Barack Obama's Real Offense in the Eyes of the GOP - He's Black

When not insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim who was not born in the United States, the Tea Party crowd is busy fantasizing about impeaching Obama.  Never mind that they have no legal grounds for doing so.  It's simply because they cannot stand the man.  His real offense?  He's black.  He embodies all the fears and resentments of angry whites who see their privileged position in society eroding and the white majority position in the population declining.  Soon, they will be merely like everyone else or, and this is what terrifies them, less than everyone else.  There's a good reason the Tea Party is so strong in the South: since the beginning of the nation, one might be nothing, but if you were white in the South, you were assured a superior position in Southern society in most circles (not all, of course, my New Orleans belle grandmother so "poor white trash" as the lowest of the low since, unlike blacks, they did not face racial barriers to self improvement).  These people are steadily losing that once assured position to black, Hispanics, Asians, etc., and it has become an obsession embodied by Obama.  In the New York Times Maureen Dowd looks at the GOP obsession to impeach Obama and rightly concludes that it's really all about race.  Here are excerpts:

ON the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Kerry Bentivolio, a Michigan [Republican] congressman, has a dream, too: to impeach the nation’s first black president. 

Bentivolio graciously conceded that he’d have to come up with some grounds first. “I went back to my office and I have had lawyers come in,” he said. “And these are lawyers, well — Ph.D.’s in history — I said, ‘Tell me how I can impeach the president of the United States. What evidence do you have?’ You’ve got to have the evidence.” 

The Tea Party congressman, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, hopes to find e-mails linking the White House to the I.R.S. examination of groups with a “Tea Party” label seeking tax-exempt status. 

“I stood 12 feet away from the guy and listened to him and I couldn’t stand being there,” he said of President Obama,. . . .

Bentivolio is the perfect avatar of the impeachment fever gripping a G.O.P. that’s unmoored from reality, given that he once admitted in a court deposition, “I have a problem figuring out which one I really am, Santa Claus or Kerry Bentivolio.” That’s why he sometimes used the pronoun “we.” 

He’s been playing Santa Claus — as part of a business he started 19 years ago called Old Fashion Santa — with his own six reindeer.

The Free Press reported that Bentivolio, no Edmund Gwenn in “Miracle on 34th Street,” left a teaching job in 2011 “after complaints he bullied students, even telling one class on its first day that his goal was to make all the students cry once during the year.” How much more gratifying to bully the president. 

Not content with fighting off a popular immigration overhaul or threatening to shut down the government and set off the first federal default, hard-core Congressional Republicans want to nullify the election. Unlike when the Republicans did their nutty impeachment of Bill Clinton — (Newt Gingrich is back, starring in the “Crossfire” reboot) — they don’t even control the Senate. And as David Axelrod told me, there isn’t a “scintilla of justification.”

Earlier this month, the president’s motorcade pulled into the Orlando Hilton and was greeted by about 50 protesters holding signs saying “Kenyan Go Home,” “Impeach Obama” and “Obama Lies.” 

This month has been rife with efforts among the G.O.P. “wise men,” using every channel possible — polls, op-eds, cable, Twitter — to try to talk sense to the goons of August. When Condi Rice is a “wise man,” you know you’re in trouble. 

The Democrats never impeached W. and they had real grounds: starting a war on false premises and sanctioning torture. “The Republican Party is in a constant struggle between its ego and its id,” Axelrod says, “and the id has mostly won out lately.” 

It isn’t the president who should leave. It’s the misguided lawmakers trying to drive him out.  For some of the rodeo clowns clamoring for impeachment around the country, Barack Obama’s real crime is presiding while black. 

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Pat Robertson: Obama Inciting 'Black-On-White Violence'

Regional embarrassment and racist Pat Robertson has let off another explosion of verbal diarrhea.  This time he is blaming Barack Obama for "inciting black-on- white violence."  The data to support this claim?  There is, of course, none.  And its all an delusion in the mind of a man who seems increasingly out of touch with any kind of objective reality who daily panders to the sense of outrage of the white supremacists of the GOP and conservative Christian groups.  These people just cannot get over their hate and bigotry and go off every time they remember a black man is in the White House.  As I have said before, it's a wonder that today's GOP city and county committee meetings don't start with all attendees donning white robes and hoods. And for non-Virginians, it is important that they remember that Robertson is historically the largest GOP donor in Virginia.  Right Wing Watch has these details:

