Clever Leaders Are Plundering Our Freedoms

How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing? Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years. Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the institutions set up by that Constitution are enough to ensure the continuance of a free, self-governing nation. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what members of the Constitutional Convention were creating, he replied: "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." In other words, a constitutional government does not depend on the Constitution but on us. To the extent that we allow clever people to circumvent the Constitution, while dazzling us with rhetoric, the Constitution will become just a meaningless piece of paper, as our freedoms are stolen from us, much as a pickpocket would steal our wallet while we are distracted by other things...more

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation. The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication. But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records...more

National Insecurity

There’s a country that earlier generations might not recognize in which the national government’s criminal investigative agency can execute its own warrants without court approval; present them to private companies and demand information about people who are not necessarily suspected of criminal wrongdoing; and — if that were not enough — forbid those companies from telling anyone — not even the target of the investigation. The country I have in mind is not a Latin American banana republic or a Middle Eastern dictatorship. It’s the United States of America. The warrant-like orders requiring no judge’s signature are called national security letters. In the last nine years the FBI, Defense Department, and CIA have issued well over a hundred thousand national security letters. The FBI has exceeded even the broad powers granted by Congress, and that overreach continued for years after it came to the attention of bureau lawyers. Earlier this year the inspector general of the Justice Department documented the FBI’s frequent violations of the law. (See it here in pdf form.) If the government is now operating within the law, that is no reason for complacency: The law itself is an abuse...more

NRA takes flak for ties with left

The National Rifle Association, the powerful lobbying group that has been a longtime nemesis of liberals, is facing mounting criticism from influential allies on the right and even from its own board over a series of recent moves they say are selfish, short-sighted and ultimately harmful to the conservative movement. Critics cite a list of transgressions, from considering an endorsement of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), to endorsing moderate Republicans — and even Democrats — rather than their more-conservative challengers, to taking a cautious approach to Second Amendment court cases and President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. And they are especially angry about the group’s willingness to play ball with Democratic leaders on campaign finance legislation vigorously opposed by congressional Republicans, powerful business groups and nearly the entire conservative movement...more

US drug war has met none of its goals

After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked. "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."...more

Army Preps for Tea Party 'Terrorists'

This week, I was contacted by a number of civilian and military personnel (enlisted and officer ranks) who expressed concern about a military exercise scenario proposed for Ft. Knox, the U.S. Bullion Depository. (For the record, I called Ft. Knox security for an official comment and received the standard reply: "We are not authorized to discuss this exercise.") As with most such exercises, the Ft. Knox scenario outline occurred in stages, as if real time intelligence was being provided at various intervals. The first intel advisory I received was issued on Friday, 23 April 2010, and identifies the terrorist threat adversaries as "Local Militia Groups / Anti-Government Protesters / TEA Party." You read that right: "TEA Party"! The military officers and enlisted personnel with whom I spoke are all dedicated uniformed Patriots who are loyal, first and foremost, to their oath toTheir concerns about this exercise mirrored my own. As one put it, the scenario "misrepresents freedom loving Americans as drunken, violent racists -- the opponents of Obama's policies have been made the enemy of the U.S. Army." "support and defend" our Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." They were equally concerned that it appears the command staff at Ft. Knox had signed off on this exercise, noting, "it has been issued and owned by field grade officers who lead our battalions and brigades," which is to say many Lieutenant Colonels saw this order before it was implemented...more

Get the government out of airport screening

Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, governments across the world increased airport security, and rightly so. But in a hasty overreaction to that tragic day, Congress gave the job of screening passengers and baggage to a new federal agency: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). As a result, taxpayers pay for more than 48,000 airport security screeners and TSA has requested nearly $8.2 billion in funding for 2011. Creating the massive bureaucracy was a mistake. Even though the quality of airport screening was low before Sept. 11, it was not a failure of the "rent-a-guard" screeners that let those 19 terrorists board planes "armed" with box cutters. Those "weapons" were perfectly legal at the time. The real failure was one of policy, which didn't make use of passenger history and law enforcement information that should have flagged most of the terrorists as suspicious characters who warranted enhanced scrutiny. Following Sept. 11, most other countries increased their standards for airport security by letting each airport implement its own procedures under government supervision. In Europe, that led to nearly all major airports hiring certified private security firms to do their screening. Canada created a new federal agency to implement better screening but outsourced the actual screening. This kind of high-performance contracting permits better training and airport-specific flexibility (e.g., higher pay scales in Canada's jobs-rich oil patch) and it better matches screener numbers to changing travel patterns and airport passenger levels. In contrast, the system Congress and the George W. Bush administration created came with a massive conflict of interest: TSA serves as both the aviation-security regulator and the provider of key security. Who's watching the watchmen?...more

UK - Medical records go online without consent

Patients’ confidential medical records are being placed on a controversial NHS database without their knowledge, doctors’ leaders have warned. Those who do not wish to have their details on the £11 billion computer system are supposed to be able to opt out by informing health authorities. But doctors have accused the Government of rushing the project through, meaning that patients have had their details uploaded to the database before they have had a chance to object. The scheme, one of the largest of its kind in the world, will eventually hold the private records of more than 50 million patients. But it has been dogged by accusations that the private information held on it will not be safe from hackers. The British Medical Association claims that records have been placed on the system without patients’ knowledge or consent. It follows allegations that the Government wanted to complete the project before the Conservatives had a chance to cancel it...read more

