Iraq Order of Battle: December 2008

The agreement sets 30 June 2009, as the deadline for U.S. combat troops to withdraw from all Iraqi cities and towns; the date for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq is 31 December 2011.

No Office of the President Elect

Pay no attention to that man behind the podium, there is no "Office of the President-Elect" in the United States Constitution; furthermore, the Electoral College has not met yet so there is no President Elect just yet.

Signature? Signatures?

Is this the same signature appearing on each document? Some people consider what look like The Elect's signatures, on different documents, and have questioned whether it is from the same hand. For example, people have questioned one from an allegedly counterfeit Selective Service Registration and the other is from his Statement of Candidacy. Has anyone compared the signatures?

The Elect: No Paper Trail

The Elect has no paper trail for the past 48 years. There is no documentation, records, or paper trail.

List of possible documentation:

Original, vault copy birth certificate: not released.
Certificate of Live Birth: released but counterfeited.
Obama/Dunham marriage license: not released.
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license: not released.
Soetoro adoption records: not released.
Fransiskus Assisi School: school application released stating religion: "Islam."
Punahou School records: not released.
Selective Service Registration: released but counterfeited.
Occidental College records: not released.
Passport (Pakistan): not released.
Columbia College records: not released.
Columbia thesis: not released.
Harvard College records: not released.
Harvard Law Review articles: likely none but perhaps one unsigned has been found.
Baptism certificate: none.
Medical records: not released.
Illinois State Senate records: none.
Illinois State Senate schedule: lost.
Law practice client list: not released.
University of Chicago scholarly articles: none.

The Elect: $750M

The Elect received nearly $750 million dollars during the campaign. That is more than twice what McCain raised and it's more than what Bush and Kerry combined managed to snag during 2004. The Elect opted out of taking public funds which made him the first candidate for president to opt out of public financing since the system was created in the 1970s to counter the effect of buying the election.

Gov. Richardson States: The Elect is an Immigrant

As Governor Bill Richardson stated at the Democratic National Convention in Denver Colorado on 1 September 2008: "Barack Obama is an immigrant...he is one of us...." I do not think it can be much clearer. The U.S. favors an immigrant as President.

SCOTUS Today

Nothing more released about the Donofrio case today. More information is expected early next week.

The Elect Agrees McCain A Natural Born Citizen

In April 2008, a resolution was proposed to the U.S. Senate, recognizing John McCain as a "natural born citizen." Now what is odd about this resolution is that it was introduced by the opposition party, Democrats, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The bill was co-sponsored by whom? It was co-sponsored by political opponents, nominees, The Elect, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

Their sponsorship, in the midst of a contentious campaign, is to say the least odd. Why were they so interested in the subject of "natural born citizen?"

At the time, McCain was obviously their primary opponent as he turned out to be during the Fall campaign.

In any case, Senate Resolution 511 was passed on 30 April 2008 as a non-binding resolution. S.R. 511. S.R. 511 is not a law, but rather, a unanimous opinion. Obama and Clinton were determined to demonstrate that McCain qualifies as a natural born citizen.

The respective candidates addressed the question that The Elect, Obama, did not want to face directly. Are you, yourself, a natural born citizen? Obama has failed to produce documentation that he is a natural born citizen of the United States. He attempted to defer questions about his origins by deflecting doubts about McCain. McCain agreed with the arrangement so no one would be inclined to doubt the citizenship about a person who clearly loves this country and was willing to fight and suffer as a prisoner of war as he did for five and a half years.

We await definitive proof or the Supreme Court Justices will decide. Or, The Elect could simply produce a $14.00 authentic birth certificate, or his student records, or a passport before he entered the Senate, or health records stating his natural born status at birth, or any simple and easily produced documentation. So, far, no records have been transparent, only expensive legal defenses and claims of how transparent his administration will be. So far, this is not so.

