April 25, 2016

Is the U.S. government evil? You tell me

fromRutherfordInstitute: This is a government that treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, traded, tracked, tortured, and eventually eliminated once they’ve outgrown their usefulness.
The Government is Not Us

Walter E Williams: Educational fraud continues

fromCreators: "I'm not sure about what can be done about education. But the first step toward any solution is for the American people to be aware of academic fraud at every level of education."
Indoctrination and Censorship

Public transit becomes another tool for total government surveillance

fromReason: City’s new bus system comes with 24-7 camera feeds.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Former federal prosecutor: Pay attention to what Andrew McCabe lied about

fromTownhall: After nearly two years of digging, there is still no proof of Trump-campaign collusion in Russian election-meddling. But we have collusion all right.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Trump assured Rand Paul that he intends to end wars in Afghanistan and Syria

fromGatewayPundit: Paul reversed course and voted for Mike Pompeo to become Secretary of State after assurances that President Trump intends to end the wars in Syria and Afghanistan and reform FISA.
Defense Versus The War Machine      Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Man's joke video of dog giving Nazi salute lands him U.K. hate speech fine

fromReason: Court feels "menaced" by a pug. The Brits seem a bit tightly wound.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

December 4, 2017

Cops steal $91,800 from a musician, claiming he gave it to them

from Reason: Wyoming's roadside waivers are a thin disguise for highway robbery.
Police State America

Activists arrested in Atlanta for feeding homeless without a permit before Thanksgiving

from ActivistPost: Feeding the hungry without paying politicians for the privilege.
The Government is Not Us   Regulation Nation

Supreme Court could legalize sports betting nationwide

from DailyCaller: As a result of a challenge from New Jersey — home of gambling Mecca Atlantic City — the court could overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act and allow sports betting in most states.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Four camera surveillance PODS coming to a city near you

from MassPrivatei: Welcome to Police State America, where one camera surveillance system is never enough.
Police State America   Government is Watching Every Move You Make

CNN calls for banning the term ‘fake news’

from DownTrend: In a related story, medicine show operators are calling to ban the term "snake oil salesman".
Media Bias on Parade

VIDEO: William F Buckley Jr - Newt Gingrich: A Debate on the Legalization of Drugs

from LibertyPen/YouTube: (1990) Excerpts from: A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Drugs Should Be Legalized. Also in the debate: Richard Dennis, Ira Glasser, Robert W. Sweet, Pat Schroeder, Charles B. Rangel, and, William von Raab.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

November 28, 2017

These laws are eroding public trust with police. And they are hurting good officers too

from Sacramento Bee: Here is the point that always gets lost in discussions about police brutality: The system is rigged in favor of the police every time it is alleged.
Police State America

The Motherboard guide to avoiding state surveillance

from Motherboard: A straightforward guide to privacy, messaging, and keeping yourself safe from passive and active surveillance.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Mother, Air Force vet kidnapped, sent to Rikers for traveling in NY with her legal Texas handgun

from TheFreeThoughtProject: For carrying her legally purchased and licensed handgun in her vehicle as she traveled through New York, a mother of two and honorably discharged veteran was arrested and charged with a felony.
Police State America    2nd Amendment Assaults

Walter E Williams: Black Self-Sabotage

from Creators: How long will black people accept the educational destruction of black youngsters — something that only benefits the education establishment?
Indoctrination and Censorship

Trump calls for media competition to win FAKE NEWS trophy

from DownTrend: The smart money is on CNN.
Media Bias on Parade

Legalization a boon to more than just marijuana markets

from the Las Vegas Sun: “Let’s put it like this: A rising tide takes all ships,” said Stuart Titus, CEO of San Diego-based General Hemp. “It’s incredible to see the growth in the industry.”
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

November 24, 2017

Good Samaritans shutdown, ticketed for feeding homeless during Thanksgiving holiday

from TheFreeThoughtProject: Feeding the homeless is now illegal in Atlanta and you will be ticketed and extorted unless you pay the state for permission beforehand.
Regulation Nation

VIDEO: Libertarian Car Talk

from LibertyPen/YouTube: From the Tom Woods Show, Eric Peters on the latest libertarian car issues.
Regulation Nation

NSA Internet surveillance under Section 702 violates the First Amendment

from EFF: It’s not just our Fourth Amendment rights to privacy that are in the crosshairs, but also our First Amendment rights. These rights to anonymously speak, associate, access information, and engage in political activism are the bedrock of our democracy, and they’re endangered by the NSA’s pervasive surveillance.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

