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TechnoratiGovernment Authority Is Crossing a Line
Last week, Eloisa Tamez, 73, lost the latest round in her ongoing fight with the U.S. government. A judge ordered her to let Washington survey her land near Brownsville, Texas. It lies in the path of a proposed border fence. Now, Tamez, heir to an original Spanish land grant dating to the 1700s, fears that her property will be seized with good reason.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently waived more than 30 laws in order to expedite construction of the border fence. He did so with little regard for the concerns of residents, local officials and environmentalists.
And though the proposed path would cut through the properties of many citizens, it would bypass land owned by the wealthy and politically connected. The Texas Observer reported that the fence would detour around the River Bend Resort and golf course, as well as developments owned by the Hunt family, whose members are major supporters of President Bush. The fence would also cause irreparable damage to wildlife; two Texas nature preserves would wind up in Mexico. They'd likely have to close.
Chertoff maintains that the fence is necessary because Americans have been adamant about border security. Yet two recent polls by CBS and CNN show that Americans rank illegal immigration lowest on their short list of the most pressing national problems.
The fence wouldn't solve our immigration crisis. It would simply divert crossings to other places along the 2,000 mile border. It would do nothing about the 12 million unauthorized migrants already here. In fact, nearly half of all illegal immigrants entered the country legally and overstayed their visas, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is right in assessing the fence as a waste of money.
Moreover, Congress has ceded too much power to Chertoff. In 2005, it granted him the authority to waive laws while prohibiting federal appeals courts from reviewing his decisions, undermining the system of checks and balances enshrined in our Constitution. Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club have filed petitions with the Supreme Court challenging the legality of the waiver. I hope the court accepts the case and voids the grant of power. Alternatively, Congress should revoke this power because it is being abused.
In the meantime, Chertoff has free rein to destroy fragile ecosystems, flout our laws and trample on the rights of citizens like Tamez. How sad that we are willing to undermine our Constitution for an expensive, wasteful monument to American insecurity.
Raul Reyes is an attorney in New York and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
© 2008 USA TODAY
27 Comments so far
Show AllThey are using gangstalking techniques, glad someone else can recognize gangstalking when they see it.
I say...of Chertoff..WATERBOARD THE MOTHERFUCKER! HE NEEDS CURING...HIS MISDEEDS ARE TANTAMOUNT TO TREASON..TO "DOMESTIC TERRORISM" A GOVERNMENT THAT IS ENGAGING IN A SYSTEMATIC CAMPAIGN OF ABUSE AND FEAR AGAINST THE CITIZENS..WHO ALSO, BY THE BY...ARE PAYING THAT SAME GOVERNMENT FOR THE GREAT WORK THEY ARE DOING...YOU ARE BUILDING THAT FENCE..PERIOD!
THE NEO-CON(VICTS) ARE EVIL, PURE EVIL. A NEW "LOYALIST" ARMY OF BUREAUCRATS AND HENCHMEN, MERCENARIES WHO DO NOT KNOW THE "NUMBERS" AND DO NOT CARE! THEY SIMPLY DO NOT LISTEN TO ARGUMENT, AND WILL NOT DEBATE..THEY DO NOT CARE FOR THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS, NOR DO THEY CARE FOR THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS..THEY ONLY CARE THAT YOU REMAIN IN FEAR..THEIR PERSONAL ISSUES KEEPING THEM ENTHUSIASTIC FOR THE ZEALOTRY REQUIRED TO CARRY ON LISTENING TO YOUR PHONE CALLS, INTERCEPTING ALL OUR EMAILS...TORTURING AND KIDNAPPING..AND ON AND ON AND ON..
AND IF THERE ARE "LISTENERS" OUT THERE..SCANNING POSTS AND THE WEB..HERE'ES HOPING YOU GET THIS MESSAGE..
