To: Members & Friends of To The Point
From:  Dr. Jack Wheeler

 I would like to cordially invite you to attend our To The Point Summer Rendezvous to be held in Colorado Springs, Colorado from Friday August 24^th to Sunday August 26^th.

Our Rendezvous in Las Vegas last February was such a success that no one wanted to wait an entire year for another.  

This is not a conference.  It is a rendezvous, a gathering of members of To The Point for the purpose of their spending time with each other.  It is an opportunity for TTPers to meet and talk with me - and vice versa! - and with other TTP contributors such as Joel Wade, Jack Kelly, and Dagny D'Anconia.

In other words, this is a family affair, a gathering of the TTP Family.  If you were at the Vegas Rendezvous, you know what I mean.  TTPers share a common bond, a set of shared values that makes their being together intensely enjoyable. 

That's the best description I can give for what you'll experience at the Summer Rendezvous:  intensely enjoyable.

To make this possible is taking a lot of effort on the part of To The Point's General Manager, Miko Reyes, and a number of TTPers who have so kindly volunteered to assist him.

That's because I'm writing this from Antanananrivo (Tana for short), the capital of Madagascar.  So Miko has to try and put everything together while I'm in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  That's not easy.

Like the Vegas Rendezvous, this is "Dutch Treat" where everyone pays their own costs and nothing is added on.  There will be range of places to stay from costly (like the Broadmoor) to not (like the Best Western).  Whatever the costs are for dinners and activities, we'll all share.

We'll start with a reception and dinner Friday evening the 24^th.  A "Pre-Rendezvous" tour of the Air Force Academy that afternoon may be arranged.

Saturday, we'll hike and picnic in the spectacular and nearby Garden of the Gods.  Then we'll gather again for another evening of dinner and friends.

After Sunday brunch, we'll head back home, our heads overloaded with new perspectives and heightened grasp of what is going on in our world - and with friendships you'll treasure.

To participate in the Summer Rendezvous, please contact Miko immediately at info@tothepointnews.com.

Only fifty - 50 - TTPers may attend.  That's right, just 50.

I should mention that all those attending will receive a free one-year To The Point membership, or have their current membership extended one full year.

I really hope I see you at our Summer Rendezvous.  Please let Miko know if you can join us.

Jack Wheeler

Franz Kafka couldn't make this up.  Ollie North is doing his best to see that his Sandinista foe, Daniel Ortega, responsible for the Communist tyranny in the 1980s that took so many lives of his (and my) Contra friends, will be elected president of Nicaragua this Sunday, November 5th.

He's not doing it on purpose.  Just like Democrats who are so filled with Bush-hatred they will support anything that hurts Bush even if it hurts America, Ollie is so filled with State Department-hatred that it is blinding him to what he is doing.

I know it's hard to believe - and that Foggy Bottom has gotten something right for once adds to the Kafkaesque weirdness.

The story begins in 1997....

What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.

As a Whistleblower like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

I feel a kinship with Snowden: he is essentially the equivalent of me. He saw the surveillance state from within and saw how far it's gone. The government has a pathological incentive to collect more and more and more; they just can't help themselves - they have an insatiable hoarding complex.

Since the government unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11, it has been eating our democracy alive from the inside out. There's no room in a democracy for this kind of secrecy: it's anathema to our form of a constitutional republic, which was born out of the struggle to free ourselves from the abuse of such powers, which led to the American Revolution.

That is what's at stake here: to an NSA with these unwarranted powers, we're all potentially guilty; we're all potential suspects until we prove otherwise. That is what happens when the government has all the data. 

[This was originally in To The Point for July 4, 2004. This is the version for 2007.  We at To The Point wish all of you an exceedingly happy Fourth of July.]

July 4th is Freedom's Birthday. My suggestion is, amidst the fireworks and barbeques and flag-waving fun - all of which are great - that you take the time to feel good about America.

You travel around the world and you see the remnants of history's great civilizations. You walk through the preserved wreckage of Rome's Imperial Forum or the Acropolis of Ancient Athens and you wonder -- what was it really like to be here when these civilizations were at their peak? You can do that today in Washington DC -- or your hometown.

We Americans are privileged to live in one of history's supreme moments. We Americans are participants in one of history's greatest civilizations in its prime.

Someday in some future epoch, history will have moved on, and there will be distant centuries between that time and the American Era. People will then look upon America as we do upon ancient Egypt or Greece, and will do so with same wonder and awe.

I suggest you look upon America with that wonder and awe now.

We are happy to announce a new feature for To The Point.

A lot of you have expressed frustration that they could not easily forward a Members Only article to their friends.  There is an email function, but to access an emailed article, you had to be a TTP member yourself.  The only other way was to copy and paste an article into the text body of an email message.

Our problem was that an emailed link to one article in To The Point would open up access to the entire site.  We solved this with software providing a "one-time use" for just that article.

Here's how it works.  All TTP articles have two small icons in the top right corner, one for Print, one for Email.  For any article you'd like to email to a friend or friends, just click on the icon and enter your friend(s) email address(es).  Add your name, address, and whatever message subject you want.  Push send.  That's it.

Your friend will get a link which will bring up the article on the To The Point webpage when he clicks it.  Your friend has full access to that article - but only that article.  He or she is in the site for just this "one-time use."

Hopefully, they will benefit so much from the article they will be persuaded to subscribe themselves!

But there's no sales pitch attached, just the article itself.  So many of you have asked for this - wanting to share the wealth of To The Point - and now we can oblige.  So feel free to forward away!