Showing posts with label Department of Homeland Security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Department of Homeland Security. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Obama was for it, but now he's against it - Why didn't he make the correct choice in the first place?

Obama opposes detainee abuse photo release

from Yahoo News.com
Wed May 13, 2009
By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a reversal, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he would fight the release of dozens of photographs showing the abuse of terrorism suspects, over concern the images could ignite a backlash against U.S. troops.

The decision was a blow to some liberals in Obama's Democratic Party who see the photos as part of a broader effort to investigate Bush-era officials and cleanse America's image abroad.

Just last month the Obama administration had said it would comply with a court order to release the pictures by May 28, saying legal options for appealing the case had been limited.

But Obama shifted gears after senior military commanders and some members of Congress expressed misgivings about the potential for the photos to generate violence against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama defended his decision, saying publication of the photographs "would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals."

"In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger," Obama told reporters. "Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration is likely to seek a court order aiming at blocking the release of the photos, which had been expected within weeks.

Gibbs was peppered with questions about Obama's shift in course. He said Obama, who has seen some of the pictures, told his legal team last week that he did not feel comfortable with releasing them.

'MAKES A MOCKERY'

The American Civil Liberties Union, which argued for the photos' release, expressed outrage and said the decision "makes a mockery" of Obama's campaign promise of transparency.

"It's absolutely essential that these photos be released so the public can examine for itself the torture and abuse that was conducted in its name, and so that high-level officials who authorized or permitted that abuse can be held accountable," ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said.

The human rights group Amnesty International said it was disappointed.

"Human beings have been tortured and denied basic rights. The American people have been lied to, and government officials who authorized and justified abusive policies have been given a pass," said the group's executive director, Larry Cox. He said the full story had not been told.

But the shift was welcomed by Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent, who said Obama "did exactly the right thing."

"The fact that the president reconsidered the decision is a strength not a weakness," they said in a statement.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he had had second thoughts about the decision to release the pictures after hearing the concerns of the top U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. Army Generals David McKiernan and Ray Odierno.

"Our commanders, both General McKiernan and General Odierno, have expressed very serious reservations about this, and their very great worry that release of these photographs will cost American lives," Gates told U.S. lawmakers.

"That was all it took for me."

Obama inflamed partisan tensions in Washington in April by releasing memos written by Bush-era Justice Department lawyers that provided the legal justification for harsh interrogation tactics such as waterboarding, which is simulated drowning.

On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the first of what could be a series of hearings about the topic was held. A former FBI agent, Ali Soufan, argued that methods like waterboarding produced unreliable evidence and were ineffective.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has argued that the tactics did provide valuable intelligence and has appealed to the Obama administration to release memos that detail the methods' effectiveness.

Some Democrats, such as House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have been calling for appointment of a "truth commission" to conduct a public probe into Bush administration interrogation tactics.

But Obama has been wary of such an investigation.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray and James Vicini; Writing by Steve Holland, Editing by Simon Gardner
Click to read the rest of the article and the comments

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Obama Will Have Blood On His Hands If He Releases The Photos

Poison Photo-Drop

President Obama’s decision to release photographs of prisoner abuse will imperil our nation and its defenders.

from The National Review Online
By Andrew C. McCarthy

American soldiers, American civilians, and other innocent people are going to die because Pres. Barack Obama wants to release photographs of prisoner abuse. Note: I said, “wants to release” — not “has to release,” or “is being forced to release,” or “will comply with court orders by releasing.” The photos, quite likely thousands of them, will be released because the president wants them released. Any other description of the situation is a dodge.

If President Obama wanted to refrain from releasing these photos in order to protect the military forces he commands or promote the security of Americans — his two highest obligations as president — he could do so by simply issuing an executive order. The applicable statute expressly allows for it, just as it provides for Congress — now in the firm control of the president and his party — to withhold the photos from disclosure. Instead, Obama and congressional Democrats are choosing to release the photos.