How Jeff Sessions plans to end medical marijuana before the year is over

from Newsweek: Sessions is known for being one of the nation's toughest critics of legal pot. He once said the KKK was "OK until I found out they smoked pot."
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: Killing Net Neutrality will set the Internet free

from Reason: Promises that "we're going to see an explosion in the kinds of connectivity and the depth of that connectivity" like never before.
Regulation Nation

Pro–net neutrality graphic makes argument against net neutrality

from Reason: Do net neutrality advocates fear consumer choice?
Regulation Nation

November 16, 2017

VIDEO: Why I Hate The Left, by Owen Benjamin

from Owen Benjamin/YouTube: In the video, Benjamin explains what he means by "the Left." He also talks about political debate, and the idea that if debate isn’t centered around common goals, it’s fruitless.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Gov't approves first-ever med with digital tracking system

from Newser: The stated pretense for this tracking pill is to remind mentally challenged patients to take their meds.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

VIDEO: Hillary's Deception - The Trump-Russia Dossier

from LibertyPen/YouTube: A collection of news clips that explain the issues surrounding the Trump-Russia dossier, a phony document fabricated by British intelligent agent Christopher Steele and funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

John Stossel - Legalize Sex Work

from Creators: If you owned yourself, you would be free to rent yourself out. But you are not. That begs the question,
who owns you?
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

The Senate Intelligence Committee really wants to secretly snoop on Americans

from Reason: Every attempt to restrain and reform unwarranted domestic surveillance batted away.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make    The Government is Not Us

James O’Keefe: A truth seeker in an age of media bias

from The Epoch Times: Founder of Project Veritas on undercover journalism and holding the press accountable.
Media Bias on Parade

November 2, 2017

Civil forfeiture: The ransacking of the American people 

from The  Villanovan: Civil forfeiture may be one of the most sordid rackets of the last couple of decades, a scheme so devious, so heinous, that it would make swine like Bernie Madoff and Charles Ponzi blush.
Police State America   The Government is Not Us

Is federal government flooding of Houston homes a taking?

from Washington Post: A "controlled flooding" inflicted extensive damage on thousands of homes and businesses that might otherwise have been spared the effects of the storm. Government argues that is not a taking.
The Government is Not Us

AG Jeff Sessions suggests prosecutions for marijuana growers, sellers and users in legalized states 

from ActivistPost: Sounds like bluster. Any serious move in this direction would be the end of Trump. Two thirds of Americans support marijuana legalization.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

John Stossel: Communism Turns 100

from Creators: This year marks the hundredth anniversary of one of the worst mistakes ever made: the Communist revolution in Russia.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Halloween is over — but surveillance state boosters still want to scare us

from Salon: Senate Intelligence Committee hopes to pass off major expansion of NSA’s spy powers as “reform.” No thanks.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

🎬  New from Remy: Trigger (Thriller parody)

from Reason: A very scary Halloween video for fragile snowflakes, since we now know triggers cause meltdowns.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

November 1, 2017

Reconsidering surveillance law raises anew issues of privacy

from FoxNews: What Americans need to know about domestic surveillance policy, as Congress considers the privacy implications of Section 702 of the FISA Act.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

One year later, is Trump a blessing or a curse to the deep state?

from Rutherford Institute: The American police state is still alive and well and flourishing. Rather than draining the corrupt swamps as he repeatedly promised, Trump and his brand of reality TV politics have merely redirected our attention.
The Government is Not Us

The fragile generation

from Reason: Bad policy and paranoid parenting are making kids too safe to succeed.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Walter E Williams: Let's help our media friends

from Creators: Williams offers a bit of sympathy to the mainstream media and other Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers one year after their trauma.
Media Bias on Parade

Professor calls reason itself a “white, male construct”

from DownTrend: A kooky college professor argues that nonwhites are all naturally irrational.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Presidents are reckless with soldiers' lives

from Creators: The problem is not that Trump is tactless about soldiers' deaths but that he and his predecessors have been reckless with their lives.
Defense Versus The War Machine

October 19, 2017

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls: The experiment in freedom is failing

from Rutherford Institute: We are being ruled by a government of scoundrels, spies, thugs, thieves, gangsters, extortionists, bounty hunters, battle-ready warriors and cold-blooded killers who communicate using a language of force and oppression.
The Government is Not Us

Government may ‘seize’ citizens’ fingerprints to unlock Apple devices, federal court rules

from ShadowProof: How a robe-draped tyrant made cops warm and fuzzy for Apple's iTouch technology.
Police State America

