Independent Investigation Into Pentagon Attack Yields Alarming Information

News n Views (special thanks to The National Expositor)

A three year independent investigation into the September 11, 2001 attack on the Pentagon has yielded new eyewitness evidence which, according to the Southern California-based researchers who conducted the investigation, “conclusively (and unfortunately) establishes as a historical fact that the violence which took place in Arlington that day was not the result of a surprise attack by suicide hijackers, but rather a military black operation involving a carefully planned and skillfully executed deception.”

They have compiled the most pertinent testimony into an 81 minute video presentation entitled National Security Alert, which has earned the respect and praise of a growing number of distinguished academics, journalists, writers, entertainers, pilots, and military personnel.

The investigation involved multiple trips to the scene of the crime in Arlington, Virginia, close scrutiny of all official and unofficial data related to the event, and, most importantly, first-person interviews with dozens of eyewitnesses, many of which were conducted and filmed in the exact locations from which they witnessed the plane that allegedly struck the building that day. It was primarily conducted by two men named Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis, also known as Citizen Investigation Team, or CIT.

“There were a growing number of people in the United States and around the world who were suspicious of the government’s story about what had happened at the Pentagon that day,” Ranke explains. “The doubts were initially fueled by the dubious damage to the building, which seemed incompatible with a 757 crash, the deliberate lack of transparency by the authorities, and many other issues, but they really intensified after a team of professional pilots (Pilots for 9/11 Truth) analyzed the data obtained from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) via a Freedom of Information Act request in 2006, which was supposedly from the black box of American Airlines Flight 77, and found that the last reported altitude of the plane was far too high to have struck the light poles or the building. This meant that either the plane did not cause the observed physical damage, that the government had released fraudulent data, or both.”

“We were tired of the cover-up, but we were also frustrated with the dead-end theorizing that was taking place”, says Marquis of the project’s genesis. “We knew that the only way we were ever going to know what had really happened was if we actually went to the area, knocked on doors, and interviewed everyday people about what they saw.”

When these eyewitness accounts are aggregated, they paint a very disturbing picture, say the researchers.

“To put it as concisely as possible, the plane had to have flown on a very specific flight path in the final seconds before it reached the Pentagon in order to have caused the observed damage, starting with the light poles that were photographed on the ground and ending with the directional damage to the building itself which was outlined in detail by the American Society of Civil Engineers,” explains Ranke. “The government claims the plane flew on this flight path and hit the building. The eyewitnesses in all of the most critical vantage points, on the other hand, independently, unanimously, and unequivocally report a drastically different flight path, proving that the plane absolutely could not have hit the light poles or the building. It is a non-controversial scientific fact that a strike from this trajectory would have caused a very different damage path.”

It wasn’t just witnesses who watched the plane approach the building that the team spoke with, however.
“We’ve also published our interview with a Pentagon police officer who saw the plane flying away from the Pentagon immediately after the explosion”, says Marquis. “We already knew that the plane could not have hit based on the testimony of the witnesses on the other side of the building who watched it approach, but it was still vindicating to get this kind of confirmation.”

A 2006 Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll found that “More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East.” Nevertheless, Ranke and Marquis acknowledge it is still quite controversial to claim, as they do, that “criminal elements within the U.S. government” were complicit in the attacks.

Read the rest, view video, and see more photos at this link.

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Wake Up, America: Forced vaccinations, quarantine camps, health care interrogations and mandatory "decontaminations"

by Mike Adams, The Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) The United States of America is devolving into medical fascism and Massachusetts is leading the way with the passage of a new bill, the "Pandemic Response Bill" 2028, reportedly just passed by the MA state Senate and now awaiting approval in the House. This bill suspends virtually all Constitutional rights of Massachusetts citizens and forces anyone "suspected" of being infected to submit to interrogations, "decontaminations" and vaccines.

It's also sets fines up to $1,000 per day for anyone who refuses to submit to quarantines, vaccinations, decontamination efforts or to follow any other verbal order by virtually any state-licensed law enforcement or medical personnel. You can read the text yourself here: http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/sen...

Here's some of the language contained in the bill:

(Violation of 4th Amendment: Illegal search and seizure)

During either type of declared emergency, a local public health authority... may exercise authority... to require the owner or occupier of premises to permit entry into and investigation of the premises; to close, direct, and compel the evacuation of, or to decontaminate or cause to be
decontaminated any building or facility; to destroy any material; to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons;

(Violation of 14th Amendment; illegal arrest without a warrant)

...an officer authorized to serve criminal process may arrest without a warrant any person whom the officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order given to effectuate the purposes of this subsection and shall use reasonable diligence to enforce such order. [Gunpoint]

(Government price controls)

The attorney general, in consultation with the office of consumer affairs and business regulation, and upon the declaration by the governor that a supply emergency exists, shall take appropriate action to ensure that no person shall sell a product or service that is at a price that unreasonably exceeds the price charged before the emergency.

"Involuntary Transportation" (also known as kidnapping)

Law enforcement authorities, upon order of the commissioner or his agent or at the request of a local public health authority pursuant to such order, shall assist emergency medical technicians or other appropriate medical personnel in the involuntary transportation of such person to the tuberculosis treatment center.

$1,000 / day in fines

Any person who knowingly violates an order, as to which noncompliance
poses a serious danger to public health as determined by the commissioner or the local public health authority, shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 30 days or a fine of not more than one thousand dollars per day that the violation continues, or both.

Forced vaccinations

Furthermore, when the commissioner or a local public health authority within its jurisdiction determines that either or both of the following measures are necessary to prevent a serious danger to the public health the commissioner or local public health authority may exercise the following authority: (1) to vaccinate or provide precautionary prophylaxis to individuals as protection against communicable disease...

Forced quarantine for those who refuse (illegal imprisonment without charge)

An individual who is unable or unwilling to submit to vaccination or treatment shall not be required to submit to such procedures but may be isolated or quarantined pursuant to section 96 of chapter 111 if his or her refusal poses a serious danger to public health or results in uncertainty whether he or she has been exposed to or is infected with a disease or condition that poses a serious danger to public health, as determined by the commissioner, or a local public health authority operating within its jurisdiction.

