http://ap.google.com/article/
ALeqM5g07mkwmsp4l_Q5H-YBiHq6phbimgD91LTE800

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

Law enforcement officials say the proposed policy would help them do exactly what Congress demanded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: root out terrorists before they strike.

Although President Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on their race or ethnicity, the new rules would allow the FBI to consider those factors among a number of traits that could trigger a national security investigation.

Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — like evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.

Among the factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person's race or ethnicity.

More than a half-dozen senior FBI, Justice Department and other U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the new policy agreed to discuss it only on condition of anonymity, either because they were not allowed to speak publicly or because the change is not yet final.

The change, which is expected later this summer, is part of an update of Justice Department policies known as the attorney general guidelines. They are being overhauled amid the FBI's transition from a traditional crime-fighting agency to one whose top mission is to protect America from terrorist attacks. [...]

Once you use racial profiling as a matter of policy; where does it stop? We are real close to the "justice system" of the old Soviets. Some would say we have already pasted them.

Will an Obama administration work to role back this affront to the constitution?

Bush doesn't obey the law, congress doesn't obey the law, hell, the DOJ doesn't obey the law. This country has been taken over by corporate criminals. Congress is full of 'em as is the WH. So face it, there is nothing we can do. They do not respond to letters or phone calls. They do not respond to investigations. They do not respond to legal rulings. They just continue their criminal behavior. Please, someone, tell me, WHAT THE HELL CAN BE DONE? -- doubledave27

The internet has given us the opportunity to observe that the government of the USA is out of control and has been so for a long, long time. Bush II did not start the fire, he just poured gas on the flames.

The elites have been playing a divide and conquer game for generations. We have the democrats blaming the republicans and the republicans will blame the democrats as soon as Obama is sworn in office.

What to do? Start a movement for a constitutional amendment that explicitly allows any state in this union to leave the union anytime that its voters decide to do so. The states have no power over an out of control central government. Nor do the cities. Nor do the voters.

Not the voters!?! No. The voters want peace and a government that follows the laws as they are written. That has not been the case in America for at least a century. If the voters controlled the government, then the admission of so many war crimes by the Bush crime family would have caused a demand for impeachment.

Oh. Wait. I think there was a strong demand for impeachment from the people. What ever happened with that?

On this day when we honor those who served this country, it is nice to see a story by a real patriot. No, he never helped murder poor farming families overseas. Like I said, a real patriot.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff07042008.html

My War Story

By DAVE LINDORFF

In 1967, when I was a senior in high school in Storrs, CT., I faced a momentous decision. In April, I would turn 18, and would have to register for the draft. The Vietnam War was by then in full swing.

A year or two earlier, I’d been an avid fan of military aviation magazines, and bought into the whole anti-Communist Cold War thing. But by ’67, I had seen enough of the violence being done in Vietnam against a desperately poor peasant population—the napalm attacks on civilians, the burned babies, etc.—that I had done a 180-degree turn. I wanted nothing to do with war and killing. So like many young men of my generation I made a decision: I would fill out my registration at the draft board, and I’d get my draft card, but I would not let myself be inducted into the military.

[...]

As we said back then, what if they gave a war and no one came? Or today, what if the government gave illegal orders but no employee would carry out the order?

We must stop blaming only those at the top. We find the hit-men in the Mafia to be as guilty as the man who orders the hit do we not? It is time to really start blaming the federal agent who evedrops on your phone call or the coward pilot who drops death on women and children from the sky. High time to say that "just following orders" is no excuse for a Nazis or an American.