Interview with Biden: Bush eroded Americans' rights

In an exclusive interview of Sen. Joseph Biden by Frank Levine, published October 19, 2008, just prior to the November election, the vice-presidential candidate promised that the U.S. Constitution will once again protect the rights of all.

By Frank Levine
Roswell Daily Record

In an exclusive interview with the Roswell Daily Record, vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Biden, (D-Del.), said that one of the first items on his agenda in a Barack Obama administration will be to restore Constitutional rights - "including every American's right to privacy and protection against unwarranted government intrusions" - eroded, he said, during the current Bush administration, often under the pretense of protecting national security.

"I will keep the government out of our lives, out of our homes, and off our telephones," said Biden, condemning the current level of governmental access to the private lives of millions of Americans. "I will restore our Fourth Amendment rights that have been either attacked or diluted during the Bush administration."

He said the restoration of Constitutional rights to Americans will not limit the country's effectiveness or collective resolve in fighting the current war on international terrorism.

As one of the longest and most bitterly contested presidential campaigns nears its end, Biden took a few minutes in a telephone interview Friday to focus on some of the issues that have been all but ignored in the day-to-day media coverage of the candidates.

There was just one light-hearted mention of "Joe the Plumber" during the interview.

Biden, who has been in the U.S. Senate since 1972, knows Washington well, and fully understands the ebb and flow of political power.

Top on his administration agenda, and also linked to the Constitution, would be to restore balance between the three branches of government, by dismantling the "unitary executive" theory promulgated by the current administration that has, according to Biden, severely limited congressional or judicial intervention in the exercise of near absolute presidential power.

"The current president uses it (unitary executive power) to tap your phone, hold secret hearings, hold people without trial indefinitely, and undermine the foundation of our laws through the elimination of habeas corpus," he said. "There are no restraints on that power, as it is currently applied."

Habeas corpus is the long-standing judicial principal that entitles a criminal defendant the right to demand the state "produce the body" of evidence that would justify a defendant's incarceration. Without it, a defendant must be freed.

Under the current administration, Biden said, defendants can be held indefinitely without charge and with no recourse, "simply on the president's say so."

Officially, the unitary executive theory relies on the so-called "Vesting Clause" in Article II of the Constitution that states, in part: "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." The theory is more understood when the clause is considered in conjunction with the so-called "Take Care clause that gives the president the right to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

This interpretation, according to Biden and others, has strictly proscribed the powers of the Congress and Judicial branches of government in recent years, giving the president powers heretofore unseen - with a few exceptions during time of war that were later nullified by judicial or executive review.

Biden, who is on a whirlwind campaign tour of New Mexico, also visited Mesilla, Friday, where he reportedly warned supporters that the presidential campaign is likely to get ugly in its final days prior to the Nov. 4 election.

During his wide-ranging interview with the Daily Record, Biden focused on the bread and butter issues of the Obama campaign, including health care, clean energy and the war in Iraq.

He said that new ways must be found to diminish our country's dependence on foreign oil, especially when the United States produces only 4 percent of the world's oil production, yet consumes 25 percent.

"Of course we must still drill for oil," he said, "but we must also seek a rational energy policy that develops alternative sources of energy."

He said that a major investment, of up to $15 billion "up front" is initially required to explore and develop alternatives.

Earlier, Biden told a massive crowd in Mesilla, "We are going to reclaim our place in the world. We will end this war in Iraq. We will end it responsibly."

Biden was born in Scranton, Pa., and lived there for 10 years prior to moving to Delaware. He was first elected to the Senate in 1972, and became the fifth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was re-elected to the Senate five more times. He is current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"I know what is planned as to the draw down of forces in Iraq," he said. "The plan mirrors almost exactly what Barack has been saying from the beginning."

Drug violence may jump border

The following article was published in the Roswell Daily Record on September 3, 2008.



By Frank Levine

The horrific violence exploding less than three-hours away from Roswell in Mexico is on the verge of jumping the border and spreading north - threatening not only innocent civilians, but area law enforcement officers as well, according to studies by the National Drug Intelligence Center and a prominent private sector intelligence source.

In recent weeks, dozens of Mexican law enforcement officers have been killed and tortured by alleged members of drug cartels fighting for control of drug transit points into the United States - especially in the Ciudad Juarez sector, El Paso's proverbial "sister city."