Cf. S.R. 511:

Co-sponsors

o Sen. Hillary Clinton [D, NY]
o Sen. Barack Obama [D, Ill]

Committees

Introduced result Voted on by Senate
April 10, 2008 April 30, 2008

All Bill Actions

* Passed by Unanimous Consent in the Senate on Apr 30, 2008. Resolution agreed to in Senate without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent.
* Apr 24, 2008: Committee on the Judiciary. Date of scheduled consideration. SD-226. 10:00 a.m.
* Apr 24, 2008: Committee on the Judiciary. Ordered to be reported without amendment favorably.
* Added to calendar on Apr 24, 2008: Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 715..
* Added to calendar on Apr 24, 2008: Committee on the Judiciary. Ordered to be reported without amendment favorably..
* Apr 24, 2008: Committee on the Judiciary. Reported by Senator Leahy without amendment and with a preamble. Without written report.
* Apr 10, 2008: Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
* Introduced on Apr 10, 2008.

Mainstream Plays Constitutional

Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution states:

"No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time."

Although the language is difficult it really simply means that a lawmaker cannot fill a position if the salary for that position has increased during their term in office. It looks like Hillary can not be Secretery of State, or, is there a way that she still could be?

This constitutional issue, Hillary's, has gotten in the mainstream media although questions of whether The Elect is a natural born citizen or not has remained in the blogsphere.

When the question of compensation has happened before in the recent past lawmakers simply made an end around.

Ohio Senator William Saxbe was named President Nixon's attorney general in 1974 and again when Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen became President Clinton's Treasury secretary in 1993.

Congress voted a lower salary, or the candidate simply accepted a lower salary, it is not as if she needs the money anyway. The third is the most likely route, no one has the standing, or the right, to sue to stop her from being secretary of state.

The last is the most troubling for an administration touting transparency as their motiff.

Rove Favors "New" Team

If Karl Rove favors The Elect, then how could there be change? Indeed, the despised Republican wonk endorses the "new" security team.

Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed.

College Out of Financial Reach

CNN issued the results of a survery which reported that tuition and fees, adjusted for inflation, rose 439% from 1982 to 2007; moreover, public policy and education received an "F" in affordability in 49 states, California received a "C."

Another Natural Born Citizen Suit Filed in Cali

Dr. Orly Taitz has files a natural born citizen suit in California Supreme Court: the Docket number is S16869, Lightfoot v. Bowen. This is a “Petition for Extraordinary Writ of Mandamus for Stay.” The California Court will either issue an emergency stay of the voting of the electors, or decline to hear the case because it is a federal issue.

Iranians on The Elect

The BBC ran an interesting story about Iranian reaction to The Elect's victory. One blogger, cartoonist and blogger Nikahang Kosar who now lives in Canada, likened Obama to the reformist Mohammad Khatami in Iran. Obama's promise of 'change' reminds many Iranians of their own optimism when they elected the reformist Mohammad Khatami as president in 1997. This reflects the disillusionment Khatami's supporters felt when his attempts at reform were blocked by Iran's Islamic hardliners.

Likewise, Tehran journalist Ehsan Taqaddosi echoes this feeling, writing on demokracy.blogfa.com states: "Khatami was our Obama."

And, a third Iranian, Ehsan Taqaddosi, fears Obama cannot deliver what he promises.

Like Obama, Khatami was a pleasant talker and he introduced concepts such as the rule of the people and democracy into our political literature. But what happened in practice?

Nothing changed... Everyone says that Obama will be the same as his predecessors and in practice he may only be able to create a short, sharp shock.

Khatami also created a short, sharp shock and at the end of his tenure, we didn't witness any of the enthusiasm and determination which existed during the initial years of his government's rule.

The Iranian comments were originally in Farsi and translated by BBC Monitoring.

