Even if you're not interested (or too scared) to sign a petition, it is stuff all citizens should be made aware of, and most of it is being hidden, and that gets me boiling. They spent $70 million bucks to putz around with Clinton's sex life, for cryin out loud, and this stuff here isnt news??? I don't think I've felt this little hope for the future of this country since Reagan took office.

PETITION

Speaking of Reagan, did you read this (not that its a surprise):

Feds Worked to Quash College Protests SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The FBI, working covertly with the CIA and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, spent years unlawfully trying to quash the voices and careers of students and faculty deemed subversive at the University of California, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

For years the FBI denied engaging in such activities at the university. But a 17-year legal challenge brought by a Chronicle reporter under the Freedom of Information Act forced the agency to release more than 200,000 pages of confidential records covering the 1940s to the 1970s, the newspaper reported in a special section for its Sunday editions.

Those documents describe the sweeping nature of the FBI's activities and show they ranged far beyond the campus and into state politics as the agency plotted to end the career of UC President Clark Kerr while aiding Reagan's political career.

Only after federal judges repeatedly ruled that the FBI had drifted unlawfully from intelligence gathering into politics -- and the case was about to be heard by the Supreme Court -- did the FBI settle, removing much of the blacked-out material in the files.

In its unsuccessful battle to keep them secret, the agency had said its actions had been proper -- that it had merely tried to protect civil order and national security during a time when the nation feared Communism and waged war in Vietnam.

"Things are done a lot differently today," FBI spokesman Bill Carter told the Chronicle. "The files speak for themselves."

The broad outlines of the illegal FBI campaigns became public in the 1970s as Congress held hearings that showed the FBI and CIA had disrupted the lives of law-abiding citizens and organizations engaging in legitimate dissent.

The documents obtained by the Chronicle show just how extensive these activities were in California, how Kerr and others were targeted, and how eagerly Reagan worked to quash protests.

Gov. Reagan intended to mount a "psychological warfare campaign" against subversives, file tax evasion and other charges against them, and do anything else it could to restore moral order, Herbert Ellingwood, Reagan's legal affairs secretary, told the FBI in a request for confidential information about people on campus.

The records show FBI director J. Edgar Hoover agreed to provide such information from the agency's files.

"This has been done in the past," the director said, "and has worked quite successfully."

The Office of Ronald Reagan referred the Chronicle's questions to Edwin Meese III, Reagan's chief of staff as governor. Meese said the FBI, as far as he knew, gave Reagan no special political help, and that he did not remember planning any activities against "subversives."

"There was never any concentrated strategy to do these things," he said.

The documents also show that the FBI tried to protect Reagan from being implicated for lying about his own past as a member of several groups officially deemed subversive by altering his security clearance.

Reports that Reagan informed on his fellow actors at a time when the FBI was trying to root out suspected subversives have surfaced before, but were downplayed. In 1985, when the FBI released some documents about Reagan, a Reagan spokesman said he had only a "very minor" involvement with the bureau at a time when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild.

The records obtained by the Chronicle reveal who it was that Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, named during a 1947 meeting with FBI agents: Larry Parks ("The Jolson Story"), Howard Da Silva ("The Lost Weekend") and Alexander Knox ("Wilson"). Each was later called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and blacklisted in Hollywood.

The new documents also show Reagan's contacts with the bureau were more extensive than he acknowledged or has been reported: Files show he repeatedly gave the FBI names of people he suspected of being communist over the years.

Hoover, meanwhile, ordered agents to investigate the 6,000 UC faculty members and top administrators. The resulting report in 1960 listed professors' political activities, and said many had engaged in "illicit love affairs, homosexuality, sexual perversion, excessive drinking or other instances of conduct reflecting mental instability."

CIA Director John McCone also was involved, meeting with Hoover in January 1965 after the Free Speech Movement held its first sit-ins. Records show they decided to leak information to conservative UC Regent Edwin Pauley, who would "use his influence to curtail, harass and at times eliminate" liberal faculty members. Pauley had hoped to fire Kerr.

The FBI blamed the liberal Kerr for allowing the campus protests to grow, and Hoover himself wanted a crackdown at Berkeley before student protests grew nationwide.

When, to Hoover's dismay, President Lyndon Johnson picked Kerr to become his secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, the FBI background check included damaging information the agency knew to be false, and Johnson withdrew the nomination, the documents show.

Reagan was elected California's governor in 1966 after repeatedly consulting with the FBI while campaigning against "campus malcontents and filthy speech advocates" at Berkeley. One of his first moves was to fire Kerr, who never received another White House appointment.

