Tag Archives: freedom

The People are not Sovereign

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…government is.  Or so says Czar of all the Russias President Vladimir Putin.

Of course people wanted change.  But [people] cannot impose illegal change…you need to use only constitutional means.

Never mind that the will of the people is what gives “constitutional means” legitimacy, since those means are the will of the people given concrete effect.  But not in Putin’s world.  In his world view, “constitutional means” are what government says they are, and government is constituted the way the men populating the organs of government say it is.  No people, no citizens, are involved.

Putin also insisted that [Interim President] Oleksandr Turchynov was

not legitimate.  From the legal perspective it is Mr. Yanukovych who is president.

No.  Plainly no.  From the legal perspective, Yanukovich had lost all legitimacy the moment he lost the consent of the Ukrainian people to be their President.  That he had lost that consent is amply demonstrated by all those months in the streets—and not only in Kiev—by the people protesting, at first his actions, and ultimately his political status.  The firmness of their will is corroborated by the violence against and the murders of the protestors sanctioned by that government, and the people’s continued protests despite those atrocities.

Putin also has announced that he has no obligation to respect the wishes of the Ukrainian people as expressed in the upcoming May governmental elections, if he doesn’t get the results he wants.

Never mind that exactly those elections are what will express the will of the people, if the elections are allowed to go forward freely and fairly.  The only interference there will be “such terror as we see now” in the form of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The only “terror as [Putin] see[s] now” is his own terror of the will of the people—perhaps of the will of the Russian people, as well.

Finally, this:

Putin said Tuesday that Moscow reserved the right to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine by any means necessary….

This was Hitler’s excuse for Sudetenland.  However, the “ethnic Russians” are Ukrainian citizens, not Russian citizens, and it is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government to protect its citizens.  If Putin is claiming a right (oddly, not a duty) to protect the badly abused citizens of another sovereign nation, than we have to ask: where is his duty in Syria, in northern Korea?  Oh, wait….

It Doesn’t Wash

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The Department of Homeland Security wants a private company to provide a national license-plate tracking system that would give the agency access to vast amounts of information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers, according to a government proposal that does not specify what privacy safeguards would be put in place.

Such a national license-plate recognition database, ostensibly, would “help catch fugitive illegal immigrants.”  But once in existence, to what use would (not might) government put that database later?  Can you say NSA, boys and girls?  The danger is illustrated clearly, if unintentionally, by David Roberts, International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Technology Center Senior Program Manager:

We’d like to be able to keep the data as long as possible, because it does provide a rich and enduring data set for investigations down the line.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation understands (see the first link) the danger of Roberts’ goal:

Ultimately, you’re creating a national database of location information.  When all that data is compiled and aggregated, you can track somebody as they’re going through their life.

Such an open-ended dragnet of no one in particular, but simply of all of us, for vague, undefined future purposes in not consistent with individual liberty—or responsibility.

Even though the courts have ruled on “presumption of privacy,” they’ve gotten it wrong, basing their “assumption” on a measure of mindreading that simply doesn’t exist in our species.  The fact that the loud, vociferous, even zealous, hue and cry over evasions of privacy—real or perceived—even exists demonstrates that there is a very strong presumption of privacy held by each of us, even as we move about in public.

Indeed, the logic is flawed, also.  The fact that what we do is readily apparent to our fellow citizens as we wander the mall, walk the sidewalks, talk on our phones, drive on our streets, etc, is in no way an agreement the government can track our movements, much less create dossiers on each of us as we engage in these activities in the view of, or in concert with, our fellow citizens.

The government is not our fellow citizen; it is our political employee.  Even so, it has far too much power to be trusted with watching the things we let our fellow citizens see us do without a court’s oversight, without, for instance, a specific warrant for which a specific probable cause concerning a specific individual among us must first be demonstrated and sworn to by the government official desiring to investigate one of us.

The relationship between us—or any one of us—and government is not at all symmetrical, and there is very little reciprocity involved.  Arguments supporting such government activities as tracking of our out-of-home movements assume, erroneously, exactly that symmetry.

There’s no doubt that such a…tool…could achieve much good.  However, the good achieved is through convenience to government, not through a fundamental change in capabilities for hunting down specific bad guys.  The dangers such a tool represents to individual liberty and responsibility—to what it means to be an American—far outweigh the benefits of that convenience.

Update: Now HHS Undersecretary Jeh Johnson is saying the idea of having a private company develop a national database of our license plates has been canceled.  So, where are we?  Is the idea done?  Or is it being brought inside HHS, to be pursued sub rosa?

