http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/26/60minutes/main6335794.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/26/60minutes/main6335794_page2.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/26/60minutes/main6335794_page3.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/26/60minutes/main6335794_page4.shtml

video at
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6341542n
 

Ex FBI & CIA terrorism fighter Nada Prouty
was herself accused of aiding terrorism, but
in her first interview, she denies she was anything
other than a patriot. Scott Pelley investigates her case.

(CBS)  Nada Prouty's identity was once a closely held national secret. She was an FBI agent, then a CIA officer with top security clearances who penetrated terrorist organizations overseas. Her fellow CIA officers say she risked her life often, volunteering for dangerous missions. And because she's originally from Lebanon, she speaks native Arabic, a rare skill for an American intelligence officer.

But Prouty's daring career was destroyed. In those years after 9/11 when rooting out terrorists at home was an obsession at the Justice Department, federal prosecutors launched investigations and even Prouty was accused of supporting terrorism. Was a traitor exposed? Or did America lose a patriot?

Now, former undercover CIA officer Nada Prouty steps out from the shadows to tell her story for the first time.

"I love the country. I believe in the country. I believe in everything that this country stands for," Prouty told "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley.

She acknowledged this was dangerous work. "I embraced the mission. The mission became my family. The mission became my life. And I would have given anything to protect the mission."

Prouty's missions for the FBI and CIA read like a history of America's fight against terrorism. She investigated the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, the attack on Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and, in Pakistan, she interrogated a terrorist who killed 20 people on a Pan Am plane and got him to confess.

"Nothing prepares you to meet a terrorist, a real-life terrorist, someone who's killed Americans, someone who’s vowed to always kill Americans," Prouty explained.

Asked what happened to the terrorist she interrogated, Prouty told Pelley, "He's in a jail in Colorado, where he gets to see daylight one hour a day."

And she admitted she's happy about that. "It brought justice. This is what we're about. We're about bringing justice to the families of the victims," she said.

Pursuing justice for the FBI led her to much more dangerous missions at the CIA. She worked in Iraq during the most violent period of the insurgency. Armed with an assault rifle, she went on raids with U.S. Special Forces troops. She interrogated suspected terrorists, and she was part of the team that developed the intelligence on the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein.

Her CIA boss at the time said "many officers in the CIA were unwilling to serve in this deteriorating, high-risk and thankless environment. Mrs. Prouty did not waver."

While in Iraq, Prouty's bulletproof vest had to be altered for an extraordinary reason: she was pregnant at the time.

"People watching this interview right now are asking themselves, 'Why would she do that?'" Pelley asked.

"Yes, and I ask myself now, looking at my child, how could I put her life in danger? But that's what I wanted to do. I couldn't look at our Marines that are standing outside, guarding us, and tell them, 'Hey, I'm pregnant, I'm shipping out.' I knew what my contributions were. And I wanted to protect the lives of our soldiers," she said.

Prouty was born into war, growing up amid the conflict in her native Lebanon. At age 19, she came to the U.S. to get a degree in accounting. And years later, while studying for a master's degree, one of her teachers suggested she apply to the FBI.

Prouty had to wait two years while the FBI ran a background investigation. She was cleared in 1999 and became a rising star. After two more background investigations she got one of the nation's highest security clearances. And in 2003 she joined the CIA.

"She was absolutely dogged. She would never quit," Bob Grenier remembered. He met Prouty when he was CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan.

He retired in 2006 as a 27-year veteran, who headed the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center.

"She was involved in virtually all the high profile terrorism cases during those years," Grenier said.

"And became one of this country's most experienced officers in doing all of those cases?" Pelley asked.

"Yes. Young as she was, and as few years as she actually had in service, she was tremendously experienced," Grenier said.

Asked if she saved American lives, Grenier said, "I think that's fair to say."

But while Prouty was hunting terrorists overseas, an investigation began back home that would destroy her career. The Bush administration was working to break up terrorist financing. And by 2004, federal prosecutors in Detroit were looking at the large Arab-American population around Dearborn, Mich.

Suspicion fell on a Lebanese-American restaurant owner named Talal Chahine. And as it happened, Chahine was married to Prouty's sister. In 2005, FBI agents came to CIA headquarters to ask Prouty a few questions.

"They showed me a picture of my brother-in-law, with a spiritual leader at that time, I didn't know who he was, but with a spiritual leader from Hezbollah," Prouty remembered.

