DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Climate of Fear: Jim Risen v. the Obama administration

Long article, and certainly biased. I doubt this thread goes very far, but I found it to be a compelling read.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/06/23/risen

Climate of Fear: Jim Risen v. the Obama administration
By Glenn Greenwald

The Obama DOJ's effort to force New York Times investigative journalist Jim Risen to testify in a whistleblower prosecution and reveal his source is really remarkable and revealing in several ways; it should be receiving much more attention than it is. On its own, the whistleblower prosecution and accompanying targeting of Risen are pernicious, but more importantly, it underscores the menacing attempt by the Obama administration -- as Risen yesterday pointed out -- to threaten and intimidate whistleblowers, journalists and activists who meaningfully challenge what the government does in secret.

The subpoena to Risen was originally issued but then abandoned by the Bush administration, and then revitalized by Obama lawyers. It is part of the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent whom the DOJ accuses of leaking to Risen the story of a severely botched agency plot -- from 11 years ago -- to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program, a story Risen wrote about six years after the fact in his 2006 best-selling book, State of War. The DOJ wants to force Risen to testify under oath about whether Sterling was his source.

Like any good reporter would, Risen is categorically refusing to testify and, if it comes to that (meaning if the court orders him to testify), he appears prepared to go to prison in defense of press freedoms and to protect his source (just as some young WikiLeaks supporters are courageously prepared to do rather than cooperate with the Obama DOJ's repellent persecution of the whistleblowing site). Yesterday, Risen filed a Motion asking the Court to quash the government's subpoena on the ground that it violates the First Amendment's free press guarantee, and as part of the Motion, filed a lengthy Affidavit that is amazing in several respects.

During the Bush years, Risen was one of the few investigative journalists exposing the excesses and lawbreaking that was the War on Terror -- causing him to be literally hated by officials of the National Security State. Along with Eric Lichtblau, Risen most famously revealed, in 2005, that the NSA was secretly spying on Americans without warrants which -- as he put it in his Affidavit -- "in all likelihood, violated the law and the United States Constitution." In 2006, he revealed that the Bush administration had been obtaining huge amounts of financial and banking information about American citizens from the SWIFT system, all without oversight or Congressional authorization. And here's how he summarized the multiple revelations in State of War, the book for which the Obama DOJ is now seeking to force him to reveal his source upon pain of imprisonment:

State of War included explosive revelations about a series of illegal or potentially illegal actions taken by President Bush, including the domestic wiretapping program. It also disclosed how President Bush secretly pressured the CIA to use torture on detainees in secret prisons around the world; how the White House and CIA leadership ignored information before the 2003 invasion of Iraq that showed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction; documented how, in the aftermath of the invasion, the Bush Administration punished CIA professionals who warned that the war in Iraq was going badly; showed how the Bush Administration turned a blind eye to Saudi involvement in terrorism; and revealed that the CIA's intelligence operations on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Iran and other countries were completely dysfunctional, and even reckless.

(To understand the function of the American media and American political culture: please re-read that paragraph -- describing revelations of pervasive lawbreaking and corruption at the highest levels of government from one reporter in one book -- and compare the media's indifferent and/or supportive treatment of that revealed conduct to the orgy of intense, obsessive condemnation directed at Anthony Weiner; or compare how the perpetrators of that conduct revealed by Risen are treated with great respect to the universal scorn heaped on Weiner).

Particularly because of the NSA revelation, Risen was despised by Bush officials and was the target of a right-wing hate campaign (including suggestions -- from administration officials and prominent others -- that he be prosecuted for espionage). Risen compiles ample evidence in his Affidavit to argue that the Subpoena issued to him in the Sterling case was a by-product of the administration's efforts to harm him; he writes: "the administration was embarrassed by the disclosures I made in the course of my reporting for State of War as well as in The New York Times, and eventually singled me out as a target for political harassment." Indeed, Risen argues -- persuasively -- that the investigation to unmask his source, and the prosecution of Sterling itself, is little more than a means of punishing him for his reporting and for intimidating similar disclosures in the future:

I believe that the investigation that led to this prosecution started because of my reporting on the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. The Bush White House was furious over that story. I believe that this investigation started as part of an effort by the Bush Administration to punish me and silence me, following the publication of the NSA wiretapping story. I was told by a reliable source that Vice President Dick Cheney pressured the Justice Department to personally target me because he was unhappy with my reporting and wanted to see me in jail.

