Category Archives: The State

From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA

Barack Obama, Intelligence, Journalism, Law, Technology, The State

“From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“…A pesky detail has eluded all those invincibly stupid special interests who’re piping up for the privacy of the press, as opposed to fighting for the privacy of all Americans.

Have the various tele-lawyers, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and protesting members of the House Judiciary Committee forgotten the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, whose provisions were extended until December 31, 2017, by the people’s representatives?

There is nothing new about warrantless wiretapping—other than that the American people haven’t been particularly exercised about them. They’ve trusted Uncle Sam to go about this activity judiciously.

Peeping Sam had promised, after all, that covert surveillance would never be executed against ‘United States persons.’ Were a “United States person” to fall under suspicion, he or she would not be subjected to surveillance without ‘judicial and congressional oversight,’ puled the same perverts. …

…The incontinent coverage of the AP outrage has a delusional quality. Contra those whose job it is to feign indignation on TV—America is not a free country. Media convulsions notwithstanding, the government is reading over your shoulder—has been doing so for some time. It can spy on Americans without breaking the law.

It is perfectly permissible for the state to monitor you, me or The Other Guy, without a ‘perfunctory nod to due process and legal restraint.’ In other words, without a court order. …”

Read the complete column, “From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA,” now on WND.

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An Agency Of Thieves (IRS) Expected To Practice Theft And Intimidation With Fairness

Criminal Injustice, Government, Morality, Political Philosophy, Taxation, The State

“Tea party,” “patriot,” “the Constitution and Bill of Rights”: This is the stuff of the American Revolution. These are also the keywords that cued the rogue Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to target conservative organizations.

We are ruled by a traitor class and we’ve become traitors to our founding.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, characteristically, understates the IRS’s abuse of “police power” as “an intrusive, ideologically targeted federal investigation of a political movement.”

WaPo’s Editorial Board stepped it up, conceding that “Any unequal application of the law based on ideological viewpoint is unpardonable — toxic to the legitimacy of the government’s vast law-enforcement authority.”

A forthcoming Treasury Department inspector general’s report finds that IRS staffers looked for applications for tax-exempt status from groups that used in their names words such as “Tea Party,” “Patriots” and “9/12,” as well as ones that contained expressions of concern about government spending or criticism of how the country is run. One manager worried — with reason — that this targeting might result in “over-inclusion” of applications that needed no such scrutiny. By 2011, IRS staff had set aside more than 100 applications for added review. It wasn’t just a couple of wayward staffers involved but rather a number of IRS agents and managers.
The inspector general also reports that Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS’s tax-exempt organization office, knew about the targeting in 2011; she seemed to say Friday that she learned about it from news reports last year. That inconsistency raises suspicions about the agency’s statements that higher-ups didn’t know about the targeting and that there was no political motivation.

Let us remember that the IRS’s activities are immoral, if not illegal. The IRS’s business is legalized theft. However you slice it, there is no moral difference between a lone burglar who steals stuff he doesn’t own and an “organized society” that does the same. Most of what the federal government does is in fact immoral, but not illegal, as it makes up the laws. After all, those in power determine what’s licit and what’s elicit.

Apparently, we expect an agency of thieves (the IRS) to practice theft and intimidation in an even and fair manner.

In a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also apply to the collective. A society founded on natural rights must not finesse theft. The Founders intended for government to safeguard man’s natural rights. The 16th Amendment changed that—it gave government a limitless lien on a man’s property and, by extension, on his life. The Amendment turned government into the almighty source – rather than the protector – of man’s rights and Americans into indentured slaves.

No one in the US government ever gets punished or demoted. Pundits, no doubt, will soon turn to the question of suing the IRS. And most will agree about the “wisdom” of “governmental immunity,” intended as it is to “stop people from suing the government and government employees and officials in many cases.“

Indeed, legislators have used their position to pass laws exempting themselves and many others from liability.

The sovereign has immunity. And you call this a republic?

