Anti-Bullying Bill Could Jail People Who Criticize Politicians (Nanny of the Month, June ‘13)
School’s out for summer and Nanny of the Month is taking the opportunity to salute the zealots within the otherwise laudable anti-bullying movement. They take a real problem--few things are more loathsome than picking on the vulnerable--and bungle the response, as has been done with most every “get tough!” effort from D.A.R.E., the failed anti-drug program, to all the idiotic iterations of the “zero tolerance” fad.
Do we really need to ban trash talking at high school sporting events? Do we really need attorney general investigations of foul-mouthed jocks? And for the love of whatever remnants of common sense remain in our schoolhouses and statehouses, do we really need to fight bullying with jail cells?
Not only did this month’s top nanny introduce a bill that would criminalize speech deemed to be bullying--up to a year in the clink!--she introduced a bill that, according to UCLA First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh, is not limited to speech about children (despite it being touted with the typical “for the children!” justifications). Volokh notes that the bill, if passed, could punish harsh speech directed at journalists, academics, celebrities, politicians, and the like, if the speech results in “substantial emotional distress.”
Presenting the Nanny of the Month for June 2013: New Mexico State Rep. Mary Helen Garcia!
http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/06/28/anti-bullying-bill-could-jail-people-who
The Paula Deen Witch Hunt
No era is complete without the demonization and purging of scapegoats by those who deem themselves able to discern who is allied with the Powers of Darkness. Every age has folk accused of being witches and warlocks. There is always someone like Matthew Hopkins, who believed he was uniquely qualified to identity them, be it through the spotting of bodily defects like warts, birthmarks or second breasts used to suckle imps. Hopkins identified some 230 witches who were eventually executed.For some, especially leftists, the witch of the day is Paula Deen. Her use of the "N" word years ago is seen as the equivalent of a linguistic wart, the verbal portal through which the very Devil entered into her. She must perforce be eliminated from civil society.
It is not enough that Deen, who seems genuinely penitent but a bit confused as to why she continues to be the target of such unremitting and savage attacks (including mockery of her tears), has confessed her sin and asked for forgiveness. Of course so did some of the accursed wretches in the Salem witch trials. Those confessors were forgiven. Deen is not.
No, for the Left, her weeping confessions and pleas for forgiveness have not been penance enough. Deen must be destroyed. Her material possessions must be confiscated, her cook books banned and her food empire eliminated from the earth.
The fact of the matter is that Deen represents everything leftists despise. Her use of a blasphemous word is a pretext for attacking a person who is everything the Left hates.
What is it about her that invites hatred?
First, Deen is a devout Christian. According to Aesthetics International Association, "Paula Deen is a devout Christian above and beyond all other professional attributes. Her peace of mind and gentle character exemplify what it means to be a Christian. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Criswell College in biblical studies and in library science. A large part of her adult life has been dedicated to the church while developing her professional esthetic training and work experience."
It is hard to imagine a description more calculated to bringing down the wrath of the largely atheistic Left. Being a Christian, especially a conservative Christian, is enough to warrant Deen's destruction, just as it has been for Sarah Palin, Tim Tebow and for the hapless president of Chick-fil-A, whose mere mention of his biblical views on marriage set off a political firestorm that serves as a severe warning to other Bible-toting warlocks. The list of the condemned is long.
Next, Deen does not endorse the Left's food ethos. One of the most important doctrines of the Left is salvation by works, especially salvation by proper food choices. Paula Deen violates their doctrinal food standards. She's overweight and diabetic, but still has the temerity to cook greasy stuff packed with carbohydrates, fats and sugar. Joy Bauer of Business Insider cites ten of Deen's most horrible culinary transgressions, including a Krispy Kreme pudding actually concocted by viewer Bill Nicholson. The pudding (a video of Paula making it is found here) does weigh in with a total of over 8,000 calories; but the fact that no one is forced to cook and eat vittles Deen cooks appears to be completely overlooked by food mandarins.
Deen is also a formerly poor woman who came from nothing and who built an empire now worth millions. Therefore, she is part of the corporate world of greedy capitalists. She profits from her entrepreneurial endeavors and so should be punished for her successes.
Just as bad, she's Southern, which means that in the eyes of the Northeastern and Californian leftist elite there are grounds for suspicion. For some, the South is still considered automatically racist, filled with members of backwards tribes that cling bitterly to guns, religion and greasy food. Deen is from an area thought to be inhabited by Deliverance-type genetically inferior, inherently racist and homophobic rednecks who openly advertise "Guns, Peanuts and Hams" on billboards directing travelers to Stuckey's stores, home of nutritionally disastrous pecan logs.
In a recent and incredibly condescending article about Deen in the New York Times, John McWhorter kindly suggests she should perhaps be forgiven for her use of the "N" word some three decades ago and reinstated in her Food Network job because "People of her generation can neither change the past, nor completely escape their roots in it. [...] Changing times cannot utterly expunge all traces in her of the old South's assumptions. Old habits of thought linger, like eczema and asthma."
