😂
Hilarious YOU are complaining that prosecutors are “gunning full speed to file charges against Trump” because the RAPIST has been complaining vociferously that they slow walked these charges that he claims should have been brought Jan 21 2021 (despite some charges stemming from actions he took in September 21 and later), and says they’re slow walking them to delay until 2024 … ignoring or trying to hide from the fact that 99% of delays came from Trump and his cohorts forcing prosecutors to repeatedly go all the way to the Supreme Court to get their testimony or documents in their efforts to delay trials until after the election. 😂

Republicans dismissed the accusations (not charges) against Clinton after 12 failed investigations found absolutely nothing criminal. Nada, nothing, none, zip, zilch, bumpkis.
Hunter (a private citizen so total 100% red herring) is going to court likely before Trump. His father COULD pardon him and end the nonsensical persecution “by just thinking about it”, but instead a special prosecutor was just empaneled.

Trump the rapist is only running so he can pardon himself from the list of 91 serious felony charges (and growing) he faces today for defrauding and assaulting the American government and people.

What insanity are you believing now?

Did i misunderstand? Are you actually trying to say the rapist Trump only spitballed ideas? Are you so delusional you bought the stupid lie that he’s being charged for exercising free speech!?! 😂

Good luck with that…because he’s not charged with spitballing ideas, or lying about the election…he’s charged in this indictment with conspiring to impede official proceedings, taking actions to impede official proceedings, and attempting to defraud the government by submitting fake electors, and attempting to deny millions of voters their rights of participation in the process by stealing their votes. He’s charged with trying to “delay” the final certification to give his dishonest ploys to steal the election by fraud more time, a major felony…and his fucking lawyer went on TV and admitted he did it! 😂
You morons!

Keep chugging the flavoraid. Jim….I mean Don will be there to personally usher you into MAGA heaven when it’s over because he loves you and is well known for helping the little guy.

P.S.- a second judge has now said Trump is a rapist, and dismissed his counterclaim against Carrol for calling him a rapist. Enjoy!

This is your answer to 50 listed (and 1000 to come) pedophilic Republicans is a single unquoted tweet by a Republican operative best known for spreading false propaganda that you know no one will read because you are known to link to fake sites? ROTFLMFAHS!!! 😂 😂
Let me help you with that…don’t ignore #61

51Republican chairman of the Oregon Christian Coalition Lou Beres confessed to molesting a 13-year old girl

52 Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd was arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with an 8-year old girl. Authorities say Floyd also was interested in a 3-year-old girl and 16-month-old boy.

53 Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy, in other words, rape.

54 Republican petition drive manager Tom Randall pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 14, one of them the daughter of an associate in the petition business.

55 Republican County Chairman Armando Tebano was arrested for sexually molesting a 14-year-old girl.

56 Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pled guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14-year-old girls.

57 Republican campaign worker Mark Seidensticker was found guilty of offering alcohol and cigarettes to a 14-year-old boy. Authorities accused him of having offered beer and cigarettes to a boy while driving a car with a trunk stocked with blankets, duct tape, rope, and a lubricant. Seidensticker worked on NH Republican state executive councilor Burton campaigns for more than a decade. Burton knew he was convicted of assault when he hired him.

58 Republican Mayor Tom Adams was arrested for distributing child pornography over the internet.

59 Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.

60 Republican Committeeman John R. Curtin was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor

61 Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader, Lutheran church president, and BTK killer Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.

62 GOP ad consultant Carey Lee Cramer who created an anti-Gore ad modeled on LBJ's "Daisy" ad convicted of sexual assault of 2 8-year-old girls, including his daughter who appeared in the ad.

63 Republican Lobbyist Craig Spence - running call-boy prostitution ring, killed himself. While I am not posting people arrested for soliciting a prostitute, someone who runs a prostitution ring is a whole different kettle of fish.

64 Republican Judge Ronald C. Kline was placed under house arrest for child molestation and possession of child pornography

65 GOP state Rep Jim Knoblach of St. Cloud, MN ended his re-election campaign Friday amid detailed accusations from his adult daughter of what she described as his inappropriate behavior toward her since childhood

66 Steve Aiken(82), campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Congress in Arizona, former Quakertown, PA, police officer, and self-proclaimed reverend, was convicted of having sex with two underage girls

67 Republican president of the New York City Housing Development Corp. Russell Harding pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer

68 Republican state representative Bob Allen charged with soliciting oral sex from a male undercover cop. Normally, I would ignore a gay man being arrested for being gay, but he claimed Fear of Black men made him do it

69 Republican prosecutor John David Roy Atchison arrested on charges of flying across the country to try and have sex with a five-year-old girl. Committed suicide.

