Commentary by James Shott
These days talk of government excesses is routine. A list of recent infractions contains things like the Internal Revenue Service using its resources to persecute applicants for non-profit status and the National Security Agency collecting data on every American’s phone calls and email.
Government excesses have been growing for a long time, and since 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked four airliners and successfully crashed three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the U.S. has been taking strong measures to detect potential terrorist threats, and these are by far the most threatening excesses.
The first of these was the USA Patriot Act, created and passed less than two months after the 9-11 attacks, and signed into law by President George W. Bush. Things have not improved since that fateful law passed.
The problem with such measures is that while they may or may not help prevent a terrorist attack, they present a frightening opportunity for government abuse. Americans are rightly distrustful of such mechanisms, and our Constitution prohibits our government from adopting liberty-crushing measures like these.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) was passed and signed into law by President Barack Obama, and greatly expanded the power and scope of the federal government to fight the War on Terror, including codifying into law the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without trial. Including US citizens. Under the new law the US military has the power to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on US soil under the broad new anti-terrorism provisions provided in the bill.
This is not the first time such extraordinary misuse of the military has been considered. In 2002 a similar discussion arose, but was ultimately quashed by Mr. Bush.
Those features in the NDAA are unacceptable, even in the name of fighting terrorism. Prior to the NDAA the Posse Comitatus Act prohibited Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. Americans also enjoyed the protections of the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The intention was to prevent precisely what the 2012 NDAA enacted into law.
Nevertheless, Mr. Obama signed the NDAA into law, saying, “I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”
However, according to Michigan Democrat Senator Carl Levin, Mr. Obama demanded that American citizens be included under the detention law and that the President of the United States have exclusive authority to invoke the statute. “The language which precluded the application of Section [1021] to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” Sen. Levin said after the NDAA was signed into law.
Critics all across the political spectrum rightly opposed the NDAA because of elements in section 1021.
While many government excesses and cases of misbehavior go along uninterrupted, a federal judge appropriately put a stop to the offending elements of the 2012 NDAA only months after it took affect.
Federal Judge Kathleen Forrest granted a preliminary injunction striking down those sections of the NDAA that sought to provide the president the power to indefinitely detain citizens without benefit of their rights.
Judge Forrest concluded that Section 1021 “…failed to ‘pass Constitutional muster’ because its broad language could be used to quash political dissent.” In a statement clearly directed to lawmakers, she added, ”Section 1021 tries to do too much with too little – it lacks the minimal requirements of definition and scienter that could easily have been added, or could be added, to allow it to pass constitutional muster.”
The Obama administration, however, then fought successfully to appeal Judge Forrest’s injunction, and a 2013 version of the bill contains the same intolerable provisions as the 2012 version, and was also signed by President Obama.
Despite Mr. Obama’s comforting words, despite the bi-partisan opposition to section 1021, Mr. Obama demanded that language exempting America citizens and lawful residents from the provisions of Section 1021 be removed, he fought for and won keeping the Section alive in the 2012 version, and signed the 2013 version with those provisions contained in it.
No matter how much you may trust Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama, or any future president, no president can be allowed to have the absolute authority provided in the NDAA to detain citizens without due process, or to set the US military against the people. No individual can be allowed that authority. Ever!
There goes “innocent until proven guilty,” a major protection for citizens against tyranny. Erik Kain, writing on Forbes.com, says: “We’re talking about the stripping away of our most basic freedoms. We’re talking about a potential state that can call me a terrorist for writing this blog post and then lock me up and throw away the key.”
A majority of the US House and Senate approved these measures. Is this what you expect of your elected representatives?
Cross-posted from Observations
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Liberty. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Liberty. Tampilkan semua postingan
Kids, Guns and America's Failing Education System
Here is a novel idea that would help bring value back into our failing education system. Start teaching kids gun safety in schools and let the local sheriff departments and responsible community members like those in Tea Team USA help set the courses up.
Data mining breeches our Founder’s concept of liberty and privac
Collecting data from phone calls of Verizon customers is one thing. Collecting email information on millions of Americans is something else. Both of these activities stir concern and break the bounds of constitutionality, but the invasion of privacy is far greater in the collection of email data.