In other words, McWhorter sees Paula Deen as an incurably scabrous Southern old school racist, well past hope even if subjected to intensive re-education and thought reform. It's just too late for her. Therefore, the best that can be done for her is to put her outside the camp because she is beyond conversion and can never attain salvation. There, forever banished from polite society, she can go on working in semi-exile until she eventually retires from the Food Network. That's how charitable McWhorter is.
The Deen controversy illustrates the fact that the Left is the one of the most unforgiving and unyielding religious cults in existence. When its doctrinal standards and creeds are brought into question or its religious rules violated, no punishment is enough and no act of repentance suffices to wash away the indelible stain of sins committed.
It wouldn't matter if Paula Deen were to don a hair shirt and enter a convent in order to atone for her sins. She has erred by her blasphemous use of a word, and now will remain unforgiven for the rest of her life. Though eventually she may be tolerated enough to continue living and even cooking, Paula Deen is to have the Letter "R" for "racist" emblazoned on her kitchen apron forever as a permanent reminder she is afflicted with Bigot's Eczema.
But most importantly, the Deen case represents something else, something really far worse for the health of America than Krispy Kreme pudding. Her case shows that we Americans live in a society far too often given over to witch hunts.
Any one of us can be and too often is accused, condemned and publically destroyed without trial or proof of guilt. We can be pilloried and have rotten eggs thrown at us for any infraction, real or perceived, committed in the past, present or future -- all without proper consideration of the rule of law. With the eye of the NSA and the IRS as well as God knows what other all-seeing gaze upon us, each of us is considered guilty of something and can have arbitrary vigilante justice visited upon us at any given moment. In other words, each of us has a wart that is proof to the current righteous elite that we are guilty and worthy of condemnation without prospect of forgiveness or redemption in this life or the hereafter.
What a contrast to genuinely tolerant Americans who believe judgment should be withheld until guilt is absolutely proved; who believe a person is to be judged by the whole of his or her character and not by one flaw; who do not think one word should make a person eternally guilty; who think sins can be forgiven and that redemption is possible.
Trayvon, Rachel and White Privilege
Perhaps I'm just a creepy-a** cracka' who doesn't get it. But it always seems that when it comes to standards, the left gives you two for the price of one. And the idea that white people "can't" understand black folks -- a similar point to which was made in a recent article about the George Zimmerman trial -- is a good example.But before getting to that particular piece, I have a question: is the issue here that one race simply cannot understand another? Or is this really just restricted to white people? Are whites uniquely defective in this regard? To claim the latter seems an awfully bigoted position.
If this problem can afflict any race, however, it brings us to an irony: if black racial theoreticians consider inter-racial understanding so elusive, how can they be so sure they understand whites well enough to be sure that whites can't understand blacks? Maybe this lack of understanding just afflicts blacks and projection is at issue here -- or maybe it's a problem unique to these black racial theoreticians.
As for the liberal whites who subscribe to these racial theories, if whites cannot understand blacks, how can they claim to do so? And if they can't understand blacks, how can they be so sure that the understanding of blacks of the whites with whom they disagree is incorrect? Maybe the problem is unique to them.
If this all sounds ridiculous, know that it is. But stupid theories deserve...well, you know.
Speaking of you know, the aforementioned article, "What White People Don't Understand About Rachel Jeantel,"was penned by a white gal. In fact, author Rachel Samara is white enough for two people, and she writes:
It seems the middle-aged white men on both sides of this [Zimmerman] case are totally unaware of what Rachel's life is like - a 19-year-old high school student of Haitian descent who knows nothing more than the few block radius she has grown up in.
...She holds vital information that both the defense and prosecution need, but these middle-aged white men questioning her do not get it. Sadly both the prosecution and the defense (but more so the defense) have an extreme disconnect from her reality [which obviously includes heavy drinking, drug use, a vocabulary that is 25 percent expletives, and lying] ....
Now, this much reminds of the All in the Family episode in which two gun-wielding black home invaders enter the Bunker household. During a rather implausible exchange between the criminals and family members, the very liberal college student Michael "Meathead" Stivic gives a brief self-righteous speech explaining the criminals' actions and tells bigoted Archie (I'm paraphrasing), "You don't know what an under-privileged life in the inner-city can do to a man!" When one of the home invaders then soulfully asks Stivic, "And what do you know about it?" Meathead sheepishly responds, "Well, I learned about it in sociology class."
Of course, sociology has advanced much since the 1970s, and I'm sure Samara is on the cutting edge of that esteemed field. But not only does she have little idea of what the middle-aged men in question -- who have vastly more life experience than she does -- "get," there's something she doesn't get: the lawyers' job isn't to understand Rachel Jeantel; they aren't her therapist or minister. It isn't about her at all. It's about a man named George Zimmerman, whose life hangs in the balance. And the job of the defense is to find inconsistencies in a witness's testimony and discredit it if possible.
