Quote of the Day: “The JUSTICE Act will allow intelligence agents to monitor terrorism suspects while putting checks in place to ensure that law-abiding Americans’ privacy and civil liberties are protected.” – Sen. Daniel Akaka
Following 9/11, Congress passed the gargantuan USA PATRIOT Act, without reading it. The PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act were written to protect Americans from terrorism, but they’ve left people unprotected from their own government.
It also authorized National Security Letters (NSLs). NSLs allow federal agents to seize your personal records without a warrant, even when there’s no suspicion of wrongdoing. The FBI can also prohibit you from telling anyone that you’ve been searched because of an NSL. The FBI was found to have abused this power thousands of times.
The good news is that some parts of the PATRIOT Act will expire at the end of the year unless Congress renews them. This provides an opportunity to roll back many dangerous provisions. Toward this end Senator Russ Feingold introduced the JUSTICE Act (S. 1686) on September 17, Constitution Day. JUSTICE stands for the Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts. This bill would . . .
narrow the scope of “sneak and peak” warrants so they can’t be used in common criminal cases
ensure judicial review of NSLs and require that they only be used in terrorism or espionage investigations
prevent roving wiretaps of unnamed suspects that allow the government to monitor the conversations of innocent people
revoke the retroactive immunity provision of the FISA Amendments Act that has shielded the telecom companies that collaborated with the government in illegal surveillance
In short, the JUSTICE Act would give government agents powerful tools to spy on suspected terrorists, while preventing them from spying on YOU.
We would prefer to repeal the PATRIOT Act entirely, but until that can happen the provisions of the JUSTICE Act would move things in the right direction. Please take action to pass the JUSTICE Act.
If your Senator is on the Judiciary Committee, please also call him or her on the phone and urge him or her to support the JUSTICE Act. If your Senator is not on the Committee please call the Committee Directly to urge them to vote the JUSTICE Act out of committee. You can see a list of the Committee members here.
The phone number for the Senate Judiciary Committee is 202-224-7703
Rand Paul appeared for a 30 minute call-in segment on CSPAN’s Washington Journal this morning. Many topics were discussed. Check it out below in the 3 part playlist.
Robert Higgs smacks another home run in his latest commentary. He lists a few lessons that he learned through his own protests and political demonstrations of the Vietnam war and seeks to pass on that knowledge to us today.
In lesson two he notes that it takes all kinds to make up a demonstration.
Lesson number two is that the people in the demonstrations are there for all sorts of reasons, despite what one might suppose from their announced issue(s) as signified by signs, banners, and group statements. I often bemoaned the lack of seriousness in many of the antiwar demonstrators with whom I marched. A great many of the younger ones seemed to be there mainly because demonstrating against the war was, literally, a sexy thing for a college student to do: at the demonstration, one might meet someone suitable for a not-very-subsequent sexual liaison—in plain language, participating in a demonstration served as a reasonably promising avenue to getting laid. Beyond this quite understandable motivation, however, people had all sorts of other reasons for participating.
Some fancied themselves radicals out to overthrow the government. Others were worried that children, grandchildren, or other relatives and friends might be drafted, shipped to Vietnam, and killed. Some of us actually cared about the countless hundreds of thousands of Asians being slaughtered by U.S. forces for no good reason. Although we were all against the war in some way, our ways varied widely. The participants in most demonstrations, including the recent one in Washington, no doubt have this same heterogeneous quality. In a protest, however, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The recent 9/12 DC and Tea Party demonstrations will certainly make most of us feel better but how much will it really change things? Higgs makes some other great points in his column including why he chooses to no longer participate in such demonstrations. Read the rest of it now.
Quote of the Day: “A danger foreseen is half avoided.” –Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
Politicians keep responding to your pressure by pretending to do what you want. The “responding” part is evidence that pressure works, while the “pretending” part is evidence that we need a larger Downsize DC Army. Here’s the latest response that we think could have a bit of pretense to it . . .
A bill numbered H.R. 3471 calls itself “The REAL ID Repeal and Identification Security Enhancement Act of 2009.” The bill was introduced by Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee. Here’s the good part . . .
H.R. 3471 would actually repeal the REAL ID Act. Thus, the REAL ID scheme to create a national identity card would be gone.
Here’s what we consider the pretend part . . .
H.R. 3471 also restores the identity security provisions of the “Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.”
“Similar to the Akaka-Sununu Senate bill of 2007 and the Allen House bill of 2007, Rep. Cohen’s bill would eliminate most of the requirements that laid the foundation for a National ID card, such as the obligation that all data and systems be standardized. The proposal also requires a collaborative approach, called negotiated rulemaking, which would advise the Department of Homeland Security on how to maximize driver’s license security while minimizing the administrative burden on the states.”
The troublesome words are “most of the requirements that laid the foundation for a National ID card,” and “negotiated rulemaking.”
