lived then under the control of a king. (Think now: the imperial presidency.) That king was a powerful, unitary executive who ruled at a distance. His goal was simple: to use his power over American colonies to draw the maximum financial gain while suppressing any dissent that might endanger his control.In those years, protest was dangerous. Speech could indeed make you the enemy of the government. Journalism could be a crime if you didn write in support of those in power. A citizen needed to watch what he said, for there were spies everywhere, including fellow colonists hoping for a few crumbs from the king's table. Laws could be brutal and punishments swift as well as extra judicial. In extreme cases, troops shot down those simply assembling to speak out.Among the many offenses against liberty in pre constitutional America, one pivotal event, the Stamp Act of 1765, stands out. To enforce the taxes imposed by the Act,van cleef and arpel replica necklace, the king's men used "writs of assistance" that allowed them to burst into any home or business, with or without suspicion of wrongdoing. American privacy was violated and property ransacked, often simply as a warning of the king power. Some colonist was then undoubtedly the first American to mutter,van cleef and arpels replica clover necklace, if I have nothing to hide, why should I be afraid? He soon learned that when a population is categorically treated as a potential enemy, everyone has something to hide if the government claims they do.The Stamp Act and the flood of kingly offenses that followed created in those who founded the United States a profound suspicion of what an unchecked government could do, and a sense that power and freedom are not likely to coexist comfortably in a democracy. A balancing mechanism was required. In addition to the body of the Constitution outlining what the new nation's government could do, needed was an accounting of what it could not do. The answer was the Bill of Rights.The Bill's preamble explained the matter this way: order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [the government's] powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added. Thomas Jefferson commented separately, "[A] bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."In other words, the Bill of Rights was written to make sure that the new government would not replicate the abuses of power of the old one. Each amendment spoke directly to a specific offense committed by the king. Their purpose collectively was to lay out what the government could never take away. Knowing first hand the dangers of a police state and unchecked power, those who wrote the Constitution wanted to be clear: never again.It needs to be said that those imperfect men were very much of their era. They were right about much, but desperately wrong about other things. They addressed but ignored the rights of women and Native Americans. Above all, they did not abolish the institution of slavery, our nation Original Sin. It would take many years, and much blood, to begin to rectify those mistakes.Still, for more than two centuries, the meaning of the Bill of Rights was generally expanded, though especially in wartime it sometimes temporarily contracted. Yet the basic principles that guided America were sustained despite civil war, world wars, depressions, and endless challenges. Then, one September morning, our Post Constitutional era began amid falling towers and empty skies. What have we lost since? More than we imagine. A look at the Bill of Rights, amendment by amendment, tells the tale."Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."The First Amendment was meant to make one thing indisputably clear: free speech was the basis for a government of the people. Without a free press, as well as the ability to openly gather, debate, protest, and criticize, how would the people be able to judge their government's adherence to the other rights? How could people vote knowledgeably if they didn know what was being done in their name by their government? An informed citizenry, Thomas Jefferson stated, was "a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."That was how it was seen long ago. In Post Constitutional America, however, the government strives to "control the message," to actively thwart efforts to maintain a citizenry informed about what done in its name, a concept that these days seems as quaint as Jefferson's powdered wig. There are far too many examples of the post 9/11 erosion of the First Amendment to list here. Let's just look at a few important ones that tell the tale of what we have lost since 9/11.