Wednesday - March 27, 2013
It’s Upsetting that this is even news
Watching the always snuggly Robin Meade on the morning news over coffee this morning. Always my favorite way to get my eyes open.
One of her lead news stories is “Will Amanda Knox face extradition?” with the follow-on “State Department refuses to comment”.
Are you effin’ kidding me?
Not in my America. Not now, not ever. The Italians convicted her, sent her off to rot in jail, and then FOUR YEARS later came up with some new evidence and overturned that conviction. She was set free and got the heck out of Italy just as fast as she could. Damn straight! Now the Italians have decided to re-try her? Well, that’s just plain screwed up. And I really don’t care if they “annulled” the first conviction or not; she was tried, she was convicted. Done. And then her conviction was thrown out. Done. You took you shot, then took it back. That’s all you get.
But ... in this day and age ... Constitution trampled left and right, ignored whenever convenient, end runs done on the legislature left and right, memories of Elian Gonzales, the whole peak of the Executive Branch chock full of Commies and Islamists, and the most wobbly Supreme Court in my entire lifetime ... maybe this question is a crapshoot.
It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be a news story. There shouldn’t even be the question. Not in the mind of a single American. Not a one. Little kids in second grade ought to know better.
One of the most basic, most fundamental concepts that this nation was built on was NO DOUBLE INDEMNITY* NO DOUBLE JEOPARDY. Ever. And to even entertain the suggestion, even for TV ratings, is antithetic to the point of nausea. It speaks volumes to just how low, how un-American, this country has become.
We call it the Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
And no matter what kind of extradition treaty the USA may have with Italy, a person’s individual rights MUST trump those. I really don’t care if there is some minor precedent against it. Italy let her, that “terrible satanic murderess” out of jail and dropped the charges. I don’t shiv a git if that isn’t a 100% Official acquittal or just an overturning of her conviction, it tastes like acquittal, so a big va fangool to you Italy.
* I came back a couple hours later when I had this niggling thought. Yup, double jeopardy. Being tried twice for the same offense. Double Indemnity was a movie starring Fred MacMurray. It’s also a clause in some life insurance policies. Hey, first cup of coffee and all. But you knew what I meant!
Posted by Drew458 on 03/27/2013 at 07:38 AM
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Wednesday - March 06, 2013
Now Joining Me On My Perpetual Soapbox, Mr. Bill Whittle
Oooh, I just love it when one of the Big Boys agrees with me. Here’s our favorite Virtual President speaking out on the elections process and voter ID.
I’ll take it a step further. Not only voter ID with a photograph on it, but Voter ID with a full NICS check and an SSN check as part of the process. And you have to get a new ID every 4 years. To make certain that no illegal aliens vote. To make certain no convicted felons vote. To make certain that Snowbirds only have one vote. And what the hell ... if you act now, you get a free CCW or FOID with your registration if your state requires them, although you may have to submit a digital fingerprint to activate those.
No more absentee ballots, period. Lock down the candidates 60 days prior to any election; if your party’s candidate drops out, dies, or gets incarcerated, then the alternate - who was also part of the primary! - then steps in. Ex-pats and overseas military vote 2-3 weeks ahead of everyone, to give their ballots plenty of time to get back here and into the system. Open the voting a month before “Vote Counting Day”. County workers go out to the hospitals and nursing homes with a digital gizmo to allow the fully incapacitated to cast their ballots. All the data goes into the system, and when the clock strikes midnight in Hawaii the entire country’s ballots are counted and the figures released. Which should take about 7 seconds, but give it overnight just to make sure, and then the results hit the airwaves with the 6am news.
Freedom is not free. The very smallest cost of freedom is responsibility. If you won’t step up, then step out.
Posted by Drew458 on 03/06/2013 at 12:38 PM
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Sunday - February 24, 2013
New Jersey Next Please
7TH CIRCUIT LETS POSNER RULING STAND; HUGE WIN FOR CCW, SAYS SAF
For Immediate Release: 2/22/2013
BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today won a significant victory for concealed carry when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a December ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that forces Illinois to adopt a concealed carry law, thus affirming that the right to bear arms exists outside the home.
The ruling came in Moore v. Madigan, a case filed by SAF. The December opinion that now stands was written by Judge Richard Posner, who gave the Illinois legislature 180 days to “craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment…on the carrying of guns in public.” That clock is ticking, noted SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb.
“Illinois lawmakers need to create some kind of licensing system or face the prospect of not having any regulations at all when Judge Posner’s deadline arrives,” Gottlieb said. “They need to act. They can no longer run and hide from this mandate.”
