Democrats renew gun control measures for the campaign and beyond

The New York Times sees a renewal of Democrat’s efforts to increase restrictions on guns. The newspaper says that after 20 years of holding back on the gun control initiative, “a string of mass shootings involving high-powered weapons, rising anxiety about domestic terrorism, and killings of and by police officers have emboldened Democrats. They say the shootings are intensifying support for gun control, elevating weapons policy to a top-tier issue, with particularly strong appeal to suburban female voters.”

Democrats, The Times says, will press the case for new restrictions in political races across the country that will include expanded background checks, new limits on gun purchases and increased scrutiny on gun makers and dealers, all of which is buoyed by polls they say show strong support for these measures.

National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said, however, the American public would ultimately reject added gun control because Democrats, while cloaking their gun agenda in the language of “common sense,” really want to go much further. “The political elites and D.C. politicians don’t understand Middle America,” she said. “They don’t understand that voters support the Second Amendment and the individual right to self-protection.” The NRA says Clinton would put an individual’s right to self-defense at risk.

Connecticut Democrat Senator Christopher Murphy agrees that Clinton and other gun control advocates are committed to making the issue a major theme of the campaign, and should she win the November election will continue it in her presidency. “This issue is a core value for Hillary Clinton and it is good politics,” Murphy said. 

Clinton’s running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, also supports the idea that gun control will be a presidential initiative. Kaine has long been an advocate for stricter gun laws, moved by the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007 when he was Virginia’s Governor. The shooting, in which a South Korean student with mental health problems killed 32 students and faculty, prompted Kaine to seek to bar the mentally ill from acquiring guns. 

This idea has merit, but is fraught with potential danger in the hands of liberals, who so often fail to use due care in creating policy, and create as many problems as they solve. Liberals have the bad habit of indulging in what Dr. Thomas Sowell calls “stage-one thinking,” which ignores possible downstream results in order to rush through some “wonderful” idea.

In fact, the 2016 Democrat Party Platform states: “While responsible gun ownership is part of the fabric of many communities, too many families in America have suffered from gun violence. We can respect the rights of responsible gun owners while keeping our communities safe.” 

One of the favored talking points in support of restricting the rights of law abiding citizens to protect themselves and their families, and restrict their use of firearms for sport and recreation is that 30,000 people die in America each year from guns.

For the sake of discussion, let’s accept that 30,000 figure, which – taken all by itself, without context – is shocking. That’s a lot of people. 

However, when context is applied, that number seems substantially less damning. Considered as part of the roughly 320,000,000 total population of the United States, it represents just .0001 percent. That means each American has a one in ten thousand chance of dying from a gunshot each year. And that doesn’t dig down into the details of gun deaths, showing how many are accidents, suicides, or justified shootings.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 20 times more people die from heart disease each year than from guns, and nearly that many die from cancer. More people – 42,700 – die from “intentional self-harm (suicide)” than from gun violence. 

In 2013, according to DrugWarFacts.org, which cites data from the CDC, motor vehicle deaths totaled 35,369, all homicides were 16,121, and in 2014, drug overdoses claimed 47,055 lives. 

Gun deaths do not appear on the list of the top ten causes of death in America. In fact, The Times quotes FBI data showing slightly more than 8,000 gun homicides in 2014, quite a difference from the overhyped 30,000 figure.

Conspicuously missing from the liberal tirade is that guns are inanimate objects, incapable of doing anything on their own. Like such things as hammers, kitchen knives and automobiles, guns are under the control of their user. Is this simple concept too complex for liberals to understand?

Or perhaps it just gets in their way: They know and understand that a disarmed populace is a compliant populace.

The Patriot Post notes, “This year’s [DNC] platform doesn’t even bother to mention the words ‘Second Amendment’ … Drafters opted instead for the meaningless tripe about how ‘gun ownership is a part of the fabric of many communities.’ Fabric can be changed. Rights endowed by our Creator cannot.”