Of course, Jeantel has been wronged, but it wasn't by the white guys at the Zimmerman trial. It was by parents, a leftist government-school system and popular-culture effluent peddlers that ensured she'd become a quasi-illiterate, ignorant, shiftless guttersnipe.
Returning to "white privilege" and in fairness to Samara, she doesn't take the absolutist position that whites "can't" understand blacks; she simply says that most whites don't. And she may be correct. I've long observed that most people have trouble understanding mindsets radically different from their own; many people project and ascribe their own mentality to others. This is precisely why, mind you, Westerners often think that democracy suits all cultures in a one-size-fits-all fashion (Islam and "nation building," anyone?).
The reality, however, is that people run the gamut in discernment. Some understand others poorly, some very well, and many are in-between. But yet there are those who would deny that whites can understand blacks at all, and this is for a very insidious reason:
To shut down debate and silence opposition.
The idea is that since you are wholly incapable of understanding the matter, you have no business even rendering an opinion. And, for sure, your voice shouldn't be listened to.
But there's a very simple reason why I can understand blacks: they're human beings. And all people have certain things in common; we all need food, shelter, warmth, sleep, love, and Truth. We all share a basic human nature, even if the particulars of people's lives can cause that nature to become twisted in a variety of ways.
Another commonality is that we all need to conform to our society's just norms. So, no, it isn't our obligation to jump through hoops to understand Jeantel and her jive. We don't have to understand terrorists, either, except insofar as doing so will help us destroy them. And children don't have to be "understood" in the sense of kowtowing to their childishness. Rather, everyone needs to understand, accept and uphold the principles and obligations of good citizenship.
Lastly, there is the commonality of sin and sacrificing reputation. Lying is wrong no matter who does it, and repeated lies will discredit you -- even, believe it or not, if you don't happen to be a little white boy who cried wolf in a fairy tale.
Can America survive three more years of Obama?
Can the United States survive the remaining 3 1/2 years of the Obama presidency? That was the question I asked a well-known veteran of Washington politics and national-security issues. Though a Democrat, he is trusted and respected by both parties for his many years of advice and troubleshooting service to the nation.I asked the question because our long conversation reflected shared worries about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and America’s retreat. We discussed the disasters of Syria, Benghazi and Obama’s strange support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. We agreed the odds were growing that Iran would get a nuclear weapon and feared what it would mean for Israel and our Arab allies.
We expressed shock at the lasting damage done to our intelligence agencies by Edward Snowden, the sloppy background check that enabled him to get security clearance in the first place and the Keystone Kops effort to capture him. We winced that our nation’s reputation was an international punch line as Russia and China mocked our president.
Given that context, my question of whether America can survive Obama was not just a figure of speech or an exaggerated musing. I meant it literally.
My friend understood my meaning.
“I don’t know,” he said. When I pressed him, he reviewed the scope of the global disorder we had just discussed, and repeated his answer. “I don’t know,” he said a second time.
The exchange happened last week, and my heart skips a beat when I recall it. His answer wasn’t what I expected or hoped for.
Despite my pessimism, I wanted to be talked out of it. I wanted this wise man, with his experience and calm temperament, to tell me not to worry, that we had been through worse before and America would be fine.
Maybe we will be fine. But the sense that the walls are closing in on us and that we are showing weakness to an emboldened, hostile world fills me with dread. I have a growing fear we are on the verge of a catastrophe.
It didn’t help that the Army announced it will trim our forces by 80,000 troops over five years and said more reductions might also be necessary to meet budget reductions.
Nor does it help that our president seems somewhere between indifferent and oblivious to growing global threats. His $100 million, weeklong family trip to Africa, no doubt to be followed by an August vacation, seems off-key.
And his answers at a press conference in Senegal to questions about Snowden were beyond bizarre. As my colleague Geoff Earle wrote from Washington, the president adopted a “What, me worry?” tone.
“I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” Obama said. His answer was classic Obama — setting up a straw man by falsely suggesting somebody had proposed he send jets, then minimizing Snowden’s crime by calling him a “hacker,” as though he had played a computer prank.
In fact, Snowden has been charged in a federal indictment with espionage, among other counts.
The president also disparaged suggestions he should be more involved, saying he had not spoken to the leaders of either China or Russia. “I shouldn’t have to,” he said, because the case “is not exceptional from a legal perspective.”
You would think White House reporters traveling with the president would push him on his listless approach to the crisis, but you would be wrong. Obama spent 14 minutes with the press corps as Air Force One flew later to South Africa, but got no questions about Snowden. Instead, according to The Weekly Standard, reporters asked only about the Africa trip.
So the mainstream media, like Obama, isn’t worried about anything. Which means the rest of us must continue to sound the alarm while counting down the days until Jan. 20th, 2017.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/what_obama_worry_BESXT1q0d22RAx4YnqMMMN#ixzz2XnZahztW
Path to Tyranny: How Big Government Progressivism Threatens Everything
With clouds of scandal hanging over the
White House, many of President Obama’s detractors are eagerly waiting
for a shift in political winds.