“We were delighted with Judge Posner’s ruling in December,” he continued, “and today’s decision by the entire circuit to allow his ruling to stand is a major victory, and not just for gun owners in Illinois. Judge Posner’s ruling affirmed that the right to keep and bear arms, itself, extends beyond the boundary of one’s front door.”
In December, Judge Posner wrote, “The right to ‘bear’ as distinct from the right to ‘keep’ arms is unlikely to refer to the home. To speak of ‘bearing’ arms within one’s home would at all times have been an awkward usage. A right to bear arms thus implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home.”
Judge Posner subsequently added, “To confine the right to be armed to the home is to divorce the Second Amendment from the right of self-defense described in Heller and McDonald.”
Read the rest and mark your calenders. I want to see just what happens in Illinois with this one.
Posted by Drew458 on 02/24/2013 at 11:19 AM
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Saturday - February 09, 2013
Oh Hella Yeah
Aw flack, I can’t find a better headline ... this is the feel-good story of the weekend.
Follow this link, read the little post, watch the video. It will make your day.
Of course, the local media puts their left handed spin on things, making the uppity councilman seem like some kind of hero. BS. That’s why you need to follow the above link ...
The members of the Oak Harbor City Council were outnumbered and surrounded by men with guns, but they managed to diffuse the situation with parliamentary procedures.
But as hard as they try, it’s impossible to hide the truth that there was almost a mighty uprising in that little city. People have had enough. There will be no more.
Posted by Drew458 on 02/09/2013 at 10:31 PM
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Monday - January 21, 2013
et tu australia?
Unbelievable once upon a time in their history, but times have changed.
I was looking for a related story, got lost in surfing and Google searches and found myself here.
I won’t post all of it, the link will have the rest as always. Just shows us doesn’t it that it isn’t the usual suspects that cave in.
Getting late, waiting for a phone call from an electrician. Excuses is all we’ve had so far. Says he’ll call and then doesn’t.
Ah, the new age Brit work ethic.
Who says there’s a country wide financial crisis? If there is one, it hasn’t touched this no show fellow. I should be used to it by now, having had workmen that didn’t show up without a call or else came late without word. And often never bothered to return calls.
That’s way off the topic. Sorry.
Here’s the story. With a H/T Sydney Morning Herald
Free speech dogged by politics of difference
Paul SheehanThe obvious question is, what are they afraid of? Is it fear of violence, or vandalism, or simply fear of association?
Debbie Robinson, a small business operator who describes herself as an ordinary citizen, wants to bring to Australia a Dutch political leader who is a supporter of democracy, freedom of religion, feminism and gay rights. But when she started making arrangements all she encountered was fear.
‘’In Sydney, venues that were initially available were cancelled or would not take the booking when they realised who the speaker was,’’ she told me. She provided a list of rejections: the Hilton Hotel, North Sydney Leagues Club, Sydney Masonic Centre, Wesley Convention Centre, Luna Park Function Centre, the Concourse at Chatswood and the Sir John Clancy Auditorium at the University of NSW.
‘’I offered a church-based venue in Sydney a donation and their reply was, ‘You could offer $4 million and we would not accept your booking’.’’
Finding venues was not her only problem. ‘’Earlier in the year I approached APN Outdoor to arrange a four-week run of bus ads in Sydney. The artwork was forwarded to them and I was quoted a price for the job . . . Then I was advised they would not be able to run the ad as it was too political and would result in the buses being damaged and defaced. They would not say who would do the damage.’’
The same happened in Perth, where Robinson lives, when venues declined to take her booking, including the Burswood Casino. When she tried to organise a payments system for the tour, she was rejected by Westpac. The bank, which has been courting the Chinese Communist government for years, wanted nothing to do with this Dutch democrat.
‘’I was organising an e-way payment system with Westpac to link to the website of the Q Society [the sponsor of the tour]. I received a call from a manager who said the Westpac Risk Management Team had decided the material for sale was offensive and inappropriate and therefore they would not proceed with the e-way system. I asked to speak to the manager responsible and was told he was on leave.’’
The Dutch MP causing so much concern is Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party of Freedom (PVV), the king-maker in Dutch politics over the past two years. When Wilders withdrew his support for the government last year, it collapsed and a national election was called.
A month after that election, in which the PVV polled a million votes and won 16 seats, Wilders was scheduled to be in Australia. The trip was cancelled after it was sabotaged by the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen.
The minister then had the gall to write an opinion piece, published in The Australian on October 2 last year, in which he claimed, ‘’I have decided not to intervene to deny [Wilders] a visa because I believe that our democracy is strong enough, our multiculturalism robust enough and our commitment to freedom of speech entrenched enough that our society can withstand the visit of a fringe commentator.’’
