October 23, 2017

America has built the most comfortable civilization in the world

from PJMedia: Human civilization can be described as a long crawl away from a life that was nasty, brutal and short.
America is winning that race.
The Pursuit of Happiness

3 stories that show Big Brother is alive and well

from The Daily Bell: 1. Getting Clever with Fear to Restrict the Internet. 2. Prosecutors pick a target, THEN find a crime.
3. Fitbit and pacemaker info used to catch criminals.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Why you may need a passport next year to fly from city to city within the United States 

from Reason: A passport to fly within the country, but no ID to vote. Government serves the politician not the people.
Regulation Nation

U.S. ran $666 billion deficit in fiscal 2017, sixth highest on record

from Wall Street Journal: "U.S. revenue and spending both hit record highs in fiscal 2017.
Economic Policy: Statism vs. The Free Market

Alabama police use asset forfeiture to ruin an innocent small business owner

from Reason: How government has set things up so police departments can take anything they want with impunity.
Police State America    The Government is Not Us

Former NFL players say league should allow players to use marijuana to treat pain, injuries

from Reason: Former player: If there's any sport or league that should be leading the way in experiments with cannibis,
of course it's the NFL.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

October 21, 2017

Federal court ponders Constitutionality of prostitution ban

from Reason: "Why should it be illegal to sell something that you can give away for free?"
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

USA Liberty Act won’t fix what’s most broken with NSA internet surveillance

from EFF: The bill doesn’t end the practice of “backdoor searching,” when government agents — including domestic law enforcement — search through the NSA-gathered communications of Americans without any form of warrant from a judge.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Republicans officially give up trying to cut spending

from Reason: After all that fuss from 2009 onward, Rand Paul is the last Republican left objecting to the continued growth of government.
Economic Policy: Statism vs. The Free Market

DHS pays police millions to ticket and prosecute motorists

from MassPrivatei: Police pull over more than 50,000 drivers on a typical day, more than 20 million motorists every year. So why do they need more money still?
Police State America

50 state study shows that more requirements lead to less jobs

from Will-Law: States with more burdensome licensure requirements (fees, training hours, exams, and age requirements) had significantly lower employment in the ten professional occupations.
Regulation Nation

The media blackout of Clinton-uranium scandal senate probe

from CNS News: Media bias is currently “on full display,” Media Research Center President Brent Bozell warned Thursday as network news continued to ignore the Senate probe into the Clinton-Uranium scandal.
Media Bias on Parade

October 19, 2017

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

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

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

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

Chicago politician pushes ban on businesses banning cash

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

Cities are getting paid to turn street lights into spying SmartNodes

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

John Stossel: A CNN Smear

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

Cannabis credit union sues the creature from Jekyll Island 

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

October 4, 2017

Feds Give Americans the frog treatment

from Reason: A plan by the Department of Homeland Security to collect social media information on American citizens,
including their "handles" and even their search results.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

CNN continues to solidify its place atop the fake news dung heap

from American Spectator: 24/7 party politics disguised as news.
Media Bias on Parade

Studies confirm, free people are happier

from TheDailyBell: Even people who think that the government should be less involved in daily life are happier than
people who think society needs more rules.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

⭐️  The deep theory behind stifling speech

from The Savvy Street: A brilliant, but long, piece on how philosophy is responsible for the rise in political correctness and
how philosophy can also fix it.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Stop manipulating the worst shooting in U.S. history to support your political views

from LongRoom: Those eager to make this tragedy about gun control are going to run into a lot of factual difficulties,
not just political ones.
2nd Amendment Assaults

John Stossel: Disabled by Government

from Creators: After government nitwittery removes 20,000 university lectures from access, an entrepreneur comes
to the rescue.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

October 3, 2017

Freedom of conscience is the foundation of all freedom

from Liberty.me: The essence of freedom is the ability to be true to oneself.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

