Ben Stein Holds Court

March 31, 2008 5:50 AM

 ”There’s a lot of your fans out there,” Ben Stein was asked, “who may think you’ve lost your mind.”

Stein, the star and writer of his anti-evolution film, “Expelled,” was on a conference call for reporters, though it was one of his own cohorts asking the questions.

“And what would you say to those folks?”

“I would say you’re right. I probably have,” Stein laughed.

Stein held court for an hour — mostly sounding very serious about a film for which, in publicity pictures, he appears in a tie, jacket — and shorts with black socks and sneakers.

“I haven’t lost my mind,” said Stein. “I think I’m engaged in a struggle that’s very much uphill, and in which the establishment is very much against me, but I’m a rebel to my core…and happy to be in an uphill struggle.”

His questioner asked, “Being as intelligent as you are, how you can you possibly question the intelligentsia who’ve pretty much already decided that Darwinism is no longer a theory, it is a law?”

Stein: “Well, I mean, the intelligentsia also said at a certain point that Adolph Hitler was the wave of the future, and the intelligentsia at a certain point also said that communism in Russia was the wave of the future, and the intelligentsia have said a great many things that haven’t turned out to be true…so the intelligentsia is often wrong, and I’d say they’re wrong at least as often as they’re right, and we aim to show them they’re wrong again.

“And you know what else? We’re sick of being pushed around by the intelligentsia, and, even though I am one of the intelligentsia, we don’t like being pushed around by other members of the intelligentsia, and I don’t even like pushing myself around.”

He was asked about the premise of the film.

“My feeling is that Darwinism is only at a best a partial solution, and an extremely dangerous partial solution. I would say, based on the little I know, Darwinism explains microevolution within species quite well. As to its broader consequence and implications, I don’t think it explains individual species evolution at all well.”

Stein and the film’s producers dismissed accusations that they had interviewed various adherents to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, such as the biologist/blogger PZ Myers, under false pretenses, before the project took on the tone it has.

A voice said, “Let’s move off the subject of these criticisms of the film” — and he was interrupted by another voice, saying, “Let’s NOT move off the subject. There are a lot of legitimate criticisms to be made….”

“Who is this?”

“PZ Myers.” There was laughter. Myers had tried last week to go to a screening of the film, and was thrown out.”

“You are a most persistent man,” laughed a voice that sounded like Stein’s.

Myers was asked to “do the honorable thing” and leave the call, which he did after announcing his e-mail address for anyone who may want his side of the controversy. (Read Myers’ version of the call HERE. You can also read the interview invitation he says he got last year from one of Stein’s producers HERE.)

And the call went on, but that gives you a taste. Whatever you think of Stein’s people and their efforts, there they are in their own words.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2008/03/ben-stein-holds.html

Administration Unveils Sweeping Plan to Overhaul Financial Regulation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury’s ornate Cash Room, declaring, “A strong financial system is vitally important — not for Wall Street, not for bankers, but for working Americans.”

The administration’s plan drew criticism, however, from Democrats who said it did not go far enough to deal with abuses in mortgage lending and securities trading that were exposed by the current credit crisis. Some state officials criticized what they saw as unwanted federal intrusion on their turf.

Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin blasted Paulson’s approach as “a disastrous backward step that would put the investor in jeopardy” because it would pre-empt state regulation of securities and insurance.

The administration said that it planned to work with Congress to have constructive conversations, but officials would not predict when any aspects of the proposal could be enacted into law.

Asked if Bush’s goal was to get the overhaul approved before he leaves office, presidential press secretary Dana Perino told reporters aboard Air Force One, “We’ll have to see. It is a big attempt.”

The plan, which would require congressional approval for its biggest changes, seeks to trim a hodge-podge collection of overlapping jurisdictions that date back to the Civil War.

It would give the Federal Reserve more power to protect the stability of the entire financial system while merging day-to-day bank supervision into one agency, down from five at present.

It also would create one super agency in charge of business conduct and consumer protection, performing many of the functions of the current Securities and Exchange Commission.

It would propose eliminating the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, merging their functions into other agencies.

The head of the commodity trading commission raised concerns about the plan. CFTC Acting Chairman Walt Lukken said merging the Securities and Exchange Commission and his agency could end up making “the U.S. futures industry less competitive globally” unless differences in the laws governing the sales of securities and futures contracts were resolved.