Pat Robertson today, while discussing the shooting of an Australian baseball player in Oklahoma by three teenagers, two of them black and one white, accused President Obama of inciting anti-white violence. The 700 Club host said, “We are having a tremendous amount of this black-on-white violence and I have a feeling that instead of bringing racial harmony, having an African-American president has exacerbated the problem.”
“He seems to be wanting to bring division among people instead of bringing them together; he is one of the most divisive leaders this country has ever had,” Robertson continued. “It just seems he wants to rub the edges raw every chance he gets.” Robertson argued that Obama is trying to divide people by race and class: “There’s always something there to stir up controversy.”
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-obama-inciting-black-white-violence#sthash.InZVuMwo.XNB1TTht.dpuf

Pat Robertson today, while discussing the shooting of an Australian baseball player in Oklahoma by three teenagers, two of them black and one white, accused President Obama of inciting anti-white violence. The 700 Clubhost said, “We are having a tremendous amount of this black-on-white violence and I have a feeling that instead of bringing racial harmony, having an African-American president has exacerbated the problem.”

“He seems to be wanting to bring division among people instead of bringing them together; he is one of the most divisive leaders this country has ever had,” Robertson continued. “It just seems he wants to rub the edges raw every chance he gets.” Robertson argued that Obama is trying to divide people by race and class: “There’s always something there to stir up controversy.”

 

As Blue Virginia reminds us, some of Robertson's other statements include:

Of course, this is the same top Virginia GOP donor who has said: Gays Destroy Society, Want Christians in Jail; that gays are really straights with "chromosomal damage", that Planned Parenthood backs genocide and inspired Hitler, that "Wild" Liberals Support "Society of Death" 

For the record, back in my GOP activist days I got to meet Robertson in person.  In my opinion, he is an arrogant egomaniac who is having a tempestuous love affair with himself.  Obnoxious doesn't even begin to describe him. His mere presence - not to mention Regent University and CBN - are a huge negative for Hampton Roads.

   

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NSA Gathered Tens of Thousands of Americans’ E-mails

With each passing day we seem to discover more details on just how extensive domestic spying on American citizens has become - and how national politicians from Barack Obama on down have been less than honest about just how badly the privacy of citizens has been violated.  Whether the extent of the abuses is due to a run away National Security Agency or our elected officials knowingly allowing the abuses to take place, average citizens ought to be seriously disturbed.   It is particularly disturbing that government officials seemingly were deliberate lying to the court which supposedly protects Americans from domestic spying abuses.  If one thinks that they have any privacy in America, they need to think again.  The Washington Post looks at the latest revelations on the gathering of citizens' e-mails.  Here are excerpts:

For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion.

The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 “wholly domestic” communications each year.

In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans. 

“For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John D. Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion.

“The court is troubled that the government’s revelations regarding NSA’s acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program,” Bates wrote in a scathing footnote.

[T]he NSA collects more than 250 million Internet communications each year, the opinion said. The vast majority — 91 percent — are obtained from Internet providers such as Google, Yahoo and AOL through a program code-named PRISM.

“By expanding its Section 702 acquisitions to include the acquisition of Internet transactions through its upstream collection, NSA has, as a practical matter, circumvented the spirit of [the law],” Bates wrote. “NSA’s knowing acquisition of tens of thousands of wholly domestic communications through its upstream collection is a cause of concern for the court.”

The newly released opinion also reflects Bates’s frustration with the court’s inability to independently verify the NSA’s assertions, a sentiment underscored in a recent statement made to The Post by the current chief judge, Reggie B. Walton.

Bates continued: “Contrary to the government’s repeated assurances, NSA had been routinely running queries of the metadata using querying terms that did not meet the required standard. . . . The Court concluded that this requirement had been ‘so frequently and systematically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall . . . regime has never functioned effectively.’ ”

FISA Section 702, as written, is insufficient to adequately protect the civil liberties and privacy rights of law-abiding Americans and should be reformed.” 

Ironically, my son who can be a bit of a computer geek had told me several years ago that all of this was happening.  I did not believe him at the time.  Obviously, now I do.

