DO DRONES SPY ON U.S. SOIL? FBI DIRECTOR SAYS ‘YES’ BUT IN A ‘VERY, VERY MINIMAL WAY’

Original Post: The Blaze

Liz Klimas

FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, yes, the government does use drones over U.S. soil for surveillance — but not too much.

When asked by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) about the use of unmanned aircraft, Mueller said “Our footprint is very small. We have very few,” according to Wired.

ederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee June 19, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Mueller confirmed that the FBI uses drones for domestic surveillance during the hearing on FBI oversight. Grassley pressed, asking about their purpose, to which Mueller said they were for surveillance. Surveillance on U.S. soil?

“Yes, in a very, very minimal way, and seldom,” Mueller said.

The Huffington Post reported Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) expressing privacy concerns over the use of drones and calling them “the greatest threat to the privacy of Americans.”

In terms of privacy protections built into the drone program at the moment, Mueller said the program itself “is very narrowly focused on particularized cases and particularized needs,” which he called “the principal privacy limitation we have.”

He did say the bureau was in the “initial stages” of developing privacy guidelines though.

In May of this year, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that the Obama administration had killed four Americans using drones in Yemen and Pakistan. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also showed letters sent by Holder that said “the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial.”

The FAA was charged with drafting new regulations that would open up the skies of America to more private, commercial and military drone use by 2015.

Memo spells out when it's OK to kill Al Qaeda-linked Americans without trial

Original Post: The Star

WASHINGTON—The White House and its critics faced off Tuesday over the legality of drone strikes to kill U.S. citizens abroad, in a likely preview of arguments that will be raised during this week’s confirmation hearing for President Barack Obama’s choice to head the CIA.

The disclosure of an unclassified Justice Department memo laying out the legal framework for the U.S. government’s ability to attack its own citizens drew criticism from civil liberties groups. But the White House strongly defended the controversial policy as legal and ethical.

The memo, first obtained by NBC News, argues that drone strikes are justified under American law if a targeted U.S. citizen had “recently” been involved in “activities” posing a possible threat and provided there is no evidence suggesting the individual “renounced or abandoned” such activities. A top U.S. official must determine that the targeted person “poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States,” cannot be captured, and that the strike “would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney defended current U.S. drone policy, saying they are used to mitigate threats, stop plots, prevent future attacks and save American lives. “These strikes are legal, they are ethical and they are wise,” he said. Civil liberties groups expressed concerns, while lawmakers called on the White House to release more of its legal underpinning for the assertion that the president has the power to kill U.S. citizens abroad without trial.

“My initial reaction is that the paper only underscores the irresponsible extravagance of the government’s central claim,” Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote on the ACLU’s blog. “Even if the Obama administration is convinced of its own fundamental trustworthiness, the power this white paper sets out will be available to every future president.”

The use of drones figures to be a prime topic for White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan when he faces the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday in a confirmation hearing on his nomination to become CIA director.

The U.S. government has dramatically increased its use of drones abroad in recent years to target Al Qaeda figures in far-flung places from Pakistan to Yemen.

The document was disclosed as a bipartisan group of U.S. senators called on the Obama administration to release to Congress “any and all” legal opinions laying out the government’s understanding of what legal powers the president has to authorize the killing of American citizens.

The senators who signed the letter, including members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the administration’s co-operation would “help avoid an unnecessary confrontation that could affect the Senate’s consideration of nominees for national security purposes.”

One national security official said the leak of the Justice Department memo may have been timed to blunt such congressional demands for the release of additional documents. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat who chairs the Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday that she had been calling on the administration to release legal analyses related to the use of drones for more than a year. Feinstein said the document obtained by NBC had been given to congressional committees last June on a confidential basis, and that her committee is seeking additional documents, which are believed to remain classified.

Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday said he was concerned that the release of more documents could put sources and operations at risk.

There is “a real concern to reveal sources, to potentially reveal sources and methods and put at risk the very mechanisms that we use to try to keep people safe, which is our primary responsibility,” he said at a news conference.

The memo is drawing new attention to the 2011 strike that killed U.S.-born Anwar al Awlaki, who U.S. investigators say was a major player with Al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate and linked to a botched plot to blow up a U.S. airliner with a bomb hidden in a man’s underwear on Christmas Day 2009. His teenage son was also killed in a drone strike.

Targeted killings carried out by remotely piloted unmanned aircraft are controversial because of the risks to nearby civilians and because of their increasing frequency. The United Nations recently launched an investigation into their use.

Most such attacks have been carried out by the United States, but Britain and Israel have also used drones.