70 Republican chairman & radio show host E Ozwald Balfour arrested on four counts of forcible sex abuse/groping

71 Clifton Bennett, 18, son of Arizona Republican state senator Ken Bennett plead guilty to assaulting 3 boys, aged 11-15 with broomsticks up their rectal areas. They sodomized 18 boys and were not charged with sexual assault

72 Republican preacher Hewart Lee Bennett arrested for soliciting sex from 16-year-old boys while claiming that he did so to gain their trust and then teach them the love of Jesus

73 Republican commission candidate Wilton Frederick Bland sentenced to 80 years in prison for various sex crimes including 45 counts of first-degree rape of an 11-year-old

74 Republican councilman John Bryan resigned from office and committed suicide several hours later, just a few minutes before police arrived at his home to question him about his alleged rape of his two adoptive daughters, ages 12 and 15

75 Garrett Ventry-Judiciary Committee communications aide coordinating GOP messaging on Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation forced to resign due to sexual harassment claims. He denies them

Just FYI-
BARNETT, Richard

Case Number:
1:21-cr-38
Charge(s):
Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Aiding and Abetting; Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon; Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon; Entering and Remaining in Certain Rooms in the Capitol Building; Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building; Theft of Government Property

This is the guy who broke into Pelosi’s office hunting her then sat at her desk, feet up, stole documents, made some phone calls, and allegedly (but not charged) did other damages to the Capitol building (like smearing shit on the walls).

Guilty on all 8 counts today.

Today is interesting….
1.)a federal judge said in her official ruling that guilty insurrectionists WERE acting on Trump’s orders to “stop the steal”, which meant disrupt congress in their constitutional duties. That officially makes him a seditious insurrectionist.
2.) his deposition in the Eugene Carrol case is so full of perjury and contradiction it will be a miracle if he’s not charged. He actually claimed he’s never once touched a woman without prior consent….as if we hadn’t seen all the videos.
3.) in his pre deposition he was shown a photo of Carrol, who he’s repeatedly said he didn’t rape only because she’s “not his type”, but when he saw the photo he said “that’s my beautiful ex wife, Marla”. D’oh!
What a tool. Where’s your messiah now? (Hint, it’s a courtroom somewhere).

Edit: and, on Toth Senchal, he fully admitted stealing classified documents from the whitehouse because he liked the colorful folders. Another flailing explanation that contradicts his other flailing explanations without being a defense.
Still no defense to refusing to turn them over and lying about having them when asked by the archives, when they were demanded by the archives, or about actively hiding them when the FBI searched for them repeatedly, finding more every time everywhere they searched. 🤦‍♂️
Also no explanation for Giuliani claiming he was routinely instructed to take top secret documents home despite not having security clearance to see them and not having a secure place to store them at home.

I will be astonished, given the legal issues laid out in that second video, if the smoke shop is not charged. 7 times with a knife,
He's gonna have trouble claiming it was proportionate.

The credit card companies get 2-4% of every single purchase made with every single card. They really couldn't give a shit if some pay on time, and others keep a balance. The consumer end of the equation is peanuts. That's why, if you ask, they'll lock your card for a few months and not charge interest while you pay it down.

Recently, they've changed it so they charge 2-4% for refunds as well. So if you buy something for $100, Visa holds onto $3. If you come back and get your money back, Visa holds onto ANOTHER $3. So your favourite store just got reamed for $6, with no actual purchase being final.

Yes, and that's why I display such contempt and distrust of them.

As I understood it, yes, 3 pairs of cuffs, all 3 attached to his wrists, not a chain of 3 pairs to make him comfortable. I mean, why is he cuffed at all? WTF?!? He's not 500lbs, the only time they use more than one pair in a chain is when the perps hands can't fit behind their back, NEVER for comfort....that's simply not what cuffs are about...EVER.

Yes, this level of 'incompetence' (if that's what it was, and I don't concede that) MUST be intentional. It falls so far below the bar we have set as reasonable, or the standards that police MUST meet through testing, that the only way it could actually be his incompetence rather than intentional negligence is if his supervisor intentionally falsified his test results to keep him on the force....so it's either HIS intentional negligence or his supervisors, but either way, it's intentional. No question in my mind that SOMEONE along the chain of responsibility intentionally allowed this behavior...or this level of incompetence that it's clear would lead to this behavior. There was intentional negligence, no way around it.

It actually seems to indicate a lack of a reason for shooting in the first place to me.

I've seen a dozen videos about this. Numerous times they mentioned an over 15 minute wait before he was seen by medics, during which time they had him handcuffed, bleeding in the street, but not charged with any crime or even suspected of one....why the cuffs?

I think that there is a point where negligence is SO intentional, and the results of that negligence SO foreseeable that it's indirect intent. Cops shoot to kill...period. If they shoot inappropriately, like at someone not posing a threat, that's attempted murder IMO. Period. They intend to kill, it's not accidental. Wounding him was accidental and clearly incompetence, which should be another charge IMO, unsafe discharge of a weapon...at least twice for those times he missed completely....and attempted murder 3 times.

(Side note...how in the hell do you miss from that close with a rifle?!? That, as much as anything else, should have people up in arms, that an officer is so non-proficient with his weapon, but still allowed to carry and use it. WTF?!? I want every officer with a firearm to be reasonably proficient with it...really any person with one, but that's another discussion. Police have to train, and prove proficiency with their weapon....how can this possibly happen without intentional skirting of the standards/rules/law?)

