Category Archives: The State

Rand Paul Manhandled

Homeland Security, Regulation, Relatives, Republicans, Rights, Ron Paul, Terrorism, The State

I far prefer Ron Paul’s strident response to the TSA’s assault on Rand Paul than the son’s watered-down words. To CNN’s Erin Burnett, Rand said, essentially, that the TSA folks were good people bogged down by inflexible rules. He followed up with special pleading.

It is not the first time special interests—House and Senate representatives, for example—suggest a system of sectional privileges and rights, based on professional need and proximity to power. Patrick Smith, the author of Salon’s “Ask the Pilot,” has implied that because of his professional position, he should be entitled to “preferential, alternative checkpoints for pilots.”

Such cloistered concerns typified a 2,000-strong, flight attendant’s union, which has been fielding tons of complaints from its members, who were, nevertheless, none too concerned for their customers, the manhandled passengers.

Noelle Nikpour, contributor to Mr. Sean Hannity’s Great American Panel, is another. Nikpour, a tedious Republican strategist who talks up a storm on that forum, extended her exquisite understanding of individual rights to … people like herself and her co-panelists. You know, important sorts who fly a lot; they ought to be able to acquire a permit that’ll exempt them from being screened afresh as they scurry to their important appointments.

Rand seems to have joined these special-case pleaders in asking for wavers for frequent fliers who’ve been willing to share more personal data with the goons of the TSA.

I prefer the Ron Paul presidential campaign’s “strongly worded statement Monday afternoon, blistering the TSA for its practices”:

“The police state in this country is growing out of control. One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe,” it said.

UPDATED: The Despot’s Bag of Tricks

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Military, Terrorism, The State

In apartheid South Africa, denial of due process very often took the form of detention without trial. But, as I observed in Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, the South-African model of detention-without-trial is slowly becoming a fixture of the American legal landscape.

Via the Tenth Amendment Center:

Congress just passed, and the President just signed, a bill that gives legal authority to the President to kidnap and perpetually imprison persons, including American citizens, without the benefit of due process. …

The relevant sections of the bill are 1021 and 1022.

* Section 1021 asserts the President’s authority to arrest suspected (not convicted) terrorists and gives him the option to choose whether or not they even get a trial, and if so, what kind of trial.

* Section 1022 requires that a certain class of terrorist get no trial. Instead they must be held in military prisons, for as long as this President, or any future President desires.

SECTION 1021

Section 1021 is very expansive in its reach. It “includ[es] any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

* Who is “any person?”
* What is a “belligerent act?”
* What is “direct support?”

One could be safe in assuming these words mean whatever a creatively-minded prosecutor, a flexible judge, and an ignorant jury define them to mean — EXCEPT THAT, UNDER THIS ACT, ONE MIGHT NEVER GET AS FAR AS A COURT HEARING.

These terms will be defined by the bureaucrats in power.

Note who the bill’s co-sponsor is: McMussolini.

UPDATE: RT: “He will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”

These harsh words come courtesy of the executive director of the ACLU, formerly a supporter of the president but also just one of the many dissenters who have since grown disillusioned with an administration tarnished by unfulfilled campaign promises and continuous constitutional violations.

UPDATED: Workers Vs. Voters (Parasites Looking for a Host)

Democracy, Elections, Labor, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Taxation, The State, Welfare

About the New Deal, H.L. Mencken quipped that it divided America into “those who work for a living and those who vote for a living.”

TIME magazine has chosen its archetype hero. He is the voter, not the worker, also known as that habitual “Protester.” The Protester sticks around for lack of anything else to do.

No wonder Tea Party America failed to make it into TIME’s pantheon of protesters. These middle-class, upstanding folks returned to “petty” duties like jobs, families and other such unworldly, provincial preoccupations.

Or in Barack Obama speak: Back they went to their guns, bibles, and bigotries.

Workers unite! You who bear the burden of taxes, unshakable yourselves. Break free from the chains with which the moochers and looters seek to imprison you (using the power of the state, naturally).

UPDATE (Dec. 25): The professional voters cost the professional workers a whole lot:

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is considering a lawsuit against Occupy L.A. protesters to reimburse the city for damage caused during the occupation of the City Hall lawn. The two-month encampment cost the city at least $2.35 million, not counting repairs to the lawn and fountain outside City Hall, according to a report issued Friday.
Much of that cost — more than $1.7 million — will be added to the growing pool of red ink in this year’s city budget. The Occupy bills will increase an anticipated $72-million shortfall over the next six months, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana said.

(LA Times)

The AG doesn’t say who she will sue and how. Parasites are like a big amorphous amoeba. This single-celled organism acts in unison because it’s so unevolved. Occupy L.A. is flopping about looking for a viable host.

Merry Xmas.
ilana

UPDATE II: War Games: Smash ‘Em & Put Them Together Again

Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law, Terrorism, The State, War

Look; isn’t Uncle Sam wonderful? This little Pakistani girl below “was burned beyond recognition by a U.S. drone and left for dead in a trashcan. … She was found by a medical mission team two years ago and was described as ‘lucky’ by staff as two other children found with her were killed by the military attack.”

The child was “brought to the U.S. from her home in Pakistan,” where American surgeons patched her up, sort of. That’s the least we Americans can do. One of her new caregivers named the child Shakira, which means thankful. Evidently some dolt thinks little Shakira should be grateful that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men COULD put little Shakira together again.

UPDATE I (Dec. 23): FROM “JUST WAR FOR DUMMIES” (March 12, 2003):

I’m no pacifist. While I don’t condone the lingering American presence in Afghanistan, and while I doubt the abilities of the U.S. military to contain al-Qaida there, I supported going after bin Laden’s group in that country. That was a legitimate act of retaliation and defense, accommodated within St. Augustine’s teachings, whereby a just war is one “that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects.”
Al-Qaida was responsible for the murder of 3,000 Americans. The Taliban openly succored the organization and its masterminding leadership. Mr. Bush had asked the hosting Taliban to surrender bin Laden and his gang. The Taliban refused, insisting on defending their murderous guests.

UPDATE II (Dec. 24): In reply to Theodor Lauppert below: And this writer “isn’t generally considered a source for” the strengthening of the positive law, international or other.