Tag Archives: freedom

Big Brother Alive and Well?

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The House Judiciary Subcommittee held a meeting a week ago Tuesday on potential new provisions of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, and the outcome was very disquieting.  Richard Littlehale, of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, made this recommendation, and he was serious:

Billions of texts are sent every day, and some surely contain key evidence about criminal activity.  Text messaging often plays a big role in investigations related to domestic violence, stalking, menacing, drug trafficking, and weapons trafficking.

The subcommittee wound up suggesting longer retention times of interpersonal electronic messages as well as the creation of expedited federal access to these databases.

That’s the ticket: we need to start prying into everyone’s personal business because someone, somewhere, might be thinking about committing a crime.  Our 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments need to by federally regulated.  Sure.  That’s the story, and they’re sticking to it.

Already, many of the message transporters and facility providers retain copies of our electronic correspondence for inordinately long times: Verizon, for instance as recently as 2010, kept customer text messages on file for three to five days, while Virgin Mobile stored them for 90 days.

Other providers haven’t been so cavalier with our private correspondence.  AT&T (then Cingular Wireless in the text-messaging arena), Sprint, and Nextel didn’t hang onto any of it for any length of time.

Of course, that means these…persons…in the House need to standardize message handling.  All for the convenience of government.  Littlehale talked about this, too.

We’re at the mercy of the service providers to determine how long it’s going take them to comply with that request [for the customer’s messages].  I would suggest whatever the level of standard of proof, the thing that really matters most to us at state and local law enforcement is prompt response.

Well, I would suggest that this is a textbook example of why none of the providers should retain this information at all, for any length of time.

And this from Republicans and Conservatives.

National Defense in Obama’s Second Term

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Senator Jon Kyl (R, AZ (Ret)) outlined in a Wall Street Journal op-ed what we can see and expect from President Barack Obama during his second term.  It isn’t pretty.  On missile defense, Obama is doing this [emphasis added]:

  • The president is on course to systematically reduce America’s capabilities in both areas despite specific commitments he made while securing bipartisan support for the 2010 New Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Russia.
  • [Adding 14 ground-based interceptors in Alaska only] gets us back to the numerical level planned during the Bush administration—and without the technological improvements in ground-based interceptors, or GBIs, that the Bush administration supported.
  • US national missile defense will continue to rely on obsolete 1980s “kill vehicle” technology involving kinetic energy and small warheads.  At 44 GBIs, the system should be effective against the current threat from North Korea, but not against an attack from countries like Russia and China with more robust and mature capabilities.
  • US has canceled the final phase of the Europe-based missile-defense system, which was to have included NATO allies such as Poland as the hosts of sensors and other elements of the system. This will please Russia.
  • [T]he Aegis system the Navy uses to track enemy missiles and guide American ones will be less capable of protecting Europe—from Iran, for instance—and offer even less protection for the U.S. The assurance of deploying the final phase of missile defense in Europe was the Obama administration’s pretext for capping the improvement of America’s GBI system.

On strategic deterrent, Obama is doing this to our triad of ICBMs, SLBMs, and bomber fleet [emphasis added]:

  • Russia is preparing to field a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (one type of which can carry as many as 15 warheads); Obama is still studying whether to develop its own modernized ICBMs.
  • Replacement of the Ohio-class nuclear-ballistic-missile submarine—the foundation of the sea-based leg of the triad—has been delayed for two years, leaving the force with only 10 boats.
  • No decision has been made on whether the next generation strategic-bomber force will even be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
  • Energy Department and National Security Agency five-year budgets for modernization have been cut by some $4.4 billion.  That’s the same amount Obama had agreed to add to secure Senate support for the New Start treaty in 2010.
  • The building of a modern Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility for handling plutonium—critical to modernization and added to the Treaty Resolution of Ratification and in the president’s message to the Senate upon entry of the treaty into force—has been delayed at least five years—tantamount to killing it.

As Kyl puts it,

President Obama’s antipathy to both missile defense and our nuclear deterrent risks leaving the U.S. and its allies vulnerable not just to attack, but also to nuclear blackmail and proliferation.

This is a national disaster waiting to reverse the defeat of the Soviet Union.

Bias

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The lesson in a Florida Atlantic University class involved the professor instructing his students to write Jesus’ name on a piece of paper, put the paper on the floor, and then stomp on it.  A student refused to do the stomping,

I said to the professor, ‘With all due respect to your authority as a professor, I do not believe what you told us to do was appropriate.  ‘I believe it was unprofessional and I was deeply offended by what you told me to do.’

