You don't need me to tell you that the federal government was originally designed to be much smaller
and much less powerful than it is today. (Well... maybe some of you do.) Certainly the
founding fathers intended it to be far less intrusive and costly. But today we have arrived
at a point where the federal government micro-manages numerous little details, including a law —
the Comprehensive Energy Policy Act of 1994 — requiring that new toilets use only
1.6 gallons per flush. (As long as swimming pools are legal and golf courses are irrigated
with drinking water, 1.6 gallon toilets should not be mandatory.) Very gradually, more and
more laws and regulatory agencies are being created, and
one day even the most gullible citizen will wake up and realize that he is ruled by tyrants.
All the material about
the USA Patriot Act is
now on a page of its own. The material about the invasion of
the Food Police now
has its own page, too. (See other related links at the bottom of this page.)
Anything that isn't mandatory is now prohibited.
Hundreds of laws kick
in Monday. In California, driving with people in the trunk will be illegal. In Alabama,
landlords will have to provide livable conditions for tenants. Illinois agencies will have to provide
people to answer phones, not just automated messages. These are among the hundreds of laws that will
take effect Monday [1/1/2007]. Each New Year's Day, a flurry of legal experiments begin that shape
Americans' lives. The U.S. government spends twice as much money as state and local governments combined,
but state government has the greatest effect on Americans' everyday lives — how they drive, how they
get married and divorced, how they hunt and fish, and how they buy cigarettes and beer.
How Free Are We Really?
There is neither such thing as a people with complete freedom nor one completely bereft of it; it's a matter of
degree. While many realize this, few understand that there is a barometer with which liberty can be
measured: The number of laws in existence. By definition, a law is the removal of a freedom, as
it dictates that there is something you cannot or must do. ... Every year our nation enacts more and
more laws but hardly ever rescinds any, which means every year we become progressively less free. I call
this "creeping totalitarianism."
The Emerging Surveillance State:
The new FISA bill allows the federal government to compel many more types of companies and individuals to
grant the government access to our communications without a warrant. The provisions in the legislation
designed to protect Americans from warrantless surveillance are full of loopholes and ambiguities. There
is no blanket prohibition against listening in on all American citizens without a warrant. We have been
told that this power to listen in on communications is legal and only targets terrorists. But if what
these companies are being compelled to do is legal, why is it necessary to grant them immunity? If what
they did in the past was legal and proper, why is it necessary to grant them retroactive immunity?
Tyranny In the Name of Progress:
California
court bans religious objections to same-sex pregnancies. Once again, judges in California have
taken sides in the culture wars. On Monday [8/18/2008], in North Coast Women's Care v. Benitez, the Golden State's
highest court ruled that doctors may not rely on their religious principles to refuse in-vitro fertilization
for same-sex couples. The decision runs roughshod over the First Amendment's free-exercise clause,
seeking to supplant Judeo-Christian principles with the state-imposed religion of secularism. This is a
false choice under the federal Constitution, which makes room for both.
Servile Nation. The janitor who cleans up a
shopping mall in exchange for a paycheck is to be disdained as someone seeking his own economic benefit, while an
AmeriCorps "volunteer" who cleans up a public park in exchange for money extorted from taxpayers at gunpoint is to
be celebrated as the embodiment of the Common Good. Yes, they both perform the same function, but only the
labor of the latter has been consecrated through the exercise of government coercion.
Police
in Thought Pursuit. Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the Act aims to identify and stigmatize
persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism, for example,
opposition to the Patriot Act or the suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. The Act will
inexorably culminate in a government listing of homegrown terrorists or terrorist organizations without due
process; a complementary listing of books, videos, or ideas that ostensibly further "violent radicalization;"
and a blacklisting of persons who have intersected with either list. Political discourse will be chilled
and needed challenges to conventional wisdom will flag. There are no better examples of sinister
congressional folly.
Suddenly, Denver is 'like a police state'.
They're calling it "Gitmo on the Platte." With riot police on every downtown corner, security helicopters
whomping overhead, news that police had secretly converted a northeast Denver warehouse into a detention centre
enraged protesters and civil libertarians here yesterday who hoped for a different message with Barack Obama's
Democrats in town.
ABC Reporter Arrested in Denver
Taking Pictures of Senators, Big Donors. Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as
he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic Senators and VIP
donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown's Palace Hotel. Police on the scene refused to tell ABC
lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.
ABC Reporter's Attorneys Want
All Charges Dropped. Lawyers for an ABC reporter and civil rights groups are demanding that
Denver police drop all charges against a reporter who was arrested yesterday [8/27/2008] while trying to
shoot video on a public sidewalk outside the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver.
A D.C. police state.
There is a neighborhood adjacent to Capitol Hill in Washington that is under siege. But the police can't
turn things around on their own. On any given day, residents and visitors to the Trinidad area of Northeast
are forced to traverse unfamiliar streets because D.C. police have barricaded the neighborhood as an anti-crime
tactic — and when law enforcers accomplish that they are intent and in effect creating a police state
in the nation's capital.
The Court defers
to plain language. Adrian Fenty, the mayor of Washington, said he would direct the D.C. cops
to figure out a way around the [Supreme Court's] decision [upholding the Second Amendment]. … And why shouldn't he be cheerful about the actual effect
of the decision? Once the cops have a computerized list of gun owners, they can draw up a map showing
where each of those owners lives. Bureaucrats like maps with a lot of little colored pins. This
makes Big Brother's oversight easier.
Cops pay 3 a.m. visit to tell
man his door is unlocked. A Lakeville man says he feels violated after two police officers woke him up at
3 a.m. to tell him his door was unlocked. Their surprise visit was part of a public service campaign to remind
residents to secure their homes to prevent thefts.
The Editor says...
This is just inexcusable conduct on the part of the local cops. Leaving the door to one's house unlocked is not
a crime, and with no evidence of a crime in progress, the police had no right to enter the house. It is
the police officers who were violating the law in this case, and if they were to face civil liability for their
actions, it would go a long way toward preventing the spread of this behavior. If these "public service
campaign[s]" go unchallenged, police departments in other cities will try them out.
Boiled Frog Alert ...
High Court Rules on Illegal Searches.
The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday [4/23/2008] that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when
done during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law.
The Editor says...
The way I see it, this ruling opens the door for the police to make "traffic stops" for no reason at all,
hoping to find drugs or firearms in someone's car. This ruling effectively drains the life out of the
Fourth Amendment.
When
I Was a Boy, America Was a Better Place. When I was a boy, America was a freer society than it is
today. If Americans had been told the extent and number of laws that would govern their speech and
behavior within one generation, they would have been certain that they were being told about some
dictatorship, not the Land of the Free.
45 days in jail for selling bacon-wrapped hot dogs.
"Bacon is a potentially hazardous food," says Terrence Powell of the LA County Health Department. Continue
selling bacon dogs without county-approved equipment and you risk fines and jail time. Palacios knows all
about that. She spent 45 days in the slammer for selling bacon dogs, and with the lost time from
work, fines, and attorney's fees, she fears she might lose the house that bacon dogs helped buy.
Machine Gun-Toting Officers To Patrol
NYC Subway. The NYPD is pulling out all the stops to beef up safety of the subways. On
Thursday it launched a new anti-terror effort called "Operation Torch," but the cost of the program is raising
some eyebrows. The NYPD's new firepower consists of cops with Mp5 submachine guns, rifles, body armor
and bomb-sniffing dogs.
Abuse of Power in Texas: The Texas
Department of Family and Protective Services, a misnamed bureaucracy if ever there was one, has demanded the
children seized by the state and placed in foster care be immunized immediately against the wishes of their
mothers, who fear negative effects. Ahh, but those mothers are no longer mothers, explains Patrick
Crimmins, spokesman for the department. "We're the legal parents of the children, and we would like for
them to be immunized," he said.
