Category Archives: Rogue Federal Agencies

Ramblings

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When Mrs. Crucis and I took our trek last month, we expected to see a cross-section of America. We saw some of the best of our nation and some of the worse.

We love the mountains and the deserts of the South West. One of our favorite areas is the Four-Corners area where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. It is also the location of the Navajo Nation, a third world nation, poverty stricken, and dependent on federal welfare, a reservation where the only new buildings are those built or underwritten by the feds. All else is ramshackled and dilapidated and most of the housing is either rusting mobile homes or decaying federally funded public housing.

The Navajoes have a rich culture. One that appears to be incompatible with that of the rest of the country. It seems to affect the Navajoes more than the other tribal areas we traveled through in Utah, Idaho and Montana. The Blackfoot reserivation in Montana was clean, neat and well-kept. They have the same problems with drugs and alcoholism as do many reservations, but they also have a viable community. The Blackfoot Reservation was remarkedly different from the Navajo Reservation.

The Navajoes culture is dying. When we traveled through Shiprock, NM, we stopped at a (federally underwritten) strip-mall. There was a gift shop that Mrs. Crucis wanted to visit and we needed to stock up on edibles. We usually fixed sandwiches for lunch when traveling.

Next to near the entrance of the grocery was a bulletin board. While waiting for Mrs. Crucis, I scanned the notices, sale items, people looking for rides to one destination or another, handyman flyers looking for work…and a notice from the Navajo Tribal Government looking for people to teach the Navajo language to the younger members of the tribe.

That saddened me. The loss of the language and its culture wasn’t due to assimilation, it was due to purposeful neglect. The feds refuse to allow Navajo to be spoken in schools. The younger generation, those who still remain, don’t speak it in their day-to-day life. The older generation is dying off. The language is headed for extinction.

Contrast the economy of the Navajo reservation with that of Utah, Idaho, Montana and to a lesser extent, New Mexico. In Utah, the homes were well kept and maintained. Nearly every yard had a well-kept, neatly mowed and trimmed lawn. Due to the climate, many were small, some only 15’x15′. But the care and effort to maintain the home was well evident. Mrs. Crucis loves Utah, it is one of her favorite states.

I was struck with Darby, Montana. Montana has no state sales tax; no sales tax at all. On the other hand, there appeared to be a casino around every corner with a pawn shop within walking distance. We saw more casinos and pawn shops in Montana than in any other state in our travels.

What struck me about Darby was seeing three gun-shops in a three-block stretch of town. That’s my kind of town.

On the political scene, to differences are just as obvious. The moral and political corruption of the establishment parties in Washington are becoming incompatible to the conservative core outside of the DC beltway. It matters not if that establishment is Dem or ‘Pub. Both are rotten.

The ‘Pub establishment fears Trump, Cruz, Walker and the other conservative candidates more than they do Hillary, Sanders, O’Malley and Biden. The ‘pub establishment believes they can work with the dems. We already see that in the actions of McConnell and Boehner.

Sadly, the infection is present at the state and local levels as well. The Republican Party is dying. There may be a period of remission if Cruz, or Walker, or one of the conservative insurgents win the nomination and the Presidency. But the sickness is still present in DC.

A conservative President would have to fight both the dems and the ‘pubs in Congress. I doubt that he could prevail unless he chooses to use some of the same tactics as has Obama. Using Executive Orders to bypass Congress, for instance.

Ted Cruz has declared that if he wins the nomination and the Presidency, one of his first acts would be to rescind every illegal Executive Order issued by Obama. I think he should go further and rescind all EOs issued by Obama and some from G. W. Bush, too. That act alone would reverse a corruptive trend in government started by Teddy Roosevelt.

Before TR, a President issued an Executive Order rarely. Those EOs, were issued when Congressional approval wasn’t available, when action was needed immediately. Later, the EO would be presented to Congress for approval. Some were approved, some were disapproved and the EO was rescinded.

It is time for the use of Executive Orders to end. It is time for the political establishment of both parties to end as well.

Is it time of a new party, a third party to give conservatives a choice? I’m unsure. The ‘Pubs have one last chance to survive, to end the rule of the Establishment and return government to the people instead of the Washington political elite.

