US House Rep. Ron Paul says the CIA has has in effect carried out a "coup" against the US government, and the intelligence agency needs to be "taken out."

Speaking to an audience of like-minded libertarians at a Campaign for Liberty regional conference in Atlanta this past weekend, the Texas Republican said:

There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries. ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve. ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA.

Paul's comments, made last weekend, were met with a loud round of applause, but they didn't gather attention until bloggers noticed a clip of the event at YouTube.

Paul appeared to be referring to news reports that the CIA is deeply involved in air strikes against Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A suicide bombing late last year against Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan took the lives of seven of CIA operatives, including two contracted from Blackwater. The event highlighted the CIA's deep involvement in the war effort.

Paul's reference to the CIA being "in the drug business" refers to long-running allegations that the CIA has funded some of its covert operations with proceeds from drug-running. That claim was most famously made in a 1996 investigative report from the San Jose Mercury-News, which alleged that cocaine from the Contra-Sandinista civil war in Nicaragua was making its way to the streets of L.A. via the CIA.

Ron Paul "WE NEED TO TAKE OUT THE CIA"

MTV's Aimee Allen, Ron Paul Anthem Music Video MUST SEE!!

Reactions to the Supreme Court’s hugely anticipated Citizens United case are flooding in. We found a good boiled-down explication of the ruling over at The Atlantic’s Web site. Writes Chris Good in a post titled “Bring on the Spending”:

[The opinion] basically eliminates a middleman: before today, corporations and unions had to set up PACs (political action committees), filed separately with the IRS, that would receive donations. And they did. Corporations and unions spend millions of dollars on elections. Now, however, the accounting firewall is gone, and Wal-Mart or the Service Employees International Union, for instance, can spend their corporate money directly on candidates.

So how are folks reacting? Campaign-finance reform, and the constitutionality thereof, is by its very nature, sticky. It deals with the intersection of two highly cherished notions in America — freedom of speech and the sanctity of democracy, and the justices in the Citizens United case were forced to wrestle with where, precisely, to draw the line between the two.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the reactions from the parties and others close to the issues emphasize the “victory” of whichever side of the divide they’re on — “free speech” or “democracy.” Those on the right side of the political spectrum tended to prioritize the former, those on the left, the latter. That said, we thought you might find interesting this sampling of reactions:

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a non-profit that works to remove the influence of private money from politics:

Today’s Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case is a disaster for the American people and a dark day for the Supreme Court.

The decision will unleash unprecedented amounts of corporate “influence-seeking” money on our elections and create unprecedented opportunities for corporate “influence-buying” corruption.

Today’s decision is the most radical and destructive campaign finance decision in Supreme Court history. In order to reach the decision, five justices abandoned longstanding judicial principles, judicial precedents and judicial restraint.

Gibson Dunn’s Ted Olson, lawyer for Citizens United:

The decisions that the Court today overruled rested on the faulty premise that political speech can be restricted in order to prevent corporate money from “distorting” political discourse. In fact, the vast majority of corporations are either nonprofit advocacy groups–like Citizens United–or small businesses. Far from “distorting” the political process, the speech of these corporations reflects the views of their members or the entrepreneurial individuals who formed the corporation. Permitting these individuals to have a voice in the political process adds an important perspective to the public debate and enables individuals of limited means to band together to counterbalance the political speech of the super-rich. McCain-Feingold silenced those speakers, and, as the Court concluded, was therefore impossible to reconcile with the First Amendment.

Common Cause:

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision today that will enhance the ability of the deepest-pocketed special interests to influence elections and the U.S. Congress, said a pair of leading national campaign finance reform organizations, Common Cause and Public Campaign. The decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, which overturned the ban on independent expenditures by corporations, paves the way for unlimited corporate and union spending in elections.

Citizens’ United:

This is a victory for Citizens United, but even more so for the First Amendment rights of all Americans. The fault line on this issue does not split liberals and conservatives or Republicans and Democrats. Instead, it pits entrenched establishment politicians against the very people whom they are elected to serve.

"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."Plato, ancient Greek philosopher

...“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”Alex Carey, Australian social scientist

“The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.” Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. Emeritus Professor of Linguistics

On Tuesday, January 19 (2010), the Obama administration got a kick in the pants from the Massachusetts voters when they filled former Senator Ted Kennedy's seat by electing a conservative Republican candidate. The essence of their message was: stop dithering and start governing; stop trying to satisfy the bankers and please the editors of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, and start caring for the ordinary people.