As more details emerge about the
administration’s response to the Benghazi terror attacks, the Justice
Department’s eavesdropping on the press, the Internal Revenue Service’s
targeting of conservative organizations and the National Security
Agency’s expansive domestic surveillance efforts, Republicans look
forward to a precipitous decline in the president’s public approval
ratings.
But the implications of these new
scandals (and several old ones, too) go far beyond spoiling one man’s
political legacy. Such abuses of power and negligent leadership in
bureaucratic agencies across the administration have exposed the
inherent dangers of Big Government and laid bare progressivism’s
menacing threat to America’s future.
THE PROBLEMS OF BIG GOVERNMENT
In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned for
president with the goal of ushering in an era of 21st century
progressivism. Recent national crises in the housing market, the
financial collapse and ensuing economic recession set the stage for
Obama’s ascent, and he worked overtime to convince Americans that
government could be their problem-solver, as it supposedly had been in
the days of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
“Now, there are some who question the
scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too
many big plans,” Obama announced during his first Inaugural address.
“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or
too small, but whether it works.”
With a mission to rehabilitate the
image of Big Government, Obama rapidly increased the size and scope of
the federal bureaucracy with policy “victories,” including an $800
billion stimulus plan, promises of an economy driven by green energy and
his divisive health-care law. Regardless of the fact that the
unemployment rate continued to climb, bailed-out automakers continued to
underperform, subsidized green energy firms went bankrupt and Obamacare
is less popular than ever, Obama’s embrace of Big Government opened the
door to something much worse.
Conservatives have long warned about
the dangers of such government expansion, and the Obama administration’s
recent tangle of scandals illustrates those fears, effectively
demonstrating how Big Government lends itself to an abhorrent abuse of
power.
The
irony for Obama — someone who has pledged allegiance to Big Government —
is that the purported distance separating him from these scandals
simultaneously exposes the inherent flaws in his primary governing
philosophy.
THE FOG OF BUREAUCRACY:
“Horrible customer service.” That’s the way outgoing IRS chief Steven
Miller characterized his agency’s targeting of conservative groups
seeking 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. “I think that what happened here
was that foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more
efficient in their workload selections,” he said.
The Internal Revenue Service’s
admitted targeting of Tea Party and other similar groups shows how the
growth of America’s regulatory state blurs the lines of responsibility
in governing. David Axelrod, Obama’s own top advisor, admitted as much
during a recent appearance on MSNBC. “Part of being president is there’s
so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so
vast,” Axelrod explained.
The implication here is that the
government has gotten so big that low-level bureaucrats can freely use
their entrusted authority to pursue personal and political agendas
without question. Hence, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is
under investigation for playing favorites with so-called “green” groups
over conservative groups seeking public information. Higher up the
executive food chain, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius is on a personal crusade to pressure businesses into paying for
the implementation of the president’s health-care law, and she and EPA
administrator Lisa Jackson purposefully circumvented federal records
laws by sending and receiving email messages through dummy accounts.
[...]
THE GROWING REGULATORY STATE:
The greatest threat posed by Big Government today has little to do with
partisanship or political ideology — it has to do with human nature.
While Barack Obama encourages people
to “reject” any notion that “tyranny is always lurking just around the
corner,” the Founding Fathers knew better. They specifically designed a
system of diffused power to counteract man’s inherent hunger for power; a
system where checks and balances would neutralize special interests and
transparency would ensure accountability to voters.
In “Federalist No. 51,” James Madison
wrote: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of
man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It
may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be
necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government
itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”
But in his tenure, President Obama has
rejected the warnings of Madison and other Founders, repeatedly
sidestepping established constitutional order. Instead, Obama’s “good
intentions” always outweigh such constraints.
[...]
THE LEADERSHIP VACUUM:
No evidence has been provided thus far that President Obama personally
directed the IRS to target his political opponents or asked the DOJ to
secretly snoop on reporters at the Associated Press or Fox News. But
that doesn’t mean he hasn’t played a central role in these scandals.
In a regulatory system entrusted with
so much authority, a president’s leadership style serves as a major
factor in setting the tone for the executive branch as a whole. When
trust and power are so concentrated, the objective duties of regulators,
intelligence personnel and law-enforcement officers become malleable to
the politically correct agenda of the day. In this case, that agenda
included protecting Obama’s progressive policies and undermining
perceived threats to his carefully crafted public persona.
Despite handing down no “official” IRS
directive to target Tea Partiers, the president’s vocal disdain for
such groups and their ideals lends an unofficial endorsement to the
agency’s improper behavior.
[...]
THE PROBLEM OF PROGRESSIVISM
A reliance on an expansive central
government is key to Barack Obama’s governing strategy and strongly
driven by his staunch progressive political ideology. With the ultimate
goal of instilling faith in Big Government to solve society’s problems,
today’s scandals also pose significant challenges for his second-term
agenda.