Reality check: Bowen’s department sat on Wilders’ visa application for almost two months, then acted only after the minister received public criticism and Wilders was cancelling his trip.
No such long delay hindered the visit of Taji Mustafa, a spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an apologist for jihad, when he made a speaking tour in Australia last September while Wilders was being frozen out.
Posted by peiper on 01/21/2013 at 02:36 PM
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Sunday - January 20, 2013
Molon Labe Bitches
Pro-gun activists held “high noon” rallies across the United States on Saturday to defend the right to own firearms that they say is being threatened by President Barack Obama’s gun-control proposals.
The U.S. debate over gun control erupted in mid-December after a man armed with an assault rifle killed 20 first-graders and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut - the deadliest of a string of U.S. shooting sprees last year.
“We are law-abiding citizens, business owners, military, and we are not going to be responsible for other people’s criminal actions,” former Marine Damon Locke said to applause at a Florida rally he had helped organize.
Some in the crowd of about 1,000 in Brooksville, about an hour north of Tampa, hoisted signs that said: “Stop the Gun Grabbers” and “Gun control isn’t about guns, it’s about control.”
n Connecticut, a rally for gun rights drew about 1,000 people at the state Capitol, where lawmakers have reacted to the Newtown shooting with proposals to tighten gun-control rules, including limiting access to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
That did not sit well with gun owner Jessie Buchanan, who attended the rally in Hartford.
“They could take away the 10-round magazine today and tomorrow it would be the five-round and the next day it would be the whole thing,” Buchanan said.
In Denver, the mood was defiant as about 500 people, including families with children, gathered in unseasonably warm weather outside the state Capitol.
,,,
Sporting a shirt that read, “Girls with guns,” 31-year-old Jennifer Burk said, “My parents didn’t raise a victim and the government shouldn’t try and make me one.”
Gun-control advocates say U.S. civilians have no justifiable need for assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, and they say more background checks will help keep guns out of the hands of criminals.
The reaction has been fierce from gun supporters such as the National Rifle Association, who point to a right to bear arms that is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and which they do not want to see watered down.
Thousands of gun advocates gathered peacefully Saturday at state capitals around the U.S. to rally against stricter limits on firearms, with demonstrators carrying rifles and pistols in some places while those elsewhere settled for waving hand-scrawled signs or screaming themselves hoarse.
The size of crowds at each location varied - from dozens of people in South Dakota to 2,000 in New York. Large crowds also turned out in Connecticut, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington state.
...
Some demonstrators in Olympia, Wash., Phoenix, Salem, Ore., and Salt Lake City came with holstered handguns or rifles on their backs. At the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, attendees gave a special round of applause for ‘the ladies that are packin’.
Sounds like at least a dozen rallies. Pretty good for something put together in just a couple weeks.
At the New York state Capitol in Albany, about 2,000 people turned out for a chilly rally, where they chanted ‘We the People,’ ‘USA,’ and ‘Freedom.’ Many carried American flags and ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ banners.
The event took place four days after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the nation’s toughest assault weapon and magazine restrictions.
Republican Assemblyman Steven McLaughlin said the new law was ‘abuse of power’ by the governor. Some in the crowd carried ‘Impeach Cuomo’ signs. Protester Robert Candea called the restrictions ‘an outrage against humanity.’
...
n Minnesota, where more than 500 people showed up at the Capitol in St. Paul, Republican state Rep. Tony Cornish said he would push to allow teachers to carry guns in school without a principal or superintendent’s approval and to allow 21-year-olds to carry guns on college campuses.
Capitol rallies also took place in Colorado, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin, among other states.
May this be only the beginning. It’s high time our elitist masters learn what “up in arms” rally really means.
Posted by Drew458 on 01/20/2013 at 12:51 PM
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Friday - December 21, 2012
lift that barge and bottoms up
OK just a bit of fluff before getting all serious again. Anyway, sometimes it is kinda nice to see women as they really mostly are, as opposed to the professional models and actresses.
Ah, just to be fair for once.
Ladies, there might be something for you as well, at the link for this article. I said ‘might’ cos I can never be sure.
Do women gape at men at much as we drool over women? Might but perhaps more subtle?
The nude calendar for charity is a bit overdone, but it gives guys another excuse to look cos after all, it’s for charity.
Don’t matter what it’s for, feminists do NOT want us looking. Boo-hoo.