I’m supporting Ted Cruz. Nearly everyone I meet and talk with does, too. Some like Trump because he says what they believe. I can understand that. I agree with much than Trump says as well but I don’t believe Trump would be a good president. He is as corrupted by power as is the Establishments in Washington.

When we were traveling through New Mexico, the news of the EPA spill in Colorado that polluted the Animas River was announced. The prevailing opinion of the region’s residents is that the EPA purposely broke the dam that caused the spill.

It was ironic that when John McCain visited the Navajo Nation a few days later, he was run off by the President of the Navajoes. The dependent children of Washington rebelled against one of the leading members of the Washington Establishment and ran him out of town.

It was a good day, when I heard that.

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Blargh!

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Yes, it’s one of those days. According to the calendar it’s Presidents Day. You know, that artificial holiday created by merging Washington’s and Lincolns birthdays to give public employees a 3-day weekend in the middle of February.

Overnight we received 3-4″ of snow. So far this winter, the snow has passed either to the north of us or to the south of us. Last night’s big dump passed south again but we were within the outskirts. So instead of getting 6-8″ as did some parts of Missouri, we only got 3-4″ according to my Mk I eyeball measurement of the snow sitting on the railing of my backyard deck. With a temp of 13°F this morning, I think I will stay inside today.

My lack of motivation seems to be mirrored by the news, too. I usually receive eight to a dozen newsletters/updates/breaking news announcements. This morning, it was only two newsletters and they were short to boot. I wonder if the whole world has decided to take the day off and join the local kids and my g’kids for a snow-day.

As for news. It seems to be a habit for the feds to release their edicts over the weekend for the MSM to ignore. Apparently they hope that if something is dumped on Saturday, by Monday morning, with the MSM ignoring it, the news will just slip away.

Case in point. The BATFE announced that it is planning on banning a particular kind of ammunition popular with AR-15 owners, the M855 5.56mm cartridge. It is a military round, slightly heavier than the Vietnam era cartridge that used a 55gr bullet. The M855 is 62grs and is more stable when fired through brush or in strong winds. This makes the bullet slightly more accurate in adverse conditions than the older cartridge.

The M855 is the US equivalent of the NATO cartridge known as SS109. The bullet had a steel core. When the M855 appeared on the market, the BATFE rightly determined it was not armor-piercing because it did not meet the BATFE definition of ‘armor piercing.’ Some gun-grabbers claimed that the steel core automatically meant the round was designed for armor piercing. The BATFE said it was not.

Over the weekend, the BATFE announced it will reverse itself next month. The instant result will be a feeding frenzy of sellers and buyers for the existing stocks of M855 before the ban is enacted.

It’s just another step of federal tyranny. If they can’t ban firearms, they ban the ammunition for those firearms, one small piece at a time.

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The Judge Speaks

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Judge Andrew Napolitano of FOX News wrote an editorial that appeared on the FOX News website. It was relatively short. Its reasoning is specific. It is an indictment of the Patriot Act and the abuses that have occurred since its passage.

Is our Constitution just a worthless piece of paper?

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During his [George W. Bush] presidency, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. This legislation permits federal agents to write their own search warrants when those warrants are served on custodians of records — like doctors, lawyers, telecoms, computer servers, banks and even the Post Office.

Such purported statutory authority directly violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy in our “persons, houses, papers and effects.” That includes just about everything held by the custodians of our records. Privacy is not only a constitutional right protected by the document; it is also a natural right. We possess the right to privacy by virtue of our humanity. Our rights come from within us — whether you believe we are the highest progression of biological forces or the intended creations of an Almighty God — they do not come from the government.

If the terms and meaning of the Constitution could be changed by the secret whims of those in the executive branch into whose hands they have been reposed for safekeeping, of what value are they?

This is not an academic argument. If our rights come from within us, the government cannot take them away, whether by executive fiat, popular legislation or judicial ruling, unless we individually have waived them. If our rights come from the government, then they are not rights, but permission slips.

The terms of the Patriot Act were made public, and those of us who follow the government’s misdeeds could report on them. After all, this is America. We are a democracy. The government is supposed to work for us. 

