Forever Remember Eleven September

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.  Benjamin Franklin

The Congressional response to Al Qaeda’s terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, was the Patriot Act.  On this day, we stepped onto a slippery slope leading toward what we claim to abhor.  Once, wiretapping required advance approval from a federal judge; now, it requires only that the President sign a National Security Letter.  What is frightening about this is that the president is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. 

The Constitutional separation of federal powers was intended to act as a counterweight to keep any branch of the federal government from becoming so powerful that it could avoid public scrutiny and accountability.  US legal tradition was that Congressional and Judicial oversight prevented secret, heavy-handed, and unconstitutional law enforcement from taking away our liberties.  This is how things were done in Hitler’s Germany, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

In the former Soviet Union, a written summons from the KGB or GRU gave Soviets laundry problems.  Here at home, a National Security Letter produces similar results.  The letters carry with them gag orders that criminalize discussing the matter with anyone.  These letters, served on communications service providers like phone companies and ISPs, allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens' private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review.

Without such oversight and review, the First Amendment’s guaranty of free speech is countermanded without the public authorizing a Constitutional amendment.  The Act’s provision that authorizes federal agents to seize any tangible thing such as emails, browsing histories, or library records effectively eliminates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable and warrantless seizures of our persons, houses, papers, and effects.

Libertarians worried that the PA’s nearly unlimited surveillance authority would lead to unlawful abuses by federal officials.  It did, and it was used to investigate non-terrorists' political dissent.  A 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Justice Department found 'widespread and serious abuse' of authority by the F.B.I. under the Patriot Act.  Many of those F.B.I. cases involved people with no clear connection to terrorism.

Prior to the Act’s re-authorization, some Senators proposed amending it so that the FBI would have to prove in advance—requiring authorities to establish probable cause—showing that their intended seizure is directly connected to terrorism.  However, Obama did not demand these protections on condition of signing it.  Conversely, Senator Ron Wyden reports that he has been secretly reinterpreting public laws and statutes to allow him to hide how the Act is currently interpreted.

Wyden wants to repeal the Act’s business-records provision because there is stark difference between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says.  Libertarians embrace a healthy mistrust of government that could be assuaged with transparency.  We recognize that something is amiss when government hides its activities from the governed.

As long as the Patriot Act remains focused on ordinary Americans rather than suspected terrorists, the terrorists -- if you’ll forgive the truism -- have indeed won.

It would be disrespectful to the thousands who died that sad September day to allow memories of that tragic event to justify refashioning the land of liberty into a corrupt totalitarian state.  The victims and their heirs deserve better, and so do we.

Forever remember eleven September.

We Must Watch the Watchers

In Clive Thompson’s WIRED article “Watching the Watchers,” the author addresses the growing popularity of sousveillance, which is the monitoring of events not by those above (surveiller in French) but by citizens, from below (sous-).  Since the Patriot Act ended the rule of law in America and brought with it the blight of totalitarianism, concerned libertarians have begun to ask quisnam vigilo vigilo or “who watches the watchers?” 

Increasingly, individual members of the public feel the need to participate.  There is an app for that; it is Bambuser.  It streams cell phone video directly to the Web.  In an online article by Becca Caddy, the author describes her interview with Hans Erickson, Bambuser’s CEO.  She asked him what sort of users his company had targeted.  He said,    

One of our founding members, Mans Adler, envisaged Bambuser as a global tool that would aid democracy, allowing anyone and everyone a medium to get their message heard.  During the recent Egyptian and Bahraini protests we saw a surge in broadcasts as demonstrators used Bambuser to stream personal videos from inside Tahrir square, Friday prayers and even funerals.

If ignorance is bliss, it is no doubt reassuring to believe that it simply cannot happen here.  Government oppression crushing civilian dissent happens in Tiananmen Square or Tahrir Square, not in Washington Square.  Guess again.  Freedoms to assemble peaceably and, through free political speech, to criticize the acts of government are the first liberties that totalitarians seize.  