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White House Tap Dances Around UK Intimidation of The Guardian

Personally, I find it some what hard to believe that the British government would have sought to threaten the UK newspaper The Guardian and demand all data in the paper's possession relating to the leaks by Edward Snowden without the knowledge of or a request from the U.S. Government/White House.  After all, the materials involved cam from America's spy system, not the UK's.  Yet the White House is trying to feign surprise and claim that nothing like that could happen here in America.  I for one don't believe it and Barack Obama is continuing to sully his reputation and integrity (or what integrity any politician has nowadays).  Raw Story looks at the White House's tap dancing routine.  Here are excerpts:

The White House distanced itself from Britain’s handling of the leaked NSA documents when representatives said it would be difficult to imagine the US authorities following the example of Whitehall in demanding the destruction of media hard drives.

As a former lord chancellor said the Metropolitan police had no legal right to detain the partner of a Guardian journalist at Heathrow airport under anti-terror laws, the White House suggested it would be inappropriate for US authorities to enter a media organisation’s offices to oversee the destruction of hard drives.

The White House – which on Monday distanced Washington from the detention of David Miranda – intervened for the second time in 24 hours after the Guardian revealed that senior Whitehall figures had demanded the destruction or surrender of hard drives containing some of the secret files leaked by the US whistle blower Edward Snowden.

Asked at his daily briefing on Tuesday whether President Obama’s administration would enter a US media company and destroy media hard drives – even to protect national security – the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said: “That’s very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate.”

The intervention by the White House came after the British government embarked on an aggressive offensive to justify the treatment at Heathrow of the partner of the Guardian journalist Greenwald.  Theresa May, the home secretary, confirmed that she was given advance notice of Miranda’s detention as she praised the police action on the grounds that he possessed sensitive documents that could help terrorists and “lead to a loss of lives”.

But May received a setback when Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the former Labour lord chancellor who was involved in introducing the anti-terror legislation used to detain Miranda, said the police had no right to detain him under the Terrorism Act 2000. Miranda was held for nine hours at Heathrow on Sunday under schedule 7 of the act, which allows police to detain people at ports and airports even if they are not acting suspiciously.

Falconer added: “What schedule 7 allows an examining officer to do is to question somebody in order to determine whether he is somebody who is preparing, instigating or commissioning terrorism. Plainly Mr Miranda is not such a person.”

Former shadow home secretary David Davis said No 10′s confirmation that David Cameron was given notice of the detention of Miranda meant that ministers had, in effect, approved of his treatment. 

It is no coincidence that both America and the UK alone of western democracies have police state-like domestic surveillance and spying operations that are on a level equal to Russia and China.  Apparently, the U.S. Constitution's protections for the citizenry mean nothing to Obama and others in Washington.  The ruse of fighting terrorist and national security needs have been used before to usher in dictatorship.  One need only look at 1930's Germany.

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The Guardian: UK Government Tried Intimidation

In a precursor of what we may yet see in America, the editor of the UK newspaper The Guardian - which frequently has better coverage on issues in the USA and crimes by U.S. military personnel than one finds in the America press - has described intimidation efforts by the British government to secure the information leaked to that paper by Edward Snowden.   What makes the story so strange is the leaked information was AMERICAN information, not that of the UK.  One cannot help but wonder whether the Brits were acting in concert with the Obama administration.  It's all very troubling.  Here are highlights from Politico:

The British government intimidated The Guardian newspaper and destroyed material Edward Snowden provided on surveillance programs, editor Alan Rusbridger said Monday.

Writing in a column on The Guardian’s website, Rusbridger said that in June he was contacted by “a very senior” U.K. government official demanding the return or destruction of the material from Snowden. A month ago the tone toughened, Rusbridger wrote, when a government official told Rusbridger “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”

“There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it,” Rusbridger said. “I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. ‘You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.’

Rusbridger said he was told if he did not destroy the material, the U.K. would move to close down The Guardian’s reporting through the courts. Despite telling government officials most of their reporting on Snowden was being done outside of the U.K., Rusbridger said British officials carried on with attempting to stop the reporting.

Rusbridger said The Guardian will continue reporting on the Snowden documents, just not in London.

Rusbridger wrote the column after David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the Snowden story, was detained for nine hours in London’s Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 of Britain’s terror laws. Rusbridger said the detention of Miranda and the seizure of his electronic materials was just the next event in a long line of intimidation by the U.K. government.

“The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments — while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden — are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance,” Rusbridger said.

