EckerNet.Com

Ok first the background information for those of you still using the old media…then the commentary.

Well, the New York Times, while it has always been suspected, has basically officially made it known that they consider themselves an official intelligence source for terrorists. That’s right I said it.

This SECRET program where they scanned foreign bank transactions of suspected terrorists, that are weeks old and that are already public information, was legal. It had apparently already been used to great success and so far NOBODY has even suggested that there was anything wrong with the program. It was just another very useful tool in the fight against terror.

Yet, the NYT felt it necessary to reveal the SECRET program to the world and thereby neutralize it’s effectiveness and essentially take away a very valuable tool the government was using to protect America. All that, you’d think the NYT would have a good reason. Nope….just that it was in the public interest to know.

Tell me again, why do I need to know anti-terrorism tactics?? I mean apparently I mistakenly “opt-in” for all sorts of email spam, so did I also mistakenly sign up for some elite anti-terrorism task force?? Was the entire population of the free world suddenly drafted into servitude as an anti-terrorism army?? Why do I need to know? I mean it’s always nice to feel included, but this might be stretching it.

Plus one thing that many people aren’t aware of regarding SECRET information is….well, it’s secret. Now as any post-grade school individual can tell you a secret means you don’t tell everyone. Here’s another thing some people aren’t away of. The information is classified at a certain level, even if you have that level of clearance you still don’t get access to that information unless you can demonstrate a “need to know”. So once again, why did we need to know?? Public interest sounds great and all, but short of any interest I had in trying my hands at amateur accounting, why do I need to know??

Well to put it bluntly you don’t. There are many valid reasons why. First of all it’s a useful tool, and it’s only useful as long as people don’t know about it. Because if they don’t know about it, they can’t evade it…stealth works the same way. I’m waiting to see the NYT demand the Air Force put sirens and spotlights on Stealth Bombers, and then paint them blaze orange. But I digress….

It’s a useful tool, it allowed out intelligence force to get a feel for what terrorists were doing. It wasn’t perfect but it was a guide. But how harmful could it be??

Well let’s look at this in a historical context. Back in WWII, shortly after Pearl Harbor, the United States largely cracked the JN-25 code used by the Japanese forces. Now it wasn’t perfect, they still had to deal with codewords for various locations and forces, but it allowed US intelligence to generate a general idea of what the Japanese were doing. In fact, it even allowed US intelligence to predict the attack on Midway atoll. As a result, the US Navy was able to lay a trap for the Japanese and destroy four of their valuable carriers at a loss of only one American carrier. It was undoubtably the turning point of the Pacific war. Without that victory, Midway would have been captured, Japan would still have those 4 carriers and Hawaii (and in turn the US West Coast) would be open to imminent invasion. You could make reasonable arguments that the US would have been tempted to negotiate a truce with Japan as a result….indeed that was the goal of the Japanese at the time.

Now what if the New York Times had felt it was in the public interest to now that we were eavesdropping on those misunderstand Japanese? After all, Roosevelt clearly didn’t have an “exit strategy” and he had probably lied about the extent and purpose behind the Lend/Lease program. Actually, nevermind, he was a Democrat so his word was golden.

But what if the NYT or any publication had revealed that the US had a secret, useful took with which they could accurately predict that activities of the Japanese military. Certainly it was in the public interest to know we had something like that and weren’t just fighting blindly. Right? But the results would have been catastrophic. The Japanese would have changed their code, the Battle of Midway would have played out much differently and we very well could have ended up negotiating for peace with the Japanese with most of the Pacific under their control. All in the name of “public interest”.

Yes, the NYT has freedom of the press, and I will never argue they do not. However, with rights comes great responsibility. Here the NYT had a responsibility to recognize that this program should have remained secret for the greater good. While it may have been in the public interest to know (although that is debatable itself), it was even more in the public interest that it should stay secret. And it was DEFINITELY in the interest of national security that we not reveal all the tools we use to catch terrorists.

Rep Peter King has called on the Attorney General to brings charges against the New York Times and I join him in that call. We haven’t had a trial for treason in such a long time. Just imagine the “public interest” in that! I beat who ever is left at the New York Times can get a Pulitzer covering the trial!!

We’ve been alerted that a very dangerous entity has come of age within our society.

This group has become even more dangerous lately, alarming officials at all levels. The sources which this group uses to get what they need to commit their heinous acts are unknown. Unknown even to many within the organization itself, so fiercely are they protected. Their methods do no seem to follow any defined set of rules/standards recognizable either in the US or worldwide. As a result they have managed to penetrate the US government at all levels, apparently even with agents within the White House itself!

Despite repeated attempts by our government, this group has managed to defeat and elude some of the best our intelligence agencies have to offer. Ironically, the appear to do this by abusing the very freedoms that make our country great. And in doing so have made some of our best anti-terrorism efforts futile.