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The Government Can

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Freedom

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The media can't handle the truth

by Gene Lyons

Aug. 27, 2009 | So yet another Bush administration Cabinet-level official has petitioned to get his conscience and reputation back. This time, it's Tom Ridge, former secretary of Homeland Security. The one-time Pennsylvania governor admits in a new book that he felt political pressure from the White House to issue bogus terror alerts before the 2004 presidential election.

Big surprise, right? By 2004, anybody who didn't grasp that crying wolf was the Bush/Cheney administration's basic game plan was probably also astonished last January when the "Texas cowboy" who's never been seen on a horse chose a Dallas mansion over his beloved ranch. Golly, who's doing all that brush-cutting?

Indeed, the most fascinating aspect of the Ridge revelations has been a flame war that's broken out between establishment Washington pundits and less-reverent bloggers. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder started it by observing in smug inside-the-Beltway fashion that he and like-minded colleagues were actually right to be wrong about fake terror warnings.

People who smelled a rat, see, "based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." Whereas, sober-sided thinkers like him credited the Bush administration's good intentions.

Confronted with ample contemporaneous evidence of Bush administration flimflams by Salon's Glenn Greenwald and the scholarly Marcy Wheeler of Firedoglake.com, Ambinder apologized for the "gut hatred" part. But he alibied: "Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit."

Yeah, sure. Purely with regard to terrorism and national security, by 2004, Bush/Cheney had already gotten caught deceiving the public about having "no warning" before the 9/11 attacks, not to mention about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. If skepticism was still inappropriate, would it ever be warranted?

Yet people who found the timing of terror alerts suspect, such as then-Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, were dismissed as crackpots.

It was much the same after former Secretary of State Colin Powell confessed misgivings about his 2003 U.N. speech that stampeded the United States into an ill-advised war in Iraq. How could any serious American journalist possibly have seen that coming? Or, as your humble, obedient servant here wrote at the time, "War fever, catch it."

This column summarized "mainstream" opinion on Feb. 12, 2003: "The allegedly 'liberal' Washington Post responded editorially with a one-word headline, 'Irrefutable.' Columnist Mary McGrory announced that despite being almost a pacifist ... 'I'm Persuaded,' mostly by what she described as Powell's unimpeachable integrity. Joining the stampede was New York Times columnist Bill Keller, who noted that 'The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club includes op-ed regulars at this newspaper and the Washington Post, the editors of the New Yorker, the New Republic and Slate, columnists in Time and Newsweek."

And yet it was all rubbish, exactly as some of us raised on intelligence hoaxes suspected. Evidence of what I called "chicanery and fraud" in the U.S. case against Iraq was obvious to anybody unafraid to see it.

But here's the big thing about "mainstream" journalism and what Ambinder calls "information asymmetry." Upton Sinclair said it best: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Furthermore, the safest place during a stampede is the middle of the herd. Establishment journalists with mortgages, car payments and children in private schools saw what happened to the Dixie Chicks. Why couldn't it happen to them? (The job I got fired from that month wasn't paying my bills.) The United States had been attacked. Feelings ran high, especially in New York and Washington.

What did it matter if we killed the wrong Arabs, so long as Arabs were being killed? In Thomas Friedman's immortal words, "We hit Iraq because we could. That's the real truth."

Under oath to a Senate committee, Condi Rice told a barefaced whopper about the Aug. 6, 2001, CIA terrorism briefing that Bush blew off. Media insiders pretended not to notice. Bush made a slapstick skit of searching under his Oval Office desk for Iraqi WMDs. The press laughed on cue. He claimed that Saddam Hussein forced him to invade Iraq by expelling U.N. arms inspectors. (In reality, Bush made them leave.) Pundits praised his charm.

Long under siege for "liberal bias," media careerists now find themselves confronted with people they see as passionate amateurs. True, fearless scrappers like my friend Joe Conason have always been around, and somebody like Paul Krugman -- a world-class economist who doesn't care what, say, MSNBC's Chris Matthews thinks of him -- can be very annoying.

But what's really driving these jokers up the wall is economic and intellectual competition from the Internet: people with first-class minds and a passion for truth that some of them can barely remember.

© 2009 Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association

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Elect Nobody in 2012!

There is a new candidate for the 2012 election and his name is nobody. There are already too many laws anyways. We could use a 4 year break.

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Green Politicians and Ham

by Paul Jacob

“Do you like green eggs and ham? . . . Try them! Try them! And you may. Try them and you may, I say.”

Same goes for politicians and term limits. When state legislators ever-so-reluctantly try term limits, turns out that they actually like green eggs and ham, that is, term limits, better than state legislators who aren’t term-limited.

I read an endless stream of stories about how politicians, about to be term-limited, say the limits aren’t working. News flash: Politicians have always hated term limits. But now a survey commissioned by the National Conference of State Legislatures finds something surprising: there is more support for term limits among legislators in term-limited states than there is among politicians who have no actual experience with term limits.

Think about that. When asked whether term limits “promote healthy change” or “don’t work,” legislators serving under term limits in their state were 50 percent more likely to see term limits in positive terms than their unlimited colleagues.

“Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!”

Well, I guess we shouldn’t get carried away. Even in term-limited states, legislators oppose the limits by a margin of nearly four to one. Term limits were designed to please voters, not legislators.

Still, good to know that for legislators under term limits, the idea is starting to grow on them.

Ever so slowly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Return Of The Robber Barons

from EconomicPopulist.org

"We must break the Money Trust or the Money Trust will break us."
- Louis D. Brandeis, 1913

When the economy appeared to be melting down last September, Wall Street bank representatives began showing up in Congress like mobsters walking into a mom-and-pop business looking for protection money.
"Nice economy ya got here.(crash!) It would be a shame if something were to happen to it."

Mobsters and Robber Barons have a lot in common.
Neither has any respect for the law or morals, only for power. Neither can ever be satisfied with any amount of wealth. They will always need to steal more and more and more until they've completely bankrupted their victims.

We are now at the mercy of modern Robber Barons, and if history is any judge, it is either them or us.

