WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, today held an oversight hearing on reforming the state secrets evidentiary privilege.  The state secrets privilege allows the government to prevent public disclosure of testimony and materials in litigation if their disclosure would reveal information damaging to national security.

“When used properly, the state secrets privilege protects vital national security interests,” said Rep. Nadler.  “However, in recent years, the state secrets privilege has been expanded to not only produce arguably unfair results by preventing disclosure of specific items of evidence but also has been used to block litigation altogether and prevent any examination of challenged government activity.  We need to consider how we can reform the system to ensure that only truly sensitive information is kept secret.”

The hard times of winter are here. There are people living on the streets and under bridges because our government has failed. Should the average person complain or stay silent as not to be singled out by abusive government agents. These Gov. agents are not bad people but it is a natural act to harm those that correct what is perceived to be the right way. Gov. agents do not like to be told what to do. The people grant HUD and different Gov agencies public money to do a job. Is it possible to spend the money in a more efficient manner? Can we solve or control homelessness by using the money in a more practical manner? Should homeless people be allowed to tent on public land? Does the public realize that 25 percent of the homeless are disabled Veterans. Disabled because of where these hero’s have been and what they have seen. Can we ignore or limit the use of public land or money to help these people in hard times.

Here’s your question, class:

In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.

Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.

Mr. Bush said, “In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams. And a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.”

So how much educational dreaming will $20 buy?

-George Bush’s alma mater, Phillips Andover Academy, tells us their annual tuition is $37,200. The $20 “Pell Grant for Kids,” as the White House calls it, will buy a poor kid about 35 minutes of this educational dream. So they’ll have to wake up quickly.

Early in the morning of October 22nd last fall several hundred people quietly arrived on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Many of us were organized into affinity groups. There was the anti-capitalist bike block. There were Iraq Veterans Against the War. There was the group of people dressed in polar bear costumes agitating through a portable sound system. There were the young people from Students for a Democratic Society in their yellow Campus Climate Challenge t-shirts. There was the Separate Oil and State group. And there were Code Pinkers, some wearing giant bobble-heads of Cheney, Bush and Rice.

We were united behind the short but clear slogan: No War, No Warming!

*End the war for oil in Iraq and all future wars for oil and natural gas.

*End the addiction to oil--and coal and natural gas--that are driving the heating of the earth, the climate disruption which will inevitably lead to more and more wars as our ecosystem and economies are devastated.

*Shift government resources--our tax money--from support of fossil fuels to support of a deep- and wide-ranging, jobs-creating, clean energy revolution