FISA Court Requires Bush Admin to Respond to ACLU's Request for Public Info

[Matt Collins]

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/31356prs20070817.html

WASHINGTON - In an unprecedented order, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has required the U.S. government to respond to a request it received last week by the American Civil Liberties Union for orders and legal papers discussing the scope of the government's authority to engage in the secret wiretapping of Americans. According to the FISC's order, the ACLU's request "warrants further briefing," and the government must respond to it by August 31. The court has said that any reply by the ACLU must be filed by September 14.

[RP4ME]

WOW - so tommorow is D-day - wonder if they'll comply?

[Green Mountain Boy]

I just read an article the other day saying that the White House is now claiming the office that handles Freedom of Information Requests is no longer subject to Freedom of Information Requests.

I'm not making this up.

[RP4ME]

scary stuff.

[Bob Cochran]

I just read an article the other day saying that the White House is now claiming the office that handles Freedom of Information Requests is no longer subject to Freedom of Information Requests.

I'm not making this up.
Naturally.

I don't know if everyone gets it yet. The Bush administration truly thinks they're above the law in every way. The arrogance is without limits.

[RP4ME]

Did anyone hear if they complied with teh court request- im sure tehy will ignore it again. thinsg are just NOT adding up......its more than just arrogance - something seems really fishy....

[Trassin]

The White House didn't comply.

Link (http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spying/31536prs20070831.html)

[sixpackrt]

Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union
Enthusiastic proponent of Communism


Roger Nash Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), leftist, anarchist, and Communist, was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts to comfortably situated parents, in 1884. He was educated at Harvard College, where he earned an M.A. degree, and then moved to St. Louis, where he taught Social Work at Washington University.

At the approach of World War I, Baldwin, a pacifist, co-founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which opposed the use of warfare in the settlement of international disputes. Among his colleagues in this endeavor were Norman Thomas, perennial Socialist candidate for President; the pacifist/Marxist A. J. Muste; and radical journalist Oswarld Garrison Villard, Editor of The Nation.

As World War I progressed, Baldwin co-founded the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM), again with the aim of promoting a pacifist, internationalist agenda. In 1920 he joined with several of his colleagues in the American Left to establish the ACLU. Baldwin was named the organization's first Executive Director, a position he would hold until 1950.

The ACLU soon became enmeshed in a variety of high-profile causes; the Scopes Trial; the Sacco and Vanzetti case, which has long been a cause celebre of the Left; and the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Baldwin showed much sympathy to the Soviet economic system in his statement in his Harvard classbook, and in the foreword he wrote to Letters from Russian Prisons (1924). He embraced the view that the Russia of his day was "a great laboratory of social experimentation of incalculable value to the development of the world.”

In the 1930s Baldwin and the ACLU became linked to the Popular Front movement, which was engendered by Stalin to strengthen the Communist Party by allowing it to make common cause with socialists and other leftist groups. Baldwin himself made two trips to the Soviet Union, and in 1928 published a book entitled Liberty Under the Soviets, which contained effusive praise for the USSR.

In 1934 Baldwin authored a piece titled "Freedom in the USA and the USSR." He wrote: "The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental. When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever. Dictatorship is the obvious means in a world of enemies at home and abroad. I dislike it in principle as dangerous to its own objects. But the Soviet Union has already created liberties far greater than exist elsewhere in the world. … [There] I saw ... fresh, vigorous expressions of free living by workers and peasants all over the land. And further, no champion of a socialist society could fail to see that some suppression was necessary to achieve it. It could not all be done by persuasion. … f American champions of civil liberty could all think in terms of economic freedom as the goal of their labors, they too would accept 'workers' democracy' as far superior to what the capitalist world offers to any but a small minority. Yes, and they would accept — regretfully, of course — the necessity of dictatorship while the job of reorganizing society on a socialist basis is being done."

Baldwin altered his stance on the Soviet Union in 1939, when the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was signed. Angry that the Soviets had betrayed all principles by signing an accord with Hitler, Baldwin promptly sought to have all Communists removed from the ACLU board; the Communist labor organizer, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, was among those purged from the organization.

After the War, Baldwin was sent to Japan by General Douglas MacArthur, who wanted him to assist the Japanese in developing a concept of egalitarian government and civil liberties. Also in the postwar period, Baldwin was a co-founder of the International League for the Rights of Man (later the International League for Human Rights.)

Baldwin retired as Executive Director of the ACLU in 1950 but remained active in the organization. He traveled extensively after his retirement, especially to Asia, where he condemned the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, even as he embraced the Communist dictator Ho Chi Minh as a member of the Vietnamese-American Friendship Association. He cultivated the friendship of convicted terrorist Pedro Albizu Campos in Puerto Rico. He also joined SANE (the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), which argued for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United States.