(Lack of) Freedom of InformationIn 1966, an idea for keeping Americans better informed on the workings of their government was hatched: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Strengthened in 1974, it began with the premise that, except for some obvious categories (like serious national security matters and personal information), the position of the government should be: everything it does is available to the public. Like the Bill of Rights, which made specific the limits of government, FOIA began with a presumption that it was the government duty to make information available and quickly to the people, unless a convincing case could be made otherwise. The default position of the FOIA switch was set to ON.Three decades later, the FOIA system works far differently. Agencies are generally loath to release documents of any sort and instead put their efforts into creating roadblocks to legitimate requests. Some still require signatures on paper. (The State Department notes, for personal information cannot be submitted electronically and should be submitted by mail. Others demand hyper detailed information like the precise dates and titles of documents whose dates and titles may be classified and unavailable. The NSA simply denies almost all FOIA requests out of hand, absent a court order.Most federal agencies now regard the deadline mandated for a response as the time period to send out a received note. They tend to assign only a few staff members to processing requests, leading to near endless delays. At the State Department, most FOIA work is done on a part time basis by retirees. The CIA won directly release electronic versions of documents. Even when a request is fulfilled, copying is often denied and reproduction costs exaggerated.In some cases, the requested records have a way of disappearing or are simply removed. The ACLU experience when it filed an FOIA style request with the Sarasota police department on its use of the cell phone surveillance tool Stingray could be considered typical. The morning the ACLU was to review the files, Federal Marshals arrived and physically took possession of them, claiming they had deputized the local cops and made the files federal property.John Young, who runs the web site Cryptome and is a steadfast FOIA requester, stated, delay, brush off, lying are normal. It is a delusion for ordinary requesters and a bitch of a challenge for professionals. Churning has become a way of life for FOIA, costly as hell for little results. Lips and the WhistleblowerAll government agencies have regulations requiring employees to obtain permission before speaking to the representatives of the people that is, journalists. Even speaking about unclassified information is a no no that may cost you your job. A government ever more in lockdown mode has created what one journalist calls a where censorship is the norm. who does speak to Americans about their government? Growing hordes of spokespeople, communications staff, trained PR crews, and those anonymous officials who pop up so regularly in news articles in major papers.With the government obsessively seeking to hide or spin what it does, in the sunlight contact barred, and those inside locked behind an iron curtain of secrecy, the whistleblower has become the paradigmatic figure of the era. Not surprisingly, anyone who blows a whistle has, in these years, come under fierce attack.Pick a case: Tom Drake exposing early NSA efforts to turn its spy tools on Americans, Edward Snowden proving that the government has us under constant surveillance, Chelsea Manning documenting war crimes in Iraq and sleazy diplomacy everywhere, John Kiriakou acknowledging torture by his former employer the CIA, or Robert MacLean revealing Transportation Safety Administration malfeasance. In each instance, the threat of jail was quick to surface. The nuclear option against such truthtellers is the Espionage Act, a law that offended the Constitution when implemented in the midst of World War I. It has been resurrected by the Obama administration as a blunt tool for silencing and punishing whistleblowers.The Obama administration has already charged six people under that act for allegedly mishandling classified information. Even Richard Nixon only invoked it once, in a failed prosecution against Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.Indeed, the very word couldn be stranger in the context of these cases. None of those charged spied. None sought to aid an enemy or make money selling secrets. No matter. In Post Constitutional America, the powers that be stand ready to twist language in whatever Orwellian direction is necessary to bridge the gap between reality and the king's needs. national security or benefit a foreign power. It could still be a part of an charge.A final question might be: How could a law designed almost 100 years ago to stop German spies in wartime have become a tool to silence the few Americans willing to risk everything to exercise their First Amendment rights? When did free speech become a crime?Each person charged under the Espionage Act in these years was primarily a source for a journalist. The press was necessary to question government officials directly, comment on their actions,van cleef and arpels fake butterfly necklace, and inform the citizenry about what its government was doing. Sadly, as the Obama administration is moving ever more fiercely against those who might reveal its acts or documents, the bulk of the media have acquiesced. Glenn Greenwald said it plainly: too many journalists have gone into a self censoring mode, practicing "obsequious journalism."