The Paulson plan It would ask Congress to establish a federal Mortgage Origination Commission to set recommended minimum licensing standards for mortgage brokers, many of whom now operate outside of federal regulation, and it would also take a first step toward federal regulation of the insurance industry by asking Congress to establish an Office of Insurance Oversight inside the Treasury Department.

Paulson acknowledged in his remarks that most of the changes will not occur until after a lengthy debate in Congress, leaving it to the next administration to deal with the biggest changes proposed by the report. He also said the Bush administration’s focus would remain on getting through the current severe credit crisis, which has roiled financial markets since last August.

Paulson rejected Democratic charges that it was lax regulation of mortgage brokers and the financial industry that had led to the current problems.

“I do not believe it is fair or accurate to blame our regulatory structure for the current market turmoil,” he said. “I am not suggesting that more regulation is the answer or even that more effective regulation can prevent the periods of financial market stress that seem to occur every five to 10 years.”

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said he strongly disagreed with Paulson. “The unregulated corners of our economy did much to contribute to the meltdown in our housing market and the accompanying spillover to our financial markets,” Schumer said in a statement. “The administration’s ‘deregulation-above-all-else’ attitude helped cause the problems we now face.”

Banking groups raised strong objections to the plan while other groups expressed approval.

“Dismantling the thrift charter and crippling state banking charters will weaken banking in America,” said Edward Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association.

Tim Ryan, head of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which represents more than 650 securities firms, banks and asset managers, praised the overhaul proposal and said there was widespread agreement on the need for modernization in an era “where billions of dollars race across the globe with the click of a mouse.”

Frank Keating, president of the American Council of Life Insururers, praised the insurance proposals but Dan Mica, president of the Credit Union National Association, said his organization was “astonished and angered” by the plan to abolish a separate federal regulator for credit unions. He said this move would “essentially turn credit unions into banks.”

In Congress, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, who is working on his own regulatory revamp, called Paulson’s proposal a “constructive step forward” but said it wouldn’t give the Federal Reserve enough authority to carry out its expanded job to police the stability of the entire financial system.

Many Democrats said that Congress’ first priority should be to deal with the current mortgage crisis that is threatening millions of Americans with the loss of their homes and that an extensive debate on a regulatory overhaul should not occur until a new president is in office next year.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., told reporters that he viewed the administration’s plan as a “wild pitch — it’s not even close to the strike zone” of what is needed to help the country get through the current mortgage crisis. He said the real problem was not the need for new regulations but “the failure of this administration to utilize the tools they’ve been given over the years to deal with the very practices that caused this problem.”

The proposed overhaul would be the most extensive since the current regulatory system was created in response to the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression.

It comes at a time when the financial system faces its most severe credit crisis in two decades, one that has resulted in billions of dollars of losses for big banks and investment houses and the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, the country’s fifth-largest investment bank.

The rising tide of bad debt has made it harder for consumers and businesses to get credit, further weighing on an economy struggling with a prolonged housing slump and soaring energy prices. Many economists believe the country is already in a recession.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080331/fed_overhaul.html?.v=3

Gore To Start $300 Million Dollar Campaign On Climate

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 31, 2008; A04

Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.

The Alliance for Climate Protection’s “we” campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from “American Idol” to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” It highlights the extent to which Americans’ growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change.

“This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.”

Private contributors have already donated or committed half the money needed to fund the entire campaign, he said. While Gore declined to quantify his contribution to the effort, he has devoted all his proceeds from the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” the best-selling companion book, his salary from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and several international prizes, such as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which add up to more than a $2.7 million. Paramount Classics, the documentary’s distributor, has pledged 5 percent of the film’s profits to the group, and some of the money raised through the 2007 Live Earth concerts will help the campaign, along with Gore’s proceeds from an upcoming book on climate change.

While “An Inconvenient Truth” urged viewers to fully inflate their car tires and to install compact fluorescent light bulbs to combat global warming, Gore said he is now focused on ensuring that the United States enacts a national carbon emission cap and ratifies a new global pact on climate change in the next three years.

“The simple algorithm is this: It’s important to change the light bulbs, but it’s much more important to change the laws,” he said. “The options available to civilization worldwide to avert this terribly destructive pattern are beginning to slip away from us. The path for recovery runs right through Washington, D.C.”

The new effort comes at a time when the three remaining major party presidential candidates — Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) — have all endorsed federal limits on greenhouse gases, virtually ensuring that the next occupant of the White House will offer a sharp break from President Bush’s climate policy.

