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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Webster Groves who wrote (423558)	7/6/2003 3:57:59 PM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 769670

<Yep...another Bush hating moron to add to the list....> The number seems to be growing. Why is that ? Because Bush hating morons are breeding while in rehab?

To: Webster Groves who wrote (423558)	7/6/2003 4:56:12 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 769670

This is the new America under Bush/Ashcrap Celebrate America - by Questioning Where it's Headed by Bill Berlow On this Fourth of July, please take a few moments to ponder what this country is supposed to be about: the freedom to question. No doubt William "Bud" Combs will. Combs, 59, is a retired Tallahassee teacher and Air Force veteran. If all went according to plan, today he'll celebrate his first full day of independence - freedom - in three months. He was expected to arrive here by bus last night after his scheduled release from the federal prison camp at Eglin Air Force Base. Combs was sentenced to 90 days for trespassing during a peaceful protest last November at Fort Benning, Ga., home of the controversial program formerly known as the School of the Americas. Combs crossed a line during a demonstration against the school (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation) that trains friendly Latin American military and police forces. He knew he might wind up in prison. That's the possible price of civil disobedience. What the veteran peace activist didn't know was that he would spend eight days of his sentence in solitary confinement at the nearby Santa Rosa County Jail. His apparent offense: receiving and sharing with other inmates what federal authorities consider disruptive, if not subversive, political literature. The offending "propaganda" included commentary by such extremists as Bill Moyers and Ellen Goodman, and included an article published in Reader's Digest. The common thread was that they all questioned the wisdom of government policy. According to his friends and lawyer, Combs has never before been in trouble with the law. The following is an excerpt from Moyers' article, a sample of the commentary that Combs shared with fellow inmates. It's part of what Combs believes resulted in his punishment. "Every Memorial Day I think about what these (D-Day veterans) did and what we owe them. They didn't go through hell so Kenny Boy Lay could betray his investors and workers at Enron, or for a political system built on legal bribery. It wasn't for corporate tax havens in Bermuda, or an economic system driven by the law of the jungle, or so a handful of media buccaneers could turn the public airwaves into private sewers. ... "Democracy is about doing better. It's about fairness, justice, human rights and, yes, it's about equality, too: Look it up." Inmates don't have the same rights that the rest of us have, and maintaining order in a prison is obviously trickier than it is in free society. But Combs and the written opinions he shared don't exactly add up to the equivalent of Lenin distributing the Communist Manifesto to inspire a prison revolt. "It's not like he's a subversive," said Tallahassee resident Bill Carroll, a fellow peace activist and longtime friend of Combs. "He couldn't be more patriotic." After authorities told Combs he was under investigation, Carroll said, "They told him he was not allowed to contact anyone. They shackled him and hauled him off." According to Combs, he's been questioning authority for more than 30 years. While stationed in South Korea with the Air Force in 1970, he wrote, he wore a black armband to protest the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State. A June 15 letter that Combs wrote said authorities still hadn't told him details about why he'd been sent to solitary. Written on the blank side of a printout of Moyers' commentary, the letter said only that Combs' prison counselor told him unofficially that the offense involved "receiving and distributing political propaganda." "Many of the articles questioned and/or criticized policy and decisions of the Bush administration. However, all were freely expressed and published in a 'free' society," Combs wrote. "I guess the (U.S. Bureau of Prisons) has a regulation against freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Can they do that?" When I spoke to Combs by telephone Tuesday, he knew no more than he did when he wrote that letter to our mutual friend. Bill Quigley, a New Orleans law professor who's representing Combs, said he sought an explanation from prison officials, but was told with no elaboration that the investigation was closed. A Bureau of Prisons spokesman told me that, while he wouldn't provide details either, there were "appropriate circumstances" that warranted Combs' treatment. Quigley said he expected to pursue the matter further once his client was free. Quigley wants to know whether prison officials acted within the law. The broader question these days is what we value more: our freedom or our "security." Security is crucial. But the founding fathers knew that freedom, above all, is ultimately what sets America apart, what makes our nation special. The Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, remains one of history's most revolutionary documents. "It's very important to continue to speak truth to power," Combs said Tuesday. "Question the government and its decisions. ... It is our right in a democratic society to do that." So, on this 227th anniversary of a truly radical idea, let the freedom to question and criticize ring. For Bud Combs and all Americans. Sounds like a real COMMIE eh? CC