A free press is what protects us from government tyranny and also keeps the government honest - if there is such a thing - and exposes war crimes such as those exposed by Bradley Manning' release of information.   One of the first things dictatorships do is silence the free press (Hitler and the Nazi regime did so as have the ayatollahs in Tehran).  What is happening in the UK and America is disturbing.

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Quote of the Day: The Abuse of Domestic Spying

I continue to find the level of domestic spying on citizens in America frightening - not to mention a violation of the U.S. Constitution's provisions against unlawful search and seizure.  Yet Barack Obama and others have continued to defend the unconstitutional practice using the excuse that it is necessary to fight terrorism and national security.  The Nazi regime used the national security ruse in the 1930's and we all know what that lead to down the road.  The potential for abuse is simply too great and there are in truth no effective controls in place to prevent abuse should someone in the government decide to do so.  In a post Andrew Sullivan sums things up well after at first defending the practice.  The final straw for him was the holding and interrogation of reporter Glenn Greenwald's husband: 

When the NSA leaks burst onto the scene, I was skeptical of many of the large claims made by civil libertarians and queasily sympathetic to a program that relied on meta-data alone, as long as it was transparent, had Congressional buy-in, did not accidentally expose innocent civilians to grotesque privacy loss, and was watched by a strong FISA court.

Since then, I’ve watched the debate closely and almost all the checks I supported have been proven illusory. The spying is vastly more extensive than anyone fully comprehended before; the FISA court has been revealed as toothless and crippled; and many civilians have had their privacy accidentally violated over 3000 times. The president, in defending the indefensible, has damaged himself and his core reputation for honesty and candor. These cumulative revelations have exposed this program as, at a minimum, dangerous to core liberties and vulnerable to rank abuse. I’ve found myself moving further and further to Glenn’s position.

What has kept me from embracing it entirely has been the absence of any real proof than any deliberate abuse has taken place and arguments that it has helped prevent terror attacks. This may be too forgiving a standard. If a system is ripe for abuse, history tells us the only question is not if such abuse will occur, but when. So it is a strange and awful irony that the Coalition government in Britain has today clinched the case for Glenn.

A disclosure upfront: I have met David Miranda as part of a my friendship with Glenn Greenwald. The thought of his being detained by the British police for nine hours because his partner embarrassed the American government really sickens me at a gut level. 

My obvious question is: what could possibly lead the British security services to suspect David of such ties to terror groups? 

[A]lthough David was released, his entire digital library was confiscated – including his laptop and phone. So any journalist passing through London’s Heathrow has now been warned: do not take any documents with you. Britain is now a police state when it comes to journalists, just like Russia is.

In this respect, I can say this to David Cameron. Thank you for clearing the air on these matters of surveillance. You have now demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that these anti-terror provisions are capable of rank abuse. Unless some other facts emerge, there is really no difference in kind between you and Vladimir Putin. You have used police powers granted for anti-terrorism and deployed them to target and intimidate journalists deemed enemies of the state.

You have proven that these laws can be hideously abused. Which means they must be repealed.

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AFA's Sany Rios: the Face of Bigotry (and Insanity)

Since it's Sunday morning, it's timely to look at some of the batshit craziness being spewed by the "godly Christian" crowd.  Always a contender for the title as one of the most hate filled and virulently anti-gay members is Sandy Rios, of the certified hate group, American Family Association.  Rios like most of the Chriatofascists has a bizarre fixation on gays and gay sex whether it's because she secretly longs to have some gay sex of her own or because we threaten her flimsy faith  system is hard to discern.  The woman needs a mental health care intervention in my view.  Right Wing Watch looks at Rios' latest explosion of verbal diarrhea.  Not surprisingly, the always racist Rios attacks Barack Obama as well.  Here are highlights:

After denouncing First Amendment protections for Muslim-Americans, American Family Association talk show host Sandy Rios saidthat despite the political setbacks of the Religious Right, “God will even the score” with President Obama and “homosexual activists.” She said that Obama and “homosexual activists” will be punished in the end for “breaking all kinds of moral laws and mocking everyone in the process.”

I would not want to be in the shoes of any of the left right now. I would not want to be in Barack Obama’s shoes. I would not want to be in the shoes of homosexual activists. I say that with humility and with fear for them because God will even the score, he will sort things out, he will be God and he will not be mocked. Whereas they think they are getting away with breaking all kinds of moral laws and mocking everyone in the process, they just don’t know God, they don’t know who they are up against and we do. And that should bring out some mercy in us because I wouldn’t want to be—what did that old evangelist say: ‘it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God.

