From the draft text of the bailout bill now being considered by Congress:

"Decisions by the Secretary [of Treasury] pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

What Secretary Paulson is demanding, under terms of economic blackmail, is for the US Congress to abdicate its Constitutional authoriy regarding its "power of the purse."  Am I reading this wrong?

"The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time."

The current bill and any modification thereof is likely to filled with open ended clauses like the above.  These will give the FED, with the Treasury acting as its agent, incredible new and expanded powers. 

If you're outraged by this naked power grab - that the FED and Mr. Paulson's friends at Goldman Sachs have put him up to - join with others in showing up to your local Congressional office to personally lodge your opposition to the Paulson Plan.   Day of this action for this is Thursday Sept 25th, 9:00am. 

Bring your friends.  Don't forget to bring your camera to document your visit.

The great, immortal, never equaled, never surpassed Bob Hope:

(These days, I think he would have included the Republicans too.)

Most of us who had a reasonably traditional education can recall having learning about “strict constructionists” and “loose constructionists” — two schools of thought about how properly to interpret the Constitution. The term has survived into modern times to describe various judicial philosophies, and in addition to serving as a guide for evaluating the constitutionality of federal law, is also used to describe how judges rule on the application of the laws relevant to various cases brought before the courts. It is sometimes used as a synonym for “originalism” — adherence to the “original intent” of the authors of the Constitution.

However, deciding on the “original intent” of a specific phrase in the Constitution can be subject to various interpretations, the most accurate of which are generally based on studying documents like the Federalist to read descriptions of constitutional principles in the founders’ own words.

But beyond the original intent behind any specific phrase in the Constitution is something even more fundamental: Exactly how much power did the Founding Fathers who authored our Constitution intend to cede to the federal government? With the adoption of the Constitution and the abandonment of the Articles of Confederation, our nation was transformed from a loose confederation of sovereign states to a more structured federal republic, wherein the states ceded certain specific, delegated powers to the federal government, in the interest of protection from foreign enemies and to allow for free commerce among the states. However, they did so with great apprehension. So-called anti-federalists (such as Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, and George Mason,) objected to the Constitution because: They believed it gave too much power to the federal government; there was no bill of rights; the federal government could maintain an army in peacetime; Congress, because of the “necessary and proper clause,” wielded too much power; and the executive branch also was also given too much power.

The most compelling argument in opposition to a bill of rights was that if the federal government were prohibited from violating specific listed rights, what would stop it from violating rights other than the listed ones, that inevitably must be overlooked?

In defense of ratification of the Constitution, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison authored the series of 85 letters under the name "Publius,” which were later compiled in one volume called the Federalist.

Though the differences of opinion between the Federalists and anti-Federalists preceded the ratification of the Constitution, and may be viewed as irrelevant to a discussion about whether the Constitution should be construed strictly or loosely, the philosophical differences expressed during the ratification period set the stage for later differences about how to interpret the document.

Over the past few years, Americans have been repeatedly told by the Bush administration that we do not torture.

Now, in a recent New York Times article no less, we learn that the CIA and U.S. military after 9/11 adopted the methods of the Communist Chinese to interrogate detainees rounded up in the War on Terror net.

The Chinese, we are told, prefrerred these "passive methods," such as forcing prisoners to stand "for exceedingly long periods," rather than physical violence. Chinese methods of torture were documented and published in an article in 1957 by Alfred D. Biderman, who "interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea...."

Biderman made a chart to accompany his article. He entitled it, "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance." American military trainers took the same chart, minus its title, and used it to train interrogators at Guantanamo.

Bush administration officials have been quick to dismiss these "enhanced interrogation techniques" (the term developed by the Nazis in the 1930s, and in German is Verschärfte Verneh-mung) and others such as "waterboarding," as torture.

A few months ago, journalist Christopher Hitchens allowed himself to be waterboarded and then wrote about the experience.

Watch the video, read his account, and decide for yourself if Verschärfte Verneh-mung is what civilized people call torture, or if it's just another soft term employed by people becoming more hardened in desenstivity towards other human beings.