The actions of average Americans tell a story different from Democrats. Townhall.com reports that women obtaining concealed carry permits increased at twice the rate of men from 2012 to 2016. And the Crime Prevention Research Center notes that the murder rate fell by16 percent between 2007 and 2015.

Yet again Democrats are wrong about what Americans think.

America’s long, difficult trek from tyranny and oppression to …

Commentary by James Shott

North America’s colonists were necessarily daring and independent, otherwise they would not have ventured to the New World. Being so far from Mother England, they needed and were able to establish colonial governing bodies, which could levy taxes, muster troops, and enact laws.

As time passed the colonies strengthened, and began seeing themselves as independent states, and their obedience to and dependence on the British Crown was receding into the background.

As the future leaders of the United States grew into those roles in the colonial legislatures, they also studied the ideas of the Enlightenment: the social contract, limited government, the separation of powers and the consent of the governed, ideas at odds with the heavy hand of King George.

The colonies found many things imposed by England objectionable, such as the Sugar Act that increased duties on sugar imported from the West Indies; the Currency Act that devalued Colonial currencies; the Quartering Act that forced colonists to house and feed British soldiers if necessary; the cruelty of the British Army at the Boston Massacre; the Stamp Act taxing many common items; and the Tea Act that spawned the Boston Tea Party.
 

Nearly two and one-half centuries later we are again facing a heavy hand, this time not from a monarch, but from the government created by those colonists after they had had enough heavy handedness, and fought for and won their freedom.

Our government’s objectionable activities from the recent past include an inspector general’s report showing that the IRS had targeted conservative groups for lengthy and onerous review of their applications for non-profit status. And cases such as when an Army veteran heard banging on his door before dawn, then he and his two young boys spent several hours in police cars in their jammies as a Department of Education SWAT team searched his home because his wife, who didn’t live there any more, had defaulted on her education loans.

A program of the Department of Justice called “Operation Chokepoint” is used to put the financial squeeze on legal industries the administration doesn’t like, such as firearms sellers and payday lenders.

Another program known as civil asset forfeiture allows police to seize, and then keep or sell, any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government.

Wonder how the colonists would have reacted to these outrages had they been perpetrated by King George?

Today, the federal government has its fingers in virtually every aspect of our lives, and often it is very involved. Its activities no longer are effectively limited as directed by the U.S. Constitution. The federal government largely controls education at the local level, regulates mud puddles on private property, and now has taken control of the way Americans receive their healthcare.

With the force of law it now espouses positions based not upon Constitutional principles, but based upon ideology and political impulses.

One of the most ominous to date is the effort announced earlier this month to use the full force of the federal government, which has adopted one side of a vigorous debate on the effects of humans on the world’s climate, to criminally charge businesses that argue against the government’s chosen position with racketeering under RICO laws.

“Treating climate change as an absolute, unassailable fact, instead of what it is — an unproven, controversial scientific theory — a group of state attorneys general have announced that they will be targeting any companies that challenge the catastrophic climate change religion,” say Hans von Spakovsky and Cole Wintheiser in The Daily Signal.

Ignoring America’s principle of freedom of thought and speech, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said last month, “The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real,” and he is threatening to pursue companies he claims are committing fraud by “lying” about the dangers of climate change “to the fullest extent of the law.”

The coalition “AGs United For Clean Power” consists of 15 state attorneys general as well as the AGs of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. In addition to Schneiderman are Kamala Harris, California; William Sorrell, Vermont; Mark Herring, Virginia; Maura Healey, Massachusetts; Brian Frosh, Maryland; George Jepsen, Connecticut; and Claude Walker, the Virgin Islands, and representatives from Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington State and D.C.

Unsurprisingly, sixteen of the seventeen are Democrats, while the Virgin Islands AG is an independent. And no farcical climate inquisition would be complete without the participation of former vice president and climate change beneficiary Al Gore.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch admits that the Justice Department is discussing the possibility of pursing civil actions against climate change doubters, and that the FBI has been asked to consider if it meets the criteria for federal law enforcement to take action. Tyranny rears its ugly head.

