A while ago I started to just save all the URLs to stories about how bad things are getting in this country, not really meaning to do anything with them other than gather them and keep them as reference as things spiraled downwards. With the Democratic takeover of the Legislature, I feel it is time to post them to remind everyone how much work there is to do if we want to get our country back on track and stop our collision course with becoming a police state. This is not a complete of exhaustive list, though it is longer than I wish it were.

• 9/11 Toxic Dust Whistleblower Raided By SWAT Team: Ground zero hero Major Mike McCormack says he was deliberately targeted for helping release documents on EPA government cover-up.
  
• U.S. Holds 14,000 in Secret Prisons: In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.
• President Bush is urging Congress to let the CIA keep using “alternative” interrogation procedures — which include, according to published accounts, forcing prisoners to stand for 40 hours, depriving them of sleep and use of the “cold cell,” in which the prisoner is left naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and doused with cold water.
• Congress Considering Strip Searching Students: The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006 (HR 5295) is a sloppily written bill that would require any school receiving federal funding (essentially every public school) to adopt policies allowing teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrantless searches of every student, at any time, for essentially any reason they want
• ACLU Says New Specter-Cheney NSA Bill Provides Sham Oversight, Says Congress Must Be Independent of the Executive: The American Civil Liberties Union today strongly rebuked new legislation offered by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) that would give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “optional” review over the National Security Agency’s controversial program to spy on Americans.
• House Votes for 700-Mile Fence:The House voted 283-138 on Thursday to construct more than 700 miles of two-layered fencing along the porous Southwest border.
• There is so much political corruption on Capitol Hill that the FBI has had to triple the number of squads investigating lobbyists, lawmakers and influence peddlers.
• Bush’s Housing Secretary Told Staff To Award Contracts To Political Allies: In May, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson told a group of minority buisness people that he canceled a government contract because the contractor criticized President Bush.
• The Bush administration asked an appeals court Thursday to step in immediately and dismiss a lawsuit over the government’s warrantless eavesdropping program, calling a lower judge’s ruling dangerous and wrong.
• Bush Offers Himself Amnesty for Human Rights Crimes: The United States is following the lead of “dirty war” nations, such as Argentina and Chile, in enacting what amounts to an amnesty law protecting U.S. government operatives, apparently up to and including President George W. Bush, who have committed or are responsible for human rights crimes.
• The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that not only authorizes, but extends, US warrentless wiretapping. No accountability. No oversight. No definition of ‘terrorist’. No record of who voted for what.
• Once President Bush signed the new law on military tribunals, administration officials and Republican leaders in Congress wasted no time giving Americans a taste of the new order created by this unconstitutional act.
• Possibly actually 35,000 in US secret prisons, and only 5% may have anything to do with terrorism.
• CIA admits existence of interrogation directives: The CIA has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents — including a directive signed by President Bush — that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terrorism suspects.

Every single one of these stories is an outrage, and there are so many more out there. We are in outrage overload in this country- there’s too much evil going on to be able to process and fight it all. I will continue to collect and add links to the pile, but please realize that things are not good right now, and we as Americans cannot allow OUR country, the land of the free, to be hijacked by religious fanatics (Bush et al.). Add any links you have to the pile.