‘We’re just raising money for charity’: Female rower who stripped for naked calendar defends herself from feminist blogger’s attack
By Ruth StylesA student who stripped for a charity calendar has hit back at critics who claim posing naked is tacky and damaging to the feminist cause.
Hettie Reed, a student at Warwick University, pictured second left in the picture below, said that singling out women is ‘grossly unfair’, adding that her rowing club’s charity calendar was ‘not about being part of some kind of watered down pornography.’
The rowing club calendar, which Hettie helped organise, is being sold to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support, which was chosen because one of the rowing team’s mothers is suffering from the disease.
Calendar girls: From left, Jenny Clark, Hettie Reed, Fi Angell, Ella Peters and Lexie Titterington
The offending calendar isn’t the first produced by the University of Warwick rowing club either.
The boy’s team have produced naked calendars for the past four years, even creating a behind the scenes video called ‘Brokeback Boatroom’.
But while the boys’ effort has made a significant contribution to charity after being singled out by comedian Stephen Fry and singer, Boy George, the girls’ first calendar has come under fire from self-described feminists and Hettie is furious.
‘There are some sad people out there and it’s a waste of time to criticise people for making a charity calendar,’ she told MailOnline.
‘The calendar was done in a non-tacky, tasteful way - if you look at the images, they are actually nice pictures, naked or not.
‘I do believe that women deserve equality and in my eyes, if the men of our rowing club are able to make a naked calendar we should have the right to do the same thing without [receiving] derogatory and slanderous comments - that is what equality is about.’
Hettie’s comments came in the wake of a blog on the Huffington Post website, which attacked Hettie and her friends, and said they had put the feminist cause back.
Layla Haidrani, a student at the University of Kent who describes herself as a commentator on feminist issues, wrote: ‘Groups of women posing semi-naked on a field with sticks doesn’t sound a fundraising initiative for charity, it just sounds tacky,’
‘Although many argue that it is purely for fundraising purposes, in my own university sports team, the majority of women who participated were not made aware and did not even seek to find out which charities were being helped.
‘Rather, they just view it as an opportunity to strip and attempt to gain notoriety with friends and family both back home and on campus.’
She continued: ‘I can’t help but feel that women are just victims in the ‘liberation game,
‘As opposed to being liberated by posing semi-naked, they are in fact just helping women to be perpetually viewed as sex objects, something to be ‘bought’, ‘sold’ and then tossed away once the Christmas period is over.
But Heidrani, says Hettie, has got the wrong end of the stick.
‘These naked calendars do make money for some fantastic charities and so what really is the harm in them?’ she asked.
‘We do have some good looking girls in there but our calendar isn’t necessarily sexy and it certainly isn’t demeaning.
Actually, the article is interesting and once again the femanazis take it upon themselves to declare what a women should and should not do. They make the agenda, they decide for everyone what is and what to think. Who elected her or any one person to decide for all, what is proper and not proper in this calendar debate?
Layla Haidrani is a history student at University of Kent, Canterbury. Raised in Camden, she is a commentator on feminist issues and international politics affairs and defines herself as a passionate socialist.
Perhaps Ms. Haidrani would prefer women to cover up. Like this?
Posted by peiper on 12/21/2012 at 04:21 AM
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Thursday - December 20, 2012
Another Dead White Guy Heard From
No, not OCM, whose blog I happened to stop off at and indirectly got the idea for this post from. Tench Coxe.
Who?
Tench Coxe was another of the Founding Fathers. He was the delegate from Pennsylvania to the Constitutional Convention. He was an anti-Federalist, which means he was against an all-powerful central government.
His quotes?
“The power of the sword, say the minority..., is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of Americans. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments but where, I trust in God, it will always remain, in the hands of the people.”
* The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.
So all you willfully blind leftists with your “the Second Amendment was only about muskets and single shot horse pistols, because that’s all they had in those days” ... you are full of crap. May I remind you of Lexington and Concord, and what Paul Revere’s ride was about? CANNONS were privately owned in those days. Artillery, both on land and at sea. And while the range of such weapons was only about a mile and a half, and they didn’t always fire explosive shells, a 32 pound cannonball could EASILY shoot your house down. One shot, properly aimed. No more house. Crash. Try doing that with one round of .50 BMG.
I think OCM wants his own rocket propelled grenade launcher. Good for him. As long as he understands he’s responsible for every bit of damage caused by every bit of shrapnel when he blasts something, then let him own it.
Posted by Drew458 on 12/20/2012 at 05:52 PM
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Tuesday - December 11, 2012
hark comrades, glorious allies to gather for freedom and smite newest foe. who’s next?
This front page greeted us this morning.