When the political left cannot prevail through the strength of its arguments in the arena of free ideas, it resorts to force. That is unconditional surrender, a testament to the failure of liberalism as a practical ideology.

Cross-posted from Observations

Should the USA Patriot Act be renewed, amended, or replaced?

Commentary by James Shott

Congress is trying to decide whether or not to extend the USA PATRIOT Act, and GOP presidential hopeful Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is so strongly opposed to doing so without at least substantial changes that he conducted a filibuster of sorts last Wednesday. In explaining his action, he said, “I’ve chosen to filibuster the Patriot Act because the Patriot Act is the most un-patriotic of acts.”

A little history: the Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, only a few weeks after that horrible day. Its title is a ten-letter acronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001."

The Act originally was set to expire after four years, but three legislative actions, the first in 2005, another in 2010 and the last in 2011, have essentially preserved the Act. The current law is set to expire on June 1.

The chaotic mood of the country after nearly 3,000 innocents were brutally murdered by radical Muslim terrorists who crashed four airliners into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, led to a piece of hastily designed legislation to enable the government to better identify and stop terrorist activity. This crisis-driven activity brought allegations of opportunism to hurriedly pass a law that in calmer times would have triggered vigorous and lengthy debate. The bill was put together, voted on, passed, and signed into law only six weeks after the attacks. It passed by a wide margin in the House, and had only one dissenting vote in the Senate.

As Otto von Bismarck said, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” Legislation born crisis is open to deliberate mischief, or damage resulting from its careless creation.

Sen. Paul’s libertarian tendencies lead to objections to breaches of liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, specifically the NSA’s mass phone call data collection program.

"They want nothing more than to keep the national security spy state growing until it tracks, traces and catalogues virtually every detail about every aspect of our lives," he said of the NSA program in a campaign email. "Once government bureaucrats know every aspect of our lives — what we watch, what we buy, what we eat, where we worship — it won't be long until they try to run them 'for our own good.'"

However, not all Republicans agree with this perspective. One of his potential opponents in the GOP presidential race, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, is not a fan of critics of the NSA program. “Let me be clear — all these fears are baloney. When it comes to fighting terrorism, our government is not the enemy,” he said. “They want you to think that there’s a government spook listening in every time you pick up the phone or Skype with your grandkids.”

And those two perspectives fairly well outline the opposing positions, one favoring strong methods to protect the citizenry, the other opposing strong methods that infringe, or have the potential to infringe on constitutional guarantees of personal liberty.

But this is not about what Gov. Christie thinks and what Sen. Paul thinks, this is about what the Constitution allows the government to do and what it does not allow. And the conflict between rooting out terrorists and terrorist plots before they occur, and honoring the individual freedom we are guaranteed is a tricky one.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Notice that it does not say, “unless Congress or the President says otherwise.” Mass collection of information about the citizenry fails that test.

Earlier this month the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA’s phone data collection program “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized,” according to Judge Gerard Lynch’s opinion for the three-judge panel, which does not address the constitutional aspects of the law, but says the NSA program exceeds Congress’ intention, which itself is likely unconstitutional.

We must not allow government to impose actions because of a crisis that in calmer times we would not tolerate. Once government gains a power it is next to impossible to take it away, and once a mechanism is available it is always available for mischievous application. Remember Lois Lerner?

These words, attributed to both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, must be heeded: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

We should do anything and everything within constitutional limits to fight terrorism, but we must not allow even small degrees of unconstitutional activity, not even to combat a known imminent attack. Once that threshold is crossed, reestablishing it will be virtually impossible.

Cross-posted from Observations

Notice: You are breaking one or more federal laws and/or regulations

Commentary by James Shott

Most of us probably think of ourselves as law-abiding, up-standing American citizens. We pay our taxes on time. We keep our drivers licenses and inspections up to date. We don’t shoplift, or take illegal drugs. We don’t murder, rob, rape or assault others. That’s the way law-abiding citizens think and act.