Carlos Miller’s Website Photography is not a Crime chronicles a list of police departments and other government entities whose members believe that the public lacks the legal privilege of scrutinizing and criticizing their activities, especially when those activities might be extra-legal.  The extent to which the police have come to serve the interests of the state, rather than to serve and protect the public is alarming.  Voltaire observed that it is dangerous to be right when government is wrong.

When agents of the state hide what they are doing, they are generally up to no good.  When they arrange matters such that they are above the very law that they are sworn to enforce and are unaccountable to the people, the resulting form of government is totalitarian.  Other Constitutional guaranties that have disappeared under the PA are habeas corpus, or the right to force the state to justify holding citizens involuntary and the requirement that the state must demonstrate probable cause prior to arrest.

There are government surveillance systems in all 50 states, ostensibly to make the streets safer for the public; however, there is no safety if we are not safe from the police.  That someone can be arrested for the egregious crime of standing in her own front yard because an agent of the state claimed arbitrarily, subjectively, and expediently that he was uncomfortable is inexcusable.

An attorney for another woman who was arrested in similar circumstances pointed out to Ray Sanchez of ABC News that videotaping is probably the most effective way to protect citizens against police officers who exaggerate or lie.  Judges and juries want to believe law enforcement, he said.  They want to believe police officers and unless you have credible evidence to contradict police officers, it's often very difficult to get judges or juries to believe the word of a citizen over a police officer.

When police prevaricate under oath to get convictions, the government that they represent is fundamentally corrupt because they cannot do this without the tacit approval of both the judicial and legislative branches of that government.  If Paul Revere rode tonight, his clarion call would be, “The totalitarians are coming.”

May your gods be with you.

In Bed with the O-bumites? You Bet!

The Washington Post's reputation as an H. L. Mencken-type champion of the little guy, the poor, and the oppressed has taken a bit of a drubbing lately.  It has come to light that the Post owns Kaplan University.  Kaplan is a for profit university that has been accused by members from both aisles of Congress of exploiting economically disadvantaged students by saddling them school loans that they cannot repay in return for promises of non-existent jobs.

Kaplan is also a very profitable jewel in the Gray Lady's financial crown.  Post Chairman Donald Graham has had little to say in defense of Kaplan's actions.  However, Alan Carnuba's article "The Screwed Generation" reveals that the O-bumites' hopey-changey thing has been more like the green weenie for recent and soon to be college graduates.

Carnuba says that [t]oday’s college graduates are thoroughly screwed. According to Matthew Segal, the president of a non-profit membership organization called Our Time, “With 85% of college graduates moving back home and an average debt of $22,900 per student, thousands are staring at a bleak economic future.” 

Aren’t these the eager, besotted youngsters who, at age 18, voted for Barack Hussein Obama as if he were the Second Coming? In the words of Herman Cain, a GOP presidential contender, how did that work out?

Post Chairman Graham, a former police officer, was also questioned by one of his shareholders as to his opinion of Barack O-buma inviting a rapper to the White House to chant a tribute to a cop killer (the Post ran an article defending this act).  Graham plead the fifth and refused to comment.  This silence seems to be Graham's tacit approval of O-buma, the rapper, the cop killer, and Kaplan's apparent shafting of the poor.

The Post story about the rapper said, “Critics were swift to pinpoint lyrics that support such controversial figures as Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army leader who was convicted in 1977 of killing a New Jersey state trooper.  On the other side, [the rapper] Common’s defenders asserted that such songs are civic-minded protests of corrupt law enforcement and unjust legal proceedings.

Asked to explain this printed defense of a tribute to a cop-killer, Graham again declined to get involved. “We are obviously not going to comment on any given news story in today’s paper…”  What a shock.

Graham also clammed up and refused to say which members of the U.S. Senate and House he had personally lobbied in order to forestall federal regulations affecting Kaplan, a Post subsidiary and for-profit education business that had been contributing operating funds to the money- and circulation-losing Post newspaper. Kaplan has been under fire, even from the Obama Administration and liberal Democrats, for allegedly conning students into taking out federal loans for a worthless education or non-existent jobs. These federal payments had made Kaplan into a very profitable business.

