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.

The O-buma Legacy: WWWIII

Barack O-buma plans to throw open the gates and bow down, as he has done previously to various foreign leaders, to kow tow and drive Israel from within the walls of our village and into the clutches of terrorists.  The O-bumites are now in league with mass murderers.  Their brethren are infamous.  The following is from Wikipedia. 

• 1983-bombed the US Embassy in Lebanon, killing 17
• 1983-bombed a US Marine barracks, killing 241
• 1984 - Twenty-two people were killed (two of them American) and seventy were wounded when a van loaded with four hundred pounds of explosives exploded in front of the U.S. Embassy annex in Awkar, Lebanon. Islamic Jihad (code name of Hezbollah) claimed responsibility for the bombing in a call to the media.
• 1985 - TWA Flight 847 hijacked, U.S. Navy diver is killed by Hezbollah.
•  1985 - Achille Lauro hijacking, wheel-chair bound American killed by Palestinian militants.
• 1988 - Pan Am Flight 103, outbound from London for New York with 259 people aboard, was destroyed by a bomb on December 21, 1988 while over Lockerbie, Scotland. All aboard the aircraft were killed as were eleven persons on the ground.
• 1993 - World Trade Center bombing, February 26: 6 killed, 1,042 injured.
• 1993 - Attack at CIA Headquarters in McLean, Virginia, January 25: 2 killed, 3 injured.
• 1995 - Killing of two US Diplomats in Pakistan, March 8.
• Khobar Towers bombing: 19 American servicemen killed.
• 1998 - US embassy bombings: U.S. Kenya Embassy blown up, 214 killed (including 12 Americans); U.S. Tanzania Embassy blown up, 11 killed.
• 2000 - USS Cole attacked, 17 U.S. Navy sailors killed, 39 sailors injured.
• 2001 - September 11, 2001 attacks, 2,997 killed;  

The traitors in the O-buma White House want to create a post-Israel scenario that will force the US to choose between engaging in a protracted, unwinnable Mideast war or surrendering without firing a shot and vacating the region altogether.  Either way, this is the next big step in the progressives' planned downward gyre for America.

The Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft reports in his article "Rewarding Evil" that the Palestinian Hamas and Fatah terrorist factions signed a truce on Wednesday May 4, 2011. Neither of the terror factions recognize Israel and neither terror organization has plans to reject terrorist activities against the Jewish people.

In recognition of this terrorist truce, Barack Obama yesterday gave the Palestinian people Old Jerusalem. Old Jerusalem contains the most sacred holy sites of Christianity.  Arrogant, considering that they are not his to give away in the first place.  Further, all of the Christian and Jewish holy sites will now be under Hamas control thanks to Barack Obama.

Charles Krauthammer's article "The News in Obama's Speech" reveals that O-buma attended Jimmy Carter's school of weaseling and waffling.  He has come full circle from condemning the philosophies and policies of former president George W. Bush to adopting them.  'It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.'

With this Barack Obama openly, unreservedly and without a trace of irony or self-reflection adopts the Bush Doctrine, which made the spread of democracy the key U.S. objective in the Middle East.

'Too many leaders in the region tried to direct their people’s grievances elsewhere. The West was blamed as the source of all ills.'

Note how even Obama’s rationale matches Bush’s. Bush argued that because the roots of 9/11 were to be found in the deflected anger of repressed Middle Eastern peoples, our response would require a democratic transformation of the region.

'We have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self-determination of individuals.'

A fine critique of exactly the kind of “realism” the Obama administration prided itself for having practiced in its first two years.  How far did this concession to Bush go? Note Obama’s example of the democratization we’re aiming for. He actually said:

'In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. There, the Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence for a democratic process . . . Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region.'

Hail the Bush-Obama doctrine.

O-buma and company are dismantling the republic from within and without.  They realize that backing Israel into a corner will produce one certain result: it will trigger WWIII.  They remember Hafez Assad lobbing artillery shells into downtown Tel Aviv from the Golan Heights.  They are also perceptive enough to realize that when it happens again, the Israelis will go nuclear.

May your gods be with you.

Don't go away Angry, just go away

No longer can we afford to embrace the "tired...poor...huddled masses."  We have grown tired of illegal aliens, especially those among their number who are terrorists, drug dealers, and weapons smugglers.  We have had enough of Congressional Theftocrats' importing welfare recipients making us poor as they enhance the size of their bureaucratic fiefdoms.

We also have enough huddled masses in our ghettos, barrios, housing projects, trailer parks, taxpayer subsidized housing units, and crack holes to last us through this millennium.  As if the situation with jackpot babies were not sufficiently burdensome to citizens, we also have a legal loophole fostered by Hilarious Clinton and the rest of the Loopy Left that allows miscreant citizens and other would-be dismantlers of the republic to import terrorists through sham marriages.

Never fear, Brick-a-Brack O-buma is here.  He and his ideological and intellectual twin who heads the Department of Homeland Security are truly on top of the situation.  They stand ready to condemn insurance companies, Wall Street executives, and Tea Party activists as dire threats to the nation; however, when it comes to Islamic Fundamentalism's jihad against America, not so much.

At least the would-be Times Square bomber was merely a lone assassin.  Yes, and the Warren Commission found that Oswald was a lone gunman.

 

 May your gods be with you.