Bank Wars

"The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly. So long as that exists, our old variety and freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question."
- Woodrow Wilson, 1911

On February 28, 1913, the House of Representatives released a report with the most banal name imaginable - Committee Appointed Pursuant to House Resolutions 429 and 504 to Investigate the Concentration of Control of Money and Credit.
In spite of the long-winded and innocuous title, the testimony in the report revealed to the world an unseemly and corrupt conspiracy of Wall Street bankers that threatened the very foundations of our democracy. Despite the dangers, many of the recommendations of the Pujo Committee were ignored until after the 1929 Crash.


Arsene Pujo

As a species and a nation, we seem to be doomed to repeat our mistakes.

Dirty political battles between Washington and eastern bankers are not a new concept in America. The Bank War between President Jackson and the Second Bank of the United States is the most obvious and public of these exchanges. Nicolas Biddle, the Second Bank's President, purposely caused the 1834 Depression, by restricting the money supply, to use as leverage against President Jackson.


Src: The Smoking Argus Daily, Allison Bricker

Unfortunately for Mr. Biddle, his arrogance regarding his ability to cause an economic collapse allowed his ego to get the best of him. He continued boasting, now publicly that relief would only come if Congress renewed the bank’s charter. When Pennsylvania Governor George Wolf, a previous supporter of the central bank was made aware of the bank President’s sentiments, he immediately came out against extension or renewal of the bank’s charter.
When someone mentions trusts and trust-busting, people tend to think of John. D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, J. P. Morgan's Northern Securities railroad company, and Andrew Carnegie's U.S. Steel.
What frequently gets forgotten is the Money Trust of Wall Street. The reason that it isn't mentioned is because it was never totally broken. Instead the decision was to regulate it via the creation of the Federal Reserve. Nicolas Biddle's dream was finally realized.


Src: The Smoking Argus Daily, Allison Bricker

Our Financial Oligarchy

"Far more dangerous than all that has happened to us in the past in the way of elimination of competition in industry is the control of credit through the domination of these groups over our banks and industries."
- Pujo Committee

"The dominant element in our financial oligarchy is the investment banker. Associated banks, trust companies and life insurance companies are his tools...Though properly but middlemen, these bankers bestride as masters America's business world, so that practically no large enterprise can be undertaken successfully without their participation or approval."
- Louis D. Brandeis, 1913

What frequently gets lost in economic discussions is that the current depression is different from all other post-WWII recessions. All previous recessions were caused intentionally by the Federal Reserve.
The Fed would raise interest rates in order to choke off inflation. Once the inflation was contained they would lower interest rate. Consumer demand, which was artificially suppressed by the Fed's high interest rates, would then be released and the economy would boom.

That didn't happen this time.

The Fed didn't raise interest rates to choke off inflation. There was no consumer demand that was artificially suppressed, thus there was no pent-up demand that was waiting to be released when the Fed cut rates.
What little "less bad" news that we've heard with home and auto sales has been almost exclusively to do with the tax rebates for first-time home buyers and the cash-for-clunkers program. Both of these programs are limited in time and scope, and both bring future demand to the present, which will leave an even bigger gap in demand once they are finished.

What happened this time was an economic collapse that emanated directly from Wall Street. It's source was bad loans that the bankers and rating agencies pushed onto the financial markets of the world, knowing full well that it was only a matter of time before they blew up and took down the world economy.
The economy didn't collapse because of government regulations. It didn't collapse because the government taxed too much or spent too little.
It wasn't because the American consumer stopped spending.

It was because the financial system knowingly overpriced a major financial asset class, and then leveraged itself against that asset class in the vain hope that the Day of Reckoning never came.

The whole financial crisis only came to light because of what amounts to a falling out amongst thieves.

War Between the Ruling Kleptocracy

Read the rest by clicking here.

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FBI Operative Turner Said Cynthia McKinney Should be Lynched

by Cynthia McKinney

I am in the Bay Area and rocking with the San Francisco Bay View newspaper. But something quite insidious is happening and I think you should know immediately how it involves my friends and me.

Hot on the heels of my learning that the Georgia Green Party might have been described by the U.S. Government as a “terrorist organiztion,” it has just now come to my attention that a “journalist” who suggested that I be lynched was actually being paid by our own government to say that. Now, when I reported it to the FBI, how in the world was I to know that he was at that time on the FBI’s payroll? Interesting that charges stem from his comments against Connecticut lawmakers and Illinois judges, but not from the threat made against me, a sitting Member of Congress at the time! I wonder why. To whom can I or any other innocent citizen turn when the government, itself, is the instigator?

John Judge, my Congressional staffer, is the one who reported the threat. Here is what John just wrote, along with the article that reports that Turner was on the FBI payroll at the time the threat was made against me, according to Turner’s attorney. See the green highlights below:

John Judge wrote:
This is the guy who announced a program topic suggesting that Cynthia McKinney be lynched on her way to the polls to vote in 2006 and published her campaign office address on the website. He asked how she would look swinging at the end of a rope and what message it would send to other “uppity” Blacks. I called NJ Homeland Security and FBI at the time sincee related to it as a death threat. The FBI agent I spoke to said “We know all about Mr. Turner”. Looks like they did. Now they say he was trained as an agent provocateur by the FBI to get others to participate in illegal acts. As Jim Garrison says in the movie JFK after interviewing Clay Shaw, “I think we got one”.

Here is an excerpt _ JJ
“Prosecutors have acknowledged that Turner was an informant who spied on radical right-wing organizations, but the defense has said Turner was not working for the FBI when he allegedly made threats against Connecticut legislators and wrote that three federal judges in Illinois deserved to die.

“*But if you compare anything that he did say when he was operating, there was no difference. No difference whatsoever,*” Orozco said.”

Harold Charles “Hal” Turner is an American white nationalist and white supremacist from North Bergen, New Jersey. He was arrested in June 2009 over alleged threats to politicians, and is currently jailed without bail. Prior to Turner’s arrest his program, The Hal Turner Show, was a webcast from his home once a week, and it depended on listener donations.