Big Brother Wants to Know All About You: The American Community Survey

Over the past several years, I have been barraged with emails from Americans expressing their dismay over the American Community Survey, the latest census form to hit randomly selected households on a continuous basis. Unlike the traditional census, which collects data every ten years and is now underway, the American Community Survey is taken every year at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And at 28 pages (with an additional 16-page instruction packet), it contains some of the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census questionnaire. These concern matters that the government simply has no business knowing, including a person’s job, income, physical and emotional health, family status, place of residence and intimate personal and private habits. As Beth found out, the survey is not voluntary. Answering the questions is not a polite request from the Census Bureau. You are legally obligated to answer. If you refuse, the fines are staggering. For every question not answered, there is a $100 fine. And for every intentionally false response to a question, the fine is $500. Therefore, if a person representing a two-person household refused to fill out any questions or simply answered nonsensically, the total fines could range from upwards of $10,000 and $50,000 for noncompliance. While the penalties for not answering are outrageous, the questions, as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has said, are “both ludicrous and insulting.” For example, the survey asks how many persons live in your home, along with their names and detailed information about them such as their relationship to you, marital status, race and their physical, mental and emotional problems, etc. The survey also asks how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have in your house, along with the kind of fuel used to heat your home, the cost of electricity, what type of mortgage you have, the amount of your monthly mortgage payments, property taxes and so on. This questionnaire also requires you to detail how many days you were sick last year, how many automobiles you own, whether you have trouble getting up the stairs and, amazingly, what time you leave for work every morning and how long it takes you to get there...read more

For GOP, Embrace of Tea Party Carries Some Risk

In particular, Republicans' courtship of the Tea Party movement threatens to pull the party away from its moorings on two crucial and emotional issues: the war on terror and immigration. On the terror front, many Tea Partiers question the very notion of a war on terror, and see some law-enforcement policies adopted in its pursuit as unacceptable intrusions on American liberties. On immigration, the close-the-borders rhetoric common within the Tea Party movement runs counter to what many in the GOP hope will be a renewed outreach to Hispanics...read more

Mr. Seib makes no mention of the Constitution when discussing law-enforcement policies. Wonder why?

As a long time observer of federal law-enforcement agencies, I can tell you they are adept at having legislative language to increase their power inserted in bills at the last minute, with no hearings and no debate. They also keep legislation "on the shelf", ready for when the timing is right.

For instance, after the OKC bombing, Clinton took legislative proposals "off the shelf" and for the most part got them enacted. Not satisfied, they went back later with Clinton II, which was rejected by the Republican Congress as being either unconstitutional or anti-liberty. Back on the shelf it went and there it rested until 911. Off the shelf it went becoming significant provisions in the PATRIOT Act.

Watch closely, and you will see it makes no difference who is President or who controls Congress, a crisis of some sort hits and legislation comes flying "off the shelf."

And then along comes the TEA Party demanding strict adherence to the Constitution.

Make no mistake, that is what they are worried about. Those shelves could become bare.

The Census and the Constitution

What purpose did the Constitution's framers have in mind ordering an enumeration or count of the American people every 10 years? The purpose of the headcount is to apportion the number of seats in the House of Representatives and derived from that, along with two senators from each state, the number of electors to the Electoral College. The Census Bureau tells us that this year, it will use a shorter questionnaire, consisting of only 10 questions. From what I see, only one of them serves the constitutional purpose of enumeration — namely, "How many people were living or staying at this house, apartment or mobile home on April 1, 2010?" The Census Bureau's shorter questionnaire claim is deceptive at best. The American Community Survey, long form, that used to be sent to 1 in 6 households during the decennial count, is now being sent to many people every year. Here's a brief sample of its questions, and I want someone to tell me which question serves the constitutional function of apportioning the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives: Does this house, apartment, or mobile home have hot and cold running water, a flush toilet, a bathtub or shower, a sink with a faucet, a refrigerator, a stove? Last month, what was the cost of electricity for this house, apartment, or mobile home? How many times has this person been married? After each question, the Bureau of the Census provides a statement of how the answer meets a federal need. I would prefer that they provide a statement of how answers to the questions meet the constitutional need as expressed in Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution...read more

George W. Obama

Bush's successor—who actually taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago—is continuing much of the Bush-Cheney parallel government and, in some cases, is going much further in disregarding our laws and the international treaties we've signed. On January 22, 2009, the apostle of "change we can believe in" proclaimed: "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of my presidency." But four months into his first year in command, Obama instructed his attorney general, Eric Holder, to present in a case, Jewel v. National Security Agency, a claim of presidential "sovereign immunity" that not even Dick Cheney had the arrant chutzpah to propose. Five customers of AT&T had tried to go to court and charge that the government's omnipresent spy, the NSA, had been given by AT&T private information from their phone bills and e-mails. In a first, the Obama administration countered—says Kevin Bankston of Electronic Frontier Foundation, representing these citizens stripped of their privacy—that "the U.S. can never be sued for spying that violated federal surveillance statutes, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the Wiretap Act." It is one thing, as the Bush regime did, to spy on us without going to court for a warrant, but to maintain that the executive branch can never even be charged with wholly disregarding our rule of law is, as a number of lawyers said, "breathtaking."...read more