Reflecting on his early years as the ACLU's Executive Director, Baldwin candidly revealed his original motives and objectives: "I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the properties class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. It all sums up into one single purpose -- the abolition of dog-eat-dog under which we live. I don't regret being part of the communist tactic. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the communists wanted and I traveled the United Front road to get it."

Baldwin maintained an office in the United Nations after his retirement from the ACLU, working as a consultant for the International League for Human Rights. He died in 1981.

[sixpackrt]

http://www.eco.freedom.org/el/20050601/ward.shtml

What is the goal of the ACLU?
By Jack Ward

June 1, 2005

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sounds like an organization that protects American values. Many people believe that the ACLU is the nation's guardian of liberty, and great protector of the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, the ACLU was never a promoter, or protector of American values or the Constitution. In fact, ACLU might as well stand for the American Communist Lawyers Union. The ACLU has created the facade that it is a champion of the oppressed, but it uses the powers of the government to coerce all members of our society into accepting a socialist existence.

Don't believe me, just read what Roger Baldwin, the co-founder of the ACLU said: "I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself... I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the properties class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. I don't regret being part of the communist tactic. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the communists wanted, and I traveled the United Front road to get it." In spite of Baldwin's Communist leanings, President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 16, 1981.

Baldwin didn't create the ACLU in a vacuum, he had plenty of help. A group of Communist Party officials, fellow travelers, anarchists, and radicals joined Baldwin to found the ACLU in 1920.

Former chairman of the Communist Party USA, William Z. Foster was also an ACLU co-founder. Foster said, "The establishment of an American Soviet government will involve the confiscation of large landed estates in town and country, and also, the whole body of forests, mineral deposits, lakes, rivers, and so on."

The ACLU's official policy statement reveals that the intent of the ACLU (like the Communist Manifesto) is to undermine the moral foundation, and weaken the fabric of our society. For example, according to the ACLU's Policy Guide, the ACLU supports the legalization of all drugs (including "hard" drugs, like crack and PCP), public drunkenness, pornography (including "kiddie porn"), sexual perversion, (including sodomy, bestiality, pedophilia, and necrophilia), prostitution (including child prostitution), euthanasia, and infanticide.

Policy numbers 62 and 75 reveal that the ACLU is also opposed to a parent's role in educating their children, including home schooling and vouchers. Obviously, they believe the education of our youth is too important to be left to parents.

Policy numbers 239 and 242 state that the ACLU is opposed to the death penalty, even for the most heinous murderers. What is worse, the ACLU demands that all criminals (except murderers) be given suspended sentences, and released back into the community. We already know that most convicted criminals are prone to resume their life of crime, once released from prison. The ACLU policy of leniency is on display, everyday. These are examples of ACLU Policies that are designed to weaken the fabric of our society.

The ACLU mirrors Lenin's Rules for Revolution. Lenin's rules were revealed after a 1919 raid in Dusseldorf, Germany. The files marked Communist Rules for Revolution, included:

corrupt the young, control all means of publicity, divide people into hostile groups, destroy people's faith, preach democracy, but seize power, encourage government extravagance and discontent, foment strikes and civil disorder, breakdown moral values, and create a pretext to control all firearms.

These were Lenin's plans to undermine a society and create chaos, in order to successfully overthrow a government. And all this time, you thought that the ACLU was really concerned with your civil liberties.

Now, you know that the goal of the ACLU was, and continues to be, to promote Communism. Baldwin and his Communist buddies ran the ACLU for thirty years promoting the goals of the Communist Manifesto, and little has changed since he left. While it is true that not all ACLU members or supporters are Communists, all must be sympathetic to the ACLU goals, or they wouldn't be associated with the ACLU.

Once created, the ACLU provided legal protection to Communist infiltrators in the U.S. Since then, the ACLU has been the legal arm of the Collective Left (Communists, Socialists, Progressives, and Liberals) anarchists, radicals, and members of the Ku Klux Klan and NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association).

Former ACLU Southern California staff attorney, Rees Lloyd is now working to expose the ACLU. Lloyd describes the ACLU as, "the Taliban of American liberal secularism."

I guess that the ACLU's goal must be to create anarchy, and destroy our society.

[RP4ME]

Regardless of what the real purpose of the ACLU is I think that the Exec. branch is acting outside and above the law. Congress needs to to do something otherwise they are obviously complicit. People hate the ACLU when they arent defending a position they support.

[angelatc]

WIth the ACLU you have to take the bad with the good.