“Most of the requirements” doesn’t mean “all of the requirements.” In addition . . .
The fact that these rules would (as we understand it) be negotiated with other unelected bureaucrats in the various states doesn’t make it much better, and it might even make it worse. Likewise . . .
In Part 1, I rehashed my experiences on Saturday’s protest in Lancaster of the Big Brother surveillance cameras and the Fourth Amendment. Part 2 covered the two-party system and 9/12 protests across the nation.
Part 3 was really interesting as I got to explain the “Real Interest Rate“ to listeners and also chat about the campaign’s new Income Taxplank. In Part 4, I relate that although Republicans especially sometimes talk a good talk, they are just blowing hot air unless they want to discuss a sound currency. I delved into the Treasury market in more detail in Part 5. In Part 8, I shot off a final salvo at the current state of government and concluded the interview.
I will be speaking at this event tomorrow, Saturday August 29th. I will not stand idly by while Orwellian surveillance schemes are implemented in my country. Where do you stand?
In Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Saturday, August 29, 2009, the Citizens Against Public Surveillance (CAPS) is holding a large protest against the implementation of surveillance cameras deployed in Lancaster, PA, and is inviting all who want a voice in this matter to attend. CAPS is a recent offshoot of the Lancaster Coalition for Sensible Security (LCSS), and is organized to end the hasty deployment of the privately run, Orwellian surveillance system in a city of 55,000 people with a 25% poverty rate.
The CAPS protest will be held this Saturday at Farnum Park (Water & Conestoga Streets) at 1:00 pm on Saturday, August 29, 2009. The protesters will then march to Lancaster Square at 2:00 pm for the rest of their rally. The theme of the rally is – “Take the cameras down.”
Renee’ Baumgartner (CAPS) will speak in Lancaster Square, along with others that are concerned about the lack of accountability, oversight, and transparency for this system of 165 surveillance cameras. The system is designed to keep the public under constant general surveillance.
Jake Towne, 2010 candidate for U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania’s 15th District, will be speaking about his experiences with camera surveillance while he was living abroad in communist China and how this camera system is a blatant violation of our rights as protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Towne’s website is TowneForCongress.com.
Rand Paul was kind enough to participate in an email interview with us earlier this week. Tomorrow he celebrates his father’s birthday with a money bomb of his own. Organized by grass roots supporters and dubbed the “Run Rand Run” money bomb, it aims to raise $1 million for his Senate campaign.
Yesterday a new scientific poll was released showing that Rand Paul trails the establishment GOP candidate by only 11 percentage points. Rand showed up with 26% to Trey Grayson’s 37%. This is a very strong showing for an anti-establishment candidate challenging a career politician. There are still 9 months to go before the May 2010 GOP primary in Kentucky. This poll proves the viability of Paul. Grayson now has to prepare himself for a dogfight. A lot can happen in 9 months.
Here is our short interview with Rand Paul from earlier this week.
LM: Starting off with a bit of a personal question, what was it like growing up in the Ron Paul household? Was he as strict with his children as he is with following the Constitution?
Rand Paul: All the kids were into sports. My older brother was a nationally ranked swimmer and my younger brother played baseball in college. I swam for a non-scholarship program at Baylor. My earliest memories are of discussing politics with my father’s friends. I always gravitated to the adult conversation.
This week let’s start off with some interesting comments by radio talk show host Jason Lewis. A caller discusses the now infamous New Hampshire Town Hall gunman’s appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews. Lewis uses the opportunity to bluntly say that the gunman identified himself as a Ron Paul supporter and is the Ron Paul supporters who are “leading the charge on taking the country back.” Listen to the excerpt below.
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The Left is attempting to minimize the dissent running rampant at “town halls” across the country. Now a chain email has been initiated by the White House to debunk what they call “lies” about health reform efforts. To this I ask what happens when these so-called lies turn out to be true? Haven’t we had enough denying economic reality? Supporters of this kind of health reform argue that it’s not a single payer plan and that the government’s public option will compete fairly with private insurance companies.
Ron Paul was interviewed on “The Ed Show” yesterday to discuss the New Hampshire man open carrying his firearm outside Obama’s New Hampshire Town Hall meeting.
The man mentioned that he voted for Ron Paul when he was interviewed by Chris Matthews so Ed wanted to get Ron Paul’s perspective on the “incident”.
A man who had the gall to exercise his Constitutional right to bear arms has come under fire, so to speak. The man, William Kostric, chose to open carry his handgun in a leg holster while holding up a sign prior to an Obama Town Hall meeting in New Hampshire the other day. What the hell was this guy thinking? Let’s find out…
See the following video from MSNBC reporting the story while it was happening:
The sign he happens to be holding doesn’t help calm fears about this man’s intentions, but think about it. If he were intending to do harm to anyone why would he be advertising that he has a weapon? He attempts to clear things up a bit when he was a guest on Hardball later in the day.
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