They are making that choice fully aware that it will cost lives. It is a sedulous Democrat talking-point, repeated most recently by Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Services chairman and a key Obama ally, that the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib inspired new terrorist recruits, caused American combat casualties, and made the United States more vulnerable to terrorist attack. This has long been Obama’s own position. It is a charge he made throughout the 2008 campaign, and it is one he repeated just a month ago in his Strasbourg speech: “When we saw what happened in Abu Ghraib, that wasn’t good for our security — that was a recruitment tool for terrorism. Humiliating people is never a good strategy to battle terrorism.”

It was not by reading news reports about prisoner abuse that “we saw what happened at Abu Ghraib.” It was by viewing the graphic photos: the images broadcast incessantly throughout the world, used simultaneously by al-Qaeda and by the anti-war Left to condemn the United States military, the United States government, and the American people themselves for the aberrational depravity of an unrepresentative handful of rogue prison guards. Obama has always been very much a part of the anti-war Left. That’s why he can make the risible assertion that “humiliating people” was anyone’s “strategy to battle terrorism.” That is why he said at a CNN campaign forum last June that “Abu Ghraib is something that all of us should be ashamed for, even if you were supportive of a war.”

Obama doesn’t have the political nerve to end the war. But he is slowly (or, as he’d no doubt put it, pragmatically) strangling the war effort. A critical part of the antiwar project is to make Americans feel ashamed of defending ourselves, inducing us to accept the European view that actions taken in our defense — even those that have protected us from additional jihadist strikes — tarnish our image, stir our enemies, and put us in grave danger. Better to go back to seeing terrorism as a law-enforcement concern, this theory holds, and accept the occasional terrorist strike as a cost of managing, rather than fighting, this scourge. What we lose in dead Americans, the argument goes, will be more than compensated for in increased international prestige — if not for the United States, at least for Barack Obama. Discrediting the war effort itself is what the release of these photos is about.

The ACLU, the anti-war crowd’s Old Reliable, has argued for years that release of the photos would “provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” and thus that their “disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse.”

These contentions are absurd. No one is claiming that there has been no prisoner abuse outside Abu Ghraib. It has long been reported that there were many other allegations — although the bipartisan 2004 Schlessinger Panel, in rejecting claims of systematic prisoner abuse, reported that less than one-tenth of 1 percent of 50,000 detainees in the War on Terror had viable abuse claims, an extraordinarily low percentage by historical standards. Many officials have already been held accountable, investigations are continuing, and there is no need to broadcast the photos for that process to go forward.Exposing these photos to scrutiny, moreover, would not “help the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse.” It would be just as likely to achieve the opposite. A photograph captures an instant, not a pattern. It is capable of being grossly manipulated: We could have no photos and still have widespread abuse, or a million photos and still have relatively little. The Left knows this quite well, and that explains why the mainstream media stopped broadcasting video of the 9/11 attacks (and other terrorist strikes) for fear of tarring all Muslims with the acts of a few. The photos at issue won’t tell us anything significant about prisoner abuse, and they may very well serve to distort reality. What seems certain is that they will get Americans killed; again, that is Obama’s own stated view, which, as Front Page magazine’s Ben Johnson recounts, is echoed not only by Sen. Levin but by Sens. John Kerry and John McCain, among others.

The administration claims its hands are tied because of a ruling last September by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. That is untrue. The Second Circuit decision rejected the Defense Department’s argument that disclosure was foreclosed by an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for “law enforcement records” that “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.” The three-judge panel reasoned that while the term “any individual” could be broadly construed, it should not cover a class of millions of people, such as all the members of our armed forces who might be jeopardized. To do so, the panel said, would nullify what it took to be the higher purpose of FOIA: to let Americans “know what their government is up to.”