The biggest problem IMO is there's rarely any justice at all, even in those cases where there's incontrovertible evidence of guilt. Instant justice would be nice, but delayed justice would be FAR preferable to no justice, which is the current situation. How many recent killings of unarmed men have gone completely unaddressed? Far too many to count.
The system is set up in such a way that those charged with prosecuting police have personal and professional relationships with them that deny impartiality in almost every case. That is why there's rarely any prosecution, and even when there is (usually because they are pressured into it by public outcry) they blatantly throw the case in the toilet with no consequence....and there's still no justice.

What I fail to understand is how no one was charged with anything (again). In 2008 the Societe General "lost" 4.9 bilion Euros and the blamed it all on one guy, Jerome Kerviel, a junior trader who supposedly could gamble around with nearly five billion Euros without cheking in with his superiors.

In this case, the CEO of JPMorgan even blamed "a small group of employees" yet still, the US DOJ is not charging any indivduals.

It seems the banks have grown so far out of the reach of the world's justice departments in the last few years that they not even bother to present a fall guy for their crimes anymore.

Yes, that's why they charged him with THEFT, not robbery. He didn't USE the piece of metal in his hand to threaten.
The arson part, that can be considered 'violent', you're right there.
No, ROBBERY is violent, burglary is sneaky. Y ou might note he was not charged with breaking and entering, robbery, OR burglary. Trespass is what it's called when you enter an OPEN building or home, burglary if you did it intending to steal, robbery if you came armed and used that arm in any way against a human.
No, I'm fairly certain auto theft and GRAND THEFT AUTO are different charges, like petty theft and grand theft are different.
No one ever mentioned a "tussel" with store employees, they are instructed to allow him to walk away, they would lose their job if they tried to stop him, because the gun was under $500, petty theft.
You are welcome to believe police when it comes to them excusing their violence. I am free to not believe them. Their recent actions have shown them to be untrustworthy, so I feel proper not trusting them.
Wait, so because a guy actually committed crimes, you will believe cops? Huh? They guy shot in the back did more violence than this guy, he actually tussled with the cop.
You know those aren't the only two options, right? Kill him or let him free to kill 11 year olds?
Videos have proven time and time again to be a far better picture of what actually happened than the officers accounts. If I could trust an officer to tell the truth, I could be there with you. Unfortunately, they have proven at every turn that they are not trustworthy, so I think any rational person would stop trusting them and require they PROVE their contentions, and ignore anything they claim without proof. That's where I am.

The witnesses? The only witness that vaguely supports this that I've seen is an anonymous witness cited in the Daily Caller. Not credible journalism even by USA standards. The known witnesses are Dorian Johnson (altercation at the car, shooting as he ran away, he got hit, turned around put his hands up and stumbled forwards before the shooting began again), James McKnight (more or less the same as Johnson), Michael Brady (altercation at car, shooting, then as Brown was halfway towards falling to the ground more shots), Piaget Crenshaw (shots fired as he ran away with hands up, turned with hands up, more firing). Those accounts aren't too far from the Police account really. Is it reasonable to conclude deadly force is required in the timeframe of the shooting? What does police protocol say? One step? Two? When can you be sure it's not charging but belligerence, drunkenness, or injury? I'm sure America are the experts in these cases by now and have explicit and clear guidelines for semi-autonomous itinerant armed police officers and when they can and cannot open fire. Surely it isn't just 'if you harbour any fear, kill or otherwise incapacitate the citizen you are trying to apprehend'?

There is also TheePharoah who tweeted it from the scene and said ' JUST SAW SOMEONE DIE OMFG....no reason! He was running!', but you know, its not clear he can provide further useful information assuming he was interviewed.

Hey Republicans. Don't forget, you invented the individual mandate. You tried to pass it into Federal law many times yourself. Don't be all ticked off just because some black guy finally did what you couldn't. Typical move the goal post behavior. What's changed since the Republican version that was endorsed by the insurance industry? Let's see... they now need to cover pre-existing conditions, yeah, that's horrible, making insurance companies cover sick people and not charge them more, how horrible... and they changed it from catastrophic coverage to comprehensive coverage, so now the insurance companies have to pay for far more services... hmm... I wonder why Republicans suddenly oppose their own idea? Perhaps because suddenly there is less profit in the suffering of millions of people? That is all that matters to Republicans, profit over people. To undue the damage caused by unions in giving people 40 hour work weeks and make people work 80+ hours a week again so that the fat rich cats can keep more and more of the limited resource called money... so that nice little income gap can continue to grow. Hey, perhaps someday soon the US will be like the old Soviet Union with long bread lines, the Republicans clearly want to see that. After all hundreds of them chanted "Let them die!" at the Republican debate... that was the moment that I decided even if I got my faith in god back, I'd rather be in hell then in heaven with people like that, apparently they forgot all the teachings of Jesus about how the rich can't get into heaven, how to help the needy and the poor, how to be lovers of peace and not war, how love was the greatest commandment, and everything else that the Republican party is opposed to.

