Military self-delusion on the U.S. Constitution

  Several former U.S. defense secretaries and retired generals recently published an open letter about the current political environment in America. The letter stated, among other things: “Military officers swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not an oath of fealty to an individual or to an office.”

  That’s just pure nonsense and self-delusion. Oh, sure, technically it’s true that military officers swear such an oath, but they don’t follow it. Instead, they faithfully and blindly follow the orders of the president, which means, as a practical matter, that their oath is one of fealty to the president, not to the Constitution.

Gitmo confirms our ancestors’ concerns

  What the Pentagon and the CIA have done with their prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba reflects the concern of our American ancestors who demanded the enactment of the Bill of Rights immediately after the Constitution brought into existence the federal government.

  Recall that when the Constitutional Convention met, it was with the purpose of simply amending the Articles of Confederation, the governmental system under which the United States had been operating for 13 years.

The Supreme Court’s deference to the Pentagon

  Imagine a county sheriff that took a suspected drug-law violator into custody more than 10 years ago. Since then, the man has been held in jail without being given a trial. The district attorney and the sheriff promise to give the man a trial some time in the future but they’re just not sure when. Meanwhile, the man sits in jail indefinitely just waiting for his trial to begin.

  Difficult to imagine, right? That’s because most everyone would assume that a judge would never permit such a thing to happen. The man’s lawyer would file a petition for writ of habeas corpus. A judge would order the sheriff to produce the prisoner and show cause why the prisoner shouldn’t immediately be released from custody. At the habeas corpus hearing, the judge would either order the release of the prisoner based on the violation of his right to a speedy trial, or he would order the state to either try him or release him.

Jacob G. Hornberger: America - A military nation

  Americans like to think of their country as different from those run by military regimes. They are only fooling themselves. Ever since the federal government was converted into a national-security state after World War II (without a constitutional amendment authorizing the conversion), it has been the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA that have run the government, just like in countries governed by military dictatorships.

  Oh sure, the façade is maintained — the façade that is ingrained in all of us in civics or government classes in high school and college: that the federal government is composed of three co-equal, independent branches that are in charge of the government.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Copying the communists

  The biggest mistake the American people ever made was the conversion of the federal government from a constitutionally limited republic to a national-security state, a type of governmental apparatus that characterizes totalitarian regimes. A national-security state consists of a large, permanent military establishment and a secretive “intelligence” agency with omnipotent powers and whose purported mission is to gather “intelligence” about supposed threats to the country.

  That fateful decision ended up costing the American people their founding governmental structure of a republic. Even worse, it stultified the consciences of the American people, leading them to defer blindly to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA as those three components of the national-security establishment led the country increasingly toward the dark side that characterizes totalitarian regimes.

Gene Policinski: We need to see the Gitmo proceedings

  As things now stand, Americans will not be able to see TV coverage of upcoming 9/11-related trials from Guantanamo Bay.

  The situation is regrettable — but easily remedied.

  A military judge last week said he had no authority to override an earlier decision by the Department of Defense that denied requests by the defense attorneys for the accused and by and news-related groups to televise the trials. In late November, the Pentagon said it would provide ample transparency for the proceedings through news coverage, a remote viewing site at Fort Meade, Md., and a website that posts transcripts of the pre-trial proceedings within 24 hours of hearings.

Jacob G. Hornberger: No moral standing to criticize Putin

  The U.S. government’s ongoing dispute with Russian President Vladimir Putin reflects what a disaster the U.S. government’s “war on terrorism” has been, at least from the standpoint of moral standing.

  Ever since his election, Putin, harkening back to what he undoubtedly remembers as the fond days of the Soviet Union, has been taking harsh actions to suppress criticism of him, his actions, and his regime. To avoid being seen as an opponent of freedom of speech, however, he uses Russia’s system of a tightly regulated economy and a complex tax system to go after his critics by charging and prosecuting them with tax and regulatory violations.