We have the right to know what it is doing in our names as it is doing it, and we have the right to reveal what the government does. Yet, under this law, the feds punished many efforts at revelation. That’s because the Patriot Act prohibits those who receive these agent-written search warrants from telling anyone about them. This violates our constitutionally protected and natural right to free speech. All of this has been publicly known since 2001.

Then, in June 2013, Edward Snowden, the uber-courageous former CIA and NSA official, dropped a still smoldering bombshell of truth upon us when he revealed that the Bush administration had dispatched the NSA to spy on all Americans all the time and the Obama administration had attempted to make the spying appear legal by asking judges to authorize it.

Snowden went on to reveal that the NSA, pursuant to President Obama’s orders and the authorization of these judges meeting in secret (so secret that the judges themselves are not permitted to keep records of their own rulings), was actually capturing and storing the content of all emails, text messages, telephone calls, utility and credit card bills, and bank statements of everyone in America. They did this without a search warrant based on probable cause — a very high level of individualized suspicion — as required by the Constitution.

Snowden revealed that Obama’s lawyers had persuaded these secret judges, without any opposition from lawyers representing the victims of this surveillance, that somehow Congress had authorized this and somehow it was constitutional and somehow it was not un-American to spy on all of us all the time. These judges actually did the unthinkable: They issued what are known as general warrants. General warrants were used against the colonists by the British and are expressly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. They permit the bearer to search wherever he wishes and seize whatever he finds. That’s what the NSA does to all of us today.

Last week, we learned how deep the disrespect for the Constitution runs in the government and how tortured is the logic that underlies it. In a little-noted speech at Washington and Lee Law School, Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of both the CIA and the NSA, told us. In a remarkable public confession, he revealed that somehow he received from some source he did not name the authority to reinterpret the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy so as to obliterate it. He argued that the line between privacy and unbridled government surveillance is a flexible and movable one, and that he — as the head of the NSA — could move it.

This is an astounding audacity by a former high-ranking government official who swore numerous times to uphold the Constitution. He has claimed powers for himself that are nowhere in the Constitution or federal statues, powers that no president or Congress has claimed, powers that no Supreme Court decision has articulated, powers that are antithetical to the plain meaning and supremacy of the Constitution, powers that any non-secret judge anywhere would deny him.

If the terms and meaning of the Constitution could be changed by the secret whims of those in the executive branch into whose hands they have been reposed for safekeeping, of what value are they? No value. In such a world, our Constitution has become a worthless piece of paper.

At the time of its passage, not much was known about the Patriot Act. It was a hasty response to 9/11 and to the intelligence failures that occurred before and after the attack. The Clinton administration had been diligent in weakening our military and intelligence organizations. The media built one scandal after another regardless of the merit of the incidents. In addition, interservice rivalry prevented sharing of information between agencies purposed for intelligence gathering. The intelligence organs had lost their identity and became politicized…to our detriment.

As with any pendulum, it had swung from one side of effectiveness to the other. The Patriot Act did not maintain the effectiveness of intelligence, it misdirected the aim of intelligence from outward to…inward. And we have all suffered from that change in direction.

A liberal Senator from the North East claims people want high-capacity magazine because, “they are arming against the government.” Apparently, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has never considered why people feel the need to arm themselves against the government. His statement is sufficient reason as it stands. But it is the abuses of government, such as those perpetrated by the Patriot Act, that provides the motivation Senator Murphy fears. Perhaps if he asked that question, “Why?” he would discover another answer and another alternative for his ire.

As we have seen, the senatorial GOP led by Mitch McConnell have no interest opposing the tyrannical acts of government. No, instead of opposing, they support such acts to the detriment of us all.

I have presented Judge Napolitano’s editorial in an attempt to expand its presence across the internet. It’s worth reading and consideration.

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Thursday’s Topics

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Quote and question of the day:

Does The Tea Party Need More Experienced Candidates?

This election season’s primary results, in particular Mitch McConnell’s lopsided trouncing yesterday of Matt Bevin, have produced their share of obituaries for the Tea Party. But the experience so far of Tea Party and other insurgent showdowns against the GOP establishment just goes to show that candidates and campaigns still matter – and that’s not likely to change. While both “Establishment” and Tea Party campaigns have gotten savvier in learning how to play the primary game, we are likely for the foreseeable future to see Tea Party challengers win when they are good candidates, with some prior political experience, talent and funding – and lose when they lack one or more of those attributes. I’d like to look here in particular at the importance of political experience, and whether Tea Party campaigns has been losing races because it was running complete political novices. — Red State.