I don't get why people get upset at the keep the insurance plan. It isn't the government shutting it down, it is greedy insurance companies shutting it down. It's like jobs going to China, people get mad at the government rather than the rich ass hole who sent the jobs oversees so his own personal profits could be higher. I seem to recall the people who are complaining, defended oil company profits by pointing out that per dollar earned/gross profit margin oil was down at 17 or so, while banks were number one followed by a small gap, pharmaceuticals were number two and insurance number three with a nice gap to number 4 and on to the rest of the list. So yeah, if changes in how they have to cover people means they might fall off that list of top 3 most profitable bushiness, then I would expect them to drop the less profitable plans to maintain their multi-billion dollar profit off the suffering of others so a few rich people can have a nice cozy life while millions suffer for their greedy gains.

Health insurance shouldn't be about huge profits. It should be about getting people the health coverage they need... of course I could also argue that the health care industry as a whole shouldn't be so profit driven... nor should the education required to train our healthcare workforce (nor education at all really)... We should have gotten what Obama promised in the first place, a single payer system, or at the very least a Government Option, rather than caving into the Republican Right and turning the money over to a multi-billion dollar industry... and now look, they still oppose it even though it was their idea... If they were going to oppose it no matter what, he should have made it worth everyone's while and given actual reform.

And hey, if you oppose it, come up with something better. Something that will help the millions of people working at places like retail and fast food that can't get employer sponsored coverage. Make sure every American is covered and can afford health care, not emergency treatment, but going to see a doctor for preventative care and affording any medication that the doctor may prescribe.

"Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A leaked top-secret order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon Business customers. Last night The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on a, quote, "ongoing, daily basis." The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the content of the communications. The order expressly compels Verizon to turn over records for both international and domestic records. It also forbids Verizon from disclosing the existence of the court order. It is unclear if other phone companies were ordered to hand over similar information.

AMY GOODMAN: According to legal analysts, the Obama administration relied on a controversial provision in the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 215, that authorizes the government to seek secret court orders for the production of, quote, "any tangible thing relevant to a foreign intelligence or terrorism investigation." The disclosure comes just weeks after news broke that the Obama administration had been spying on journalists from the Associated Press and James Rosen, a reporter from Fox News.

We’re now joined by two former employees of the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating the Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. William Binney worked for almost 40 years at the NSA. He resigned shortly after the September 11th attacks over his concern over the increasing surveillance of Americans. We’re also joined in studio here by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

First, for your legal opinion, Shayana, can you talk about the significance of what has just been revealed?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. So I think, you know, we have had stories, including one in USA Today in May 2006, that have said that the government is collecting basically all the phone records from a number of large telephone companies. What’s significant about yesterday’s disclosure is that it’s the first time that we’ve seen the order, to really appreciate the sort of staggeringly broad scope of what one of the judges on this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved of, and the first time that we can now confirm that this was under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which, you know, has been dubbed the libraries provision, because people were mostly worried about the idea that the government would use it to get library records. Now we know that they’re using it to get phone records. And just to see the immense scope of this warrant order, you know, when most warrants are very narrow, is really shocking as a lawyer.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, some might argue that the Obama administration at least went to the FISA court to get approval for this, unlike the Bush administration in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. Well, we don’t know if the Bush administration was, you know, getting these same orders and if this is just a continuation, a renewal order. It lasted for only—it’s supposed to last for only three months, but they may have been getting one every three months since 2006 or even earlier. You know, when Congress reapproved this authority in 2011, you know, one of the things Congress thought was, well, at least they’ll have to present these things to a judge and get some judicial review, and Congress will get some reporting of the total number of orders. But when one order covers every single phone record for a massive phone company like Verizon, the reporting that gets to Congress is going to be very hollow. And then, similarly, you know, when the judges on the FISA court are handpicked by the chief justice, and the government can go to a judge, as they did here, in North Florida, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, who’s 73 years old and is known as a draconian kind of hanging judge in his sentencing, and get some order that’s this broad, I think both the judicial review and the congressional oversight checks are very weak.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, this is just Verizon, because that’s what Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian got a hold of. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other orders for the other telephone companies, right?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: Like BellSouth, like AT&T, etc.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: As there have been in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Yeah, those were—those were companies mentioned in that USA Today story in 2006. Nothing about the breadth of this order indicates that it’s tied to any particular national security investigation, as the statute says it has to be. So, some commentators yesterday said, "Well, this order came out on—you know, it’s dated 10 days after the Boston attacks." But it’s forward-looking. It goes forward for three months. Why would anyone need to get every record from Verizon Business in order to investigate the Boston bombings after they happened?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, William Binney, a decades-long veteran of the NSA, your reaction when you heard about this news?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, this was just the FBI going after data. That was their request. And they’re doing that because they—if they want to try to get it—they have to have it approved by a court in order to get it as evidence into a courtroom. But NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it’s been all the companies, not just one. And I basically looked at that and said, well, if Verizon got one, so did everybody else, which means that, you know, they’re just continuing the collection of this kind of information on all U.S. citizens. That’s one of the main reasons they couldn’t tell Senator Wyden, with his request of how many U.S. citizens are in the NSA databases. There’s just—in my estimate, it was—if you collapse it down to all uniques, it’s a little over 280 million U.S. citizens are in there, each in there several hundred to several thousand times.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, let’s go to Senator Wyden. A secret court order to obtain the Verizon phone records was sought by the FBI under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was expanded by the PATRIOT Act. In 2011, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden warned about how the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

