Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Other democracies - Britain and Israel, to name two - are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.

This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger Top Secret America created since the attacks. In July, The Washington Post described an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it.

Today's story, along with related material on The Post's Web site, examines how Top Secret America plays out at the local level. It describes a web of 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counterterrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions. At least 935 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks or became involved in counterterrorism for the first time after 9/11.

Rudolf

A new Gallup poll, released Dec. 17, reveals that 40 percent of Americans still believe that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years. This number is slightly down from a previous high of 47 percent in 1993 and 1999.

My belief is that regulation generally serves at least some facsimile of its intended purpose.

link.

Assuming the knucklehead was driving like the man says he was driving...the man has been known to make that kinda sh*t up when it suits him.

Waaaahhhh!  Papers that graphically detail the charges against Assange have been leaked to The Guardian - the same paper that published the Wikileaks.

Doncha just hate it when irony comes to bite you in the a$$?

In a move that surprised many of Mr Assange's closest supporters on Saturday, The Guardian newspaper published previously unseen police documents that accused Mr Assange in graphic detail of sexually assaulting two Swedish women. One witness is said to have stated: "Not only had it been the world's worst screw, it had also been violent."

Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail.

[What can I tell you about war?

War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation--spiritual, emotional and, finally, physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems, economic, social, environmental and political, that sustain us as human beings. War is necrophilia. The essence of war is death. War is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. It is organized sadism. War fosters alienation and leads inevitably to nihilism. It is a turning away from the sanctity of life.]

why am I starting to feel
(none / 0) (#83)
by Capt Howdy on Fri Dec 10, 2010 at 08:44:39 AM EST

that this is a kabuki and that it is all going to pass before the holidays?

the tax bill, repeal of DADT, START, not sure about the DREAM act.

but I have this "feeling" that is all may happen.

maybe its the holiday season.  or maybe I am coming down with something.

At a White House news conference on December 7 in which he announced a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, Barack Obama chastised his liberal base for sticking unrealistically to their "purist" positions.

What the president didn't say was that a few hours earlier he had met with and tried to assauge some his most vociferous liberal critics -- economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, Alan Blinder, and Robert Reich, the former Labor secretary.

and

The two participants, both of whom would recount the conversation only on condition of anonymity, said that the conversation came to no resolution.

"He didn't really respond,'' said one of the participants. "He said it was hard to change the narrative after 30 years" of small-government rhetoric and policies dating back to Ronald Reagan.  "He seemed to be looking for a way to reassure the base. Or maybe it was just to reassure himself."