BeliefWatch: Banned?

[35Pete]

Put human beings in charge of anyone and they have a tendency to suck.

BeliefWatch: Banned?

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Moshe Milstein, a religious Jew who is incarcerated at the federal prison in Otisville, N.Y., wants his Maimonides back. Officials at the Otisville prison recently removed hundreds of books from the chapel library there—including, Milstein charges in court documents, works by the great 12th-century rabbi and physician Maimonides as well as the Zohar, the ancient text upon which the mystical practice of Kabbalah is based. The books were removed, Bureau of Prisons officials explain, to comply with new rules set earlier this year. To reduce the risk that prisoners will find hateful or radicalizing (read: terrorist) materials in chapel libraries, the BOP has developed lists of 150 approved books per religion for 20 religions, including Bahai, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses. In all of the bureau's 114 prisons, chaplains are in the midst of dramatic reorganizations, removing from shelves any book not on one of the BOP's lists. "It was a huge undertaking," says Traci Billingsley, a BOP spokeswoman.

..more facist nonsense...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20121800/site/newsweek/

Let the book burning begin. And **** the 1st amendment too! First prisons, then libraries.

[JLB]

are too many prisoners reading books?

[nehemiah]

although i think this is a dumb thing to do b/c the only thing radicalizing prisoners is the fact that they are ****ing locked up w/ nothing to do...

you can still send books to inmates.

just gotta have them sent straight from the publisher.

[35Pete]

I wish....Wouldn't it be great if the States grew a pair, updated the declaration, and redeclared it like this?

Problem is that it would never happen. :(



In State Legislatures, August 21, 2007

The Unanimous Declaration of the Fifty United States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good, and instead has decreed law from his own personal whims, citing "National Security" and "Executive Privilige" when challenged.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures such as the hastily drafted and rammed through congress Patriot Act.

He has ignored the Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrassour people, and eat out their substance as seen with the FBI, THE CIA, FEMA, and The Department of Internal (Homeland) Security.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures and nearly driven us into financial and moral ruin with reckless imperialism.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power and ignored Posse Comitatus.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us, not necessarily in our homes, but in our communities, to spy on us and harass us.

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province,
establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For effectively suspending our own Legislatures by ignoring the directives of the 9th and 10th amendments, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us for merely disagreeing with his policies.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people by fabricating a terrorism crisis and engaging in false flag operations.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive to bear Arms against their Country, in the War on Drugs and The War on Terrorism, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Terrorist Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Washington brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Washington Establishment, and that all political connection between them and the District of Columbia, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

[35Pete]

It would never happen. But damn, I didn't need to modify that masterpiece by more than a few words to demonstrate the modern state of affairs.

That's the point of the exercise.

Since abolishing is out of the question, we'll just have to work the process harder to take back the power that Washington has stolen from us.

[sukie]

Pete although I find this book removal silly and pointless you really need to stop emoting with the slippery slope mentality.

First prisons then Libraries? That is no different than the causality correlation crap you despise.

[jimmifli]

Slippery slope is usually "the sky is falling" crap.

[35Pete]

Slippery slope is usually "the sky is falling" crap.

Flashback 1982.

If you proposed "reasonable restrictions" on public tobacco use and I said "Next thing you know someone will be banning smoking in a town or city" then you'd be crying "chicken little" and all the loudmouths here would be laughing at such "hysterics".

But you'd be wrong and I'd be right.

So your analysis, while catchy sounding, is complete crap and is contradicted time and again by the historical record.

Saying it is doesn't make it so. It's usually people that are completely ignorant and/or bored by history that scoff at such assertions, and thus condemned to fall for the same crap again, and again, and again, and again..

[sukie]

Pete... The smoking bans weren't government fascisms but rather the public vote.