America has entered its third great era: the post constitutional one. In the first, in the colonial years,van cleef and arpels fake necklace, a unitary executive, the King of England, ruled without checks and balances, allowing no freedom of speech, due process, or privacy when it came to protecting his power.In the second, the principles of the Enlightenment and an armed rebellion were used to push back the king abuses. The result was a new country and a new constitution with a Bill of Rights expressly meant to check the government's power. Now, we are wading into the shallow waters of a third era, a time when that government is abandoning the basic ideas that saw our nation through centuries of challenges far more daunting than terrorism. Those ideas enshrined in the Bill of Rights are disarmingly concise. Think of them as the haiku of a genuine people's government.Deeper, darker waters lie ahead and we seem drawn down into them. For here there be monsters.The Powers of a Police State DeniedAmerica in its pre constitutional days may seem eerily familiar even to casual readers of current events. We lived then under the control of a king. (Think now: the imperial presidency.) That king was a powerful, unitary executive who ruled at a distance. His goal was simple: to use his power over American colonies to draw the maximum financial gain while suppressing any dissent that might endanger his control.In those years, protest was dangerous. Speech could indeed make you the enemy of the government. Journalism could be a crime if you didn write in support of those in power. A citizen needed to watch what he said, for there were spies everywhere, including fellow colonists hoping for a few crumbs from the king's table. Laws could be brutal and punishments swift as well as extra judicial. In extreme cases, troops shot down those simply assembling to speak out.Among the many offenses against liberty in pre constitutional America, one pivotal event, the Stamp Act of 1765, stands out. To enforce the taxes imposed by the Act,van cleef and arpel replica necklace, the king's men used "writs of assistance" that allowed them to burst into any home or business, with or without suspicion of wrongdoing. American privacy was violated and property ransacked, often simply as a warning of the king power. Some colonist was then undoubtedly the first American to mutter,van cleef and arpels replica clover necklace, if I have nothing to hide, why should I be afraid? He soon learned that when a population is categorically treated as a potential enemy, everyone has something to hide if the government claims they do.The Stamp Act and the flood of kingly offenses that followed created in those who founded the United States a profound suspicion of what an unchecked government could do, and a sense that power and freedom are not likely to coexist comfortably in a democracy. A balancing mechanism was required. In addition to the body of the Constitution outlining what the new nation's government could do, needed was an accounting of what it could not do. The answer was the Bill of Rights.The Bill's preamble explained the matter this way: order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [the government's] powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added. Thomas Jefferson commented separately, "[A] bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."In other words, the Bill of Rights was written to make sure that the new government would not replicate the abuses of power of the old one. Each amendment spoke directly to a specific offense committed by the king. Their purpose collectively was to lay out what the government could never take away. Knowing first hand the dangers of a police state and unchecked power, those who wrote the Constitution wanted to be clear: never again.It needs to be said that those imperfect men were very much of their era. They were right about much, but desperately wrong about other things. They addressed but ignored the rights of women and Native Americans. Above all, they did not abolish the institution of slavery, our nation Original Sin. It would take many years, and much blood, to begin to rectify those mistakes.Still, for more than two centuries, the meaning of the Bill of Rights was generally expanded, though especially in wartime it sometimes temporarily contracted. Yet the basic principles that guided America were sustained despite civil war, world wars, depressions, and endless challenges. Then, one September morning, our Post Constitutional era began amid falling towers and empty skies. What have we lost since? More than we imagine. A look at the Bill of Rights, amendment by amendment, tells the tale."Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."The First Amendment was meant to make one thing indisputably clear: free speech was the basis for a government of the people. Without a free press, as well as the ability to openly gather, debate, protest, and criticize, how would the people be able to judge their government's adherence to the other rights? How could people vote knowledgeably if they didn know what was being done in their name by their government? An informed citizenry, Thomas Jefferson stated, was "a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."That was how it was seen long ago. In Post Constitutional America, however, the government strives to "control the message," to actively thwart efforts to maintain a citizenry informed about what done in its name, a concept that these days seems as quaint as Jefferson's powdered wig. There are far too many examples of the post 9/11 erosion of the First Amendment to list here. Let's just look at a few important ones that tell the tale of what we have lost since 9/11.