There are "Laws" and then There are "Laws"

Supposedly humanity pulled itself up from the swamp by forming law-based societies, i.e. collective living guided by public law. But the US has moved into a brave new world where "laws" aren't public, they are secret!


The full text of Senator Wyden's speech is available here.

In this video Oregon Senator Ron Wyden gives a very useful review of illegal activities by intelligence agencies of the US. Watch the first ten minutes to learn some important history.

I especially appreciate this bit from his speech at 11:30:

When laws are secretly reinterpreted behind closed doors by a small number of government officials and there is no public scrutiny and no public debate you are certainly more likely to end up with interpretations of the law that go well beyond the boundaries of what the American public are willing to accept.

And at 14:00:

I don't believe the law should ever be kept secret. Voters have a right and a need to know what the law says and what their government thinks the text of the law means. And that's essential so the American people can decide whether the law is appropriately written and they are in a position to ratify or reject the decisions their elected representatives make on their behalf.

Sadly, the US government has just passed the Patriot Act where the law is in fact not completely public and the public has no right to know how the government "interprets" the law. The people of the US are governed by a cabal that acts in secrecy!

Why is the above such a "big deal". Well, look at this bit from Washington's Blog:

The "National Security" Apparatus Has Been Hijacked to Serve the Needs of Big Business

As I noted yesterday:

Claims of "national security" are ... used to keep basic financial information - such as who got bailout money - secret. That might not bode for particularly warm and friendly treatment for someone persistently demanding the release of such information.

I gave the following two examples:

Reuters noted in January:

U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.

And Business Week wrote on May 23, 2006:

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations

Further evidence comes from the Department of Homeland Security's involvement in requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

But since the Obama government believes that citizens have no right to know what the laws say, nobody knows just how much "terrorism" laws are being used to protect fraud on Wall Street. And that is only one small example of the corruption possible when a government decides its own people have no right to know what are the laws that "govern" them.