Hezbollah is the Lebanese group, backed by Iran and on the U.S. terrorism list. Prouty says she had little to do with Chahine. She thought he was a womanizer cheating on her sister. But because of the family ties, Prouty was under suspicion.

Asked what happened to her relationships with her colleagues and inside the agency, Prouty said, "Everybody scattered away. You would think that I had the plague. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with me."

That went on more than a year until, finally, in frustration, she went to Detroit to try to clear things up with the prosecutors.

"It wasn't until I sat face-to-face, until that was the time that I knew what I was being accused of," Prouty told Pelley. "And they said that I have viewed some documents in the FBI / ACS system without authorization."

"The FBI computer system?" Pelley asked. "What documents did they say that you had looked at?"

"They insinuated that it was documents relating to Hezbollah investigations," she replied.

Prouty says the prosecutors told her that the evidence against her was secret and she couldn't see the documents in question. But they implied that she had passed classified information.

"Look, the suggestion here, I mean reading between the lines, here, is that you looked for Chahine's name and your sister's name to see if the FBI was investigating," Pelley remarked.

"That's absolutely false and absurd," Prouty said.

She said she "absolutely" did not do that.

And, in fact, the investigation into whether she'd passed classified information turned up nothing. But prosecutors Eric Straus and Kenneth Chadwell kept digging and they stumbled on something that all those background investigations had missed or dismissed: it turned out that 18 years earlier, when she first came to the United States, Prouty had taken a fateful shortcut to citizenship.

She had arranged a sham marriage. "I understood it was wrong."

And she understood that was against the law.

In 1989, at age 19, Prouty, her sister and a girlfriend arranged bogus marriages to get their green cards and avoid going back to Lebanon, which was still at war. Eighteen years later, in 2007, prosecutors rounded them all up and charged them with conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Under pressure, Prouty agreed to waive the 10-year statute of limitations on immigration fraud and plead guilty to two felonies related to the sham marriage. She also pled guilty to one misdemeanor count of unauthorized use of an FBI computer, a charge she now denies.

"I've made that mistake when I was a 19-year-old teenager. And I shouldn't have made it. And I own up to it. But I did not look into FBI ACS system without authorization. I did not mismanage or mishandle any classified information," she told Pelley.

Asked why she pled guilty to that charge when she now says it wasn't true, Prouty said, "I had to make a decision. I could not see our limited financial resources disappear in front of our own eyes."

"From attorney's fees that amounted in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," she added.

But pleading guilty wouldn't be the end of it: prosecutors didn't have the evidence to make a terrorism case in court so they made one in the media.

In a November 2007 press release the prosecutors said, "It's hard to imagine a greater threat" than someone like Nada Prouty. They said that she had "exploit[ed] her access to sensitive counter-terrorism intelligence."

And, later, the Detroit office boasted it had uncovered "the only known case of an illegal alien infiltrating U.S. intelligence agencies with potential espionage implications," as if Prouty had plotted from the age of 19 to infiltrate the CIA. All the worse, there it was, a word never uttered in court -- "espionage."

Prouty was branded a traitor in the national news media.

"My family was destroyed. Neighbors wouldn't talk to us,” Prouty recalled. “When my daughter would go out in the neighborhood, her friends would scatter away. They told her, 'We don't wanna talk to you 'cause your mommy is bad.’”

"One of the New York papers called you ‘Jihad Jane,’" Pelley remarked.

"That's the Jane that went to Iraq and put her life on the line," Prouty said.

Before she was sentenced, the CIA launched its own investigation to find out if Prouty was a Hezbollah spy. Bob Grenier, the CIA's former head of counterterrorism, told Pelley what the Agency found.

"There was a full investigation which included multiple polygraph examinations," he said. "She was completely exonerated."

The CIA wrote a letter to the prosecutors saying "the Agency did not identify any information that Mrs. Prouty cooperated or engaged in unauthorized contact with a foreign intelligence service or terrorist organization."

Asked how thorough these investigations are and how seriously they are taken, Grenier told Pelley, "Oh, my God, you cannot imagine how seriously the CIA would take an investigation like that."

At sentencing, Federal Judge Avern Cohn blasted the U.S. Attorney's Office. "Perhaps prompted by the excessiveness of the press releases," he said, the news media "grossly distorted the circumstances of your case." "As a citizen," the judge told Prouty, "you served your country honorably and effectively."