As it has in so many other instances, the Obama administration appears on the verge of fulfilling Dick Cheney's nefarious wish beyond what even Cheney could achieve.

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There are two aspects to Risen's Affidavit which merit particular attention. First, Risen cites a 2006 ABC News report from Brian Ross and others that claimed the Bush administration was, without warrants, spying on the communications of reporters (including Ross) in order to discover the identity of their sources. I personally never attached much credence to that story because of how unreliable I find Brian Ross to be, but in his Affidavit, Risen states (under oath) that he "has reason to believe that the story . . . is true" because he "learned from an individual who testified before a grand jury in this District that was examining my reporting about the domestic wiretapping program that the Government had shown this individual copies of telephone records relating to calls made to and from me."

The fact that Bush officials were spying on reporters is extraordinary. Instead of pursuing Cheneyite vendettas by persecuting whistleblowers who exposed newsworthy ineptitude from long-irrelevant CIA plots, the Obama DOJ ought to be investigating that allegation; that it isn't and wouldn't speaks volumes.

Second, Risen links the Obama administration's pursuit of the Sterling case and of Risen to the current President's broader (and unprecedented) war on whistleblowers and investigative journalism. He writes:

[I believe that the efforts to target me have continued under the Obama Administration, which has been aggressively investigating whistleblowers and reporters in a way that will have a chilling effect on the freedom of the press in the United States.]

What's particularly striking about this prosecution is that it involves digging deep into the ancient past (the Iran operation in question was begun under the Clinton administration): this from a President who insisted that Bush officials not be investigated for their crimes on the ground that we must "Look Forward, Not Backward." But it's not hard to see why Obama officials are so intent on doing so: few things are more effective in creating a Climate of Fear -- one that deters investigation and disclosure and stifles the exercise of basic rights -- than prosecuting prominent people for having challenged and undermined the government's agenda. As Risen documents, that -- plainly -- is what this prosecution and the Obama administration's broader anti-whistleblower war is about: chilling the exercise of basic rights and the ability to challenge government actions.

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While there is no good faith claim that Risen's revelation six years after the fact harmed U.S. national security, Risen's story was unquestionably newsworthy because it revealed how inept and ignorant American intelligence agencies are when it comes to Iran. Indeed, Risen claims vindication for his story "given subsequent reports about the unreliability of our intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities and about our government's tendency to overstate the threat in a way that is not entirely consistent with the intelligence actually gathered."

That Iran is developing nuclear weapons is one of the Obama administration's most cherished orthodoxies. Anything that challenges that is attacked. Recall how cowardly Obama officials ran to Politico to anonymously malign Seymour Hersh's recent New Yorker piece arguing that there is little credible evidence of Iran's nuclear activities. As Risen says: "Whether one agrees with Mr. Hersh's article or not, it is clear that, five years after I wrote State of War, there is still a serious national debate about Iran's nuclear ambitions and about whether the current administration has incentives to exaggerate intelligence related to this topic."

What the Obama administration is doing, above all else, is bolstering the Climate of Fear that prevents any challenges to its pronouncements of this sort. I wrote about that joint White-House/Politico attack on Hersh to mock the gross hypocrisy of criticizing Hersh for his use of anonymous sources in the very same article where Politico granted anonymity to Obama officials to attack him; but the more substantive point is that of course Hersh has to use anonymous sources. In the Climate of Fear being deliberately fortified by the Obama administration, what person in their right mind would openly challenge their national security decrees on classified matters or call their veracity into question? As the Sterling/Risen case and numerous others have intentionally conveyed: imprisonment is the likely outcome for those who do that.

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This Climate of Fear is being strengthened by more than just whistleblowing prosecutions and the targeting of journalists. So many Obama policies are devoted to its fortification.

Today in The New York Times, former NYT reporter David Shipler chronicles the multiple ways the current President, in conjunction with Congress and the Supreme Court, have intensified the decades-long assault on the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures: "The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime. Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers until 2015, and the F.B.I. expanded agents' authority to comb databases, follow people and rummage through their trash even if they are not suspected of a crime." In his last paragraph, Shipler describes why this matters so much:

The Fourth Amendment is weaker than it was 50 years ago, and this should worry everyone. "Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government," Justice Robert H. Jackson, the former chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, wrote in 1949. "Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart."