SEN. RON WYDEN: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they are going to be stunned, and they are going to be angry. And they’re going asked senators, "Did you know what this law actually permits? Why didn’t you know before you voted on it?" The fact is, anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act, and yet many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified. It’s almost as if there were two PATRIOT Acts, and many members of Congress have not read the one that matters. Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Ron Wyden. He and Senator Udall have been raising concerns because they sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee but cannot speak out openly exactly about what they know. William Binney, you left the agency after September 2001, deeply concerned—this is after you’d been there for 40 years—about the amount of surveillance of U.S. citizens. In the end, your house was raided. You were in the shower. You’re a diabetic amputee. The authorities had a gun at your head. Which agency had the gun at your head, by the way?

WILLIAM BINNEY: That was the FBI.

AMY GOODMAN: You were not charged, though you were terrorized. Can you link that to what we’re seeing today?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, it’s directly linked, because it has to do with all of the surveillance of the U.S. citizens that’s been going on since 9/11. I mean, that’s—they were getting—from just one company alone, that I knew of, they were getting over 300 million call records a day on U.S. citizens. So, I mean, and when you add the rest of the companies in, my estimate was that there were probably three billion phone records collected every day on U.S. citizens. So, over time, that’s a little over 12 trillion in their databases since 9/11. And that’s just phones; that doesn’t count the emails. And they’re avoiding talking about emails there, because that’s also collecting content of what people are saying. And that’s in the databases that NSA has and that the FBI taps into. It also tells you how closely they’re related. When the FBI asks for data and the court approves it, the data is sent to NSA, because they’ve got all the algorithms to do the diagnostics and community reconstructions and things like that, so that the FBI can—makes it easier for the FBI to interpret what’s in there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Thomas Drake, who was prosecuted by the Obama administration after he blew the whistle on mismanagement and waste and constitutional violations at the NSA. Thomas Drake, your reaction to this latest revelation?

THOMAS DRAKE: My reaction? Where has the mainstream media been? This is routine. These are routine orders. This is nothing new. What’s new is we’re actually seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records of—from any company that exists in the United States.

I think what people are now realizing is that this isn’t just a terrorist issue. This is simply the ability of the government in secret, on a vast scale, to collect any and all phone call records, including domestic to domestic, local, as well as location information. We might—there’s no need now to call this the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Let’s just call it the surveillance court. It’s no longer about foreign intelligence. It’s simply about harvesting millions and millions and millions of phone call records and beyond. And this is only just Verizon. As large as Verizon is, with upwards of 100 million subscribers, what about all the other telecoms? What about all the other Internet service providers? It’s become institutionalized in this country, in the greatest of secrecy, for the government to classify, conceal not only the facts of the surveillance, but also the secret laws that are supporting surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Drake, what can they do with this information, what’s called metadata? I mean, they don’t have the content of the conversation, supposedly—or maybe we just don’t see that, that’s under another request, because, remember, we are just seeing this one, for people who are listening and watching right now, this one request that is specifically to—and I also want to ask you: It’s Verizon Business Services; does that have any significance? But what does it mean to have the length of time and not the names of, but where the call originates and where it is going, the phone numbers back and forth?

THOMAS DRAKE: You get incredible amounts of information about subscribers. It’s basically the ability to forward-profile, as well as look backwards, all activities associated with those phone numbers, and not only just the phone numbers and who you called and who called you, but also the community of interests beyond that, who they were calling. I mean, we’re talking about a phenomenal set of records that is continually being added to, aggregated, year after year and year, on what have now become routine orders. Now, you add the location information, that’s a tracking mechanism, monitoring tracking of all phone calls that are being made by individuals. I mean, this is an extraordinary breach. I’ve said this for years. Our representing attorney, Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project, we’ve been saying this for years and no—from the wilderness. We’ve had—you’ve been on—you know, you’ve had us on your show in the past, but it’s like, hey, everybody kind of went to sleep, you know, while the government is harvesting all these records on a routine basis.

You’ve got to remember, none of this is probable cause. This is simply the ability to collect. And as I was told shortly after 9/11, "You don’t understand, Mr. Drake. We just want the data." And so, the secret surveillance regime really has a hoarding complex, and they can’t get enough of it. And so, here we’re faced with the reality that a government in secret, in abject violation of the Fourth Amendment, under the cover of enabling act legislation for the past 12 years, is routinely analyzing what is supposed to be private information. But, hey, it doesn’t matter anymore, right? Because we can get to it. We have secret agreements with the telecoms and Internet service providers and beyond. And we can do with the data anything we want.

