Category Archives: Private Property

UPDATED : Feds Have No Right To Conscript APPLE (Big Gov. Guy Gates)

Business, Constitution, Jihad, Private Property, Technology, Terrorism

It’s one thing for the federal government to subpoena “the data on the iPhone 5C” of jihadi murderers Rizwan Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik. It’s quite another for the FBI and prosecutors to demand “Apple produce software that would give investigators access to the iPhone at issue.”

A warrant for the information of the killers is perfectly reasonable. For this, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution provides:

The Fourth Amendment requires the government to present to a judge evidence of wrongdoing on the part of a specific target of the warrant, and it requires that the warrant specifically describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized. The whole purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to protect the right to be left alone — privacy — by preventing general warrants.

In the case of the Fockers, I mean the Farooks, there is ample probable cause.

Probable cause is a level of evidence sufficient to induce a neutral judge to conclude that it is more likely than not that the government will find what it is looking for in the place it wants to search, and that what it is looking for will be evidence of criminal behavior.

But for a magistrate to order that Apple make an application to assist the Feds in doing their work: That’s tantamount to conscripting the company to involuntarily work for the feds. There is no warrant in the Constitution for that!

In fact, the involuntary conscription of someone’s labor, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished in 1865.

This is why I get frustrated when people waffle about the need for someone to enforce the US Constitution. What Constitution? Surely it’s time to realize the Constitution is, for the most, a dead letter? Alas, in the fullness of time, a provision will be found for this new violation. Allusions will be made to our “changing, dangerous world.”

UPDATE (2/23):

Smash The Spoils System, Baby: South Carolina Brings It

Donald Trump, Elections, Private Property, Republicans

The menagerie of morons that is American media—these crooked, scripted, bought-and-paid-for insiders—are finally, but not quite, grasping Donald’s appeal to average folks. The gaffes and impolitic statements are the hallmark of a man who tells the truth as he see it, without dressing it up in the raiment of politically enforced propriety. Most ordinary people would do the same if they’d live to tell the tale:

Via The New York Times’ Frank Bruni:

… people voting for [Trump] aren’t evaluating him through any usual ideological lens. They’re not asking what kind of Republican he is. They’re not troubling themselves with whether the position he’s selling today matches the position he was selling yesterday or even what that old position was.

They want to try something utterly different—utterly disruptive, to use the locution du jour—and that leaves them, on the Republican side, with the options of Trump and Ben Carson. Trump has the fire.

Who said so in June in “A Candidate To ‘Kick The Crap Out Of All The Politicians’”? (Watch this space for my forthcoming book.)

… Trump didn’t just win South Carolina, and he didn’t just win it by a margin of 10 points. He won it despite what looked, over recent days, like a concerted effort to lose it. He won it after what appeared to be one of the worst weeks that a candidate could have.

It began at the most recent debate, where he trashed the last Republican president, George W. Bush, and accused him of lying to the American people as he led them into war in Iraq. He sounded like a liberal Democrat. Republican primary voters, especially those in the South, aren’t typically receptive to that.

Over the next days, Trump sounded even more like a liberal Democrat, at least as described by Ted Cruz, who went after him relentlessly, armed with Trump’s own past statements in support of abortion rights and Planned Parenthood. [We libertarians are accused of so sounding, too, because we know you cannot compel free individuals not to do certain things with their private property—their bodies—however, you can defund a thing that ought not to be funded in the first place, because there is no constitutional warrant for it.]

The week got messier from there. Trump picked a fight with the Pope. Trump picked a fight with Apple. It became evident that no personage or brand, no matter how beloved, was safe from his wrath.

TWEETS

Some Highlights Of ABC GOP Debate (Other Than Megyn Kelly’s Absence)

China, Conservatism, Constitution, Donald Trump, Media, Politics, Private Property, Republicans

The ABC Republican debate in New Hampshire was not an exciting evening. Other than that Marcobot malfunctioned magnificently—and with it the folly of the Rubio press was exposed. The best part of the evening was Megyn Kelly’s absence on the panel.