All three have discussed global warming with Gore in phone calls over the course of the past few months. While McCain backs a more modest plan than that favored by the Democrats — he supports a 60 percent reduction in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2050, compared with Obama and Clinton’s vow of an 80 percent cut during that period — the presumptive Republican nominee emphasized during a recent stop in Chula Vista, Calif., that he had pushed for a federal cap-and-trade system before either of his opponents came to the Senate.

“Neither have proposed legislation or played any public role during their time in the Senate,” McCain said, sidestepping the fact that Clinton and Obama both back climate legislation, up for a Senate vote in June, that he has yet to endorse.

Gore, who backs a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by mid-century, said that while he’s “encouraged” that the remaining candidates back mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, they still need to be pushed: “What happens after the election will depend on whether or not we win enough hearts and minds in the country as a whole.”

And former Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), a board member of the two-year-old alliance, said the candidates’ commitment to a cap-and-trade system does not negate the fact that the majority of Americans fail to see climate change as a compelling political issue.

“Most Republicans, along with most Democrats, are focused almost exclusively on Iraq, the war against terrorism and the economy,” Boehlert said. “That leaves little room for anything else.”

In an effort to penetrate Americans’ consciousness and change lawmakers’ political calculus, the group aims to enlist 10 million volunteers through a combination of network and cable commercials, display ads in magazines ranging from People to Real Simple, and online social networks. By contrast, the civil rights and antiwar movements in the 1960s each boasted about 5 million activists.

Cathy Zoi, the Alliance for Climate Protection’s chief executive, said the group will focus on individuals known in the advertising world as “influencers” who talk to a disproportionate number of people in their communities. While some ads will target inside-the-Beltway policymakers, the bulk of their efforts will focus on the general public.

“This is modern organizing,” Zoi said, adding that the campaign aims to convince voters that “this is a solvable problem.”

In an effort to broaden the campaign’s appeal, the alliance has already forged working partnerships with groups including the Girl Scouts and the United Steelworkers of America. One of its early ads will feature the unlikely alliance of clergymen Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton sitting on a couch on Virginia Beach, talking about their commitment to address climate change.

Its first ad, which is narrated by the actor William H. Macy, highlights American’s collective responses to historical challenges. “We didn’t wait for someone else to storm the beaches of Normandy,” Macy intones. “We didn’t wait for someone else to guarantee civil rights.” The commercial will run several times Wednesday on shows such as “Good Morning America,” “Today,” “American Idol,” “Larry King Live” and “Anderson Cooper 360.”

League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski, whose group is supporting the effort, said he’s optimistic the “we” campaign will succeed in a way that traditional environmental groups have not. “It heightens both the urgency and the sense we can get the job done with the broad middle that will make the difference,” Karpinski said, “while having the resources to communicate in a sophisticated way, in a more expansive fashion than the community has done before.”

Without question, the campaign represents one of the most far-reaching public advocacy initiatives in recent years. The American Legacy Foundation, an anti-smoking campaign that arose out of the massive 1998 tobacco settlement, made $100 million in ad buys its first year, but its funding quickly dwindled and it now spends $30 million annually. The Ad Council — which runs public service announcements ranging from the “Just Say No” anti-drug message to the “Smokey the Bear” commercials — receives an average of $40 million a year in donated media for the 50 campaigns it operates and only occasionally hits the $100 million annual mark for its campaigns.

The climate alliance’s initiative, however, will not go unchallenged by climate change skeptics. Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a nonprofit funded by the coal industry and its allies, is spending about $35 million this election to bolster support for coal-generated electricity. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank that receives part of its funding from oil and gas companies, recently spent close to $35,000 to run a television ad both in the District and in scattered cities throughout the country attacking Gore, and plans a follow-up campaign. The ad argues that Gore and his allies in Hollywood use plenty of energy but that “Al Gore wants to cut our energy use, putting our jobs and our future in jeopardy.”

Myron Ebell, who directs energy and global warming policy for CEI, said the fact that Gore feels compelled to run such an elaborate ad campaign highlights the extent to which his conservation message has failed to resonate with the American public. “He’s spending a hundred million dollars to convince the American people to make sacrifices that he and his elite friends are not willing to make,” Ebell said, adding that while many Americans may now blame humans for causing climate change, “the American people are not there with other alarmists” when it comes to supporting deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

John Podesta, president of the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, said the fact that independent groups are already advertising on the issue underscores how much more politically relevant climate change is in the 2008 election, especially because Congress is unlikely to send a bill to Bush for signing this year. It is unclear whether the Senate has 60 votes to pass a cap-and-trade bill this summer, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee has yet to produce a companion climate bill.