YOU AND THE REST OF THE LOYALIST CORPORATE FASCIST THEOCRACY ARE DOING MORE DAMAGE TO THIS NATION AND IT'S CITIZENS AND LAW'S THAN ANY ARMY OF ANY OTHER NATION OR GROUP COULD EVER HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH..WHY? BECAUSE THERE IS NO THREAT! 3 WORDS: THE DRUG WAR! YOU CAN'T EVEN PUT A DENT IN THAT ONE, AND YOU EXPECT TO BEAT THE SAME GUY'S THAT BEAT THE RUSSIANS? GIVE ME A BREAK..YOU MAKE THE LISTS..THEY DON'T. YOU SPY ON US AND DISSAPEAR US, THEY DON'T. YOU FORCE YOUR WAY INTO OUR HOMES AND TERRORIZE US WITH THREATS AND SEARCHES AT AIRPORTS AND "THREAT LEVELS" THAT DO NOT EXIST EXCEPT IN YOUR MINDS...IF A NARCO-TRAFFICER CAN GET A DC-10...THEN WHAT? A GROUP FINANCED BY SAUDI'S CAN'T? YEAH RIGHT!...SURE...SO "NO FLY LISTS" THAT JUST HAPPEN TO TARGET SENIOR CITIZENS WHO PUBLISH THEIR OWN ANTI-WAR RAG...HMMM...AND 900,000 PEOPLE ON "WATCH LISTS" IF THERE WERE THAT MANY REAL "THREATS" IN THIS COUNTRY...THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN AT LEAST...AT LEAST A TELEPHONE POLE CUT DOWN BY NOW...YOU'D THINK...BUT NOPE...AND IT AINT CAUSE YOUR HAVING ANY EFFECT..IT IS BECASUE THERE IS NO THREAT!
THE REALITY OF "UNITY" IS TAILGATING YOU ON THE FREEWAY...
IT'S ALL A LIE, AND THE LIERS ARE LISTENING AND THREATENING..
FUCK EM ALL..HAIL BUSH! HAIL CHENEY! YOU'VE REALLY DONE A SMASH UP JOB WITH EIGHT YEARS...GEEWHIZ! THE COUNTRY IS IN REALLY GREAT SHAPE...THANKS FOR NOTHING..
AND OH YEAH! WHERE IS THE ANTHRAX KILLER? IS HE ON YOUR "WATCH LIST" PROBABLY NOT! BUT THEN AGAIN..HE IS AN ACTUAL THREAT...NOT JUST A POLITICAL DISSENTER..SO..HE GET'S A PASS...
I'LL SEE YOU IN THE TRENCHES
With the coming NAU why do we need a wall?
I want to see a list of the 30 laws that have been waived.
Mr. Bush, tear down this wall.
Cross the line?????
I want to know who the IAFF works for, the people or the new spy nation.
I know the following article is very true. The IAFF is being funded by our tax dollors to organize local community watch groups using Civil Corps volenteers.
They have lost thier minds and create witch hunt senerios all the time.
Why? To recruit , train and get more money.The more suspects your comminty has , the bigger the spy network, and more money and power for the locals running the show.
This is Americas biggest dirty secret. We have a huge spy nation being run by people who are accountable to no one.
They are using gang stalking techiques to create disturbed suspects and then train thier comminty watch groups to spy on them.
All the while making them "IAFF" look more important and powerful.
To save Amercia we need to abolish this program funded by the DHS.
Because they are not Police, they can be used to conduct warntless survielence , dig up dirt, destory activists or political enemys.The good old boy network in each town can insure power.
They are glorified gang stalkers, they are dangerous,they operate above the rule of law, and are a threat to our
constitutional rights.
updated 1:36 p.m. EST, Wed December 5, 2007
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FDNY anti-terror plans spark fears of witch huntsStory Highlights
Homeland Security wants to train firefighters to spot indications of terrorism
Legal expert: Program would turn firefighters into surveillance devices for police
"Nobody's out for a witch hunt," says New York fire department
Once perfected in New York, program could be extended nationwide
OH its perfected, these are a bunch of cruel , sadistic , mean , unlawful Gang Stalkers. Trust me , I know.
This country is in big trouble , Bush has given permision to the people we trust to trash the constitution.
Build a wall all the way around the USA. Bush and his circle the wagons.
cactuspie -- If you want a laugh,Consider that what we see of SKELETOR
is actually the improved version - portrait of Dorian Grey - uplifted enraptured.
No one { alive } can handle seeing the actual portrait itselfNamaste
All in a days work for Skelator, er, uh, I mean Chertoff. Let's not forget he was once the front man for covering up death squads for Chiquita in Latin Amnerica. Heck of a job Michael!
Same old, same old. It never stops with favoritism, special treatment and racism by the Republican mindset. And of course Demos as well- even the Clintons have there excesses.
The Fence issue - however resolved - is just another issue that opinionated activists deal with from the atomized and largely impotent isolation of their home computers.
Right wingers and authoritarians love the disembodied Group Think power of computer websites. Progressives are supposed to be more wary of such Disembodiments.
Progressives who tell other progressives to turn of their TV's may be correct on that point. But they will make that point better by also turing off their computers - and using the spare time to talk to the neighbors, physically, face to face.
Obviously, a post like mine, for what it's worth, can only be posted a few times without becoming internally inconsistent.
The fence is to keep Americans in during martial law. As for the title of this article, the government crossed the 50 yard line a long time ago, and is in the end zone now. Just getting ready to spike the ball.