After last week’s primary, the ‘net abounded with articles that proclaimed the Tea Party was dead. McConnell bragged about his win over Matt Bevin and other RINOs facing primary opposition took heart. They conveniently overlook Tea Party wins such as Ben Sasse in Nebraska and Alex Moony in West Virginia. The battle between the GOP establishment and the grassroot reformers, collectively called the Tea Party, is not over.

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Democrats claim government cannot be accountable. What a despicable statement. Everyone, every organization is accountable—if we make them so.

If government is not accountable, then what are we? What is our relationship with government? Are we serfs? Peasants? Have we no rights? The Constitution says otherwise. That is why the liberals hate it.

Accountable government is impossible, according to liberals

By: John Hayward  |  May 21st, 2014 at 06:20 PM

No sooner did I encourage Republicans to make accountability one of their primary campaign themes then I came across Ron Fournier at National Journal tearing into lefty Ezra Klein for arguing that accountable government is a superhero fantasy:

“Presidents consistently overpromise and underdeliver,” he begins, a fair start. Surely, the editor-in-chief of Vox is going to make the obvious point that presidents and presidential candidates should know enough about the political process (including the limits on the executive branch) to avoid such a breach of trust.

Klein is a data guy. He must know that the public’s faith in government and poltics is on a decades-long slide, a dangerous trend due in no small part to the fact that candidates make promises they know they can’t keep. In Washington, we call it pandering. In the rest of the country, it’s called a lie. Klein yawns.

Klein is basically asking us to accept all of Obama’s lies and failures because we need to understand that politicians promise a lot of stuff they can’t deliver.  Presumably we’re supposed to smile and clap when a slick character like Obama does an especially good job of tricking us into believing he can deliver the moon and stars, but it’s extremely rude and unrealistic to complain when those celestial goodies aren’t delivered on schedule.

Fournier is having none of it: “A Harvard-trained lawyer and Constitutional scholar like Obama didn’t stumble into the 2008 presidential campaign unaware of the balance of powers, the polarization of politics, the right-ward march of the GOP and other structural limits on the presidency. He made those promises because he thought those goals were neither unreasonable nor unattainable. Either that, or he was lying.”  He goes on to note how eagerly Klein tries to separate Obama from his promises, writing as if some non-human entity called The Obama Campaign made all those inconvenient commitments to stuff like improving the Department of Veterans Affairs.

…

It’s not exactly new for Obama apologists to claim that running the mega-government they support is effectively impossible, a task too difficult even for the super-genius messiah they adore.  Obama himself is making that argument, every time he claims he learned what his Administration is up to by reading yesterday’s newspaper.  One of his efforts to avoid responsible for the ObamaCare launch debacle involved him whining that government agencies are “outdated” and “not designed properly,” which would seem difficult to square with his enthusiasm for making government ever larger.    His adviser David Axelrod said Obama should be let off the hook for all responsibility in the IRS scandal because “part of being President is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know, because the government is so vast.”

In order for Obama to save his own hide, and protect his top appointees – which is part of saving his hide, because he believes firing anyone, over anything, would make it difficult for the media to ignore his scandals to death – he’s basically making the accountability argument for Republicans.  All you have to do is quote his endless evasions and childish tantrums.  What good does it do the victims of bureaucracy to hear that Barack Obama’s super-angry about what happened to them, when all he does is order the offending agency to investigate itself, and maybe get back to him after the next election with the results?

It’s the Left that keeps inadvertently dropping these killer soundbites, and writing these op-ed screeds, to make the case that their beloved Big Government is inherently corrupt and out of control.  They’re doing a great job of indicting their philosophy, in order to protect their heroes from consequence.  They’re so wrapped up in personalized politics that they don’t realize how much their excuse-making is eroding public confidence in government.  They’re essentially telling the American people that nobody will ever be held responsible for anything that goes wrong, because the system has grown so powerful that it no longer fears the wrath of its subjects.