Boston
police jump the gun with "Safe Homes". The police department in that Massachusetts city has just
launched an initiative that exhibits a cynical disregard for the rights of the citizenry, even as it cleverly
cloaks the program in language pretending to protect the people toward whom it is directed. I refer to
the "Safe Homes Initiative," with its slick brochures and smooth rhetoric.
FBI compiling big database of
physical traits. The FBI has embarked on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest
computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented
abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad. Digital images of faces,
fingerprints and palm patterns already are flowing into FBI systems….
Who Will Control Your
Thermostat? In California, we have 236 pages of state-mandated standards for building energy
efficiency, known as Title 24. … What should be controversial in the proposed revisions to Title 24
is the requirement for what is called a "programmable communicating thermostat" or PCT. Every new home and
every change to existing homes' central heating and air conditioning systems will required to be fitted with a
PCT beginning next year following the issuance of the revision. Each PCT will be fitted with a
"non-removable " FM receiver that will allow the power authorities to increase your air conditioning
temperature setpoint or decrease your heater temperature setpoint to any value they chose. During "price
events" those changes are limited to ±4°F. and you would be able to manually override the changes.
During "emergency events" the new setpoints can be whatever the power authority desires and you would not be
able to alter them. In other words, the temperature of your home will no longer be yours to control.
The Editor says...
I can think of a couple of ways to defeat that FM receiver without touching it. And I'm sure it will
only be a matter of time before some hacker figures out how to shut off (or turn on) every air conditioner
in town.
California Seeks Thermostat
Control. Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to
control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will
be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.
The Editor continues...
Scroll down to the end of the article to see a quote from Nicole Tam, a spokeswoman for PG&E,
who claims that the thermostat control signals are hacker-proof because they "are encrypted and
encoded". What a relief! We all know that no encryption scheme has ever been cracked
by hackers.
California
Proposes Taking Control of Thermostats. The California Energy Commission has proposed requiring
thermostats that allow the government to control the temperature of homes and businesses in case of high energy
prices or shortages, a measure that some critics are calling "draconian."
Update:
Public Outrage Throttles
California Plan to Control Home Thermostats. Powered by a wave of public outrage
that transcended party lines, California citizens have forced regulators at the California
Energy Commission to abandon plans to control thermostat settings in private homes. The
Energy Commission had attempted to slip the thermostat provision into Title 24, a
236-page set of rules covering energy efficiency mandates on building construction.
Hillary's plan
for economic ruin: [Scroll down] This supposed deficiency of governmental intervention gets no
support from a glance at the Federal Register, which includes tens of thousands of pages of new, old and
proposed rules. Nor does it help the thesis to note the cost of implementation, $1.1 trillion
annually, according to the Small Business Administration. All of this may seem as nothing to Clinton,
but some fret that these endless, frequently obnoxious and sometimes pointless rules impose thousands of
dollars on an average family each year, steal liberty from individuals and inflict mayhem as they goosestep
their way across the business landscape.
The Taxpayer Frog In the
IRS Pot: There were few enough federal regulations in 1900 that the government did not do anything
special to keep track of them. That changed in the middle of the New Deal. The Federal Register, the
master list of federal regulations, came into existence in 1936. In that year it had 2,620 pages of
regulations. The next year it had 3,450. In the year 2000, it had 83,294 pages.
Magnum, P.C.?
New Texas Law Limits Computer Repair To Licensed Private Investigators Under the new law enacted in 2007,
Texas has put computer repair shops on notice that they had better watch their backs any time they work on a
computer. If a computer repair technician without a government-issued private investigator's license
takes any actions that the government deems to be an "investigation," he may be subject to criminal penalties
of up to one year in jail and a $4,000 fine, as well as civil penalties of up to $10,000. The definition
of "investigation" is very broad and encompasses many common computer repair tasks.
Stores reward hybrid drivers with
choice parking spaces. Wheelchair users and others with limited mobility have long had access to
prime parking spaces. Then expectant mothers got their own special spots. Now some stores are
setting aside coveted parking close to the door for fuel-efficient hybrids.
The Editor says...
How about "black only" parking spots? That would be cheaper
than reparations. No, I'm not kidding.
Big Brother keeps making subtle changes in order to assist the needy or reward certain types of
behavior. Reserved parking places for certain disadvantaged minorities — and now hybrid
car owners — is just an example. The tax code is full of these little incentives.
But by putting these restrictions in place, in many cases the government is engaging in exactly the
sort of discrimination it pretends to oppose.
Cigarette
surveillance program begins today. Starting today [9/27/2007], state Department of Revenue
agents will begin stopping Tennessee motorists spotted buying large quantities of cigarettes in border states,
then charging them with a crime and, in some cases, seizing their cars. Critics say the new "cigarette
surveillance program" amounts to the use of "police state" tactics and wrongfully interferes with interstate
commerce.
Have Gun, Won't Travel. The Gun-Free
School Zones Act … made it a federal crime punishable by five years in prison to possess a gun within 1,000
feet of a school. … According to an analysis by gun control scholar Alan Korwin, the gun-free zones created
by the statute cover so much of Phoenix and Cleveland that they are impossible for people traveling in those
cities to avoid. The upshot, he says, is that "virtually all public travel with firearms is now a
violation of law."
The Editor says...
Don't tell me that effect was just an "unintended consequence" of the law. And don't
tell me the 1000-foot radius will never be increased.
Pro-Gun Liberals? The entire government
machine is based on force or the threat of violence. If I don't pay my property taxes, the government
sends out a bunch of guys with guns to kick me out of my house. If I don't claim all of my income on my
"voluntary" federal income tax return, then you send out the guys with guns to put me in jail for tax evasion.
Behavior Worth Medicating? Twelve adults
gathered in a small, closed courtroom to decide how many powerful, anti-psychotic drugs that the child, who is
currently in the custody of the state, would be required to take. … The verdict: the little guy would
be forced to take anti-psychotic drugs Risperdal, Concerta, and Seroquel, plus the stimulant Clonidine and the
anti-anxiety drug Klonopin. This outcome begs the question of whether a six-year-old child, let alone
children as young as three, can be diagnosed as psychotic. And, whether children should be drugged by
potions so powerful that most of them are not approved by the FDA for use in children.
FDA Takes Tyranny to the
Heartland. In this age of almighty government, nearly every blade of grass is regulated,
oftentimes heavy-handedly, as Michigan farmer Richard Hebron found out when the Michigan Department of
Agriculture (MDA), on Oct. 13, 2006, carried out a highly orchestrated sting operation against him for
transporting unpasteurized, unprocessed milk of the highest quality to enthusiastic consumers. That
day, his wife also was served a warrant in the dragnet.
When Your Only Tool
is Coercion, Every Problem Looks Like Too Much Freedom. There is a famous saying that when the
only tool you have is a hammer every problem look like a nail. For politicians, bureaucrats, and many
activists when the only tool they have is coercion the cause of every problem looks like too much freedom.
And make no mistake; if you are committed to accomplishing your social goals by using government power, then,
by definition, your only tool is the hammer of coercion. As George Washington pointed out in his second
inaugural address: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force." And when people
choose to use government to accomplish their goals they are choosing to use force, not reason and certainly
not eloquence.
A Gift
from Divided Government. The [Federal Elections Commission] from its very formation was a blatant
grab at power by those who detest individual liberty and fundamental freedoms. Taken to its logical
extensions, the FEC is an outright repeal of the First Amendment's right to free speech. When all
political communication is regulated by politically appointed hacks, when only favored entities are allowed to
engage in political action, when some people are severely limited in what they can say or do while others are
given a free hand to do as they please, freedom ceases to exist.
