Ducking Around As Freedoms Go POOF

Constitution, Fascism, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Law, Liberty, The Courts

Face it, the idea of a judiciary that would police the executive as an arm of a self-correcting tripartite government is worse than naive. Rather, it WAS recklessly naive of the American Founding Fathers to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve as a check on one another.

Today, Judge William Pauley, “a Clinton appointee to the Southern District of New York,” ruled that “privacy protections enshrined in the fourth amendment of the US constitution needed to be balanced against a government need to maintain a database of records to prevent future terrorist attacks. ‘The right to be free from searches is fundamental but not absolute,’ he said. ‘Whether the fourth amendment protects bulk telephony metadata is ultimately a question of reasonableness.’”

Pauley argued that al-Qaida’s “bold jujitsu” strategy to marry seventh century ideology with 21st century technology made it imperative that government authorities be allowed to push privacy boundaries.

As if the purview of an American justice is to “marry” American law with Islamic ideology; a US judge must apply the constitution to the facts. In truth, any protection the natural law once provided us has been lost, buried under the rubble of legislation, statute, precedents, whatever.

The Guardian:

The judgement, in a case brought before a district court in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union, directly contradicts the result of a similar challenge in a Washington court last week which ruled the NSA’s bulk collection program was likely to prove unconstitutional and was “almost Orwellian” in scale.
Friday’s ruling makes it more likely that the issue will be settled by the US supreme court, although it may be overtaken by the decision of Barack Obama on whether to accept the recommendations of a White House review panel to ban the NSA from directly collecting such data.

There you have the sum of American freedom and federalism: Legislation that flouts the Fourth Amendment is already in place to provide Pauley with all the positive-law backing he needs to justify an anti-Constitutional ruling.

To wit:

The [Judge dismissed the] ACLU case against the NSA … primarily on the grounds that bulk collection was authorised under existing laws allowing “relevant” data collection to be authorised by secret US courts.

And if the Supreme Court doesn’t play (as nicely as Supremo Roberts played for ObamaCare)—there is always an extra-constitutional committee to kill off/override constitutional protections.

As the nation f-cks around with the huckster Ducksters, the ‘privacy protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution’ just got still weaker, as if this were possible.

UPDATE III: ‘Duck Dynasty’: A Decoy For Dummies (Robertson’s Fans Not Working With Much)

Celebrity, Christianity, Homosexuality, libertarianism, Morality, Pop-Culture, Religion

“‘Duck Dynasty’: A Decoy For Dummies” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“… there is nothing wrong with making a good living catering to the base, voyeuristic demand created by many millions of Americans, as do the Ducksters. But are capitalists compelled to like their product because it makes money? No. It is perfectly productive, if far from lucrative, for me to criticize all aspects of the puerile Duck production.

The Ducksters are part of a debased culture—the right-wing answer to Kim Kardashian, whose deformed figure and ass elephantiasis you can ogle online and on late-night Leno (1.21 minutes in).

Then there is the matter of Duck-Dynasty religiosity.

“I think you’re missing an important point, Ilana,” said one perceptive Facebook Friend. “The [Ducksters] were selected for the show because they are how you describe them. Duck Dynasty was meant to be a redneck minstrel show. They were supposed to be objects of ridicule for cosmopolitan America. They are what blue-state America imagines religiosity to be.”

Arguably, this is precisely what being devout looks like in the USA.

Delve more deeply, and you’ll discover that Christianity in our country is a lot like what the Ducksters profess. No longer doctrinaire or demanding, the mishmash of pop-religion practiced in churches across America is an extension of the therapeutic culture: festooned with feelings, mostly misdirected. Untempered by intelligent interpretation of scripture.

As for the Ducksters’ occupation. I’ll leave you with Proverbs 12:10:

Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel. …

The complete column is “‘Duck Dynasty’: A Decoy For Dummies.” Read it on WND.