Turner promotes antisemitism (including the rounding up and killing of Jews, he opposes the existence of the state of Israel and he denies the Holocaust.

According to the AP Hal Turner has exposed through his attorney that he worked for the FBI from 2002 to 2007 as an “agent provocateur” and “his job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest”

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How to Fight Back Against Genetically Modified Foods

by Aaron Turpen, Natural News

With genetically modified (GM) foods dominating the United States' corn and soybean crop today, Monsanto - the company most responsible for GM foods - has also dominated most of South Africa`s seed crops as well. As reported by Barbara Minton here at Natural News in April, a huge crop failure there is directly attributed to this lack of seed diversity. So how do Americans, and people world wide, fight back against this takeover of food sources by GM foods? To answer that, the GMOs themselves as well as the way the company who makes them operates should be understood. That will show how real, grassroots, actions that everyone can participate in will work to stop this monopolization of the world's food.

How GM Foods and GMO Works
The most common modification that Monsanto makes to seeds is to create HT-ready crops ("herbicide tolerant" crops). These are crops that are able to withstand Monsanto`s other product, RoundUp, to a strong degree. This increases crop yield by allowing the farmer to spray liberally with the RoundUp herbicide to kill weeds and some parasites.

The problem? Well, obviously, all that spraying can`t be good for anybody. It also is severely destroying seed diversity in the agricultural markets - over 90% of American soybean crops are now genetically modified organisms (GMO). About 70% of our corn crops are also GMOs.1

Now that Monsanto has a virtual monopoly on those seeds, they`ve announced that they`re raising seed prices by up to 42%, as reported in Bloomberg on August 13.2

Further, as Ethan Huff pointed out in his article here at Natural News, there is plenty of reason to question the health problems associated with GM crops.

Currently, Monsanto is working to corner the market on GMO wheat crops in the U.S. If their progress there is anything like it`s been with corn and soy, they could hold 70% or more of the seed market within fifteen years.

Most of the reasons for not liking GMO crops have been outlined already, but for more information, you can check the Natural News archives on GMOs here.

Monsanto`s gangster tactics can be seen in the documentary movie The World According to Monsanto by Twilight Earth.3 This is how they`ve gained their monopoly.

Fighting Back Against Monsanto and GM Crops
First and foremost, stop financially supporting Monsanto as much as possible. This means scouting out and avoiding GMO foods on the grocery store shelf, not buying Monsanto`s products, and more. As Shelly Roche of Bytestyle.tv says, "Vote With Your Fork!"

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Obama's Health Insurance Cartel

by Sheldon Richman

President Obama and other advocates of nationalized health insurance have tried a variety of sales pitches, which indicates their difficulty in getting traction with the public. The latest is “competition and choice.”

Who could be against those things?

Well, Obama for one, followed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House member Barney Frank, and everyone else who favors what is question-beggingly called reform. The word reform suggests not just change but improvement. Therefore, to call the proposals to nationalize the medical-insurance industry reform is to assume precisely what is in dispute and must be proved. The argument is — or should be — over whether the proposed changes indeed are reform. To call them reform before the debate has even begun is to rig the discussion. It’s an old — and sadly effective — bit of sophistry.

But let’s get back to competition and choice. I contend that what Obama favors would produce the opposite of competition and choice: cartel and restriction. This is so clear that it’s hard to believe an intelligent person surrounded by economic advisers wouldn’t know this.

We’ll use HR 3200 as our guide. Most of the provisions of this bill are likely to be in any final legislation, with the possible exception of the government-operated insurance program, or “public option.”

The bill begins with a provision “to establish standards to ensure that new health insurance coverage and employment-based health plans that are offered meet standards guaranteeing access to affordable coverage, essential benefits, and other consumer protections.” No insurance policy would be deemed qualified unless it satisfied the conditions imposed by the government. This is important because under the bill, every individual would be mandated to have a “qualified” health plan. A sub-standard plan that nevertheless satisfied a particular consumer — such as low-cost high-deductible catastrophic coverage — would be forbidden.

According to the bill, a plan would be accepted as qualified only if, among other things, it:

covered preexisting conditions without limit;
accepted all applicants;
guaranteed renewal;
charged everyone, regardless of health status, the same premium within an area, with the exception of age and family variations defined either by the legislation or by state law;
had achieved the medical loss ratio defined by the Health Choices Commissioner (the ratio refers to the percentage of revenues paid in benefits; companies that fell short would have to give policyholders rebates);
imposed no annual or lifetime limit on coverage; and
was “equivalent … to the average prevailing employer-sponsored coverage.”

The “essential benefits package” would have to cover:

hospitalization;
outpatient and emergency services;
professional services;
incidental services, supplies, and equipment;
prescription drugs;
rehabilitative and habilitative [?] services
mental-health and substance-use disorder services
preventive services (Obama has specified physical exams, mammography, and colonoscopy);
maternity care; and
well-baby and well-child care

The bill would also set up a Health Benefits Advisory Committee, a public-private panel of “experts,” “to recommend covered benefits and essential, enhanced plans.”

Read the rest here.

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Is fear of our government rational?

by Tibor R. Machan

Too often now when people voice fear of the American government, whether it is homeland security or health-care reform, one is accused of being irrational or paranoid. It is that familiar "It can't happen here" syndrome at work. But there are good reasons not to dismiss such concerns under current circumstances.

When society is considered a collective -- akin to a team, only not voluntarily established like most sport teams -- those who see themselves as its leaders and charged with selecting goals everyone must pursue can quite easily slip into a mode of thinking that construes all opposition a form of betrayal. If, for example, the federal government is understood along these lines, setting goals for us all for which resources and hard work are needed, and dissent from which may threaten the ability to collect those resources and secure such work, the dissenters will naturally be perceived as traitors to the cause. Indeed, their obstreperousness will easily be perceived as dangerous obstruction of justice! After all, those who lead us toward a goal they consider vital to the public interest do understand themselves to be promoters, champions of social justice. How else are they to understand wealth redistribution, for example?