…

…it’s not good enough to simply restore the oversight functions of the press, by electing someone they’re not in love with.  The system itself has to be whittled down to size.  The quest for accountability is a crusade with bipartisan appeal, because a lot of rank-and-file Democrat voters expect it too.  Some of them believe in government control precisely because it thinks bureaucrats and politicians are more accountable than the robber barons of the private sector.  They are hideously mistaken, and the Obama years have given us plenty of examples to prove it.  Start with the VA scandal, but don’t stop there.  Go through the whole sorry mess, and ask voters if they can point to a single act of genuine responsibility from Obama’s government.

Not only has it become impossible for the public to hold any high official responsible for his actions, but there’s no way to escape from the broken system.  You can’t demand new management, you can’t escape from lousy “deals” that bear little resemblance to what you were promised, and you can’t stop paying for the government’s mistakes.  All of this is going to get a lot worse, as the power and reach of government grows, and more of its unsustainable plans collapse.

People are suckers for Big Government because they think the bums can be thrown out of office if they mess up.  The Obama years offer enduring proof that this belief is hopelessly naive.  Where do you go to vote the permanent bureaucracy out of office?  How do you hold a politician accountable for his errors, when he’s got an army of constituents hungry for more of the favors he dispenses?

But don’t take it from me.  Just listen to the liberal politicians and pundits who are increasingly insistent that no one can be held responsible for the failures of the Leviathan State, because no hand is strong enough to hold Leviathan’s reins.

To an extent, the liberals are correct in that a change of leadership will not return accountability to government. Any leadership change that want to limit government and constrict its growth and power, must have an internal house-cleaning from top to the very bottom. The abuses of regulations and the federal agencies is not possible without the willing compliance of all, to the lowest employee. Replacing the patronage appointees will do nothing to impose change. Only wholesale disbandment of those agencies and their regulations can achieve what this country needs.

When there are more unemployed federal workers than private sector workers, only then will we achieve any of our goals.

 

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What’s good for the goose…

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I see that another government agency is building a private army, arming them, putting them in the universal government black uniform and buying body armor. Which agency? It’s not just an agency, it’s an entire governmental department, the Department of Agriculture. According to another website, the USDA soliciting bids for .40S&W submachine guns.

That begs the question that, so far, no governmental department nor agency has answered—why? What justification drives this solicitation? As before, that question remains unanswered.

A May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns [in] .40 Cal. S&W.”

According to the solicitation, the Dept. of Agriculture wants the guns to have an “ambidextrous safety, semiautomatic or 2 round [bursts] trigger group, Tritium night sights front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore group) and scope (top rear), stock collapsible or folding,” and a “30 rd. capacity” magazine.

They also want the submachine guns to have a “sling,” be “lightweight,” and have an “oversized trigger guard for gloved operation.” 

The solicitation directs “all responsible and/or interested sources…[to] submit their company name, point of contact, and telephone.” Companies that submit information in a “timely” fashion “shall be considered by the agency for contact to determine weapon suitability.”

What use does the USDA have for these? Arming Meat Inspectors? Then add the body armor, what is the need? Is there an armed militia of Angus cattle who are arming themselves for protection from slaughter-houses?

Agriculture Department puts in request to buy body armor

By Cheryl K. Chumley, The Washington Times, Friday, May 16, 2014

Swat team personnel gather for a briefing before entering the the former Roth’s grocery store to investigate an armed robbery at School House Square in Keizer, Ore., on Tuesday, March 18, 2014. A Brinks employee was robbed at gunpoint when he was servicing an ATM machine, said Keizer Police Deputy Chief Jeff Kuhns. (AP Photo/Statesman-Journal, Timothy J. Gonzalez)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has put in an acquisition request to buy body armor — specifically, “ballistic vests, compliant with NIJ 0101.06 for Level IIIA Ballistic Resistance of body armor,” the solicitation stated.

The request was put in writing and posted on May 7 — just a few days before the same agency sought “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns” equipped for 3-round magazines, Breitbart reported.