The student also went to the professor’s boss, who then suspended the student for refusing to comply with the professor’s instruction.

The lesson itself reasonable; here’s the lesson syllabus:

Have the students write the name JESUS in big letters on a piece of paper.  Ask the students to stand up and put the paper on the floor in front of them with the name facing up.  Ask the students to think about it for a moment.  After a brief period of silence instruct them to step on the paper.  Most will hesitate.  Ask why they can’t step on the paper.  Discuss the importance of symbols in culture.

The instructions in the syllabus are intended to build a feeling about the action in the student so the student can reflect on it—at no point did the syllabus expect the student actually to carry out any step of the lesson.

It’s clear from the description of the incident (and for this post, I’ll assume the description to be accurate) that FAU reacted wrongly in a number of ways: it overreacted to the student’s protest, and the reaction it had was in the wrong direction.  Suspension was both too much (no opprobrium of any sort was appropriate), and if the school were to react in any way, it needed to act on the professor’s handling of the lesson.

The other error that FAU made was that its reaction violated the clear intent of the syllabus—to make the students think about an action, not to force the student to do that act.

Paul Kengor, Executive Director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College in Grove City PA:

Gee, I wonder if the instructor would dare do this with the name of Mohammed[.]

Indeed.  And so there’s a third error by FAU: Mohammed, Buddha, Brahma, and so on, should have been subjects of this lesson, also.  The broad range of reactions to a suggestion to desecrate these deities would have added immensely to the lesson’s outcome.

In the end, FAU “apologized” for the lesson.  The university also said the lesson will never again be used.

We sincerely apologize for any offense this has caused.  Florida Atlantic University respects all religions and welcomes people of all faiths, backgrounds and beliefs.

Not “our offense.”  A cynically amorphous “any” offense.  And apparently not a word of apology to the student for the university’s treatment of him for his objection.

Gun Control Fools are Everywhere

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Todd Starnes, writing for Fox News tells has this example, a dark of night (literally) raid on the home of a gun owner.

New Jersey police and Dept of Children and Families officials raided the home of a firearms instructor and demanded to see his guns after he posted a Facebook photo of his 11-year-old son holding a rifle.

The father’s lawyer, Evan Nappen, said,

Someone called family services about the photo. …  They wanted to see his gun safe, his guns and search his house.  They even threatened to take his kids.

DCF naturally had excuses. A “spokesperson,” while ducking comment on the specific raid assured us all that

The department has a child abuse hotline for the state of New Jersey and anybody can make a call to that hotline.  We are required to follow up on every single allegation that comes into the central registry.

Of course they are.  With police raids, and not with an individual representative of the department.  Because all gun owners are crazies.

It gets better: the father was told [by the raiding police]

I was being unreasonable and that I was acting suspicious because I wouldn’t open my safe[.]

It’s suspicious behavior to insist that Constitutionally acknowledged individual rights be honored.  It’s suspicious behavior to object to a warrantless search.  It’s suspicious behavior to object to legally owned weapons being inventoried by a government.

This is one of the reasons we have the 4th Amendment: to protect us against exactly this sort of governmental arrogance.  These government men knew they were the ones being…unreasonable and suspicious.  After threatening to get a search warrant so they could conduct their search, they never did.

This is the offending image:

Notice another example of the stupidity of gun control, especially proposals wanting to ban particular weapons.  That’s a .22 rifle, not a “semi-automatic assault weapon.”

Oh, and the boy has a New Jersey hunting license, and he’s passed the state’s hunter safety course.

Of course, nothing wrong having been done (by the victims, anyway), no charges were filed.

Gun Control Hypocrisy

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Colorado has passed its gun control bills into law.  Included in that set is a limit on the size of semi-automatic rifle ammunition magazines to a maximum of 15 rounds.  In response to Magpul Industries’ statement that they would leave Colorado if the bills were passed, those good Democrats passed an amendment:  Magpul could make any size magazine they wished so long as the larger ones were not sold in Colorado.

State Congressman Mark Waller (R) has the right of it, noting the Democrats’ monumental hypocrisy.

[Y]ou can sell [magazines] at any other place where any of these tragic shootings have happened.  …a monumental inconsistency in their thought process.

Yeah.  Can’t sell normal magazines in Colorado, but feel free to sell them in, oh, say, Newtown, CT.

That’s the problem with interfering with freedom.  The damage is far-reaching, and it’s tough to do without the dishonesty of hypocrisy.