But because of the law the judge was forced to revoke her citizenship. And instead of throwing her in prison, he fined her $975.

Read the Sentencing Hearing Transcript

The prosecutors received an award for their three-year Hezbollah investigation. But for all of the press they were seeking then, they declined to talk to us for this story.

But the Justice Department did send us a statement saying that it "makes no apologies for the prosecution of Nada Prouty." "She has no one to blame but herself." The statement says, "The actions taken by the government to address her crimes were measured, appropriate and consistent with obligations to uphold the law without fear or favor."

Read the full Justice Department Statement

“You know, there are people watching this who say, ‘She was a CIA agent -- she's trained to lie,’ Pelley said. “The prosecutors in Detroit certainly thought you were lying. What do you say to that?” he asked Prouty.

“I have the truth on my side,” Prouty responded. “I've already been exonerated by the CIA. I've already been exonerated by a federal judge and I say to the people look at the evidence and make up your mind.”

Prouty was to be deported to Lebanon, but because she would likely be killed by the very terrorists she investigated, the judge blocked her deportation. Today she lives in Virginia with an American husband she married in 2001, and their two children. But, as a "deportable alien," she must check in with immigration officers regularly. She can't get a job, open a bank account, or travel more than 50 miles from her home.

"I wonder whether losing your citizenship was the worst part of all of this?" Pelley asked.

"That was the most painful part," she acknowledged.

Asked how she feels about that, Prouty said, "I've carried a weapon in defense of my country and I've put my life on the line for the country. I've put the life of my unborn child for the country. And I've been in horrible situations, I’ve been shot at, and what the country gives me back is de-nationalization. They take away from me the most precious thing, the thing that I believe in the most. I feel like I've been stabbed in the heart.
 
 

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2010/03/resistance.html

Friday, March 26, 2010
Resistance
 

Imperial impunity: Samurai in feudal Japan were invested with Kiri sute-gomen, "authorization to cut and leave" -- a literal license to kill. Yet they were actually more accountable than police in contemporary America. "Time to end this! Enough is enough!" With those words, Officer Troy Meade of the Everett, Washington Police Department fired seven rounds into the body of Niles Meservey, killing him instantly. At the time, Meservey was stupefied by alcohol and sitting behind the wheel of his Corvette. The car was completely boxed in by other vehicles and a chain-link fence. According to several eyewitnesses -- including another police officer -- the 51-year-old man wasn't going anywhere, and posed no threat to anyone. Meade shot the drunken man not because of any threat to himself or others; he did it because he was angry and frustrated over Meservey's non-compliance.

Just minutes earlier, Meservey had been cut off by the bartender after he had inflicted unwanted attention on a couple of women at a nearby club, briefly dragging one of them onto the dance floor. Several people were worried about the prospect of the intoxicated man attempting to drive home when he clearly presented a risk to himself and others. One of them, Trisha Tribble, called 911. “We’re really concerned about a guy leaving the parking lot of Chuckwagon on Evergreen Way — in a white Corvette, he’s extremely intoxicated,” Tribble told the dispatcher. Several officers from the Everett Police Department soon arrived; among them were Troy Meade, an 11-year-veteran, and Officer Steven Klocker. Meade arrived at about 11:39 PM; Klocker reached the scene a little less than five minutes later.

By the time Officer Meade arrived, Meservey's Corvette was bracketed by cars on either side and cut off by a parking lot fence in front of him. Meade pulled up behind Meservey, effectively boxing him in.

Joanne Hancock, who was smoking outside the Chuckwagon Inn when the police arrived, went inside to share the news with others concerned about Meservey. This prompted a small group of people to go outside and watch the arrest.

By the time Klocker arrived to provide “backup,” Meade had spent roughly five minutes trying to convince Meservey to get out of the car. Klocker would later report that Meade’s tone and attitude toward the intoxicated man were “belligerent,” and that he “used language which made him uncomfortable because of the nearby civilians.”
 