Elector Dead: Still Scheduled to Vote

Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has notified the state of California that a dead woman is listed as an official elector. Kreep stated:

"In the 28th Congressional District (Congressman Howard Berman), situated in Los Angeles County, Ilene Huber is listed as the presidential elector designated in that district. However, as shown in the attached certified statement of Dean C. Logan, registrar-recorder/county clerk of the county of Los Angeles, state of California, there is no Ilene Huber listed as a registered voter in the County of Los Angeles. A statewide search of public records has revealed only one Ilene Huber in the state of California, and she is deceased-a copy of her certificate of death is attached hereto as well."

Latest Natural Born News

16 states are holding a hearing of some sort regarding The Elect's natural born status and two hearings are scheduled before the SCOTUS.

Berg Writ Update

The Philip J. Berg petition for writ of certiorari from The Elect was ignored by him and the Democratic National Committee. The Elect has not produced a legitimate, original birth certificate. Berg is now filing a motion to stop Obama from taking office in January. Berg is asking the SCOTUS to stop state certification of electors to keep the Electoral College from meeting 15 December and casting votes for Obama. He is also seeking to postpone the official vote count Jan. 6 until the court reaches a decision on his appeal.

Donofrio and Wrotnowski Update

The Donofrio situation can be summarized but there are more as well.

SCOTUS updates today include the Cort Wrotnowski situation, an emergency application. Wrotnowski's Docket now shows that the renewed application to Justice Scalia is dated Nov. 29. That’s the date Cort express mailed the original papers.

Donofrio to Full Court: 5 Dec. '08

Donofrio v. Wells was distributed for conference on 5 December 2008 by the full Court after a prior referral of the application by Justice Thomas.

Troops Quartered in America

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 according to Pentagon officials. The justification for the combat troops is said to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe.

There are, and should be, strenuous opponents to this plan from both the left, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the right, the libertarian Cato Institute. Both ends of the political spectrum should be alarmed by this unwarranted expansion of executive authority.

The Constitution was written with the intention of having civilians in control of the military, not the other way around. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12 placed a two-year limit on spending for the army as a measure to insure civilian control of the military.

This tradition persisted throughout American history.

Any new law alters the two-centuries-old Insurrection Act, which Congress passed in 1807 to limit the president’s power to deploy troops within the United States. That law has long allowed the president to mobilize troops only “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

Along these lines, the Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 16, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction. The Act prohibits the federal uniformed services (the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces except when they are impressed into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) in the former Confederate states.

The National Defense Act of 1916 made each State's militia (volunteer army) a part of the National Guard. Each State's National Guard is under the command of that State's governor; but Congress has given the President the power to call those units into federal service under exceptional circumstances, such as during the Los Angeles riots in 1992, when necessary (Article 1, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16). I also read the 3rd Amendment, the quartering of troops amongst civilians, as another indication that the Founders were wary about having combat troops amongst the general populace. The U.S. has had a long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace.

The unprecedented nature of the 20,000 troops combat troops should be clear. Troops returning from urban warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan are being re-deployed in America.

The question is why?

There is no insurrection currently and the National Guard along with law enforcement agencies have traditionally provided security. Why does the U.S. government feel compelled to place so many combat troops in the general population?

Domestic deployment appears to be an expansion in presidential and military authority. Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of "a creeping militarization" of homeland security.

The troops are here already. The first reaction force is built around the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, which returned in April after 15 months in Iraq. The team includes operations, aviation and medical task forces that are to be ready to deploy at home or overseas within 48 hours, with units specializing in chemical decontamination, bomb disposal, emergency care and logistics. The troops are on a one-year domestic mission.

Although some Pentagon leaders initially expected to build the next two response units around combat teams, they are likely to be drawn mainly from reserves and the National Guard, such as the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade from South Carolina, which returned in May after more than a year in Afghanistan.

Since 1 October 2008, the US Army announced that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command (NORTHCOM), as an on-call federal response force for natural or man-made emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

This marks the first time an active U.S. Army unit will be given a dedicated assignment to NORTHCOM, where it is stated they may be "called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive (CBRNE) attack." These soldiers will also learn how to use non-lethal weapons designed to "subdue unruly or dangerous individuals" without killing them, and also includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and beanbag bullets. However, the "non-lethal crowd control package [...] is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S.