"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently waived more than 30 laws in order to expedite construction of the border fence. He did so with little regard for the concerns of residents, local officials and environmentalists."
And it was done with the "magic wand" of a dictator within a rubber-stamped dictatorship.
The fence and every other thing they do to try to keep illegal aliens out will always backfire. It also keeps the in the US.
When there was no attempt to curb illegal imigrants, there were far fewer living here. The fence keeps them here.
The department of "homeland" security is ruled by a Zionist Israeli-serving jew. What else do you need to know? Isn't this fence a typical Israeli way?
Apparantly, Texas government isn't willing to protect its own....
As a native Texan, I think it is obscene to let the feds come in and stomp on the residents.
IF the government had had this under control for the last 50 years, this wouldn't be happening now.
I'm starting to get the feeling that somewhere there's a Bush-ecutive order stating that anyone who follows any law while serving at "the pleasure of the war criminal president" will have their entire career immediately terminated.
Good thing "they" haven't started combining all the exec orders and signing statements and "secret legal justifications," or we'll start reading about "anti-border fence" terrorists refusing to allow their land to be stolen with the help of "special groups" financed by Iran and the Dems who must be 'tergated wit da in-hanced methodsss, y'un'er'stan?
Gorsegrower: Can you, or anyone else out there, give me a link to verify Chertoff's dual citizenship - and that of other's purported to be US/Israeli citizens? Am most interested.
Thanks!
Dual 'citizen' Chertoff is as evil as he looks.
Visit the Alamo and see who's lovingly caring for the buildngs and grounds of that most hallowed of Texas jingoistic war shrines - a bunch of Mexican caretakers! Homeland Security is a fraud perpetrated on the US citizen who has been duped into being scared of all the wrong things, like illegal aliens. It is another front for the money laundering of our taxes into the pockets of the filthy rich. Its supra-legal staus is unconstitutional. It is the biggest, most bloated, most costly, and poorest-run government agency ever created, by a party who sells the dumbed-down American voter its lies about small government and true management talent every election term. And now we're ready to install Johnny Bomb Bomb as the next dictator. Chertoff, Dobbs, Bush and most US voters are all idiots.
and all the while they're sticking that middle finger in your face. and the smirk, the smirk! what a crew!
The fence is not political. The fence is just another way that the government is handing over our taxes to a few corporations (Boeing in this case) in the name of 'Homeland Security'. A handful of Bush cronies will make a killing out of this deal and Chertoff will retire (resign or get kicked out?) from public office only to wallow in the corporate kick backs he will receive in his post-public service job.
Meanwhile the MSM is doing an excellent job of obfuscating the reality of this proposed fence by claiming that it is a hot political debate in which each party is struggling over what to do with the massive influx of illegals who desire to live in a perfect corporate society (The U.S.) in order to escape their 'backward' and 'socialist' third world countries.
Laws are just G-D pieces of paper for this administration and they should not be bothered by following any of them. Let`s see what the Repugs think about breaking laws if and when we get a Democrat president and Congress. My guess is there will be an astonishing change of philosophy on that.
An unsightly fence in view from the Resort and Golf Course?
What a ghastly abomination! Chertoff may waive 30 other laws, but he had better not waive the unwritten social law against THAT! Polite Society in Texas shall not abide it!
Aw, Raul, just try telling this to Lou Dobbs!
I live in Mexico 6 mo. of the year in an low population area of the state of Jalisco. The people are poor. They live for the most part in stick houses with packed dirt floors. One of my neighbors, a man 35 years old is a "coyote". He is poor. The big money for smuggling people into the U.S. goes to the people already on "el otro lado". He takes people to crossing places for peanuts. Enough to survive only. He tells me that although it is more difficult these days no fence is going to stop crossings. It will merely change timing, method and location. Also many (most?) crossings are facilitated in the U.S. by indigenous Americans. I know, you still like to call them indians. No matter, they feel closer to the Mexicans looking for work than they do to white Americans. The wall---what a joke!
Chertoff builds _f e n c e s_ across his _ e y e s _
and doesn't __ k n o w __ to ask
_ w h y __ h e __cannot _ s e e _
Just to add a note of concurrance to Power_Slave above, besides erveryone of the "illegals" having some type of gainful employment that economic treasonists who hire and exploit them have provided, the primary reason they are looking for work in the US is that NAFTA has ruined everything from subsistence farming to the currency.
And all those Maquilladora jobs that were there a few years ago are fleeing to lands even more desperate and poverty-stricken than Mexico. It's just the way big multinational capital would have it.