By Dave Lindorff

Let me state from the get-go that I'm no opponent of gun ownership
(got my first rifle at the age of 12 and am still a crack shot). But
something weird is going on when you have guys wandering around a
political rally or protest site with pistols strapped to their thighs,
or semi-automatic assault rifles strapped brazenly to their backs, as
has been happening outside of venues where President Obama is speaking.

Before we get to the legal issues here, I just want to paint you a mental picture:

By Dave Lindorff

The outbreak of a new swine flu in Mexico, and the potential threat
of a new global pandemic, shines a bright light on a major weakness in
the United States—an employment system where most workers are not paid
or even face getting let go if they get sick and have to stay home from
work, combined with a broken healthcare system where roughly one in six
people have no ready access to a doctor.

What the American failure to mandate employer-paid sick-days means
is that most Americans who don’t feel well go to work anyway, in part
for fear of losing their jobs, and in part because they are already
living so close to the margin that they cannot afford to miss a few
days’ pay.

By Dave Lindorff

Reading the latest AP report
on how American citizens are being snatched up, detained and deported
(sic) by the Immigration and Naturalization Service has reminded me
just what a screwed up place this country has become.

Ever since September 11, 2001, the country has simply lost it.

` Remember back then, no sooner had the dust settled over Lower
Manhattan, than the INS and other police agencies began rounding up
thousands of people with Muslam sounding names, or even with non-Muslim
sounding names but Muslim-looking faces, and locking them away in
federal and county detention centers, with no access to lawyers. People
who were here on grants of asylum because of political persecution in
their home countries were being shipped home to likely torture and
death, without any hearings.

By Dave Lindorff

I am not a terrorist.

How can I prove this in these paranoid times? Easy. The New York
Department of Motor Vehicles took my $30 payment over the phone to
clear what they said was a record of my NY drivers license having once
been withdrawn, and informed the National Driver Register in Washington
that I’m a good guy deserving of a renewal of my Pennsylvania drivers
license.

Let me explain.

By Dave Lindorff

The word is that Barack Obama, in keeping with his promise of a new
post-Bush/Cheney era of “civility in government,” is telling Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid not to eject the treacherous Sen. Joe
Lieberman (I-CT) from the Democratic caucus.

This is a terrible mistake. Joe Lieberman is a wretched example of
a man without principle—a back-stabbing slimeball of a politician whose
only allegience, apparently, besides to himself, is to Israel.

Now I don’t want anyone to think I’m some rabid anti-semite. My
wife and kids are Jewish, we have good friends who are Israeli, and no,
I don’t think the Jews run the media or the country. I do, however,
think that Joe Lieberman thinks more about what, in his warped and
shriveled worldview, is good for Israel, than about what is good for
America.

By Dave Lindorff

Okay, I have to vent here. We all get a little crazy sitting alone
at our keyboards in this business, and it's finally gotten to me.

I know there are serious signs of a complete mental breakdown in the
US, with polls reporting that millions of people are actually excited
at having a low-rent religious fanatic who consistently mispronounces
pundit as "pundint" (shades of Dubya!), pilfers state funds for her
family's personal use, lies about her alleged opposition to Washington
pork, claims the bloody war in Iraq is "God's will," forces her
17-year-old daughter to make a momentary mistake into a lifetime one by
marrying the kid who got her pregnant, and refers to blacks as "sambo"
and to Alaska's indigenous people as "arctic arabs," running for vice
president on the ticket with a man who is a walking medical disaster
waiting to happen.

By Dave Lindorff

I was injured thanks to the government’s ridiculous airport
security program last week on a US Air flight from Chicago to
Philadelphia. I also saw how pointless the whole thing is, if the
supposed goal is really to prevent airline hijackings.

First, my injury. Because of a silly fear that I might blow up a
plane with explosives tucked into my running shoes, I, along with
everyone else in the security checkpoint line at O’Hare, including
two-month-old babies wearing little booties, had to doff my footwear.
Clad in just socks, I tried to maneuver my way around a metal counter
that held those plastic trays carrying my laptop, my shoes, my belt and
change and keys, and my carry-on bag, and in the process my unprotected
big toe hit a sharp piece of metal protruding from the table.

By Dave Lindorff

With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already.

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and “compassionate conservatism,” an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government.

What did we actually get?

By Dave Lindorff,

President Bush has turned to the cheapest lies in an effort to protect himself from being exposed as a criminal in the ongoing campaign to have the National Security Agency spy at will on Americans.

Claiming—without a scintilla of evidence to back him up—that there are people planning a “much worse attack” than 9-11 on America, he says he must not only have free rein to unleash the NSA
spymasters on American telephone and internet communications, but also a grant of complete immunity from prosecution for such spying for the telecom industry.

There’s a time bomb ticking over here in Europe, and it’s completely off the radar where it will hit the hardest: the US.

The Bush administration is pushing for radical new regulations on airline travel including:

- Armed guards on all US-airline flights from Europe to the US
- More personal data on all air passengers FLYING OVER (not even landing in) the US
- Europeans will need new permits and a lengthier permission-application process before even booking a ticket to the US
- "Washington is also asking European airlines to provide personal data on non-travellers - for example family members - who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly, young or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, a demand the airlines reject as ‘absurd’".