Where Is The Outrage?

By Findalis


Hat Tip to Texas Fred

I read this at the above site and am passing this along to give it a wide birth.  Judge Andrew P. Napolitano has been a voice of common sense on FOX News.  I do hope that you will read this and pass it to others.

Since this particular piece didn’t get that much coverage, I hope the good Judge and FOX News will have no objections to this being used, in full, with full accreditation back to FOX News and Judge Andrew P. Napolitano. This is a piece that needs to be seen by ALL Americans.

Where is the outrage?

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
Published June 07, 2012

For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the government’s use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News Channel where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done if — had drones existed at the time — King George III had sent drones to peer inside the bedroom windows of Monticello. I suspect that Jefferson and his household would have trained their muskets on the drones and taken them down. I offer this historical anachronism as a hypothetical only, not as one who is urging the use of violence against the government.

Nevertheless, what Jeffersonians are among us today? When drones take pictures of us on our private property and in our homes, and the government uses the photos as it wishes, what will we do about it? Jefferson understood that when the government assaults our privacy and dignity, it is the moral equivalent of violence against us. The folks who hear about this, who either laugh or groan, cannot find it humorous or boring that their every move will be monitored and photographed by the government.

Don’t believe me that this is coming? The photos that the drones will take may be retained and used or even distributed to others in the government so long as the “recipient is reasonably perceived to have a specific, lawful governmental function” in requiring them. And for the first time since the Civil War, the federal government will deploy military personnel inside the United States and publicly acknowledge that it is deploying them “to collect information about U.S. persons.”

It gets worse. If the military personnel see something of interest from a drone, they may apply to a military judge or “military commander” for permission to conduct a physical search of the private property that intrigues them. And, any “incidentally acquired information” can be retained or turned over to local law enforcement. What’s next? Prosecutions before military tribunals in the U.S.?

The quoted phrases above are extracted from a now-public 30-page memorandum issued by President Obama’s Secretary of the Air Force on April 23, 2012. The purpose of the memorandum is stated as “balancing … obtaining intelligence information … and protecting individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution…” Note the primacy of intelligence gathering over freedom protection, and note the peculiar use of the word “balancing.”

When liberty and safety clash, do we really expect the government to balance those values? Of course not. The government cannot be trusted to restrain itself in the face of individual choices to pursue happiness. That’s why we have a Constitution and a life-tenured judiciary: to protect the minority from the liberty-stealing impulses of the majority. And that’s why the Air Force memo has its priorities reversed — intelligence gathering first, protecting freedom second — and the mechanism of reconciling the two — balancing them — constitutionally incorrect.

Everyone who works for the government swears to uphold the Constitution. It was written to define and restrain the government. According to the Declaration of Independence, the government’s powers come from the consent of the governed. The government in America was not created by a powerful king reluctantly granting liberty to his subjects. It was created by free people willingly granting limited power to their government — and retaining that which they did not delegate.

The Declaration also defines our liberties as coming from our Creator, as integral to our humanity and as inseparable from us, unless we give them up by violating someone else’s liberties. Hence the Jeffersonian and constitutional beef with the word “balancing” when it comes to government power versus individual liberty.

The Judeo-Christian and constitutionally mandated relationship between government power and individual liberty is not balance. It is bias — a bias in favor of liberty. All presumptions should favor the natural rights of individuals, not the delegated and seized powers of the government. Individual liberty, not government power, is the default position because persons are immortal and created in God’s image, and governments are temporary and based on force.

Hence my outrage at the coming use of drones — some as small as golf balls — to watch us, to listen to us and to record us. Did you consent to the government having that power? Did you consent to the American military spying on Americans in America? I don’t know a single person who has, but I know only a few who are complaining.

If we remain silent when our popularly elected government violates the laws it has sworn to uphold and steals the freedoms we elected it to protect, we will have only ourselves to blame when Big Brother is everywhere. Somehow, I doubt my father’s generation fought the Nazis in World War II only to permit a totalitarian government to flourish here. Is President Obama prepared to defend this? Is Gov. Romney prepared to challenge it? Are you prepared for its consequences?

Source

Barack Hussein Obama can offer NO viable defense for this invasion of privacy. Mitt Romney, if he has ANY courage in him, will not only challenge it, he will vow to strike it down once he is elected POTUS.

Are *WE* prepared for the consequences?

I think a more fair question would be; is the regime of Barack Hussein Obama prepared to suffer the consequences that indeed they must if this travesty is allowed to come to fruition?

It has been reminded to us time and time again that our freedoms will be taken from us not all at once, but slowly.  All so slowly that we will not even notice their loss.  By the time we notice the loss of our freedoms it will be too late.

Take heed America!  It is time to Wake Up!

US Government “Health Police” Go Too Far This Time!

US Government “Health Police” Go Too Far This Time!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Gruesome pictures on cigarette packs only serve to demonstrate just how ignorant the US Government thinks Americans really are.

I live in a state that was, more or less, financed by tobacco for over 200 years. Within two blocks of my home are three tobacco warehouses where tobacco was trucked in by farmers and sold at auction. I, myself, have followed the auctioneer down the long rows of tobacco as each pile was auctioned off to the highest bidder. I still savor the memory of the aroma of freshly cured tobacco on the floors of those warehouses.