“This will be played out on the candidate level, but also among an array of parties who have a stake in the outcome,” Podesta said. “Without presidential leadership, you’re left with a regional division and a partisan division [in Congress] that’s likely to produce movement, but not the bold kind of change that’s needed. You need a president for that.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/30/AR2008033001880_pf.html

Bethpage man, 80, arrested in war protest

Don Zirkel of Bethpage poses for a portrait inside his home located at 150 Sunny Lane. He claims to have been detained after an incident in Smithtown Mall because the shirt he was wearing expresses his sentiment for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. (Photo by James A. Escher / March 31, 2008)

Among the many milestones in Don Zirkel’s life — serving in the Army Army, editing The Tablet, the Diocese of Brooklyn’s newspaper, and working in the state Division of Human Rights under Gov. Mario Cuomo — perhaps the most famous will now be his arrest at the food court in Smith Haven Mall.

“Eighty years, and I have never been arrested before for fighting injustice,” Zirkel, of Bethpage, said yesterday.

On Saturday, Zirkel, 80, was at an anti-war rally outside the mall in Lake Grove, wearing a white T-shirt splotched with red and emblazoned with a simple message about the fatalities of the Iraq war: “4,000 troops, 1 million Iraqis dead. Enough.”

Zirkel said he was at the rally to support the anti-war protesters. “I was an encourager. I was an affirmer,” he said.

During the rally, Zirkel and his wife went into the mall’s food court for coffee and French fries. After he declined mall security’s request to either turn the T-shirt inside out or leave, he said police put him in a wheelchair and escorted him from the mall. Suffolk police charged him with criminal trespassing and resisting arrest. He was released on bail and is due to be arraigned May 22in Central Islip.

Police also said Zirkel was passing out leaflets at the mall, a charge he disputes. Mall officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.

“I’m being punished for six words that spoke the truth. That’s insanity. War is insanity,” said Zirkel, who said his nephew recently returned from active duty in Iraq.

“I’m wearing the T-shirt again,” he added.

Though Zirkel says this is his first brush with the law, he has led a life of what he calls “social action,” most notably through his involvement with the Roman Catholic church.

Born in Ozone Park, Queens, to a perfumer and a homemaker, Zirkel attended a Bay Shore seminary but decided that he did not want to become a priest; instead, he married his childhood sweetheart.

Zirkel said he served in the Army during the Korean War as a corporal and chaplain’s assistant, though he was not deployed. After he was discharged, Zirkel attended St. John’s University, earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and theology.

Zirkel began reporting for The Tablet before he was drafted, and after he graduated from St. John’s, the job turned into a journalism career. As editor of the paper, he covered some of Catholicism’s biggest shifts and challenges in the era of Vatican II.

He left the newspaper after 37 years in 1985, ready for a change, but not for retirement.

During his years covering local Catholic events, Zirkel befriended a Queens lawyer, Mario Cuomo, who by then had become governor. Zirkel sent his resume to Cuomo, who hired him as spokesman for the state Division of Human Rights. “It was right up my alley,” Zirkel said.

He worked there for seven years, followed by a stint as a speechwriter and public relations representative for the Center for Developmental Disabilities in Woodbury, before retiring for good in 1992.

Zirkel also served as deacon for Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church in Wyandanch, which last year suffered a fire that destroyed its rectory.

He began protesting the Iraq war “when the pope sent a cardinal to see President Bush and tell him it’s an immoral war, which I 100 percent agree with,” Zirkel said.

“There are people my age getting killed over there,” he said, referring to Iraqi civilians

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-lizirk0331,0,2154627.story

UN Could Lead New 9/11 Investigation, Says Japanese MP

Japanese member of Parliament Yukihisa Fujita told the Alex Jones Show yesterday that a potential new investigation of the 9/11 cover-up could be led by global parliamentarians he has been in contact with, or even by the United Nations itself.

Fujita, an MP for the Japanese Democratic Party, and a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet (national legislature), presented evidence which contradicted the official 9/11 story during a widely publicized Japanese Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee meeting in January of this year.

Following Fujita’s presentation in the Japanese Diet, he also took part in a 9/11 truth conference at the EU Parliament in Brussels on February 26th which was hosted by Italian MEP Giullietto Chiesa (both presentations can be viewed at the end of this article).

“This is something Parliamentarians of various countries could ask – I was in Europe meeting with European MP’s and they are also thinking about asking the UN to investigate, so these kind of efforts need to be done internationally,” said Fujita, adding that he had visited eleven different European countries in an attempt to garner support for the move.