He's a hero -- aren't they all? Officer Troy Meade, charged with murder in the shooting death of Niles Meservey. “I don’t know why the f**k I am trying to save your dumb ass,” Meade snarled at Meservey, according to Klocker’s account. Both Meade and Klocker withdrew their portable electro-shock torture devices (more commonly called Tasers). Meade, who was closest to the driver, shot Meservey with his Taser through the open driver’s side window, inflicting two separate strikes — one five seconds long, the other six seconds’ duration. “Why in the f**k did you do that?” muttered the drunken man, who — predictably enough — wasn't inclined to endure any further abuse. He reached for his keys and started the car, but he had nowhere to go: The vehicle lurched over a concrete curb and ran into an unyielding chain-link fence. Bear in mind, once again, that Meservey was entirely boxed in. It was possible, albeit with some difficulty, for Officer Meade to reach through the window and seize the car keys, rather than escalating the situation by using potentially deadly force. Had he done so, it wouldn't have been long until Meservey would have succumbed to unconsciousness.

But this would have meant exercising a modicum of patience, and doing some heavy lifting. It was more convenient to shoot the unarmed, helpless drunk. So Meade — according to Klocker's official account — took up a position near the left rear wheel of the Corvette, pulled his gun, and fired eight shots into the car.

When several other police officers arrived a few minutes later, Meade was seen pacing back and forth near the murder scene.

“I’m out of it,” he blubbered to one of the new arrivals. “I want my Garrity.”

The “Garrity Rule” — adapted from the 1967 Supreme Court ruling Garrity v. New Jersey, which involved a ticket-fixing scandal — is the legal security blanket desperately grasped by police officers who have just committed a serious crime.

Uttering the incantatory word "Garrity" triggers an enhancement of the right against self-incrimination that only the government’s armed enforcers enjoy: Any statements made thereafter can only be used for the purpose of a departmental investigation, not for criminal prosecution.
 

Scene of the crime: Meservey's Corvette following the lethal shooting (left); an overhead view (below, right). Klocker, who witnessed the entire incident, pointed out to investigators that when Meservey’s body was pulled from the car, the prongs of Officer Meade’s Taser were still firmly embedded in his shoulder. “I’m thinking as I'm dragging him … why didn’t we [shock] him again?” Klocker told investigators. If escalation had been “necessary,” Klocker thought, Meade would have used the Taser again, or resorted to pepper spray. “I would never have shot [Meservey]… I don’t think we had reached that level of force yet,” Klocker concluded.

Meservey was neutralized and not long from the comforting embrace of alcohol-induced unconsciousness. Thus it seems obvious to someone not indoctrinated in the state’s view of discretionary killing that there was no reason to use lethal force of any kind in this situation. Using the minimal force necessary to take the keys away from Meservey would have ended any threat the drunk posed to persons and property.

But Meservey had done something more serious than threaten the lives and property of other citizens; he had insulted a police officer through his persistent refusal to submit.

Meade --who was involved in a prior lethal shooting a few years ago -- vaulted up the escalation ladder from confrontational and abusive language to lethal violence within a matter of minutes. In doing so he provided a compelling illustration of the fact that every encounter between police and citizens is pregnant with deadly consequences for the latter. Though useful, such a lesson was not worth Meservey's life.
 

Meade was originally charged with first-degree manslaughter and placed on paid vacation (aka “administrative leave”). Unlike a private citizen charged with lethally shooting an unarmed, non-threatening man six times in the back, Meade was set free on his own recognizance. It’s entirely likely that Meade wouldn’t have been indicted if it weren’t for rising public concern over recent police shootings in Everett. Meade's attorney defended the murder of Niles Meservey as the result of a “split-second decision," although such manifestly was not the case. Trisha Tribble, who summoned police to the scene by calling 911, was mortified by the death of Meservey, whom she described as “this drunken guy, [who] was obviously out of his mind.” "

"There was no reason for him to die,” she commented after the slaying.

On March 24, Meade was charged with second-degree murder for the June 10 killing of Meservey. According to his attorney David Allen, the charge is outrageous, since a police officer has essentially an unqualified right to dispense lethal force: "I don't think an officer who is on duty -- who is sworn to uphold the law -- should ever be charged with a crime like that." (Emphasis added.)

Bear in mind that Allen didn't say a police officer should never commit a crime like that; what he said, in essence, was that a police officer who commits an act of lethal violence should never be charged with a criminal offense. From this perspective, any use of deadly force by an officer is legal by definition.

The claim made by Allen on behalf of Officer Meade is a contemporary American version of what was called kirisute-gomen in feudal Japan. The phrase, roughly translated as "authorization to cut and leave," referred to the power exercised by Samurai, the Shogun's armed enforcers, to kill anyone from a lower caste who insulted them.

