Patch

Patch sniffing for Aliens

Reporting
In the past week, federal judges have ruled that Time magazine and New York Times reporters should go to jail for what they know, even if it was never published. Another federal court ruled that the governor of Maryland has the right to order state employees never to answer questions posed by The Baltimore Sun.
So it goes in the land of the free.

From Lou Dobbs
“The ultimate message in outsourcing is this: America be damned. It's all about the lowest cost," says the silver-haired, 59-year-old newsman at his new Time Warner Center digs in Manhattan. "I can't accept that statement. Nor will I, whether it comes from a lawmaker, a politician or a businessman or woman. The pain that's being exacted on our middle class from so many quarters is intolerable."

• A pox on both parties. Dobbs is a lifelong Republican but says President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" rings hollow when "the White House obviously supports outsourcing of American jobs to cheap labor markets."

Budget

" A whopping 78% of federal farm subsidies goes to a mere 8% of farmers, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile, the typical small farmer collected less than $2,000 from the fed govt. " (The 8% is corporate farms and tax shelter farms.)

The Patch has been reading message boards and blogs from AARP (message board) to Powerpoint (conservative blog), to Fox TV. What I’m seeing seems to be a planned, will prepared plan, maybe even paid for, conservative attack. The message is, if you’re not a conservative right-winger, if you question the ideologue of the Republican Party in general and the Bush administration in particular, then one is a left wing liberal democrat. The bad part of this, the message comes across that being a left wing liberal democrat equals to being unpatriotic and un-American. This message is consistent enough to be coming from the same place and group . The message is slanted this way and that way but is basically the same. Now the Patch hopes she isn’t paranoid and doesn’t think she is.
The right wingers ( neocons) do not seem to recognize the democracy depends on checks and balances. America needs at least a two party system (maybe three would be better)
The counter to any liberal democratic argument is this continued attack on the argument.


LAW

House Republicans yesterday appeared headed toward passing a bill giving the government vast new power to build roads and barriers along the U.S. border with Mexico, exempt from judicial review as well as environmental, conservation and labor laws.


However, the watchdog group OMB Watch warned that the bill "would place Homeland Security above the law."
A coalition of major environmental groups -- including Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club -- contends that the bill would allow the Homeland Security Department "to undertake large construction projects anywhere along our borders," including "pristine islands and waters."


Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.), a major proponent of the bill, said the legislation is primarily aimed at finishing the San Diego fence. "We know
that there are people who will look for any hurdle they can to prevent completion of the fence," he said
There’s the message again.

They keep trying to pass bills to by-pass all law and see nothing wrong with it, but any opposition is damned. The Patch can see nothing incompatible with Homeland Security and Law. Patch thinks no fence is much the less evil then government secrecy, BUILD THE FENCE WITHIN THE LAW. IT CAN BE DONE!
Patch keeps thing of the Germans and Hitler.
Enough again, the Patch can go on all day with this stuff. I mean ask yourself what’s it mean when the government is above the LAW? What’s it mean when the (our) government works in secret?

THE PATCH