The May 7 solicitation reads: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, [seeks] Body Armor [that’s] gender specific, lightweight, [containing] plate/pad (hard or soft) and concealable carrier. [Also a] tactical vest, undergarment (white), identification patches, accessories (6 pouches), body armor carry bag and professional measurements,” Breitbart reported.

The solicitation also reads that “all responsible and/or interested sources may submit their company name, point of contact and telephone number,” the media outlet reported. And “timely” respondents “shall be considered by the agency for contact,” Breitbart said.

Add it to the list of federal agencies making requests for guns and ammunition in recent months.

The same article mentions the purchase of ammunition by the US Postal Service. The USPS, unlike the USDA, has long had an investigative component, Postal Inspectors. They are federally commissioned officers and has racked up a record of arrests for mail fraud. The USDA has neither the history nor the need for armaments like the Postal Service.

I read somewhere that the number of NFA purchases by citizens (to the uninformed, NFA purchases include full-auto weapons, suppressors, and short firearms, a legacy from Prohibition and the Gangster Era,) has increased dramatically. In line with that is the purchase of body armor by citizens as well, in some areas, more body armor is bought by locals than their law enforcement agencies.

These purchases of body armor has raised concerns for some municipalities and they’ve passed ordinances banning the purchase of body armor by law-abiding citizens. According to one website that sells body armor, they will not ship their products to Connecticut nor to New York for buyers who are not military or law enforcement organizations.

One of the purposes of the 2nd Amendment was to allow citizens to be armed—on par with government. Citizens who are armed—and protected, equally with the government are better prepared to resist governmental tyranny.

The bottom line? Buy body armor for yourself while you can. It’ll be another motivation to maintain your weight…and girth. Body armor is useless if it doesn’t fit. Prices for body armor is less than a new AR.

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The Return of the Friday Follies

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This has been an interesting week—interesting as in the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Obamacare continues to disintegrate. The GOP Establishment howls, “See! See!”, as if it vindicates their ineptness and lack of leadership opposing it and the dems in general.

More dem pols are attempting to distance themselves from Obama and Obamacare, Mark Pryor of Arkansas is an example. The twenty and thirty-somethings, those whom the libs depended upon to fund Obamacare, are rebelling. That subject, rebellion, revolution, was spoken aloud this week by Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute before a congressional judiciary committee and was supported, obliquely, by law professor Jonathan Turley, an Obama supporter.

Frankly, I, like any sane citizen, would rather not live in interesting times. Unfortunately, we, collectively the citizens of this nation, have allowed the situation to occur. And, the longer the condition is allowed to continue, the worse it will be and the more difficult it will be to correct.

If it can. That was the underlying concern espoused by Michael Cannon and Jonathan Turley.

But, I’ve already written about those subjects. Today is Friday, December 6, 2013. Tomorrow is Pearl Harbor Day. I wonder if it will be remembered by the intelligentsia in Washington…or used as another campaign event by the democrats and Obama celebrating our slide into totalitarianism and a police state, of a one-party rule like that of the old Soviet Union.

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The GOP Establishment as acquired an ally in their war against the Tea Party and their party’s core conservatives—the US Chamber of Commerce. That alliance created a reaction. The Club for Growth has joined the fray on the side of conservatives.

New battlefront emerges in war between Republicans, tea party

By Seth McLaughlin – The Washington Times, Thursday, December 5, 2013

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s new push to get involved in Republican primaries by defending incumbents against tea party challengers could actually make it easier to unseat them, according to the head of the influential Club for Growth.

Chris Chocola, the club’s president, said the battle between the chamber, which he said advocates big business, and the rank-and-file free-market conservatives whom his group represents is well underway as Republicans try to field their candidates for the 2014 congressional elections.

The latest fight is shaping up in Idaho, where the chamber announced this week that it will run ads defending incumbent Rep. Michael K. Simpson, a Republican, against a challenge by lawyer Bryan Smith. The club has endorsed Mr. Smith.

“The chamber is pro-business and we are pro-free market, and that is the difference,” Mr. Chocola told The Washington Times. “The opposing views are not new, but there seems to be some heightened interest from the establishment types to get involved in a race like Idaho. If that heightened interest continues there might be more chances that we end up on opposite sides.”

The column continues, here, at the website.