"Before the Meiji Restoration of 1868, there was a legal structure in place whereby people of the Samurai class or higher could kill anyone of the agrarian class or lower who insulted them," explained Dr. John Pierre Mertz, a professor of Japanese language at the University of North Carolina, in a phone interview. "The Samurai literally had the power to cut people in two, if they considered the insult to be intolerable. This was part of the culture, and people were very aware of it. In fact, there were manuals that described how a woman could clean and prepare a decapitated head for burial."

There's no reliable way of knowing how often this form of summary execution -- often referred to as burei uchi, or "striking down the impolite" -- was carried out, and what accounts exist tend to be encrusted with accumulated myth and legend.

"Understandably, very few people were willing to stick around and witness incidents of this kind," Dr. Mertz explained to Pro Libertate. "It's important to understand as well that the consequences of an act of this kind could be quite severe, since a killing of this kind was taken as evidence of failure on everybody's part to uphold the societal code. There would be an inquest, and if a Samurai were found to have killed an inferior for no good reason, he would be compelled to apologize -- which meant committing ritual suicide through seppuku. So it's likely that things of this kind happened rarely in feudal Japan."

Another historical analysis of the Edo period maintains that there was another important restraint on the power of Samurai to execute "impudent" commoners: By that account, a commoner had the absolute, innate right to use lethal force in self-defense against what we would now call police brutality.

A commoner who killed a Samurai in self-defense was not subject to punishment of any kind, since that act would have culled an unsuitable specimen from the warrior caste. A peasant targeted for execution but who escaped with his life was not tracked down and charged with "resisting arrest" or "evasion" of the police"; instead -- per this account -- the Samurai who needlessly drew his sword was subject to severe punishment for disrupting the peace.

While admitting that the existing records are scanty and ambiguous, Dr. Mertz insists that in the Japanese feudal system, only fellow Samurai or their superiors could seek retribution for criminal violence against those in lower orders. "If an Agrarian person were to lift a finger against the disciplining power, it would be a really serious thing," Mertz replied when I asked whether a peasant in that system had a right to self-defense. "Once again, it's difficult to say exactly how the laws were implemented, since there isn't a lot of detailed reporting on the subject."

Even if Japanese peasants weren't permitted to defend themselves, the dreadful penalties inflicted on Samurai who needlessly killed commoners provided a compelling deterrent against the use of unjustified violence by the enforcement caste.

This fact engenders wistful speculation: How frequently would American police resort to unnecessary force if they -- in the fashion of the Samurai -- confronted the prospect of enduring exactly what they illicitly inflict on others?

The post-1868 Japanese ruling elite was forced to abolish kirisute-gomen because the idea of empowering police to execute citizens for "impudence" was offensive to the Anglo-Saxon view of individual liberty protected by law -- the same legal tradition that begat the United States Constitution.

"After Japan was opened to the West, citizens from western nations who lived in colonial enclaves were protected by `extraterritoriality' agreements secured through British treaties," Dr. Mertz recounted to Pro Libertate. "Western governments weren't going to permit their citizens to be struck down in the streets" because they refused to genuflect to Samurai. So the Japanese revoked the enforcement caste's license to kill.
The sobering and inescapable fact is that in Lee Greenwood's America, where "at least [we] know [we're] free," the police consistently enjoy a far greater scope of official impunity than that granted to the roaming warriors of feudal Japan.

Clear and concise confirmation of that assessment comes by way of some less-than-friendly advice offered by an LAPD officer who writes for National Review under the nom-de-cyber Jack Dunphy.

In any encounter with a cop, a civilian must bear in mind that "the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you," explained Dunphy. "He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure, fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own."

During the military occupation of the conquered South, President Andrew Johnson told his subordinates: "Whenever you hear a man prating about the constitution, spot him as a traitor." Officer Dunphy expands that totalitarian formula: A Mundane who frustrates a member of the Exalted Enforcement Caste by invoking his constitutional rights, he should be shot on sight in the interest of "officer safety" -- the highest priority and most sacred responsibility of the heroic Paladins of Public Order.
 