Phone call data consists of phone numbers, dates and call duration, but not the conversation itself. Email data, on the other hand, not only has email addresses and date information, but the actual message as well, which often includes names and attached text and media files.
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The potential for misbehavior is enormous, particularly with email data, given the nature of the information available to prying eyes. Some comfort may be taken from the idea that intelligence personnel who use this information are not susceptible to political influences unlike, say, Internal Revenue Service workers. That does not relieve the concern for our privacy, however.
Hardly anyone doesn't want to the government to find plotting terrorists or discover terrorist plans before they are acted upon, even if it involves tapping phones, capturing emails or other covert measures. But the routine collection of massive amounts of data in the hopes of finding a couple of useful pieces of information is over-the-top and unjustified. Its use has increased since the practice was first introduced after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and has increased exponentially under the Obama administration, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The way it is supposed to work is that when the government has reason to believe that one or more individuals – like let’s say Irv Huffington or Ahmed Ali-Yahoo – may be planning an attack, it goes to court to seek an order allowing it to tap their phone or take whatever actions it proposes to do. It doesn't simply start collecting the records of millions of people hoping to find the Huffington or Ali-Yahoo needle among millions of data bits in the haystack.
Here's what the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That language is precise and unambiguous. It does not allow judges to give anyone, or anyone to just take the information of millions of Americans in the hope of finding something hidden away among huge collections of data.
In order to get permission to breech a citizen's privacy, the government must request permission by offering a compelling reason and support that assertion under oath, describing explicitly the place and persons under suspicion. Nowhere in the 4th Amendment is the term "fishing expedition" mentioned or implied, nor is there language allowing nosing around in the private lives of millions of citizens who empower the government because it makes things easier, and it does not depend upon what the meaning of "is" is.
The Founders viewed "general warrants," or dragnet searches such as we are witnessing today, as tyrannical. That view is not mitigated by the advent of terrorist acts that kill dozens, hundreds or thousands, nor by the amazing technological advances since the mid-18th century; general warrants still are tyrannical.
The United States has Constitution protections for a reason: because the Framers understood from first-hand experience how government can slither into impropriety, tyranny and oppression unless it is clearly and firmly prevented by statute from doing so. The U.S. Constitution was created not to limit what the people may do, but to limit what the government may do.
We are told, and many of us believe, that in order to be safe in these perilous times, we must give up much of our liberty and privacy for security, but Benjamin Franklin expressed this idea about that: Those who willingly give up liberty for security will have neither, and deserve neither.
It is a point of shame for the citizens of the United States that so many Americans have no functional knowledge of the principles upon which our nation was created or of the meaning or power of the US Constitution. That is a prime reason that so many on the political left are able to mis-think so many things with such great success.
As a nation we have grown lazy and tone deaf as our government has grown to gargantuan proportions and ridiculous levels of expense, and burst through the top and sides of the constitutional box our much-smarter-than-we-are Founding Fathers built for it.
When they look out on the US landscape and see that some things that aren't working well, they think becoming more like left/liberal Europe is the answer, without even the suspicion that the reason things aren't working is because they have been trying for decades to become more like Europe and less like the United States of America, which under the US Constitution became the freest, most prosperous and most successful nation in human history, while liberal socialist and communist governmental models have always failed.
Making Sense Objectively of the Absurd...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
Everywhere in today's liberal, or progressive lexicon we hear of the evils inherent in Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Indeed the general consensus, or so it seems to this individual, is that Ayn Rand herself was an evil person.
So, perhaps some object liberal, or progressive can explain the evil in the following...
Thank You...
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
Everywhere in today's liberal, or progressive lexicon we hear of the evils inherent in Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Indeed the general consensus, or so it seems to this individual, is that Ayn Rand herself was an evil person.
So, perhaps some object liberal, or progressive can explain the evil in the following...
Thank You...
A national tragedy: We are learning what is really in Obamacare
Many thanks to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for jamming the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through the House of Representatives so that finally the people could "find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy," as Ms. Pelosi so famously said two years ago. This unintentional revelation of what goes on in Ms. Pelosi's mind came in the heat of the battle between the liberal Congress and the American people, a majority of whom opposed this first step in a government takeover of our healthcare system. The American people lost that battle.
