Facebook Liberates Egypt

Are you on Facebook? If you aren’t you are truly the exception to the rule. Facebook is a worldwide phenomenon, and it now can take credit for liberating an entire country. Egypt, a country that has been existing under a cloud of a cruel dictatorship for 3 decades is now free of its dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

In three short weeks, and coming in reaction to Tunisia’s successful removal of its dictator, Egyptian protests, at times turning violent as Mubarak sent armed thugs in to make trouble, have finally stirred the Egyptian Army to withdraw its support of Mubarak. And with no backing from the Army, Mubarak had to leave.

The Egyptian Army is in charge now.

But getting back to the central thesis, all of this came about because of Facebook.

From the Associated Press through the Chron:

“Perhaps most surprising was the genesis of the force that overthrew Mubarak. The protests were started by a small core of secular, liberal youth activists organizing on the Internet who only a few months earlier struggled to gather more than 100 demonstrators at a time. But their work through Facebook and other social network sites over the past few years built greater awareness and bitterness among Egyptians over issues like police abuse and corruption. ‘Facebook brought down the regime,’ said Sally Toma, one of the main protest organizers.”

This is remarkable. I don’t think anyone ever suspected that social networking would ever do anything more than hooking people up and passing around recipes and photographs of your kids and vacations.

If Facebook can liberate an entire country, what could possibly be next? A cure for cancer? The perfect cup of coffee?

An end to conservatism as we know it?

The possibilities are limitless, it seems.

Department of Injustice Takes Another Hit

You just have to wonder when it is all going to end, and the answer comes back every time, January 20th 2009. A 3 judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has found that the FBI violated Congressman William Jefferson’s constitutional rights in their unlawful search and seizure of his congressional office. The AP article has been published in the Chron and can be found here.

Jefferson claims vindication, but no one is saying that he is pure as driven snow because there’s still that 90 large that they found in his refrigerator freezer. The ultimate in frozen assets.

But what we all can say now is that the FBI, in completing this heinous act, was clearly out of bounds. Everyone knew it. The Constitution prohibits the Executive Branch from using its law enforcement powers to interfere with the Legislative Branch. It’s called the Speech and Debate Clause (Article 1 Section 6 Clause 1) which is there to protect the integrity of the legislative process by insuring the independence of individual legislators.

The search was OK, the justices said, but the FBI erred in seizing Jefferson’s congressional documents which could then be examined by the Executive Branch. A clear breach.

But it’s just the times, isn’t it? Everywhere you look in the Bush Regime you see excesses and abuse of power. It’s not just here and there, it’s institutional. Trampling on rights, abuse of power, lying to the people, it’s all part of a culture that has flourished and grown for the past 6 years. I think it has gotten to the point that they really are not aware any more of what is legal and what is illegal, incapable of knowing the difference between right and wrong. And isn’t the latter a common criterion in deciding whether a person is insane?

OK, rant over.

Makeup of the court panel.

Curiously, the court panel consisted of justices who have all served in some capacity in the Injustice Department, and not at any time in the Legislative branch. Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, one of the judges on the panel, is best remembered as a Reagan nominee to the Supreme Court until they dug up the dirt that Ginsburg smoked Mary Jane while at university and even when he was a professor at Harvard Law. Likewise, Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson was a 1986 Reagan appointee. However, Judge Judith W. Rogers was a Clinton appointee.

All three agreed that the FBI overstepped its purview and needed to let Congressman Jefferson filter which documents pertained to business of the legislature.

While not exonerating Jefferson, as Jefferson had hoped, the court’s opinion goes a long way toward restoring the government we had before the Bush Regime took over. I doubt we will ever see this happen again.

But then, I could be wrong.

Dismantling the Wall: Another Brick is Loosened in Patriot Act

Back in October 2001, when the terrorists won the short-lived War on Terror, the Patriot Act was passed by both Congressional bodies and signed into law by Bush. The Patriot Act, and the 9-11 attacks were godsends for Bush and his neo-conservative cronies. That it is now slowly eroding is good news for people who love liberty.

Since its passing in October 2001, elements of the Patriot Act have been ruled unconstitutional by US federal courts or repealed by congress. Example, in 2004 section 2709 was ruled unconstitutional by a district federal court. That section enabled government agents to force internet service providers to reveal personal information of their clients. Example, in 2005 Congress repealed the section of the Patriot Act that gave the government the power to peruse library records using secret FISA courts.

Then when the Patriot Act was reaffirmed in 2006, another provision was added. The provision that Bush almost immediately started utilizing. This was a provision that removed appointment of interim US Attorneys by a federal district judge, and gave the power of appointment to the Attorney General – that is, to Bush.

And now we have that provision of the Patriot Act being shown the door.

In response to the dismissal of 8 US attorneys, and mounting evidence that they were fired for political reasons, and additional evidence that Bush sought to replace them with his cronies, the US Senate voted 94 to 2 to repeal the provision of the Patriot Act that the Bush administration was using to politicize US attorney’s offices.

Specifically it is this: If after 120 days have passed and the president has not nominated, and the Senate has not confirmed a replacement in a US Attorney regional office, the power to appoint an interim US Attorney returns to a federal district court judge where the power had lain before the Patriot Act.

Bush loses some power. When that happens it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Honestly, you are going to have to really try hard to convince me how this later-added provision of the Patriot Act made us safer from the terrorists. It was just another nice bit of power that Bush’s people wanted to add to the Executive Branch - and subtract from the Judical Branch.

You have to ask yourself how many more of these little landmines have been included in that despicable piece of legislation.

It’s probably not a bad idea to perform major surgery and repeal the Patriot Act altogether. If there are good parts to it, and who knows, there might be, you can add them back later.

But for now, to regain our liberty, and to thumb our noses at the terrorists, baby and bathwater both need to go.