GypsyWillett

Why this is important:

America is the land of the free- but if the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act is passed into law, that will very rapidly change.
The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act is being called the most traitorous act ever witnessed in the Senate, and the language of the bill is cleverly designed to make you think it doesn't apply to Americans, but toward the end of the bill it essentially says it can apply to Americans "if we want it to."
This bill, passed December 1st, 2011 in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a "battleground" upon which the U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate U.S. citizens with impunity.
If this is signed into law, it will shred the remaining tenants of the Bill of Rights and unleash upon America a total military dictatorship, complete with secret arrests, secret prisons, unlawful interrogations, indefinite detainment without ever being charged with a crime, the torture of Americans and even the "legitimate assassination" of U.S. citizens right here on American soil!
Once this becomes law, you have no rights whatsoever in America - no due process, no First Amendment speech rights, no right to remain silent, nothing.
-Mike Adams

From the page: "Letters to Santa: Heartbreaking requests among the predictable lists

By Petula Dvorak
Monday, Dec 13, 2010
Employment figures, economic indicators, stock prices - bah, humbug! Read some letters to Santa if you want to understand the Recession That Will Not Die.

There are letters from kids, hyped up on endless TV commercials and long histories of getting what they want, seeking entire Barbie ecosystems or absurdly expensive video game systems. And there are heartbreaking missives from those simply asking for a pair of shoes for a grandmother.

In my household, I began to worry for my child's soul about two weeks ago, when the "crismus list" being feverishly composed at my kitchen counter began taking on a Unabomber-like quality. My first-grader attacked this list with a ferocity and single-mindedness I had never imagined possible for his wiggly self.

Succinct, it is not.

Constantly revised and annotated, its items number roughly 37 as we embark on the 12 days of Christmas.

Not only are his desires written in florid detail, but he has helpfully provided Santa with model numbers and prices: "generl greevisis starfitr 8095 $49.99." (Translation: He wants a Lego spaceship called the General Grievous Starfighter. But no way in the world is Santa spending $49.99 on it.)

This is the child whose nightly homework sessions resemble prison interrogations, so torturous is it for him to write one sentence describing what Dolores the cat did in the book he read.

I was curious to see whether other children newly empowered with the skill of writing are equally gripped by such naked greed, despite numerous lectures about scaling back and lowering expectations this year.

So I called one of my mommy friends to ask about list-writing in her household.

When her 6-year-old sat down to the task, she was also told to write a list of gifts for others.

Good idea. Parenting jealousy began to creep in. Why didn't I think of that?

"So, what did her list look like?" I asked.

"Well," my friend hesitated, "she came up with just one thing. And was really proud that she narrowed it down to one."

"And? What was it?" I said, bracing for something about a sack of rice to feed a small village.

"A remote control," she said, exhaling. "To control the world."

It got better.

The mini-mastermind in a pink headband left out a letter in the missive, addressing her humble request to"Sata."

So when Mom gently suggested that she forgot an "N", the 6-year-old quickly added it on, thus appropriately asking "Satan" for a world dominance remote control.

Awesome.

I had to see more letters. So I called the U.S. Postal Service and asked whether I could sit in on the sorting when they go through the letters to Santa that come pouring in every December.

When I walked into the Brentwood postal facility in Northeast Washington, a woman working there handed me a pile of 11 letters. They were pretty predictable: requests for roller skates, shoes, Legos, baby dolls, bikes, "a toy horse with hair," iPods, "cumputers," Barbies, "a toilet seat for my aunt."

There was at least one poignant line about a mother: "Her bills is killing her." And there was that request for shoes for Grandma (size 7).

I sifted through them quickly and asked for more.

"That's it. As far as the ones written by kids," said Sharon Tennison, the local post office spokeswoman.

"What do you mean? What about all those?" I asked, pointing to stacks on two other desks.

"The rest we got were from adults," she said. "They started coming in August."

"Letters to Santa? From grown-ups?" I asked.

Nearly 300 letters sat on the other desks, written in neat print or loopy cursive script, detailing jobs lost and hungry children, addressed by adults to a man in a red suit who is apparently their last hope.

"I'm a single mom living in the D.C. General shelter with my kids," one letter began. It ended not with a request for toys or bikes or a remote control, but for clothes. And instead of model numbers and prices, she included her children's shoe, underwear and clothing sizes.

"I want them to know there is hope," she wrote.

They went on and on like this, hundreds of Hail Mary passes to Santa or the Postal Service or just anyone who might get the letters and read them. Some were optimistic enough to include addresses and names, should a secret Santa choose to respond.

Others were nothing more than handwritten prayers signed with a single name, letters in a bottle sent adrift. A last resort, or maybe just catharsis.

"We saw a few last year, but it was never like this," said one of the clerks who was sorting mail, shaking her head as she opened yet another one from a mother.

The story has been the same across the country, where big-city post offices are seeing more requests for food and clothing, rather than toys, and more parents are doing the asking.

For about 100 years, the Postal Service has had