Of course, now that the odious gunk contained in the Affordable Care Act, now affectionately known as "Obamacare," has started oozing out, even the people who voted to approve the measure now realize how little they knew about it when the vote was taken.
Searching President Barack Obama's florid promises for a truthful statement about all the wonderful things the ACA would do for us is more challenging than Diogenes' trying to find an honest man.
Like your doctor? You can keep your doctor. Nope!
Like your insurance? You can keep your insurance. Nope!
It will lower costs. Nope!
After all the broken promises, there are also some new goodies in Obamacare:
There are 18 new taxes, estimated at about $800 billion, that will mostly affect America's middle class. And inflation, the cruelest tax on the poor, will increase as businesses find their operation burdened with added costs brought about by higher taxes and onerous government mandates, and pass those costs along to the consumer in the form of higher prices.
Obamacare will add $6.2 trillion (That's "trillion" with a "t"!) to the long-term deficit, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Medicare providers will be expected to continue to provide services despite a cut of $716 billion in payments. Added bureaucracy will make applying for health care even more burdensome than it already is; worse than that, an estimated 7 million people will lose their employer-provided health insurance; and worse yet, thousands of workers will find their hours cut or will lose their jobs entirely.
Just what we need: another government mandate that keeps unemployment unacceptably high.
Opponents of Obamacare warned that forcing companies employing 50 or more full-time workers to buy health insurance for their employees would result in a loss of jobs overall, and many full-time workers would have their hours reduced below the 30-hour weekly threshold. Even though the employer mandate does not go into effect until next January, employers are required to track worker's hours for up to 12 months prior to that, meaning that job and hours cuts have already begun so that employers can escape the $2,000 per-worker fine for uncovered employees, or have to bear the even higher costs of providing health insurance to full-time workers.
So, rather than increasing the number of employees getting insurance from their employers as advertised, Obamacare has instead caused employees to have their hours reduced, or cost them their jobs entirely.
These decisions are being made by more than a few businesses. The International Franchise Association finds that 31 percent of franchisees plan to cut staff to avoid Obamacare’s 50-employee mandate, and a study by Mercer consulting firm found that half of businesses that don’t presently offer health insurance plan to reduce employee hours to avoid Obamacare’s penalties.
The food industry has been particularly hard hit, including: Kroger, Wendy's, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Burger King, McDonalds, KFC, Taco Bell, and Papa John's Pizza. Also affected are government workers across the nation, for the same reasons.
If not keeping your doctor or your insurance policy if you wanted to is not bad enough, or if thousands of Americans losing the jobs or having their hours reduced to less than 30 a week isn't bad enough, how about thousands of doctors taking down their shingles? According to a survey from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, 6 in 10 physicians said they expect many of their colleagues to retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years.
Another 55 percent of doctors surveyed believe many of their colleagues will cut back on their hours because of the way medicine is changing, and 75 percent believe the best and brightest may not consider a career in medicine, up from 69 percent in 2011.
How could the smartest man ever to inhabit the Oval Office have been so desperately wrong? Curious people want to know: Did Barack Obama just not have a clue about what the law that now bears his name would actually do, or did he deliberately deceive people about what it would do in order to gain their support for it?
There is a faction that firmly believes that if people lose their private sector insurance coverage, or can't afford it, that is precisely what Mr. Obama wants, thus making his dream of a single-payer government healthcare system a reality.
So, will our public servants act to relieve us of this Obomination? They should remember that there are Senate and House elections in 2014. And so should we.
If our government does not protect us from ourselves, who will?
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg literally believes he is his brother's keeper, and in fact the keeper of all the millions of New Yorkers and visitors to the city. He was thus compelled to ban the sale by restaurants and other venues of sugary drinks in doses larger than 16 ounces, citing an ethical mandate for someone to do something to protect people from themselves.
Such feelings are at the root of boundless dictates from governments at all levels, and are frequently the product of folks who believe not only that they know better than we do what is best for us, but also feel led to control our behavior for our own good.
However, New Yorkers may rest marginally easier now that a state Supreme Court Judge has properly ruled that the Bloomberg Ban is "arbitrary and capricious," and is now null and void.
This penchant among the nation's nannies produces varying degrees of damage. Some actions, like the Bloomberg Ban, are relatively harmless, merely restricting the personal liberty our Founders provided for us to pursue happiness.
