The Constitution

ACLU: Gun Control Bill Threatens Privacy Rights and Civil Liberties

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I have to admit, I have a really hard time understanding the perspective of liberty minded folks that lean toward the “progressive” or “liberal” side of the traditional political spectrum when it comes to gun control.  Here is why.

I can understand where their visceral dislike of guns comes from.  Many of them are urbanities and cannot possible conceive the reason anyone would need or want a gun, let alone an “assault rifle.”  I grew up in Manhattan, believe me I get the mentality.  It is very much a cultural phenomenon more than anything else.   That said, many of these people fully understand how criminal our corporate government has become and how these oligarchs are systematically attempting to remove the civil rights of the citizenry.  While this may not be a “right” you agree with, it is a right nonetheless.  I think at a time when we are dealing with such fascist tendencies at the top, we should not advocate for the removal of any rights whatsoever from the citizenry.  This has been my position all along and continues to be.

Yet there is more.  As we see from the ACLU, Harry Reid’s gun control bill is about far more than gun control.  It is about government databases, as well as various other blatant threats to privacy and civil liberties.  From the Daily Caller:

As Senate Democrats struggle to build support for new gun control legislation, the American Civil Liberties Union now says it’s among those who have “serious concerns” about the bill.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, a top lobbyist for the ACLU announced that the group thinks Reid’s current gun bill could threaten both privacy rights and civil liberties.

The inclusion of universal background checks — the poll-tested lynchpin of most Democratic proposals — “raises two significant concerns,” the ACLU’s Chris Calabrese told TheDC Wednesday.

Calabrese — a privacy lobbyist — was first careful to note that the ACLU doesn’t strictly oppose universal background checks for gun purchases. “If you’re going to require a background check, we think it should be effective,” Calabrese explained.

Calabrese wouldn’t characterize the current legislation’s record-keeping provision as a “national gun registry” — which the White House has denied pursuing — but he did say that such a registry could be “a second step.”

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#StandwithRand: The Filibuster that United Libertarian and Progressive Activists

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“I rise today to begin to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination for the CIA I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court. That Americans could be killed in a cafe in San Francisco or in a restaurant in Houston or at their home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is an abomination.” 

– Senator Rand Paul during his 13-hour talking filibuster yesterday

One of the biggest disappointments for me during 2012 was Ron Paul’s failure to run as a third party candidate for President.  Last January, I wrote a very popular post titled Why I Support Ron Paul in which I predicted that the Republican establishment would sabotage his attempted run and that he needed to break ranks and run on his own.  The reason I was so adamant on this point was not because I thought he would necessarily win (although I think he would’ve done much better than most people think), but because his being up there next to Romney and Obama would have exposed both political parties for the frauds that they are.  It would have exposed the fact that on the most important issues like the Federal Reserve, TBTF Wall Street criminal banks, aggressive and short-sighted foreign policy and civil liberties they are completely on the same page.  It would have brought certain issues to the fore that the establishment parties don’t want debated in public.  They’d much rather divide and conquer the nebbish with issues like abortion, gay marriage and gun rights.  Issues that while very important to many, are easily used to split people along geographic and cultural lines and do not represent existential issues core to the survival of the spirit of the nation itself. To paraphrase, I agree with the statement “to know who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”  Ron Paul would have criticized those people and institutions in a very public forum in a third party run and elevated the debate for all of us.  It didn’t happen and the public debate went back into the gutter.

Then Rand Paul stood up and talked for 13 hours.

Personally, I would have preferred the issue that united libertarian and progressive activists to have been the Federal Reserve, since it is the core cancer of this country and indeed the world. Without Federal Reserve funding, none of the awful things our government and multi-national corporations do at home and abroad would be possible, but you don’t always get what you want.  If civil liberties is the issue that does it, so be it.

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Can the Cops Collect Your DNA? The Supreme Court is About to Decide…

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There have been many interesting cases before the Supreme Court as of late, and the most recent one relates to whether or not police have the right to collect someone’s DNA upon arrest.  Justice Samuel Alito has called the case “perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this court has heard in decades.”  Given the Obama Administration’s complete contempt for civil liberties and The Constitution, they are siding with the state of Maryland in the case.  I am strongly opposed to the collection of DNA upon arrest for various reasons, but the primary one being that when you are arrested you are still presumed innocent.  I do not think an arrest (which could be wrongful) should allow the state to collect your genetic information.  From Bloomberg:

The U.S. Supreme Court, hearing what one justice said might be the biggest criminal procedure case in decades, considered overturning as many as 29 state and federal laws that allow the collection of DNA samples when a person is arrested.

In an hour-long argument full of rapid-fire questions, the justices debated whether the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches requires officials to wait until a person is convicted.

The ruling in the Maryland case will be the court’s first on the privacy of genetic information and may have implications for other cutting-edge police techniques in the future.

Several justices, including Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia, suggested they may cross the ideological lines that often divide the court. Scalia signaled his skepticism toward Maryland’s collection program immediately, scoffing when the state’s lawyer opened her argument by touting the 225 matches and 42 convictions the state had secured.

“I’ll bet you if you conducted a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures, you’d get more convictions, too,” Scalia said. “That proves absolutely nothing.”

