Same old Same old

The Smirking Chimp has accompanied John Nirenberg to Nancy Pelosi’s office:

I had been to Nancy Pelosi’s office in the Cannon House Office Building before. In fact, I’d been there several times and usually had a pleasant stay, often very quick and efficient, other times prolonged by everyone’s enjoyment of the songs my friends in pink were singing, and as often as not resulting in new friendships with fine officers of the Capitol Police who accompanied us out. This time was going to be different.

Just a few of us went by there on Wednesday. No cameras. No songs. And no signs, since we’d already left those at the door with our Capitol Police friends, who continue to get the wrong impression about us. We walked in and said “Good afternoon,” which they apparently mistook for the voice of the Filipino Monkey saying “We are come to slaughter your children.”

It surely looks like citizens are the equivalent of midges to your Speaker. Shoo ’em off! They might ask uncomfortable questions, too.

Read the rest of the story, here:

COINTELPRO again?

On an episode of PBS Now from 2004, COINTELPRO was described as a secret FBI program designed to monitor and “neutralize” domestic groups deemed by the FBI to be a danger to national security. Such groups included anti-war groups and civil rights groups and individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr. and even Eleanor Roosevelt. J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI at that time.

According to Wikipedia:

In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute Communists. At this time he formalized a covert “dirty tricks” program under the name COINTELPRO. This program remained in place until it was revealed to the public in 1971, and was the cause of some of the harshest criticism of Hoover and the FBI. COINTELPRO was first used to disrupt the Communist Party, and later such organizations such as the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King Jr.’s SCLC, the Ku Klux Klan and others. Its methods included infiltration, burglaries, illegal wiretaps, planting forged documents and spreading false rumors about key members of target organizations. Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.

In 1975, the activities of COINTELPRO were investigated by the Senate Church Committee and declared illegal and contrary to the Constitution.

Hoover amassed significant power by collecting files containing large amounts of compromising and potentially embarrassing information on many powerful people, especially politicians. According to Laurence Silberman, appointed deputy Attorney General in early 1974, Director Clarence M. Kelley thought such files either did not exist or had been destroyed. After The Washington Post broke a story in January 1975, Kelley searched and found them in his outer office. The House Judiciary Committee then demanded that Silberman testify about them. An extensive investigation of Hoover’s files by David Garrow showed that Hoover and next-in-command William Sullivan, as well as the FBI itself as an agency, was responsible.

So, given the secret (illegal) domestic surveillance programs that have been put in place and expanded upon since 9/11, is this happening once again? Is that what is preventing the members of Congress from taking the steps necessary to stop this rogue president from breaking our laws and dismantling our rights and our Constitution? Has the administration and the NSA been collecting information and creating secret files on members of Congress in order to exert power over them and keep them in line? Could this be some of those TOP SECRET spying activities that we DON’T yet know about and are not allowed to ask about? It would explain a lot.