I’ve already done my rant on the subject, maybe too often. It’s one of those non rocket science events where this sort of thing was expected.
So this is all there is for this post.
It’s nice that us and our most glorious former empires are not going to set boots on the ground. Of course, we can afford it. Money no problem.
Just take it from the public who always have plenty of spare cash to toss at various foreign adventures. It’s all for democracy so nobody will mind.
Posted by peiper on 12/11/2012 at 05:49 AM
Filed Under: • FREEDOM • Insanity • International • UK • USA •
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Friday - October 12, 2012
As If You Needed It
Jeff Quinn over at Gunblast.com has put both party’s position statements side by side and done a bit of comparison. I won’t steal his thunder, so go read his post. It’s short and to the point, and you pretty much know what it says already. But ... horry clap. Them lefty zealots are a scary bunch.
Today, we have a choice to make, and this upcoming election is important in many ways, but especially to our way of life. We have one party who wishes to control every aspect of our lives, and another party that only wants to control many aspects of our lives
Regarding the Republican position statement, which Jeff includes verbatim:
The above is the strongest pro-rights statement to ever come out as the official platform of the Republican Party. Mitt Romney does not have a stellar record on gun rights, but within the framework of this platform, the party will hold his feet to the fire, and hopefully, he will do nothing to impede our civil rights.
Regarding the Democrat position statement, which Jeff includes verbatim:
It starts off rather well, but reading the rest of that paragraph reveals that their first sentence is very much akin to the matter into which I stepped while out in the cow pasture today. They go on to state that our God-given civil rights are subject to “reasonable” regulation. They do not state who will do the reasoning and regulating. Maybe Harry Reid? Nancy Pelosi? Charles Schumer? Barak Obama? Those are the leaders of the party, and they want to “reasonably” regulate that which God has given us.
He then spends 6 energetic paragraphs detailing the Democrat worldview and what is wrong with it. And he doesn’t make a single mistake. Nice reading, quick and to the point.
Vote wisely, as if your life depends upon it, because it does.
Got that right. Go read the whole darn thing.
Oh, and a little bit more for you from the Quinn boys - a list of properly sourced Obama quotes regarding firearms and gun rights. Thanks fellas!
“I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers’ lobby.”
From “The Audacity of Hope” by Barack Obama, p.215 Oct 1, 2006
There you go: Obama in a nutshell. You’re smart enough to see what this statement means coming from a person like BHO.
Posted by Drew458 on 10/12/2012 at 05:36 PM
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Thursday - June 28, 2012
Scalia, the Patriot: Too Little, Too Late
The ObamaCare decision handed down today is enormous. Nearly 200 pages. Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Alito, and Thomas dissented. Their joint dissent runs to more than 40 pages, but it’s pretty obvious who wrote it.
I wanted to sift through it to find a few gems that would reflect the whole, but that was nearly impossible. The Act is wrong on so many layers, and the actions of the court are also so multiply wrong, that a few snippets simply can not cover the issues. There are just too many issues.
So here are my cuts of his words, in the order he wrote them, with almost all the case references, ibids, footnotes, and other lawyerly crap removed for clarity’s sake.
Is there any bottom line? Yes. Scalia feels that today’s decision was the worst instance of judicial activism in our history. By turning itself inside out and declaring that this whole Thing is actually a Tax, even though the words of the Thing say dozens of times that it is not a Tax, the high court has created the most onerous piece of legislation from the bench ever.
Italics, brackets, and emphasis are mine.
Whatever may be the conceptual limits upon the Commerce Clause and upon the power to tax and spend, they cannot be such as will enable the Federal Government to regulate all private conduct and to compel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.
That clear principle carries the day here. The striking case of Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942), which held that the economic activity of growing wheat, even for one’s own consumption, affected commerce sufficiently that it could be regulated, always has been regarded as the ne plus ultra of expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence.
As for the constitutional power to tax and spend for the general welfare: The Court has long since expanded that beyond (what Madison thought it meant) taxing and spending for those aspects of the general welfare that were within the Federal Government’s enumerated powers, see United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1, 65–66 (1936). Thus, we now have sizable federal Departments devoted to subjects not mentioned among Congress’ enumerated powers, and only marginally related to commerce: the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The principal practical obstacle that prevents Congress from using the tax-and-spend power to assume all the general-welfare responsibilities traditionally exercised by the States is the sheer impossibility of managing a Federal Government large enough to administer such a system. That obstacle can be overcome by granting funds to the States, allowing them to administer the program. That is fair and constitutional enough when the States freely agree to have their powers employed and their employees enlisted in the federal scheme. But it is a blatant violation of the constitutional structure when the States have no choice.