And yet, I am willing to bet some money that every one of us has breeched or is on the wrong side of some federal decree.

I say that with a high degree of confidence because there are so many of these edicts from on high that nobody – not you, not law enforcement, not even the judges at whose mercy we will find ourselves if charged for breaking one – knows them all.

You see, here in the Land of the Free there are between 3,600 and 4,500 federal statutes that impose criminal sanctions, according to Michael Cottone, writing in the Tennessee Law Review.

As bad as that is, the ridiculously high number of federal laws pales in comparison to the number of regulations created by administrative agencies that carry criminal penalties, maybe as many as 300,000 of them.

With that knowledge, the old maxim “ignorance of the law is no excuse” is now a mere absurdity.

Of course, if we actually were to follow the dictates of the U.S. Constitution – a quaint idea, these days – at least some of those 300,000 regulations aren’t valid, since the only authorized law-making entity at the federal level is the Congress, and the Constitution does not authorize the Congress to abdicate that duty, and pass it along to the excessive number of unelected bureaucrats in the too-many Executive Branch agencies, departments, administrations, commissions and offices.

The Constitution sets forth the following: Article I, Section I: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” That’s about as plain as it can be. Notice it does not say, “except where Congress decides to cede that authority to the Executive Branch.”

Some laws are downright stupid, or sometimes are applied stupidly:
* A child saved a woodpecker from her family’s cat and was fined $535 under the migratory bird law.

* A 66-year-old retiree went to prison because he didn't have proper paperwork for orchids.

Some are irrational; others are conveniently broad and through twisted reasoning are used to punish American individuals and businesses. Consider the case of Gibson Guitars: On August 24, 2011, agents of the federal government executed four search warrants on Gibson manufacturing plants in Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, where they seized pallets of wood, electronic files and finished guitars. Other than making excellent musical instruments, what had Gibson done?

Public servants in the Department of Justice determined that using wood from India that was not finished by workers in India is illegal, not by U.S. law, but because of the way the DOJ interpreted Indian law. The feds argued that Gibson violated the Lacey Act of 1900, which outlaws the use of plants and wildlife that have been taken or traded in violation of foreign law.

Apparently, Gibson is supposed to have known that Indian companies broke Indian law and sold wood illegally, thereby making Gibson subject to prosecution in the U.S. Seriously.

CEO Henry Juszkiewicz said Gibson competitors also use this same wood, and wondered why his company had been singled out. Fair question. Regardless, Gibson paid $300,000 to avoid criminal charges, was forced to make a "community service payment" of $50,000 to the U.S. National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to promote conservation and development of tree species used in making musical instruments, as well as withdraw claims to $262,000 worth of exotic woods seized by federal authorities.

It is unfair and oppressive to hold taxpaying citizens to the impossible standard of knowing and obeying every one of the hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations that might affect them, but in addition to that, perpetuating circumstances that allow prosecutors to haul people into court and potentially fine or imprison them on the flimsy basis that they should actually know all these decrees is outrageous, although Mussolini, Pol Pot, and Stalin would approve.

"The criminal code today is so vast and complex that judges and lawyers have a lot of trouble discerning what's legal and what's illegal," John Malcom, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the House Judiciary Committee. "What hope do ordinary citizens have?" The government should be required to identify every federal crime, he said, and make that list easily accessible and free to the public.

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers president Steven Benjamin testified that when the average citizen cannot figure out what is illegal, "that is unfairness in its most basic form. We have become addicted to the use of criminal law as a blunt instrument to control social and economic behavior."

George Terwilliger, former deputy attorney general in George W. Bush’s administration, thinks Congress should pass one overriding law that requires proof of intent for any federal crime.

Contact your representative and senators and tell them to implement the Malcom and Terwilliger recommendations.

Talking about the problem does nothing to solve the problem!

Take A Stand - Shout It Out 

 An alternative for today 

Great minds discuss STRATEGIES 

Average minds dwell on problems 

Small minds discuss people

                                    Eleanor Roosevelt (w/revisions)                      

                               

America needs freedom troopers not blow- hards whining about the situation.