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Eric Holder Responds: Claims Military Can Assassinate U.S. Citizens on U.S. Soil

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Last week, I highlighted the fact that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul had still not received an answer to his question of whether the U.S. government believes it has the authority to assassinate a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.  Well we finally have an answer from Attorney General Eric Holder and it’s not good.  In a … Read more

Meet Stingray Surveillance: The “Unconstitutional, All-You-Can-Eat Data Buffet”

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It’s getting impossible to keep track of all the new spy tools being rolled out by the police state in the name of “fighting terrorism”, aka spying on innocent American citizens unconstitutionally.  I thought that I had my hands full the other day with ARGUS: The World’s Highest Resolution Video Surveillance Platform, but this “Stingray” system is already being deployed illegally in cities throughout the United States.  As the EFF states: “The Stingray is the digital equivalent of the pre-revolutionary British soldier.”  From the EFF:

The device, which acts as a fake cell phone tower, essentially allows the government to electronically search large areas for a particular cell phone’s signal—sucking down data on potentially thousands of innocent people along the way. At the same time, law enforcement has attempted use them while avoiding many of the traditional limitations set forth in the Constitution, like individualized warrants. This is why we called the tool “an unconstitutional, all-you-can-eat data buffet.”

Recently, LA Weekly reported the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) got a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant in 2006 to buy a stingray. The original grant request said it would be used for “regional terrorism investigations.” Instead LAPD has been using it for just about any investigation imaginable.

Of course, we’ve seen this pattern over and over and over. The government uses “terrorism” as a catalyst to gain some powerful new surveillance tool or ability, and then turns around and uses it on ordinary citizens, severely infringing on their civil liberties in the process.

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Australian General Gets Key U.S. Army Post

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This sounds like a bad idea.  Like a really, really bad idea.  While I understand the concept of allies, I don’t see the need to place a foreign citizen in such a high position of power within the U.S. Armed Forces.  At the end of the day, where do this person’s loyalties ultimately lie?   With the American citizenry or with the Australian government?  Has he even read the U.S. Constitution?  How cozy is he with the Queen of England?  In his bio we see: “In a key representational appointment, Major General Burr was privileged to be the Equerry to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for the 2000 Royal Visit to Australia.  How cute.

From the Associated Press:

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii (AP) — Maj. Gen. Richard Burr salutes with his palm facing out, like he’s shielding his eyes from the sun. He wears a wide-brimmed felt “slouch hat” with a brown and green camouflage uniform.

The two-star general in the Australian Defence Force stands out amid the American soldiers donning berets and green and beige fatigues at the U.S. Army’s headquarters for the Pacific. But he’s responsible for directing their training and exercises as U.S. Army Pacific’s deputy commander for operations.

Burr’s appointment — it’s the first time a non-American has served in such a high-ranking position at a command like this— symbolizes the Army’s push to connect more with allies and friendly nations in the Pacific as it implements the Obama administration’s policy to “rebalance” national defense strategy toward the region.

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Must Watch Video: Is the NDAA Lawsuit Headed to the Supreme Court?

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The NDAA lawsuit is one of the key topics I have written about over the past year or so.  For those of you that aren’t up to speed, one of the most popular posts I ever wrote was NDAA: The Most Important Lawsuit in American History that No One is Talking About.  Basically, Section 1021 of … Read more

Meet Stewart Rhodes: Founder of Oath Keepers

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I have known about Stewart Rhodes for several years now.  The first time I heard him interviewed I was blown away by his courage, intellect, resolve and heightened capacity for strategic thinking.  I remember thinking he reminded me more of our founding fathers than just about anyone else out there.  I remember thinking he reminded me … Read more

British Newspaper Calls for a 3rd Obama Term

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This Op Ed by Mary Dejevsky in the UK’s Independent consists of such rampant propaganda and drivel it is almost impossible to believe she is not on the official payroll of the Obama Administration.  Who would’ve thought the second British Invasion would consist of Piers Morgan and Mary Dejevsky?  I miss the Beatles.

Prepare for a sense of overwhelming disbelief as you read the following excerpts.  From The Independent:

What a difference four years make. When Barack Obama delivers his second inaugural address, as he will on the Washington Mall on Monday, he will do so confident that he is hitting the ground running.

Really, then why does a recent Gallup poll say Americans have never been so downbeat on the nation?

And while a second term frees him from many of the constraints that curb the ambitions of all first-term presidents, the sense already lurks that his presidential promise is only starting to be fulfilled.

What promise?  Continuing and expanding Bush’s unconstitutional policies under the guise of “liberalism?”

Yet there are compelling reasons why two four-year terms may not be enough for a competent and popular US president today. The first, and most obvious, is that a maximum eight-year lease at the White House is short by international standards.

Silly me, for a minute there I thought we were a sovereign nation capable of making our own decisions.

Now here is where she really loses it…

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My Most Popular Post of 2012: You Know You Are a Conspiracy Theorist If…

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While Piers Morgan’s interview with Jesse Ventura brought the most visitors to my site for any single post, the most read post I did all year from all sources was You Know You Are a Conspiracy Theorist If…

The post was read 71,382 times on Zerohedge alone and just missed the site’s Top 25 Posts for 2012 List.

So…in case you missed it the first time, here it is!

You Know You Are a Conspiracy Theorist If…

You are capable of critical thinking.

You distrust mainstream media.

You like nature.

You think it’s a good idea to spend the Friday after Thanksgiving with your family rather than camping outside Best Buy to get a cheap plasma television made in China.

You think it’s a little strange that WTC building 7 came down at free fall speed on 9/11 yet it was never hit by a plane.

You think that drones in America might not be for Al Qaeda.

You would like to be able to get on a plane without having to engage in a mandatory radiation bath and digital strip search.

You have read a book in the past year.

You think you have the right to protest.

You think the War on Terror is a scam.

You think the War on Drugs is a scam.

You think the anger directed at America from the Middle East could possibly be related to our foreign policy rather than hating how amazingly free we are.

You think the Republicans and Democrats are exactly the same on the important issues affecting our country.

You think believing in The Constitution does not constitute a terrorist act.

You have heard of the Bill of Rights and can even name what some of them are.

You question whether the government loves you.

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