Speaking to a crowd of graduates at
Ohio State University just days before the firestorm of recent scandals
erupted, Obama downplayed skepticism in government.
“Unfortunately,
you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as
nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of
all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up
the works,” he said. “They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just
around the corner.”
“You should reject these voices,” he
urged, “because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and
unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we
can’t be trusted.”
According to Obama’s progressive
ideology, government of, by and for the people cannot become tyrannical
because the government is the people. Reject warnings of tyranny, he
says, because a self-governing people would surely never tyrannize
themselves.
This is a theme he’s repeated
throughout campaign seasons and policy speeches. He insists that there’s
“nothing we can’t do” through government action if we just invest our
faith in it. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he says, and we
can “provide care for the sick” and “get good jobs to the homeless” — if
only those darn obstructionist conservatives would get out of his way.
[...]
The Bill of Rights was drafted to
constrain the government with a cautious assumption of guilt. As a
result, the government is expressly prohibited from infringing on the
rights of its citizens, regardless how benevolent or justified its
claims may seem. But modern progressives and their partiality toward
group identity over individual rights necessitates that the “outdated”
Constitution must yield to the evolving demands of societal progress.
This common thread ties together each of the administration’s current
scandals and many of its most controversial policies.
[...]
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR CONSERVATIVES
The brewing scandals and Obama’s
fondness for Big Government aren’t just about an entrenched, entitled
political class shielding its unearned power and privilege from
accountability, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, recently wrote in an op-ed at
FoxNews.com. “They’re frankly also about the Republican Party’s own
enablement of that power and privilege, and our failure to effectively
advance and apply the conservative principles that would protect the
country from their abuse.”
Besides
opening the door to GOP electoral success in the 2014 midterm
elections, conservatives have a unique opportunity to turn Obama’s
scandals into a valuable lesson.
“The Founders knew that, over time,
either the people would control the government or the government would
control the people,” Lee wrote. “That’s why they bequeathed to us a
constitutionally limited government. … The way to keep it is not to
demonize Barack Obama, but to expose the truth about the dangers of
progressivism.”
… Will the country embrace the
arrogance and fear of “hope and change,” or will voters see the failed
ideas driving these scandals and take action to reverse America’s
descent into democratic despotism?
[...]
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/01/path-to-tyranny-how-big-government-progressivism-threatens-everything/
Wondering What Harmless ‘Metadata’ Like the NSA Compiles Can Actually Reveal? German Politician Shows You
The term “metadata” has been tossed
around lately, especially after the leak about the NSA’s classified
programs last month. It’s a collection of allegedly harmless — and
nothing too specific — data from phone and Internet companies. But what
if that’s not quite true?
Prior to leak about the NSA, TheBlaze detailed just what this information could show
about an individual when the government investigating phone records of
Associated Press reporters and editors was a hot button issue. But now a
German politician has taken it a step further, using six months of his
own metadata to give a visual of what this information really depicts.
Malte Spitz, a member of Germany’s
Green party, sued the telecommunication company Deutsche Telekom to give
up 35,830 records of his data from 2009 into 2010. Zeit Online then compiled these six months of Spitz’s life on a map showing how many incoming and outgoing calls and text messages were had and how long he used the Internet.
Here are a couple screenshots of the activity, but be sure to take a look at Zeit Online
for more of this interactive metadata graphic (Note: be sure to try out
hitting “play” on Zeit’s website to see how Spitz traveled too):
(Image: Zeit Online)
(Image: Zeit Online)
(Image: Zeit Online)
(Image: Zeit Online)
(Image: Zeit Online)
“We combined this geolocation data
with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter
feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available
on the internet,” Zeit Online wrote. And when all this is taken
together, it reveals a lot.
Spitz explained as much in an op-ed in the New York Times Sunday about it titled “Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him.”
Spitz explained to readers that six
months of his data was retained per a 2006 European Union directive,
which was met with “huge opposition” and later found unconstitutional in
the country.
“In Germany, whenever the government
begins to infringe on individual freedom, society stands up. Given our
history, we Germans are not willing to trade in our liberty for
potentially better security. Germans have experienced firsthand what
happens when the government knows too much about someone,” Spitz wrote.
“Three weeks ago, when the news broke
about the National Security Agency’s collection of metadata in the
United States, I knew exactly what it meant. My records revealed the
movements of a single individual; now imagine if you had access to
millions of similar data sets. You could easily draw maps,
tracing communication and movement. You could see which individuals,
families or groups were communicating with one another. You could
identify any social group and determine its major actors,” he continued later in his op-ed. [Emphasis added]
With this latest news of the NSA’s data
collection, Spitz wrote that U.S. President Barack Obama speaking
outside the Brandenburg Gate on June 19 — just five days after The
Guardian had broken its first NSA story based on information leaked to
it from Edward Snowden — “looked a lot different from the one who spoke
in front of the Siegessäule in July 2008.”