Not only has the anti-conservative campaign of the GOP establishment drawn out national organizations such as the Club for Growth, it has also started a wave of grassroots activism and reactivation of local Tea Party groups rallying to fight that establishment from both parties.

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Speaking the truth. It is a dangerous occurance, regardless of the validity of the statement. Here in the U. S., it can get you fired. You’d think the consequences would be worse is socialist Europe and the UK. If you thought that, you’d be wrong.

PRUDEN: British press horrified as London’s new mayor dares to proclaim the truth

By Wesley Pruden – The Washington Times, Thursday, December 5, 2013

LONDON — Free speech is good, but sometimes dangerous in practice. Saying what you think can get you sacked in America even if it’s something that most people think. Practicing free speech here in the old country is risky, too, but saying the wrong thing appears to be a misdemeanor, not yet a felony.

Boris Johnson, the irrepressible mayor of London, said some provocative things the other day to a private think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, and political London — mostly the scribblers, anyway — has been in a tizzy since.

The mayor playfully invoked Gordon Gecko, who exists only in a movie, and his economic philosophy that “greed is good” to make the point that intelligence, ambition, inspiration and above all perspiration is the irresistible driver of prosperity for everyone. He observed that some people are smarter than others, and that the 2 percent pulls the 98 percent into the good life. To the consternation of conservatives in the government and the left-wing columnists and commentators, the mayor is still upright and walking around.

The 98 percent should be grateful to the 2 percent and not spend a lot of time cultivating resentment. “Some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy,” he said, “and keeping up with the Joneses is, like greed, a valuable spur to the economy.” This reflects an unremarkable understanding of what was once called human nature before the liberals — “progressives,” they call themselves now — decided that the state can install a better nature than God did.

Mr. Johnson then went even further. He said nice things about Margaret Thatcher, who has never been forgiven in certain of these precincts for pulling Britain out of the deep coma imposed by a welfare state that had reduced an empire to “a little England.”

The mayor sometimes talks less like a mayor than a newspaper columnist, which he is as well, for The Daily Telegraph. The squeals from the left and the harrumphs from the right after his Maggie Thatcher remarks may be less about the interpretations of his message than about the folly of electing a newspaper columnist to high office. Instead of bashing the rich, he wrote the other day, “we should be offering them humble and hearty thanks. It is through their restless, concupiscent energy and sheer wealth-creating dynamism that we pay for an ever-growing proportion of public services.”

You can read more here.

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The topic, State Nullification, is a continuing subject in many conservative circles. It appeared in a Washington Times column this week in a discussion of the overbearance and possible Constitutional violations by the government and the NSA. Nullification, contrary to popular thought, is not supported in the Constitution. It was, however, discussed in the Federalist Papers and in those papers, advocated as a possible solution to the excess of the federal government.

The Constitution and state-level resistance to NSA spying

Wednesday, December 4, 2013 – A View from the Tenth by Michael Boldin

LOS ANGELES, December 4, 2013 –  In Federalist #46, James Madison advised state-level actions in response to unconstitutional or unpopular federal acts. He wrote that a successful strategy includes a “refusal to cooperate with officers of the Union.”

As reported by US News, and linked at the top of the Drudge Report yesterday, a coalition of organizations is working to put that advice into practice in response to mass NSA surveillance programs.

The activists would like to turn off the water to the NSA’s $1.5 billion Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, and at other facilities around the country.

 Dusting off the concept of “nullification,” which historically referred to state attempts to block federal law, the coalition plans to push state laws to prohibit local authorities from cooperating with the NSA.

Draft state-level legislation called the Fourth Amendment Protection Act would – in theory – forbid local governments from providing services to federal agencies that collect electronic data from Americans without a personalized warrant.

This morning, at the TIME Swampland blog, Nate Rawlings picked up on the story as well, but opined that the “effort is sure to be stymied by federal authorities.”

Such an opinion assumes that the federal government has the Constitutional authority to stop states from opting out of federal acts and programs, or has a history of doing so.

Both assumptions are incorrect.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly supported the ability of states to opt out of federal acts and programs. The legal principle is known as the “anti-commandeering doctrine,” and says that the federal government cannot force, or “commandeer,” states to enact, administer or enforce federal regulations.