Lines to remember, in sequence:

Marcobot # 1:

And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Barack Obama is undertaking a systematic effort to change this country, to make America more like the rest of the world.

That’s why he passed Obamacare and the stimulus and Dodd-Frank and the deal with Iran. It is a systematic effort to change America. When I’m president of the United States, we are going to re-embrace all the things that made America the greatest nation in the world and we are going to leave our children with what they deserve: the single greatest nation in the history of the world.

Marcobot # 2:

But I would add this. Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this country. He wants America to become more like the rest of the world. We don’t want to be like the rest of the world, we want to be the United States of America. And when I’m elected president, this will become once again, the single greatest nation in the history of the world, not the disaster Barack Obama has imposed upon us.

CHRISTIE about Marcobot:

I think he mentioned me and my record in there, so I think I get a chance to respond. You see, everybody, I want the people at home to think about this. That’s what Washington, D.C. Does. The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him. … [Marco] gets very unruly when he gets off his talking points. …

TRUMP: [Waffles a lot before he spits out a reasonable position on North Korea.] The Chinese … They tell me. They have total, absolute control, practically, of North Korea. [L]et China solve that problem.

BUSH: More sanctions on Iran and North Korea [so that more of the people may die or fall into poverty. What’s new in Republican “thinking”?]

Kasich: “It is completely ridiculous to think we are going to go into neighborhoods, grab people out of their homes and ship people back to Mexico. That’s not where the party is. The party is not for departing 11.5 million people.”

CRUZ:[About that wall] I’ve got somebody in mind to build it.

we’re going to build a wall. We’re going to triple the border patrol. We’re going to increase — and actually, since Donald enjoyed that, I will simply say, I’ve got somebody in mind to build it.

We’re going to increase four-fold, the fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, so that you have technology monitoring an attempted incursion to direct the boots on the ground where they’re occurring. We’re going to put in place a strong e-verify system in the workplace, so you can’t get a job without proving you are here legally.

We’ll put in place a biometric exit-entry system on visas, because 40 percent of illegal immigration comes not over the border illegally, but people coming on visas and overstaying.

We will end sanctuary cities by cutting off taxpayer dollars to any jurisdiction that defies federal immigration law.

MARCOBOT: Like Kasich, he supports what his large donors call “a very reasonable, but responsible approach to people that have been here a long time, who are not dangerous criminals, who pay taxes and pay fines for what they did.”

TRUMP ON HEALTHCARE: “The insurance companies are getting rich on Obamacare. The insurance companies are getting rich on health care and health services and everything having to do with health. We are going to end that. … We’re going to take out the artificial boundaries, the artificial lines. We’re going to get a plan where people compete, free enterprise. They compete. So much better.

As for Trump on eminent domain. His only reasonable defense (which he doesn’t put forward because he’s not surrounding himself with the smartest people) is that “the Con-stitution” gives government the power to confiscate. It’s wrong. And the Con-stitution is wrong to do it:

The Constitution gives authorities the right to seize private property for the “common good—that catch-all constitutional concept. READ “The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate.”

Why we’re glad circus girl was not on stage:

(Thanks, Washington Post, for providing a transcript of the GOP debate, Feb. 6, for those of us who still favor the written word.)

Two Weeks’ Tweets, Jan 1-17, Debate, Iran, Kurds, UN, Jobs (Steve), Guns, Rape Of Europe

Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Drug War, Europe, Feminism, GUNS, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Iran, Islam, Private Property, Race, Terrorism, UN


PEGGY Noonan’s so simplistic:

HORRIBLE Haley:

THIS is how stupid modern women are:

TRUMP:

DERIDING Middle America:

RUBIO’s Rotten:

Cologne stinks:

TED Cruz is goofy:

OBAMA cries:

Megyn Kelly conceit:

TRUMP on guns:

Philip Haney Hero:

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