Kerr, whose own FOIA request was denied by the FBI, said he was unaware of the plots against him. "Maybe I was too naive, but I never assumed they were taking efforts to get rid of me," he told The Chronicle.

-- Anonymous, June 09, 2002

Answers

They also say Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor. Doubtful, they will ever get enough signatures. If people are really concerned, they need to find a candidate that can outdo him next election. His approval rating is still in good shape.

-- Anonymous, June 09, 2002

Wow, that's a lot of stuff to wade through, EM. But I'll give it a shot. Probably take me several days.

I don't know about online petitions, however. My understanding is that they get nowhere. If there were some way to write directly to whoever would receive such a petition, I would think it more likely to actually get some attention. Assuming, that is, that people would actually write and mail such letters.

I am starting to wonder who the Dems will be running against Bush. I saw an article speculating that Hilary would run and probably win in 2008. I swear that the anti-Clinton faction hates her worse than Bill, so that could get rather ugly . . . But 2008 is a long way off. Wondering who, if anyone, the Greens will run . . . WHY am I wondering about this!?! I'll have plenty of time to stew about it 18 months (or so) from now! ;-)

-- Anonymous, June 10, 2002

Oh, hee-hee, ho-ho!!! I always thought he should be impeached for the simple act of being so stupid!!!! But then, other's are already so over qualified on that account!

Great Earth Mother help us all, if we all survive the years Shrub is in office, and we don't have another World War or nuclear catastrophy develop from his peculair form of foreign policy, or lack thereof, we will all die eventually from the increase in air, water, and soil pollution because of his total lack of concern with global warming and lack of enforcement for the Clean Air Act passed long ago. The soft coal burning power plants down on the Ohio Rover are still spewing out their mixture of noxious pollutants, in total disregard of the Clean Air Act, no "teeth" to the Bill to enforce it!

-- Anonymous, June 10, 2002

Annie, I'm afraid that you just depressed the little green bejabbers out of me. That was WAY too accurate.

-- Anonymous, June 11, 2002

Annie...Us folks who live in the Northeast know exactly how badly those coal-burning factories are polluting the atmosphere! Almost all of the acid rain here in Maine can be traced to those power plants. It's hard enough cleaning up our own backyards without getting more "stuff" from someone else. Very frustrating!!!!

-- Anonymous, June 11, 2002

Ya'll almost got lucky, I couldn't remember my password!

Let's see if I can enter this discussion without getting political. That should be a good trick! If you read the report to Clinton from Gore, it reads like a novel and not a report. Way too long, as all of them are, for any president to be sitting around and reading. Way too long for me to sit around and read the whole thing. He has other people to read these things and condense them. Therefore, there's probably no president that gets all the information. Second, concerning the other report, every elected official that we have is vying for a position on a committee. That's where they get their power. How many reports do you think come out of these committees everyday? Hundreds. Most of this stuff is written just so it can get into the Congressional Record and is of no consequence. Just fodder for their reelection campaign. Third, scenarios for terrorist attacks? I'm sure they had and have hundreds of possible scenarios. Like Jay said, there is evidence that they knew that the Pearl Harbor attack was going to occur. Unfortunately, the government isn't an organization that operates in a fast and efficient manner. Not only were we not at war with Japan, but there were numerous other reasons that we didn't get the message out but it wasn't because we wanted a war. I would think that even though our government might have had suspicions that we were going to be attacked, that the scenarios were so unlikely that they weren't acted on. Take into consideration that they were highly unlikely, our government moves slowly (nothing happens until we study it until it's too late to act) and then factor in, that under our Bill of Rights , we are severely handicapped. Hell, under our present system, we can't even put away known criminals. They have the more rights than we do. Also, this isn't a country that has had a lot of experience in dealing with terrorist attacks.

In reference to the whole report, I hate reports like that. There is always some truth in each item that they list but not the whole truth. It's kinda like a lawyer in a court room. When he asks you a question, he only wants you to answer the question in the way that he wants it answered in order to benefit his client. He doesn't want the truth, just the right answer. These reports, naturally, only put out information that benefits them. They're not interested in the truth. Not the, what we use to call, "The big picture". Do you seriously think that if they had that much concrete evidence that they would be circulating a petition? They'd be impeaching him for stupidly! I would also be suspicious since it is put out by "Democrats.com". I don't know if that's really the democrats or just a domain name.

Besides all that, I can tell you every mistake the quarterback makes during a football game. After he throws the ball!

Each item on here should have taken at least a page to explain but I figure it's boring enough as it is.

Wildman, (being politicalless) well, it ought to be a word!

-- Anonymous, June 11, 2002