The census has
grown beyond its bounds. While the Patriot Act and National Security Agency wiretapping have
received enormous attention and criticism from the mainstream media, another federal agency has been quietly
gathering far more personal information about U.S. residents than those laws ever can. And this
unreported project affects thousands more people. Our inquisitive federal government has been
demanding that selected U.S. residents answer 73 nosy questions. They are threatened with a fine
of $5,000 for failure to respond.
Data Disseminated by Federal Agencies Can't
Be Challenged, Court Rules. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on March 6
ruled the Salt Institute, a nonprofit association of salt producers that provides public information on
behalf of its members, lacked standing to bring a lawsuit challenging government-disseminated misinformation
about alleged health risks of salt. Because it is difficult to imagine a plaintiff who would suffer
greater harm from erroneous data about the adverse health effects of salt than the Salt Institute itself,
the decision raises grave questions about the public accountability of government agencies.
Chicken farmers protest
homeland security rules over propane tanks. Are chicken coops the next battleground in the war
on terror? Poultry growers are protesting proposed regulations from the Department of Homeland Security
that would label propane gas a "chemical of interest" and require anybody with 7,500 pounds or more of the
fuel to register with the agency. At that amount, poultry farmers who use propane to heat chicken
houses would have to fill out the forms.
UK Police Can Now Demand Encryption Keys. Under
a new law that went into effect this month, it is now a crime to refuse to turn a decryption key over to the
police. … "The Home Office has steadfastly proclaimed that the law is aimed at catching terrorists, pedophiles, and
hardened criminals — all parties which the UK government contents are rather adept at using encryption to cover up their
activities." We heard the same thing from FBI Director Louis Freeh in 1993. I called them "The Four Horsemen
of the Information Apocalypse" — terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers — and they
have been used to justify all sorts of new police powers.
Car Payment
Late? Big Brother Won't Let the Engine Start. Rashida Redd punched in a six-digit code
in her Pontiac Grand Prix and got a new lease on life. … The device, the size of a cigarette pack and
mounted under the dashboard, flashes green if she has made a car payment on time. If she misses
her $94 weekly payment, it won't let her car start.
[Obviously, if a loan company can do that today, it won't be long before such a device is
standard equipment. This would enable the state to put the brakes, so to speak, on
people with unpaid traffic tickets.]
1984
sticks its camel nose under the Catholic cafeteria's door. Big Brother dishes up mealtime
regulations for students — but how did "sexual orientation" get on the menu? A poster in a Catholic
School cafeteria states that discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited. Literally
"cafeteria Catholics."
U.S. Supreme Court destroys the
right to private property. The U.S. Supreme Court [has] ruled in Kelo v. City of
New London that local governments can seize private property for private development even when
that property is not "put into use for the general public."
Property Rights Devastated by Supreme
Court Ruling. Any government 'purpose' means homes get bulldozed.
More opinions about this terrible Supreme Court decision can be found
here.
"Robed Masters" Usurping
Control of U.S. Government, Says Bauer. Phyllis Hamilton is a federal district
court judge in San Francisco — but Gary Bauer says she must believe herself to be
a "higher authority" than the elected officials in Congress and the president himself. How
else, he wonders, could the Clinton appointee justify striking down a ban on partial-birth
abortion that was passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Bush?
Study: Distraction Behind Most Car
Crashes. Those sleep-deprived, multitasking drivers — clutching cell phones, fiddling
with their radios or applying lipstick — apparently are involved in an awful lot of crashes.
Distracted drivers were involved in nearly eight out of 10 collisions or near-crashes, says a study released
Thursday [4/20/2006] by the government.
Editor's Note:
Obviously this "study" was published to generate popular demand for a new law against driving while
distracted. It won't fix the problem, but it will give the cops another excuse to search your
car for drugs and weapons. When an objectionable commercial comes on the radio, am I supposed
to pull over and stop before changing the station?
This brings up another point: Have you seen the inside of a police car lately? Besides the
lights and sirens and multi-channel two-way radios, they have computer terminals through which they receive
almost all their instructions from the dispatcher. (Not to mention car-to-car text messages
about where they're going to eat lunch.) Some have GPS maps that show the location of other police cars
as well as their own. The cops are in no position to judge others as distracted drivers.
Statistics disprove the "study" cited above.
Cellphones and Distracted Drivers:
Cellphones have gone from a rare luxury to ubiquitous in the last ten years. Yet over the same time
period, automobile accidents have declined steadily: from 1994 to 2004 the fatality rate per
100 million miles has gone from 1.73 to 1.44, and the injury rate from 139 to 94. For
cars (which are the most common vehicles) the numbers for fatal crashes went from 2.07 to 1.57, injury
crashes from 191 to 123, and property-only crashes from 351 to 260 over the same period.
Consent Decrees: The
Other Judicial Activism. This loss of self-rule has come in the form of
mandates passed by Congress over the last three decades which drastically impact our
state and local governments. ... From 1970 to 1999 Congress passed 67 such mandates,
the majority of them unfunded. These mandates created a profusion of new rights
in our country covering everything from rights for prison inmates to accessibility rights
for people with disabilities to the right of everyone to breathe clean air.
A Truth
Obama Won't Tell: This episode … proves the impossibility of talking sense on
the subject of illicit drugs during a political campaign. That course of action would mean
admitting the inadmissible: that the prohibition of cannabis has been cruel, wasteful and
fraudulent. Cruel because it leads to the arrest of nearly 700,000 people a year for mere
possession of a substance that is comparatively benign. Wasteful because it expends
billions of dollars in police, court and correctional resources that could be deployed against
dangerous predators. Fraudulent because it hasn't solved anything: According to the
federal government, nearly 100 million Americans have tried the stuff.
City may ban little baggies.
Tiny plastic bags used to sell small quantities of heroin, crack cocaine, marijuana and other drugs would be banned
in Chicago, under a crackdown advanced Tuesday by a City Council committee. Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd)
persuaded the Health Committee to ban possession of "self-sealing plastic bags under two inches in either height
or width," after picking up 15 of the bags on a recent Sunday afternoon stroll through a West Side park.
The Editor says...
Why not also ban larger baggies, paper envelopes, shoeboxes, glove compartments, and any other
storage device that might possibly hold drugs? It is obvious (to me) that the war on drugs
isn't really about the drugs -- it is about control.
Repeal the
Bradley Amendment. When our supposedly compassionate federal government pokes its nose into
areas that, under our principle of federalism, should be none of its business, the result is often
unintended consequences, gross injustices, and of course massive costs.
Roy
Moore, the Imperial Congress, and the Rule of Law. Only such a person as Roy Moore could be
expected to possess the courage and steadfastness sufficient to tackle the difficult issues threatening to
cripple America and eradicate its future. Win or lose, he is showing the nation what needs to be done
if it is to have any hope of restoration.
US-VISIT: Documents
obtained by EPIC under the
Freedom of Information Act from the Department of Homeland Security show that US-VISIT has resulted
in many cases of mistaken identity. Commercial aircrew members, vacationers, and businesspersons
have all been delayed by the gaffes. The problems caused unnecessary delays in the visitors'
travels and resulted in the improper flagging of crewmembers by government watch lists.
EPIC's US-VISIT page: US-VISIT
includes the interfacing and integration of over twenty existing systems. Among the systems
used by US-VISIT are: the Arrival Departure Information System, Advance Passenger Information
System, Computer Linked Application Information Management System 3, Interagency Border
Inspection System, Automated Biometric Identification System, Student Exchange Visitor Information
System, and Consular Consolidated Database. Some of these data systems contain more personal
information than US-VISIT needs to operate. Some of them also contain information about
United States citizens and lawful permanent residents, not just foreign nationals subject to
the US-VISIT program.
Chutzpah 1,
Citizens 0. With all the whining and carping about the balance of power between this
branch of government and that, why is there nary a peep about the most fundamental of constitutional
balances, that between the government and the people?