While, public awareness has caused their funding to dwindle slightly, they still take in more than enough cash to do their damage. In fact, some otherwise upstanding Americans, may be indirectly funding this monstrosity without even knowing it so cleverly do they disguise their methods.

It is difficult to determine exactly how many American deaths this group has caused. It can easily be assumed to be a significant number due to their expertise in defeating and neutralizing American intelligence efforts, thereby making terrorist actions by other unaffilated groups that much more likely to succeed.

In recent days, their opposition to US efforts in Iraq and the War on Terror in general has increased. It can safely be assumed that they will not diminish in their efforts to foil efforts by the US to defeat terrorism both home and abroad. This group clearly can no longer be ignored and must be dealt with immediatly.

I hereby call upon President Bush and the federal government in general to deal with the New York Times and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Thank you.

Grrr, I’ve been laying low and trying to keep to myself, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I’ve been tagged with a meme. And bloggers, as we all know, are physically incapable of resisting memes.

Besides…this one actually made me think. Which sitcom character would I want to be?? Sitcom?? They still make those??

Well….tough decision. I mean what one-sided stereotypical character do I go for??

I mean my first impulse would be The Fonz, I mean who is cooler than Fonzie of Happy Days???

On the other hand, he was a dropout and probably was never gonna leave that damn diner. So how about Monty Burns, who basically owns Springfield and has enough money to do something pretty freaking cool every episode.

Hmmm, but then again he’s old and boring. So how about Stan (the father) from American Dad!….think about it a gun-happy CIA weapons expert who worships Reagan and is able to taser damn near anyone.

Maybe I’ll alternate amongst them.

Now who do I tag that hasn’t already been tagged???

Hmmm, ever since Hugh Hewitt tagged Nihilist this thing has bounced around the MOB….we must spread the wealth. So Harvey of Bad Example, take that! Who else to torture? Well their father already got tagged, but I tag the two youngest members of the Nightwriter clan.

…the Wheelage Tax. “Wheelage Tax?” you say. Yes, the Wheelage Tax….I know it sounds like the name of the token dorky guy from a bad sitcom. I don’t run the government, I just bitch about them. In this case, the fact that Dakota County (of which I am a resident) has decided to pass a “Wheelage Tax”.

What is the “Wheelage Tax”?? Well, every vehicle gets assessed a tax of $5 per vehicle with the proceeds going to road construction. Why the millions of other taxes on my vehicle don’t already cover that is not sufficiently addressed. The word is a five-star twenty-member publicly-funded government-run “research commission” is looking into that. And they are leaving no stone unturned, as I hear they just checked into a hotel in the Bahamas on a prolonged “fact-finding mission”. But I digress…

But you don’t live in Dakota County?? Sorry pal, you’re not out of the path of the storm. Anoka, Scott and Washington counties are soon to follow. Presumably Hennepin is busy trying to figure out why their smoking ban isn’t having the results proponents insisted it would.

How can they get away with this?? Well, it’s easy see. They are the government, and you are….well, nobody…except in those days immediately leading up to Election Day, then you intelligent hard-working decent folk are the bedrock of our democracy and your vote matters so vote for me. Ok that may be a cynical way of putting it…I’ll let the politician explain

“We have tremendous transportation needs, but with more drivers and more congestion on roads, we need more funding,” said Joe Harris, the Dakota County commissioner who helped revive the wheelage tax, a little-used state tax dating to the 1970s.

Some of my readers have complained they can’t understand governmentese so I’ll translate…

So like we thought it would be great if we (the govt) had even more money. I mean why should the greedy people have it? And then we saw this tax just sitting around unused. I mean it was actually letting people keep their own money!! What good is a tax if you don’t screw the people with it?? Seriously. So we just made up some random number and told people to pay it or else.

Everyone understand that? Good.

What’s that? You won’t stand for this?? Well, sorry, but they are a step ahead of you…

Paying $5 a year is less expensive than paying an additional 6 or 7 cents in taxes per gallon of gas, Dakota County’s Harris said.

That’s right. You should all recognize the language of the 3rd grade playground bully. Suck it up or I’ll make it hurt worse!!! Now hand over your lunch money, don’t make me give you an atomic wedgie!!! Good to see our government is run by such well-adjusted adults.

How much money is this going to raise? Well…

Anoka County, which is expected to approve a wheel tax next week, should raise $1.5 million per year, Commissioner Dennis Berg said.

Dakota County could raise between $1.5 million and $1.7 million, Harris said.

Washington County would raise $925,000 annually through a wheelage tax, Peterson said.

What are we gonna get for all that money?? No idea. Rumor has it they are going to make the roads more aesthetic by painting all the manpersonhole covers either fuchsia or magenta. I’m not sure if I should be upset about that because I have no f-ing clue what either of those colors are.