Others, like the ban on Edison's incandescent light bulbs that have served us economically and dependably for well more than a century, have more serious effects. The newly mandated compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are said to use less energy and last longer than their predecessors, but are far more expensive, do not fit in many fixtures that incandescent bulbs do, and contain mercury, a substance that in emissions from coal burning electricity plants is viewed with great alarm by environmentalists, but is just peachy in CFLs. If you are unfortunate enough to break one of these bulbs, you must declare a minor hazmat emergency and execute a rigorous, time consuming and inconvenient cleanup routine. None of this is deemed nearly as important as the minuscule reduction in electricity use that CFLs provide, however.
Hyped-up environmental fears have spawned legions of regulations and initiatives, among which is the development of green cars that either run on electricity, or hybrids that alternate between conventional gasoline power and electricity. At the heart of this movement is concern over those dastardly carbon emissions produced by burning gasoline and diesel fuel. Electric cars emit no carbon dioxide and hybrids only do so when operating in gasoline mode.
We are told that if we do not take dramatic action immediately to reduce carbon emissions, the world will heat up and it will be even worse than the sequester. But the degree to which the activities of humans affect the world's temperature is a subject of (excuse the term) hot debate among scientists, and the evidence thus far -- when all the fraudulent and contrived data is omitted -- fails to support the doomsday prediction.
Nevertheless, President Barack Obama thought this was important enough to set a goal of having 1 million green cars on the road by 2015. But like CFLs, green cars are not consumer friendly, and sales in 2012 totaled a mere 50,000, well below what is needed to achieve Mr. Obama's goal. Consumers do not trust the immature technology and do not like their higher sticker prices.
Worse, you aren't told that environmental benefits are far less than we've been led to expect. A report by the National Center for Policy Analysis discusses the problems, noting that while electric cars do not contribute to "global warming," that is true only in the sense that they do not emit carbon dioxide. Building an electric car produces more than twice as much carbon-dioxide as building a conventional car, and because electric vehicles use electricity typically produced with fossil fuels, it indirectly emits about six ounces of carbon dioxide per mile compared with 12 ounces for a conventional car. Buying a green car that costs a lot more, uses an untrusted technology and contributes very little to environmental improvement holds little appeal for most people.
A Cato Institute report quoted former president Ronald Reagan: "Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves," and then suggested that "today’s policymakers would do well to heed Reagan’s words," noting that "Lawmakers at all levels of government have shown increasing contempt for personal responsibility and an increasing tendency to employ the power of the state to influence behavior. Government today pressures us to avoid risks, even risks that many of us knowingly and willingly take. There seems to be a consensus among nanny-statists that, with enough public service announcements, awareness campaigns, and social engineering efforts, Americans will start behaving as the nanny- statists want them to."
Yet, the nannies in both the public and private sectors ignore evidence that Americans prefer to think for themselves, enjoy the personal liberty we were given, and pursue happiness as we decide to, even if there is some risk attached to it.
Don't lie to us about the condition of the environment to gain control or force foolish changes to how we live, or force us to eat better or act differently for our own good. Just go away and leave us alone.
Surviving the Test of Time...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
The nation is indeed in serious trouble. The right and the left are so enmeshed in their own ideological perspective neither can differentiate between day and night. It's okay they keep reassuring themselves... after all those we elected are working hard at ensuring our well being. A sentiment that will, in the long run, amount to exactly NOTHING.
Yep, the nation's electorate, which is of course us, are happy believing those we elect are going to address the problems we face and ultimately resolve them in our best interests. However, given the present realities I guess it depends on whether or not one really understand what your interests are. At this juncture in history my bet rests on most don't have a clue what there own rational self interests are, let alone how to preserve them.
Okay... whether you agree or not I'm here to tell you that 99.9% of the politicians you elect are out to accomplish one thing and one thing only, it is getting reelected. In other words the a'holes will tell you anything they think you want to here. I don't mean to offend anyone but I must say they are apparently doing a mighty fine job deciphering what they think you are saying because for the most part you keep reelecting them.
I find it interesting, indeed comical, the number of times I hear people say "it's not my representative and Senator." that is part of the problem. How foolish and naive can one be?