Two days later, President Barack Obama seemed to have understood the people's message when he announced a “Volcker rule” that will forbid large banks from owning hedge funds that make money by placing large bets against their own clients, using information that these same clients gave them. It was time. Such a policy should have been announced months ago, if not years ago.

On the same day, however, a nonelected body, the U.S. Supreme Court, threw a different challenge to the Obama administration. Indeed, on Thursday January 21 (2010), a Republican-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon itself to profoundly change the U.S. Constitution and American democracy. Indeed, in what can be labeled a most reactionary decision, the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court,  ruled that legal entities, such as corporations and labor unions, have the same purely personal rights to free speech as living individuals. Indeed, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech. 

The only problem with such a wide interpretation of the U.S. Bills of Rights (N.B.: The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights) is that this runs contrary its letter and its spirit, since it clearly states later on that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, and reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the citizenry or States.” The words “people” and “citizenry” clearly refer here to living human beings, not to legal or artificial entities such as business corporations, labor unions, financial organizations or political lobbies. 

Such entities, for example, cannot vote in an election. Indeed, laws governing voting rights in the United States clearly establish that only “Adult citizens of the United States who are residents of one of the 50 states have the right to participate fully in the political system of the United States”. No mention is made of corporations or other legal entities.

However, with its January 19 (2010) decision, the majority on the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court is saying in effect that even if artificial entities cannot vote in an election, they can spend as much money as they like to influence the outcome of an election. Money is speech for them, and the more a legal entity has of it, the more it has a right to become powerful politically and control the political agenda.

In fact, what Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative Supreme Court majority have done is to overcome a century-old democratic tradition in the United States in granting a constitutional right to business corporations and to banks, (because they are really the ones with a lot of money), to use their enormous resources to not only participate in debates about public issues, but also, and above all, to de facto dictate the election of candidates of their choice to public office.

That's plutocracy, not democracy!

Plutocracy is defined as a political system characterized by “the rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.” Democracy, on the other hand, is defined as a political system where political power belongs to the people. This means “a political government either carried out directly by the people (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The terms "the power to the people" are derived from the words "people" and "power" in Greek. 

This fundamental idea of democracy was well summarized by President Abraham Lincoln, in his 1863 Gettysburg Address, when he said that it is “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” This is a definition that is based on the basic democratic principle of equality among human beings.

But now, the Roberts Court's decision must have made President Lincoln turn in his grave, because that decision, in effect, transfers political power from the living “people” to artificial corporate entities, with tons of money to spend. If Congress does not act quickly to reverse this decision, legal entities will be able to spend freely in the media to support or oppose political candidates for president and Congress, and this, as far as the last moment of a political campaign. This is quite something!

By a stroke of the pen, the Roberts Court has thus abolished the laws governing American electoral financing and removed limits to how much special money interests can spend to have the elected officials they want. The government they want will largely be “a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.” Truly amazing!

To reflect the new political philosophy of the five-member majority of the Roberts Court, the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution that says “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union...” should, maybe, more appropriately be changed for “We, the business corporations of America...” 

It is that much more ironic that the word “corporation” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. It is scarcely conceivable that the drafters of the Constitution had anything resembling corporate entities in mind when they drafted the Bill of Rights. But the Roberts Court majority does not seem to agree with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Mason...etc. Because of their decision, the five conservative members of the U. S. Supreme Court of today have become the new Fathers of the U. S. Constitution.

For nearly a century, it has been assumed that the U.S. Bill of Rights protected persons, not corporations. Even if sometimes the courts have extended the rights of the14th Amendment banning the deprivation of property without due process or equal protection of the law to the property of corporations, it was never thought that the purely personal rights of the first Amendment of the Bill of Rights applied to corporate entities as well as to human beings. This is understandable. Business corporations are created through legislation that gives them potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance their efficiency as economic entities. While such characteristics can be beneficial in the economic sphere, they represent special dangers in the political sphere. That is the rationale for not extending constitutional rights to purely legal entities.

But now, the five-member majority of the Roberts Court have said that such legalized artificial entities have the same constitutionally protected rights to engage in political activities as living individuals.

This is clearly revolutionary or, more precisely, counter-revolutionary.
 

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WASHINGTON -- Responding to the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday to overturn corporate spending limits in federal elections, progressive firebrand Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) immediately highlighted a series of moves to "avoid the terrible consequences of the decision."

