John Carey
Political Realities

We live in an age where both are threatened by the ignorance of average voter and forces in government who want to fundamentally transform our constitutional republic.

How will history judge this generation if we let our republic slip away?

In 1787 citizens gathered outside of Independence Hall as delegates emerged after the Philadelphia convention closed. As Benjamin Franklin made his way through the crowd a Philadelphia native Mrs. Powel asked Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The other night when I was watching President Obama give his State of the Union address, he opened his speech talking about his grandparents and their contributions during World War II. This generation is often referred to as the “greatest generation.” This was the generation that held the country together during the great depression. This was the generation that stepped up and saved the world from the forces of evil. This was the generation that came home from the war and helped transform America into an economic powerhouse. They were a generation with innovative ideas and a free market economy to grow them. They were shining examples of rugged individualism who believed in free market principles and limited government intervention. Contrary to popular belief, they were not fans of Social Security or Medicare. Most viewed any kind of government program claiming to offer security in exchange for liberty with suspicion. They believed that more government meant less freedom. I know this because my grandparents were a part of this generation and they loved liberty.

Today we live in unprecedented times. America’s debt has spiraled out of control. The dollar is no longer the preferred currency of the world. Our credit rating has been downgraded. Our economic indicators show a weak economy growing at a snail’s pace with an unemployment rate of 8+ percent. Our education system is a complete failure. Our elected officials have doubled down on stupid by implementing terrible policies that have hampered economic growth and shackled individual liberty. They pass unconstitutional legislation and spending bills that create new and prop up old unsustainable government entitlement programs with borrowed money from China. Our growing national debt is over $15 trillion and is now 100+ percent of our GDP. Backroom deals and dirty politics have become the norm in D.C. as our elected officials raid the treasury to enrich themselves and fund pet projects. People are clamoring that the system is broken. There’s talk of reform and fundamental transformation. Folks we’re losing our republic and no one in Washington D.C. has the integrity or courage to save it.

This is not the first time in history that a great republic has fallen. We have the fall of the Roman Republic as a blueprint to examine. Rome like us was saddled with a massive amount debt due to continuous wars and corrupt politicians. Men of ambition rose to power through their military conquest and political maneuvering. The institutions and traditions that made the Roman Republic great were poisoned from within and fear grew within its citizenry as these same men of ambition promised reform to fix the system. Unemployment was high and a large portion of the population was much more interested in the games than reestablishing their constitution. A few champions of the republic stepped forward with cries to restore it and warnings that the end was near, but for the most part these pleas fell on deaf ears. Most Roman citizens were looking for the least painful solutions to solve their problems. They were looking for a leader to save them instead of looking to themselves for the answers. Rome turned into a mob and surrendered their liberties to an empire because it was the least painful solution. 2,000 years after the fall of the Roman Republic we find ourselves at the same crossroads and we’re making the same mistakes.

There is talk of a system in dire need of reform. I agree. We need to reform the system in a manner that limits the ability of ambitious politicians from obtaining more power to infringe on our rights. We do this by reestablishing the constitution as the law of the land. One candidate will not save the republic. It will take the effort of all liberty loving people to do the things required of them to hold our elected officials feet to the fire. As we look at the crop of candidates the process has selected for us to choose from, I must say I’m extremely disappointed. We need a liberty loving mindset in D.C. and this means we need a candidate who is willing to reestablish the constitution as the law of the land and deconstruct the unconstitutional agencies that are regulating our lives. We need a candidate who has the courage to repeal unconstitutional laws and deregulate so that our market can be a free market once again. We need a candidate who will decentralize control and give the power back to the states and people. We need a candidate who is willing to make themselves and government an irrelevant factor in our lives.

Do we have a candidate who is willing to do these things? The answer is yes. Is he leading the field? The answer is no. Why is he not leading the field? Because people are comfortable with big government in their lives and like the Roman citizens of old, they’re choosing the path that is least painful. And this is why we’re going to lose the republic folks. This is why America will lose its exceptionalism and we will be no different than any other nation in the world. We will go down as the generation who allowed the republic to slip away. I wonder how history will judge us.

Will history be kind to this generation or judge us harshly? Will history view us as weak or strong? 2,000 years from now will students be examining and discussing the glaring mistakes we’re making today? Will they wonder how we could be so stupid and let a good thing slip away? My guess is yes. If we fail now I believe history will be unkind to this generation and we’ll deserve it. You see we have very little time to reverse course and save the republic. If we don’t change our ways and change them within the next couple of years there will be an economic reckoning unlike we have ever seen before band we will wonder what happened. Many people will be blindsided by these economic events and will look to a leader or the government for more flawed solutions and trust me the government will be more than happy to offer them up. This equates to less liberty and more central planning by an imperfect government and that’s the kind of environment that will eventually lead to tyranny.

