By these ill-defined standards, are we a leftist "group"??

Of course they'll target "leftist" groups. After all, the right wing terrorists have one. They're running the country.

These new laws won't be for fighting terrorism.

"Fighting terrorism" is merely the marketing slogan for these laws.

How about a list of the 'spineless' Dems who support torture. Better to name them now and let folks apply pressure than to wait for the vote then complain...

But I think right wingers who have broken ranks would certainly be on the list also. There will be plenty of company in the camp for "Enemies of America" if we use the administration's definitions. (Cheney has already spelled them out fairly well)

Defining an enemy combatant as including someone who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States and lumping anti-globalization groups with terrorist organizations and pretty soon that check you write every year to GreenPeace can land you in eternal incarceration

As a long-term member of that well-known lefty org, the Religious Society of Friends, I'm here to tell we're a popular target for every fascist US president who begins to develop even a touch of paranoia. And what about our equally notorious action group, the American Friends Service Committee? Better add some more to the already very thick files on that bunch as well.

On the bright side, we'll probably have shady characters showing up for First Day Meeting, and maybe we can persuade them to see the Light, as it were. Don't laugh - that happened in the past, during both Nixon and Reagan.

Yeah, a list of those Dems not actively opposing the torture bill would be helpful, as well as contact information. Of course, it might just be easier to post a link to the democratic congressional roster.

YES! its extremely disturbing!

I've always thought of "nationalist" & "separatists" as extreme right wingers. Interesting that the report doesn't make that distinction.

i do realize that question was rhetorical (i had to point that out after readin my last post and thinking - what a dumb ass)...

also:

i would like to also second the need for a list of dems who vote for the torture bill. where could that be found?

...and the line that the Administration will probably take on this language, is that it refers to groups like Sendero Luminoso/Shining Path and the Zapatistas - Marxist/Maoist groups in other countries that have already been designated as terrorist organizations. After Glenn's comments, I'm a little less sure. One wonders if the various racial separatist and militia groups are having similar fits over the reference to "nationalist" and "separatist" organizations....

Alarming indeed, but wouldn't "nationalist, or separatist groups" include Timothy McVeigh and Eric Robert Rudolph and others of the militia movement?

"Well, here comes the future and you can't run from it;

If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it."

Easy to sing in a country where free speech is taken for granted. A little dicier when the prospect is indefinite detention and torture.

will be defined as any anti-government or seperatist group in the future. Any person or group that disagrees with the neoconservative viewpoint has already been labeled leftist, liberal and the like since this non-existent "war" began.

(Quote by Edward R. Murrow, as reported by Joe Wershba)

This news unnerves me to the highest degree. This is a democratic republic, a country where we elect leaders and can just as easily replace them with someone more fit to govern. But the President seems to have confused this country with a country in which all opposition is to be silenced. Where international laws and treaties ratified and joined by those in office before him do not affect him. Where his party and his alone has the rights.

This does not bode well for all of us. Combined with the broad "compromise" on torture and the legal black hole that so many (innocent and guilty) people have been dumped into, this piece of news confirms the feeling that I have seen circulating around the Internet: the terrorists aren't the targets.

We are. Us and anyone else who dares stand against the tyranny and corruption that threatens to engulf this country.

These are dark times. This is McCarthyism and the sins of Watergate rolled into one.

God help us all.

Editor;

To my knowledge, there has been only one terrorist act committed by leftists. It occurred some years ago when a radical environmental group bombed the offices of a professor on the campus on Michigan State University. You might want to research it.

Ah, the Gestapo is coming. This is just a way of setting the stage.

Well, while it might be disturbing enough to keep me up tonight, I have to admit that this inclusion in the NIE is logical.

Abraham Lincoln, whose knowledge and intimate experience in the American struggle for freedom and unity is unparalleled, leaves two quotes by which we can understand this logic. The first describes our current situation, where no matter how desperate the struggle, the two sides operate within the law and those institutions of self-government established by the constitution.

"Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. "

As long as we are able to operate freely and fairly within this system, to peaceably remove tyrants from power, the idea of violent opposition will never enter the minds of patriots. When, however, the basic freedom and fairness of the system has been compromised by those in power, when the traditional American ideas of liberty and justice for all are under assault from the very men entrusted with their preservation and promotion, it is the moral duty of true patriots to rebel.

While recent attempts by the Republicans to undermine basic freedoms have shaken many of us I am confident that violence has not yet crept into our minds. We are, however, standing ever closer to the edge, and that is why the NIE gives me some small comfort. It is doing exactly what it should, acknowledging the very real anger and frustration that many in America are experiencing. Of course this is only one aspect of the report, and I have no doubt that there are neo-con fingerprints all over the mention of leftists, but it helps to illustrate the reality of our situation.

The second quote frames a justification for something I hope never to see around a situation that is becoming an increasing possibility:

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it. "

Those in the domestic intelligence sector have no immediate reason to panic, the transition from peaceful resistance within the system to agressive, possibly violent revolution will only happen when the system has been demonstrably violated and the people cheated. If voter fraud, disenfranchisement, manipulation, and outright election theft occurs in the next two elections on the same levels as they did in the last two, there could be extreme repercussions.

These are big if's, and even if there are such problems in the upcoming election there will be a final chance for redemption in 2008. If, however, things continue on their current trajectory we will most certainly witness a rise in extreme and radical activities within our own country. And they will be justified.

Damn those in power for making good people consider such things. Damn them for their greed and their ignorance, their blind hatred and their uncompromising self-righteousness. And damn us, for our complacence and gross negligence.