(Lack of) Freedom of InformationIn 1966, an idea for keeping Americans better informed on the workings of their government was hatched: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Strengthened in 1974, it began with the premise that, except for some obvious categories (like serious national security matters and personal information), the position of the government should be: everything it does is available to the public. Like the Bill of Rights, which made specific the limits of government, FOIA began with a presumption that it was the government duty to make information available and quickly to the people, unless a convincing case could be made otherwise. The default position of the FOIA switch was set to ON.Three decades later, the FOIA system works far differently. Agencies are generally loath to release documents of any sort and instead put their efforts into creating roadblocks to legitimate requests. Some still require signatures on paper. (The State Department notes, for personal information cannot be submitted electronically and should be submitted by mail. Others demand hyper detailed information like the precise dates and titles of documents whose dates and titles may be classified and unavailable. The NSA simply denies almost all FOIA requests out of hand, absent a court order.Most federal agencies now regard the deadline mandated for a response as the time period to send out a received note. They tend to assign only a few staff members to processing requests, leading to near endless delays. At the State Department, most FOIA work is done on a part time basis by retirees. The CIA won directly release electronic versions of documents. Even when a request is fulfilled, copying is often denied and reproduction costs exaggerated.In some cases, the requested records have a way of disappearing or are simply removed. The ACLU experience when it filed an FOIA style request with the Sarasota police department on its use of the cell phone surveillance tool Stingray could be considered typical. The morning the ACLU was to review the files, Federal Marshals arrived and physically took possession of them, claiming they had deputized the local cops and made the files federal property.John Young, who runs the web site Cryptome and is a steadfast FOIA requester, stated, delay, brush off, lying are normal. It is a delusion for ordinary requesters and a bitch of a challenge for professionals. Churning has become a way of life for FOIA, costly as hell for little results. Lips and the WhistleblowerAll government agencies have regulations requiring employees to obtain permission before speaking to the representatives of the people that is, journalists. Even speaking about unclassified information is a no no that may cost you your job. A government ever more in lockdown mode has created what one journalist calls a where censorship is the norm. who does speak to Americans about their government? Growing hordes of spokespeople, communications staff, trained PR crews, and those anonymous officials who pop up so regularly in news articles in major papers.With the government obsessively seeking to hide or spin what it does, in the sunlight contact barred, and those inside locked behind an iron curtain of secrecy, the whistleblower has become the paradigmatic figure of the era. Not surprisingly, anyone who blows a whistle has, in these years, come under fierce attack.Pick a case: Tom Drake exposing early NSA efforts to turn its spy tools on Americans, Edward Snowden proving that the government has us under constant surveillance, Chelsea Manning documenting war crimes in Iraq and sleazy diplomacy everywhere, John Kiriakou acknowledging torture by his former employer the CIA, or Robert MacLean revealing Transportation Safety Administration malfeasance. In each instance, the threat of jail was quick to surface. The nuclear option against such truthtellers is the Espionage Act, a law that offended the Constitution when implemented in the midst of World War I. It has been resurrected by the Obama administration as a blunt tool for silencing and punishing whistleblowers.The Obama administration has already charged six people under that act for allegedly mishandling classified information. Even Richard Nixon only invoked it once, in a failed prosecution against Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.Indeed, the very word couldn be stranger in the context of these cases. None of those charged spied. None sought to aid an enemy or make money selling secrets. No matter. In Post Constitutional America, the powers that be stand ready to twist language in whatever Orwellian direction is necessary to bridge the gap between reality and the king's needs. national security or benefit a foreign power. It could still be a part of an charge.A final question might be: How could a law designed almost 100 years ago to stop German spies in wartime have become a tool to silence the few Americans willing to risk everything to exercise their First Amendment rights? When did free speech become a crime?Each person charged under the Espionage Act in these years was primarily a source for a journalist. The press was necessary to question government officials directly, comment on their actions,van cleef and arpels fake butterfly necklace, and inform the citizenry about what its government was doing. Sadly, as the Obama administration is moving ever more fiercely against those who might reveal its acts or documents, the bulk of the media have acquiesced. Glenn Greenwald said it plainly: too many journalists have gone into a self censoring mode, practicing "obsequious journalism."
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