by Eva Galperin and Nadia Kayyali. Imagine that you watched a police officer in your
neighborhood stop ten completely ordinary people every day just to take a
look inside their vehicle or backpack. Now imagine that nine of those
people are never even accused of a crime. They just happened to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time. Even the ... MORENSA Spying: Now It's Personal
by Eva Galperin and Nadia Kayyali. Imagine that you watched a police officer in your
neighborhood stop ten completely ordinary people every day just to take a
look inside their vehicle or backpack. Now imagine that nine of those
people are never even accused of a crime. They just happened to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time. Even the ... MORENever Consent To A Warrantless Search
from the Beaufort Observer. Most of our regular readers know that police must have probable cause to search and seize evidence. They cannot search just because they want to and then use what they find to charge a person for a crime. Or so that is the way it is supposed to be. But as we have reported often, there are some crooked cops among ... MOREPlan To Split California Into Six States Closer To Reality
by Travis H. Brown. Thanks to the signatures of more than 807,000 concerned Californians,
an ambitious idea has moved that much closer to becoming a reality. The
“Six Californias” Initiative,
sponsored by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, seeks to
create areas that are more governable, more productive, and more
successful. As I wrote ... MORENorman Solomon: Does Uncle Sam Have A God Complex
Who is it that can see and hear everything? As a matter of faith, some people believe that God can see and hear everything. But as a matter of fact, the U.S. government now has the kind of surveillance powers formerly attributed only to a supreme being. Top “national security” officials in Washington now have the determination ... MORE
Free Market Capitalism vs. Crony Capitalism
by Richard Ebeling. In the minds of many people around the world, including in the United States, the term “capitalism” carries the idea of unfairness, exploitation, undeserved privilege and power, and immoral profit making. What is often difficult to get people to understand is that this misplaced conception of “capitalism” has nothing to ... MORE
Andrew Napolitano: Obama's Chilling Effect
Government-approved tyranny. "Chilling" is the word lawyers use to describe governmental behavior
that does not directly interfere with constitutionally protected
freedoms, but rather tends to deter folks from exercising them. Classic
examples of "chilling" occurred in the 1970s, when FBI agents and U.S.
Army soldiers, in business suits ... MORE
What I Don’t Like About Life In The American Police State
by John W. Whitehead. There’s a lot to love about America and its people: their pioneering spirit, their entrepreneurship, their ability to think outside the box, their passion for the arts, etc. Increasingly, however, as time goes by, I find the things I don’t like about living in a nation that has long since ceased to be a sanctuary for ... MORE
Katie Kieffer: Socialism Punked You, Millennials
A window of opportunity arises. “Here’s your drink, darling,” the bartender said with a smile. He seemed upbeat as he made drinks and greeted customers. “Do you like your job?” I asked him. “I hate it,” he confessed. “Honestly, I hate my job.” I keep running into young people who put on a show of being happy with their lives but, when ... MORE
Jury Nullification Is Interfering With Marijuana Convictions
by Lily Dane. Proactive justice is occurring. Courts around the country are having more
trouble prosecuting marijuana cases because of increasing awareness of a
constitutional doctrine called jury nullification. Under the Bill of Rights, jurors have the power to find a defendant not guilty if they find the law in question is flawed – even if ... MORENullification of Oppressive Federal Laws Is Catching On
by John F. McManus. Earlier in 2014, the Kansas state legislature enacted a law stating that some federal gun control regulations would not be obeyed in Kansas.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder immediately notified Governor Sam
Brownback that this new state law was unconstitutional. He cited Article
VI of the U.S. Constitution, ... MOREAmerica's Unsustainable Long-Term Debt Trajectory
by Peter Suderman. In
the past year or so, the White House has become increasingly
aggressive in touting President Obama’s achievements in reducing
the deficit. The deficit has been “cut by more than half since
2009,” a 2013
blog post by the White House Office of Management and Budget
declared, pointing to the shrinking of ... MOREJohn Stossel: Who'll Build The Roads?