Hina Shamsi of the ACLU, which has sued for more information on the drone program, called the memo “profoundly disturbing” and “a stunning overreach of executive authority.”

Shamsi, head of the ACLU’s National Security Project, in a statement called on the Obama administration to release what she said was a 50-page classified legal document on which the 16-page summary is based.

“Among other things, we need to know if the limits the executive purports to impose on its killing authority are as loosely defined as in this summary, because if they are, they ultimately mean little,” she said late Monday.

Obama allows military to detain American citizens on American soil indefinably with out a trial

Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial

Original Post: Guardian

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end".

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.

The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.

"It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."

There was heated debate in both houses of Congress on the legislation, requiring that suspects with links to Islamist foreign terrorist organisations arrested in the US, who were previously held by the FBI or other civilian law enforcement agencies, now be handed to the military and held indefinitely without trial.

The law applies to anyone "who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces".

Senator Lindsey Graham said the extraordinary measures were necessary because terrorism suspects were wholly different to regular criminals.

"We're facing an enemy, not a common criminal organisation, who will do anything and everything possible to destroy our way of life," he said. "When you join al-Qaida you haven't joined the mafia, you haven't joined a gang. You've joined people who are bent on our destruction and who are a military threat."

Other senators supported the new powers on the grounds that al-Qaida was fighting a war inside the US and that its followers should be treated as combatants, not civilians with constitutional protections.

But another conservative senator, Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said "detaining citizens without a court trial is not American" and that if the law passes "the terrorists have won".

"We're talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. It puts every single citizen American at risk," he said. "Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts."

Paul was backed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.

"Congress is essentially authorising the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," she said. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."

Paul said there were already strong laws against support for terrorist groups. He noted that the definition of a terrorism suspect under existing legislation was so broad that millions of Americans could fall within it.

"There are laws on the books now that characterise who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the department of justice. Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than seven days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist," Paul said. "If you are suspected because of these activities, do you want the government to have the ability to send you to Guantánamo Bay for indefinite detention?"

Under the legislation suspects can be held without trial "until the end of hostilities". They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue.

The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would "cause confusion" in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.

But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.

Critics accused the president of caving in again to pressure from some Republicans on a counter-terrorism issue for fear of being painted in next year's election campaign as weak and of failing to defend America.

Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.

"The paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people's minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is," Malinowski said. "It wasn't asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs."

In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.

The FBI director, Robert Mueller, said he feared the law could compromise the bureau's ability to investigate terrorism because it would be more complicated to win co-operation from suspects held by the military.

"The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain co-operation from the persons in the past that we've been fairly successful in gaining," he told Congress.

Civil liberties groups say the FBI and federal courts have dealt with more than 400 alleged terrorism cases, including the successful prosecutions of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber", Umar Farouk, the "underwear bomber", and Faisal Shahzad, the "Times Square bomber".

Elements of the law are so legally confusing, as well as being constitutionally questionable, that any detentions are almost certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court.

Malinowski said "vague language" was deliberately included in the bill in order to get it passed. "The very lack of clarity is itself a problem. If people are confused about what it means, if people disagree about what it means, that in and of itself makes it bad law," he said.

China to literally own U.S. I'm not even exaggerating

China Wants to Build a 50 Square Mile City in the US

Original Post: EU Times

Thanks to the trillions of dollars that the Chinese have made flooding our shores with cheap products, China is now in a position of tremendous economic power. So what is China going to do with all of that money? One thing that they have decided to do is to buy up pieces of the United States and set up “special economic zones” inside our country from which they can continue to extend their economic domination. One of these “special economic zones” would be just south of Boise, Idaho and the Idaho government is eager to give it to them. China National Machinery Industry Corporation (Sinomach for short) plans to construct a “technology zone” south of Boise Airport which would ultimately be up to 50 square miles in size. The Chinese Communist Party is the majority owner of Sinomach, so the 10,000 to 30,000 acre “self-sustaining city” that is being planned would essentially belong to the Chinese government. The planned “self-sustaining city” in Idaho would include manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail centers and large numbers of homes for Chinese workers. Basically it would be a slice of communist China dropped right into the middle of the United States.

According to the Idaho Statesman, the idea would be to build a self-contained city with all services included. It would be modeled after the “special economic zones” that currently exist in China.

Perhaps the most famous of these “special economic zones” is Shenzhen. Back in the 1970s, Shenzhen was just a very small fishing village. Today it is a sprawling metropolis of over 14 million people.

