Monthly Archives: March 2013

The Obama Sequester in Action

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From Fox News:

The top US immigration enforcement official acknowledged Thursday that the Obama administration has in fact released thousands of illegal immigrants from local jails over the last month despite prior claims that the release was only in the hundreds.

The sequester clemency:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton, at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, said the agency released a total of 2,228 illegal immigrants from local jails “throughout the country” between Feb. 9 and March 1 for “solely budgetary reasons.”

But DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano says she knew nothing of this.  Of course.  She’s Sgt Schultz.

Another Victory over Big Government

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Here’s the long and the short of it, as summarized in The Wall Street Journal:

A federal judge this week struck down a controversial set of laws allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek people’s records without a court’s approval, saying the strict secrecy orders demanded by the laws are not constitutional.

US District Judge Susan Illston (Northern District of California) ordered the government to stop sending national security letters or to stop trying to enforce gag orders related to them, but she stayed her order pending the government’s appeal.

Of course, it’ll go to the 9th Circuit, which means it will go on to the Supreme Court, so the fight isn’t over.  But this is an excellent start.

Illston’s opinion decried these violations of Americans’ individual freedom:

[The] pervasive use of nondisclosure orders…creates too large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted.

She added [emphasis added]:

[T]he statute impermissibly attempts to circumscribe a court’s ability to review the necessity of nondisclosure orders.  …the NSL nondisclosure provisions significantly infringe on speech regarding controversial government powers.  …  As written, the statute expressly limits a court’s powers to modify or set aside a nondisclosure order to [certain] situations….  The statute’s intent…is incompatible with the court’s duty to searchingly test restrictions on speech.

There are two problems with these letters.  One is that they allow searches without a court’s warrant.  The FBI can use them to search for phone data and for financial and electronic records, and all the FBI agent needs is his Field Office Special Agent in Charge to say it’s all jake.  This is a clear violation of our 4th Amendment.

The other problem worsens this exponentially: the FBI can require (or could before Illston’s ruling) the recipient of the letter to keep quiet about his receipt—denying the owner of the records any opportunity to respond to the search before it happens.  This also denies two critical aspects of the 1st Amendment: that right to speak of receipt and the duty of a court to adjudicate any allegation of a 1st Amendment violation.

Illston’s ruling can be read here.

Something about Missile Defense

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I won’t go into the older history of the Progressives’ vilification of President Ronald Reagan over his push for a missile defense, and I won’t mention then-Senator John Kerry’s (D, MA) denunciation of such a system as

a dream based on illusion, but one which could have real and terrible consequences[.]

But we do need to think about Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 promise to gut missile defense development programs and—in one of the few spending cuts to which Progressives have agreed in recent history—to cut spending on such things.

We do need to think about President Barack Obama’s betrayal of Poland and the Czech Republic when he cancelled agreements to deploy missile defense systems there on the basis of Russian demurral.

We do need to think about spending $2 billion to add a whole 14 interceptors to our existing de minimis system in this time of world-ending sequester.

We do need to think about Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s analysts justifying all of this:

Although American and South Korean intelligence officials doubt the North is close to being able to follow through on a nuclear strike, or that it would even try, given its almost certain destruction, analysts say the country’s aggressive behavior is an important and worrying sign of changing calculations in the North.

After all, this “analysis” comes in light of the Russians and the Iranians having or being allowed to achieve this capability, yet we withdraw missile defenses from European locations that could defend Israel and Europe.

We do need to think about DoD delaying deployment at additional sites, including the East Coast, in order to do an environmental study, first.

We do need to think about whether this administration has any sort of clue at all about a coherent national defense policy.

Congressman Mike Rogers (R, AL), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, is saying

Four years ago, the Obama administration began to unilaterally disarm our defenses and deterrent in the hope our enemies would follow suit.  President Obama is finally realizing what President Reagan taught us 30 years ago—the best way to keep the peace is through strength.

But is he?  Or is all of this just the loud posturing of a paper tiger?  After all, Pentagon officials are dismissing Rogers’ criticism, insisting that northern Korean technology was considerably less developed four years ago.  Yet surely they know that Russia’s wasn’t, when Reagan’s missile defense efforts were so loudly pooh-poohed, and surely they know that Russian technology was 30 years improved when Obama acceded to Russian demands to cancel our missile defense plans in eastern Europe.

Hmm….

YGTBSM

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And these guys are serious.