"If we do nothing then I think you can kiss your country goodbye," Grayson told Raw Story in an interview just hours after the decision was announced.

"You won't have any more senators from Kansas or Oregon, you'll have senators from Cheekies and Exxon. Maybe we'll have to wear corporate logos like Nascar drivers."

Grayson said the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling -- which removes decades of campaign spending limits on corporations -- "opens the floodgates for the purchases and sale of the law."
 

"It allows corporations to spend all the money they want to buy and sell elected officials through the campaign process," he said. "It allows them to reward political sellouts, and it allows them to punish elected officials who actually try to do what's right for the people."

Fearing this decision before it became official, Grayson last week filed five campaign finance bills and a sixth one on Thursday. Grayson said the bills are important to securing the people's "right to clean government."

The bills have names like the Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act and the Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act. The first slaps a 500 percent excise tax on corporate spending on elections, and the second mandates businesses to disclose their attempts to influence elections. More details are available on the congressman's Web site.

"These bills will save us from drowning in corporate money and special interest money," Grayson said. "They should have been passed a long time ago but after the Supreme Court opened those floodgates, I think it's imperative we get these things done."

Reforming campaign finance laws has been a daunting task, as senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ) have made concerted attempts and failed.

"I'm very optimistic," Grayson said. "I discussed the bills with the leadership when I filed them, which was a week ago in the case of the first five."

"The bills are short and readable, which frankly is pretty unusual these days," he said. "The longest one is four pages long and there are six of them."

Grayson has created the Web site SaveDemocracy.net to gather petitions in support of his bills. On Friday at 8:30 AM EST there were nearly 40,000 signatories.

'Worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case'

The first-term congressman from Florida had an ominous view of the consequences of embracing the decision.

"Anytime Exxon feels like it, Exxon can go and claim one of the 435 Congressional districts in this country, and drop $100 million in cash to pay for ads to knock off anybody they don't like. To them, that's an insignificant amount of money."

Grayson even likened the ruling to the 1857 pro-slavery Dred Scott case, arguing the two are "bad for pretty much the same reasons."

"We now today have a Supreme Court decision that essentially says only corporations have Constitutional rights," he said. "The rights of the rest of us to clean government is somehow overlooked by the Founders, according to this Supreme Court."

The decision supports "this bizarre conception that the Constitution is for the benefit of the powerful, and nobody else," he added.

Grayson's critique echoes the viewpoints of many others who believed campaign finance laws were already too permissive to special interests before Thursday's ruling.

"I think few people would say that what we really need in America is more corporate interference in the political process," he said.

Reforming campaign finance laws will be a tricky process for Congress because both Republicans and Democrats receive weighty campaign contributions from wealthy corporations.

While few Democrats have acted in recent years to change campaign finance laws, Grayson predicted his party will now be more interested in the issue.

"This just happened, that's why you're not hearing enough," he said. "You're going to hear a lot. I'm pretty confident that these bills will draw a tremendous amount of Democratic support."

Inviting his opponents to support his effort, Grayson said: "I'm hopeful that in the end there are principled Republicans who will actually join the effort, because nobody really wants to become the congressman from Wal-Mart."

GOP 'smiling' at the decision

Never one to pull a punch from Republicans, Grayson questioned the intentions of the ruling's backers.

"In the same way that Republicans always do their best to suppress voter turnout in elections, the Republicans are doing their best here to increase the amount of corporate cash," Grayson said. "They are, in essence, a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America."

GOP elders -- including party chair Michael Steele, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) -- praised the verdict, hailing it as a defense of free speech.

"For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process," McConnell said. "With today’s monumental decision, the Supreme Court took an important step in the direction of restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups."

"Freedom won today in the Supreme Court," said Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN).

But Republicans were not unanimous in their support -- McCain and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) criticized the outcome.

"McConnell is the head of the Senate Republicans, and he knows that a decision like this means a huge amounts of cash from special interests, which Republicans are more than happy to support," Grayson said.

"Everyone in the political process will have to knuckle under their corporate masters or face the consequences, and maybe Mitch McConnell is happy about that but I have to think that ordinary Americans are going to be pretty unhappy."

The decision was criticized by President Obama and Democratic senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Feingold.

"I think most elected conservatives are already bought and paid for by special interests so this just makes it official."

His view of independent conservative voters who back the ruling?

"What conservatism seems to mean to them, when you get down to it, is simply offering comfort to the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted," Grayson said.
 

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