Here is the rub: 

Conservatives, as I have observed, spend lots of time bloviating - railing about America's problems and talking about the people causing them - what is worse they primarily do so to others of like minds. Not the opposition or the young people that need to know how much America has declined. 

They are often times more interested in showing how smart they are to each other but they shy away from entering the fray.  Too many I meet are weak in their convictions, scared of being criticized by the leftists. 

Patriots Stand Up 

Be Proud 

Shout it Loud

Jesus Died for Us

Make him Proud

Stand up against

Christian and Jewish Oppression

Twitter is a POWERFUL tool 

Use IT! 

Government encroachments on liberty, in the name of fighting terrorism

Commentary by James Shott

These days talk of government excesses is routine. A list of recent infractions contains things like the Internal Revenue Service using its resources to persecute applicants for non-profit status and the National Security Agency collecting data on every American’s phone calls and email.

Government excesses have been growing for a long time, and since 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked four airliners and successfully crashed three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the U.S. has been taking strong measures to detect potential terrorist threats, and these are by far the most threatening excesses.

The first of these was the USA Patriot Act, created and passed less than two months after the 9-11 attacks, and signed into law by President George W. Bush. Things have not improved since that fateful law passed.

The problem with such measures is that while they may or may not help prevent a terrorist attack, they present a frightening opportunity for government abuse. Americans are rightly distrustful of such mechanisms, and our Constitution prohibits our government from adopting liberty-crushing measures like these.

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) was passed and signed into law by President Barack Obama, and greatly expanded the power and scope of the federal government to fight the War on Terror, including codifying into law the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without trial. Including US citizens. Under the new law the US military has the power to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on US soil under the broad new anti-terrorism provisions provided in the bill.

This is not the first time such extraordinary misuse of the military has been considered. In 2002 a similar discussion arose, but was ultimately quashed by Mr. Bush.

Those features in the NDAA are unacceptable, even in the name of fighting terrorism. Prior to the NDAA the Posse Comitatus Act prohibited Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. Americans also enjoyed the protections of the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The intention was to prevent precisely what the 2012 NDAA enacted into law.

Nevertheless, Mr. Obama signed the NDAA into law, saying, “I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

However, according to Michigan Democrat Senator Carl Levin, Mr. Obama demanded that American citizens be included under the detention law and that the President of the United States have exclusive authority to invoke the statute. “The language which precluded the application of Section [1021] to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” Sen. Levin said after the NDAA was signed into law.

Critics all across the political spectrum rightly opposed the NDAA because of elements in section 1021.

While many government excesses and cases of misbehavior go along uninterrupted, a federal judge appropriately put a stop to the offending elements of the 2012 NDAA only months after it took affect.

Federal Judge Kathleen Forrest granted a preliminary injunction striking down those sections of the NDAA that sought to provide the president the power to indefinitely detain citizens without benefit of their rights.

Judge Forrest concluded that Section 1021 “…failed to ‘pass Constitutional muster’ because its broad language could be used to quash political dissent.” In a statement clearly directed to lawmakers, she added, ”Section 1021 tries to do too much with too little – it lacks the minimal requirements of definition and scienter that could easily have been added, or could be added, to allow it to pass constitutional muster.”

The Obama administration, however, then fought successfully to appeal Judge Forrest’s injunction, and a 2013 version of the bill contains the same intolerable provisions as the 2012 version, and was also signed by President Obama.

Despite Mr. Obama’s comforting words, despite the bi-partisan opposition to section 1021, Mr. Obama demanded that language exempting America citizens and lawful residents from the provisions of Section 1021 be removed, he fought for and won keeping the Section alive in the 2012 version, and signed the 2013 version with those provisions contained in it.

No matter how much you may trust Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama, or any future president, no president can be allowed to have the absolute authority provided in the NDAA to detain citizens without due process, or to set the US military against the people. No individual can be allowed that authority. Ever!