Recall that Cyprus is as bankrupt as Greece.  In order to bail out Cyprus (we’ve been over the legitimacy of bailouts elsewhere), the European Central Bank, European Commission, and the IMF have demanded a one-time tax on deposits: 9.9% on deposits over €100,000 ($131,000) and 6.75% on smaller deposits.

Nothing underhanded about any of this, either.  Uh, uh.  Because depositors, including many of the 3,500 British soldiers stationed in Cyprus, are complicit in the incompetence of the banks’ management.  Yeah.  That’s it.  We’ll go with that.

Finance Minister Michalis Serris already has taken steps to block depositors from taking their money out ahead of the tax:

We have taken immediate measures so that electronic transfers cannot take effect before banks reopen on Tuesday [today is a holiday in Cyprus.]

Chump change was recovered by depositors over the weekend via Cyprus’ cash machines, but the machines’ money stocks were limited and not replenished as they ran out.  Willy Sutton couldn’t have done it better.

A planned weekend vote by the Cypriot Parliament to pass this thing, however, was been postponed until today amid…concerns…that the Parliament may have more integrity than Serris and block the “agreement” with the ECB, the EC, and the IMF.

This is supposed to raise €5.8 billion ($7.6 billion).  Think about this, though.  Are the interest rates or investment rates of return that the Cypriot banks are paying on those deposits more or less than those taxes?  You get three guesses, and the first two don’t count.  For how long will those depositors leave their remaining money in those banks?  Again, three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

This is what happens when the wrong folks are left in charge of OPM.

Update: Cyprus’ legislative vote has been delayed until Tuesday afternoon.

Update again: Today (Tuesday) the Greek Parliament rejected any “tax” on private deposits by a vote of 36 “No,” 19 abstentions, and 0 “Aye.”

Gun Control, Progressive Style

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Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has jammed into a gun control bill making its way through the Senate an amendment that adds Draconian Federal government control over our individual right to keep and bear arms.  Schumer first Dragoons the states.  Section 102 of the gun control bill, with his amendment, is aptly titled:

SEC. 102. PENALTIES FOR STATES THAT DO NOT MAKE DATA ELECTRONICALLY AVAILABLE TO THE NATIONAL INSTANT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK SYSTEM.

Under this section, the US Attorney General is allowed to withhold up to 4% of Federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies in any state that respects its citizens’ privacy vis-à-vis the Federal government by refusing to provide its state’s data to the NISC.  After a five-year “grace” period from implementation of the Senate’s legislation, the US Attorney General is required to withhold 5% of that funding.

Charles Cooke, writing for National Review Online, provides a description of other parts of the Schumer Amendment.  On the matter of “transfers” of firearms between household members, Cooke summarizes thusly:

If, for example, a gun owner leaves his home for more than seven days—leaving his firearms with his roommate, or gay partner, or landlord—he’ll be committing a felony that carries a five-year prison term.  And while married couples are exempted from falling afoul of that provision, the family exemptions apply only to recorded “gifts” and not to “temporary transfers.”

Don’t take that business trip of eight days without incurring the hassle  of taking all of your firearms with you (or the jail term in New York, if you do).  If you leave them behind, you and your spouse will become Schumer-felons on the eighth day.  Unless you formally “gifted” those weapons to your spouse, using the attendant paperwork to effect the transfer, before you left.  After which, your spouse better not leave for more than seven days without exercising one of those same options.

Cooke understates the problem of “transfers” of firearms between friends, though.  Cooke summarizes thusly:

[I]t would be illegal to lend a gun to a friend so that he can go shooting.  Want to give your pistol to your neighbor so he can pop down to the range for a few hours but don’t have time to go with him?  Sorry, better make sure you look good in orange.

But Schumer’s amendment says, in SEC. 202. FIREARMS TRANSFERS, paragraph (2)(D), that the transfer must occur at the firing range.  The owner still has to take the time to accompany the friend to the range and effect the “transfer” there.

Moreover, Schumer’s amendment requires that regulations be written to require a paper record be created for every transfer:

(ii) shall include a provision requiring a record of transaction of any transfer that occurred between an unlicensed transferor and unlicensed transferee….

Want to lend your piece to your friend for his use at the firing range?  Go with him to the range to make the weapon loan, and then fill out a ream of Federal paperwork concerning that loan.  Every time.

Welcome to Progressivism.

Schumer’s amendments can be viewed here and here.