Until very recently, the laws of most states recognized the principle stated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1943 ruling United States v. Di Re: "One has an undoubted right to resist unlawful arrest, and courts will uphold the right of resistance in proper cases." The right to resist unjustified police violence -- whether it takes the form of kidnapping (the proper description of an unlawful arrest) or physical assault -- is still legally recognized in a dozen states. It has been upheld in recent court decisions, most recently by Florida Circuit Court Judge John DeFuria, who ruled that homeowner John Coffin "had a right to resist" when he and his wife were violently attacked in their home by two sheriff's deputies. Nonetheless, arrests for the non-crime of "resisting arrest" are quite common. In fact, a study conducted last year by the San Jose Mercury News found that an average of three people a day were arrested for that supposed offense in that city.

Furthermore, of the 206 court cases in which "resisting arrest" was the most serious "offense," 145 -- or seventy percent -- of the cases "involved the use of force by officers." Most importantly, not a single one of the 117 complaints of unnecessary force filed with the police department's internal review board was "sustained."

Constitutional and statutory guarantees of the right to resist state-inflicted violence are otiose when those designated the "disciplining power" refuse to police themselves, and the productive class has neither the means nor the will to protect itself. This is why we've arrived at a point where police can kill innocent citizens with impunity, and yet the slightest physical contact by a citizen can be prosecuted as "battery on an officer," and a citizen wielding a flyswatter can be charged with "felonious assault" on a policeman.
 

Portrait of a literary hero as "Zek": Alexander Solzhenitsyn during his incarceration in the Soviet gulag (left and below, right). Without a right to resist, we have a duty to submit -- and submission to unlawful police violence frequently results in serious injury, sexual assault, and death. Wherever possible, resistance should be peaceful. Where violence is used it must be strictly governed by the non-aggression principle. Prudence has its proper claims to make as well: The right to resist unlawful violence may not be exercised in every appropriate circumstance, but it must be recognized as valid in all cases. In the first chapter of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn offers a detailed reflection on the "cataclysm" that results when one hears an armed stranger pronounce the dreadful phrase, "You are under arrest."

"At what exact point ... should one resist?" he wrote. "When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home?"

By the Brezhnev era, after tens of millions had been exterminated in the gulag, many Russians lamented that "submissiveness had softened our brains to such a degree" that resistance was no longer possible. All of this could have been avoided, Solzhenitsyn contended, if resistance had begun "at the moment of arrest itself."
 

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?" mused Solzhenitsyn in a famous footnote to that chapter. "Or, if during the periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, where they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?.... The [Security] Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers ... and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"

"If ... if .... We didn't love freedom enough," he concluded. "We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."

Solzenitsyn's words will be a suitable epitaph for American liberty if we do not restore, and practice, the right to resist.

(This essay is an updated adaptation of the presentation I was scheduled to make at last week's Liberty Forum in New Hampshire.)

Be sure to tune in for Pro Libertate Radio each weekday from 6:00-7:00 PM (Mountain Time) on the Liberty News Radio Network.
 
 
 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/54356.html

The Southern Poverty Law Center (or as I like to call it, ADL South), has published a post on yet another group of people it hates (because it doesn’t fit into the SPLC’s socialist view of the world): FEMA conspiracy theorists. Of course, SPLC’s “expert” sources for the condemnation of the theorists are the highly-esteemed scholarly journals Popular Mechanics and Newsweek, CNN’s “American Morning” show, and (drum roll, please) the latest Establishment pseudo-Libertarian shill Glenn Beck. Well, if those New World Order/One World Government media puppets say that there is no truth to the government building FEMA detention camps for political prisoners, that cinches it for me. That’ll show those conspiracy nuts. Or does it?

It seems that a rogue Establishment public broadcast station, KBDI Colorado Public Television, had the temerity to air a documentary called Camp FEMA: American Lockdown three times. The film explores the possibility that the government is building FEMA detention camps for political prisoners. This has ruffled the fascist feathers of the SPLC. The SPLC post also disparages the late Libertarian Aaron Russo’s documentary on the secret history of the Fed that KBDI aired alongside the FEMA documentary. The SPLC proclaims that Russo’s documentary was “debunked” by the “Federal” Reserve Banksters’ own personal mouthpiece, The New York Times. (That’ll show those conspiracy nuts again.) And, of course, where would any post on “hate” groups be without it throwing in the anti-hate warning du jour that some groups are anti-Jewish. Yep, it’s in this SPLC post also. Phew! Now we can all sleep better.