Uh huh.

Even government officials are noting the extreme measures. Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response--a nearly sevenfold increase in five years--"would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," stated Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense. Even McHale stated that this was "a fundamental change in military culture."

The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.

If funding continues, two additional teams will join nearly 80 smaller National Guard and reserve units made up of about 6,000 troops in supporting local and state officials nationwide. All would be trained to respond to a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive attack, or CBRNE event, as the military calls it.

Military preparations for a domestic weapon-of-mass-destruction attack have been underway since at least 1996, when the Marine Corps activated a 350-member chemical and biological incident response force and later based it in Indian Head, Md., a Washington suburb. Such efforts accelerated after the Sept. 11 attacks, and at the time Iraq was invaded in 2003, a Pentagon joint task force drew on 3,000 civil support personnel across the United States.

In 2005, a new Pentagon homeland defense strategy emphasized "preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents."

In late 2007, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed a directive approving more than $556 million over five years to set up the three response teams, known as CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces.

Last month, McHale said, authorities agreed to begin a $1.8 million pilot project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency through which civilian authorities in five states could tap military planners to develop disaster response plans. Hawaii, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Washington and West Virginia will each focus on a particular threat--pandemic flu, a terrorist attack, hurricane, earthquake and catastrophic chemical release, respectively.

Last Monday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, seemingly now retained by The Elect, ordered defense officials to review whether the military, Guard and reserves can respond adequately to domestic disasters.Gates ordered defense officials to review whether the military, Guard and reserves can respond adequately to domestic disasters.

Gates gave commanders 25 days to propose changes and cost estimates. He cited the work of a congressionally chartered commission, which concluded in January that the Guard and reserve forces are not ready and that they lack equipment and training.

Bert B. Tussing, director of homeland defense and security issues at the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership, said the new Pentagon approach "breaks the mold" by assigning an active-duty combat brigade to the Northern Command for the first time.

Is it happening to America?

"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."

Adolph Hitler

How GPS Works

GPS works by using the 29 satellites orbiting the Earth 12,000 miles up. Five of them are redundant. The U.S. military began launching them in 1978, and it took until 1994 to get the required 24 in orbit which was enough to calculate a position anywhere in the world. These 2,000- to 4,000-pound satellites are 17 feet wide. They traverse six separate orbits with each orbit having four satellites chasing one another.

The satellites are positioned so that any ground-based GPS receiver can always receive data from at least four of them. A master control station in Colorado Springs and five unstaffed monitor stations around the world track each satellite's orbit precisely. The controls are correcting in that if a satellite is out of position, they command its booster rockets to nudge it back on track.

Using a 50-watt radio transmitter each orbiting GPS satellite continuously broadcasts signals containing a pseudorandom code that provides its identity and position and the time maintained by an atomic clock. An accurate data location requires at least three satellites and incrementally four is much better, and six or seven provide even more accurate results. A GPS receiver uses relatively simple geometric calculations to determine its own latitude, longitude, and altitude. By comparing successive readings as compared with time, it can also calculate ground speed and direction.

Errors persist since many people have noticed that GPS data is never totally accurate. Radio waves travel at the speed of light or 186,000 miles/second. And in a vacuum, the Earth's atmosphere slows waves down. Further delays occur when signals bounce off intervening obstacles such as buildings, elevated geography, and trees. Until 2000, the public GPS was purposely made less accurate because GPS was originally designed for military use and the U.S. government didn't want enemy forces to possess better position information. Thus, the U.S. military introduced deliberate errors into the system. This process resulted in GPS calculations that could be off by 100 meters.

Differential GPS (DGPS) now corrects for measurement errors by comparing the GPS positions recorded at designated reference stations with the accurately known positions (determined through careful surveys) of those stations. The improved calculations result in accuracy within a yard or two.