And why is the Undersecretary making this statement?  Where are the HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius and her boss, President Barack Obama?

Progressive Gun Rights

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…are what government says they are.  Last week, though, the 9th Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, struck down a San Diego County, California law that asserted exactly that.  This law

requir[ed] residents to show a “pressing need” in order to get a permit to carry weapons in public.

However,

The judges found that in order to receive a permit, a person need only show a desire to defend himself outside the home.

Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, writing for the court, clearly does understand the situation.  Addressing three other Appellate Court rulings upholding public carry restrictions (a fourth Appellate Court struck such restrictions), he wrote

they misapprehend both the nature of the Second Amendment right and the implications of state laws that prevent the majority of responsible, law-abiding citizens from carrying in public for lawful self-defense reasons.

Jon Lowy, Director, Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, demurred, however:

Neither history nor precedent supports this aberrant, split decision that concocts a dangerous right to carry hidden handguns in public places to people whom law enforcement has determined…have no good cause or qualifications to do so.

Rights are what a Progressive government says they are, according to this Progressive.

No, Mr Lowry.  You clearly do not understand inalienable rights, nor our Constitution.  The right to life is inalienable, and it carries with it the inalienable right to self-defense.  Neither are “concocted rights.”  These rights, moreover, carry within them the right to possess the means with which to carry out that defense.  Everywhere.  These inalienable rights are not at all limited to places convenient to government.  Full Stop.

Moreover, the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution says this:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The binding document, within which our governments—at all levels—must operate, has said all there is to say on our right to keep and bear arms.  Especially in public.  Governments have very little at all to add regarding “good cause or qualifications.”  Full Stop.

A Pending Blow for States’ Rights

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A group of legislators in Maryland has introduced the “Fourth Amendment Protection Act” in the Maryland state legislature, a bill that would deny state support to Federal agencies engaged in warrantless electronic surveillance.  This bill is aimed directly at the National Security Agency and its warrantless monitoring and tracking of US citizens (secret warrants?  C’mon), and it would block the provision of “material support, participation, or assistance in any form” by any state entity or any entity of a political subdivision of the state, or by companies with state contracts.

That “material support, participation,…” ban would include providing water and electricity via public utilities to the NSA at its Ft Meade HQ.  Other parts of the bill would prohibit the use of evidence gathered by the NSA in state courts and prevent state universities from partnering with the NSA on research.

The bill would have state or local officials who violate the ban subject to as much as a year in a county jail and a $5,000 fine.  Such officials also would be fired from their jobs and be barred from public service

Delegate Michael Smigiel (R, Dist 36):

I want Maryland standing with its back to its people holding a shield. Not facing them holding a sword.

Anti-Religion Mendacity

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Pinellas Park, FL, has a bible that sits on a dais in its city council chambers.  This bothers Randy Heine a very great deal.

The Bible must go.  It doesn’t belong in a government meeting.  Every time I speak, it makes me feel awkward.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has taken up the cause.

Not only is the city council sending a message of endorsement for Christianity over other religions and nonreligion [a letter of theirs to the city council asserts], but display of this King James Bible sends a message of endorsement of one particular Christian sect over all others.

Of course it does no such thing, no more than the ubiquitous references to God in our government documents and on our currency and…does any such thing, nor does our Congress and our Supreme Court opening sessions with prayer does any such thing.

FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel complained that he has written four letters to Pinellas Park, and

They’ve just refused to even deign to answer our issues, so I think that says something about their mindset.

A mindset with which I heartily agree: gangs like FFRF aren’t worth the trouble of answering, except in court to swat down their plaints.

Also, Americans Atheists Inc is bellyaching because there’s a Ten Commandments monument outside the capitol building in Oklahoma City.  In part, their complaint asserts

While at the state Capitol, ([individual plaintiff Aimee] Breeze) is confronted by the Ten Commandments display, which she views as hurtful and exclusive and therefore avoids the area of the display while at the Capitol[.]

Nah.  There’s no push to require Breeze to believe or to think or to behave in a particular way.  There’s no endorsement of any religion.  The only exclusion going on here is Breeze’s exclusion of others’ beliefs.

In fact, the Constitution is not silent on government’s role in matters of religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….

Both of those clauses apply, not just one convenient to anti-religionists.  And they mean that, in a political arena, anti-religionists don’t get to infringe free exercise, either, morally, if not strictly legally.

Of course there’s also no pressure emanating from a Bible or a Ten Commandments monument pushing members of other religious faiths, or atheists, to believe—or not—in a particular way.  Unless there’s something emanating from the Bible or the monument because they’re real.

These anti-religionists know this full well.