“During Mr. Obama’s presidency, no
American political debate has received as much attention in Germany as
the N.S.A. Prism program. People are beginning to second-guess the
belief that digital communication stays private. It changes both our
perception of communication and our trust in Mr. Obama,” Spitz wrote.
Spitz went on to describe the shift
Germans have had from solidarity with the U.S. after 9/11 to one that
through the Bush administration and into the Obama administration has
led to questioning “whether Americans actually share our understanding
of the right balance between liberty and security.”
“When courts and judges negotiate
secretly, when direct data transfers occur without limits, when huge
data storage rather than targeted pursuit of individuals becomes the
norm, all sense of proportionality and accountability is lost,” he said.
As of right now, Spitz said the “trust and credibility” Obama once had in Germany has now been undermined.
Spitz ends his op-ed suggesting Obama
should have included in his speech not James Madison’s quote that “No
nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,”
but Benjamin Franklin saying “They that can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/01/wondering-what-harmless-metadata-like-the-nsa-compiles-can-actually-reveal-german-politician-shows-you/
5 Immigration Questions for Members of Congress
It’s July 4 week, which means Members of Congress are at home in their districts. As you head to your nearest town hall meeting, take these questions for your Representative. Below, we also provide the real answers you should be listening for.
1. Since the Senate-passed bill doesn’t require the flow of illegal immigrants to stop, how can you say this approach secures the border?
No one can make that promise. The Senate bill, S.744, throws tens of billions of dollars at the problem and calls for meeting arbitrary security standards, but it doesn’t guarantee that illegal immigration will stop.
Also, many of the bill’s “requirements,” such as 700 miles of border fencing and new border patrol agents, would not commence immediately but over time. As with current immigration laws, some provisions would end up being ignored or waived.
S.744 contains no guarantee that the government would keep its promises of more security and enforcement. Even if it did, it wouldn’t even come close to stopping illegal immigration. We’d revisit this debate again within 20 years.
2. The Senate-passed bill requires the U.S. government to manage many more visas, even though it doesn’t do a good job with today’s smaller work load. So how does this “fix” our legal immigration system?
It doesn’t. The bill makes some changes to various types of visas but does little to fix the broken bureaucracy in charge of the legal immigration system. Without significant changes, new requirements and more responsibilities would only make the system worse.
S.744 does away with some flawed visa programs, such as the “diversity” lottery. It creates a merit-based program and adds work-based visas. Although these are steps in the right direction, the devil is in the details. For example, the bill would make the H-1B visa program unworkable by creating expensive restrictions and costs.
In short, S.744 fails to make the legal immigration system better.
3. The Senate-passed bill puts the federal government in charge of enforcing immigration laws, even though state and local governments want to help and would be good partners. Is this federal focus the right approach?
No, giving the federal government all the responsibility is the wrong approach. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has fewer than 6,000 agents, and S.744 does little to augment that. Putting all the authority in federal hands is a surefire way to hamstring enforcement, simply because the federal government can’t do it all.
A million local and state law enforcement officers are ready and willing to help enforce federal immigration law. These officers know their communities best and are already in place. By partnering through programs such as 287(g), state and local authorities can help. Sadly, S.744 ignores them.
4. Since the Senate-passed bill would add huge costs and likely depress wages for many current Americans, is it really good for the citizens you’re supposed to represent?
The fact is, this approach costs too much, and hurts current citizens. The bill is loaded with wasteful pork and kickbacks, such as $1.5 billion for a mini-stimulus “jobs for youth” program. What’s more, the bill would harm the nation’s long-term fiscal health. After amnesty, illegal immigrants on average would receive more in government benefits, such as welfare and entitlements, than they pay in taxes. The total cost of amnesty to taxpayers could be $6.3 trillion or more.
Finally, the bill would lower the wages of current citizens as they compete for jobs with illegal immigrants who get amnesty. By introducing millions of newly legalized workers to the market, the bill would drive down wages.
5. In 1986, when Congress last passed amnesty, the sponsors said it was a “one-time” thing. The Senate-passed bill follows the same “amnesty first, security and enforcement later” approach. Why are we doing that again?
There is no reason to make the same mistake twice. The U.S. government gave out amnesty and legal permanent residency to at least 2.7 million illegal immigrants as a result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. That amnesty didn’t stop illegal immigration, because the government didn’t (and still doesn’t) want to tackle border security or enforcement of immigration laws. In fact, amnesty only encourages more illegal immigration by sending the message that once enough illegal residents are here, the government will hand out amnesty again.
Some have argued that S.744 is not amnesty, but this is simply double-talk. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), when running for office in 2010, said “an earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty.” He was right.
S.744 allows illegal immigrants, including many criminal aliens, to remain here legally and even become citizens. It rewards those who broke the law, even as millions legally wait in line. This is amnesty, and this is unfair.