So, you know, I sit here—I sit here as an American, as I did shortly after 9/11, and it’s all déjà vu for me. And then I was targeted—it’s important to note, I—not just for massive fraud, waste and abuse; I was specifically targeted as the source for The New York Times article that came out in December of 2005. They actually thought that I was the secret source regarding the secret surveillance program. Ultimately, I was charged under the Espionage Act. So that should tell you something. Sends an extraordinarily chilling message. It is probably the deepest, darkest secret of both administrations, greatly expanded under the Obama administration. It’s now routine practice.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Shayana, I’d like to ask you, specifically that issue of the FISA court also authorizing domestic surveillance. I mean, is there—even with the little laws that we have left, is there any chance for that to be challenged, that the FISA court is now also authorizing domestic records being surveiled?

AMY GOODMAN: FISA being Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I mean, you know, two things about that. First, the statute says that there have to be reasonable grounds to think that this information is relevant to an investigation of either foreign terrorist activity or something to do with a foreign power. So, you know, obviously, this perhaps very compliant judge approved this order, but it doesn’t seem like this is what Congress intended these orders would look like. Seems like, on the statute, that Congress intended they would be somewhat narrower than this, right?

But there’s a larger question, which is that, for years, the Supreme Court, since 1979, has said, "We don’t have the same level of protection over, you know, the calling records—the numbers that we dial and how long those calls are and when they happen—as we do over the contents of a phone call, where the government needs a warrant." So everyone assumes the government needs a warrant to get at your phone records and maybe at your emails, but it’s not true. They just basically need a subpoena under existing doctrine. And so, the government uses these kind of subpoenas to get your email records, your web surfing records, you know, cloud—documents in cloud storage, banking records, credit records. For all these things, they can get these extraordinarily broad subpoenas that don’t even need to go through a court.

AMY GOODMAN: Shayana, talk about the significance of President Obama nominating James Comey to be the head of the FBI—

SHAYANA KADIDAL: One of the—

AMY GOODMAN: —and who he was.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. One of the grand ironies is that Obama has nominated a Republican who served in the Bush administration for a long time, a guy with a reputation as being kind of personally incorruptable. I think, in part, he nominated him to be the head of the FBI, the person who would, you know, be responsible for seeking and renewing these kind of orders in the future, for the next 10 years—he named Comey, a Republican, because he wanted to, I think, distract from the phone record scandal, the fact that Holder’s Justice Department has gone after the phone records of the Associated Press and of Fox News reporter James Rosen, right?

And you asked, what can you tell from these numbers? Well, if you see the reporter called, you know, five or six of his favorite sources and then wrote a particular report that divulged some embarrassing government secret, that’s—you know, that’s just as good as hearing what the reporter was saying over the phone line. And so, we had this huge, you know, scandal over the fact that the government went after the phone records of AP, when now we know they’re going after everyone’s phone records, you know. And I think one of the grand ironies is that, you know, he named Comey because he had this reputation as being kind of a stand-up guy, who stood up to Bush in John Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004 and famously said, "We have to cut back on what the NSA is doing." But what the NSA was doing was probably much broader than what The New York Times finally divulged in that story in December ’05.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, will Glenn Greenwald now be investigated, of The Guardian, who got the copy of this, so that they can find his leak, not to mention possibly prosecute him?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Oh, I think absolutely there will be some sort of effort to go after him punitively. The government rarely tries to prosecute people who are recognized as journalists. And so, Julian Assange maybe is someone they try to portray as not a journalist. Glenn Greenwald, I think, would be harder to do. But there are ways of going after them punitively that don’t involve prosecution, like going after their phone records so their sources dry up.

AMY GOODMAN: I saw an astounding comment by Pete Williams, who used to be the Pentagon spokesperson, who’s now with NBC, this morning, talking—he had talked with Attorney General Eric Holder, who had said, when he goes after the reporters—you know, the AP reporters, the Fox reporter—they’re not so much going after them; not to worry, they’re going after the whistleblowers. They’re trying to get, through them, the people. What about that, that separation of these two?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I’ll give you an example from the AP. They had a reporter named, I believe, John Solomon. In 2000, he reported a story about the botched investigation into Robert Torricelli. The FBI didn’t like the fact that they had written this—he had written this story about how they dropped the ball on that, so they went after his phone records. And three years later, he talked to some of his sources who had not talked to him since then, and they said, "We’re not going to talk to you, because we know they’re getting your phone records."

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you all for being with us. Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights. William Binney and Thomas Drake both worked for the National Security Agency for years, and both ultimately resigned. Thomas Drake was prosecuted. They were trying to get him under the Espionage Act. All of those charges were dropped. William Binney held at gunpoint by the FBI in his shower, never prosecuted. Both had expressed deep concern about the surveillance of American citizens by the U.S. government. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for our hours of interviews with them, as well." - Democracy Now!