The
highest security in inauguration history. Sharpshooters will be
deployed on roofs, while bomb-sniffing dogs will work the streets. Electronic
sensors will be used to detect chemical or biological weapons. Anti-abortion
protesters have been warned to leave their crosses at home. Parade performers
will have security escorts to the bathroom, and they've been ordered not to look
directly at President Bush or make any sudden movements while passing the
reviewing stand.
Apochryphal, yet believable:
Will Your Safe Deposit Box
Be Seized During The Next Emergency? What you can do now to protect your valuables.
Forget Spy vs. Spy — This is
Cops vs. Cops. The demonstrators arrived angry, departed furious. The police had
herded them into pens. Stopped them from handing out fliers. Threatened them with arrest
for standing on public sidewalks. Made notes on which politicians they cheered and which ones
they razzed. Meanwhile, officers from a special unit videotaped their faces, evoking for one
demonstrator the unblinking eye of George Orwell's "1984."
Orwell Today compares the world George Orwell described
in "1984" with the world we are living in today.
Are we having fun
yet?. I've lived under dictator Francisco Franco in Spain when the Guardia Civil routinely stood
on street corners with automatic weapons … But I've never experienced anything like American security in
the land of the free. It was chillingly ironic listening to President George W. Bush talk about
liberty, a word he used about 15 times in his inaugural address – and our mission to help
others liberate themselves – while we were being frisked, filmed and watched by snipers.
A
Man's Home is Uncle Sam's Castle. Possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but not when the law
wants your possessions. … This is why principle matters, folks. Not too many complained when the EEOC
sued business after business for alleged discrimination, or when the nanny state foisted mandate after mandate
upon them. But one thing leads to another. Compromise the principle of private property rights and
you've created a slippery slope, one of whose steeper drop-offs is called eminent domain, and at whose
terminus can be found the netherworld of tyranny.
Reno's Raid on the Rule of
Law. Janet Reno's illegal seizure of Elian Gonzalez – in essence, a hit-and-run raid
on the rule of law – threatens the liberty and safety of every American.
Elián's
Odyssey. In the story of a small Cuban boy is reflected the ordeal of our
age – the struggle of truth and liberty versus lies and tyranny.
In Some States, Wine Shipment Is a
Felony. Interstate wine shipments using a common carrier, from a winery to an
adult consumer 21 years or older, are prohibited in 24 states.
Judge's jailing of 20 in cell phone
flap upheld. A Niagara Falls City Court judge who jailed 20 defendants after a cell phone or
wristwatch alarm went off in his court last year was acting within his judicial authority, a federal
district judge has ruled.
What's in the Secret VEIL Test Results? I
wrote last week about how the analog hole bill would mandate use of the secret VEIL technology. Because
the law would require compliance with the VEIL specification, that spec would effectively be part of the
law. Call me old-fashioned, but I think there's something wrong when Congress is considering a secret
bill that would impose a secret law. We're talking about television here, not national security.
Taking a bite out of crime:
Lemonade
stand wins fight with city. The St. Louis Health Department
closed a curbside lemonade stand run by two little girls, ages 10 and 12. A
Health Department inspector told them they didn't have the proper business licenses and were
selling unsafe ice cubes. The girls were using powdered lemonade mix with ice
cubes bought from a store.
Teen's
Worm Sales Squished by Connecticut Town. For the last three summers, 13-year-old Joey Cadieux
has headed outside with his flashlight on rainy nights to collect nightcrawlers from his yard. Purchased
by passing fishermen for $2.50 a dozen, the wriggling worms brought him $7 to $10 in a good month, just enough
for bike trips to his favorite neighborhood pizza joint. But when a town official recently objected to
his stenciled black-and-white "nite crawlers" yard sign, Joey's business got the hook.
The War on
Pot: As the nation's "drug czar," John Walters is supposed to be saving
us from the ravages of hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. At least that was the original
sales pitch for the "war on drugs" in the 1980s. But the war has evolved into
largely a fight against marijuana, which no one has ever claimed is a hard drug. Walters
is nonetheless committed, Ahab-like, to arresting every marijuana smoker in the
country whom law enforcement can lay its hands on.
The left's
vision: Santa Monica, California, has decreed a fine of $2,500 a day for not
cutting your hedges! Has someone discovered some terrible health hazard or other danger from hedges that are
too high? Not at all. The politicians who run Santa Monica have simply decided that people
should not be able to build a high wall of hedges around themselves.
The Creeping Militarization
of the Home Front: Deploying troops on the home front is very different
from waging war abroad. Soldiers are trained to kill, whereas civilian peace officers
are trained to respect constitutional rights and to use force only as a last resort. That
fundamental distinction explains why Americans have long resisted the use of standing armies to
keep the domestic peace. Unfortunately, plans are afoot to change that time-honored
policy.
Big Brother Not Only Watches Us, It Toys
with Our Children. Lego, for example, in 2003 began marketing a plastic construction set depicting
a police 18-wheeler housing a surveillance unit, complete with monitoring devices and control panels to track
movements of little Lego citizens. … While the Lego surveillance play set is — according to the
company — oriented toward 8-year-olds, a rival company, Playmobil, which produces plastic figures for younger
darlings, apparently has determined there is a market for toys teaching 4-year-olds the benefit of submitting
oneself to intrusive police searches.
Armed and dangerous: Federal
agencies expanding use of firepower BATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals Service, even the National Park Service and
Department of Health and Human Services — all have their own SWAT teams.
Misdemeanor Mistakes and Felony Forgetfulness.
It was a cool, clear October day in Washington, D.C., when the closing bell rang and twelve-year-old Ansche
Hedgepeth ran out the door of Alice Deal Junior High School. She stopped at a fast-food restaurant for
an order of hot French fries and then headed for home. Ansche took the escalator down into the
Tenleytown/American University Metrorail station to catch her train. In the station, she ate a single
French fry. Moments later, the junior high student was in handcuffs and headed for jail.
Update:
Court Dismisses Case of
Girl Arrested for Eating French Fries in DC Metro. While chastising metro officials for creating
such a "foolish" operating procedure as the one mandating arrest for juveniles found eating, drinking or smoking
in a metro station, District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the case of a 12-year-old girl who was arrested
for eating a French fry on the Washington, D.C. Metro. Judge Sullivan stated that once probable cause of a
violation had been established by Metro police, Hedgepeth had "no fundamental right to freedom from physical
restraint." Rutherford Institute attorneys intend to appeal the district court's ruling to the District of
Columbia Court of Appeals.
License Plate "Guns"
and Privacy: New Haven police have a new law enforcement tool: a license-plate
scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving or parked cars and links
with remote police databases, immediately providing information about the car and owner. Right
now the police check if there are any taxes owed on the car, if the car or license plate is
stolen, and if the car is unregistered or uninsured. A car that comes up positive is towed.
Overthrowing the Constitution and Subverting
Representative Democracy. Too many judges can no longer be counted on to reach rational and
reasonable decisions based on the law. Instead, too many judges now regularly issue decisions based on
the absurd and the fanciful. To make matters worse, these same judges impose their political views on the
rest of us through anti-democratic and politically unaccountable means and then they tell us the Constitution
made them do it.
The open secret — who runs
the show? The legislative staffs at the federal level as well as in the states have far more power
than it is polite to talk about. Usually, politicians fear bringing the subject up. They don't want
us to realize how much they rely upon their professional staffs to keep cranking out their never-ending batches
of half-baked legislation. They only bring it up when they have to: when a goofy provision just
seems too goofy even for Congress. Or when their careers are threatened with term limits.
Criminalizing
Dissent: The FBI's Project Megiddo, which warns against millennial terrorism, paints
constitutionalists, devout Christians, hate groups, and militias with the same broad strokes.