[Thanks to Chris Ciancio]
 
 
 

http://frontpage.americandaughter.com/?p=3549

By Nancy Matthis

Remember when Obama said he wanted a “national security force”? Not the national guard, but a civilian one that has not sworn to uphold the Constitution? On July 2, 2008 in a speech in Colorado Springs, Barack Obama called for a police state.

Remember that first alarming glimpse of what that army might look like? Notice how much these “Hitler youth” type young men talk about health care!

Obama just got his private army…

…And no one seems to have noticed. It is buried in the Senate revisions to the health care bill.

    Subtitle C–Increasing the Supply of the Health Care Workforce
       Sec. 5201. Federally supported student loan funds.
       Sec. 5202. Nursing student loan program.
       Sec. 5203. Health care workforce loan repayment programs.
       Sec. 5204. Public health workforce recruitment and retention programs.
       Sec. 5205. Allied health workforce recruitment and retention programs.
       Sec. 5206. Grants for State and local programs.
       Sec. 5207. Funding for National Health Service Corps.
       Sec. 5208. Nurse-managed health clinics.
       Sec. 5209. Elimination of cap on commissioned corps.
       Sec. 5210. Establishing a Ready Reserve Corps.
    Subtitle D–Enhancing Health Care Workforce Education and Training

See the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, page 1312:

    SEC. 5210. ESTABLISHING A READY RESERVE CORPS.
    Section 203 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 204) is amended to read as follows:
    SEC. 203. COMMISSIONED CORPS AND READY RESERVE CORPS.
    (a) ESTABLISHMENT–
    (1) IN GENERAL.–here shall be in the Service a commissioned Regular Corps and a Ready Reserve Corps for service in time of national emergency.
    (2) REQUIREMENT.–All commissioned officers shall be citizens of the United States and shall be appointed without regard to the civil-service laws and compensated without regard to the Classification Act 2 of 1923, as amended.
    (3) APPOINTMENT.–Commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps shall be appointed by the President and commissioned officers of the Regular Corps shall be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
    (4) ACTIVE DUTY.–Commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps shall at all times be subject to call to active duty by the Surgeon General, including active duty for the purpose of training.
    (5) WARRANT OFFICERS.–Warrant officers may be appointed to the Service for the purpose of providing support to the health and delivery systems maintained by the Service and any warrant officer appointed to the Service shall be considered for purposes of this Act and title 37, United States Code, to be a commissioned officer within the Commissioned Corps of the Service.
    (b) ASSIMILATING RESERVE CORP OFFICERS INTO THE REGULAR CORPS.—Effective on the date of enactment of the Affordable Health Choices Act, all individuals classified as officers in the Reserve Corps under this section (as such section existed on the day before the date of enactment of such Act) and serving on active duty shall be deemed to be commissioned officers of the Regular Corps.

    [Note here that those personally appointed by BO -- without advice and consent of the Senate -- automatically become a part of the Regular Corps. Ed.]

    (c) PURPOSE AND USE OF READY RESERVE.–
    (1) PURPOSE.–The purpose of the Ready Reserve Corps is to fulfill the need to have additional Commissioned Corps personnel available on short notice (similar to the uniformed service’s reserve program) to assist regular Commissioned Corps personnel to meet both routine public health and emergency response missions.
    (2) USES.–The Ready Reserve Corps shall–
    (A) participate in routine training to meet the general and specific needs of the Commissioned Corps;
    (B) be available and ready for involuntary calls to active duty during national emergencies and public health crises, similar to the uniformed service reserve personnel;
    (C) be available for backfilling critical positions left vacant during deployment of active duty Commissioned Corps members, as well as for deployment to respond to public health emergencies, both foreign and domestic; and
    (D) be available for service assignment in isolated, hardship, and medically underserved communities (as defined in section 399SS) to improve access to health services.
    (d) FUNDING.—For the purpose of carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the Commissioned Corps under this section, there are authorized to be appropriated such sums as may be necessary to the Office of the Surgeon General for each of fiscal years 2010 through 2014. Funds appropriated under this subsection shall be used for recruitment and training of Commissioned Corps Officers.

How many of you, dear readers, were aware of the fact that the health care bill created another army?

Related:

Right Side News — Are you Ready?

God and Country USA — Obama’s army in the health care bill

RAND — A Stability Police Force for the United States: Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities
 
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