If the Chinese have their way, we will soon be seeing these “special economic zones” pop up all over the United States.

So exactly who is “Sinomach”?

The following description of the company comes directly from the website of Sinomach:

With approval of the State Council, China National Machinery Industry Corporation (SINOMACH) was established in January 1997. SINO-MACH is a large scale, state-owned enterprise group under the supervision of the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

As you can see, Sinomach is basically an arm of the Chinese government.

The borrower is always the servant of the lender, and now China is buying up America.

The reality is that Sinomach is not looking only at Idaho. Sinomach is in discussions to develop “special economic zones” all over the United States.

Sinomach has recently dispatched delegations to Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania to explore the possibility of establishing “special economic zones” in those states.

Will such “self-contained communities” soon start appearing from coast to coast?

According to Dr. Jerome Corsi, the U.S. government has already set up 257 “foreign trade zones” across America. These “foreign trade zones” will apparently be given “special U.S. customs treatment” and will be used to promote global free trade:

“The FTZs tend to be located near airports, with easy access into the continental NAFTA and WTO multi-modal transportation systems being created to move free-trade goods cheaply, quickly and efficiently throughout the continent of North America.”

So what do our politicians think about all of this?

Most of them are greatly in favor of it.

“Idaho’s the last state that should say we don’t want to do business with Asia,” Idaho Lt. Gov. Brad Little said last year. “Asia’s where the money is.”

So will all of this “foreign investment” really bring jobs back to the American people?

Perhaps a few, but the truth is that these “special economic zones” that the Chinese are setting up are designed to be self-contained communist Chinese communities. Some Americans will likely be employed in these areas, but not nearly as many as our politicians would have you to believe.

In addition, these “special economic zones” represent a massive national security threat. The communist Chinese could potentially be able to bring in and store massive amounts of military equipment virtually undetected.

In the days of the Cold War, we would have never dreamed of giving the Russians a 50 square mile city in the middle of Idaho.

But today we have become convinced that the communist Chinese want to be our great friends.

The following quote originally appeared in the Idaho Statesman, but has since apparently been taken down:

“The Chinese are looking for a beachhead in the United States,” said Idaho Commerce Secretary Don Dietrich. “Idaho is ready to give them one.”

Indeed.

If relations between the U.S. and China go south someday, we will deeply regret giving China so many open doors.

The truth is that you can never fully trust the communist Chinese. Their top military officers talk about a coming conflict with the United States all the time. China is extremely interested in North America. In fact, the Chinese and the Mexicans have even been holding talks on military cooperation.

But even if you don’t consider the communist Chinese to be a military threat, you should be deeply concerned about the economic implications of what is happening.

Today, tens of millions of Americans are wondering why the economy is so bad.

Well, there are a lot of reasons, but the fact that we have sent China thousands of our factories, millions of our jobs and trillions of dollars of our national wealth is a major contributing factor.

If you do not know the truth about how badly the Chinese economy is wiping the floor with the Americen economy then you need to read this article: “40 Signs The Chinese Economy Is Beating The Living Daylights Out Of The U.S. Economy“.

Beautiful new infrastructure is going up all over China today, and meanwhile many of our once great manufacturing cities are turning into rotted-out war zones.

China would not be what they are today if we had insisted that they abandon the communist system and respect basic human rights before we ever opened up trade with them.

But that did not happen. Instead we enthusiastically welcomed China into the WTO and we let the predatory Chinese system run wild.

In 2010, China had a “current account balance” of over 272 billion dollars, which was the largest in the world.

In 2010, the United States had a “current account balance” of negative 561 billion dollars. According to the CIA world factbook, that put us in last place in the entire world. In fact, our negative current account balance was more than 9 times larger than anyone else in the world. If you go check out this chart it will give you a really good idea of how nightmarish our trade situation has become.

The world is changing and nothing is ever going to be the same again.

Just ask the residents of Boise, Idaho – they are about to have a 50 square mile self-contained communist Chinese city plopped right into their backyard.

Obama: Gee, it would be easier to be President of China

Original Post: Hotair

posted at 11:30 am on March 11, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
printer-friendly

And you know who endorses that notion? Thomas Friedman. In a New York Times report giving a presidenting-is-so-hard spin to Barack Obama’s vacillating incoherence on the unrest sweeping the Arab world, reporters Mark Landler and Helene Cooper offer this nugget at the end:

Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”

Bill Kristol uses few words to savage Obama for this sentiment:

If you’re president of China, people around the world who are fighting for freedom don’t really expect you to help. If you’re president of China, you don’t have to put up with annoying off-year congressional elections, and then negotiate your budget with a bunch of gun-and-religion-clinging congressmen and senators. If you’re president of China, you can fund your national public radio to your heart’s content. And if you’re president of China, when you host a conference on bullying in schools, people take you seriously.