Perhaps if you keep repeating this then it will become true and i will be happy for him to get away with rape. You never know. Keep repeating it and see if it works out for you.

Yes he's been accused of something (not charged), but he thinks that the government (or several governments) is (are) conspiring against him. So he applied for asylum to another country who granted it.

Now unless ecuador has an extradition treaty with the US, why are we still discussing this? In fact, even if they do - why are we discussing this? I keep telling you that i want britain to keep out, yet you keep accusing me of being a rape supporter. You haven't read a single post i've written so far. Every reply has been either a lie or about something i didn't say.

You're not convincing anyone that either a) i'm a supporter of rapists, or b) that you're not simply a julian assange hater for whatever reason.

However i do agree with your last post - some fucking idiot tory silver spoon rich boy opened his stupid mouth to flex nuts that no one wanted flexing by saying "Actually, we can take him if we want." I bet the diplomatic guys are furious at the shit-storm that created.

>> ^thumpa28:

And you sound like his mother. You want him to get away with his crimes because what? He happened to run a company that released something someone else stole? That make sexual assault ok in your book?>> ^dannym3141:

If he is a rapist, then he should be brought to justice - but how can you trust law/court justice when the law/court is effectively an involved party?

your response was long and the first half just reiterated me being a gnostic but i am what some may consider a "christian" gnostic.

So, as a Christian gnostic, what parts of the bible do you feel are authorative and what do you throw away? Do you consider the Old Testament to be valid?

so i dont see god as a failure nor evil.
i view god very much like the trinity.
father,son,holy ghost
or..
mind,body,spirit.
both work fine.
also if you changed the word "matter" to represent "ego"
then you would be closer to how i view the battle of "good" vs "evil"
i would say it is ego vs spirit.
you would say god vs devil,but we would be saying the same things.

I take it you don't believe Satan exists? If you don't believe in the fall, what is your narrative as to how things got the way they are?

the inherent differences in our philosophy are simply this:
internalization.
externalization.
i believe the teachings of christ (and others) hold the key to free ourselves from the ego (which is the ultimate liar).salvation starts when we realize we are spiritual beings with the spark of the divine.the creator if you will.spirit,soul,chi work also and that the ego seeks to dominate the spirit,pulling us ever further from our true self and our creator.(indivisible btw).

you view this dichotomy in a totally different light.jesus/god are outside.seperate and only through humility and acceptance that christ is lord and savior and died for your sins can you (or anybody) achieve salvation.(be saved)

I don't think it is that black and white. What you seem to believe is that you're one with God, and that by awakening your spiritual self (through gnosis i assume) you can conquer the ego and be free.. What I believe is that we each have a sinful nature which is corrupt and separates us from God. I believe that Christ conquered that nature as a man on the cross, and that through His substitutionary atonement, we are reconciled back to God and reborn in the spirit.

So, this isn't externalizing it. We come to Christ to be healed, but that is just the beginning. Being born again means to become a new creation and receive the Holy Spirit. It is not simply to bow to Christ and thank Him for salvation. It is to be remade in the image of Christ, and that is inside and outside.

Neither it is separateness from God, because the body of Christ is unity with God. We are in Him and He is in us and He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him. Christ is the head of the body of Christ, as the Father is the head of Christ. We are sons and daughters of God and co-heirs with Christ.

so when you ask if i believe christ was savior i would answer yes..most certainly,but i come to that conclusion by a different path and different tools.
yet we both use the bible.
pretty neat huh?
but you ONLY use the bible as your authority and that is fine but i tend to use..well...everything..but thats another conversation.

Yet, how can He be savior when you say you can save yourself?

so now we come to what do i tell these lost and broken people who have experienced a crisis of faith.
well...
i dont attack their religion.
i allow them to talk and let that spike of uncertainty bubble to the surface so i can get a better look at it.if i am going to help anyone i have to know where the pain is yes?

you have to realize that the majority of the people i deal with came from very strict,authoritarian and fundamentalist families.they were usually sheltered from the real world (not always a bad thing) and the culture shock alone is a trauma in itself and many times the parents are not exactly curious people but their children are (or the ones that came to me).

the first thing i do is hand them a scofield study bible (i have a stack of them) and tell them to read JUST the words of jesus and get back to me when they are ready.scofield has all the words of jesus highlighted in pink,cant miss em.

now you may ask "why would enoch do that"?
simple.many religions have a long LOOOONG list of doctrine and dogma by having that person read just the words of jesus we get to cut 80% of that crap out and focus on the words of jesus.

Do you believe all the words of Jesus (in the bible) are truth?

here is what "sin" actually is.this may not sound biblical but it actually is.jesus spoke of it often.
sin is when you KNOW/FEEL something is wrong and you CHOOSE to do it anyways.

