Volume 5 Issue 3…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…January 25, 2002

by Dr. Francis Boyle fboyle@law.uiuc.edu

Actions taken by the US President and Attorney General in detaining untold numbers of individuals and calling for secret military tribunals to handle prisoners of war represent "a constitutional coup d'etat." Since 9-11, add up everything John Ashcroft, George W. Bush and their coterie of federalist society lawyers have done. We have seen one blow against the Constitution after another, which may lead to a "police state." Ashcroft unilaterally instituted monitoring of attorney-client communications, despite the 4^th Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures without warrant and the 6^th Amendment right of representation by counsel. Civil liberties are being lost; it happens in a coup d'etat.

The criminal investigation into the attacks, the largest in U.S. history, netted more than a thousand detainees. However, the Justice Department has failed to build a case against a single prime U.S. suspect in terrorist attacks. There is no evidence indicating that any of those detained played a role in 9-11. Yet, numerous legal protections, based on constitutional and international treaties, appear to have been ignored or violated in the case of these detainees.

Disrespecting the rule of law, the US rapidly becomes a banana republic. With 'disappeared' people, we see a repeat of the phenomenon in Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, which, by the way, the US government supported.

We do not know where the detainees are, the conditions under which they are being held or whether they have access to attorneys. We do know one of them died, under highly suspicious circumstances. There have been reports that he was tortured to death.

The Constitution protects aliens in the US. They are entitled to the protections of due process, as well as basic constitutional rights in criminal cases, including indictment, trial before a federal district judge or jury, and rights relating to venue and things of that nature. Foreign detainees are also protected by international law under treaties to which the US is a party. International law affords basic due process protections to everyone here in the US irrespective of their citizenship.

The executive order calling for secret military tribunals is extremely dangerous. It basically tells the Taliban and al Qaeda, 'We are not going to give you the protections of either the third or fourth Geneva Conventions' guarantees on trials; this opens the door to reprisals, as any captured member of the US armed forces could be denied these guarantees. So, we expose our troops to similar treatment, which could be a summary trial, in secret, subject to the death penalty.

When the story is finally written, events today will seem strikingly similar to the Warren G. Harding Administration. Students will compare and contrast Teapot Dome and Enron. One thing they are sure to note is the facilitator roles played by media, whose boundless hypocrisy aided cover-ups for corrupt patrons.

Harding's handlers were men with deep pockets. Their smoked-filled backroom deal put him on the 1920 Republican Party presidential ticket. They controlled government and media, which gave Harding a bye, just like G.W. How the media handle Enron will be telling. So far, American media have been weighed and found wanting by those burned by the Enron scandal. The good news is reporters are finding it difficult to stay on message, because the 'official line' sounds ridiculous. Unflappable, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer sweats bullets over Enron, the blue dress; its millions of dollars in contributions are stains on Bush's presidency. For hiding it, blah on the media's boundless hypocrisy.

Bit of History

by Current, Williams & Friedel

President Warren G. Harding wished to surround himself with the best-qualified men, and in part he succeeded. When he was persuaded that his friend Albert B. Fall was not of a caliber to be secretary of state, he placed Fall, a notorious anticonservationist, in charge of the Interior Department. He then appointed the brilliant and distinguished Charles Evans Hughes to be secretary of state. He placed Herbert Hoover, the friend of small enterprise and expert on efficiency, in charge of the Commerce Department, and made Henry C. Wallace, spokesman for the Midwest farmers, secretary of agriculture. Andrew W. Mellon represented big business as secretary of the treasury. These able men, pulling in several directions, together with the congressional leaders, developed government policies.

The President seemed to be carrying out his campaign slogan: "Less government in business and more business in government." Democrats made strong gains in the 1922 elections, reflecting the hard times that followed the war, but the return to prosperity heightened Harding's popularity. Occasionally, he was vigorous in his humanity. At the urging of Hoover, he pressured the steel companies into granting an eight-hour day to workers. Overwhelmingly Republican, the press created the illusion that he was an exceptionally fine President.

Behind the facade, rot set in. With singularly bad judgement, Harding placed a number of his poker-playing and drinking companions into positions of trust, where they betrayed the American people. One of the "Ohio Gang," Attorney General Harry Daugherty's friend Jesse Smith, engaged in large-scale "fixing" in the Department of Justice. After Harding ordered him out of Washington, Smith committed suicide. The director of the Veteran's Bureau, Charles R. Forbes, engaged in such colossal thievery that the total loss ran to nearly $250 million. When Harding received intimations of the corruption, he allowed Forbes to flee the country and resign. Ultimately Forbes served a two-year penitentiary sentence for defrauding the government.