UPDATED: Boston (And America) Betrayed (Blaming Russia)

Barack Obama, IMMIGRATION, Intelligence, Islam, Military, Nationhood, Political Correctness, Republicans, Russia, Terrorism, The State

“Boston (And America) Betrayed,” now on WND, is the current column. Here’s an excerpt:

“What if anything did the unspeakably wicked, premeditated, Islam-inspired bombing of the Boston Marathon, on April 15, teach us?

Nothing much at all, other than that we’re immune to learning.

Sh-t happens, the country’s self-anointed cognoscenti keep instructing America. Don’t rush to conclusions.

If you’re media, milk Boston for all its worth. If you’re an ordinary American with a pulse, follow your leaders. Or their lick-spittles in the theatre of the absurd that is television news.

In short, everyone is said to be flummoxed about the motive for the murder spree.

And, with exceptions on the Right, America is marching in lockstep. Evil per se doesn’t exist. Those who do evil, must have been brainwashed, been hard done by, or have been afflicted with a mutation on the “moral gene.”

The putative perpetrators of an act that left three dead and many more maimed are the brothers Tsarnaev.

One of these two young Muslim-Americans has already been dispatched. On the lam after the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s descent into hell was hastened, on April 19, during a shoot-out with the Boston police.

You should also know that the two brothers’ path to citizenship and permanent residence here was without obstacles—at least, when compared to my own and that of my spouse.

This is quite understandable, given the priories and preferences established by the US Managerial State.

To no avail did Russian state security twice practically beg the FBI and then the CIA, in 2011, to place Tamerlan Tsarnaev on counterterrorism watch lists. It was pointless. The FBI turned the Russians down (as the Transportation Security Administration intensified its assaults on grandpa and grandma from the prairie).

Correction: By some circuitous route, the National Counterterrorism Center managed to add Tamerlan’s name to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE. But membership in the TIDE fraternity only got Tamerlan an invitation to a bash at the White House.

‘”Unemployment compensation’ for the elder terrorist (who was unable to work on account of vocational training in Dagestan), college aid for junior, cellphones to both courtesy of the feds, attorneys on retainer to field run-ins with the law, housing, hospitalization—you name it, the Tsarnaev brothers got it. …”

The complete column is, “Boston (And America) Betrayed,”Read it on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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UPDATE (4/26): BLAMING RUSSIA. Did you know that it was not enough for the Russians to have warned our dumb-ass “treason class” of the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev—they were supposed to do the footwork for us?

Yes, this argument is advanced by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). The ponce’s case is essentially the one princess Condoleezza made, framing the intelligence she had as not amenable to “action.”

In other words, because FBI laggards refused to develop the information—the outcome of their treason becomes someone else’s responsibility.

POLITICO:

The FBI did a “very thorough job” of checking out Tamerlan Tsarnaev after being tipped off to his potential extremism, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on Sunday, blaming Russia for failing to provide any further information.

Privatize Aviation Sector And Say Goodbye To State Sequester

Business, Debt, Private Property, Regulation, The State

If all aspects of the airline industry, “curb-to-curb,” were truly private, as they ought to be, we wouldn’t chafe about whether pilots should carry guns or not, whether granny and grandpa from the prairie ought to endure patdowns, or whether air traffic controllers should be furloughed because central planners have run out of other people’s money, to paraphrase the late Mrs. Thatcher.

Meanwhile, back on terra firma, it’s hell for the faithful who believe Big Brother will deliver them from want—and from A to B. Via The Guardian:

Republican and Democratic leaders are working on draft legislation that would protect aviation from the estimated $87bn across-the-board spending cuts.
Furloughs forced on air traffic control staff have seen flights cancelled and many others delayed. FlightStats reported that on Thursday alone, up to mid-afternoon, 107 flights had been cancelled and 3,387 delayed. The sequester cuts are being implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration, after Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a budget plan. Although the sequester began on 1 March, the cuts have been slow to take effect; the flight disruption is now highly visible and it is set to become worse from 15 June, when dozens of control towers are set to close.