They are the same group that is fighting on behalf of the man with the Ron Paul sign in his Orlando yard.

They are also the group that consistently beat down Giuliani's brownshirted tactics.

My biggest beef is that they won't deal with 2nd Amendment issues.

[ChooseLiberty]

Just when it seems like the ACLU is becoming a branch of AIPAC or ADL they go and do something reasonable.

It's hard not to be suspicious of them tho.

[sixpackrt]

Communist Goals (1963)
Documention below

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35
January 10, 1963

Current Communist Goals

EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, January 10, 1963



Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.

At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:

[From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.) DONE

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. DONE

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. DONE

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks. DONE

18. Gain control of all student newspapers. DONE

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions. DONE

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. DONE

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art." DONE

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press. DONE

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. DONE

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy." DONE

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch." DONE

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state." DONE

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. DONE

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man." DONE

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. DONE

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions. DONE

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat]. DONE

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals. DONE

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. DONE

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal. DONE

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

[sixpackrt]

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.


Globalists Plan to Give Away U.S. Patents
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, July 30, 2007

In extraordinary coordination, the judiciary committees of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in the same week approved a bill, which, if it becomes law, will spell the end of America's world leadership in innovation.

Called the Patent Reform Act, it is a direct attack on the unique and successful patent system created by the U.S. Constitution.

Before 1999, the U.S. Patent Office was required to keep secret the contents of a patent application until a patent was granted, and to return the application in secret to the inventor if a patent was denied. That protected the legal rights of the inventor, who could then go back to the drawing board to perfect his invention and try again.

A mischievous congressional "reform" in 1999 authorized the U.S. Patent Office to shift to the Japanese and European practice of publishing patent applications 18 months after filing whether or not a decision is yet made on granting a patent. Congress allowed a patent application, under certain conditions, to be exempt from the publication requirement, but the default procedure is to publish.

The 2007 Patent bill would delete this exemption and require publication of all patent applications 18 months after filing regardless of whether a decision has been made on granting a patent.

By 2006, the U.S. Patent Office had placed 1,271,000 patent applications on the Internet, giving access to anyone anywhere in the world. This foolish practice created a gold mine for China to steal U.S. innovations and get to market quickly.

Chinese pirates don't roam the high seas looking for booty but sit at their computers, roam the Internet, and steal the details of U.S. inventions that the U.S. Patent Office loads online. This practice became China's research and development program, and it is even more efficient than China's network of industrial and military spies.

U.S. policy has always been to grant a patent to the first one who actually invents something. But the new patent bill would change to the foreign system, which grants patents to the first one to file papers.

First-to-file would be a windfall to megacorporations and a big disadvantage to the small-entity inventor. First-to-file would invite an avalanche of applications from the big companies that have the resources to grind out multiple filings, and the small inventor would be lost in the shuffle. The new patent bill offers yet another way for patent pirates to steal U.S. technology. It's called post-grant review: a plan to make it easier to challenge patents during the entire life of the patent.

Another provision of the new patent bill would shift decision-making about damages for patent infringement from market valuations to judgments by judges and juries. This would increase litigation and limit the ability of independent inventors and small companies to enforce their rights or to win just compensation from those who infringe their rights.

The new bill would also transfer unprecedented rule-making authority to the Patent office. That's an abdication of congressional responsibility.

Add it all up, and it is clear that the new patent bill is a big attack on the constitutional property rights of individual inventors and small enterprises, the very kind of entrepreneurs who give us our most important innovations. About a third of all patent applications are filed by individual inventors, small companies, universities, and nonprofit groups.

The common thread in the changes to be made by the new patent bill is that they favor big companies like Microsoft and hurt individual and small-entity inventors.

Microsoft has thousands of patents, and recently argued that the free GNU/Linux operating system infringes over 200 of them. Microsoft wants to be able to use its huge patent portfolio to intimidate potential competitors, and at the same time it wants it to be easier to knock out individual patents.

If Congress wants to do something constructive for our patent system, Congress should reinstate the rule that the Patent Office may not publish a patent application until a patent is granted, and if it is denied the application must be returned to the inventor with his secrets intact.

Congress should also give back to the Patent Office the flow of fees paid by inventors, which Congress took away in 1999 to spend on other projects. Then the Patent Office can hire more examiners and reduce its backlog of 800,000 applications.

The U.S. patent system is the vital factor in the technological lead that gives the United States an edge over competitors and enemies. Globalists cannot be allowed to destroy it.



Phyllis Schlafly is a national leader of the pro-family movement, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Feminist Fantasies.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PhyllisSchlafly/2007/07/30/globalists_plan_to_give_away_us_patents?page=full&comments=true