Graham [also] claimed ignorance about a Daily Caller report by Matthew Boyle that The Washington Post Company has received Obamacare Early Retiree Reinsurance Program funding of $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies. The money was said to be for health benefits for early retirees from the company. Hal S. Jones, senior vice president for finance and chief financial officer of The Washington Post Company, said he was aware of the report but couldn’t supply any details.

Taxpayers' subsidies for the complicit and compliant lapdog media spell the end of the fourth estate's pretense of independent journalism and the First Amendment as well.  This is but another of the federal government's Tony Soprano-type subsidies; the reason for them is to take control of the businesses.  The Post has traveled too far down the slippery slope of government subsidy and control to return to respectability.  It is now a self-censoring eunuch spewing Theftocrat propaganda on behalf of the progressives.

May your gods be with you. 

Welfare by any Other Name

Once again, the O-bumites prove that they are too pusillanimous to bear being treated as they have treated others and that they offer a segregated and inferior collection of expectations and requirements as to the conduct and performance of people who qualify for affirmative welfare.

Maobuma's plan to save government union teachers' jobs will only cost taxpayers a mere $70,000 per job.  It seems as though the most effective way to combat this hustle is at the state level.  The theftocrats' generosity with other people's money is galling.  They are propping up these unions  with another $10 billion.

However, Democratic House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, to his credit, did cut out $800 million of a $4.3 semi-slush fund given to the educrats to "spend virtually any way" they want.  Obey was at odds with Department of Education Secretary Duncan that he was "offended that he only has $3.2 billion to pass around."  Life is tough for the SecEd.

One way to curtail out-of-control federal spending is to shift entitlements to the states so that the voters there can decide whether and to what extent they want to fund those programs.  This would offer an additional bonus. There would be fewer federal bureaucrats needed to track, account for, and spend the states' money.

The consequences of progressive/socialist/mommy state influences on federal policies and legislation are coming due.  Everyone in this country will bear the burden and some of us more than others.  

The Obomunists are planning to stick it to the middle class taxpayers once again.  They are going to allow the Bush Tax Cuts to expire.  The article points out that "one lesson from Hoyer's tax assault on the middle class is that 'temporary' tax cuts face the chopping block, but 'temporary' tax increases live to be paid another day."

What a shock it is that Team O-buma is still at it lying, sneaking, and weaseling to increase the size of their welfare fiefdom.

The UN's Program of Action on Small Arms is embraced by the Obaaama sheeples.  It seems likely to conflict with both the First Amendment and Second Amendment.  In the first case, the program calls for a "reduction of violence in media and in video games" and sustained "efforts at re-education and reorientation of {member states'} citizens."  Chairman Mao's re-education camps are to be run by the UN.

Second, PoA parallels an Organization of American States agreement on illicit manufacturing of firearms that neologizes that term such that virtually every US gun owner would be required to acquire a manufacturing permit from the feds.  Good luck with that; ownership requires a manufacturing permit.  This typifies Backdoor O-buma's devious schemes.  He is planning to disarm Americans through compliance with a UN mandate and then blame it all on that pesky UN.

Evidence continues to accumulate that lowering tax rates increases revenue to government.  When rates are increased, revenues decrease.  The state of Oregon recently learned what history has already taught about Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

O-buma and company seem to have tossed a bone to NASA.  Perhaps it is a meaty bone at that; we'll see whether this is genuine or just PR.

Look who's having labor problems.

May your gods be with you.

Constitution? What Constitution?

This is the most outrageous assault on the First Amendment in memory.  It makes the Patriot Act seem benign by comparison.  The scumbags in Dearborn did not invent totalitarian fascism, but they are undoubtedly the most prolific perpetrators in the nation.

That we are blind to the fact that we are shooting ourselves in our collective foot is worrisome; however, that the Europeans recognize that we are allowing the Theftocrats and O-buffoonery to eviscerate us is appalling.

