Category Archives: Law

UPDATED: Dennis Hastert, Hoisted On His Own Petard, Or Patriot Act

Criminal Injustice, Homeland Security, Law, Regulation

To pep-up the subject of Dennis Hastert, consider a flash from the past in the form of “Entertainment Interruptus,” a column published in November of 2001: “The film Spy Games reached a crescendo as retiring CIA officer Robert Redford transfers $282,000 of his life’s savings to an account in the Cayman Islands. The money is supposed to help pay for the rescue of Redford’s bureau protégé Brad Pitt, who has been ‘burned’ by his employers at the CIA for going solo.”

Only Redford would be unable to complete such a transaction now, not with the new anti-terrorism laws, approved in 2001. Brad Pitt, as the column observed, would have been “burned” by the Patriot Act, which prohibited “suspicious financial transaction”: Move around more than 10,000 of your own dollars, and you’ll likely be the object of a federal investigation.

Dennis Hastert, who approved the Patriot Act, is being hoisted on his own petard.

Via The Huffington Post:

On Oct. 24, 2001, then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) shepherded the Patriot Act through the House of Representatives. It passed 357 to 66, advancing to the Senate and then-President George W. Bush’s desk for signing.

Hastert took credit for House passage in a 2011 interview, claiming it “wasn’t popular, and there was a lot of fight in the Congress” over it.

Little did Hastert know at the time that the law he helped pass would give federal law enforcement the tools to indict him on charges of violating banking-related reporting requirements more than a decade later. …

MORE.

UPDATE (6/10): “The Thin Gruel of the Hastert Prosecution”: We should all be concerned about Dennis Hastert’s strange indictment By SCOTT HORTON.

UPDATED: #JoshDuggar And His Folks Give Me The Heebie-Jeebies (Want Sympathy? Stay Off The Grid)

Celebrity, Family, Law, libertarianism, Sex

Don’t make me write about the simpering, sanctimonious Duggar family, and their priapic son who preyed on his many sisters.

Their enabler, Megyn Kelly, noticed not at all the Freudian slips tumbling from the mouths of these “parents” (and doesn’t the whiny mom give you the heebie-jeebies?):

‘The girls didn’t want their ‘record’ revealed. They wanted to tell their own story.” The girls don’t have a “record.” I was under the impression that the girls were victims of the son (and their fruitful, multiplying parents). And all that, “Over their clothes”; boy Josh Duggar only “touched his sisters over their clothes.”

Look, we libertarians like it when family, church and local authorities handle problems “in-house.” But this was not THAT!

As to Kelly! The woman was so eager to finesse the excesses and phoniness of these parents that she forgot, oops, to mention that Josh’s mentor was later charged with child pornography.

Yuksters all.

UPDATE (6/4): WANT SYMPATHY? STAY OFF THE GRID.

This is the first time I’ve heard of these people. But now that I have, let me say that I have as much sympathy for the Duggars for suffering a legal leak as I have for the Duggar parents for marketing their family, breeding for the cameras; as I have for celebrities who take images of their snatches, upload to some Cloud (cuckoo) and bitch about the theft of these pics. Who cares. Rule of law? What law! Stay private. Stay off the grid.

UPDATE II: #UsaFreedomAct: #NSA Not Complete Liars

Business, Homeland Security, Law, The State

“Senate voted to curb the collection of millions of Americans’ phone records, the first significant retrenchment of government spying powers since the 9/11 attacks,” blared the headline on the Wall Street Journal. Yes, the sluts in the Senate signed something, but it was a classic case of bait-and-switch. The maneuver—the passing of the USA Freedom Act intended to replace Section 215 of the Patriot Act—will not prohibit the illegal collection of American metadata, but will simply co-opt the telecommunications companies into the service of the Surveillance State, a very dangerous state-of-affairs, indeed.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell worried that blocking “the House bill … would hamstring the government’s ability to detect terrorist threats.”

Would blocking the Bill have made safety worse than the 95 percent fail rate in the Transportation Security Administration’s ability to detect and stop armed passengers?

UPDATE I: Co-Opting Corporations Into The Service Of The Surveillance State. “USA Freedom Act: Privatization of the Patriot Act.”

UPDATE II (6/3): Good News: NSA Are Not Complete Liars.

It is encouraging that the NSA itself or its front people admits that “NSA’s bulk collection has not prevented a single terrorist attack.” My tongue is firmly in my cheek here. This preposterous admission means that our overlords who art in DC are not complete liars; they don’t always lie about their lies.

MORE @ CNN.

As to efficacy, if a purely utilitarian position is adopted: “A numerate analysis shows that the cost of NSA spying is substantially higher than the expected benefits.”

MORE @ EconLib.

The #RossUlbricht Outrage

Drug War, Law, Natural Law

Not content with stealing a young man’s life and property, and subjecting him to a Stalinist show trial, during which due process was denied—the federal government has sentenced Ross Ulbricht, innocent in natural law, to life in prison. The operator of Silk Road had been in the business of facilitating voluntary, victimless trade in drugs, online. Via The New York Times:

… Mr. Ulbricht’s novel high-tech drug bazaar operated in a hidden part of the Internet sometimes known as the dark web, which allowed deals to be made anonymously and out of the reach of law enforcement. In Silk Road’s nearly three years of operation, over 1.5 million transactions were carried out involving several thousand seller accounts and more than 100,000 buyer accounts, the authorities have said. Transactions were made using the virtual currency Bitcoin …

Note that the sentencing judge, Federal District Court Katherine B. Forrest, saw fit to deliver a sermon at sentencing: “What you did in connection with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.”