The Lady in Red
Tape: Judy Hooper loves doughnuts. That's one of the reasons she
opened a bakery in Evanston, Illinois. It's a small shop, bringing in about $50,000 in
profits annually. That's not enough to make her rich, but the challenge of running a
small business and her talent for baking keep this 35-year-old Chicago native busy. Ask
Hooper about OSHA, however, and her face glazes over with disdain. A 1994 inspection of
her 30-person bakery by OSHA officials left Hooper with $13,000 in frivolous fines. Her
infractions included a failure to warn employees of the hazards of household dishwashing
liquid. To recoup the cost of the fines, she would have to sell 260,000 doughnuts,
or 10,400 cakes, or 1,040,000 cookies.
Federal Regulations
Back to Near-Record Levels. Federal government regulators issued 4,148 new
rules in the 71,269-page Federal Register in 2003, 19 fewer than they did in 2002. The
cost of those rules appears nowhere in the federal budget. According to the Federal Register,
the five most active rule-producing agencies — the Departments of Treasury,
Transportation, Homeland Security, and Agriculture and the Environmental Protection
Agency — account for 46 percent of the rules under consideration.
Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual
Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State (2004 Edition). The five most active rule-producing agencies
(the Departments of Treasury, Transportation, Homeland Security, and Agriculture, and the Environmental
Protection Agency) account for 46 percent of rules under consideration. Of the 4,266 regulations now
in the works, 859 affect small business. Regulatory costs of $869 billion are equivalent to
7.9 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, estimated at $10,980 billion for 2003.
Ten Thousand Commandments (2003 Edition).
The federal government funds programs in three primary ways. The first is by raising taxes to pay for new
programs. The second is by borrowing money to pay for them. The third way the government funds its
programs is by regulating. That is, rather than pay directly and book the expense of a new initiative, it
can require that the private sector and lower level governments pay. By regulating, the government can
carry out desired programs but avoid using tax dollars to fund them. That process sometimes allows
Congress to escape accountability and to blame agencies for costs.
Ten Thousand Commandments (2002 Edition).
Ten Thousand Commandments (2001 Edition).
Ten Thousand Commandments (1999 Edition). The
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) alone expects to issue 462 of the 4,560 planned rules. The
EPA's rules now in the pipeline will cost at least $3.5 billion annually. Fewer than half
of the EPA's prioritized $100 million rules are accompanied by benefit estimates.
"If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be
governed by the ten thousand commandments."
— G.K. Chesterton
[1]
[2]
The Universal
National Service Act of 2003: New draft legislation will
take your daughters as well as your sons.
Automatic registration for the
draft: The Texas DPS is going to automatically register 18 to 26 year old males with the US
Selective Service (military draft) when they apply for or renew a Texas driver's license.
Editor's Note: This
raises some important questions. How many state agencies use their leverage
to gather information for federal agencies? And what other agencies will begin
using this technique?
Draft
Registration for 15-year-olds? "There may be no 'plans' for a national
military draft, but that hasn't kept Louisiana from registering teenagers too young
to serve in case conditions change," reported the Town Talk of Alexandria, Louisiana,
on November 13. Local resident Larry Chevalier "was alarmed when his 16-year-old
son Nathan had to register with the Selective Service System in order to get
a driver's license."
The
Action is in the Reaction. The terrorist leaders and their sponsors are
providing the pretext for the U.S. government to institute police-state measures.
What
Can Be Done: The answer to terrorism lies not in granting Gestapo-like
police powers to the federal government but in restoring legitimate internal
security measures.
Supreme Court Urged to Rule Against
Sentencing Guidelines. The Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) filed a brief
with the United States Supreme Court urging it to affirm a pair of lower court rulings that
held that the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines are unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment's
guarantee to a right to trial. If the Court agrees with WLF, as many legal observers
believe it will, Congress will likely revamp the controversial guidelines which have mandated
draconian sentences even for minor regulatory offenses.
Suspending
Habeas Corpus: The Bush administration claims the power to detain "enemy
combatants" indefinitely without trial, a suspension of the Habeas Corpus guarantee on
which our justice system is founded.
The
Gangster State: In a free society, the police protect citizens, but in a
police state, they protect government from its citizens. This police state mindset
is now more deeply entrenched under Bush than Clinton.
Victims of Over-Zealous Police
Officers: No one disputes the fact that seat belts save lives. Most states, therefore,
have buckle-up laws that make it a misdemeanor to drive with being properly belted. However, in Texas,
the Transportation Code not only permits a police officer to stop a driver for the non-use of seat belts, it
also permits the officer to arrest the driver for violating that law. Gail Atwater was one of those
unfortunate Texans.
Running From the Police — Is It
Sufficient For A Stop? In a 5-4 decision decided in January, the United States Supreme Court
effectively dished up more power onto the plates of law enforcement officers, giving them the authority to
detain a person who flees at the mere sight of a policeman.
Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of
Prohibition. Jeffrey A. Miron, Professor of Economics at Boston University
contends that the war on drugs has been more effective in fostering corruption among public
officials than in reducing drug consumption.
Criminalizing
business: If you create enough laws, everyone will be a criminal.
Criminalizing
business: part II. A recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle vividly
illustrates the anti-business mindset of many Californians. It dealt with the fact that
Wal-Mart lost a referendum to allow the retailer to put a store in Inglewood,
California. According to the Chronicle columnist, Wal-Mart was "trying to bully
its way into another targeted community." Putting an issue to a vote is called "bullying"
when business does it, and the community where it wants to locate is called a "target."
Ruled
by scoundrels: The more federal control over education, the worse it
becomes. The Endangered Species Act has attacked and trivialized private property
rights. CAFE standards, by forcing auto companies to produce lighter, and hence less
safe cars, have cost thousands of highway fatalities, and it goes on and on.
Parting
company is an option: Every single bit of evidence shows that states have a
right to secede. There's absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits
secession. What stops secession is the brute force of a mighty federal government,
as witnessed by the costly War of 1861.
Flower power: Free the
florists! Last year Sandy Meadows, who supervises the floral department at an Albertson's
supermarket in Baton Rouge, was filling in at another Albertson's store that had lost its florist when she was
visited by an inspector from the Louisiana Horticulture Commission. He told her she'd have to throw out
the seven arrangements she had produced that morning if she wanted to avoid a $250 citation for practicing
floristry without a license.
Police Arrest NH Man For Giving a Manicure
Without a License. A self-proclaimed manicurist decided to open for business in Concord [NH] on
Monday [5/9/2005] without the state's approval, attacking state licensing laws with a nail file. Michael
Fisher, 23, of Newmarket, N.H., was arrested and charged with violating the state's license law. He said
he organized the protest to call attention to what he said are needless obstacles facing small businesses in
the state. … The manicure performed without a license was undertaken right outside the state Board of
Barbering, Cosmetology and Esthetics office.
Roy
Moore, Chief Justice No More. Many side issues have divided the Christian community on this case,
so we must remember that the true enemy here is the judicial tyranny that is forcing a secular religion on our
public life and discourse. That is the battle we need to focus on.
Bill would allow FBI to
collect DNA from anyone arrested. The law, if enacted, would be the greatest single expansion of
the federal government's power to collect and use DNA since the FBI's national database was created in 1992.
Liberate
Drug Dogs and end modern prohibition. The Matheson case points out the lack of
credibility of drug dogs and their employers. Drug dogs are often used as ruses to
violate the constitutional rights of humans. Drug dogs are like humans in that they
must be taught to approach peaceful people and search them, so that they can be arrested,
handcuffed and imprisoned for decades under modern prohibition. That is
not an easy trick to teach a dog. It's easier to teach humans.
Godfather government, meet yer maker. Making new
homes "affordable" by putting a gun to home builders' heads is criminal.
Shattered Dreams: 100 Stories of
Government Abuse. This publication highlights how regulations that are poorly written and/or
inflexibly enforced can overwhelm, intimidate, bankrupt or otherwise harm average Americans. It features
situations related to the Americans with Disabilities Act, building codes, INS, IRS, the Endangered Species Act,
OSHA, Indian Affairs, zoning, property rights issues, etc.