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UPDATED I (12/27): It should be mandatory for Myron my man to strike out for sanity and intelligence at WND Comments, when mouth-breathers get out of hand. Here he does it superbly:

Myron Pauli
• 4 hours ago

I have very little use for the 21st Century KulturKreig where every utterance has to be on one ‘side’ or other in some Culture-War conducted by people on both sides who are so insecure in their own beliefs that they apparently need to have everyone think exactly like they do. Additionally, I can’t be too optimistic for a country where Phil Robertson is elevated to our Thomas Aquinas and Sarah Palin is our Edmund Burke. Not surprisingly, those who do the elevation consider Ilana to be a “liberal … communist …” until, of course, the opposite side weighs in when she utters a criticism of Nelson Mandela and then she is magically transformed into a “racist-genocidal … Nazi” since in the dualistic Manichean world of 2013, thinking is an inconvenient freakish diversion from knee-jerk feelings.

Where are all the other brilliant pals and patrons of this site?

UPDATE II (12/27): ROBERTSON’S FANS NOT WORKING WITH MUCH. Wow. Not since I came out, on 9/19/2002, against Bush’s invasion of Iraq have I received so much hate mail. The country is in serious trouble if this is Red-State America. These people are not working with much. Their Hosannas belong not with Robertson—who, understandably, protects them from the gays who’re clearly gunning for them in a big way—but to Jehovah for seeing to it that breathing is involuntary, governed by the autonomic nervous system.

If not for G-d, they’d forget to breathe. Here’s Letter of the Week.

From: Lostboys Son [mailto:moveoutdrawfire@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, December 27, 2013 8:57 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: Hey dumb bitch!!!

Are you mad because you are a half breed with no values or heritage? Are you pissed because you idol kim CRACKHOEAGAIN, got knocked up by your ex boyfriend? I bet your mad because any decent white man wouldn’t even touch you with a 10 foot poll. I wouldn’t even hit you with my car, I wouldn’t have sex with you with someone else’s dick!! You look like a troll. Go back to your lame overcrowded smog invested, std having, gang filled, slum hood, and don’t worry about duck dynasty or its viewers. You are not at all a trustworthy person, thats why you go from man to man your whole life, all while talking about other peoples lives, where in fact you should only worry about yourself!!
DUMB BITCH!!

Write to Lostboys Son (email: moveoutdrawfire@yahoo.com), to let him know you appreciate his contribution to civilization.

Gorgeous. Poetry. As for grammar and syntax: I’m ready to hang up my hat as a writer.

UPDATE III: To look on the bright side, quite a number of letters from high-IQ Christians have been received and were appreciated. Many thanks to those who’ve defended sanity, and chimed in @ Comments on WND.

Writes a lady editor:

The BEST of the Duck Dynasty articles that we read yet! I am really glad now that I haven’t wasted a second of my time watching it.

Another man of letters said:

A great column!

This really needed to be said.

My guess, though, is that columns like this will not be popular at WND!

And here’s another nice note:

I loved your column in regard to ‘Duck Dynasty’ and religiosity. And you are correct in your assessment that it is all for entertainment value and appeal to the “blue-American”. I used to watch A&E for concerts and performances; as it was known as Arts & Entertainment Network. Now, it is just an embarrass- ment. Keep up the good work.

The President’s One-Two Knock-Out Punch For Black America

Barack Obama, Crime, Law, Race, Racism

Eric Holder’s first arrest in the string of Knock-Out attacks across the country is a first in more than one way.

The arrest is unique in that it is of a white offender. Knock-Out attacks have been, almost exclusively, black-on-white hate crimes.

Were it not so frightening, it would be quite comical. Heeding the attorney general, the “U.S. attorney for the southern district of Texas” has arrested 27-year-old Conrad Alvin Barrett, who broke the jaw of a 79-year-old man, “laughing and saying ;Knockout’ as he [ran] away.”

The question is not whether this is a good arrest. Let Barret sit if he’s guilty. The question is why have there been no arrests for the killing and maiming of innocents, perpetrated by black thugs across the country?

Holder’s Justice is obviously attempting to deploy the law to frame the Knock-Out phenomenon as an equal-opportunity crime.

It’s the administration’s racial reprisal against the honky victims of hate crimes.