Chicago politician pushes ban on businesses banning cash

from ZeroHedge: Politicians fights back against VISA push for merchants to stop taking cash. A cashless society is a slave society. What do you do in cashless society when the power goes out?
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Cities are getting paid to turn street lights into spying SmartNodes

from MassPrivatei: The future of privacy in big cities is bleak, cities are now getting paid to convert street lights into spying SmartNodes (cameras, microphones, speakers etc., all-in-one light pole).
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

John Stossel: A CNN Smear

from Creators: Stossel finds Anderson Cooper's claims that Donald Trump's EPA director had conspired with the CEO of a mining company to "withdraw environmental restrictions so the company could dig "the largest open pit mine in the world in an extremely sensitive watershed in wild Alaska" has a big problem.
Media Bias on Parade

Cannabis credit union sues the creature from Jekyll Island 

from Gov'tSlaves: A credit union serving the marijuana industry has sued the Federal Reserve, asking a federal judge to enforce the 10th Circuit’s order to grant the credit union a master account despite its ties to pot.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Government Is Watching Every Move You Make

Latest Update: May 26, 2017

Judge Nap: Lack of outrage over NSA's illegal searches is 'astounding'
The thinning line between commercial and government surveillance

Big Brother is still watching you: Don’t fall for the NSA’s latest ploy

Did the government spy on Trump? Of course. It spies on all of us!

VIDEO: John W Whitehead: The War on the American People

Feds find local police willing partners in surveillance state 

377 words you can't say online without being surveilled

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Congress Created a Monster

Those of us who believe that the Constitution means what it says have been arguing since the late 1970s that congressional efforts to strengthen national security by weakening personal liberty are unconstitutional, un-American and ineffective. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress passed in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon's use of the CIA and the FBI to spy on his political opponents, has unleashed demons that now seem beyond the government's control and are more pervasive than anything Nixon could have dreamed of.  ... MORE

Government Eyes Are Watching Every Move You Make

by John W. Whitehead.  Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in   ... MORE

The Crypto Wars Are About Power, Not Terrorism

by Andrea Castillo.        The FBI may have been able to unlock San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s work-related iPhone without conscripting Apple as an unwilling hacker, but that has not slowed down the government’s broader war on encrypted technologies one bit. It didn’t take long for another tragic terrorist attack, this one in Belgium, ... MORE

Senate’s Encryption Bill Would Destroy Cybersecurity

by Scott Shackford.   Privacy under assault. The Senate Intelligence Committee's draft legislation to require tech companies assist federal authorities in bypassing the security of their products and software could have well been titled the "Shut Up and Do What You're Damn Well Told, Nerdlinger, Act of 2016." Actually, it very nearly is. The short     ... MORE

Why You Need To Be Concerned About The War On Cash

Doug Casey interview.     Louis James, the editor of International Speculator, sat down with Doug Casey to discuss the ongoing “War on Cash.” Doug reveals what people looking to protect their money should do. Louis James: There have been a lot of government moves recently, making it harder for people to do business in cash. What do you think,    ... MORE

Law Enforcement Now Snoops Private DNA Databases

by Jessica Chia.    A filmmaker in New Orleans became a suspect in the 1996 murder of an Idaho Falls teenager after his father donated his own DNA to a nonprofit organization conducting a hereditary study backed by the Mormon church. Idaho Falls Police Department had a warrant to seize the genetic information later sold to Ancestry.com in an attempt  ... MORE

Apple Says U.S Founders Would Be Appalled By DOJ Order

by Kevin Johnson and Elizabeth Weise.    Apple Inc. charged Tuesday that a court order forcing the tech giant to assist the federal government in unlocking the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook was based on non-existent authority asserted by the Justice Department. "According to the government, short of kidnapping ... MORE

Surprise! NSA Data Will Soon Routinely Be Used For Domestic Policing That Has Nothing To Do With Terrorism

by Radley Balko. Everyone is presumed guilty. A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will  ... MORE

Obama And The Justice Dept. May Be Losing The P.R. Battle Over Encryption, But Watch The Larger War

by Scott Shackford.   Nobody believes it’s ‘just one phone.’   The government fight to access your private digital data has another front brewing. The Department of Justice wants to be able to listen in on conversations on WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging and phone service owned by Facebook. Everybody who knows anything about       ... MORE

VIDEO: John Oliver - Encryption (from HBO)

Obama Advocates Government Access To All Devices

by Jeff Mason.    No surprise that privacy invasion is the tyrant's choice. U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday made a passionate case for mobile devices to be built in such a way as to allow government to gain access to personal data if needed to prevent a terrorist attack or enforce tax laws. Speaking at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, Obama   ... MORE