The U.S. Executions of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2014 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 To understand the full context of the U.S. executions of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi Jr. (see part 1), it is necessary to first do a broad survey of American history. We begin with the Constitution, the document that brought the federal government into existence. That document set forth the powers that the federal government would be permitted to exercise. If a power wasn’t enumerated, the federal government wasn’t authorized to exercise it. Why did the Framers deem it necessary to limit the powers of federal officials to those enumerated in the Constitution? It was because the American people didn’t trust governmental officials with unlimited power. They believed that the biggest threat to people’s freedom and well-being lay with their own government. If the Constitution had purported to bring into existence a federal government of unlimited powers, it would never have been ...
The Cuban Embargo Is an Attack on both Cubans and Americans by Jacob G. Hornberger October 20, 2014 In its October 11 Sunday edition, the New York Times published an editorial calling for the lifting of the 45-year-old Cold War-era economic embargo against Cuba. The Times pointed out, Over the decades, it became clear to many American policy makers that the embargo was an utter failure. But any proposal to end the embargo angered Cuban-American voters, a constituency that has had an outsize role in national elections. Among those who got upset this time by the proposal to lift the embargo was Robert Menendez, the senior senator from New Jersey and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who wrote a letter of objection to the editor. Mendendez says that President Obama shouldn’t “waste finite diplomatic resources on a country that abuses human rights and diametrically opposes our democratic ideals, at a time when the Islamic State is waging brutal war and Russia continues to undermine all international norms through its continuing invasion of Ukraine.” What “diplomatic resources” is ...
Imagine Life Without the First Amendment by Jacob G. Hornberger October 2, 2014 One of the most pervasive myths within the United States is that our rights come from the U.S. Constitution. Even the U.S. Supreme Court subscribes to this myth whenever it searches the Constitution to determine whether people have a certain right or not. Actually, as Thomas Jefferson observed in the Declaration of Independence, people’s rights are inherent to human beings. They are natural and God-given. They preexist government. That is, even if the Constitution had been rejected by the American people — even if the federal government had never been brought into existence — people would still have such fundamental rights as life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Many years ago, I was giving a lecture to an assembly of students at a local high school here in Virginia. The students were shocked when I pointed out that there is no constitutional right to free speech and freedom of the press. They laughed and scoffed at such a ridiculous ...
The U.S. Executions of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2014 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 In 1999, in response to an order issued by Bill Clinton to U.S. departments and agencies to release long-secret records of the U.S. national-security state relating to the 1973 military coup in Chile, the U.S. State Department released a memo ...
National Security, Patriotism, and Treason by Jacob G. Hornberger September 23, 2014 Ever since the post-World War II grafting of the national-security apparatus onto America's governmental structure, the assumption of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA has been that Americans who oppose national-security state policies and practices are “subversives” or even traitors. We experienced this phenomenon throughout the Cold War. U.S. officials were spying on Americans who believed in communism or ...
Altered History: The FFF Video Project on the Autopsy of John F. Kennedy by Jacob G. Hornberger September 19, 2014 This week The Future of Freedom Foundation launches a video presentation entitled “Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence,” by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s and later authored a five-volume book on the assassination of John F. Kennedy entitled
Remembering the Criminal Conviction of the Director of the CIA by Jacob G. Hornberger September 12, 2014 With yesterday marking the 41st anniversary of the U.S.-supported military coup in Chile, which resulted in the kidnapping, detention, rapes, torture, disappearances, and murders of thousands of innocent people, we would be remiss if we failed to commemorate the criminal conviction of Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA, for lying to Congress about the CIA’s role in ...
U.S. Officials Were Partners in Pinochet’s Kidnappings, Rapes, Torture, and Murders by Jacob G. Hornberger September 11, 2014 REMINDER: Our Upcoming One-Day Blockbuster Conference on October 18 at Columbia University in New York City. Don't be caught short. Sign up now because space is limited. Admission price: FREE. Today marks the 41st anniversary of the military coup in Chile, a coup in which Chilean military personnel under the command of Army General Augusto Pinochet brutally raped ...
Madison and Goering on ISIS by Jacob G. Hornberger September 9, 2014 REMINDER: Our Upcoming One-Day Blockbuster Conference on October 18 at Columbia University in New York City. Don't be caught short. Sign up now because space is limited. Admission price: FREE. Let’s consider what James Madison and Herman Goering, two historical figures on opposite sides of the ideological scale, had to say about ISIS: Let’s start with Madison and break ...
Welcome to Military America by Jacob G. Hornberger August 20, 2014 Perhaps it’s finally dawning on many Americans the adverse effect that the national-security state apparatus, which was grafted onto America’s governmental system after World War II, has had on American society. It’s taken the events in Ferguson, Missouri, to cause people to see what a militarized society looks like. We’ve seen the blowback that has come with U.S. imperialist and ...
What If the Military or CIA Had Killed Mike Brown? by Jacob G. Hornberger August 19, 2014 While the facts surrounding the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, must still be determined, one thing is clear: If it turns out that the killing was not justified, the law dictates that he is subject to being criminally indicted and also to being sued in a civil action for wrongful death by Brown’s survivors. Not so, however, ...
Embracing Communists by Jacob G. Hornberger August 18, 2014 For some 45 years, the U.S. national-security state justified its existence and its Cold War antics based on the “communist threat” that the United States was supposedly facing. If the United States failed to maintain an enormous standing army and a CIA, the nation would almost sure to fall into communist hands. Moreover, we were told, dark-side practices, such as ...