Beyond the numerous actions described by Shipler, the Obama adminstration has pursued multiple actions perfectly described by that passage, certain to achieve that very outcome. It has continuously harassed numerous WikiLeaks supporters, repeatedly detaining them at airports and seizing and copying their laptops, all without warrants, and subpoeaned their social networking records. It is seeking (and is likely to obtain) dramatically expanded domestic surveillance powers, physically and over the Internet. It has seized the power to target American citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process. It succeeded in convincing the Supreme Court to declare that one can "materially support Terrorism" -- a felony -- merely by talking to, or advocating on behalf of, designated Terrorist groups. In one of the most important stories I haven't written about (but should have), it has invasively investigated and threatened with prosecution a slew of domestic peace activists and those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. And now the precedent has been bolstered that the prime circumstance that fuels and justifies all of these powers -- war -- can be unilaterally commenced by the President for any reason, for any length of time, without a pretense of democratic consent.

For someone who has no real interest in challenging government claims or undermining official actions, these policies will have no direct, perceptible effect. It's always true that those who are supportive of institutions of authority or who otherwise have no interest in challenging them are never targeted by measures of this sort; why would they be? That's why supporters of all Presidents -- Republicans during the Bush years and now Democratic loyalists under Obama -- are rarely disturbed by such developments.

Along with the apathetic, who by definition pose no threat to anyone, prominent cheerleaders for the President and his party, who labor every day to keep them in power, are the last ones who will be subjected to such programs. Obviously, nobody in the Obama administration is monitoring the phone calls at the Center for American Progress or ones placed to the large stable of columnists, bloggers and TV stars who daily spout White House talking points or devote each day to attacking the President's political opponents. That's why purported civil liberties concerns manifest only when the other party is in power, but vanish when their own is. Partisan loyalists are indifferent to their leader's ability to deter dissent; if anything, they're happy that their party's leader wields such power and can use it against political adversaries.

But for anyone who is engaged in meaningful dissent from and challenge to government officials -- the Jim Risens and other real investigative reporters, the Thomas Drakes and other whistleblowers, the WikiLeaks supporters, the Midwest peace activists -- these prosecutions and these ever-expanding surveillance, detention and even assassination powers are inevitably intimidating. Regardless of how those powers are used or even whether they are, they will, as Risen put it, have "a chilling effect" on the exercise of core freedoms. As Risen explained in his Affidavit, even if Brian Ross' story turned out to be false, the mere claim by anonymous officials that the phone records of journalists are being monitored -- combined with threats of prison for their sources and even for reporters who are subpoenaed -- means "the Government further contributed to creating an atmosphere of fear for journalists who publish stories about national security and intelligence issues."

The most odious aspect of this Climate of Fear is that it fundamentally changes how the citizenry thinks of itself and its relationship to the Government. A state can offer all the theoretical guarantees of freedom in the world, but those become meaningless if citizens are afraid to exercise them. In that climate, the Government need not even act to abridge rights; a fearful populace will voluntarily refrain on its own from exercising those rights.

Nobody wants to believe that they have been put in a state of fear, that they are intimidated, so rationalizations are often contrived: I don't perceive any violations of my rights because there's nothing I want to do that I'm not able to do. Inducing a fearful population to refrain from exercising rights -- as it convinces itself no such thing is happening -- is a far more effective, and far more pernicious, means of suppressing freedoms. That's what a Climate of Fear uniquely enables. The vast National Security and Surveillance State has for decades been compiling powers -- and eroding safeguards and checks -- devoted to the strengthening of this climate, and the past two-and-a-half years have seen as rapid and concerted intensification as any other period one can recall. Read Jim Risen's Affidavit if you doubt that.

A very disturbing read, and I cannot argue against any of it.

If the course is not changed, America is dead... but how do we change the course and revert us to how we were 50, 60 & 70 years ago?

It cannot be done.The American people are fat,stupid and lazy.
A fine case in point would be this Wiener fellow.A Congressman flashes his private parts all over the internet and the people of his district want him to remain in power.They are either too stupid,or too lazy to realize the man has some sort of mental problem and he really shouldn't be making decesions that affect our lives.

Btw,thanks to all the well wishers yesterday.

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but how do we change the course and revert us to how we were 50, 60 & 70 years ago?

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Revolution. I'm very serious, it doesn't have to be the American people in a bloody battle to the death with the American government but it is going to take some form of organized uprising the change it and that is going to be hard to do because he is exactly correct when he says that the majority of dems won't rise up with a dem in office and vice versa for the repubs... it's hard to have a good revolution when only half the people are committed to it at any one time.