Personally, I love her reference to "that old evangelist."   We have no idea who actually wrote the books of the New Testament other than it wasn't those to whom they are attributed and we know the Bible has been manipulated and re-edited over and over again over the course of the first 1,000 years of the Church.   As for "God punishing" Obama and gay activists, Rios is unclear as to whether she is call for far right nutcases to inflict the punishment as instruments of God or if that will only happen on the supposed Judgment Day.  The woman is insane and she's dangerous in that she spews hate and venom that could incite violence.

I would not want to be in the shoes of any of the left right now. I would not want to be in Barack Obama’s shoes. I would not want to be in the shoes of homosexual activists. I say that with humility and with fear for them because God will even the score, he will sort things out, he will be God and he will not be mocked. Whereas they think they are getting away with breaking all kinds of moral laws and mocking everyone in the process, they just don’t know God, they don’t know who they are up against and we do. And that should bring out some mercy in us because I wouldn’t want to be—what did that old evangelist say: ‘it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rios-god-will-even-score-obama-and-gays#sthash.rpj2Sdvi.dpuf

I would not want to be in the shoes of any of the left right now. I would not want to be in Barack Obama’s shoes. I would not want to be in the shoes of homosexual activists. I say that with humility and with fear for them because God will even the score, he will sort things out, he will be God and he will not be mocked. Whereas they think they are getting away with breaking all kinds of moral laws and mocking everyone in the process, they just don’t know God, they don’t know who they are up against and we do. And that should bring out some mercy in us because I wouldn’t want to be—what did that old evangelist say: ‘it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rios-god-will-even-score-obama-and-gays#sthash.rpj2Sdvi.dpuf

After denouncing First Amendment protections for Muslim-Americans, American Family Association talk show host Sandy Rios said that despite the political setbacks of the Religious Right, “God will even the score” with President Obama and “homosexual activists.” She said that Obama and “homosexual activists” will be punished in the end for “breaking all kinds of moral laws and mocking everyone in the process.” - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/rios-god-will-even-score-obama-and-gays#sthash.rpj2Sdvi.dpuf

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Obama’s Empty NSA Reforms

Americans continue to live in a nation where domestic spying on civilians and breaches of privacy rival those of communist China and Putin's Russia and despite Barack Obama's talk of reform, things on this front are not about to be reigned in.  It is disturbing that the only safe approach in America is to assume that everything one does on the Internet or via electronic communications is being intercepted and read by government agents.  We have no true privacy.  The Nazi regime would be envious of the level of surveillance that watches Americans' every move.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Obama's meaningless promises of reform. Here are excerpts:

President Obama’s message about the government’s massive electronic surveillance programs came through loud and clear: Get over it.

The president used more soothing words in his pre-vacation news conference Friday, but that was the gist. With perhaps the application of a fig leaf here and a sheen of legalistic mumbo jumbo there, the snooping will continue.  Unless, of course, we demand that it end.

The modest reforms Obama proposed do not begin to address the fundamental question of whether we want the National Security Agency to log all of our phone calls and read at least some of our e-mails, relying on secret judicial orders from a secret court for permission. The president indicated he is willing to discuss how all this is done — but not whether.

Snowden’s disclosures do look increasingly like whistle-blowing, by the way, rather than espionage or treason. If administration officials really welcome the discussion we are now having, shouldn’t they thank Snowden rather than label him an enemy of the state? 

As part of its public relations campaign, the administration released a 22-page white paper outlining its legal rationale for collecting and keeping a detailed log of all our domestic phone calls. The document depends on novel definitions of words whose meaning, I always thought, was fairly clear.

Only an infinitesimal fraction of the billions of phone call records being stored in the NSA’s computers will actually have anything to do with terrorism or espionage. The government argues that it must have the entire haystack to find these few needles. Therefore, every piece of hay — your lunchtime call to your spouse, say, or your evening chat with an old friend — is relevant to an investigation.

Which investigation might that be? On this question, the administration argues there is no need to be specific. “An investigation” is taken to mean, roughly, any investigation designed to prevent terrorist attacks.