There goes “innocent until proven guilty,” a major protection for citizens against tyranny. Erik Kain, writing on Forbes.com, says: “We’re talking about the stripping away of our most basic freedoms. We’re talking about a potential state that can call me a terrorist for writing this blog post and then lock me up and throw away the key.”

A majority of the US House and Senate approved these measures. Is this what you expect of your elected representatives?


Cross-posted from Observations

Kids, Guns and America's Failing Education System

Here is a novel idea that would help bring value back into our failing education system.   Start teaching kids gun safety in schools and let the local sheriff departments and responsible community members like those in Tea Team USA help set the courses up.

Data mining breeches our Founder’s concept of liberty and privac

Collecting data from phone calls of Verizon customers is one thing. Collecting email information on millions of Americans is something else. Both of these activities stir concern and break the bounds of constitutionality, but the invasion of privacy is far greater in the collection of email data.

Phone call data consists of phone numbers, dates and call duration, but not the conversation itself. Email data, on the other hand, not only has email addresses and date information, but the actual message as well, which often includes names and attached text and media files.

 4

The potential for misbehavior is enormous, particularly with email data, given the nature of the information available to prying eyes. Some comfort may be taken from the idea that intelligence personnel who use this information are not susceptible to political influences unlike, say, Internal Revenue Service workers. That does not relieve the concern for our privacy, however.

Hardly anyone doesn't want to the government to find plotting terrorists or discover terrorist plans before they are acted upon, even if it involves tapping phones, capturing emails or other covert measures. But the routine collection of massive amounts of data in the hopes of finding a couple of useful pieces of information is over-the-top and unjustified. Its use has increased since the practice was first introduced after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and has increased exponentially under the Obama administration, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The way it is supposed to work is that when the government has reason to believe that one or more individuals – like let’s say Irv Huffington or Ahmed Ali-Yahoo – may be planning an attack, it goes to court to seek an order allowing it to tap their phone or take whatever actions it proposes to do. It doesn't simply start collecting the records of millions of people hoping to find the Huffington or Ali-Yahoo needle among millions of data bits in the haystack.

Here's what the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That language is precise and unambiguous. It does not allow judges to give anyone, or anyone to just take the information of millions of Americans in the hope of finding something hidden away among huge collections of data.

In order to get permission to breech a citizen's privacy, the government must request permission by offering a compelling reason and support that assertion under oath, describing explicitly the place and persons under suspicion. Nowhere in the 4th Amendment is the term "fishing expedition" mentioned or implied, nor is there language allowing nosing around in the private lives of millions of citizens who empower the government because it makes things easier, and it does not depend upon what the meaning of "is" is.

The Founders viewed "general warrants," or dragnet searches such as we are witnessing today, as tyrannical. That view is not mitigated by the advent of terrorist acts that kill dozens, hundreds or thousands, nor by the amazing technological advances since the mid-18th century; general warrants still are tyrannical.

The United States has Constitution protections for a reason: because the Framers understood from first-hand experience how government can slither into impropriety, tyranny and oppression unless it is clearly and firmly prevented by statute from doing so. The U.S. Constitution was created not to limit what the people may do, but to limit what the government may do.

We are told, and many of us believe, that in order to be safe in these perilous times, we must give up much of our liberty and privacy for security, but Benjamin Franklin expressed this idea about that: Those who willingly give up liberty for security will have neither, and deserve neither.

It is a point of shame for the citizens of the United States that so many Americans have no functional knowledge of the principles upon which our nation was created or of the meaning or power of the US Constitution. That is a prime reason that so many on the political left are able to mis-think so many things with such great success. 

As a nation we have grown lazy and tone deaf as our government has grown to gargantuan proportions and ridiculous levels of expense, and burst through the top and sides of the constitutional box our much-smarter-than-we-are Founding Fathers built for it.

When they look out on the US landscape and see that some things that aren't working well, they think becoming more like left/liberal Europe is the answer, without even the suspicion that the reason things aren't working is because they have been trying for decades to become more like Europe and less like the United States of America, which under the US Constitution became the freest, most prosperous and most successful nation in human history, while liberal socialist and communist governmental models have always failed.