I’m sure they’ll have more tonite on the 9 o’clock news…right after the story about which poor sap got themself murdered in Minneapolis last night. But no fear, I hear Klobuchar is on the case.

Well….

House leaders had planned a routine vote this week to extend the LBJ-era law for another 25 years, avoiding a potentially ugly eruption of racial politics.

But a Georgia-Texas coalition of conservatives slammed on the brakes. Allies from across the South gathered Thursday afternoon to strategize and take stock of their initial victory - the cancellation of a planned House vote this week.

For 40 years, Texas and eight other states have required permission for any change in election law or procedure, major or minor - from ballot design to the boundaries of voting precincts. Justice Department lawyers review proposals to guard against hidden efforts to discriminate against minorities. Parts of seven other states are also covered.

Fiercely contested congressional redistricting plans in Texas, Georgia and elsewhere have undergone that evaluation process in recent years. Although Democrats and civil rights advocates haven’t always been pleased with the outcomes, they still view the law as vital.

But opponents of a lengthy extension say the targeted states have made huge leaps since Lyndon Johnson signed the law in 1965, and don’t merit special regulatory burdens.

Ok first let’s get the blantantly obvious out of the way….this isn’t some racist ploy by some member of the GOP to take voting rights away from minorities. They just simply want to cut out a bunch of unnecessary government overhead, especially when they’ve been singled out for special attention.

However, did they not think this one through?? Ok on the issues, I agree, states shouldn’t be singled out for special regulations on voting. The time that that was necessary has come and gone a long time ago. So yeah, it makes sense you don’t want to have feds hanging over your shoulder all the time.

At the same time, step back with me to the real world. Where issues aren’t so cut and dry. Where it matters more how things play on the news than what the details actually are? You think anyone that gives this the light of day is going to hold it up as a story about lawmakers wanting to get the federal government out of their states business?? No…they’re gonna put on their tinfoil hats, put down their bong and scream at the top of their lungs, “Those racist Republicans want to keep minorities from voting!!! Disenfranchisement!!! …..um, dude, you got any more weed?”.

Think things through a little more guys….seriously.

Well it was revealed today by Rick Santorum, that we have found approximately 500 chemical weapons in Iraq. A copy of the report can be found here. So far very few news agencies are picking up the story (no bias though!) even though the documents are available.

Reaction from the loonies at the Democratic Underground consists of alot of crickets chirping. Although one intrepid soul did try to counter the story by linking to a story by a left-wing “news site”. This story basically says, “Yeah we know…we already knew about these for awhile now”. Ok which begs the question, if you already knew then why have you been parroting the “Bush Lied, People Died” line all these years?? Oh that’s right…you’re not cheering for our side. Yeah, I’m questioning your patriotism, if you don’t like it cram it up your rear…it should fit pretty well (LOL, the beauty of this is it can be interpreted so many ways).

Oh course there is also the quesiton of….why did this take so long? Many will claim for political reasons…well if that were the case then it would have been released in October of 2004 or October 2006, not the summer of 2006. I’m not entirely certain you could really call this classified. I mean we knew he had them, just where were they? And I remember having already heard about us discovered a few sarin arty shells a year or two ago. So if that wasn’t classified, then why was this?

Certainly their current location is worth keeping a secret, and perhaps the sources that told them where to find them. But the munitions themselves…I can’t really think of a good reason to keep them classified.

But then again, this whole Iraq war is just one big failed policy right?? I mean our boys are dying for nothing right? These chemical weapons were just children’s toys right?? Don’t see what there is to get all worked up over.

Well….until one finds it’s way in my backyard anyway. But then again what’s the liklihood of Saddam selling one of these to say…North Korea?? Nah, don’t believe it, I mean Saddam had morals right? He would never export terror.

EDITORS NOTE : Kevin had to be taken to the ER, as this level of sarcasm caused most of the blood vessels in his neck to explode. He’ll write more later.

To be perfectly blunt, the immigration bills are both dead in the water and don’t expect anything more this year. Obviously there is a wide chasm between the two bills. That alone would make finding a deal a virtual miracle. But there are alot of other issues involved here that mean nothing it gonna happen.

The Senate F-ed up - The tax provisions regarding illegal immigrants violates the Constitution. Any bill that includes provisions on the raising of revenue must be initiated in the House….not the Senate. Now normally this could be worked out, the House could agree to overlook that and move forward anyway. However, due to the extreme volatility of the amnesty bill, people on both sides of the issue seem to regard this as a convenient way to either stall or outright kill this bill.

Public Hearings - Hastert has insisted that due to the passion surrounding this issue and the chasm between the two bills, that public hearings are in order. Now I can’t remember the last time public hearings were held in this manner before so I have no idea how it works. However, at the very least it will draw further attention to many of the provisions the Senate tried to slide underneath the table on us. And with public opinion being what it is, I think the last thing the amnesty supporters want is the light of day on this bill…this is an election year after all.