Shattered Dreams: 100 Stories of
Government Abuse. Download the entire book in PDF format. (518 k-bytes and well worth it.)
The People Versus LaLa Wang: Wang is
the founder of MLX.com, an interactive portal site that allows customers to access a real-time database of real
estate listings. In her years as a real estate broker, Wang never faced a single consumer complaint.
But her perfect record and satisfied customer base did nothing to dissuade the New York Department of State
from trying to shut down her business.
Taxing Times in California: The Depths to which his
California has Fallen. Stories of taxpayer abuse at the hands of the IRS were once so common as
to be cliché, but Gil Hyatt recently discovered that California's state taxing authorities can be
even nastier.
Arrested for catching a
mouse? A California law requires a trapping license in order to kill mice. The Animal
Protection Institute of Sacramento pushed the bill, which mandates anyone who takes furbearing mammals or
non-game animals must purchase a trapping license by passing a complex test and paying a fee of $78.50, the
San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Four
Myths About Muslims: Day after day the "war on terror" brings more
misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Most security measures are either
window dressings for public consumption or usurpations of civil liberties by power-hungry
elements within the bowels of bureaucracy.
Upload a File, Go to Prison.
Two congressmen introduce a bill to criminalize the uploading of copyright works to peer-to-peer networks.
The penalty: five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Critics say the law goes
too far.
Commerce clause
abuse: The original purpose of the Commerce Clause was primarily a means to eliminate trade
barriers among the states. They didn't intend for the Commerce Clause to govern so much of our lives.
Dependent
on D.C.: The Supreme Court's 1942 decision in Wickard vs. Filburn gave
Congress the power to regulate anything. In that case, the Court remarkably held that
the interstate commerce clause could be used to regulate an individual farmer's
wheat production for his family's consumption.
A Grand Façade: How the Grand Jury Was
Captured by Government. Some over-reaching prosecutors have been able to pervert the grand jury,
whose original purpose was to check prosecutorial power, into an inquisitorial bulldozer that enhances the
power of government and now runs roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens.
Why they no
longer treat us with respect: Once the kind of folks who think of themselves as "the government"
have had a couple of generations to get used to their monopoly on armed force and coercion, they quickly tire
of pretending to act as our "servants."
How a mantra ate
justice: The Wenatchee witch hunt gained its opportunity from a liberal mantra that three out of
four children are subjected to sex abuse by a parent, close relative or child-care provider. This mantra
spawned federal legislation, Child Protective Services (an unaccountable agency with broad powers), an industry
of child advocates and therapists with financial incentives to find sex abuse in Johnny's football bruises, and
special prosecutorial units that need cases. These mechanisms for the miscarriage of justice are in place
in every city and town in the United States.
The Expanding Federal Police
Power: Nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government authority over ordinary
crimes. In America, crime fighting is the responsibility of state and local government. But despite
the lack of constitutional authorization, federal policymakers continually try to involve themselves in crime
fighting. [PDF]
CALEA: These
Are Not Your Father's Wiretaps. Privacy advocates fear that the FBI's need to monitor Internet Age
technologies, such as voice over IP, will give it far too sweeping powers.
Vanishing Liberties: Where's the
Press? On March 18 [2003], the Associated Press reported that at John Carroll University, in a
Cleveland suburb, Justice Antonin Scalia said that "most of the rights you enjoy go way beyond what the
Constitution requires" because "the Constitution just sets minimums." Accordingly, in wartime, Scalia
emphasized, "the protections will be ratcheted down to the constitutional minimum."
Former
Watergate "Plumber" Attacks Government Regulations: At one time, people could rake the leaves and
burn them in a barrel, ride a bicycle without a helmet, drive a car without a seatbelt and walk down the street
holding a shotgun.
Due Process Vanishes in Thin
Air. The aviation list, intended to catch terrorists before they board planes, has persistently
and widely snagged innocent American travelers, according to government documents obtained by the Electronic
Privacy Information Center through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Another crackdown on
homeschoolers? California legislation sparked concerns parents could face child-abuse charges.
Social Services
Investigations: The Removal of Children From The Home. Parents in the United States are
subject to increasing government involvement in their lives as they seek to properly raise their children.
Administrative agencies of the government, which are created by statute to carry out broad directives such as
maintaining the health and welfare of minor children, are given more and more discretion in performing those
duties. [PDF]
Pull CNN's Plug. It's
fundamentally wrong for our public airport authorities to force a trapped general audience to watch and hear a
constant stream of lies and propaganda.
Why the Pentagon Wants to Spy on
Your Shopping: Did you realize the Pentagon will soon know about every gun, book, magazine,
Twinkie, condom and everything else you buy? The reason for the massive database: to seek "patterns
indicative of terrorist activity," defense officials said [recently].
The FEMA Subsection:
FEMA appears to be up to something. Their mission is evidently more
important than just mopping up after a hurricane.
Just try to get close to one of the FEMA regional headquarters buildings and you'll
see what I mean. People who have seen it have told me that the FEMA office in
Denton, Texas, has security measures in place that you would expect to see only at
Fort Knox. Shortwave antennas are all around it, there are several no-nonsense
guards on duty, and almost all of the facility is deep underground.
Region 5 Center, Denton, TX: An article from
May, 1961 about the hardened underground facility in Denton, one of several built around the country.
The building in Denton was originally part of a "continuity of government" plan in the event of an
all-out nuclear war.
Apparently there are many people who think that FEMA is a
sinister, secretive, very costly, and dangerously powerful agency.
The latest:
FEMA
is using the FOIA to dig itself into a deeper hole. If there were an award for the
least popular federal agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency would probably be a
near-unanimous choice, thanks to the barrage of negative media it received during the
Hurricane Katrina debacle.
A
disastrous history. Jimmy Carter in 1979 tried to make sense of disaster relief
by establishing FEMA via executive order. He stated that the new structure would "permit
more rational decisions of the relative costs and benefits of alternative approaches to
disasters." Carter was wrong: Presidents kept reacting politically, and local
and state officials kept passing the buck and asking for bucks.
The Secret
National Cops. U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, questions the use of "traditional
tools" as they were wielded in her own bailiwick. Chenoweth, whose congressional district
includes Clearwater County, blasted the FEMA agents for behaving "like a bull in a china
shop." "I understand that FEMA has an important responsibility to ensure that federal
funds are handled consistent with law, but … FEMA has proceeded against a local
government and private citizens in a threatening manner," she wrote to Attorney General
Janet Reno. "It is exactly this type of unnecessary, heavy-handed
show of force that feeds the distrust of the federal government."
FEMA's
Plan for Mass Destruction Attacks: Of Course It's True. Let
me state for the record that FEMA is moving ahead with plans to create
temporary cities that could handle millions of Americans after mass destruction
attacks on U.S. cities. Though the agency has denied the program to some of our
readers and has made misleading claims about NewsMax's original story to members
of the press, the basic facts of the story remain unchallenged.
The
FEMA raid at Orofino, Idaho. At 7 a.m. on July 18th, two employees at
the [Clearwater County, Idaho] flood control center were startled by a group of men
in dark attire and bullet-proof vests and sidearms. According to various accounts,
the frightened employees, thinking they were under assault by a gang of thugs, locked the
door and called the sheriff, Nick Albers. Nancy Butler, a reporter for the weekly
Clearwater Tribune, told Sarah Foster of the Internet newspaper World Net Daily that the
behavior of the FEMA agents was "totally uncalled for." "They didn't just come over
and knock on the door — they came running over the hill at the back of the
building and crawling through the sagebrush. The whole scenario just
floored me."