As a classical liberal, and for those who do not understand what that means do some research, I can only say our leadership in both parties have failed us. To be fair the socon and neocon factions of the rEpublican party are the most at fault for attempting to keep the country on a 19th and 20th century footing. I have a news flash for you, time and technology moves on. If we are to keep the nation we all love we must move on with the times as well.
On a different yet related note.
I'm not my brothers or sisters keeper. I must live for myself and act voluntarily and responsibly to insure for myself and my family the level of prosperity we desire. Having said this I will be among the first to acknowledge your rights as well as standing up to secure and protect them if necessary. I will be ready and willing to protect you and members of your family from bodily harm to the maximum extent I am able. In return I will ask nothing other than to let me live my life as I choose. Honorably and and with the self respect I have eared the right to demand.
The beacon of liberty, prosperity, and equality has shone brightest on the North American continent and the United States of America. Have we always lived up to the lofty ideals Thomas Jefferson inscribed in our Declaration of Independence? Without hesitation I will say no, we have not. However, even given this, today we remain the freest and most productive nation the world has ever known. Whether we remain in this position depends entirely on us.
We are facing the test that time always demands of great nation states. From Ancient Greece to the Roman Empire. From the Persian Empire to the Ottoman Empire. From the Incas and the Aztecs. From the British Empire to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union they have all failed this test. Today the United States of America facing the same test other great nation states have failed.
Will our diverse and uniquely different nation be the next to fail the test of time? I hope not. It will depend on us working together to solve the problems of a modern, diverse, and free nation. Sadly, given the current state of our nation I fear the worst.
Good Night until another time.
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
The nation is indeed in serious trouble. The right and the left are so enmeshed in their own ideological perspective neither can differentiate between day and night. It's okay they keep reassuring themselves... after all those we elected are working hard at ensuring our well being. A sentiment that will, in the long run, amount to exactly NOTHING.
Yep, the nation's electorate, which is of course us, are happy believing those we elect are going to address the problems we face and ultimately resolve them in our best interests. However, given the present realities I guess it depends on whether or not one really understand what your interests are. At this juncture in history my bet rests on most don't have a clue what there own rational self interests are, let alone how to preserve them.
Okay... whether you agree or not I'm here to tell you that 99.9% of the politicians you elect are out to accomplish one thing and one thing only, it is getting reelected. In other words the a'holes will tell you anything they think you want to here. I don't mean to offend anyone but I must say they are apparently doing a mighty fine job deciphering what they think you are saying because for the most part you keep reelecting them.
I find it interesting, indeed comical, the number of times I hear people say "it's not my representative and Senator." that is part of the problem. How foolish and naive can one be?
As a classical liberal, and for those who do not understand what that means do some research, I can only say our leadership in both parties have failed us. To be fair the socon and neocon factions of the rEpublican party are the most at fault for attempting to keep the country on a 19th and 20th century footing. I have a news flash for you, time and technology moves on. If we are to keep the nation we all love we must move on with the times as well.
On a different yet related note.
I'm not my brothers or sisters keeper. I must live for myself and act voluntarily and responsibly to insure for myself and my family the level of prosperity we desire. Having said this I will be among the first to acknowledge your rights as well as standing up to secure and protect them if necessary. I will be ready and willing to protect you and members of your family from bodily harm to the maximum extent I am able. In return I will ask nothing other than to let me live my life as I choose. Honorably and and with the self respect I have eared the right to demand.
The beacon of liberty, prosperity, and equality has shone brightest on the North American continent and the United States of America. Have we always lived up to the lofty ideals Thomas Jefferson inscribed in our Declaration of Independence? Without hesitation I will say no, we have not. However, even given this, today we remain the freest and most productive nation the world has ever known. Whether we remain in this position depends entirely on us.
We are facing the test that time always demands of great nation states. From Ancient Greece to the Roman Empire. From the Persian Empire to the Ottoman Empire. From the Incas and the Aztecs. From the British Empire to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union they have all failed this test. Today the United States of America facing the same test other great nation states have failed.
Will our diverse and uniquely different nation be the next to fail the test of time? I hope not. It will depend on us working together to solve the problems of a modern, diverse, and free nation. Sadly, given the current state of our nation I fear the worst.
Good Night until another time.
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