Fujita said the reaction to his presentation of the evidence during a session of the Japanese Parliament was encouraging, adding that several members of his party were already aware of some of the issues surrounding the incredulity of the official story.

The Japanese MP said that he first began researching 9/11 around two years ago after watching documentaries and looking at evidence online.

“At the beginning I thought I couldn’t believe, this can’t be true, but then last year when I heard more about various facts and photos of the collapse of the seven building (WTC 7) and the put options conducted before 9/11 – I began to see that there was serious evidence that a cover-up might have been involved,” Fujita told the Alex Jones Show.

The MP personally visited the former President of Germany’s Bundesbank (presumably Ernst Welteke), who admitted that suspicious insider trading on American and United Airlines did take place immediately before 9/11.

Fujita said the deaths of 24 Japanese citizens during as a result of the attack in New York spurred him to ask why no cause of death had been properly ascertained by the Japanese government as would be routine, and why no DNA records had been recovered.

Fujita said he was currently engaged in a back and forth question and answer process with the Japanese Prime Minister in an attempt to get questions about 9/11 answered.

The MP said that people had warned him to be careful about asking questions about 9/11 because it could put his life in danger.

Fujita will today report back on his meetings in Europe and Sydney to fellow members of his party in an attempt to achieve further momentum in attaining consensus for a comprehensive investigation of 9/11 led by independent global Parliamentarians and not by Bush administration cronies, as was the case with the 9/11 Commission.

 http://prisonplanet.com/articles/march2008/033108_un_investigation.htm

 

 

CIA and Google Team Up Again For More Spying

Google is supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies who are in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information.

Google is selling storage and data searching equipment to the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies, who have come together to build a huge internal government intranet.

Google is also providing the search features for a private Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia.

“We are a very small group, and even a lot of people in the federal government don’t know that we exist,” said Mike Bradshaw, who leads Google’s federal government sales team and its 18 employees, yesterday to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The government supply arm of Google has also reportedly entered into a number of other contracts, details of which it says it cannot share.

Google’s partnership with the intelligence network is not new. As we reported in late 2006, An ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele has claimed sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground

Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Steele elaborated on previous revelations by making it known that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its very inception. Steele named Google’s CIA point man as Dr. Rick Steinheiser, of the Office of Research and Development.

“I think Google took money from the CIA when it was poor and it was starting up and unfortunately our system right now floods money into spying and other illegal and largely unethical activities, and it doesn’t fund what I call the open source world,” said Steele, citing “trusted individuals” as his sources for the claim.

“They’ve been together for quite a while,” added Steele.

Late last year, new programs of internet monitoring were announced by a freshly created department branch of Homeland Security called the National Applications Office

“Mr. Chertoff also plans soon to unveil a cyber-security strategy, part of an estimated $15 billion, multiyear program designed to protect the nation’s Internet infrastructure. The program has been shrouded in secrecy for months and has also prompted privacy concerns on Capitol Hill because it involves government protection of domestic computer networks.” The Wall Street Journal wrote.

Essentially the program allows the DHS to regulate and control access to the internet in the name of “protecting” national security.

The news came on the back of separate revelations that another military spy agency, the NSA has increasing control over SSL, now called Transport Layer Security, the cryptographic protocol that provides secure communications on the internet for web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers.

In other words the agency is capable of intercepting and reading your emails and instant messages in real time.

Earlier this year came the announcement that US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a “walk in the park”.

The plan would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search.

Recently, the lawyer for an AT&T engineer has alleged that “within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans” That is BEFORE 9/11, before the nation was embroiled in the freedom stripping exercise commonly known as the “war on terror” had even begun.

Earlier this year, CNET reported that both Google and Microsoft refused to say if they have provided users private data to the federal government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the warrantless wiretapping program.

We have also previously reported on a vast intelligence program, being overseen by the FBI, which is to establish a global biometric database known as “Server in the Sky” that will collate and provide an “International Information Consortium” with access to the biometric measurements and personal information of citizens of the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand in the name of fighting the “war on terror”.

After 9/11 the work of 16 different intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the giant National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on international communications, as well as the Energy Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration was centralized under the office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Over decades we have witnessed the evolution of Government surveillance programs and information databases targeting citizens. We are now witnessing the centralization of this vast control grid Panopticon beyond our own borders. borders.
http://www.infowars.net/articles/march2008/310308Google.htm

Mike Gravel CNN interview march 30 2008