This conclusion was far from indisputable. The country, after all, is currently involved in a defensive war authorized by Congress — an imperative one might have thought took precedence over other legislative goals, such as those of the Freedom of Information Act. Given the stakes, the Bush administration sought a rehearing in the case before the full Second Circuit. By the time the court denied that application on March 12, however, the Obama administration had taken over. With Attorney General Eric Holder now at the helm, the Justice Department decided not to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. As a Pentagon spokesman told Stars and Stripes, “A decision was made by the Justice Department, in collaboration with us, that we should comply with the lower court’s ruling.”

Obviously, that was a bad call. An administration that made its top priority the protection of our armed forces and the American people would have taken this case as far as it could — which would very likely have pushed a final ruling well into next year. This administration’s failure to do so underscores its anti-war predisposition — as well as the deeply conflicted posture of the Holder Justice Department, many of whose top officials (including the attorney general himself) come from firms that have spent the last several years representing America’s enemies in court.

But contrary to what the administration would have Americans believe, the Second Circuit ruling is not the end of the story. FOIA also contains an exemption from disclosure for matters that are “specifically authorized under criteria established by an executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.” That exemption was not at issue in the Second Circuit case.

Thus, if President Obama wanted to keep these photos from being exploited by America’s enemies, all he would need to do is issue an executive order sealing them, based on a finding (which could be drawn from public statements he has already made) that their release would imperil the national defense — as well as frustrate ongoing American foreign-policy efforts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, and elsewhere in the Muslim Middle East.

Some will say that the president won’t do that because he does not want to anger the anti-war Left, a significant part of his base. In truth, the president is the anti-war Left. He won’t issue an executive order of this kind because he wants the photos revealed. It is important to understand that disclosure here is not an inevitable outcome. It is a choice. It doesn’t have to happen unless Obama wants it to happen.

The same can be said of the Democratic Congress. The Second Circuit ruling that Holder chose not to appeal did not say the Constitution mandated public dissemination of photos that will imperil Americans. It said FOIA required it. FOIA is just a statute. Congress writes the statutes and it can amend the statutes. Democrats control both houses, as well as the White House. If they wanted to bar disclosure of the photos, they could do that tomorrow. And with the overwhelming support they’d get from Republicans, they could do it with veto-proof margins. But legislative override would likely be irrelevant: Obama wouldn’t dare veto a non-disclosure bill — he wants disclosure, but only if he can snooker people into believing it wasn’t his choice.

Congress would not even need to amend FOIA. As it now stands, FOIA provides for nondisclosure of matters “specifically exempted from disclosure by statute.” All Congress has to do is enact a law categorically barring disclosure of these particular photos, or barring photos that could endanger the lives of American service personnel and civilians for the duration of this war against an enemy already known to exploit such photos for propaganda purposes. Such a rule doesn’t have to last forever — only until the end of the war. And if that seems too long, Congress could stipulate that the question of disclosure will be revisited every few years.

The leading congressional Democrats are tribunes of the anti-war Left. They have not enacted such a law because, like Obama, they want the photos disclosed — or because they are too craven to defy their base. But it is important for Americans to understand: The Democrats are making a conscious choice that will imperil our nation and its defenders.

Last week, the Republican minority proposed legislation (the Keep Terrorists out of America Act) to pressure President Obama into reversing his plan to transfer trained jihadists into the United States. They are to be commended for an effective tactic. But it’s not enough. Where is the No Disclosure of Enemy Propaganda Material Act? Unless something is done, the photos that will cause American soldiers, American civilians, and other innocent people to die will be released in two weeks. Time is running out — the danger is not.
Click to read the rest of the article and the comments

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Your neighbor is now a former Guantanamo Bay inmate - It could happen!

Coming Soon To A 'Hood Near You: Gitmo (Ex?)Terrorists

from The New York Daily News
by James Gordon Meek
May 8, 2009

How would you like your family’s next-door neighbor to be a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who was trained in a military camp in pre-9/11 Afghanistan? Would it matter if they were declared no longer to be an “enemy combatant” by the Pentagon?

