July 2, 2016

Laws that are 'impossible' to follow can still be Constitutional, says California court

fromTheIntercept: California judges insure the state remains the gold standard for nitwittery, deciding that just because it is impossible to comply with a law doesn’t make it invalid.
Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process     Regulation Nation    Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Cops arrested a black man. He called them Nazis, so he was charged with a hate crime.

fromReason: "This is not what the hate crime statute was for. This is criminalizing pure speech, and that violates the First Amendment."
Police State America

Marijuana legalization is having its best year ever

fromVox: From Canada to Vermont to Oklahoma to California, this has been a huge year for legalization advocates.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Shocking moment a cop uses a stun gun on a suspect sitting on a curb who WAS following police orders

fromTheDailyMail:     Video shows a Lancaster, Pennsylvania police officer deploy his Taser on a nonviolent man complying with orders.
Police State America

The wiretap rooms

fromTheIntercept: The NSA’s hidden spy hubs in eight U.S. cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Home builders are building smaller homes because of Trump's tariffs

fromEconomicPolicyJournal: Lumber is the biggest component of a new home. An average house last year had more than $60,000 in wood products. Since early last year, lumber costs have shot up by more than 60 percent.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

December 15, 2017

Government is the cause of—not the solution to—online censorship

from Reason: As people worry about the net neutrality vote, public officials threaten our rights to free speech.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Bogus wiretap charges brought against man who recorded cops costs NH taxpayers $275,000

from TechDirt: Even though courts have found use of wiretap statutes in this fashion unconstitutional, in the Live Free or Die state, the statute lives freely and dies even harder.
Police State America

Bill O'Reilly: Secret tape exists of woman offered $200K to file sexual harassment charges against Trump

from ZeroHedge: The tactic of shaming, a favorite of the political left, seems to be kicked up a notch.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

FCC votes to repeal net neutrality rules

from The Hill: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted to repeal its landmark net neutrality protections, capping off a months-long campaign by the agency’s Republicans to deregulate the broadband industry.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Scared Cops Are Scary

from Reason: The acquittal of the officer who killed Daniel Shaver illustrates a double standard in judging self-defense claims.
Police State America

California Brags It Will End Gun Violence With Sudden Enforcement Of 50-Year-Old Law

from DownTrend: Significant as an admission by the state that instead of enforcing existing laws, they have been passing gun control laws that only restrict the rights of law abiding people.
2nd Amendment Assaults

September 20, 2017

The silencing of dissent

from TruthDig: The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Venezuelan price controls lead to predictable shortages

from Reason: Venezuelan grocery stores only have products shoppers don't want.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

Princeton’s Constitution Day lecture titled ‘F*ck Free Speech’

from National Review: This logic-challenged professor knocks those who value free speech on campus, while using her position as a campus leader to spearhead a project that openly calls the president “racist” (hate speech if directed at a lefty).
Indoctrination and Censorship

Trump vindicated: report says Obama government wiretapped Trump campaign

from Breitbart: Just in case you watch CNN or were away for the weekend, you may have missed this one.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Governments turn tables by suing public records requesters

from Associated Press: The new tactic of corrupt government agencies is to sue those make  FOIA requests, banking that the high costs of defending themselves will silence them.
The Government is Not Us

Unapproved thought is violence

from American Thinker: The cockamamie rationale that uttering unapproved or unconventional speech is can be perceived as violence to some, thereby justifying actual violent behavior.
Indoctrination and Censorship

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

The Case for Trump's Wiretap Claims

   
      Mark Levin - Trump's Wiretap Claims                          Tucker Carlson - Trumps Wiretap Claims

UK Wants Authority To Serve Warrants In U.S.

by Kevin Johnson and Gregory Korte.   British and U.S. officials have been negotiating a plan that could allow British authorities to directly serve wiretap orders on U.S. communications companies in criminal and national security inquiries, U.S. officials confirmed Thursday. The talks are aimed at allowing British authorities access to a range of     ... MORE

US Gov't’s Reported Number Of Wiretaps Only One Third Of Those Reported By AT&T, Verizon, Sprint And T-Mobile

by David Kravets.   Somebody is lying. The government published its latest Wiretap Report on July 1. The headline finding was that encryption wasn't foiling federal and state law enforcement officials, despite a growing chorus of people suggesting that we're all gonna die unless the tech sector builds backdoor access into their products to     ... MORE

More Federal Agencies Are Using Undercover Operations

by Eric Lichtblau and Willilam M. Arkin. The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show. At the Supreme Court,  ... MORE

Orwell's Nightmare: Big Brother Meets Big Business

by John W. Whitehead.      No need to wonder. Just look around you. It’s happened already. Thanks to an insidious partnership between Google and the National Security Agency (NSA) that grows more invasive and more subtle with every passing day, “we the people” have become little more than data consumer commodities to be bought, sold and paid   ... MORE

Let's End Congress's Blanket Authorization Of Force

by Gene Healy.     It may sound hard to believe, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., isn't always wrong–at least when he states the obvious: "9/11 is a long time ago," he said Wednesday, "and it's something that needs to be looked at again." The "it" is the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution, or AUMF, adopted three days  ... MORE

VIDEO: William Binney - NSA Spying: Stellar Wind

VIDEO: Tap It - The NSA Slow Jam (featuring Remy)

When Congress Voted Down The Fourth Amendment

by Radley Balko.    Earlier this month, President Obama nominated North Carolina Rep. Mel Watt to head up the Federal Housing Finance Authority. Here's a fun little nugget about Watt that has little relevance to the job he's seeking, but has lots of relevance to the current debates over leaks, press investigations, wiretapping, and such: Back in  ... MORE

VIDEO: Obama Watches Fox News

With wiretaps and helicopters. 

VIDEO: Fox News - Internet Wiretap Proposal

Judge Andrew Napolitano on government's latest attempt to bypass 4th Amendment protections.