Category Archives: Law

100 Pages of Redacted Material

Barack Obama, Constitution, Fascism, Government, Law, Technology, The State

Over 100 pages of redacted material: That’s what you get from the US government if you ask what guidelines its FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents follow in determining when to surveil American citizens using GPS (Global Positioning System).

The American Civil Liberties Union, reports RT, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in which it asked for specifics, for right now none of us knows what can trigger long-term surveillance without a warrant.

The written report omits the flare and cultural references the journalist, Gayane Chichakyan, makes. (What a novelty.)

“To the question of how, when and why the government can track its citizens, the FBI responded with this [holds up blackened pages]. It takes a lot of ink to print out something like this,” says Chichakyan, also one of my favorite reporters (because she’s super smart and goes after the story).

“Some artistic souls may think of the painting ‘Black Square’ by Malevich,’…” she adds. [“Think”? Now that’s optimistic.]

Sundering What’s Left Of The Founder’s Senate

Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Founding Fathers, Law, Politics, Republicans

I once harbored hope that due to self-interest, the Stupid Party, Republikeynesians, may just tackle the 17th amendment (as in repeal it), a 1913 abomination that sundered the republican scheme of governance put in place by the Founding Fathers, whereby senators were to be elected by the respective state legislatures. But I was operating under the naive assumption that Republikeynesians may have had a stake in the Constitution’s original intent.

Since they don’t, it is understandable that Republican senators would align themselves with Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Senate Democrats in furtherance of Senate “reform.”

In particular:

A group of liberal Democrats had been pushing Reid to trigger the so-called “nuclear option” on Thursday, the first day of the 113th Congress, to make it more difficult for the minority to stall legislation and nominees.

Say bye-bye to the legislation-stalling filibuster.

The filibuster is a powerful parliamentary device in the United States Senate, which in recent years has meant that most major legislation (apart from budgets and confirmations) requires a 60% majority to head off a filibuster. In recent years the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened …

Efforts to retard legislation are a good thing, unless the legislation being sabotaged is legislation to repeal and nullify other legislation.

“Junior Democrats, including Sens. Tom Udall (N.M.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.),” have been successful in recruiting to their nefarious cause some familiar sickos such as the too-decrepit-to-filibuster (as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)”Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), as well as Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).”

This lot “favor[s] using the nuclear option, which they call the ‘constitutional option,’ to effect this change through a simple majority vote. But they need 51 of the 55 members of the Senate Democratic Conference to back them.”

“You need a two-thirds vote in the Senate to change any of the chamber’s rules,” laments sympathetic statist Ezra Klein of the WaPo. Like the politicians, Klein dislikes any minor obstacles still extant to mob rule.

Other vile leftists like Klein complain bitterly that, “The Senate is in a prolonged, self-induced coma. It does not produce creative legislation.”

It is a well-known fact that US Senators are comatose. But we’d like their legislative efforts to be as still as their comatose minds.

Indeed, both Americas deliberative bodies are in a comma, but that’s not because of a deficit in democracy driven, legislative Brownian Motion (besides which the Founders were no fans of democracy).

The news reports are as muddled as ever on this issue. Some reports claim that the colluding quislings wish to force senators who filibuster to actually speak on the floor. That sounds good. However, can “the majority leader call for a simple majority vote on the pending business once the debate stops”? That I do not know.

UPDATED: Armstrong’s ‘Very Strong’ Post-Office Culture

Drug War, Ethics, Law, libertarianism, Sport

A friend of Lance Armstrong assured fans of the disgraced cyclist, who has been accused of doping, that Armstrong “is doing O.K. for a guy that has had his livelihood and his life torn from him, but he’s very strong.”

Armstrong may be strong but he’s also very weird.

Disgustingly weird.

Armstrong is the Michael Jackson of sport. The late Michael Jackson had hired a doctor to feed narcotics directly into his bloodstream. Taking his “milk” is how the disturbed, body dysmorphic, drug-addicted Mr. Jackson referred to this necrophilic practice.

Armstrong is alleged to have resorted to “saline and plasma transfusions,” as well as blood transfusions, where “an athlete re-injects stored backup units of blood for a red blood cell boost.”