That’s the fundamental question that ought to be going through the minds of Northern Virginia residents this week, amid news reports - including our own Daily News exclusive today - that a group from Gitmo may soon be making house in the D.C. suburbs. Officials tell The News the ethnic Turk Muslims from China, known as Uyghurs, will be settled in a Uyghur community in Fairfax, Va. - if Team Obama gives the thumbs up.

While Republicans have unarguably been making political hay out of this news - as well as the release of the Bush-era “torture memos” and President Obama’s plan to close Gitmo by January - they are indeed representing the views of many counterterror officials by objecting strenuously to plans to resettle a half-dozen former detainees in the D.C. suburbs.

“There are people in the intelligence community who are concerned about the Uyghurs from a security standpoint,” Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), ranking GOPer on the Homeland Security Committee, told The Mouth. “They have very real worries.”

Counterterror officials who spoke to The Mouth this week expressed concern but no great alarm. Some see a greater threat than others. But at the core of the debate is that it’s not entirely clear how connected the detainees were to a Uyghur terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, before they were nabbed after 9/11.

“How do you say for sure? You don’t, and that’s the problem,” said one U.S. official briefed on contingency operations involving the Uyghur detainees.

Another matter is whether they grew into hardened jihadis during the seven years they’ve been held at Gitmo, though now in a minimally restrictive camp.

“You don’t know what kind of radicalization happened down there,” said Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), whose district is the spot where U.S. officials are looking to relocate the Gitmo group.

Wolf and King complain Team Obama hasn’t told them much. But other officials insist the members have been regularly briefed on Gitmo plans.

As the Daily News reported today, a sweeping security operation by the FBI and Homeland Security Department is in place to keep a watchful eye on the Uyghurs if they’re released in Virginia. But Wolf said the costs to taxpayers of the surveillance will be high for a decade or more, during which time the Uyghurs may become determined to attack the Red Chinese government.

“Will they one day try to kill the Chinese ambassador?” Wolf wonders. “You’d have to do (surveillance) forever.”

“We are not as much worried,” said Alim Seytoff, general secretary of the Uyghur American Association in Washington. “If the Uyghurs (at Gitmo) are released, we will welcome them.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2009/05/coming-soon-to-a-hood-near-you.html#ixzz0F1urVALt&B

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

House GOP: Napolitano must go


from Hot Air.com
by Allahpundit
4-22-2009

She doesn’t know immigration law or how the 9/11 hijackers got here, and she can’t manage a report on a topic as sensitive as domestic terrorism without insulting vets, but hey — at least she doesn’t owe back taxes. Who could have guessed that the title of Most Hapless Obama Appointee would pass so soon from Geithner?

Nothing says “smart power” like having foreign media wonder how your chief of security got her job.
House Republicans are calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down or be fired in the wake of a controversial department memo that has sparked indignant battle cries from conservatives and some veterans.

“Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela,” said Texas Rep. John Carter, a member of the party’s elected leadership who has organized an hour of floor speeches Wednesday night to call for Napolitano’s ouster. “The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime.”

Click to read the rest of the Hot Air article and comments

Here is the article from The National Post

The border for dummies
National Post editorial board
National Post Published: Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job?

She appears to be about as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo.

In an interview broadcast Monday on the CBC, Ms. Napolitano attempted to justify her call for stricter border security on the premise that "suspected or known terrorists" have entered the U. S. across the Canadian border, including the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack.

All the 9/11 terrorists, of course, entered the United States directly from overseas. The notion that some arrived via Canada is a myth that briefly popped up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and was then quickly debunked.

Informed of her error, Ms. Napolitano blustered: "I can't talk to that. I can talk about the future. And here's the future. The future is we have borders."

Just what does that mean, exactly?

Just a few weeks ago, Ms. Napolitano equated Canada's border to Mexico's, suggesting they deserved the same treatment. Mexico is engulfed in a drug war that left more than 5,000 dead last year, and which is spawning a spillover kidnapping epidemic in Arizona. So many Mexicans enter the United States illegally that a multi-billion-dollar barrier has been built from Texas to California to keep them out.