The relevant court cases are:

* 1842 Prigg: The court held that states were not required to enforce federal slavery laws.

* 1992 New York: The court held that Congress could not require states to enact specified waste disposal regulations.

* 1997 Printz: The court held that “the federal government may not compel the states to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.”

* 2012 Sebelius: The court held that states could not be required to expand Medicaid even under the threat of losing federal funding.

There is nothing in the Constitution that requires a state to help the federal government do anything.

The 4th Amendment Protection Act is a state-level bill which seeks to put the anti-commandeering doctrine into practice. The Act would thwart NSA surveillance by banning a state from participating in any program that helps or utilizes NSA surveillance.  This would include providing natural resources, information sharing, and more.

The question, then, is this: Do enough states have the will to follow the advice of the “Father of the Constitution?”

Yes, that is an interesting question.

***

And for a parting shot, let this item from FOX News be a reminder what we, the conservatives, are opposing.

OBAMA SAYS ONE-PARTY CONTROL NEEDED
President Obama told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that Republicans are to blame for the failings of ObamaCare and other national problems. Obama said making concessions on his signature entitlement program was “out of the question.” The way forward, the president said, was to end divided government. “In our history, usually when we’ve made big progress on issues, it actually has been when one party controlled the government for a period of time,” he said. “The big strides we made in the New Deal, the big strides we made with the Great Society – those were times when you had a big majority.” — Chris Stirewalt, Digital Politics Editor, Fox News.

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Friday Follies for June 7th, 2013

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There are so many items to post about today that it’s almost overwhelming.  Where shall we start?

How about some bullet items.

As you can see, there are numerous subjects for a post. However, everyone is focused on the revelation that the NSA has been seizing call data for ALL (I’m still not sure that is accurate,) Verizon subscribers—and Verizon isn’t the only carrier involved!

What people are overlooking, is that this isn’t new. What is new is the volume of the data and the scope of the data seized.

The movies have misrepresented call tracing since the advent of the digital switch. Way back in the ’30s and ’40s, telephone switches were analog. In order to trace a call, you can to follow, trace a call, through the internal connections of the switch. It was a slow and laborious process.

With the advent and deployment of digital switches and modern call routing techniques, it’s much, much easier. A call detail record is created when the call is dialed. More data is added when the connection is made and additional data, timestamps, is added until the call is terminated. If either the originating or destination number is known, a carrier can retrieve the call data in seconds—a minute or two at most.

What is NOT available is the conversation.

You see, when digital switches were deployed in the ’60s and ’70s, the audio of the calls were digitalized, compressed, to better utilize and manage the telephone circuits between switches. If you tapped in on a circuit, you’d hear nothing. It’s digital data, not analog audio. The only place to tap is what is known as “the last mile,” the circuit between your home and the local switch. When wiretaps were granted, the taps had to be placed at or near the subject’s premises.

Digital central office and long distance switches weren’t designed to enable tapping and many, most perhaps, still aren’t. It’s extremely difficult. The FedGov, using FISA, asked the major telco carriers, in the early years of the 21st Century, to develop switches to enable tapping and to retrofit existing switches. It would be extremely expensive to retrofit the deployed switches and the carriers told to FedGov to pound sand.

The carriers did, as new switches were added and older switches replaced for added capacity, comply with the FedGov’s directives. Eventually, their networks will be replaced with switches that will have the capability of listening in on live conversations—but that time is still in the future. The transition will continue for several years, maybe a decade or more. Businesses just won’t replace a large, significant portion of their infrastructure at a whim of bureaucrats.  The expense would put them out of business.

However, the FedGov has carriers over a barrel…and a club called the FCC. The FCC licenses telecommunications carriers and using the threat to withdraw that license, can coerce the carriers into doing whatever the Feds want—within some fiscal reason. That’s why the transition has and will take significant time.

So, we have a reprieve for awhile. I don’t know how long. Years, maybe? A decade, possibly? We must put that time into good use. First, by electing a CONSERVATIVE congress. Next, repeal the Patriot ACT and disband DHS, or, failing that, severely curtail their power and scope.

It’s not too late…yet, if we are to preserve out liberty.

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