Well, Hu Jintao is technically “President” of China at the moment, but he has a lot of other titles that make the nature of that government more clear. Among them: “Paramount Leader,” “General Secretary of the Communist Party,” and “Chairman of the Central Military Commission.” Being “president” in China isn’t the same as being President of the United States; it’s a dictatorship, or at the very mildest, the strongest position in an autocratic and thoroughly entrenched and unaccountable political system.

As such, yes, it’s easier to wield power, which was exactly Friedman’s point and why he was an idiot for making the case for enlightened despotism over representative democracy. Making power easier for government to yield was the exact outcome that our founders feared, which is why they wrote the Constitution and ratified it 222 years ago. Enlightened despotism is still despotism, and the “enlightened” part depends entirely on whether the analysts fall in or out of favor with the despot.

And since the “president” of China doesn’t give a damn about the freedom and liberty of his own people, no one really gives a damn what he thinks about the freedom and liberty of others. Most see that as a feature of being President of the United States, not a bug.

Finally, Obama might think it would be easier to be President of China, but he’d have found it impossible to become President of China. Unlike Americans, who can vote for whomever they choose, the entrenched power structure in Beijing would never have allowed an untested back bencher with no experience in executive management to have come close to the top job. Obama should be thanking his lucky stars rather than lamenting his fate.

More attacks on patriotism

Teacher Deems American Flag ‘Offensive’

Original Post: Fox News Radio

The battle over the American flag has reached a middle school art class in California’s Santa Rita School District where a student was told not to draw Old Glory because it was “offensive,” but another student — in the same class – was praised for drawing a picture of President Obama.

Tracy Hathaway, of Salinas, CA, told FOX News Radio her 13-year-old daughter was ordered to stop drawing the American flag by an art teacher at Gavilan View Middle School.

“She had drawn the flag and was sketching the letters, ‘God bless America,’ when the teacher confronted her,” Hathaway told FOX. “She said, ‘You can’t draw that – that’s offensive.’”

Even more striking, another student in the same art class drew a picture of President Obama and was praised by the teacher.

“The picture of Barack Obama was in red, white and blue hues,” Hathaway said. “The teacher said it was great. But when it comes to the flag – all of a sudden it was offensive?”

Hathaway said she took her concerns to the principal – and he was “floored” and apologized for what happened. He arranged a meeting with the Hathaways and the teacher.

“My husband point-blank asked her what she found offensive about the picture – the American flag or the words, ‘God Bless America,’” she said. “The teacher didn’t say a word.”

Hathaway said she was especially concerned that a picture of President Obama was praised yet a picture of the American flag was deemed offensive.

“That showed where she stood in the political spectrum,” she said “But this was not a political class. This was not a religious class. This was an art class. “

“My daughter wasn’t trying to break any rules and she wasn’t trying to create a scene,” she said. “She was just expressing her view and saying this is America and I want God to bless it.”

Mike Brusa, the superintendent of schools, told FOX in a written statement that he had contacted the principal and that the issue “was taken care of to their (the parent’s) satisfaction.”

“The school administration and the parents did not view this as significant enough to bring it to the superintendent’s office,” he wrote.

However, Hathaway said her daughter has yet to receive an apology – and in fact – the teacher told the girl that she should not have gotten her parents involved in the matter.

“My daughter felt like her rights were being trampled on – she was doing what she thought was right.” she said. “It’s disturbing. It really is disturbing. When I was in junior high we didn’t have a lot of the problems they are having now. We were allowed to speak our mind. It’s absolutely devastating for me. Last time I looked, this is America. This is still a free country.”

Todd Starnes is a FOX News Radio reporter and best-selling author.

NOTE: Here is the full response from Superintendent Brusa:

When we were aware there may be additional concerns, I asked the administration to contact parents again to see if there is any expectations from prior contact that have not been met. The Principal did so, and indicated the parents were satisfied that the situation had been handled. They told the Principal they had twittered Fox and had indicated that the situation had been handled. Secondly, there are 3,000 students in the district, 250 employees, and parents that go with the students. Every day there are many interactions that occur between all these individuals. As I indicated, this event occurred several weeks ago, and in that time there would be literally thousands of events large and small between the people involved with the school. This was one small event that did not even come to the level of my office. There is an informal and formal process that is used to resolve issues. The school administration and the parents did not view this as significant enough to bring it to the Superintendent’s office. Thank you for allowing me to clarify this situation.