Woodrow The Worst

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Government, History, Military, Neoconservatism, War

WOODROW THE WORST
By Myron Robert Pauli, WHO DAMNS THE 28TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE DAY HE WAS BORN: DECEMBER 28.

AS Woodrow Wilson’s birthday approaches, I would like to place his name in nomination as our worst significant President. Perhaps Franklin Pierce was drunk during much of his 4 years in power but what did he particularly do, drunk or sober, besides the Gadsden Purchase? Woodrow, however, was a man of “accomplishments” – almost all bad. Obviously, other libertarians dislike other consolidators of power such as Lincoln or FDR, but they had a few mitigating features: fighting against slavery or Nazism, dying before they could botch the victory, and a keen sense of humor.

The only example of Wilsonian humor was when he was holed up in the White House after his stroke and finally a congressional delegation came to see him. When told that the country was “praying for you,” the paranoid Wilson responded “which way?” This was the same Wilson who got up and danced when he heard Theodore Roosevelt had died, who refused to pardon his political opponent, Eugene Debs. Sigmund Freud wrote an entire book on Wilson’s psyche including an abusive father, a doting mother, 14 nervous breakdowns, and a paranoid Messianic complex. The famous psycho-historian James Barber characterized him and Nixon as classical “active-negative” Presidents.

In Civil Liberties, Wilson brought in the Espionage and Sedition Acts, the Bureau of Information (promoting young J. Edgar Hoover), the Red Scare and deportations, and, as mentioned, he refused to pardon Debs (a leader of the labor movement who opposed going to war), even after World War I ended.

Wilson gave us our first anti-drug law (Harrison Narcotics Act) and then Prohibition making our cities safe for urban mafia and gangsters and destroying civil liberties for nearly 100 years. Our modern day paramilitary SWAT teams had their origins in Wilsonian Progressivism.

In racial matters, Wilson segregated the federal government and promoted “Birth of a Nation” (originally “The Clansman”), written by his friend Thomas Dixon. The Klan was reborn and was influential enough that supporters of his son-in-law McAdoo turned down a motion to repudiate the Klan at the 1924.

Wilson’s “domestic reforms” included the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve System, and the Internal Revenue Service. So much has been written about the latter two as essential elements of the modern Leviathan state that I will go on to other Wilsonian mischief but they are certainly worthwhile trophies in his nominee for “Worst President”.

But perhaps Wilson’s most insidious legacies were in foreign policy. He acted sanctimoniously neutral during World War I, while simultaneously egging Britain on, covering up our bias, and trying to sabotage efforts at peace by Pope Benedict XV through the Catholic warring states. As the war kept on, nations collapsed and communists took over Russia. Wilson’s armed interference with Mexico’s sovereignty ironically encouraged the idiotic Zimmerman telegram. Then, when we plunged into the war, he instituted wartime socialism management of industry, and his fanatical supporters went after German language teaching and “German music” like Beethoven.

Germany asked for an Armistice under the so-called “Peace Without Victory” ideas of his Fourteen Points. What they got was a starvation blockade, bankrupting reparations, and a hypocritical vindictive peace. The Wilsonian concept of “ethnic self-determination” started out with silly disputes between Poland and Lithuania and ended up with Nazism and The Holocaust. Non-Europeans who listened to Wilson were quickly turned away when their ideas conflicted with Japanese, French, and English imperialists – hence Mao and Ho drifted into communism in response to Wilsonian hypocrisy. Finally, he was so inflexible as a politician as to sabotage Senate adoption of his own Treaty of Versailles.

Much of the foreign policy disasters of the last century stemmed from the Wilsonian cause of America “making the world safe for democracy.” We have since been “spreading democracy” into Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Libya, Haiti, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc. Our troops have been are remain in hundreds of countries, since, with both political parties leading the battle cry.

If, in the words of Jefferson, the purpose of government is to “secure our rights” – then it appears that Wilson did the direct opposite. From Drug Laws to Sedition Laws to the IRS to the Federal Reserve to our Permanent Empire, Wilson gets my nod for the Worst. A century later, his pathetic legacy, unfortunately, lives on.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.