So this is where we are. How do we act? Do we take the painful and necessary steps needed to save the republic or do we take the path of least resistance? By the looks of who is leading in the polls we already decided. So much for keeping the republic our founders gave us.

Ben Franklin would be so proud of this generation…

Liberty forever, freedom for all!

For news and commentary that strives to recognize the reality of politics, visit Political Realities.

Like GCN Live on Facebook and follow on Twitter for more great news, opinions, and announcements from GCN Live’s hosts and staff.

Madison Ruppert
End the Lie

Late last year I reported on how the Department of Justice refused to reveal the legal justification for the United States’ highly secretive drone-based targeted killing program in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the New York Times.

After that failed attempt, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has stepped up to the plate in an effort to get the Obama administration to actually live up to their promises of transparency.

However, the government continues to nonsensically claim that the program is indeed so incredibly secret that they cannot even confirm or deny the existence of the program itself.

Even more illogical is that Obama himself comes out boasting about the program whenever it is politically beneficial for him to do so.

The same goes for officials from the administration who perpetually remain behind the cover of anonymity in speaking of the program while still attempting to justify it and in doing so confirming its existence.

In a typically spot-on article published by Green Greenwald, writing for Salon, he outlines just how ludicrous this contradictory practice really is.

In the article, he even lays out what I see as Obama making the case for himself to be arrested for the same crimes as Bradley Manning.

Since Obama claimed that Bradley Manning was guilty and that he too could be arrested for releasing classified information, while Obama himself released classified information on the drone program, it only makes sense that Obama should call for himself to be arrested.

But, of course, this will never happen and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney essentially claimed that Obama can do whatever he wants when confronted with this issue.

This represents the greater problem which Greenwald highlights in his article: they claim secrecy to cover up their actions from legal scrutiny, while publicly boasting about the supposedly secret program whenever it is beneficial to do so.

This way they can continue to scare the world into subservience, strike fear into the hearts of innocent people across the Middle East and the world, keep killing people with no oversight whatsoever all while never having to answer to anyone, while still being able to boast about the “success” of their efforts.

All of this can be done without any legal challenges by leveraging the supposed secrecy of the program when needed, allowing all of this to occur in plain sight while not actually having to prove that they can legally do such a thing.

To help make sense of this approach, I think of it as somewhat like if someone was holding a gun to your back and whispered into your ear, “Hand over your wallet or I’ll shoot.”

You then think, “This feels like a gun, this guy sounds serious, and I just saw him shoot someone, but I can’t see it with my own eyes. I guess I’ll just take his word for it.”

A police officer then approaches you both and asks your attackers, “Excuse me, are you holding a gun to that man’s back and robbing him?”

The attacker replies, “I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the gun.”

A passer-by says, “I’m an anonymous individual who has witnessed this man shoot people with that gun before. I know he has it and I know he uses it.”

The police officer then says, “Oh well, so long as you can’t confirm or deny the existence of the weapon, I’m not going to try to investigate it or hold you to account for your actions. I’ll just choose to ignore the statements of that anonymous individual who confirmed the existence of the weapon since he is anonymous and I couldn’t care less.”

The police officer then walks away to leave you to be shot in the back.

Of course this is an over-simplified and crude way to get the point across, but I think it can help those who are confused by this attempt to understand just how little sense it really makes.

If we actually had a distinctly separate judicial branch which could hold the executive branch to account for their actions, they would never so brazenly contradict themselves by openly talking about a program then when challenged choose to slide back behind the veil of secrecy and claim that they cannot confirm or deny that the program even exists.

Thankfully, there are some organizations willing to stand up to the police officer, the mugger, and the anonymous witness in our hypothetical situation, which in this case are the so-called justice system, the executive branch and the CIA, and the many anonymous officials from throughout the government, respectively.

On top of the New York Times’ efforts which I previously reported on, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the CIA, all of which are agencies of the Obama administration.

They are suing them over their persistent refusal to disclose any and all information pertaining to the assassination of American citizens.

Back in October of last year, the ACLU filed a FOIA request for the most basic (and thus uncompromising) information about the CIA’s targeted killing of three American citizens in Yemen without charge or trial.