In all the literature I have run across in my now quite long career in the field of political philosophy, insisting on the idea that the rich must not be allowed to keep their wealth, the poor must be made to share in the wealth of the nation, the indigent are legally entitled to support obtained by taking from those who have it -- all these views are defended mainly as varieties of social or economic justice. And is it not even a crime today to obstruct justice? Sure, that means obstructing law, but it is called obstruction of justice, is it not? Because if the law itself is deemed as just, then those who oppose it are in cahoots with criminals who obstruct it. And by the lights of the collectivists, laws promoting their idea of the public interest are indeed just.

How can a bona fide promoter of social justice tolerate serious, persistent dissent? It is not possible unless one is firmly committed to the idea of individual rights, the right, for example, to campaign against and even withdraw from various projects government officials consider vital to the public interest. And when a country's government is administered by officials who do not believe in individual rights, as for instance President Obama is not -- judging by his close association with and reliance on the advice of legal theorists who denigrate such rights as fictitious -- the concern that dissent will land one in hot water with government officials is quite rational.

OK, for a while there is the protection afforded by the First Amendment to the Constitution but with sufficient savvy the defenders of the public interest as they see it could very well see full warrant for weakening such protection. This is one of the lessons of Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to pack the Supreme Court when that court would not go along with his plans for the country, plans that involved breaching the principles of the Constitution. Roosevelt did not believe in the Bill of Rights as traditionally understood in America's legal history but crafted, instead, a Second Bill of Rights. It wasn't only that some of the older interpretations of the Bill of Rights needed to be straightened out but that the very idea of citizens having basic, unalienable rights stood in the way of his aggressive statism.

Today, the legal team of President Obama is of the same mind as FDR was when he launched the New Deal. What is needed, they argue, is the reaffirmation of FDR's Second Bill of Rights, with its emphasis on entitlements and the coerced services needed from everyone so as to deliver on these. So when one opposes this policy, one is clearly an obstructionist. One is breaking ranks from an army that needs all the soldiers to be dedicated and loyal. Patriotism is then defined as falling in line with the government's plans.

Why is it such a surprise, then, that the Obama administration is attacking those American citizens who voice opposition to, for example, its plan for the virtual nationalization of the health-care profession in America? Why be surprised that opponents of bailouts and stimulus programs are denigrated and marginalized instead of argued with? Such people are seen as vicious opponents of social and economic justice, and such opposition is quite intolerable to anyone who cares for such justice, is it not?

Once the bulwark against this kind of tyranny -- namely the basic rights of individuals and the legal system that rests on those rights -- is rejected as ultimately mythical, what will stand in the way of treating dissenters as traitors?

The fear of the American government becoming more and more tyrannical is not irrational but completely justified by the logic of the current administration's attitude about political and legal theory. What we are seen as, all of us, is tools and resources for carrying out the government's plans. Anyone who disagrees may well need to be neutralized.

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Don't Inject Me (the Swine Flu Vaccine Song)

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Police Reject Candidate for Being Too Intelligent

from Daily Liberty Research

This is not the first time I’ve seen a story like this, it is apparently typical hiring policy for police in many areas. Let’s face it, they want a dumbed-down police force that’s just smart enough to follow orders. We just can’t have our police thinking too much or questioning procedure!

This story says that the average I.Q. for a cop is 104, if that is accurate it means there are thousands of police with I.Q.’s in the 80-100 range. Is it any surprise then that incidents of police brutality and abuses upon citizens (as well as the Constitution) are now so frequent?

From Ananova:

A US man has been rejected in his bid to become a police officer for scoring too high on an intelligence test.

Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took an exam to join the New London police, in Connecticut, in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125.
But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

Mr Jordan launched a federal lawsuit against the city, but lost.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Mr Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

He said: “This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class. I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.”

He said he does not plan to take any further legal action and has worked as a prison guard since he took the test.

The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average.

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Doctor Speaks Out on Obamacare & Tells the Truth About Medical Costs

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Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife’s Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?

by Nicholas Monahan

This morning I’ll be escorting my wife to the hospital, where the doctors will perform a caesarean section to remove our first child. She didn’t want to do it this way – neither of us did – but sometimes the Fates decide otherwise. The Fates or, in our case, government employees.

On the morning of October 26th Mary and I entered Portland International Airport, en route to the Las Vegas wedding of one of my best friends. Although we live in Los Angeles, we’d been in Oregon working on a film, and up to that point had had nothing but praise to shower on the city of Portland, a refreshing change of pace from our own suffocating metropolis.

At the security checkpoint I was led aside for the "inspection" that’s all the rage at airports these days. My shoes were removed. I was told to take off my sweater, then to fold over the waistband of my pants. My baseball hat, hastily jammed on my head at 5 AM, was removed and assiduously examined ("Anything could be in here, sir," I was told, after I asked what I could hide in a baseball hat. Yeah. Anything.) Soon I was standing on one foot, my arms stretched out, the other leg sticking out in front of me à la a DUI test. I began to get pissed off, as most normal people would. My anger increased when I realized that the newly knighted federal employees weren’t just examining me, but my 7½ months pregnant wife as well. I’d originally thought that I’d simply been randomly selected for the more excessive than normal search. You know, Number 50 or whatever. Apparently not though – it was both of us. These are your new threats, America: pregnant accountants and their sleepy husbands flying to weddings.

After some more grumbling on my part they eventually finished with me and I went to retrieve our luggage from the x-ray machine. Upon returning I found my wife sitting in a chair, crying. Mary rarely cries, and certainly not in public. When I asked her what was the matter, she tried to quell her tears and sobbed, "I’m sorry...it’s...they touched my breasts...and..." That’s all I heard. I marched up to the woman who’d been examining her and shouted, "What did you do to her?" Later I found out that in addition to touching her swollen breasts – to protect the American citizenry – the employee had asked that she lift up her shirt. Not behind a screen, not off to the side – no, right there, directly in front of the hundred or so passengers standing in line. And for you women who’ve been pregnant and worn maternity pants, you know how ridiculous those things look. "I felt like a clown," my wife told me later. "On display for all these people, with the cotton panel on my pants and my stomach sticking out. When I sat down I just lost my composure and began to cry. That’s when you walked up."