On the contrary, sin is when you disobey the direct commands of God. Plenty of people don't know or feel it is wrong to commit all sorts of crimes, and wouldn't otherwise know, if God didn't set a standard for behavior. According to this standard, it wouldn't be wrong to murder if someone didn't know or feel it is wrong.

and dont get me started on "original sin" utter nonsense that piece of garbage.the church was unable to make its case centuries ago and still has failed to make the case for original sin. i suspect you disagree...thats ok but dont engage me on this one.i aint budging.

The bible doesn't contain the words "original sin". What it says is that God created the world perfectly, but because Adam and Eve sinned, they brought death into the world through sin. And that since then, man is born with a corrupt nature that is spiritually separated from God. How does your narrative differ from this? Do you believe that God doesn't care about sin?

i mean.
what do you tell a 22 yr old boy who is gay that god has not forsaken him?
that he is not some abomination?
that his father is wrong for beating him with a pipe in a rage and throwing him out of the only house he has ever known?
how can this boy who was raised in a god fearing house believe for a second that god loves him when according to the bible he would not?raised to believe god was not only all-knowing but all-loving except him.

well you point to the scofield bible and ask that boy to find a verse where jesus says he hates fags.thats what you do.
because it jesus doesnt say that.

I'm surprised that this is what you believe.. Of course it isn't right for a father to beat their child and throw them out. That definitely isn't demonstrating the love of God. But that has nothing to do with the boys spiritual situation.

What Jesus says is that marriage is between a man and a woman, and sex outside of marriage is a sin. There is no room in Gods plan for homosexual behavior. Now, people are born with all sorts of adverse conditions. Some people are born with cancer, or with deformed bodies. Has God forsaken them? Everyone has their own special challenges. So, a person who has homosexual desires, does he have to act upon them? Some people have sexual desire for children, or animals. Is that right? Weren't they just born that way?

or the girl who was raped and the family convinced her it was her fault because she had sinned against god and that was her punishment.

or one of my most precious whose family member had molested her for years and when she finally got the courage to say something about it only to be told to shut up.that she was a liar (not even possible with this girl) and again...her fault and punishment from god.

i could go on and on and on.

Your examples are people acting sinfully and disobeying the direct commands of God to say that sin isn't what the bible says it is. What this is just proves how bad sin really is.

what i do for these very special people is get them to understand they are spirit.
that they have a spark of the creator (made in "his" image) and that spark is their true selves.
and to cherish that spark.
i show them love.
true love of the spiritual kind.the altruistic love our spirits crave to give and receive.
that it is possible to love themselves and to forgive those who rejected them.judged them and forsook them.

You're forgetting the greatest commandments:

Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your spirit, and all of your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.

They need to love God first and everything else will follow. I think what you're substituting for the love of God is the love of self, because you perceive you have a piece of God within you. Unless you are born again, you don't have the Holy Spirit. You can't get near a holy God with a sinful nature.

i teach them the power of forgiveness.
to forgive themselves..for to forgive yourself you first have to KNOW yourself and to do that...well..you have to swim through a river of your own shit to truly know yourself.
i teach them to be free.
and in the doing they become free to love others as openly and honestly as they were meant to and to understand that many people,most actually,do not understand the true gift jesus gave us:love and forgiveness=freedom.

The true gift Jesus gave us was His precious blood. What we need is Gods forgiveness for our sins. Without His forgiveness, we will face judgement. You don't seem to believe that is going to happen. If you want to believe that, this is your right. To teach other people this, you are potentially endangering them. What happens if you stand in front of God and He shows you that what you taught people about being free and forgiving themselves sent some of them to hell?

i do not use dogma nor doctrine to teach these things.
i do not seek these people out,they find me and my obligation is to honor that path they found to me as the will of the creator.
some have needed a room to stay and heal their wounds.
i give that place of security for them.( i do this for addicts also)
i do not charge money for i do not consider helping another human being out to find themselves a service but rather a kindness in recognizing another spirit.
and here is the neat part that has always tickled me:i have never wanted for anything.car dies? i get gifted a new one a week later.
short on the electric bill? i find a lottery ticket with almost the exact amount i needed.
needed a vacation to go back home?
friend offers out of the blue to buy me a plane ticket.

Before I became a Christian, I was led like this too, with signs and all sorts of little perks. I thought I was doing Gods work, but it turns out that I was being influenced by evil. There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. Don't count on those signs because they aren't necessarily from God. If they aren't, how would you tell?

a few that i have helped went back to the church.
one woman i counseled for 12 yrs (really abusive husband) who is now a devout baptist like you!
aaand she is studying at a bible college,which of course i have to mess with her cuz they dont allow women to perform mass but i do help with her homework sometimes.

That's cool..I'm not a baptist though. I enjoy sermons from baptist pastors but I am non-denominational, so I don't ascribe the everything that baptists believe.

ok..now im just rambling.
it is late and im stupid tired but i wanted to respond before i went to bed.busy day tomorrow.
hope this gives you a clearer picture.not gonna proof read so it may just be gibberish.
in any case..
always a pleasure my friend.

I always enjoy our conversations. I hope you don't take offense at anything I said..I am just representing the truth I know and trying to figure out where you're coming from. God bless.


>> ^enoch