Election of Bilbray - As I stated before, there are some definite lessons to be learned from the Bilbray election. And his election, has emboldened opponents of the amnesty bill into taking a stronger stance on illegal immigration. In fact, Tom Tancredo’s Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus is now over 100 members. Apparently the President didn’t draw the same conclusions from the Bilbray race, which puts both him and Mehlman in the “immigrationally clueless” category.

Public outcry - This is far from a fringe issue and the outcry from the public has been huge. Lawmakers have been receiving all sorts of responses from faxes to bricks. Personally, I’ve been mailing one of these in with every request I receive from the RNC. In fact, the outcry has been so great, that the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) (which wrote most of the amnesty bill) has complained to their supporters that calls from enforcement-first supporters outnumber those from amnesty supporters 400-1. And I think lawmakers are starting to take notice. I first got this impression while attending Minnesota’s Republican Party state convention, where every single politician spoke out against illegal immigration and it netted them their loudest applause.

Together, I think all these present an unmountable obstacle to passing an immigration bill. So short of a bunch of anti-amnesty lawmakers being found atop a pile of cocaine and counterfeit money, helping Michael Jackson molest children while simulataneously sodomizing a goat…well, you can call it dead in the water folks. Which means our borders stay wide open for yet another year while this administration looks the other way as Vicente Fox ushers the “undesired” segments of his country across the border. Feel free to make your opinion on that heard in November. I’ve

Well Mayor Ray “Chocolate City” Nagin has finally admitted he has a problem….after only 53 murders. Which is surprising considering he acted so quickly when Hurricane Katrina was headed for his city. In this case he asked for help from the National Guard almost as fast as he used those buses to evacuate the city. Quite a man of action that Nagin is.

But that got me to thinking…53 murders…in a city that used to have 480,000 residents…although it’s a fraction of that now, last number I heard was 100,000 in January. So let’s say population-wise it’s comparable to Minneapolis. Now granted infratstructure-wise it’s not comparable for fun let’s look at the numbers.

Number of murders in Minneapolis so far?? 27. Cheer up Minneapolis, you’re more than half way there, and then Pawlenty can send in the guard to clean up Klobuchar’s mess. We can even have R.T. Rybak out there in the streets talking about bringing back a “hotdish” city or something. It’s nothing any less intelligent than he normally says.

Most conservatives has insisted upon an enforcement first policy when it comes to illegal immigration. Only after we stop the leaking can we hope to deal with the flood. This is a viewpoint that much of the public shares.

Unfortuanately the adminstration doesn’t feel the same way. Their opinion appears to be that we must deal with the interior and the border will basically take care of itself.

Many conservatives doesn’t believe this and they have good reason for it. We’ve been dealt amnesty before, and it didn’t work. Now we’re given amnesty again and told to call it something eles and promised that this time history will not repeat itself. Even if you could believe that, you still have to face up to the fact that this administration has a horrible record on immigration.

The Bush administration, which is vowing to crack down on U.S. companies that hire illegal workers, virtually abandoned such employer sanctions before it began pushing to overhaul U.S. immigration laws last year, government statistics show.

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.

Yet we are supposed to believe that this administration is serious about immigration?? And what more that we should abandon all reason, historical lessons and common sense and blindly follow their line?

“The claims of this administration and its commitment to interior enforcement of immigration laws are laughable,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group that favors tougher workplace enforcement, among other measures. “The administration only discovered immigration enforcement over the past few months, five years into its existence, and only then because they realized that a pro-enforcement pose was necessary to get their amnesty plan approved.”

The administration simply wants all to march lock-step and nod our heads like good boys and girls and chant “It’s not amnesty”. Sorry, but not gonna happen.

If this administration had made an honest effort at closing the borders and enforcing the laws already on the books, they might find people more receptive. If they had a track record of attempting to control illegal immigration, and then came to us with the attitude of “Look we tried, it didn’t work, but we think this might work”, you might find many willing to give it a shot.

Yet here we find ourselves handed a fool-hardy plan, not because nothing else has worked, but rather despite nothing else being tried. This plan seems destined to wallow in the no mans land between the Senate and the House, never to see the light of day. Oddly enough, the administration doesn’t seem bothered by that…or at least not overly concerned…..about an issue that has ignited great passion in the public. It’s not uncommon for a second-term president to eventually attain lame duck status….but few actively seek it out.

Well the Canes won the cup tonite with a 3-1 victory in game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, which is easily one of more challenging playoffs in sports. I got to admit I was personally cheering for the Oilers, and it would have been great to see them come back from such a deficit and take the Cup. Especially after the big lose of Roloson, whose injury I’m still convinced was the deciding factor of the whole series.

In any case, congrats to the Canes.

And the Wild better get off their ass next year and start putting some pucks in the nets.