The Act before us here exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in denying non-consenting States all Medicaid funding. These parts of the Act are central to its design and operation, and all the Act’s other provisions would not have be enenacted without them. In our view it must follow that the entire statute is inoperative.
[speaking of Wickard v Filburn and Perez v United States:] To go beyond that, and to say that the failure to grow wheat or the refusal to make loans affects commerce, so that growing and lending can be federally compelled, is to extend federal power to virtually everything. All of us consume food, and when we do so the Federal Government can prescribe what its quality must be and even how much we must pay. But the mere fact that we all consume food and are thus, sooner or later, participants in the “market” for food, does not empower the Government to say when and what we will buy. That is essentially what this Act seeks to do with respect to the purchase of health care. It exceeds federal power.
If all inactivity affecting commerce is commerce, commerce is everything. ... The [partial] dissent [by Ginsburg] claims that we “fai[l] to explain why the individual mandate threatens our constitutional order.” Ante, at 35. But we have done so. It threatens that order because it gives such an expansive meaning to the Commerce Clause that all private conduct (including failure to act) becomes subject to federal control, effectively destroying the Constitution’s division of governmental powers.
[ Is it a tax, or a penalty? Yes! And a desert topping too! ]
It is important to bear this in mind in evaluating the tax argument of the Government and of those who support it: The issue is not whether Congress had the power to frame the minimum-coverage provision as a tax, but whether it did so.In answering that question we must, if “fairly possible,” Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932), construe the provision to be a tax rather than a mandate-with-penalty, since that would render it constitutional rather than un- constitutional (ut res magis valeat quam pereat). But we cannot rewrite the statute to be what it is not. ... In this case, there is simply no way, “without doing violence to the fair meaning of the words used,” to escape what Congress enacted: a mandate that individuals maintain minimum essential coverage, enforced by a penalty.
In a few cases, this Court has held that a “tax” imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held—never—that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power—even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here)the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty. When an act “adopt[s] the criteria of wrongdoing” and then imposes a monetary penalty as the “principal consequence on those who transgress its standard,” it creates a regulatory penalty, not a tax. So the question is, quite simply, whether the exaction here is imposed for violation of the law. It unquestionably is.
Against the mountain of evidence that the minimum coverage requirement is what the statute calls it—a requirement—and that the penalty for its violation is what the statute calls it—a penalty—the Government brings forward the flimsiest of indications to the contrary.
...
And the nail in the coffin is that the mandate and penalty are located in Title I of the Act, its operative core, rather than where a tax would be found—in Title IX, containing the Act’s “Revenue Provisions.” In sum, “the terms of the act render it unavoidable,” that Congress imposed a regulatory penalty, not a tax.
For all these reasons, to say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. ... Imposing a tax through judicial legislation inverts the constitutional scheme, and places the power to tax in the branch of government least accountable to the citizenry.This Court must not impose risks unintended by Congress or produce legislation Congress may have lacked the support to enact. For those reasons, the unconstitutionality of both the Individual Mandate and the Medicaid Expansion requires the invalidation of the Affordable Care Act’s other provisions.
The Court today decides to save a statute Congress did not write. It rules that what the statute declares to be a requirement with a penalty is instead an option subject to a tax. And it changes the intentionally coercive sanction of a total cut-off of Medicaid funds to a supposedly non-coercive cut-off of only the incremental funds that the Act makes available.
The Court regards its strained statutory interpretation as judicial modesty. It is not. It amounts instead to a vast judicial overreaching. It creates a debilitated, inoperable version of health-care regulation that Congress did not enact and the public does not expect. It makes enactment of sensible health-care regulation more difficult, since Congress cannot start afresh but must take as its point of departure a jumble of now senseless provisions, provisions that certain interests favored under the Court’s new design will struggle to retain. And it leaves the public and the States to expend vast sums of money on requirements that may or may not survive the necessary congressional revision.The Court’s disposition, invented and atextual as it is, does not even have the merit of avoiding constitutional difficulties. It creates them. The holding that the Individual Mandate is a tax raises a difficult constitutional question (what is a direct tax?) that the Court resolves with inadequate deliberation. And the judgment on the Medicaid Expansion issue ushers in new federalism concerns and places an unaccustomed strain upon the Union.Those States that decline the Medicaid Expansion must subsidize, by the federal tax dollars taken from their citizens, vast grants to the States that accept the Medicaid Expansion. If that destabilizing political dynamic, so antagonistic to a harmonious Union, is to be introduced at all, it should be by Congress, not by the Judiciary.