The most spectacular fraud involved the rich naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and Elk Hills, California. Secretary of the Interior Fall persuaded Harding to transfer the oil reserves to his department, then secretly leased them to Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny. Fall, who had been in financial straits, suddenly became affluent. An investigation headed by Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana uncovered the reason. Sinclair had loaned Fall $308,000 in cash and government bonds and a herd of cattle for his ranch. Doheny had loaned him $100,000 more. In 1929 Fall was convicted of bribery, fined $100,000, and sentenced to a year in federal penitentiary.

In the summer of 1923 Harding journeyed to Alaska. Upon his return to Seattle, he became ill. It was reported that he had been poisoned by seafood, but actually he had suffered a serious heart attack. He seemed to improve, so he continued to San Francisco. There he had a second attack and suddenly died.

Phantom Scribbler

In 2001, Georgia Governor Roy Barnes got lethal injections and promptly put four death row inmates under, showing southern white conservatives he has no qualms when it comes to capital punishment. Like the Bush brothers of death, Jeb and Dubya, Barnes used state killing to assure reelection.

With his party controlling the state house and senate, Democrat Barnes appears a shoe-in. However, incumbency never guaranteed reelection, so Barnes has a campaign war chest of more than $10 million, and he has been generous with government pork. More important, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, his considerable influence will keep the 2002 legislative session on message, off any controversy and short.

At their annual confab, Barnes told Georgia's black legislators to table everything from the use of the MARTA sales tax to fund mass transit and economic development in areas where the tax is not assessed to the flag bill that enshrined the confederacy. Basically, Barnes told black lawmakers, "Don't grow brains!" For a 'little' quid pro quo, rather than deal with the issues negatively impacting their constituents, black lawmakers sing 'unity,' Barnes' status quo campaign slogan.

Comments from the Bat Cave

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/ Zorro is quickly growing up. Over the long Dr. King holiday weekend, he meant to spend time at grandma's, but forgot to let her know. As the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro said he learned from this, "Almost nine, it is time to speak my mind!"

Gap or Chasm Measures Inequality

by John Burl Smith

Emerging from denial, while speaking to the nation in his weekly radio address, G. W. Bush made a long overdue admission about America. Bush agreed with Dot M. Smith's chasm of inequality analysis, a truly startling turnabout, given his record and stated positions. Making a quantum leap to identify Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and civil rights as synonymous with his education bill, Bush acknowledged "institutionalized racism" existed in America. Documented and proven, his attempt to dismiss his admission by declaring "Americans can proudly say we have overcome" was laughable, though not funny. Trapped by his words and convoluted logic, Bush named education "the great civil rights issue of our time." Adding insult to injury, he declared, "We have a special obligation to disadvantaged children to close the achievement gap in our nation."

Bush's aforementioned achievement gap is the same gap Dr. King identified in his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Declaring "institutionalized bigotry" obliterated, Bush did not explain how America addressed Smith's chasm conclusion. Her research shows this stable disparity - gap or chasm - has existed since the founding fathers discarded the democratic principles of the Declaration of Independence to make legalized slavery the first law in the US Constitution (Article 1 Section 2). Establishing a republic based on a 3/5 inequality of its subjects, founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson embraced hypocrisy.

Campaigning in South Carolina at Bob Jones University, Bush pledged to appoint judges who strictly construct the Constitution, tacit support for the 3/5 Compromise. Following the Supreme Court-led coup d'etat, all Bush appointees supported ending affirmative action. His administration ended all programs to address systemic racism and make up for years of defacto and de jure segregation (legalized terrorism). First, Bush boycotted WCAR, then he ordered his low-level delegation to walk out. The U.S. refused to discuss its institutionalized racism and accept responsibility for its human rights violations and make restitution to those negatively affected. Blocking recognition of the Diaspora's reparations claim, Bush showed the world the "soft bigotry of racism" and how it compounds the two hundred fifty years of bond slavery that produced America's gap or chasm of inequality.

Déjà vu Dan O'Leary, Bush displayed an amazing level of deceit in claiming his goals are similar to Dr. King's. King opposed the death penalty, war, bombing civilians, racial profiling, imperialism and hypocrisy. It was because of people like Bush that Dr. King saw himself as a "drum major for justice." He believed the needs of poor Americans were a far more important government responsibility than bailing out businesses like Enron. The record shows Bush and his supporters were always on the other side fighting against equality before and after Dr. King's assassination.

Finally, playing the race card, Bush's promise of help for "disadvantaged children" was a cynical ploy to score political points. Bush, as well as, every white person in America, knows the so-called "educational achievement gap" was produced by the laws, which made learning to read and write hanging offenses (death penalty) for blacks. "Institutionalized bigotry" was federal, state and local laws that reinforced inequality through segregated education. Symbolizing whites opposed to equal access to education for blacks, "school busing" became their rallying cry in the 1970s and '80s.

