Russ Feingold

Believe it or not Teresa, for Wisconsin and many other states, deer are a prized _natural_ resource. Regardless of where our personal ideologies fall, a person could never say the same about mono-cropped fields full of subsidized corn.

Plus, lets be honest, we have a lot of farming subsidies in this country. Look at Michelle Bachmann

Most of that money needs to be spent on not heating. Most home's leak like the Titanic. Can we require that anyone that gets this money spends part to cure the problem, instead of sending it to the oil companies through our chimney's???

This money to stop the leak would stay at home and be part of the jobs creation bill. It would put people to work saving energy!!!!!!! GO RUSS!!!!!

Other outrageous Federal spendings that should be considerably limited are the Pentagon and NASA. If just half of the Pentagon's budget were used for education, health, humanitarian aide and climate protection....jobs, health, a balanced budget and a decent future for our children would be the result.

A decent future for our children would be made if people chose to educate themselves with useful degrees in Math and Science so that America remained on competitive footing with the rest of the world, rather then "Arts and Theatre"...

Putting the Pentagon's budget towards Education would do nothing other then reduce our level of high-tech jobs and... See More increase the salaries of teachers. No one goes into the teaching profession thinking they are going to make a lot of money but they sure do complain about the pay after the fact.

To Restore the Rule of Law in America we need:

1. To follow through on the recommendation of Frederick A.O. Scharz, Jr. at Senatory Feingold’s hearings on Restoring the Rule of Law for a bipartisan independent investigatory Commission “to determine what has gone wrong (and right) with our policies and practices in confronting terrorists since September 11, 2001, and to recommend lasting solutions to address past mistakes” and

2. “a series of specific reforms should be adopted aimed at reforming the executive branch and ensuring no repetition of recent abuses.”... See More

3. “A Commission would serve several vital functions. It would reveal the many as-yet-unknown aspects of what our government has done and how it evaluated or rationalized its actions. And there is much we do not know. We still do not know, for example, the legal justifications advanced for the so-called ‘extraordinary rendition’ or ‘terrorist surveillance’ programs. We do not know with sufficient detail who was responsible for advocating and implementing the troubling policies based on these legal opinions. Now do we know whether there are other secret programs that have not yet been revealed,” wrote Mr. Schwarz who was Chief Counsel for the Church Committee.

4. Google the article: “Bush Surveillance Program Was Massive” by Pamela Hess, Associated Press Writer, Fri. Jul 10, 2009.

5. There are 1.1 million people on Watch Lists. We need a framework for reviewing and auditing intelligence files by a neutral third party. We need Congressional hearings to put a stop to the growth of privacy invasive lists.

6. We need to review the consequences of a system whereby “law enforcement can use GPS devices to track you anytime, anywhere without bothering to secure a warrant showing a court that they have a legitimate reason to track your comings and goings.”

7. There are now 100 fusion centers set up around the country, “with no overarching guidelines to restrict or direct them,” the American Civil Liberties Union said. Of them, former Congressman Bob Barr said, “Using the resources of federal and state law enforcement to encourage the citizenry to submit to the government information on the political, social and even religious views of other people, is in itself outrageous. For the government to then data-base that information, disseminate it widely, and clearly imply that views with which it may disagree provides an appropriate basis on which to surveil citizens and collect information on them, is beyond the pale.” I was a third grade teacher for 29 years. I spend my days caring for a handicapped brother. For me to have spent over three years under constant surveillance and harassment on the “report” of crazy sociopaths shows that this system needs investigation and oversight.

8. We need to reinstate anti-COINTELPRO regulations and make it illegal for the FBI to monitor and conduct surveillance/harassment without evidence of wrongdoing. The Attorney General needs to reconsider new Attorney General Guidelines governing FBI investigations.

9. The President needs – as Senator Feingold phrases it in his Report Card on the Obama Administration – to “Cooperate with a review of domestic intelligence activities and authorities.” Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr. recommended in his Restoring the Rule of Law testimony before Senator Feingold’s Committee that “Congress should review and strengthen the present statutory disclosure and reporting requirements concerning intelligence and national security activities in order to enhance oversight.” He called on Congress to “review and strengthen by law the ‘internal checks and balances’ of the executive branch, in particular the system of inspectors general for agencies and departments engaged in national security policy, and the protections for internal whistleblowers.”

10. We need codes of ethics for police and firemen to prevent surveillance and harassment of citizens using organized gang stalking tactics with consequences for violations.

11. We need “limitations on the ability of police departments to conduct surveillance of First Amendment Activity in the absence of criminal activity, a mechanism for persons to discover if police have been monitoring them, and a framework for reviewing and auditing intelligence files by a neutral third party.”