Dems complained about the Patriot Act and they complained about interrogations and they complained about Gitmo and they did all of that and they were sure that once Obama was elected that it would change.... it hasn't changed and it won't.. and it's highly unlikely that Pawlenty or Bachman or Romney is going to change it much either...

For quite a while now, I have felt like the only real option that American people have is revolution.

The ballot is nothing more than a scam anymore, and actually---has been for quite awhile.

I truly believe that the only way any real change happens in this country is through revolution, whether that is violent or non-violent remains to be seen.

A lot of people on here have talked about how you can't go through life picking and choosing what laws you will follow. But I think that that is well within the bounds of civil disobedience. People had adopted those kind of tactics generations ago---and I think that it can still be a catalyst for change today.....

The people are the one's who untimately run this country---and if enough of them get sick of some such laws, and consistently disobey those laws, it can eventually begin to turn the tide....perhaps I have read "Why we Can't Wait," a few to many times---but I believe that people power can still overcome injustice.

And in this day in age---injustice is rampant......but a lot of folks just don't care. They feel like; if nothing rocks their boat, then its not their problem. Or they are caught up in a mess of consumerism---obsessing over the Hollywood dream machines, chasing the newest gizmo, or simply to caught up with their lives to ever want to put it all on line for something that they believe in---to their core.

Few people really have values that they are willing to lose everything to stand up for---those days are gone. Nowadays, people will roll over at the first sign of adversity. I think that that is quite sad. There are no real heroes in America anymore. The days of principled objectors are over with. Most people are content to shrug their shoulders, go to work, and roll on home to bury themselves in the myriad of distractions that we have at our fingertips today.

Who wants to risk their livelihood to fight injustice when you are chasing all the bs products that are marketed to us on a daily basis. Children are indoctrinated into capitalism from the moment they turn on a tv or walk into wal-mart. They want all these garbage trinkets they see in the store---and pretty soon they grow up chasing products while the whole country falls apart. And rich get richer while the working poor and middle class chase whatever bs they are told will make them happy and more comfortable.

The day has to come when enough people step away from the grand yard sale that is our country and start to look to really enact some kind of change.

Only when people grow weary of chasing all the stupid products that are marketed to us, will any real revolution happen.

I agree.

It will take the electing of a Ron Paul type....but people don't want to face the truth.

I think it is going to start in Texas with them giving SERIOUS talk about seceding from the union at which point several other southern states will follow.

I don't know it it would ever get to that point as even the talk might be enough to shake up a few of these idiots, but if it did, I doubt there would be a war as we saw 150 years ago.

Face it...this country for all intents and purposes is 2-3 different nations.

You've been talking secession ever since Obama was elected in 2008.

I know that, for what it's worth, if states started seceding, I would have NO problem going out and fighting to keep the country together.

IMO, NO state is more important than the United States. And that goes for whoever is in charge here.

Talk of revolution is one thing. Talk of secession is another.

JMHO

Actually Peen had talked about the inevitability of secession and revolution long before Obama became President.

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IMO, NO state is more important than the United States. And that goes for whoever is in charge here.

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and that is part of the problem, in the federal government's opinion the states are little more than lines on a map that are too stupid to govern themselves.. that's why the federal government, in its infinite wisdom, needs to mandate education, energy policy, welfare, medicaid, speed limits, drug policy, illegal immigration policy, marriage policy, abortion policy and all sorts of other crap that the federal government should just stay the heck out of ...

I have no doubt that any serious talk or action regarding secession would be met with swift and decisive force by the federal government and then followed up with at least half a dozen unconstitutional laws that continue to erode what little power the states have left.

Well, I apologize for not knowing that Peen has been advocating secession for a while. That doesn't mean I agree with him any more.

IMO, we solve these problems by getting the right people in Congress. But, the problem is, as soon as people get in Congress, they don't do anything to lessen the scope of the federal government, no matter what they said in their campaigns.

They just cut certain programs, but they increase other programs. It ends up being a wash.

Like I said, I don't think secession is the answer. Now, a revolution (and I'm not talking about people taking to the street with weapons, etc.) may be the answer.