A national tragedy: We are learning what is really in Obamacare

Many thanks to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for jamming the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through the House of Representatives so that finally the people could  "find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy," as Ms. Pelosi so famously said two years ago. This unintentional revelation of what goes on in Ms. Pelosi's mind came in the heat of the battle between the liberal Congress and the American people, a majority of whom opposed this first step in a government takeover of our healthcare system. The American people lost that battle.

Of course, now that the odious gunk contained in the Affordable Care Act, now affectionately known as "Obamacare," has started oozing out, even the people who voted to approve the measure now realize how little they knew about it when the vote was taken.

Searching President Barack Obama's florid promises for a truthful statement about all the wonderful things the ACA would do for us is more challenging than Diogenes' trying to find an honest man.

Like your doctor? You can keep your doctor. Nope!

Like your insurance? You can keep your insurance. Nope!

It will lower costs. Nope!

After all the broken promises, there are also some new goodies in Obamacare:

There are 18 new taxes, estimated at about $800 billion, that will mostly affect America's middle class. And inflation, the cruelest tax on the poor, will increase as businesses find their operation burdened with added costs brought about by higher taxes and onerous government mandates, and pass those costs along to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

Obamacare will add $6.2 trillion (That's "trillion" with a "t"!) to the long-term deficit, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Medicare providers will be expected to continue to provide services despite a cut of $716 billion in payments. Added bureaucracy will make applying for health care even more burdensome than it already is; worse than that, an estimated 7 million people will lose their employer-provided health insurance; and worse yet, thousands of workers will find their hours cut or will lose their jobs entirely.

Just what we need: another government mandate that keeps unemployment unacceptably high.

Opponents of Obamacare warned that forcing companies employing 50 or more full-time workers to buy health insurance for their employees would result in a loss of jobs overall, and many full-time workers would have their hours reduced below the 30-hour weekly threshold. Even though the employer mandate does not go into effect until next January, employers are required to track worker's hours for up to 12 months prior to that, meaning that job and hours cuts have already begun so that employers can escape the $2,000 per-worker fine for uncovered employees, or have to bear the even higher costs of providing health insurance to full-time workers.

So, rather than increasing the number of employees getting insurance from their employers as advertised, Obamacare has instead caused employees to have their hours reduced, or cost them their jobs entirely.

These decisions are being made by more than a few businesses. The International Franchise Association finds that 31 percent of franchisees plan to cut staff to avoid Obamacare’s 50-employee mandate, and a study by Mercer consulting firm found that half of businesses that don’t presently offer health insurance plan to reduce employee hours to avoid Obamacare’s penalties.

The food industry has been particularly hard hit, including: Kroger, Wendy's, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Burger King, McDonalds, KFC, Taco Bell, and Papa John's Pizza. Also affected are government workers across the nation, for the same reasons.

If not keeping your doctor or your insurance policy if you wanted to is not bad enough, or if thousands of Americans losing the jobs or having their hours reduced to less than 30 a week isn't bad enough, how about thousands of doctors taking down their shingles? According to a survey from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, 6 in 10 physicians said they expect many of their colleagues to retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years.

Another 55 percent of doctors surveyed believe many of their colleagues will cut back on their hours because of the way medicine is changing, and 75 percent believe the best and brightest may not consider a career in medicine, up from 69 percent in 2011.

How could the smartest man ever to inhabit the Oval Office have been so desperately wrong? Curious people want to know: Did Barack Obama just not have a clue about what the law that now bears his name would actually do, or did he deliberately deceive people about what it would do in order to gain their support for it?

There is a faction that firmly believes that if people lose their private sector insurance coverage, or can't afford it, that is precisely what Mr. Obama wants, thus making his dream of a single-payer government healthcare system a reality.

So, will our public servants act to relieve us of this Obomination? They should remember that there are Senate and House elections in 2014. And so should we.