⭐️  Flip-flopping on free speech

from NewYorker: Great piece on the fight for the First Amendment, on campuses and football fields, from the sixties to today.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Marijuana prohibition turns 80

from NORML: The government propaganda that has dictated marijuana policy for the past eight decades is withering, but still prevails in some of the union's most backward states.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

California seeks ban on fossil fuel cars, laying the groundwork to ban human driven cars

from Activist Post: Looks like the nitwits who make up California's ruling class would have out-of-state drivers check their cars at the border since no fuel will be sold. That should be great for tourism.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Smart billboards target individual motorists and spy on license plates and cellphones 

from MassPrivatel: A new age of "advertised spying" is dawning.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

PC Stalinism: the EU bans cartoons critical of the EU

from Spiked!: In a move totally unsurprising to anyone who has been paying attention, the EU has shown its authoritarian colors by banning cartoons from one of its own exhibitions.
Indoctrination and Censorship

September 29, 2017

Why we need to shrink the national debt, and fast!

from ReasonTV: It was big news when our national debt passed the $20 trillion mark. What's less understood is exactly why having such a massive debt is a bad thing. The short answer is that too much debt slows economic growth, reducing living standards.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

The new electronic police state

from TechCrunch: According to the government, your privacy protections evaporate the moment you set foot in an airport.
Police State America

Poll finds most young people worry about government surveillance ‘tracking their communications’

from Newsweek: As well they should.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make.

U.S. tech giants slowly introduce censorship online

from National Review: Companies adopt communist Chinese censorship ideology. YouTube, the worst offender, is owned by Google who fires employees with unacceptable ideas and strips “offensive” channels of their ad-earnings.
Indoctrination and Censorship

ISIS fanatics show baby-faced child suicide bomber blowing himself up new propaganda video

from The Sun: Stills from a video show a twisted adult jihadi teaching the young teenager how to operate the controls of a suicide car. Americans can hardly contemplate such evil.
Defense vs The War Machine

RIP Hugh “Hef” Hefner, a patriot, hero, and testament to the American dream

from Milo: He was not just the man that created America’s most iconic adult-oriented, sexually-liberated publication, Playboy, as he actively fought against both censorship and discrimination of all stripes.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

September 25, 2017

Has asset forfeiture gone too far? Damn right Skippy!

from FoxNews: How the legalized theft of one man's truck brings the morality of civil asset forfeiture to light.
Police State America

Oklahoma is imprisoning so many people it can’t hire enough guards to keep up

from In These Times: “Prison guard unions often have a strong incentive to push back against reforms, because so much of what we spend on incarceration goes to correctional officers,” explains John Pfaff, a Fordham Law School professor.
Police State America

Scientists go after the media for highlighting a study showing IPCC climate models were wrong

from Watts Up With That!: Sadly, these scientists cannot rejoice that things are not as bad as they thought because the new finding threatens their funding.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

UC Berkeley’s ‘Free Speech Week’ officially canceled, appeared to be set-up from the start

from The Mercury News: Email suggests organizers didn’t intend for the event to happen
Indoctrination and Censorship

Sweden's 'man-free' music festival prompts response from transgender people

from Fox News: The ban on men, it turns out, only applies to what Knyckare described as “cisgender men”—which is a term for men whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth. That's not very PC.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Judge approves surveillance on Reno buses

from Mohave Valley Daily News: If you are in public, you are in government's space and will be monitored and recorded. That is what public means these days.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

September 15, 2017

230 years after the Constitution, we’re walking a dangerous road 

from The Rutherford Institute: A look at what it means to live under the Constitution today.
The Government is Not Us

🎬  Walter E Williams - What is a Right? 

from LibertyPen: There are many misconceptions about what constitutes a right. Professor Williams provides clarity.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Court lets DEA keep evidence from warrantless search 

from TechDirt: The government's lawyers with robes conveniently decided that possible cause is just as good as probable cause. The state may do as it pleases. The Constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment are now officially gutted.
The Government is Not Us

