Prior Restraint Arguments As Pretex To Watch YOU

Argument, Constitution, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Law, Liberty, Rights, Socialism, Terrorism, The State

If we accept state aggression based on prior restraint arguments, then aggress we must ad absurdum. Why not stop all statists from procreating, lest they sire proponents of state theft and aggression? Such a program would at least be in furtherance of liberty. (And we could all do with fewer Meghan McCains.)

Prior restraint arguments are being galvanized as justification for nation-wide information sweeps conducted by the state for over a decade. Another cow, “Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching,” said “that the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future.”

It is quite telling that the story about the “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily” was broken by Glenn Greenwald (an American) writing for The Guardian (British).

Most serious libertarians have been shouting about state snooping from the rooftops for over a decade. Now you’re listening! I already told you weeks back that there was absolutely nothing new about state snooping.

Via The Guardian:

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.
The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.
The Guardian approached the National Security Agency, the White House and the Department of Justice for comment in advance of publication on Wednesday. All declined. The agencies were also offered the opportunity to raise specific security concerns regarding the publication of the court order.
The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI’s request for its customers’ records, or the court order itself.
“We decline comment,” said Ed McFadden, a Washington-based Verizon spokesman.

(I believe “Entertainment Interruptus,” published on November 28, 2001, was my first column touching on the The Patriot Act.)

On The War Path With Samantha Power

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Just War, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism

“On The War Path With Samantha Power” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“… By far the more dangerous of the two Obama Amazons is Samantha Power. Susan Rice, in a sense, has been neutralized by scandal; she’s under scrutiny. And if you’re wondering what a U.S. ambassadors at the UN could possibly do by way of taking the country to war, think of John Negroponte. He pushed for the Security Council resolution “that President Bush eventually cited in going to war in Iraq.”

If they play rough, Republicans will lap up the ladies’ foreign-policy antics, starting with the Senior Republican Senator from Arizona. John McCain recently crossed enemy lines to cavort with Syrian rebels, the type of chaps who lunch on enemy lungs. He, Lindsey Graham (another senior Republican Senator), and their colleagues can’t wait to supply the noble savages of the world with rations.

The only time Republicans will shake fists and point fingers is over a war delayed, one that isn’t led by the US, or a war waged without the necessary conviction (read collateral damage).

In all, white progressives like Power derive an erotic rush from swooping down to save The Unknown Other, whether he likes it or not. The coolest place from which to keep this hot thrill going is the global geopolitical scene.

To expect someone like Power to care about her homies first is a lot like expecting Angelina Jolie to adopt a poor white baby (an Afrikaner living in a shantytown , for example). How unglamorous! There’s no chic value in that. In Jolie’s defense, it’s her money. It’s hers to do with as she pleases. In a public servant, however, Power’s proclivities amount to treason.

Edmund Burke certainly thought so. …”

The complete column is “On The War Path With Samantha Power.” Read it on WND.

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IRS Casualties

Government, Media, Taxation, The State

He has a history of hurting himself” is how Shepard Smith (Fox News) dismissed a man who stabbed himself “outside the Rockefeller Center studios of NBC’s ‘Today’ show,” yelling “the IRS is watching me.”

The Internal Revenue Service has a history of hurting people too, Shep. That too is irrefutably.

At the risk of alerting more surveillance to myself, Joseph Stack’s attack on an office building in Austin, Texas, that housed IRS offices: Do you get it?

The Grey Lady Shakes Off A Flea Or Two

Barack Obama, Media, Technology, Terrorism

The “august” NYT EDITORIAL BOARD has finally taken a slightly less reverential, more cynical tone toward its godhead Obama, in light of “the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation.”

Wow. And what next? Will the NYT acknowledge that centralized power everywhere and always leads to tyranny?

Nah. Rest assured, the Grey Lady might have shaken off a flea or two, but the New York Times will continue to lie down with dogs (with apologies to dogs).

By the way, I already told you weeks back that there was absolutely nothing new about state snooping. “From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA”:

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.
It’s not as if the National Security Agency (NSA) under George Bush was not accused of bypassing the courts to spy on the 43rd president’s many critics. It was! Sideshow “O,” however, has done Bush one better. Obama is using the FISA provisions against “friendlies.”