[T]he Fourth Amendment, which prohibits searches without suspicion. Without informing us, the judges of the secret intelligence court have construed the amendment to permit the collection of vast, unprecedented amounts of private information about individuals who are not, the government admits, under any suspicion.

Proceedings before the court are not adversarial; only the government side is presented. Obama acknowledged that this “may tilt it too far in favor of security, may not pay enough attention to liberty.”

I’ll believe Congress is serious when it clarifies the Patriot Act and other laws to spell out that the Constitution still applies. The NSA’s capability to obliterate privacy is rampaging ahead. The law desperately needs to catch up.

I continue to find this all pervasive spying on citizens frightening.  It has all the earmarks of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes.  There is currently no one who reins in out of control spying. And there are no limits on the government's ability to label one a suspect or subversive.

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Bayard Rustin to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom

Speaking of learning from history, President Obama is taking a step that one can only hope will open the eyes of some of the cretin like black pastors who continue to be the willing water carriers - dare we say trained circus dogs? - for white supremacist leaning anti-gay organizations.  He has announced that Bayard Rustin - Martin Luther King's gay right hand man who organized the 1963 march on Washington - will receive a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.   Sadly, Rustin has been largely hidden from the history of the Civil Rights movement because of his sexual orientation.  A piece in Bilerico Project looks at the news.  Here are excerpts:

The White House announced today that the venerable Bayard Rustin -- a pioneer in the African-American and LGBT civil rights movements, confidante and advisor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington -- will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor.

A press release from the White House notes that the award, which will be presented in a ceremony later this year, is given to individuals who have "made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

The press release gives the following biography for Rustin:

Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all. An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the first Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at home and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.

LGBT organizations reacted with praise. HRC:

"Bayard Rustin's contributions to the American civil rights movement remain paramount to its successes to this day," said HRC President Chad Griffin. "His role in the fight for civil rights of African-Americans is all the more admirable because he made it as a gay man, experiencing prejudice not just because of his race, but because of his sexual orientation as well."

Rustin was active in the struggle for civil rights for sixty years, from organizing early freedom rides in the 1940s, to serving as key advisor to Dr. King, to helping found the A. Philip Randolph Institute. But his advocacy was far from limited to the rights of African Americans. He worked to end apartheid in South Africa, fought for the freedom of Soviet Jews, worked to protect the property of Japanese Americans interned during World War II, and helped highlight the plight of Vietnamese "boat people." And in the 1980s, he also spoke up for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, testifying in support of anti-discrimination legislation in New York. "Bayard Rustin dedicated his life to advocating for fairness and equality and overcame prejudice to help move our nation forward," added Griffin.

It is sad that Rustin did not receive the recognition he deserved while he was living.

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Obama to Leno: "I Have No Patience' for the Persecution of Gay People in Russia"

On the Jay Leno show, Barack Obama said nice words about his opposition to what is happening to gays in Russia.  However, as is always the case with Obama, the question is whether those nice words will translate into concrete actions.  I for one, will not be holding my breath.  After all, we still have no ENDA like executive order protecting federal employees and those working for government contractors.  Towleroad looks at the Leno-Obama exchange:

President Obama appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last night and offered a broad interview on a number of current topics, one of which was the current situation with Russia. After a discussion of the Edward Snowden NSA case, Leno expressed his dismay at Russia's anti-gay laws, and wondered why it isn't a bigger story?

Leno:

"This seems like Germany - let's round up the Jews, let's round up the gays, let's round up the...it starts with that. You round up people you don't like. Why isn't more of the world outraged at this?"

Obama:

"I've been very clear that when it comes to universal rights, when it comes to people's basic freedoms, that whether you are discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, you are violating the basic morality that should transcend every country, and I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.”

Obama then brought up the situations he encountered on his recent trip to Africa:

"What's happening in Russia is not unique. When I traveled to Africa there were some countries that are doing a lot of good things for their people, who we're working with and helping on development issues but in some cases have persecuted gays and lesbians and it makes for some uncomfortable press conferences sometimes but one of the things that I think is very important for me to speak out on is making sure that people are treated fairly and justly because that's what we stand for and I believe that's not a preset that's not just unique to America but should apply everywhere."

Again, the question is whether these correct words lead to action or remain merely words.  Mr. Obama, are you listening?