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/01/morning-bell-5-immigration-questions-for-members-of-congress/?roi=echo3-16133953968-13463211-f3c5d9693a1a9bcda9e685373f4b9298&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Quiet! Media Bias at Work in Egypt
As huge protests against the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government in Egypt have gone on for several days, the crowds have now swelled to an estimated 17,000,000. That's 'Seventeen Million', for those of you in Rio Linda.If true, these reports would mean what is going on in Egypt right now is the LARGEST DEMOCRATIC PROTEST IN HISTORY.
Why then has the American media seemed determined to mostly ignore these protests that dwarf what went on in Tahir Square in 2011? If the protests that toppled then-President Mubarak merited the breathless, widespread MSM coverage it got at the time, how much more should these present protests be a newsworthy event?
As Adam Baldwin reported on Twitter tonight, here's what the MSM is 'covering' while these historic protests have been ongoing:
Evading #Egypt: 8pm PT - CNN lede is a rehash of the #GunConcernTroll failure; HLN has Dominick Dunne; Fox has Huckabee; MSNBC has "Lock Up"What possible reason would the MSM have for deliberately pretending nothing much is going on over there in Egypt the past couple of days?
Well allow ME to speculate.
Instead of delaying the elections so real democratic candidates could participate, Obama & Co. agreed to hold them quickly, assuring that the Muslim Brotherhood would easily win. President Arab Spring then doubled down by declaring Morsi & his extreme Islamic organization to be American allies and has since poured billions of our tax dollars into the country in support of this increasingly oppressive regime.
If you've followed the news coming out of Egypt the past 2 years, you are well aware there has been little positive to report in the areas of civil liberties, freedom of the press, women's rights, or religious freedom. The crackdown on Christians in the country by Muslim fanatics has been especially horrific.
After thinking they were getting a real democracy following Mubarak's ouster, the Egyptian people have apparently had enough of Morsi & his fanatical supporters, even if President Obama hasn't.
Still, the mainstream media here in America know who Obama is backing, and for this reason have not felt particularly compelled to point out a supposedly key ally in a volatile region is now facing widespread protests by millions of citizens.
How long will the American media manage to look the other way and play dumb so they avoid embarrassing their Precious One?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/06/30/Quiet-Media-Bias-At-Work-In-Egypt
Congrats President Nobel: Obama Allies Behead Catholic Priest In Syria
Obama’s war on the Christian religion, particularly the Catholic variety, has claimed another casualty in the Middle East. The Vatican confirmed that “Syrian priest François Murad was killed in Gassanieh, in northern Syria, in the convent of the Custody of the Holy Land where he had taken refuge.… According to local sources, the monastery where Fr. Murad was staying was attacked by militants linked to the jihadi group Jabhat al-Nusra.”A graphic video of unknown origin- linked below- shows a crowd of Islamic militants gathered in a circle around three men kneeling on the ground. Many of the onlookers were shooting video of the scene from cell phones and other devices.
Each of the kneeling men, in turn, is forced to the ground and their head is sawed off with a butcher knife.
It’s scene that has become too familiar across the globe.
According to sources familiar with Jabhat al-Nusra, they are one of the most violent of the rebel Syrian factions, with roots in the Iraqi civil war, where they fought American soldiers. They are also very successful, controlling large portion of Syria.
And, oh yeah, they are part of the Al Qaida network taking orders from Iraq.
"Let us pray," writes the Custos of the Holy Land Pierbattista Pizzaballa OFM according to Catholic Online "so that this absurd and shameful war ends soon and that the people of Syria can go back to living a normal life." Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo, titular head of the Syrian Catholic church said: "The whole story of Christians in the Middle East is marked and made fruitful by the blood of the martyrs of many persecutions. Lately, father Murad sent me some messages that clearly showed how conscious he was of living in a dangerous situation, and offered his life for peace in Syria and around the world."
Thanks President Nobel for helping him out, although, I’m not sure Father Murad really needed your assistance.
So why exactly are we arming Islamic extremists across the Middle East?
Explain to me just how spreading arms and radical ideas even further into the region are in the best interest of the United States and its allies.
I’m not a big fan of Syrian president Assad, but it seems to me that there is little to choose from in Syria. Actually, this is a great opportunity to get Syria to behave better.
Make no mistake either: This war won’t be a pushover like Libya was.
Syria isn’t an isolated Libya. The current Syrian government will get the weapons it needs from Russia to fight the insurgents, because Russia has the means to keep the supply lines open.
One reason why Russia has the means is because as the West pushed harsher terms to Cyprus during their banking crisis this year, Cyprus sought relief from disaster by striking a deal with Moscow.
Those discussions are ongoing.
“On Monday Defence Minister Fotis Fotiou confirmed that recent defence talks with Moscow had centred on a request by Moscow for the use of sea and air facilities on the island,” reported the Cyprus Mail on June 30th. “Russia has been using Limassol port for refueling and supplies its naval vessels for over a year.”
Cyprus has long been subject to divisions between Greek Christianity and Middle East Islam.