Science Czar damands wedgie

White House Science ‘Czar’ Tells Students: U.S. Can’t Expect to Be Number One in Science and Technology Forever

Original Post: CNS News
by: Christopher Neefus

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration’s top science and technology official, who has argued for the economic de-development of America, warned science students last Friday that the United States cannot expect to be “number one” forever.


“We can’t expect to be number one in everything indefinitely,

Holdren is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST), making him the top science adviser in the administration.

The former Harvard professor was at the AAAS to speak to students about the Obama administration’s priority of advancing science and technology issues; its goal to increase spending in the area to 3 percent of the gross domestic product; and Obama’s great personal interest in the fields.

In a question-and-answer session with students after the talk, one student asked Holdren how the United States could move forward now that it is no longer “the big shiny beacon” where all scientists travel to do their research.

Holdren called it a mixed picture, and said it was not purely bad for the United States that other countries were making gains instead of us.

“That is, there are many benefits to the increasing capabilities of science and technology in other countries around the world,” he said. “It’s not an unmixed or dead loss that other countries are getting better in science and technology.”

“Other countries getting better increases their capabilities to improve the standard of living of their countries, to improve their economies and, as a result, ultimately to make the world a better and safer place.”

Holdren, who was previously director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said that as a result of those good advances, “We can’t expect to be number one in everything indefinitely.”

“Probably the most appropriate responses to this degree of levelization (sic) of the playing field is to cooperate, to exchange more,” he said. “We have all kinds of programs already in which U.S. graduate students and post-docs go to China and Chinese graduate students come here—direct exchanges, university to university.”

Holdren said such programs also exist with Japan, India, Brazil, and “a variety of European countries.”

“We intend to grow those programs because we think they are mutually beneficial and we intend to grow the cooperations (sic) in which we engage with other countries.,” he said.

However, the top science adviser admitted that accepting this kind of level playing field also had its downside for the United States.

“On the other hand, there are some problematic aspects,” he said, “if, for example, it is so hard for scientists and technologists from certain countries to get into this country that that kind of cooperation is impeded.”

“It’s a problem if everybody who we graduate from our universities who is originally from another country goes back—invite some of them to stay,” he said. “And we make it, in some respects, too hard to say. Some people have suggested we should staple a green card to every Ph.D. in science and engineering that we give to a non-U.S. citizen. So again, like so many of the very good questions you folks are asking, this one has no really tidy answer, but we’re trying to work it on a number of fronts.”

Holdren is often called the science ‘czar’ for the vast swath of topics on which he is tasked to advise the president, including health care, the space program, bioethics, and more.

As CNSNews.com previously reported, his ideas for cooperation among nations in prior decades have included diverting large amounts of the U.S. Gross National Product (GNP) to countries in need of development aid.

In 1995, in accepting a Nobel prize on behalf of a large group of scientists, Holdren said investing about 10 to 20 percent of the GNP of developed countries in less developed ones was vital to a world of “durable security.”

Pointing to the conclusions of geochemist Harrison Brown in the 1950’s, Holdren said, “(T)he cooperative effort needed to create the basis for durable prosperity, and hence durable security, for all the world's people would require an investment equivalent to 10 to 20 percent of the rich countries' GNPs, sustained over several decades. In 1995, these figures do not seem far wrong, but they are said to be politically unrealistic: nothing approaching them has ever been seriously contemplated by the world's governments. Until this changes, a world free of war…will remain just a dream.”

Similarly, in his 1973 book “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions,” he suggested “de-developing” the United States to benefit other, poorer nations.

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren and two co-authors wrote. “De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation. Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses of overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries.”

“This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment,” he said.

Holdren has rebuffed the efforts of CNSNews.com and other media to discuss his former positions on multiple occasions, and he did not take questions from the press at the AAAS event.

My Comments: I can't fathom why my scientifically minded friends would continue to support a president that would appoint such a man. He just said, it sucks that America is so awesome, prosperous, and intelligent and we need to suck more in order to make things fair. Some how by dragging America into the dirt, this egg head thinks that'll make things better for everyone. Because as we all know, failing the smartest kid in class made everyone else smarter in practice, right?

I almost wish Obama would subsidize booze so I could deal with his advisers.

Obama Compares America to Nazi Germany

This is rather typical of Obama. He clearly has no understanding of history if he tries to compare our history of that of Nazi Germany.