12. We need to make the person who initiates organized gang stalking against another person guilty of a hate crime.

13. Congress needs to review U.S. Surveillance Law to stop the expansion of government authority to conduct domestic surveillance without evidence of wrongdoing.

14. President Obama needs to nominate members to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

15. If you go to the ACLU web site – www.trackedinamerica.org or read Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans 1976 US Senate Report on Illegal Wiretaps and Domestic Spying by the FBI, CIA and NSA – you can see that abuses have occurred again and again in American history. We need a new executive level cabinet department – the Department of Civil Liberties – to protect the Constitutional Rights of Americans if this shameful record of abuse is ever to end.

From: Bonnie Calcagno – organized gang stalking target for over 3 years

We need to know if abuses committed in the past are also being committed in the execution of the War on Terror.

From: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans 1976 US Senate Report on Illegal Wiretaps and Domestic Spying by the FBI, CIA and NSA by the Church Committee (US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities Within the United States)

1. “targets of intelligence activity have ranged far beyond persons who could properly be characterized as enemies of freedom and have extended to a wide array of citizens engaging in lawful activity.” P. 7... See More

2. “The government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power.” P.10

3. “Government officials – including those whose principla duty is to enforce the law – have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.” P. 11

4. “Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them.” P. 11

5. “Intelligence agencies have collected vast amounts of information about the intimate details of citizens’ lives and about their participation in legal and peaceful political activites.” P. 12

6. “The overwhelming number of excesses continuing over a prolonged period of time were due in large measure to the fact that the system of checks and balances – created in our Constitution to limit abuse of Government power – was seldom applied to the intelligence community. “P. 17

7. “But in the most basic harm was to the values of privacy and freedom which our Constitution seeks to protect and which intelligence activity infringed on a borad scale.” P. 18

8. “In light of the record of abuse revealed by our inquiry, the Committee is not satisfied with the position that mere exposure of what has occurred in the past will prevent its recurrence. Clear legal standards and effective oversight and controls are necessary to ensure that domestic intelligence activity does not itself undermine the democratic system it is intended to protect.” P. 22

9. “Since the re-establishment of federal domestic intelligence programs in 1936, there has been a steady increase in the government’s capability and willingness to pry into, and even disrupt, the political activities and personal lives of the people. The last forty years have witnessed a relentless expansion of domestic intelligence activity beyond investigation of criminal conduct toward the collection of polticial intelligence and the launching of secret offensive actions against Americans.” P. 22

10. “Viewed separately, each finding demonstates a serious problem in the conduct and control of domestic intelligence operations.” P. 97

11. “A distressing number of programs and techniques developed by the intelligence community involved transgressions against human decency that were no less serious than any technical violations of the law.” P. 100

12. “At times knowledge of illegal programs and techniques has been concealed from Congress as well as executive branch officials.” P. 108

13. “The central problem posed by domestic intelligence activity has been it departure from the standards of law.” P. 117

14. Some of the things done:
1. exaggerated the threat of Communism – p. 41
2. investigated the NAACP for 25 years p. 40
3. “conducted covert programs in violation of laws protecting the rights of Americans” p. 44
4. kept information from Congress and the Attorney General P. 44
5. targeted domestic dissenters P. 50
6. developed covert programs to disrupt and discredit domestic political groups p. 53
7. “As domestic intelligence activity increasingly broadened to cover domestic dissenters under many different programs, the government intensified the use of covert techniques which intruded upon individual privacy.”
8. “The targets for FBI intelligence collection have included:
the Women’s Liberation Movement
the conservative Christian Front and Christian Mobilizers of Father Coughlin
the conservative American Christian Action Council of Rev. Carl McIntyre
a wide variety of university, church and political groups opposed to the Vietnam War
those in the non-violent civil rights movement, such as Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council, the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Council on Racial Equality (CORE).
“The Army’s nationwide intelligence surveillance program created files on some 100,000 Americans and an equally large number of domestic organizations encompassing virtually every group seeking peaceful change in the United States” P. 118

If I had had my husband and my tax share dollars that were used to pay administrative costs in the public school where my child was a student, my daughter would have gotten a fantastic home schooling experience. As it was, she had a poor highschool education. Obsolete to say the least, if not downright stupid in some instances. I am absolutely proud of her, but she deserved better.

Pay teachers a "professional" salary so that teaching attracts and competes as a viable option in the job market .

I am watching you on This Week at this moment. I am so glad that you are getting a voice in this argument. A benefit of having a new president, although a bit of a shock that the president isn't talking in such pragmatic terms.

you were awesome on This Week. We need more democrats willing to stand up against these never-ending wars.