Government planners vs the free market. "Tea party members don't think there's a federal role in transportation!" complained Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, last week, near the site of a $5.8 million highway project. If only most tea party members were that radical. While Brown and other big-government folks worry that Republicans will ... MOREEditing Out An Enlightened History Of America
by David Keene. Indoctrinating a view of dark motives. In the early days of the American Republic, Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the staunchest advocate of public education. Jefferson
authored a plan for public primary and secondary schools and is father
of the University of Virginia. He would be appalled at the state of
public education ... MORE
Elizabeth Nolan Brown: What Libertarianism Isn't
Obscured by cloudy thinking. At my first real journalism job, I started off covering personal finance. Not having the first clue about financial topics going in, I ended up asking patient sources a lot of questions like, "So tell me who should consider an REIT—and also what are they?" In my naivety this seemed very crazy to me, that people ... MOREThomas Sowell: Lawsuits And Impeachment
Foredoomed symbolic actions are overrated. Whenever Democrats are in real trouble politically, the Republicans seem to come up with something new that distracts the public's attention from the Democrats' problems. Who says Republicans are not compassionate? With public opinion polls showing President Obama's sinking approval ... MORETammy Bruce: America Is Turning In To A Police State
The stench of tyranny is in the air. With so much happening internationally and the number of scandals, crises and general screw-ups of the Obama administration here at home, it’s worth noting a disturbing development here on the domestic front: a rapidly expanding police state. On my radio program last week I had the pleasure of ... MOREWhite House: Marijuana Is An Issue Of ‘States’ Rights
By Mike DeBonis. Obama administration gets something right. In its bid to fend off congressional interference with a pending marijuana decriminalization law, the District might have prompted President Obama to make an interesting declaration. The White House on Monday said it “strongly opposes” the amendment attached last month ... MOREWalter E Williams: Our Unwillingness To Defend Ourselves
Welcoming the barbarians. The U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 2012 losses because of personal identity theft totaled $24.7 billion. The money losses from identity theft pale in comparison with the costs of paperwork, time and inconvenience imposed on the larger society in an effort to protect ourselves. ... MORENullification: The Secret Weapon Against Harsh Sentencing
by Molly Knefel. What if justice was the goal? On July 2, Occupy Wall Street protester Cecily McMillan was released from Rikers Island, completing a sentence that her jury never wanted her to serve. On May 19, that jury of twelve convicted McMillan of felony assault against police officer Grantley Bovell. The verdict came after a four-week ... MORE
The NSA's Ultimate Goal: Total Population Control
by Antony Loewenstien. 80% of all audio calls, not metadata, are recorded and stored. William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington’s move ... MORE
These White Boxes Could Track Your Every Move
by Paul Detrick. In fall 2013, Seattle, WA, residents noticed mysterious white boxes installed on street corners throughout downtown Seattle. Their interest only grew when curious WiFi networks with the names of those street corners began to pop up on their mobile phones as available networks to connect to. The boxes and WiFi turned out ... MOREReport Shows Police Using Asset Seizure To Bolster Budgets
by Katie Rucke. The government is not us. The rights afforded to people by the U.S. Constitution do not extend
to their property. This means that when a law enforcement official
suspects that someone’s property — including his or her car, money, home
or gun — was involved in a crime, the official can seize that property
and keep it. ... MORE
Why Government Should Never Control The Internet
by Robert M. McDowell. Tomorrow is the deadline for the public to comment on the Federal
Communications Commission’s (FCC) attempt to regulate the Internet under
the seemingly innocuous moniker of “net neutrality.” The architect of this movement, and the man who coined the term “net neutrality,” is Columbia law professor Tim Wu. ... MORE
Officer Robert Eloff's Third Victim
by Scott H. Greenfield. Police protect dangerous cops from public scrutiny. It would be bad enough, actually beyond bad enough, had this been all
that one can point to when it comes to Buffalo Police Officer Robert
Eloff’s exercise of power. You see, this man, Christopher Kozak, was beaten by mistake. A cellphone video has surfaced that ... MOREThe Naked Truth About the American Police State
by John W. Whitehead. It’s vogue, trendy and appropriate to look to dystopian literature as a harbinger of what we’re experiencing at the hands of the government. Certainly, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm have much to say about government tyranny, corruption, and control, as does Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Philip K. Dick’s ... MORE
Jacob Sullum: The NSA's Online Dragnet
Warrantless surveillance hits the target. As an Illinois senator running for president in 2008, Barack
Obama
promised there would be no more "wiretaps without warrants"
under his administration. He abandoned that position even before he
was elected to the White House, voting for legislation
that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance ... MOREThomas Sowell: A Primer On Race
The state against blacks. Back in the heyday of the British Empire, a man from one of the colonies addressed a London audience. "Please do not do any more good in my country," he said. "We have suffered too much already from all the good that you have done." That is essentially the message of an outstanding new book by Jason ... MOREWalter E Williams: Spending And Morality
Politicians reflect moral rot. During last year's budget negotiation meetings, President Barack Obama told House Speaker John Boehner, "We don't have a spending problem." When Boehner responded with "But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem," Obama replied, "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that." ... MOREAndrew Napolitano: Spying On Innocence
More evidence the government is not us. In what appears to be one of Edward Snowden's final revelations, the former CIA and NSA agent has demonstrated conclusively that the National Security Agency has collected and analyzed the contents of emails, text messages, and mobile and landline telephone calls from nine non-targeted ... MORE
John Stossel: Important Slow News
On perspective. Wars, plane crashes, mass murder — it's easy to report news that happens suddenly. Reporters do a good job covering that. But we do a bad job telling you about what's really changing in the world, because we miss the stories that happen slowly. These are usually the more important stories. Recently, President Barack Obama ... MORE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)