But, to be honest, I don't know what the answer is. A great majority of the American people (at least it seems that way) will go with whatever scares them most. The Democrats come out with an ad saying the GOP wants to destroy Medicare and wants to send old people to the gas chamber, and the GOP comes out with a rebuttal ad that says that the Democrats want everyone to work at the Ministry of Truth with Winston and take every single penny and give it to underprivileged wombats.

So, people will either believe the Democrats' lie, or the GOP's lie.

But if you have someone who comes out and speaks the truth (no matter how much it hurts) or doesn't exaggerate things, people won't listen.

So, it's just a vicious circle.

j/c

What did the terrorist of 911 hope to achieve with their cowardly acted?

They hoped to destroy our very way of life and the freedoms we have fought and died for since the founding of this nation.

What disturbs me the most is that we (by that I mean our Government) are doing exactly what they wanted us to do from onset of their master plan and it's as if those who make the decisions are blind to this fact.

We are destroying our way of life from within and we are making a mockery of our constitutional rights under the guise of national security.

Terrorist should be given no quarter, but these blatant acts that undermine our constitutional rights must be squashed before it goes any further and should in fact be reversed.

The best place to start is by referring to the constitution itself.
If our law makers break the laws of the land we the people should not be tolerant of such acts.

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NO state is more important than the United States.

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I both agree and disagree with this.

On the one hand, this is totally correct.
On the other hand, however, EVERY State is more important.


The difference is the context in which it is applied. ANY place where State's Rights should prevail, the latter should be the notion getting applied - bar none.

I become more convinced with each passing day that the solution is really quite simple - You don't pay taxes, you don't vote.

It is clear that the framers did not intend for Everyone to have the right to vote. You had to be a craftsman, or own a business or a certain amount of property. The fact that slaves were included as property does not at all invalidate this line of reasoning. They did NOT intend that the town drunk or the village idiot have the right to vote.

I'm sure they knew who Cicero was; he was the guy credited with being the first to say "when the people discover that they can Vote themselves Money, democracy is finished." A little over 2,000 years ago.

As for a secession being strongly contested by the government, I don't think so. The military will not be facing a few hundred people with rocks and bottles. They will be facing large numbers of automatic weapons, and let's not forget the state militias and Guard units. It's not that they could not win, it's that they would have to be willing to kill large numbers of citizens to put down the rebellion. Our modern politicians likely would not have the stomach for it, plus I don't think the soldiers would follow the order. It would depend on who's in charge.

You're essentially advocating that those with money and stature make the decisions.

We pretty much have that.

The only difference is that we let the 'village idiots' and 'town drunks' pick the puppet.

The essential difference is that whatever they decide they want done, they will do it with their own money and no one else's.

It is important to note that this is a two-way concept - You Don't Vote, You Don't Pay Taxes is also true.

You should love this, Phil, since whatever we do doesn't matter anyways, why allow ourselves to be forced to pay for it?

The only way to force government to be smaller and do less is to cut off the feed bag.

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IMO, we solve these problems by getting the right people in Congress. But, the problem is, as soon as people get in Congress, they don't do anything to lessen the scope of the federal government, no matter what they said in their campaigns.

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I honestly believe that most of the freshmen that go to Washington as congressmen and senators for the first time HONESTLY BELIEVE that they can go there and make a difference. I believe that.

Then when they get there they are faced with the reality, if they want to survive, if they wanted supported when it comes re-election time, if they don't want to be outcast by everybody, then they will play the game that the leadership of their party lays out for them.... then if they are lucky enough to get re-elected a few times by that time they are deeply entrenched and they become the leadership that they went there to change.. its a viciously repeating cycle.

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Like I said, I don't think secession is the answer. Now, a revolution (and I'm not talking about people taking to the street with weapons, etc.) may be the answer.

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I would try everything before I signed on for secession but I could see it coming to that if nothing else is effective. We are, however, still a long way from being in a place where the average person is willing to risk what they have to join such a revolution. The wealthy are still wealthy so they aren't going to rise up against the government, the middle class is still footing the bill but largely is still doing ok so they aren't going to risk it all to rise up, and the government is taking care of everybody else so they certainly aren't going to rise up and fight the hand that feeds them....

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or the GOP's lie

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It's not a lie... underprivileged wombats are killing this country.

Well, I apologize for not knowing that Peen has been advocating secession for a while. That doesn't mean I agree with him any more.

I don't advocate it. I just see it as inevitable. The country is too large and divided in too many different ways.

