Children shooting children...No Patriot Sunset?...Federal Police

Good Morning!

We've got a very disturbing story in the news this morning from Maryland....about an 8 year old sneaking a gun into daycare and shooting a classmate.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Maryland prosecutors have filed charges against an 8-year-old boy who shot and wounded a 7-year-old girl after threatening to rob her at a suburban day-care center, The Washington Post said on Wednesday.

The boy's father, "a felon with a lengthy record," was arrested and charged with leaving a firearm within reach of an unsupervised minor and other offenses after the Tuesday shooting, the Post said.

The third-grader had sneaked his father's .38-caliber revolver into the facility in his backpack on Tuesday, the paper said, quoting law-enforcement officials. He had been suspended in the past for bringing a weapon to school.

Police had initially said the boy accidentally shot the girl, a second-grade student, as a group of six children were attending a before-school program at the For Kids We Care day-care center in Germantown, Maryland, a Washington suburb.

But the Post said, "The sources said the boy threatened to rob the girl and then fired the gun once, striking her in the upper right arm."

The girl was reported in stable condition in a Washington hospital on Tuesday night, the paper said.

The boy "was charged as a juvenile with numerous counts that police declined to outline," it said. He was placed in the custody of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services.

Taking a look at Washington, it's becoming more and more apparent that the Patriot Act was indeed the "American Enabling Act". According to the AG, Congress gave the 'president' much wider powers to use against Al-Qaeda, above and beyond what Patriot did. It goes further to state that these powers do not expire, and that the whole debate about the Patriot act is "superfluous". So in essence, we are a dictatorship.

WASHINGTON -- A footnote in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's 42-page legal memo defending President Bush's domestic spying program appears to argue that the administration does not need Congress to extend the USA Patriot Act in order to keep using the law's investigative powers against terror suspects.

The memo states that Congress gave Bush the power to investigate terror suspects using whatever tactics he deemed necessary when it authorized him to use force against Al Qaeda. When Congress later passed the Patriot Act, Bush already had the power to use enhanced surveillance techniques against Al Qaeda, according to the footnote.

Thus, legal specialists say, the administration is asserting that Bush would be able to keep using the powers outlined in the Patriot Act for Al Qaeda investigations, regardless of whether Congress reauthorizes the law.

''It turns out they didn't need the Patriot Act for dealing with Al Qaeda after all," said Martin Lederman, a former Justice Department lawyer in the Clinton administration who now teaches law at Georgetown University.

Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor, and Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, also said the administration's footnote indicates that Bush would not need Congress to renew the Patriot Act to keep using its investigative powers in the war on terrorism.

Ah, but what's a police state without a good police force? Reading deeper into the "superfluous" Patriot act debate, it turns out that buried deep in the paperwork is the provision for a Federal Police Force. Which no doubt would be used to round up 'our enemies' in the dark of night. Funny, I have still-living relatives that went to war more than a half-century ago to put a stop to that sort of thing....

...Section 605 of the House version of the Patriot Act renewal legislation. It calls for the creation of a Federal Police Force. Your imperial presidency at work.

"A permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division,'" empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence"...

..."or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

In my current reading of "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" the thing that has consistently amazed me is how uninterested and complacent the German people seemed to be during Hitler's long rise to power....and by the time he led them to war, too few people had seen the truth and it was far too late to do anything about it. There's still time, but every day we put up with this "administration" is another day closer to ruin.