Peter Hendrickson wrote:

At 11:31 PM 11/15/1996, Adam Shostack wrote:

...

So, if 'anonymous Senator' came out for legalization, it would be declared that it was Kennedy, source of all Liberal Evil. Good policy comes from leaders standing up and leading. Since they don't, I'm a crypto-anarchist. To try and help the Congress become more effective is not in anyones interest, except that class of person who makes their living off the workings of government. There are lots of variations on the argument that politics is from the greek poly, meaning many, and ticks, a small bloodsucking animal. My interest in creating new, consensual realities is that I don't want to be forced to care about the congress.

I may have misunderstood you, but when you suggested "disallowing" Congressmen to use anonymity, it did not sound consensual. Even blood sucking parasites should be allowed to benefit from cryptoanarchy. I for one, would be most interested in what Congressmen would have to say if they knew their words could in no way be traced back to them. I suspect that there are a lot of basketcases in Congress and that this would become clear from the horrible things they would have to say when they were sure nobody was looking.

Go back to circa 1974-1976, and the Hart-Schweiker (spelling?) report. Gary Hart telling about the things he saw in the intelligence reports, etc., and how scary they were. Fast-forward to Hart's outing in his Presidential bid, and that confirms what happens when they can't say things publicly. I'm only quoting (minimally) one instance here - there are *tons* of such admissions on the part of high-ranking people, but they're mostly forgotten due to the avalanche of disinformation dumped on the people by the big media every day. Interesting how many people in the U.S., from the very top on down, know quite a bit of the conspiracy to murder the Kennedys and Dr. King, but some of the "intellectuals" on this very list can't handle the reality of that, so they pretend it never happened. Or, as Laugh-In said back in the late 1960's, "In a few years, it'll be 'what assassination?'".