I love the country as well. I just don't see it being able to work any longer if the form of government is to continue to become centralized in Washington DC.

If the states are going to continue to lose rights, then I have no problem fighting for that.

The flow of government should flow, town, county, state, federal.

Now it flows federal to nothing.

Sort of like a kingdom if you ask me.

i don't think anyone would have the guts to do it these days.

Phil, why is it that a hamburger does not cost $1000.00?

The reason that such a product does not exist, at least not commonly, is that WE, THE PEOPLE, collectively Refuse to pay such a price for that particular product.

If we were suddenly, magically faced with $1000.00 hamburgers we would make our desires known immediately and dramatically, The product would disappear because no one would be willing to pay for it. The feedback would happen very rapidly.

Making this work would take about the same number of citizens as getting a large-scale secession to work, with less danger to life and limb.

How does the Government do stupid stuff? With MONEY. Less money, less stupid stuff. Force them to make the choice between feeding people who contribute nothing, or fixing the roads and bridges that taxpayers drive on.

10% flat tax, with a balanced budget mandatory. I will cite GOD as my authority for the 10% number.

I agree that the conditions are becoming more prevalent that talk of secession may start to occur with more frequency and sincerity but it seems that there is a sinister thought prevailing in federal circles that pervades ideology and party.

DC made mention above of a freshmans' desire to change or impact legislation but soon after it becomes a matter of playing the game. I recall an article posted awhile back about the "ruling class" posted from the American Spectator and it was an incredibly accurate article as is DC's assessment.

The sinister thought and the Spectator article brings me to the conclusion that there are powerful people who have created a system that makes the people and their representatives wholly dependent on that system for "survival."

Take Obamacare, who will want to secede from the union when you are dependent on that union for you health care, or your job--think large federal bureaucracy, or your safety. You can poke holes in that but there seems to be an effort by both parties to keep you dependent whether its Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, Homeland Security, or Defense or Social Security.

Talk of Texas wanting to secede sounds like tough Texan talk but they get a alot of cash from the federal government via oil, defense installations and most of the growing metropolises in the nation are in Texas--San Antonio for one. If they were to secede, they could do irrevocable harm to their own economy and well being. Those that are retired would lose Social Security, they would lose their defense installations . . . bye bye San Antonio economy, it would be a bad decision.


I think "revolution" is coming. If we were a smart people we would vote EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF THE HOUSE AND SENATE OUT! Every one. I will not vote for Tim Ryan ever again. It will be his challenger. Send a shock to the system. And keep voting them out if they don't reign in the "system." Better yet, vote for independents.

Do you really see Tim Ryan not being re-elected ..... ever?

As long as he runs, he'll win. He's a Democrat in such a strong Democrat area that our indicted Democrat Auditor, accused of corruption, bribery, conspiracy, and any number of other crimes ..... yet he won the last election ... with the indictment well publicized .... against a well known, Black Republican candidate ...... and a respected independent candidate ........

Still won with 55% of the vote.

Look at Charlie Rangel. Scum so bad that even his own party had to censure him. He won re-election overwhelmingly.

It just gets worse each and every time redistricting occurs. Even the in power party will create safe districts for the out of power party in order to consolidate their power elsewhere.

As far as revolution .... well a revolution requires people willing to lay down their lives in the pursuit of change. Poor people are paid off. They have it very well. Many middle class families are similarly well compensated through government programs and tax credits. It's hard to have a revolution when only 2 or 3% of the people ... at best ... would rise up. You'd have a bigger chance of revolution by cutting welfare benefits completely then by continuing them.

I understand that. This valley is the something for nothing valley and people line up to vote democrat like it's a religion.

I'll steal a line from the Hunt for Red October: "I'm a politician, that makes me a liar and a cheat, when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops."

That's the politicians of this valley.

Yeah you're right. But I won't vote for the rube.

I vote against him at every opportunity.

It doesn't matter.

I know that he'll win with 55-60% of the vote before a single vote is cast.

On another note .... how does a lawyer get to be head of the predominant party locally, and still try cases in local courts? David Betras is the head of the local Democrat party, yet tries "injury" cases day and night in front of judges he helped elect. How is that not a conflict of interest? I find it funny when he runs his commercial about the "big insurance companies", and how they don't own "this building". (the court) I swear that I can almost hear him saying ... under his breath ........ "They don't, because I do."

I find some Solis in that some folks are at least talking about it in a rational way here on the Board ! ..