Of course when I say she "told me later," it’s because she wasn’t able to tell me at the time, because as soon as I demanded to know what the federal employee had done to make her cry, I was swarmed by Portland police officers. Instantly. Three of them, cinching my arms, locking me in handcuffs, and telling me I was under arrest. Now my wife really began to cry. As they led me away and she ran alongside, I implored her to calm down, to think of the baby, promising her that everything would turn out all right. She faded into the distance and I was shoved into an elevator, a cop holding each arm. After making me face the corner, the head honcho told that I was under arrest and that I wouldn’t be flying that day – that I was in fact a "menace."

It took me a while to regain my composure. I felt like I was one of those guys in The Gulag Archipelago who, because the proceedings all seem so unreal, doesn’t fully realize that he is in fact being arrested in a public place in front of crowds of people for...for what? I didn’t know what the crime was. Didn’t matter. Once upstairs, the officers made me remove my shoes and my hat and tossed me into a cell. Yes, your airports have prison cells, just like your amusement parks, train stations, universities, and national forests. Let freedom reign.

After a short time I received a visit from the arresting officer. "Mr. Monahan," he started, "Are you on drugs?"

Was this even real? "No, I’m not on drugs."

"Should you be?"

"What do you mean?"

"Should you be on any type of medication?"

"No."

"Then why’d you react that way back there?"

You see the thinking? You see what passes for reasoning among your domestic shock troops these days? Only "whackos" get angry over seeing the woman they’ve been with for ten years in tears because someone has touched her breasts. That kind of reaction – love, protection – it’s mind-boggling! "Mr. Monahan, are you on drugs?" His snide words rang inside my head. This is my wife, finally pregnant with our first child after months of failed attempts, after the depressing shock of the miscarriage last year, my wife who’d been walking on a cloud over having the opportunity to be a mother...and my anger is simply unfathomable to the guy standing in front of me, the guy who earns a living thanks to my taxes, the guy whose family I feed through my labor. What I did wasn’t normal. No, I reacted like a drug addict would’ve. I was so disgusted I felt like vomiting. But that was just the beginning.

An hour later, after I’d been gallantly assured by the officer that I wouldn’t be attending my friend’s wedding that day, I heard Mary’s voice outside my cell. The officer was speaking loudly, letting her know that he was planning on doing me a favor... which everyone knows is never a real favor. He wasn’t going to come over and help me work on my car or move some furniture. No, his "favor" was this: He’d decided not to charge me with a felony.

Think about that for a second. Rapes, car-jackings, murders, arsons – those are felonies. So is yelling in an airport now, apparently. I hadn’t realized, though I should have. Luckily, I was getting a favor, though. I was merely going to be slapped with a misdemeanor.

"Here’s your court date," he said as I was released from my cell. In addition, I was banned from Portland International for 90 days, and just in case I was thinking of coming over and hanging out around its perimeter, the officer gave me a map with the boundaries highlighted, sternly warning me against trespassing. Then he and a second officer escorted us off the grounds. Mary and I hurriedly drove two and a half hours in the rain to Seattle, where we eventually caught a flight to Vegas. But the officer was true to his word – we missed my friend’s wedding. The fact that he’d been in my own wedding party, the fact that a once in a lifetime event was stolen from us – well, who cares, right?

Upon our return to Portland (I’d had to fly into Seattle and drive back down), we immediately began contacting attorneys. We aren’t litigious people – we wanted no money. I’m not even sure what we fully wanted. An apology? A reprimand? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter though, because we couldn’t afford a lawyer, it turned out. $4,000 was the average figure bandied about as a retaining fee. Sorry, but I’ve got a new baby on the way. So we called the ACLU, figuring they existed for just such incidents as these. And they do apparently...but only if we were minorities. That’s what they told us.

In the meantime, I’d appealed my suspension from PDX. A week or so later I got a response from the Director of Aviation. After telling me how, in the aftermath of 9/11, most passengers not only accept additional airport screening but welcome it, he cut to the chase:

"After a review of the police report and my discussions with police staff, as well as a review of the TSA’s report on this incident, I concur with the officer’s decision to take you into custody and to issue a citation to you for disorderly conduct. That being said, because I also understand that you were upset and acted on your emotions, I am willing to lift the Airport Exclusion Order...."

Attached to this letter was the report the officer had filled out. I’d like to say I couldn’t believe it, but in a way, I could. It’s seemingly becoming the norm in America – lies and deliberate distortions on the part of those in power, no matter how much or how little power they actually wield.

The gist of his report was this: From the get go I wasn’t following the screener’s directions. I was "squinting my eyes" and talking to my wife in a "low, forced voice" while "excitedly swinging my arms." Twice I began to walk away from the screener, inhaling and exhaling forcefully. When I’d completed the physical exam, I walked to the luggage screening area, where a second screener took a pair of scissors from my suitcase. At this point I yelled, "What the %*&$% is going on? This is &*#&$%!" The officer, who’d already been called over by one of the screeners, became afraid for the TSA staff and the many travelers. He required the assistance of a second officer as he "struggled" to get me into handcuffs, then for "cover" called over a third as well. It was only at this point that my wife began to cry hysterically.

There was nothing poetic in my reaction to the arrest report. I didn’t crumple it in my fist and swear that justice would be served, promising to sacrifice my resources and time to see that it would. I simply stared. Clearly the officer didn’t have the guts to write down what had really happened. It might not look too good to see that stuff about the pregnant woman in tears because she’d been humiliated. Instead this was the official scenario being presented for the permanent record. It doesn’t even matter that it’s the most implausible sounding situation you can think of. "Hey, what the...godammit, they’re taking our scissors, honey!" Why didn’t he write in anything about a monkey wearing a fez?

True, the TSA staff had expropriated a pair of scissors from our toiletries kit – the story wasn’t entirely made up. Except that I’d been locked in airport jail at the time. I didn’t know anything about any scissors until Mary told me on our drive up to Seattle. They’d questioned her about them while I was in the bowels of the airport sitting in my cell.

So I wrote back, indignation and disgust flooding my brain.