Two weeks ago, there were 40 homicides in Juarez, raising to more than 900 homicides in the city since the beginning of the year, according to Mexican government officials and news reports.

Already there are signs that the drug war in Mexico is spilling across the border. Killings and kidnappings, especially along Texas' I-35 corridor, from Laredo to Dallas, and in the Phoenix area, have been linked to cartels in recent years, but the latest threats appear to represent more than isolated incidents and are focused near the Texas-New Mexico border areas in what the NDIC describes as a "High Intensity Drug Transportation Area."

Last week, The Associated Press reported that the El Paso Police Department had received credible information that Mexican drug cartels have authorized their members to conduct targeted killings in the United States. In response, Customs and Border Protection agents were put on high alert and security has been stepped up all along the border, according to Stratfor.com, a prominent online publisher of geopolitical intelligence, based in Austin, Texas.

Wednesday, however, an El Paso police spokesman said that the original threat story had been blown out of proportion, and was based on an unverified intelligence shared among law enforcement agencies "that fell into the wrong hands," and that people in New Mexico and the surrounding area should not be overly concerned.

His view, however, is becoming more and more isolated.

In June, the AP reported that 15 individuals, including U.S. law enforcement officials had been targeted in West Texas and New Mexico.

"Attacks ordered by Mexican drug cartels are nothing new," according to an Aug. 26 Stratfor analysis. "A team of cartel hit men carried out a tactical assault conducted on a home in the Phoenix metro area June 23, gunning down a Jamaican with ties to the drug trade. On Dec. 14, 2007, four men carried out a home invasion in Tucson, Ariz., when they entered a Border Patrol agent's home, firing at him in what appeared to be an attempted assassination. The Border Patrol agent returned fire, however, causing the four men to flee. These particular incidents did not receive - or perhaps merit - much response from the media or federal government. By contrast, the increased publicity following the El Paso warning changes the dynamic."

In an April 11 situation report, the NDIC stated that Mexican "drug trafficking organizations," or DTOs, "operate in at least 195 cities throughout the United States and in an additional 129 cities." law enforcement officials reported the presence of Mexican DTOs with affiliations to at least one of the four principal Mexican drug cartels that supply illicit drugs to U.S. markets - Federation, Gulf Coast, Juarez and Tijuana cartels.

Much of the current violence in northern Mexico, especially in the Juarez area, has been attributed to a bloody turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels.

The threat to U.S. law enforcement is significant, when considering that elements within the cartels have heavily armed paramilitary units consisting of former Mexican army soldiers, some of whom were trained in special operations - often by their U.S. Army counterparts at Ft. Benning, Ga.

According to the NDIC report, New Mexico has four cities clearly identified with Mexican drug cartels. They include Albuquerque and Columbus, Deming and Las Cruces; all but Albuquerque identified with the Federation. The report did not identify Albuquerque with a specific cartel, possibly because more than one operates in the area.

Although Roswell was not mentioned in the report, Highway 285 traversing southeastern New Mexico, was noted in a separate NDIC report as a part of "high intensity drug trafficking network."

According to last week's Stratfor analysis, money is driving the violence northward into the U.S., especially in the so-called "front-line" border states, including New Mexico.

" ... There are economic incentives for the cartels to extend their operations into the United States. With those incentives comes intercartel competition," the Stratfor analysis said, "and with that competition comes pressure on U.S. local, state and, ultimately, government and police functions. Were that to happen, the global implications obviously would be stunning ..."

In its separate "2008 Drug Market Analysis," the NDIC clearly stated, "This (cartel) violence could spill into the HIDTA region, since DTOs may more readily confront law enforcement officers in the United States who seek to disrupt these DTOs' smuggling operations. Violence has extended into the HIDTA region in the past when traffickers felt pressure from U.S. law enforcement. For example, a number of armed encounters between Mexican traffickers and U.S. law enforcement personnel occurred on the U.S. side of the border in 2006.

The report continued: "On two separate occasions heavily armed units of traffickers appeared on the banks of the Rio Grande River east of El Paso during smuggling attempts, preventing law enforcement officers from pursuing couriers, who fled across the border into Mexico.

"Although these confrontations did not escalate into violent shoot-outs, U.S. law enforcement officers were prevented from apprehending drug couriers because of the manpower and cache of weapons possessed by Mexican traffickers. It is quite likely that this type of violence will escalate because DTOs are increasingly contending with drug enforcement operations in Mexico as well as the United States."