Federal Emergency Management
Agency: Some people have referred to it as the "secret government" of the
United States. It is not an elected body, it does not involve itself in public
disclosures, and it even has a quasi-secret budget in the billions of dollars. This
government organization has more power than the President of the United States or the Congress,
it has the power to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without
a warrant and hold them without trial, it can seize property, food supplies, transportation
systems, and can suspend the Constitution. Not only is it the most powerful entity in the
United States, but it was not even created under Constitutional law by the Congress. It
was a product of a Presidential Executive Order. A Presidential Executive Order,
whether Constitutional or not, becomes law simply by its publication in the Federal Registry.
(Same article as above from an alternate source: FEMA - The
Secret Government.)
The Disaster Agency. Most Americans had never even heard of
this obscure government agency before syndicated columnist Jack Anderson reported in October 1984 that FEMA had
prepared bizarre "standby legislation" that would, in the event of a national crisis, "suspend the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights, effectively eliminate private property, abolish free enterprise, and generally clamp
Americans in a totalitarian vise." In any self-respecting banana republic, such a document might be
called a blueprint for a coup d'etat. FEMA called it "national security" planning.
COG stands for surprising
assault on democracy. An elite group of former Clinton advisers and former public officials from
both major political parties gathered recently at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., to
announce their proposal to convert the House of Representatives from an elected body to an appointed body in
the event of a national emergency.
FEMA Concentration and Internment Camps:
There over 600 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners.
They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to
be operated by FEMA should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States.
Lists of FEMA radio frequencies:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
Mount Weather Underground
Complex. Just 46 miles from Washington DC, a mysterious and secretive underground military base
exists, located deep inside a mountain near the rural town of Bluemont, Virginia. Here lies Mount Weather,
also known as the Western Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations.
Mount Weather and Underground Bases. Mount
Weather is the self-sustaining underground command center for the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA). The facility is the operational center — the hub — of approximately 100
other Federal Relocation Centers, most of which are concentrated in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia,
Maryland and North Carolina. Together this network of underground facilities constitutes the backbone
of America's "Continuity of Government" program.
Shadow
Government Is at Work in Secret. Deployed civilians are not permitted to take their families,
and under penalty of prosecution they may not tell anyone where they are going or why. "They're on a
'business trip,' that's all," said one official involved in the effort. The two sites of the shadow
government make use of local geological features to render them highly secure. They are well stocked
with food, water, medicine and other consumable supplies, and are capable of generating their own power.
Site R is secure, but it's not
undisclosed. Site R, with its six-stories of underground offices, subterranean water reservoir,
and banks of mysterious antennas, dishes and massive, steel doors, has been a designated backup command
center since it was hewn out of the mountain in 1951.
Disaster
aid boondoggle Hurricane Frances made landfall more than 100 miles north
of Miami-Dade County earlier this year. But that didn't stop thousands of residents
there from getting nearly $28 million in federal disaster aid. Top winds reached only
47 mph in Miami-Dade County during the Labor Day weekend storm, so damages were limited
to some fallen power lines and uprooted trees, according to FEMA and other
disaster-relief officials. Yet residents used their relief checks to buy more
than 5,000 televisions allegedly destroyed by Frances, as well as 1,440 air
conditioners, 1,360 twin beds, 1,311 washers and dryers, and 831 dining sets.
Not taking no for an answer, Houston mayor
seizes old warehouse. The owner declined Wednesday [9/7/2005] to lease or rent the building as
offices for FEMA, so Mayor Bill White commandeered the building.
Editor's Note: This is a clear
violation of the Fourth Amendment, since Houston is hundreds of miles away from the area damaged
by Hurricane Katrina.
FEMA versus
Wal-Mart: Many people who think that government is the answer to our problems
do not bother to check out the evidence. But it can be eye-opening to compare how private
businesses responded to hurricane Katrina and how local, state and national governments responded.
FEMA Strikes Again!
Although the effort was trumpeted in the media as an example of grassroots ingenuity in the face of disaster,
local officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency have nixed an attempt by Houston activists to set
up a low-power radio station at the Astrodome that would have broadcast Hurricane Katrina relief information
for evacuees.
Editor's Note: FEMA's
excuses for this action are numerous and each is transparently false. The micro-power
broadcasting issue is all about control. The government can't afford to allow
even one watt of unlicensed broadcasting, because it would open a door that could never
be closed again. The FCC has been fighting this battle for decades.
Hundreds
of millions paid to people untouched by disasters. The federal government's
mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe is only the latest bungling in a national
disaster response system that for years has been fraught with waste and fraud. A South
Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation has found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency in
five years poured at least $330 million into communities that were spared the devastating
effects of fires, hurricanes, floods and tornadoes.
FEMA Should Be Shut Down. What if there was no
such thing as FEMA? I asked myself that question after reading about the Federal Emergency Management
Agency's bungled efforts to serve the poor and suffering in the area formerly known as New
Orleans. … FEMA's boorish behavior underscores it real purpose, which is always to
spend its budget and get good press doing it, because such activities will reflect well
on the public sector.
Katrina victims required to use Microsoft
Internet Explorer. It's clear to me that they've engineered a web system that is: (a)
Extraordinarily over-engineered to work under only one browser, and (b) Nonfunctional under that
browser. This, I conclude, is simply another example of FEMA incompetence.
There is a lot more to be learned from FEMA's handling
of Hurricane Katrina.
Conservatives
Go on the Offense: The privacy issue was discussed in terms of making certain
that any information the government can gather on law-abiding citizens in the name of national
security is information you would not mind falling into the hands of Hillary Clinton should
she someday become president or attorney general.
Not
paranoid? You're not paying attention then. Experience tells us that
freedoms once lost are difficult to regain and that government policies once in place
take on lives of their own. If ever there were a time for a pre-emptive strike, this
is it. Best to say "Hell no" before it's no longer
permissible to protest.
An Ominous New Era: Regulation
by Litigation. Regulating industries is a slow and cumbersome process,
frustrating for officials because it often fails to achieve the results they want. So the
Environmental Protection Agency has come up with a new strategy, one that turns the
Constitution on its head and gives unelected regulators the power of the sovereign. It's
called regulation-by-litigation, and a lot of industries had better watch out.
Homeschoolers get a knock on the
door from police: A public school superintendent [in Illinois] has sent police in squad cars to
the houses of homeschooling families to deliver his demand that they appear for a "pre-trial hearing" to prove
they are in compliance with the law.
Children flee homeschool
cop: When the doorbell rings at the Channell residence in Spring Valley, Ill., 10-year-old Aaron
and 11-year-old Christopher run for cover. The homeschooled boys have been on edge, says their father
Roger, since a truant officer came to the family's front door Oct. 3 and warned, "I could have your
children taken away."
Be Careful What You
Write: On September 1, 2002, I wrote a column critical of the way screening is carried
out at U.S. airports ("A
U.S. Police State"). Since that time I have been on ten flights. On every one of
those ten flights I have been "selected" for "random" searches by the same airline screeners I
criticized. Surely this was a coincidence!
Combating federal
tyranny: No one has a moral obligation to obey unconstitutional laws. That's not to say
there isn't a compelling case for obedience to unconstitutional laws: the brutal force of the federal
government to coerce obedience.
Making Citizens the
Enemy: Seasoned travelers have concluded that the real purpose of U.S. airport "security" is to
establish a precedent for unreasonable and warrantless searches. By making citizens the enemy, the
suspension of civil liberties that is imposed on air travelers can be extended to pedestrians, motorists, and
people in their homes and hotel rooms. Terrorists can endanger some of us, but the war on terror
endangers us all. How much more can the Constitution be diminished before it is completely replaced by
arbitrary government power?
Threats to the Rule of Law in
America: Where there's rule of law, human initiative flourishes. Rule of law refers to
freedom of contract and enforcement of contracts, protection of private property, stability of laws, a
requirement that all persons, private individuals and government officials are subject to the same laws, and
most importantly, limitation of the authority of government.