The values that should have determined our course today are caution, minimalism, and the understanding that the Federal Government is one of limited powers. But the Court’s ruling undermines those values at every turn. In the name of restraint, it overreaches. In the name of constitutional avoidance, it creates new constitutional questions. In the name of cooperative federalism, it undermines state sovereignty.The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our Government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril. Today’s decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead, our judgment today has disregarded it.
For the reasons here stated, we would find the Act invalid in its entirety. We respectfully dissent.
Boil all of this down to just a few short words, and you get what Feed Your ADHD wrote:
This is no longer America. You no longer have the opportunity for the American Dream. You, we, me—we’re all slaves now. The Supreme Court of the United States of America has just made it official.
Congress has abandoned you. The executive branch has abandoned you. SCOTUS has abandoned you. The lapdog media has abandoned you.
Game. Over.
Not even RINO-lite Mittens Romney will save us now.
Sipsey Street Irregulars, one of those Three Percenter blogs, puts it all into the most simple terms:
Posted by Drew458 on 06/28/2012 at 03:40 PM
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Tuesday - June 12, 2012
Take Back Your Nation, 2
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) said he will sue the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to move forward with his controversial attempt to purge the voter rolls in his state of ineligible voters.
“I have a job to do to defend the right of legitimate voters,” Scott told Fox News on Monday. “We’ve been asking for the Department of Homeland Security’s database, SAVE, for months, and they haven’t given it to us. So this afternoon, we will be filing a lawsuit, the secretary of State of Florida, against the Department of Homeland Security to give us that database. We want to have fair, honest elections in our state and we have been put in a position that we have to sue the federal government to get this information.”
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner produced the lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C. district court on Monday, shortly after, along with a statement.
“For nearly a year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has failed to meet its legal obligation to provide us the information necessary to identify and remove ineligible voters from Florida’s voter rolls,” Detzner said. “We can’t let the federal government delay our efforts to uphold the integrity of Florida elections any longer. We’ve filed a lawsuit to ensure the law is carried out and we are able to meet our obligation to keep the voter rolls accurate and current.”
Last week, the Department of Justice demanded Florida stop the voter-roll purge, saying it violated the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and was reliant on faulty Department of Motor Vehicle records to determine who is eligible to vote.
The Scott administration responded with a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder saying it would continue the voter-roll purge, and is now seeking the DHS federal database as a part of that push.
Shortly after Scott’s announcement, the DOJ responded with a letter to Detzner saying it was launching a suit of its own against the state.
Why is it that I’ve never noticed the federal government suing states before this President, nor have I ever noticed states suing the federal government in return? Now we have 27 states suing over Obamacare, the feds suing Arizona and Alabama left and right over illegal immigration, and so on. You’d think there was some kind of Socialist usurper in the White House enabling completely un-American activities all the time. And you’d be right.
Should Florida not be allowed access to the DHS database, whatever it may contain, then they will have to forge ahead using whatever information that they can access and rely on. And if some people get improperly disenfranchised, so be it. The onus will be upon them to prove that they are legal citizens and residents of Florida and get themselves re-registered. While the right to vote is national, the control of the rolls is at the state level. Isn’t it? Oughtn’t it? I’ve never heard of a national voter registration or a national voter ID card.
IIRC, the feds are claiming that a disproportionate number of darker people - blacks and latinos - are the ones getting purged. You know, exactly the same groups that were the focus of ACORN and the other phony voter registration groups for years and years. So it’s no surprise that a larger number of their numbers are improperly registered. That isn’t racism, that’s a plain truth.
I don’t know what the registration process in Florida is, but if they had the smarts, the time, and the money, I’d say now would be the best time to put a photo ID system in place. Maybe they should “force equality” and just dump the voter rolls entirely, and then make everyone re-register. Every single citizen. In person. And (after significant validation of course) give them all nice shiny new voter ID cards with their pictures on them, which would be required to be presented to vote.
It’s about damn time. Would that Florida only be the First of Fifty.
Posted by Drew458 on 06/12/2012 at 08:17 AM
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Take Back Your Nation, 1
Part 1
North Dakota to eliminate property tax?
Since Californians shrank their property taxes more than three decades ago by passing Proposition 13, people around the nation have echoed their dismay over such levies, putting forth plans to even them, simplify them, cap them, slash them. In an election here on Tuesday, residents of North Dakota will consider a measure that reaches far beyond any of that — one that abolishes the property tax entirely.“I would like to be able to know that my home, no matter what happens to my income or my life, is not going to be taken away from me because I can’t pay a tax,” said Susan Beehler, one in a group of North Dakotans who have pressed for an amendment to the state’s Constitution to end the property tax. They argue that the tax is unpredictable, inconsistent, counter to the concept of property ownership and needless in a state that, thanks in part to wildly successful oil drilling, finds itself in the rare circumstance of carrying budget reserves.