In Canada, on the other hand, the main problem is congestion resulting from cross-border trade. Not quite the same thing, is it?
Click to read the article and comments

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Napolitano:"crossing the border is not a crime per se." Yes, she really said that.

Bulletin: Napalatano changes the immigration law all by herself. At least it looks that way. Wow, I didn't know her DHS position had that authority but I guess it does.

Question: Do we need to vote anymore? Does it make any difference? Obama's administration seems to be doing pretty much whatever they want. If they can't get it passed through the congress and senate, they'll just back door it.
Rees


Janet Napolitano said what?
from Michell Malkin.com
By Michelle Malkin
April 21, 2009

She said this on CNN over the weekend:

KING: A lot of Democrats in Congress want to you investigate [Joe Arpaio]. They think he is over the line. He says he is just enforcing the law and the problem is the federal government.

NAPOLITANO: Well, you know, Sheriff Joe, he is being very political in that statement, because he knows that there aren’t enough law enforcement officers, courtrooms or jail cells in the world to do what he is saying.

What we have to do is target the real evil-doers in this business, the employers who consistently hire illegal labor, the human traffickers who are exploiting human misery.

And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se. It is civil. But anyway, going after those as well.

Full transcript here.

Julie Kirchner gently reminds the DHS Secretary of what the law actually says:

ENTRY WITHOUT INSPECTION IS A CRIME: In fact, pursuant to 8 U.S.C.
1325
, crossing the border illegally is a crime–a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for the second and subsequent offenses. But of course, ignoring or mischaracterizing the law is a very convenient way for those in power to avoid the laws they find most inconvenient. Sadly, statements such as these are also a signal that Americans will have to wait a long time before their government articulates any credible immigration enforcement policy.
Jena McNeill at The Foundry sees through Napolitano’s parsing:

This ‘interpretation’ of the law by Secretary Napolitano seems to be the latest in an effort by the Obama Administration to scale back interior immigration enforcement efforts in the United States. As recently as March 28th, Napolitano made the decision to delay a series of immigration raids and other workplace actions aimed at finding illegal workers. At the same time, both President Obama and Secretary Napolitano have announced new initiatives intending to send the message that they take the issues at the southern border seriously. But the Administration cannot fight cartels while ignoring illegal immigration—people smuggling is part of the problem, not a separate issue. Legalization will only make matters worse. Granting the people here illegally asylum will only encourage more illegal border crossing. Likewise, failing to enforce workplace and immigration laws will only encourage more to ignore the law.
Yep, that’s The Plan.
***
There is now a Fire Napolitano website.
Click to read the article and comments

Saturday, April 18, 2009

ARE YOU ONE???




"If you believe that the only reason you have first amendment rights, is because you have second amendment rights... then you might be a Rightwing Extremist"














Friday, April 17, 2009

Senators Tell Napolitano To Show Us The Data!

from Michelle Malkin.com
By Michelle Malkin
April 17, 2009 12:58 PM

Senators Coburn, Brownback, DeMint, Burr, Murkowski, Inhofe, and Vitter sent the following letter to DHS Secretary Napolitano yesterday concerning the DHS conservative hit job:

April 16, 2009

The Honorable Janet Napolitano
Secretary
The Department of Homeland Security
310 7th street, S.W.
Washington, DC 20528-0150

VIA FASCMILLE

Dear Secretary Napolitano,

We write today concerning the release of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” prepared by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch, of the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division.

While we agree that we must fight extremists who are both foreign and domestic we are troubled by some of the statements your department included as fact in the report titled above, without listing any statistical data to back up such claims.

First, your report states that “Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists…” without listing any data to support such a vile claim against our nation’s veterans.

Second, the report states that the millions of Americans who believe in the Second Amendment are a potential threat to our national security. Why? Do you have statistics to prove that law-abiding Americans who purchase a legal product are being recruited by so-called hate groups?

