In light of the upcoming Election - I found this article fascinating

[TNOE]

Amazing, America HAS been down this road before.

http://liberty.hypermart.net/editorials/2003/How_An_Earlier_Patriot_Act_Law_Brought_Down_A_President.htm

Many Americans are suggesting that the Patriot Act (and its proposed "improvements" in Patriot II) is totally new in the experience of America and may spell the end of both democracy and the Bill of Rights. History, however, shows another view, which offers us both warnings and hope.

Although you won't learn much about it from reading the "Republican histories" of the Founders being published and promoted in the corporate media these days, the most notorious stain on the presidency of John Adams began in 1798 with the passage of a series of laws startlingly similar to the Patriot Act.

It started when Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin and editor of the Philadelphia newspaper the Aurora, began to speak out against the policies of then-President John Adams. Bache supported Vice President Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party (today called the Democratic Party) when John Adams led the conservative Federalists (who today would be philosophically identical to GOP Republicans). Bache attacked Adams in an op-ed piece by calling the president "old, querulous, Bald, blind, crippled, Toothless Adams."

[annak110]

1. Good article and, since an outfit calling itself

"The Federalist Society" wrote the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act in the first place, it is pretty obvious that they carry the very worst aspects of the governing philosophy of the early Federalists.

There are now "Federalist Societies" worldwide and a
"World Federalist Society" which is or was led by John Anderson, remember him.

Maybe those of us who want real democracy for all the people ought to organize Anti-Federalist Societies. Of course the trouble, as always, is a lack of money in our ranks.

[lpbk2713]

2. Here's another thought-provoking article.

I ran across this in today's paper.

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031204/NEWS/312040399/1004

Obviously the administration has money to send Shit-for-Brains and his entourage halfway around the globe for a photo-op but they can't come up with any money to send the troops Christmas gifts from their loved ones.