Via The NYT:

Lance Armstrong and two of his teammates on the United States Postal Service cycling squad flew on a private jet to Valencia, Spain, in June 2000, to have blood extracted. In a hotel room there, two doctors and the team’s manager stood by to see their plan unfold, watching the blood of their best riders drip into plastic bags.
The next month, during the Tour de France, the cyclists lay on beds with those blood bags affixed to the wall. They shivered as the cool blood re-entered their bodies. The reinfused blood would boost the riders’ oxygen-carrying capacity and improve stamina during the second of Armstrong’s seven Tour wins

The guy from the loopy webzine Slate concludes that “Lance Armstrong Is Like Lehman Bros,” and that there are “striking similarities between the culture of cycling and the culture of Wall Street.”

Come again?

Armstrong was riding for the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team.

He and his teammates had a strong Uncle-Sam culture.

Of course, there should be no United States Anti-Doping Agency. There should be no ban on doped-up games and competitions. These events should be held openly and be funded privately. Some spectators will want to watch souped-up sportsmen compete; others will prefer unenhanced athletes. Organizers can cater variously to these preferences. Athletes will have a choice: compete for the title of Tour de Frances au naturel, or on drugs.

UPDATE: Oh yes “blood doping” is weird and wacky. As I understand it, “blood doping” is not merely about removing a vial of blood. It’s about draining a whole lot of it, re-engineering it and then transfusing it back into the body. It’s easily more repulsive than mainlining. As I said, Armstrong is an athletic Michael Jackson. Imagine the track marks Armstrong sported on his arms.

UPDATED: Fiscal Cliff Cadenza* Simplified (‘Cuts’ In Spending-Rate Increases)

Conflict, Debt, Democrats, Economy, Law, Republicans

Cuts to designated increases in federal spending: that’s all the “spending cuts” or “budget sequestration” portion of the fiscal cliff cadenza amount to.

These cuts were mandated by a law, The Budget Control Act of 2011, enacted by our miserable legislators. They now refuse to abide by this meager law.

The media, lying simpletons that they are, are framing the government-cutting component of the fiscal free-fall as a catastrophe.

Whoever believes that cuts to the rate of government growth would be catastrophic should fry.

For good measure, the same mind-fucking media are using phrases such as “Congressional stubbornness” as proxies for Republican recalcitrance.

The next component in the fiscal-cliff equation, or The Budget Control Act of 2011, are tax hikes. The Bush tax cuts will sunset, as will the temporary payroll tax cuts and certain tax breaks for businesses. Also to take effect are taxes tied to President Obama’s health-care behemoth.

As I understand it, in addition to their refusal to consider any cuts in spending rates, Democrats are insisting on replacing the tax raising provisions of the law with tax hikes on The Rich.

The mindless masses (and the pea brains of Hollywood), however, are already against Congress, which, for all its timidity also stands accused, preemptively, of failing to raise “the national borrowing limit.”

What are the Democrats doing? Put in Charlie Sheen speak, they are “Winning.”

* Cadenza: South African informal for a fit or convulsion

UPDATE (12/29/012): ‘Cuts’ In Spending-Rate Increases.

Finally, Republicans and a couple of Democrats and their anointed experts are framing all budget proposals out there as they should: “cuts to designated increases in spending.”

Via Bret Baier:

With the government spending roughly $10 billion a day, the cuts that are being proposed wouldn’t even cover the interest on the debt.
Spending is not projected to go down. At best, the rate of growth in spending would slow.
“The word ‘cut’ is what government statisticians and budget officials call it — but in fact it’s just really a slowing of growth, and sometimes the growth is still quite high even after it’s slowed down,” said John Taylor, a Stanford University economist.
“They assume that if this year we spend 5 percent, next year we’re gonna spend 8 percent, and the year after that we’re gonna spend 10 percent. And they say ‘well I’ll tell you what, why don’t we cut a percentage point off each one of those rates of growth?’ … Well, that’s not a cut.”
Former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh noted that “no family, no business, no philanthropy” would operate that way.
“I think there are some passages in Alice in Wonderland that must have dealt with this, because in Washington less of an increase is considered a cut, even though it’s more money…”