Incredulously, Bush, as most whites, pretend that at some point blacks were allowed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Eliminating the impact of slavery, segregation and institutionalized racism, they overcame the gap to be on par with whites. When did that happen? Bush knows that whites have always used education to keep poor black children disadvantaged. We are lynched daily in Bush's America in the chasm of inequality. John 2002

Disgruntled says: The media give Dubya the highest ratings of any US president. Selected by a Supreme Court coup, not voters, these polls, like Enron's cooked books, indicate Bush is the best money could buy.

Disgruntled feels: Bullied! When Bush abrogated the ABM Treaty, shunned the Kyoto accords, walked out of WCAR and refused to engage in dialogue, the US said, "We do what we want and deploy tanks to enforce it!" Basically, the world feels terrorized by a big brutal bully!

Disgruntled wants to know: America claims to be a nation of laws that follows the rule of law. According to its laws, only Congress can declare war. There is no congressional declaration of war on terrorism. So, strictly speaking, it is illegal. Therefore, aren't all the combatants, especially the US military, illegal ones?

Politics Y2K2

by Senator John McCain

I believe part of the problem, indeed, a "key ingredient" of wasteful spending and special interest tax breaks is the affect of soft money on the legislative process. Not that every bit of pork a member secures is caused by soft money, but that in the aggregate wasteful spending is caused by, among other things, soft money.

Webster defines 'corruption' as the impairment of integrity, virtue or moral principle.' This definition does not say that corruption occurs only when laws are broken. The large amount of soft money given to both parties by various industries and the aggregate amount of tax breaks those industries received impaired our integrity. I believe that as strongly as I believe anything. Unlimited amounts of money given to political campaigns have impaired our integrity. While no one is accusing members of Congress of violating federal statutes, there is no longer a law controlling the vast amounts of money that impair our integrity. In the immortal words of the Vice President Al Gore- 'there is no controlling legal authority.'

I watched as the 1996 Telecommunications Deregulation bill became every thing but deregulatory, and led to far less competition than it was intended to engender, and the consequent increase in cable rates, telephone rates, etc. I believe that soft money played some role in that. Again, not in a way that fits within a legal definition of bribery, but in the way that the vast majority of Americans believe is an impairment of our integrity. I include myself in that indictment. That is the problem I am trying to address, and no attack, no amount of head-in-the-sand pretense that soft money doesn't affect legislation will cause me to desist in my efforts. If special interests did not believe their millions of dollars in donations buy them special consideration in the legislative process, then those special interests - who have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders -- wouldn't give us that money. Those interests enjoy greater influence here than the working men and women who cannot afford to buy our attention but who are affected, sometimes adversely, by the laws we pass. For me, that seems to be a good working definition of an impairment of our integrity, which is, as I noted, Webster's definition of corruption. (Bedford, New Hampshire speech at http://www.itsyourcountry.com)

by Dot

In America, hypocrisy knows no bounds. In 2000, we learned it is illegal to count black votes. As thousands were disenfranchised, the media praised US democracy, rather than damning the republic and its Electoral College for rendering democracy a non-starter. The media facilitated the folly. As the public interest fell by the wayside, money talked. Like the Diet Coke commercials, which claim it is a good thing when it contains aspartame, a poisonous ingredient, the media lauded America as the world’s greatest democracy, when it is built on inequality. Hypocrisy knows no bounds!

Bush's recess appointment of Eugene Scalia for Labor Department solicitor screams quip pro quo. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, his father, led the coup that made Bush president. Whether Enron energy policies or recess appointments, this is the kind of influence peddling common during Harding's tenure. The Scalia appointment and Enron are smoking guns. They recall Senator John McCain's favorite theme, i.e., the privilege and power gained through access purchased with campaign dollars. Question is will the media continue the boundless hypocrisy, which biases US news reporting, or be informative and serve the interests of the masses yearning to be free in a democratic society?

Email rdunbaro@pacbell.net: Actually, any of the international organizations (UNESCO, UNICEF, FAO, UN General Assembly, UN Human Rights Commission, and a dozen others) can pass a resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (World Court) at the Hague. Although the advisory judgement is not binding on states, it carries great weight in international law. The most important such case was the UN General Assembly resolution of 1975 requesting the ICJ to advise the GA on the status of the Western Sahara, where the Spanish had pulled out and Morocco had moved in to annex the territory. The ICJ advised the GA that the people of the Western Sahara constituted a separate nation and had the right to self-determination through a plebiscite.

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