A case against the minimum wage 

from Forbes: The case AGAINST minimum wage is the case FOR economic liberty. Supporters focus only on the beneficiaries without regard to those shut out of the job market each time the entry bar is raised.
Regulation Nation

What does child porn smell like? DHS is training dogs to sniff it out 

from ReasonTV: This may not qualify as politically correct, but it is hard to contest this being filed under other nitwittery.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Permanent reauthorization of Section 702 of FISA 'borders on insanity' 

from The Caldwell County News: The This would be a final and permanent nail in the coffin for the Fourth Amendment.
Say goodbye to the notion of the "sovereign citizen".
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

September 5, 2017

Prices should rise during crises like Hurricane Harvey

from Reason:  Prices serve an important function. They attract resources to where they are needed most. This is not price gouging, it is the beauty of capitalism at work.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

Trump quietly nominates mass surveillance advocate to “protect” your privacy rights

from Activist Post: Like those who came before him, Trump is an authoritarian and as such wants to empower the state at the expense of the individual. The government is not us.
The Government is Watching Every Move You Make

The Utah nurse is not alone — police have a history of abusing professionals rendering aid

from The Free Thought Project: The Body Cam footage of a nurse being violent arrested for doing her job and refusing to break the law may be shocking, but it's not uncommon. Badges do not put one above the law.
Police State America

REPORT: America’s top universities deny students fair hearings

from FIRE: A new survey reveals that the overwhelming majority of America’s top universities fail to provide students accused of serious misconduct with the most basic elements of fair procedure.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Government Is Watching Every Move You Make

Latest Update: May 26, 2017

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

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

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

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

Feds find local police willing partners in surveillance state 

377 words you can't say online without being surveilled

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Congress Created a Monster

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

Government Eyes Are Watching Every Move You Make

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

Red Light Cams Linked To Rear-End Collisions In Chicago

by Dan Kedmey.   New study casts doubts on the claims that cameras improve road safety. A new Chicago-focused study links red light cameras to a coinciding rise in rear-end collisions, casting doubts on claims that the mounted cameras improve safety at intersections. The study’s findings, published by the Chicago Tribune Friday, found that while   ... MORE

Dominic Frisby: Why We Should Fear A Cashless World

Government monitoring can be complete.  The health food chain Tossed has just opened the UK’s first cashless cafe. It’s another step towards the death of cash. This is nothing new. Money is tech. The casting of coins made shells, whales’ teeth and other such primitive forms of money redundant. The printing press did the same for precious   ... MORE

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

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

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

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

FBI Demands High Schools Rat Out “Anti-Gov't” Students

by Kurt Nimmo. Constitutionalists figure prominently on the target list. A new FBI initiative based on Britain’s “anti-terror” mass surveillance program instructs high schools across America to inform on students who express “anti-government” and “anarchist” political beliefs. “High school students are ideal targets for recruitment by violent extremists   ... MORE

Samuel Gibbs: If FBI Wins Case Against Apple, Feds Could Force Apple To Turn iPhones Into Surveillance Devices

Turning our property against us.  If the FBI wins in its case against Apple to help it unlock the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone 5C, it won’t be long before the government forces Apple to turn on users’ iPhone cameras and microphones to spy on them, according to the company’s head of services Eddy Cue. The FBI has demanded that Apple creates   ... MORE

Demand Congress Back Down On Privacy Intrusion

by Ron Paul.     The FBI tells us that its demand for a back door into the iPhone is all about fighting terrorism, and that it is essential to break in just this one time to find out more about the San Bernardino attack last December. But the truth is they had long sought a way to break Apple’s iPhone encryption and, like 9/11 and the Patriot Act, a mass   ... MORE

Obama To Trash Reagan’s Restrictions On Domestic Spying

by Chriss W. Street.     A tyrant's sneaky misdirection play. With the pubic distracted by the FBI battling Apple for an iPhone backdoor, President Obama is secretly working to trash President Ronald Reagan’s restrictions on the number of federal agencies that can spy on Americans and others. At a secret meeting of the United States National   ... MORE