These individuals were Anwar al-Awlaki (who some call “the CIA lackey” due to his close ties to Western intelligence evidenced by his dining at the Pentagon), Samir Khan and al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, all of which were killed by drone attacks.

All the ACLU’s FOIA request was attempting to do was find the administration’s justification for the murders on both a legal and factual basis.

Unsurprisingly, the Department of Justice and CIA both refused to give any information and even refused to confirm that the pertinent documents existed at all.

The response, which the ACLU characterized as “saying the targeted killing program is so secret that they can’t even acknowledge that it exists,” prompted the most recent lawsuit seeking both the legal and factual basis for these particular executions.

In the case of the New York Times’ suit filed in December, they seemed to just be going after the legal justification for the killings and not the factual information the agencies used to conclude that the killing was warranted in the first place.

As Greenwald rightly points out, this highlights the almost unbelievable fact that a group like the ACLU has been forced to go as far as suing the American government in order to find out what reasons they use to justify murdering Americans.

It shows just how far gone down the road of tyranny this demented government has traveled.

Greenwald makes this point painfully clear in a passage which is best read in its entirety:

“It’s extraordinary enough that the Obama administration is secretly targeting citizens for execution-by-CIA; that they refuse even to account for what they are doing — even to the point of refusing to disclose their legal reasoning as to why they think the President possesses this power — is just mind-boggling. Truly: what more tyrannical power is there than for a government to target its own citizens for death — in total secrecy and with no checks — and then insist on the right to do so without even having to explain its legal and factual rationale for what it is doing? Could you even imagine what the U.S. Government and its media supporters would be saying about any other non-client-state country that asserted and exercised this power?”

He then goes on to show how the Obama administration constantly boasts in public about the program which they claim in legal documents is so secret it cannot even be acknowledged.

Some apt examples are when Obama announced al-Awlaki’s death at a White House press conference (thus confirming the targeted killing program carried out by drones) along with his appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” in which he did the same.

Then there was United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta who recently stated on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that “the president of the United States has to sign off [on the targeted killings] and he should.”

He thus confirmed not only that the program exists but the president has a direct role in it, something which other anonymous officials tried to steer clear from when previously discussing the highly secretive National Security Council’s death panels.

Other examples include the many times anonymous officials have spoken to journalists, always trying to maintain the legitimacy of the program (which is laughable in and of itself) while still being able to claim that it is secret and cannot be challenged in court.

Since the Department of Justice maintains that the program is so secretive it cannot even confirm that it exists without exposing a state secret, they effectively keep it out of the realm of legal scrutiny entirely, while still nonsensically allowing people like Obama and Panetta to confirm its existence in public.

The ACLU discussed this thoroughly nonsensical approach in writing, “The government’s self-serving attitude toward transparency and disclosure is unacceptable. Officials cannot be allowed to release bits of information about the targeted killing program when they think it will bolster their position, but refuse even to confirm the existence of a targeted killing program when organizations like the ACLU or journalists file FOIA requests in the service of real transparency and accountability.”

While the Obama administration is not one to be lauded for consistency and straightforwardness on any account, this situation is an especially egregious example of just how inconsistent and secretive the government can be.

Hopefully the ACLU will be able to make some progress with this lawsuit, but I seriously doubt anything will happen given the fact that the courts have become a tool of the executive and the entire system of checks and balances has been all but openly eradicated from the American political system entirely.

Even if this case makes absolutely no headway in terms of actually getting the Obama administration to justify their actions, it does play a very important role in bringing this issue into the sphere of public debate and hopefully making more people who might otherwise ignore it aware of the horrors being committed in our name around the world.

It also might serve to help more people become aware of the fact that “our” government does not, in fact, work for us and thanks to this insane secrecy, they could actually target anyone for targeted killing.

With no accountability, there can be no justice, and the Obama administration can continue to attack people with impunity, even Americans.

Maybe this newest lawsuit will wake some people up to this ugly reality and hopefully build up a larger body of people in the United States who will no longer sit by and accept what our government is doing.

If you have any tips, comments or opinions to share, please email me at: admin@EndtheLie.com

This is where the lie ends. The American people are waking up to the fact that the mainstream media is controlled by a very small group of elite billionaires who decide exactly what stories to cover. We at End the Lie force politicians to address the real issues, force government to be accountable and transparent, and force real change to occur in our country. Every American needs to get informed and stand up for the principles upon which our wonderful country was founded. Do it now with End the Lie.

Like GCN Live on Facebook and follow on Twitter for more great news, opinions, and announcements from GCN Live’s hosts and staff.