In 1974, Turkey, an Islamic country, invaded Cyprus and continues to occupy a large slice of the island. It’s a bone of contention for Greece and Greek Cypriots still.
As a counterpoise, it would appear that Russia is attempting, with some success, to set itself up as a guarantor of the Christian population in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
“If Cyprus proves to be better off with Russia's financial, political and strategic backing than Greece with the assistance of the European Union,” predicted Gatestone Online last year, “the close relations between the Greeks and the Cypriots might convince Greece that it, too, should turn to Moscow rather than to Brussels for financial and economic help. A strategic realignment in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East might then be in the offing. If the EU and NATO keep regarding the pro-Islamic government in Turkey as their preferred ally, before they know it they might be confronted with an alliance of Russia, Cyprus and Greece – a strong Christian-Orthodox axis against the Turks. And whom would this alliance target after that?
Who indeed? Almost anyone, since Obama has made a mess of things.
U.S. foreign policy is a disaster and Syria is just the latest symptom.
If I told you 30 years ago that the United States in 30 years would be arming Islamic rebels against Christian populations with Russia acting as benefactors to Christianity, you would have called me crazy.
And crazy is the only way to describe it.
We live in a political world where Chinese communists lecture our country about the virtues of capitalism and the limits of socialism and Russia warns our government about spying on U.S. citizens- while Russian warnings that we are harboring Islamic terrorists go ignored.
In this country Obama has all but declared war on Christians, especially Catholics. Many Catholics have allied with Obama in the mistaken belief that the government's war on capitalism won't spread to a war on religion.
Obama doesn't just want government to replace the banks, however, but the church as well. He can't have another alms-giver out there competing with the government, like Catholic Health Services, competes with Obamacare.
"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square,” said Chicago Cardinal Francis George. “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history."
And Obama’s giving it a Russian face.
Oh, how Nobel of him.
http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/06/28/anti-bullying-bill-could-jail-people-who
A Study in Self-deception
Time to take stock of our quixotic secretary of state as he ends four grueling days of shuttle diplomacy between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The purpose of John Kerry's mission: to restart peace negotiations that have remained dormant since 2010. The result of three lengthy meetings with Netanyahu and three lengthy meetings with Abbas? Zilch. Nada.Kerry is leaving the Middle East, which he's visited five times in the last four months, totally empty-handed. Yet, at his departure press conference, the secretary insisted that he made real progress, narrowed gaps between the parties, and with just a little more work, a breakthrough could be within reach. In the meantime, Kerry left behind members of his own team to carry on the work until he returns for visit number 6 "soon."
The traveling U.S. press corps may be forgiven for refusing to share Kerry's optimism. From the start, his decision to plunge into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been an exercise redolent with hubris. Kerry seems totally oblivious of Abbas's refusal to go along with U.S. and Israeli insistence that resumed negotiations should start "without pre-conditions." Abbas instead wants to exact major Israeli concessions before talks even get under way -- like negotiations on the basis of the 1967 lines, including division of Jerusalem, a total Israeli construction freeze in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, and release of 120 Palestinian terrorist killers in Israeli jails.
The latter concession demand -- without any reciprocity -- is especially galling to Israelis because it includes a lineup of the worst bloodsoaked terrorist murderers. Israel freed more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, but not these brutal killers. To grant their release now in the context of a mere promise to negotiate is obviously unthinkable.
Also standing in the way of advancing the peace process is Hamas rule in Gaza. Abbas can speak only for his Fatah party in the West Bank. So here's a Palestinian leader representing only half a Palestinian polity. And Hamas, that other half not represented by Abbas, happens to be unalterably opposed to any negotiations with Israel because its agenda quite clearly calls for the total destruction of the Jewish state. Anything Abbas conceivably might agree to would be immediately declared null and void by Hamas.
From the start of Kerry's mission, the gap between the parties thus seemed clearly unbridgeable to any and all observers familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations impasse -- but apparently not to Kerry. Perhaps he thinks he has the talent to succeed where previous presidents and secretaries of state have failed. Perhaps he thinks that, without some kind of process, extremists could flood into a geopolitical vacuum. And so, stubbornly, he keeps soldiering on.
But in the Middle East, history matters. The past can't just be set aside. And in this instance, history teaches that Abbas has never been disposed to achieve a realistic two-state solution. He showed his true colors in 2008 when he rejected a hugely generous offer by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to create a Palestinian state in all of Gaza, 95 percent of the West Bank, a connector between Gaza and the West Bank, and all Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem. Plus repatriation to Israel of some 20,000 Palestinian refugees.
Olmert even threw in an international directorate to govern Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem -- a directorate that would have consisted of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, "Palestine," and Israel. Imagine Saudi Arabia having a say over the Western Wall and Temple Mount!
If Abbas ran away from the Olmert initiative, what makes Kerry believe that he can achieve a two-state solution, or even get Abbas back to the negotiating table?
As an astute philosopher once observed: Those who would ignore history are bound to repeat it. And Kerry keeps on repeating, and repeating, and repeating.
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