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More Government Spying - XKeyscore: NSA Collects "Nearly Everything One Does on the Internet'

In yet another bombshell article, The Guardian has a piece that suggests that U.S. government spying on American citizens is even more pervasive than previously thought.  Indeed, nearly everything one does online can be collected and used for whatever nefarious purpose the government bureaucrats.  For all I know, I may have a dossier on me at NSA given some of my criticisms of Barack Obama and other parts of the U. S. government.  Naturally, "preventing terrorism" and "national security" are the excuses thrown out to justify such pervasive spying - the same excuses used by communist dictators in China and other dictators past and present in countries around the globe.  Is there any proof of this other than statements by government officials?  Of course not.  The information is all classified and secret.  Here are article highlights:

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

"I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

In a second Guardian interview in June, Snowden elaborated on his statement about being able to read any individual's email if he had their email address. He said the claim was based in part on the email search capabilities of XKeyscore, which Snowden says he was authorized to use while working as a Booz Allen contractor for the NSA.

Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.  An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.

In a letter this week to senator Ron Wyden, director of national intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that NSA analysts have exceeded even legal limits as interpreted by the NSA in domestic surveillance.   Acknowledging what he called "a number of compliance problems", Clapper attributed them to "human error" or "highly sophisticated technology issues" rather than "bad faith".

Reading all of this, it really is no surprise that the lack of personal freedom from surveillance in America landed in the same category as that of Russia and China.     So much for privacy and freedom from big brother watching your every move.

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Bradley Manning Revealed Crimes Far Worse Than Those He Supposedly Committed

I have not yet seen the outcome of Bradley Manning's sentencing, but I continue to be sickened by the persecution of Manning by the U. S. Military and the Obama administration while those who authorized and/or committed war crimes - yes, I am talking about George Bush, Dick Cheney and a number of others  - continue to go unpunished.  Apparently, Barack Obama and the U.S. military have forgotten the standard that was applied at Nuremberg to those who committed similar crimes.  I personally do not want to hear any more blather about American exceptionalism as long as war criminals go unpunished while whistle blowers are persecuted.  A piece in Huffington Post expands on this topic.  Here are highlights:

In the media world, even national security hawks like The Daily Beast's Eli Lake concede that Manning's leaks had "a lot of public benefit." But very few have argued Manning should go free.

Did Manning break the law? According to the letter, yes he did. But since when did we presume to hold people in government accountable to the law?.

The Bush administration lied to the American people in order to justify the war crime of attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq. That crime qualified, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, as "the supreme international crime differing only from other crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Trillions of dollars and the death and suffering of millions of people were the consequences of that crime.

The Bush gang also secretly ordered warrantless surveillance of Americans' domestic communications without involving the courts, a blatant violation of both constitutional and statutory law. And don't forget the setting up of a worldwide torture regime that directly violated longstanding international law as well as domestic law, specifically a Convention against torture, passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, which specifies that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever... may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Yet, nobody but the most marginal voices in our politics ever dared to suggest the Bush administration should be prosecuted according to the letter of the law.

In the U.S., there are crimes the government approves of and those it doesn't. Contrast Bradley Manning's punishment, for example, with that of the commander in charge of the torture at Abu Ghraib. Manning was subjected to abusive detention and faces more than a hundred years in prison. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who oversaw the brutal torment of hundreds of detainees got an $8,000 fine.

Bradley Manning's leaks revealed crimes far worse than the ones he has supposedly committed. The Collateral Murder video shows the sickening slaughter of a group of people in Iraq, including journalists and rescuers.

One State Department cable revealed to the world for the first time that U.S. special operations forces raided a house in Iraq in 2006 and summarily executed one man, four women, two children, and three infants -- all shot in the head. Although Phillip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, brought the incident to the attention of then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration failed to respond.

Manning's leaks also revealed the fact that the Obama administration colluded with the Yemeni dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh to execute a secret war without the consent of Congress and systematically lie about it. Yet Manning, who blew the whistle on this criminality, is the only one facing legal prosecution..

History, at least, will look very kindly on the actions of Bradley Manning and harshly on the crimes of the overlords he challenged. The real task is for Americans to get to the point where the country -- and its government -- is ruled by law, and not by men.

 Americans wonder how the horrors of Nazi Germany came to be.  If Americans do not demand that the rue f law prevail, America is well on its way towards a totalitarian government that punishes anyone who exposes its lies and worse yet, its crimes.

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