“When,” Ms. Beehler asked, “did we come to believe that government should get rich and we should get poor?”
Polls conducted last month and last week suggest that voters here overwhelmingly oppose the ballot measure to ban the property tax.
Still, even if the measure here fails on Tuesday, the notion is picking up steam in some Republican circles in other states, including North Carolina, Texas and Pennsylvania.
“No tax should have the power to leave you homeless,” said Jim Cox, a state representative in Pennsylvania who has proposed legislation to eliminate the school property tax in the state where, he said, such taxes have led to residents’ losing homes to sheriff’s sales, entering into reverse mortgages or simply moving away.
In a way, North Dakota, though 48th in population among the states, was a logical place for such a movement to brew. While the state’s property tax collections per capita generally fall near the middle among states, the surge in oil production over the past five years, mainly in the western portion of the state, has seen its effects ripple through other parts of life here. The state’s coffers are full, overflowing even. Assessments of home values, especially in some areas, have risen drastically too.
… the [no property tax] efforts here were largely organic, the result of unhappy property taxpayers getting fed up.
“The same problem kept coming up,” said Charlene Nelson, a homemaker who became a leader of the effort to amend the Constitution, pointing to what she deems the underlying problem with the property tax. “It means all of us are renters — none of us are homeowners.”
In recent years, state officials sent more money to localities to pay for schools in an effort to lower property tax bills. But opponents of the property tax said those efforts did not go nearly far enough, and collected nearly 30,000 signatures on petitions to bring the matter to the ballot.
Those who want to keep the property tax have vastly outraised the opponents, gathering more than $500,000, campaign finance reports show. Though the question is among four on ballots here on Tuesday — including the highly contentious question of whether the University of North Dakota should give up its Fighting Sioux nickname — residents here said they had been deluged with information about the property tax measure, on signs, in radio talk shows and through months of debates in school gymnasiums and recreation halls in small towns like Edgeley and Bowman.
For his part, Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, said he opposed the property tax ban. “It’s mind-boggling, really,” he said, in an interview, of the effects of such a ban. “We’d be changing everything, frankly.”
The notion, he said, that the state has enough surplus to replace property taxes for localities around the state without raising other taxes is false. For starters, he said, much of the state’s benefits from the oil boom are already dedicated legally to particular funds and cannot simply be transferred to support schools, counties, towns, park districts and the like.
Even if the ban fails, North Dakota lawmakers now seem all but certain to tackle broader solutions to the property tax question as early as next year.
Posted by Drew458 on 06/12/2012 at 07:50 AM
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Tuesday - February 14, 2012
You Get What You Pay For
TSA workers abusing the public, again, as usual.
Isn’t it about time we dumped these losers, the whole damn Patriot Act, and DHS as well?
Dear Government: Sod off.
Female passengers say they are being targeted by TSA screeners for sexual harassment, with one Texas woman being forced to pass through a naked body scanner three times so chuckling male TSA workers in a back room could get a good look at her “cute” figure.
The incident occurred at DFW International Airport earlier this month. Wife and mother Ellen Terrell was asked by a female TSA screener “Do you play tennis?” When Terrell asked why, the screener responded, “You just have such a cute figure.”
Terrell was then told to go through the naked body scanner not once but a second time. She then heard the TSA screener talking into her microphone saying, “Come on guys, alright, alright, one more time.”
After Terrell was forced to undergo a third blast of radiation from the body scanner, the male TSA agents in the back room who were obviously enjoying the show tried to send her through yet again to see more images of her naked body.
related -
Following an admission of guilt in federal court earlier this week from a TSA supervisor, two more TSA agents based at a completely different airport have been arrested for stealing thousands of dollars in cash from the luggage of travelers, while another was arrested and fired for seriously assaulting a co-worker in a dispute over a parking space.
On January 30, the men, identified as Persad Coumar and Davon Webb, allegedly discovered a bag containing $170,000 using an X-ray machine and removed some of the money inside, the district attorney said.
The two workers are also suspected of having previously stolen valuables from luggage worth up to $160,000, according to police with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The TSA admits that in the last three years alone there have been 12 similar cases of thefts involving the removal of valuables and/or cash from baggage. These are just the ones that have been reported.
Posted by Drew458 on 02/14/2012 at 01:58 PM
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
- Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
- Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
- Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.