"[W]hile I’m not sure, I’d guess that the entire incident is captured on video. Memory is imperfect on everyone’s part, but the footage won’t lie. I realize it might be procedurally difficult for you to view this, but if you could, I’d appreciate it. There’s no willful disregard of screening directions. No explosion over the discovery of a pair of scissors in a suitcase. No struggle to put handcuffs on. There’s a tired man, early in the morning, unhappily going through a rigorous procedure and then reacting to the tears of his pregnant wife."

Eventually we heard back from a different person, the guy in charge of the TSA airport screeners. One of his employees had made the damning statement about me exploding over her scissor discovery, and the officer had deftly incorporated that statement into his report. We asked the guy if he could find out why she’d said this – couldn’t she possibly be mistaken? "Oh, can’t do that, my hands are tied. It’s kind of like leading a witness – I could get in trouble, heh heh." Then what about the videotape? Why not watch that? That would exonerate me. "Oh, we destroy all video after three days."

Sure you do.

A few days later we heard from him again. He just wanted to inform us that he’d received corroboration of the officer’s report from the officer’s superior, a name we didn’t recognize. "But...he wasn’t even there," my wife said.

"Yeah, well, uh, he’s corroborated it though."

That’s how it works.

"Oh, and we did look at the videotape. Inconclusive."

But I thought it was destroyed?

On and on it went. Due to the tenacity of my wife in making phone calls and speaking with relevant persons, the "crime" was eventually lowered to a mere citation. Only she could have done that. I would’ve simply accepted what was being thrown at me, trumped up charges and all, simply because I’m wholly inadequate at performing the kowtow. There’s no way I could have contacted all the people Mary did and somehow pretend to be contrite. Besides, I speak in a low, forced voice, which doesn’t elicit sympathy. Just police suspicion.

Weeks later at the courthouse I listened to a young DA awkwardly read the charges against me – "Mr. Monahan...umm...shouted obscenities at the airport staff...umm... umm...oh, they took some scissors from his suitcase and he became...umm...abusive at this point." If I was reading about it in Kafka I might have found something vaguely amusing in all of it. But I wasn’t. I was there. Living it.

I entered a plea of nolo contendere, explaining to the judge that if I’d been a resident of Oregon, I would have definitely pled "Not Guilty." However, when that happens, your case automatically goes to a jury trial, and since I lived a thousand miles away, and was slated to return home in seven days, with a newborn due in a matter of weeks...you get the picture. "No Contest" it was. Judgment: $250 fine.

Did I feel happy? Only $250, right? No, I wasn’t happy. I don’t care if it’s twelve cents, that’s money pulled right out of my baby’s mouth and fed to a disgusting legal system that will use it to propagate more incidents like this. But at the very least it was over, right? Wrong.

When we returned to Los Angeles there was an envelope waiting for me from the court. Inside wasn’t a receipt for the money we’d paid. No, it was a letter telling me that what I actually owed was $309 – state assessed court costs, you know. Wouldn’t you think your taxes pay for that – the state putting you on trial? No, taxes are used to hire more cops like the officer, because with our rising criminal population – people like me – hey, your average citizen demands more and more "security."

Finally I reach the piece de résistance. The week before we’d gone to the airport my wife had had her regular pre-natal checkup. The child had settled into the proper head down position for birth, continuing the remarkable pregnancy she’d been having. We returned to Portland on Sunday. On Mary’s Monday appointment she was suddenly told, "Looks like your baby’s gone breech." When she later spoke with her midwives in Los Angeles, they wanted to know if she’d experienced any type of trauma recently, as this often makes a child flip. "As a matter of fact..." she began, recounting the story, explaining how the child inside of her was going absolutely crazy when she was crying as the police were leading me away through the crowd.

My wife had been planning a natural childbirth. She’d read dozens of books, meticulously researched everything, and had finally decided that this was the way for her. No drugs, no numbing of sensations – just that ultimate combination of brute pain and sheer joy that belongs exclusively to mothers. But my wife is also a first-time mother, so she has what is called an "untested" pelvis. Essentially this means that a breech birth is too dangerous to attempt, for both mother and child. Therefore, she’s now relegated to a c-section – hospital stay, epidural, catheter, fetal monitoring, stitches – everything she didn’t want. Her natural birth has become a surgery.

We’ve tried everything to turn that baby. Acupuncture, chiropractic techniques, underwater handstands, elephant walking, moxibustion, bending backwards over pillows, herbs, external manipulation – all to no avail. When I walked into the living room the other night and saw her plaintively cooing with a flashlight turned onto her stomach, yet another suggested technique, my heart almost broke. It’s breaking now as I write these words.

I can never prove that my child went breech because of what happened to us at the airport. But I’ll always believe it. Wrongly or rightly, I’ll forever think of how this man, the personification of this system, has affected the lives of my family and me. When my wife is sliced open, I’ll be thinking of him. When they remove her uterus from her abdomen and lay it on her stomach, I’ll be thinking of him. When I visit her and my child in the hospital instead of having them with me here in our home, I’ll be thinking of him. When I assist her to the bathroom while the incision heals internally, I’ll be thinking of him.

There are plenty of stories like this these days. I don’t know how many I’ve read where the writer describes some breach of civil liberties by employees of the state, then wraps it all up with a dire warning about what we as a nation are becoming, and how if we don’t put an end to it now, then we’re in for heaps of trouble. Well you know what? Nothing’s going to stop the inevitable. There’s no policy change that’s going to save us. There’s no election that’s going to put a halt to the onslaught of tyranny. It’s here already – this country has changed for the worse and will continue to change for the worse. There is now a division between the citizenry and the state. When that state is used as a tool against me, there is no longer any reason why I should owe any allegiance to that state.

And that’s the first thing that child of ours is going to learn.

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Doctors' Orders: Avoid Insurance

by Parija B. Kavilanz

Like a lot of their patients, doctors are sick of long waits in the waiting room and dealing with insurance companies.

That's why a growing number of primary care physicians are adopting a direct fee-for-service or "retainer-based" model of care that minimizes acceptance of insurance. Except for lab tests and other special services, your insurance plan is no good with them.