If our government does not protect us from ourselves, who will?

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg literally believes he is his brother's keeper, and in fact the keeper of all the millions of New Yorkers and visitors to the city. He was thus compelled to ban the sale by restaurants and other venues of sugary drinks in doses larger than 16 ounces, citing an ethical mandate for someone to do something to protect people from themselves.

Such feelings are at the root of boundless dictates from governments at all levels, and are frequently the product of folks who believe not only that they know better than we do what is best for us, but also feel led to control our behavior for our own good.

However, New Yorkers may rest marginally easier now that a state Supreme Court Judge has properly ruled that the Bloomberg Ban is "arbitrary and capricious," and is now null and void.

This penchant among the nation's nannies produces varying degrees of damage. Some actions, like the Bloomberg Ban, are relatively harmless, merely restricting the personal liberty our Founders provided for us to pursue happiness.

Others, like the ban on Edison's incandescent light bulbs that have served us economically and dependably for well more than a century, have more serious effects. The newly mandated compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are said to use less energy and last longer than their predecessors, but are far more expensive, do not fit in many fixtures that incandescent bulbs do, and contain mercury, a substance that in emissions from coal burning electricity plants is viewed with great alarm by environmentalists, but is just peachy in CFLs. If you are unfortunate enough to break one of these bulbs, you must declare a minor hazmat emergency and execute a rigorous, time consuming and inconvenient cleanup routine. None of this is deemed nearly as important as the minuscule reduction in electricity use that CFLs provide, however.

Hyped-up environmental fears have spawned legions of regulations and initiatives, among which is the development of green cars that either run on electricity, or hybrids that alternate between conventional gasoline power and electricity. At the heart of this movement is concern over those dastardly carbon emissions produced by burning gasoline and diesel fuel. Electric cars emit no carbon dioxide and hybrids only do so when operating in gasoline mode.

 We are told that if we do not take dramatic action immediately to reduce carbon emissions, the world will heat up and it will be even worse than the sequester. But the degree to which the activities of humans affect the world's temperature is a subject of (excuse the term) hot debate among scientists, and the evidence thus far -- when all the fraudulent and contrived data is omitted -- fails to support the doomsday prediction.

Nevertheless, President Barack Obama thought this was important enough to set a goal of having 1 million green cars on the road by 2015. But like CFLs, green cars are not consumer friendly, and sales in 2012 totaled a mere 50,000, well below what is needed to achieve Mr. Obama's goal. Consumers do not trust the immature technology and do not like their higher sticker prices.

Worse, you aren't told that environmental benefits are far less than we've been led to expect. A report by the National Center for Policy Analysis discusses the problems, noting that while electric cars do not contribute to "global warming," that is true only in the sense that they do not emit carbon dioxide. Building an electric car produces more than twice as much carbon-dioxide as building a conventional car, and because electric vehicles use electricity typically produced with fossil fuels, it indirectly emits about six ounces of carbon dioxide per mile compared with 12 ounces for a conventional car. Buying a green car that costs a lot more, uses an untrusted technology and contributes very little to environmental improvement holds little appeal for most people.

A Cato Institute report quoted former president Ronald Reagan: "Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves," and then suggested that "today’s policymakers would do well to heed Reagan’s words," noting that "Lawmakers at all levels of government have shown increasing contempt for personal responsibility and an increasing tendency to employ the power of the state to influence behavior. Government today pressures us to avoid risks, even risks that many of us knowingly and willingly take. There seems to be a consensus among nanny-statists that, with enough public service announcements, awareness campaigns, and social engineering efforts, Americans will start behaving as the nanny- statists want them to."

Yet, the nannies in both the public and private sectors ignore evidence that Americans prefer to think for themselves, enjoy the personal liberty we were given, and pursue happiness as we decide to, even if there is some risk attached to it.

Don't lie to us about the condition of the environment to gain control or force foolish changes to how we live, or force us to eat better or act differently for our own good. Just go away and leave us alone.