Thirdly, the report states that those that believe in issues such as pro-life legislation, limited government, and legal versus illegal immigration are potential terrorist threats. We can assure you that these beliefs are held by citizens of all races, party affiliation, male and female, and should not be listed as a factor in determining potential terror threats. A better word usage would be to describe them as practicing their First Amendment rights.

Also, you list those that bemoan the decline of U.S. stature and the loss of U.S. manufacturing capability to China and India as being potential rightwing extremists. We would suggest that the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs in the manufacturing industry to foreign countries are not potential terror threats, but rather honest Americans worried about feeding their families and earning a paycheck.

In closing, we support the mission of DHS in protecting our country from terror attacks and are proud of the many DHS employees who make this possible in conjunction with our state and local law enforcement. We ask that DHS not use this report as a basis to unfairly target millions of Americans because of their beliefs and the rights afforded to them in the Constitution. We also ask that you provide us with the data that support the unfair claims listed in the report titled above and to present us with the matrix system used in collecting and analyzing this data?

Finally, we look forward to your prompt reply and we offer our assistance to DHS in our shared effort to fight terrorism both home and abroad by using data that is accurate and independent of political persuasion.
Click to read the article and comments

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Coincidence? - I think not!

by Rees
April 15, 2009

The Obama Administration via the Department of Homeland
Security released their report (PDF file here) about Rightwing Extremists just before the April 15th Tea Parties. You might say, "So What!"

Well, I believe their intent was to try and intimidate people from participating in today's Tea Parties. Everything they needed to put the fear of God, oops Messiah, into the American public is in that document.

Conservatives typically don't get out and demonstrate until their ox has been gored several times. Liberals will demonstrate for no reason at all.

The current political climate with the huge stimulus package, bailouts and obscene budget that will triple the deficit, finally got the conservatives off their butts and onto the streets. Liberals haven't seen anything like this out of the conservative movement since the Reagan years.

And guess what? Liberals are afraid. They realize that conservatives are the silent majority in this country and if conservatives finally make their voice heard, that it could have real potential to stop some of the out of control spending and socialistic programs being put forth by this administration and congress.

So what do they decide to do to stop or at least slow down this movement? They proceed with their Chicago Thug intimidation tactics.

The latest report by the DHS focuses on "Rightwing Extremists" with no data to support what's stated in the report. The problem is their use of the term "Rightwing Extremist" is a smokescreen to make it appear they're only talking about the real "wacko's" out there.

However, they're not. All you have to do is read the report and you will easily see they have basically smeared all conservatives. I believe I live in an average neighborhood, surrounded by average Americans. Most of my friends and relatives are what I would consider average Americans. Yet, if you go down the DHS checklist, almost every one of my family, friends and neighbors could be considered a Rightwing Extremist.

Obama fired a shot across the bow of all conservatives. He has now labeled us all as potential security threats to our Own Country, and the report was brutal in its smear of veterans.

Most Americans just want to lead a quiet life. They want to work, own a home, enjoy their family and friends and worship as they choose to. They don't want to make waves and they surely don't want to get on the wrong side of the government. As an example, look at how many people are pretty much terrified of being audited by the IRA. They know you can't get into a legal battle with the government, because they have unlimited resources and the average person doesn't. They know they will lose even if they're right.

So what happens now? Hopefully, most of the Tax Day Tea Party Protesters will still show up and make sure their message is heard by this Administration. However, I think that there will be many who won't want the Tea Party Scarlet Letter attached to their name. They don't want to be watched. They don't want to be on the wrong side of this administration.

Obama told the bankers that he was the only thing between the bankers and the pitchforks. He also famously stated to our representatives "I Won." He needs everyone to obey so that he can implement his entire agenda. He will settle for nothing less and will do whatever he has to in order to succeed.

I don't think Our Country needs to be afraid of Rightwing Extremists, I think Our Country needs to be afraid of Obama, his administrations and the tactics of intimidation that they are using to ensure compliance.

JMHO.