It appears that general McChrystal has thrown himself onto his own sword in order to avoid continuing to conduct a failed experiment.  He is a victim of his can-do attitude.  Trying to fight a war without collateral damage, lacking diplomatic and political support, and with too little manpower typifies the O-buma regime.  We have handcuffed our troops with self-destructive rules of engagement.  They are getting picked off in small numbers that have steadily mounted.  Our federal government is helping the enemy win.

Billionaire investor George Soros has invested heavily in electing Corruptocrats.  His investment seems to be paying off handily these days.  Here is how.  This almost seems as though it is a quid pro quo arrangement.

Sometimes they get it right.  Whether you trust, appreciate, or despise Google, this ruling was proper.

Heck, even Hilarious Clinton gets it right occasionally.

Can rational beings doubt that one of the primary aims of the university education collective is to disseminate propaganda?

Sentient beings should have recognized by now that the theft-by-proxy crowd has engaged in a wholesale importation of welfare recipients by hamstringing ICE.

Behavior that cost Richard Nixon the White House warrants little national coverage among the reprehensibly hypocritical presstitutes.  Where, oh where are the indignant howls for Congressional investigation?

If this drone were armed and authorized to fire on terrorists as they crossed our border, this action might not seem like pointless grandstanding by the self-appointed ruling class elite.

Watching endangered animals at zoos can be fun and enlightening.  It China, the process can be tasty as well.  There is something perverse about this.

May your gods be with you.

Hurry 2012

The photo at the left is of some SEIU communists exercising their Constitutional rights to violence, aggression, and extortion. 

For all of you who have been annoyed, frustrated, and endangered by those among us who are addicted to their phones, pods, pads, and other battery operated devices, there is a glimmer of hope.  The First Amendment does not confer the right to drive recklessly while using one or more of these devices.

Maryland is joining a small number of states that have banned cell phone use while driving.  It only takes a few people who have too little ram to converse and drive safely and who wander across traffic lanes to ruin things for everyone.  If only we could do something about those drivers who threaten our lives and property by searching through briefcases and purses, changing diapers, leering at other drivers, combing hair, and applying makeup.  No, don't go there.  The guys are as bad or worse than the gals.

There is a growing movement to ban driving while device-impaired.  Perhaps revenue from fines for these offenses could help to pull some state budgets out of the red.  It is believed that for the Florida cities of Lawtey and Waldo, the loss of money from speed trap fines would cause their governments to collapse.

Here is an example of what the party of government plans to do.  The people who have been watching their retirement nest eggs dwindle should be thrilled to learn that $165b in tax dollars will be given away to private pension funds for the already overpaid.

Have you heard about the thugs in government unions?  Try this on for size.

There should be no surprise that we have become a nation of obese people.  The trend may well have begun when people who played golf for exercise took to using golf carts that carried them and their clubs about as they consumed large amounts of calories in the form of alcohol.  Today's young people, rather than benefiting from exercise and fresh air by playing soccer, have this.

Just look what has happened under O-buma and the mommy staters, that is besides the teeny little oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

When is bribery not bribery?  It is apparently not if it is attempted by O-buma and the Theftocrats. 

In the movie Gladiator, Joaquin Phoenix (emperor Commodus) told Russell Crowe (Maximus) that "you simply won't die."  For O-bumaHolder, this is a story that simply won't die.  It is most revealing that the organization Judicial Watch (Because no one is above the law) is leading the charge to uncover the coverup.  True to form, the Presstitute hypocrites are busily spiking the story.  These are the same folks who crowed loudly about their part in drumming Richard Nixon out of office for covering up wrongdoing.

While on the topic of deception, the lapdog media are enemies of this nation.  The proof is in this publication.  The people who claim that O-buma was unaware of this order have all of the credibility of the Kennedy era liars who alleged that some G-13 was responsible for the Bay of Pigs disaster.

After such stressful and depressing news, maybe this will help.

May your gods be with you.