In a retainer practice, doctors charge patients an annual fee ranging from $1,500 to as high as over $10,000 for round-the-clock access to physicians, sometimes including house calls.

Other services included in the membership are annual physicals, preventive care programs and hospital visits.

Doctors argue that this model cuts down their patient load, allows them to spend more time per patient and help save the system money.

However, some industry groups caution that these emerging trends are a consequence of a health care system badly in need of reform.

"I had to change the model": Dr. John Kihm, 51, an internist based in Durham, N.C., converted his solo private practice to a retainer-based model in May.

Until then, his daily schedule was jam-packed. "I was seeing patients every 15 minutes," said Kihm.

He was seeing about 80 patients a week, "many were very sick with multiple systems and complications," he said. "After 20 years, I realized that this was not doable, not sustainable."

His goal is to continue medicine for another 20 years, "but I want to practice it the right way," Kihm said. That means spending more than 15 minutes per patients and doing house calls. "I had to change the model," he said, as he adopted the retainer-based structure.

He now spends 30 minutes on average per patient. He didn't disclose his annual fees but said his fees are "less that what it could cost to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day."

His fees covers annual exams, wellness programs and other types of preventative care typically not covered by insurance. If his patients do have insurance, it would pay for things like lab tests.

"My income is about the same as before, but I have less overhead costs from half as many patients and half the amount of supplies that I need," he said.

Michigan-based family doctor Dr. John Blanchard has been practicing the retainer-based care for eight years. He said his patients have "unfettered" access to him whenever they need him for a fee of between $50 to $150 a month.

The model has enabled Blanchard to "cut down on everything by about 25%," including his patient caseloads and time spent on filing insurance claims.

One industry report cited that processing claims is the second-biggest area of wasteful expenditure in the health care system, costing as much as $210 billion annually.

Prevention better than cure: MDVIP, based in Boca Raton, Fla., is one of the largest organizations of primary care physicians, numbering about 326 nationwide, that practice retainer-based medicine.

"We call it preventive, personalized health care," said Darin Engelhardt, president of MDVIP. "Our premise is if we reconstruct primary care, what would it look like?'"

According to the MDVIP formula, it means limiting its affiliated practices to no more than 600 patients.

For an annual fee of between $1,500 and $1,800, its members receive full health assessment, 24/7 access to their doctor, including via a doctor's cell phone or e-mail and a personal Web page on which they can access their medical records.

MDVIP-affiliated practices do take insurance, including Medicare, for other medical services such as lab tests and sick visits.

Engelhardt said MDVIP has about 110,000 members nationwide, half of whom are over the age of 65.

"This is a variation of the traditional model," he said. "We believe it enhances the physician-doctor relationship as well as reduces costs by stressing prevention."

Although official figures are hard to come by, Engelhardt said MDVIP's research based on Medicare data has shown that in communities with both MDVIP and traditional practices, hospitalization rates dropped by as much as 70% for its members.

He estimates that there are about 3,000 family physicians practicing a form of retainer-based medicine in the United States.

Concerns: The rise in alternative care delivery models indicates the level of frustration, both on the part of doctors seeing too many patients and consumers not getting easy access to doctors, said Dr. Lori Heim, president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).

"I am not judging this model. We don't have a policy against it," she said. "But I believe it reflects the underlying problems in the system. The retainer model won't solve all the problems in health care."

Heim said the model works better for physicians who practice in locations where consumers can afford it.

"It won't work in communities where I practice," Heim, of Laurinburg, N.C., said, referring to areas with a high number of uninsured consumers and a middle class that can't afford out-of-pocket membership fees.

At the same time, Heim warned that unless the current health care system changes, the retainer model could become more prevalent.

"If this is the model of care that we evolve into, then there could be fewer doctors for people at a time when we need more doctors," she said.

Alywn Cassil, spokeswoman for the policy research organization Center for Studying Health System Change, said retainer-based care is having a "marginal impact" on the industry so far.

"The vast majority of physicians still have a managed care contract," she said. "Only one in 10 don't."

But she agreed with Heim on one point: "If doctors further reduce their panel size of patients through these models, that will only enhance the shortage of primary care doctors," Cassil said.

What's more, the model creates a "tiered system" of access to care where even for the insured, if you pay more, you get enhanced access.

"You may be happier with it, but we have no idea whether this model makes you healthier," Cassil said.

"We don't hold ourselves as THE solution for everything that ails the health care system," MDVIP's Engelhardt said. "There is no one solution but there should be choice for consumers."

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Tom Ridge: I Was Pressured To Raise Terror Alert To Help Bush Win

by Rachel Weiner

Former Bush administration officials are vehemently denying Ridge's statements.

"We went over backwards repeatedly and with great discipline to make sure politics did not influence any national security and homeland security decisions," former White House chief of staff Andy Card told Politico. "The clear instructions were to make sure politics never influenced anything."

"Under no circumstance was Tom Ridge or anyone else directed to change the threat level," former homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said. "It didn't work that way, and it certainly didn't work that way in 2004. It was always an apolitical process."

It seems that no other former top Bush political and national security officials were willing to respond.

* * * * *
In a new book, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge reveals new details on politicization under President Bush, reports US News & World Report's Paul Bedard. Among other things, Ridge admits that he was pressured to raise the terror alert to help Bush win re-election in 2004.

Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.
Dave Weigel, writing for the Washington Independent, notes that in the past, Ridge has denied manipulating security information for political reasons. In 2004, for example, he said, "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security."

"What Tom Ridge disclosed confirms our worst suspicions," said Sen. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who criticized the color-coded system back in 2003. "Just like they did in Iraq, the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence to cause fear in the public to further its political goals."

The Bush administration was forced to admit in the days after the 2004 alert that it was based on intelligence three or four years old. Officials then claimed there was a previously unmentioned "separate stream of intelligence" that justified the warning -- but offered little tangible information to support their new story..

ThinkProgress recalls, the AP reported that "even 'some senior Republicans' privately questioned Ridge's timing of a terror alert that came just three days after the Democratic National Convention."

Ridge's book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again," comes out September 1.

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Are You Eating GMO Foods?

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