Surprisingly, these excellent bills are sponsored by the ultra-leftists of Congress, Anna Eschoo (D-CA) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), but they are uncharacteristically short bills -- only one page each. And they are perfectly consistent with the language and original intent of the Eighth Amendment banning "cruel and unusual punishments."

It's a sad day for America when we have to look to Ted Kennedy and Anna Eschoo for leadership in defending the Constitution, a fact that should perhaps be noted in a letter to so-called "conservative" Republican congressmen.

Update March 8, 2008 - President Bush will say in his weekly radio address today that he would veto any legislation containing a ban on waterboarding because it would put the security of the nation at risk. The legislation will likely not be passed as a bill on its own, but rather attached as an amendment to this year's authorization bills.

Summary: President Bush asked Congress on September 19 to make the misnamed "Protect America Act" permanent. The bill gave Congress' approval for unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping for six months. Wiretaps without a warrant and probable cause, as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, are blatantly unconstitutional. The legislation became "necessary" after a secret FISA court ruled that President Bush's wiretapping program was unconstitutional.

After President Bush repeatedly told the American people on at least seven separate occasions that he legally needed to get a court warrant in order to conduct a telephone wiretap, Bush admitted to the nation last year that he had ordered the National Security Agency to tap every American's telephone calls' time and duration and store them permanently in a mammoth database. In addition, he admitted to listening in on perhaps millions of international phone calls made internationally, and to obtaining and storing the American people's banking information - all without a warrant, as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires.

Summary: The bloody civil war in Iraq that has nothing to do with U.S. national security. Begun in 2003 under the purported rationale that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) and ties to the terrorist group al Qaeda, the WMDs never materialized, and the pre-war intelligence that the Bush administration purported to demonstrate Hussein had ties to al Qaeda actually proved that there were no ties and that Hussein had been a longstanding enemy of al Qaeda.

Update April 20: The Right Source has recieved an action alert from the American Family Association indicating that some liberal Democratic leaders want to to add the free speech suppression elements of S.1 to H.R.984. While there is nothing wrong with H.R.984 as it stands on April 20, it is important that constitutionalists contact their representatives and demand that the free speech suppression elements of S.1 stay out of the bill.

Summary: The U.S. Senate came close to passing a bill that would have created a heavy federal regulatory burden for grass roots organizations, requiring staff organizers to file a federal report every time they tried to influence more than 500 people. Clearly against the First Amendment, which declares that Congress shall make no law & abridging the freedom of speech, the U.S. Senate adopted an amendment by Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) that deleted this obnoxious section, and then passed the bill. Because the Bennett Amendment passed by a narrow 55-43 vote, we must be vigilant that the speech-strangling language is not inserted in the House version.

Summary: U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Compean are currently serving prison terms for doing their job: stopping a shipment of 800 pounds of marijuana and defending themselves when threatened by an admitted drug smuggler. The agents were imprisoned on charges of attempted murder after a trial that relied principally on the testimony of the admitted drug dealer, along with "evidence" from the Department of Homeland Security later proven to be false.

Important - Have Congress Investigate Torture and Prison Camps

Summary: President Bush ordered the CIA to set up detention camps where detainees - including American citizens - can be imprisoned and tortured without trial! Torture has been used on a majority of detainees - even though a majority also turned out to be innocent of any acts of terrorism, and were released without charges. These are clear violations of the Sixth Amendment (right to trial by jury) and Eighth Amendment (right against torture) to the U.S. Constitution. Congress needs to investigate these torture camps, put a stop to them, and those responsible for torture, denial of due process, and other offenses must be brought to trial themselves.

Important - Stop the NAU/SPP

Summary: Globalists in the United States, Canada and Mexico are in the process of drawing up a charter for a continent-wide super government. This process is being carried out through an informal Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) designed to heighten continental regulation under the guise of high standards of health and safety and border control. These ad hoc consultations are a prelude to creation of a European Union-style charter called the North American Union (NAU). Both the SPP and the NAU are threats to American national sovereignty, and to the United States Constitution.

Action needed

Write to your congressman and senators and ask them to oppose any charter that emerges from the Security and Prosperity Partnership division, and to eliminate all funding for the SPP bureaucracy created by President Bush within the Commerce and Homeland Security Departments.

Also, contact your state legislators and urge your state legislators to pass resolutions against the NAU/SPP.

Talking Points

Use a variation of one of the following points in your letter to your congressman and senators, a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, your blog or as a talking point when calling a radio talk show.

• The same elitist globalists who created the European Union bureaucracy are trying to consolidate the United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union. In North America today much of that work is being done under a Security and Prosperity Partnership that creates what is called soft law, international agreements between executives that avoid legislatures which would ask pesky questions about national sovereignty. Congress needs to take charge of American national sovereignty and take the funding out of the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership to put a stop to these shenanigans before our sovereignty is irrevocably damaged.

• President Bush announced what he called the Security and Prosperity Partnership between the United States, Canada and Mexico back in 2005 to create what could be called NAFTA on steroids. Among the promises made in the increasingly continent-wide regulation scheme is that it would help to solve the problem of illegal immigration. Funny, but Ive heard those promises before. I heard them when another president sold this country on NAFTA more than 10 years ago, and that was a really bad deal. Selling a continent-wide regulation scheme as a means of immigration control device was a lie back then, and it is a lie today.

• Politicians always try to wrap what they want to do in packaging that smacks of mom, patriotism, apple pie and the home team, even when the politicians plans are anything by good for the American people. Such is the case with President Bushs Security and Prosperity Partnership. Who could possibly be against security or prosperity? You might as well be against a mothers love, or free candy. But the Security and Prosperity Partnership is a continent-wide regulatory scheme designed to increase regulations in the name of high standards of health and safety over the entire North American continent. That means more government bureaucracy and regulatory rules that stifles business and prosperity, and no more border control security than we got after NAFTA was adopted after politicians made similar promises.

• Advocates of President Bushs Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) with Mexico and Canada are selling the continent-wide regulatory regime on the grounds that it would increase free trade without compromising sovereignty. Thats exactly the same argument made for NAFTA when it was adopted, and NAFTA has produced a number of losing cases in which the U.S. government was forced to capitulate its national rules after losing in the NAFTA court. The SPP, which envisions an eventual North American Union along the lines of the European Union, is more of the same sovereignty-destroying programs that NAFTA gave us.

Additional Resources

The John Birch Societys anti-NAU page: http://www.jbs.org/nau

Pro-NAU propaganda from the Council on Foreign Relations: Building a North American Community.