Another example of boiled frogs: Viewcrime: [In
Great Britain,] TV dealers are required by law to collect the names and addresses of people who buy
televisions. This info then goes into a giant database. Let me be perfectly clear. This is
mandatory. This is about watching television.
FBI Spy Plane Circling Bloomington,
Indiana: The FBI said that the plane is being used in monitoring people who might have terrorist
connections. Earlier, when aviation officials disclosed that the aircraft was conducting surveillance, the FBI
had denied any link to the plane.
Does FDA Regulation
Violate the Constitution? From the orange juice we drink to begin our day,
to the lunch we eat at a restaurant, to the wine we consume in the evening, the federal
Food and Drug Administration regulates what nutritional and health information food and
drug manufacturers can share with us. When Ocean Spray's Web site recently provided information
and links to health research regarding juice consumption, the FDA threatened to seize
the company's inventory, because the agency had not approved the "health claims."
States
Refuse to Kowtow to Sovereignty-Destroying Globalist Court: [Officials in]
Oklahoma said Monday [2/10/2003] it would proceed with plans to execute a Mexican national
despite claims by the World Court that it cannot. Texas has already said it would
ignore the globalist court's death stays for Mexicans on its death row. The
World Court at The Hague last week "ordered" the states not to execute three
Mexicans — two in Texas, one in Oklahoma — until it resolved a suit
filed by Mexico.
The Back Room Deal to Destroy America: A
group of U.S. Senators have conspired to destroy local zoning throughout the United States of America. The
"Community Character Act" authorizes the use of federal money so that un-elected environmentalists can advance their
extreme-left political agenda.
Virginia County Aims to Ban Lights on Private Property:
In Loudoun County, VA, the local government is considering a proposal to ban the use of outdoor lights at night. This is not
a joke. Soon, homeowners and small businesses in Loudoun County may have to turn off their lights, or face penalties. No
more Christmas lights. No more security lights to ward off would-be attackers and thieves. No more lights alerting
customers that an establishment is "open."
Editor's Note:
There is obviously more to this story than they're saying, but it is
still worth reading.
Bill would give governors absolute
power: Could state governors order the collection of all data and records on citizens, ban firearms, take
control of private property and quarantine entire cities? The answer is yes — if governors and
state legislatures adopted a new "model" bill currently under consideration.
Trust in government?
Americans need to understand that government is, has been and always will be the gravest threat to freedom we face.
American Contempt for the Rule
of Law: Most Americans have no inkling of what rule of law means. We think it means
obedience to whatever laws Congress enacts and the president signs. That's a tragedy.
Citizens Tethered to a
Democratic Leash Called Tyranny: Democracy gives an aura of legitimacy to acts that would
otherwise be deemed tyranny.
Forest Service
orders removal of poles flying American flag. The Forest Service has told California vacationers to remove
poles flying the U.S. flag from property the service has leased to them.
Feds Seek "Dictatorial Powers" on
Health Care: The federal government is pushing your state legislature to give your governor and
health officials sweeping powers that threaten your freedoms. The so-called Model Emergency Health Powers
Act would let the government do everything from seizing private property to forcing vaccinations.
Crackdown on Jaywalking Shows We Have Too
Many Laws. If they remember freer times, or if the state propaganda has been efficient enough,
people forget laws are not pious wishes. If the jaywalker does not stop when the cop accosts him, he will
be forced to. If he resists, he will be beaten down. If he is really threatening, he will be
shot. The same will happen to one who does not pay the fine and resists the bailiff. Legal coercion
is an advantage when applied to murder, rape and theft but becomes a mark of tyranny when it deals with peaceful
behaviour or minor incivilities.
Leftist
Lawmakers Want Feds to Oversee Local Development — and Your Life: While
the nation's attention is focused on the war on terrorism, S. 975, the
Community Character Act, seeks to implement a Clinton executive order that
the leftist establishment could use to dictate what you can own, what you can drive,
the kind of home in which you can live — a mammoth intrusiveness into your life.
County Criminalizes Smoking at
Home: A suburb of Washington, D.C., has adopted one of the toughest smoking rules in the country,
bringing anti-tobacco laws into people's homes. Under the terms of an ordinance approved Tuesday [11/20/2001]
by the Montgomery County (Md.) Council, people smoking in their own homes could be fined as much as
$750, if cigarette smoke bothers their neighbors.
Hillary's Nuke Safety Scheme
Would Evacuate 20 Million: Clinton is pushing for an expansion of the evacuation zone from the
present 10 miles to 50 miles, putting New York City, 30 miles away, and its 8 million
residents within the zone. This would require the evacuation of all 20 million people in that zone
in the event of an emergency at Indian Point.
The Arrogance of Bureaucratic
Power: People who went through depression and war do not understand how bureaucrats could deny
their children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren the ability to live where they were born and to put
food on the table.
America's Criminal Class: The Congress of the
United States: A five-part series on the collection of rogues, scoundrels and crooks who occupy
the House and Senate.
Part
five in the series: A long tradition of corruption and ambivalence: "You
have reached a special place in life and in American history," Senate Majority
Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi told a recent class of freshmen
Senators and Congressman. "Treat it with respect." But too
many members of both the House and Senate treat their "special place in
life and in American history" as a license to steal, living large at
taxpayer expense, ignoring laws that apply to ordinary Americans and
betraying the trust of the public that put them there.
Absolute
Power: The Legacy of Corruption in the Clinton-Reno
Justice Department by David Limbaugh
Rethinking Romans 13:
Pastor Greg A. Dixon chides Christians to combat corrupt government. In recent years, Christians have
interpreted Romans 13 as a command for unlimited submission to government by God. Many have allowed
government to become god without even knowing.
Federal Propaganda for Kids: The federal
government is cranking out propaganda and it has nothing to do with the war on terrorism. It has
everything to do with indoctrinating your kids. Federal agencies are using taxpayer-funded Web sites to
bypass parents and instill their tech-savvy children with heavy doses of big government activism.
CPS Harasses Family Whose House Burns
Down: The social worker refused to explain the allegations to the parents, and insisted that
she needed to interview the children separately with no other party present.
Editor's Note:
The Home School Legal Defense
Association runs into abuses of power all the time. Here
is a state-by-state
roundup of their recent experiences.
Dependent on
D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans by Charlotte
Twight. Manipulation of the rules of a game can determine the outcome. It's true of sports and
it's true of government. In an important new contribution to the study of American government, economist
and historian Charlotte Twight applies this insight to document both the history of government's growth
and the techniques by which politicians and bureaucrats have manipulated the rules of the game to increase
their powers and make them more difficult to roll back. In the process, politicians make Americans
dependent on government, and more like passive supplicants than active citizens. Twight explains in clear
language how Americans have been robbed of their independence.
Documentary film: 911: The Road to
Tyranny: The government needed a crisis to convince the people to willingly give up their liberty
in exchange for safety. 911 the Road to Tyranny documents the ruthless history of
governments orchestrating terrorist attacks against their own people to scare them into total submission.
"The shift from personal autonomy to dependence on government is perhaps the
defining characteristic of modern American politics. In the span of barely one
lifetime, a nation grounded in ideals of individual liberty has been transformed
into one in which federal decisions control even such personal matters as what
health care we buy -- a nation now so bound up in detailed laws and regulation
that no one can know what all the rules are, let alone comply with them."
– Charlotte Twight
Review of A Nation of
Sheep: Dependent on D.C. Rule of law means there's governance by known general rules,
equality before the law, certainty of the law, a permanent legal framework and independent judicial review of
administrative decisions. These specifications of the rule of law have been emasculated.
No one can possibly know the thousands of pages of rules published by the IRS, not to mention the hundreds
of thousands of pages of laws applicable to health care, banking, education, pensions, agriculture,
ad infinitum.
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