It was a wonderful time here when the tobacco-selling season opened. Money was everywhere. A farmer could truck in a load of tobacco in the early morning and leave the warehouse in the afternoon with a roll of bills large enough to choke a horse. They headed for the retail district of town, ASAP, to pay off loans and buy the needed clothing, etc, for their families and supplies for the next years planting. The sidewalks of our town were so crowded with shoppers that often one would have to walk in the street because maneuvering the sidewalks was impossible. Cash flowed like water.

That is all gone now. The city is a ghost of its former self. The county is now one of the poorest in the state. And I resent the hell out of it.

Look, I am a smoker. I have been since pre-school age. I am now a few months shy of my 70th birthday and I am still smoking.

I smoked cigarettes, a pipe, and cigars, and I carried a plug of chewing tobacco in my hunting vest when I was in the swamps or fields hunting. I never liked to smoke in the forests and swamps for fear of accidentally starting a fire. So rather than smoke, I would chew tobacco.

Today I only smoke cigars and a pipe.

I like tobacco. I always have. I intend to smoke, because I enjoy it, until my life is up on this plain on existence.

Love of tobacco sort of runs in my family. My maternal grandfather used tobacco products all is life. He only lived to be 96 years old. My paternal grandfather did the same thing but he was not as fortunate for the Lord called him home at the relatively young age of 93. (One of my most prized possessions is his pipe.) My father was a cigarette and pipe smoker until he expired at the age of only 89.

My aunts died in their 80’s and 90’s and they were smokers, too.

One of my greatest joys in life is to “PO” a non-smoker who might dare to look exasperated when I light up my pipe.

See, I don’t give a rat’s rear-end whether you favor or disfavor smoking. I really, really, could not care less. It is a personal choice I made many decades ago, and I like it, and I make absolutely no apologies for it.

That said -- it irritates me no end that the government, which derives tons of cash off taxes from the sale of tobacco products, has the audacity to pressure me -- and all smoking Americans -- to quit. It is none of the government’s business what I choose to do with a legal product.

When they finally make the sale of tobacco products illegal, I intend to grow my own, shred it, and continue to smoke ‘til my dying day.

As to those god-awful pictures they are proposing placing on cigarette packs, I suppose we will have to bring back the old plastic and metal cigarette cases, within which, one could slide a complete pack of cigarettes hiding the logo and the government’s scare art. Cigarette smokers may continue to smoke without looking at those disgusting government propaganda posters splashed across the packages.

Another thing that really, and I mean R E A L L Y ticks me off about the “holier than thou” anti-smoker crowd is they totally ignore the dangers posed by the use of alcohol, which is indisputably far more dangerous to a consumer’s health than a cigarette, cigar, or pipe. How about some pictures of an auto crash with dead bodies lying all about the pavement alongside empty beer and whiskey bottles. No, that is not going to happen because the authorities, the “Health Police,” and so darned hypocritical and, most likely, many are consumers of alcohol products, themselves. Being the elitist snobs they are, they are going after only those who offend them -- and drunks obviously do not offend them. I wonder how many of those elitists “Health Police” have DUI tickets they’d rather we not know about? Huh?

This is simply another case of our elitist government flexing its muscle and demonstrating its power over we “peons” by intervening in the lives of the private American citizen.

This is also another reminder that America is no longer a free country. We have a lot of rogue government agencies in Washington with the power to pass rules and regulations, which have the power of law. That, absolutely, must be brought to a screech halt.

In my opinion, there is no need for the majority of those interventionist agencies and the new US House of Representatives, where all spending bills must originate, ought to begin defunding those agencies and starving them out of existence just as soon as they are sworn into office.

Ronald Reagan once said: “Government is not the answer to our problems. Government IS THE PROBLEM.” Some of the agencies, I’d personally like to see disbanded and done away with include: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and all of Obama’s Czars and Czarinas. And that just scratches the surface for the list of agencies that serve only to harass the American public and American business. It is a very long list, indeed.

The government is too big, too intrusive, too powerful, and too full of itself. It needs to be brought to heel, which is where an American representative republic belongs in the first place.

The “Health Police” have crossed the line with their gruesome scare tactics on packs of cigarettes and I sincerely hope, when their budget comes up for review soon, it will be cut to near zero in order to bring some control and humility to their agency and remind them who they work for. They, apparently, have it backwards.

Oh, I am happily puffing on my pipe as I write this piece. If you don’t like it, may we suggest – well -- you know what you can do with your objection.

J. D. Longstreet

America’s Golden Age of Ignorance

America’s Golden Age of Ignorance
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
**********************

One can only conclude that America finds herself in the current mess as a direct result of ignorance. “Ignorance of what,” you ask? I must answer, “Ignorance of practically everything.”

I concluded, early on, the election of Obama was a direct result of ignorance. Ignorance of just how politics works in America as a result of no education, period. Ignorance as a direct result of education received in the government schools, and just plain old willful ignorance – choosing to be ignorant of politics in America, by electing not to involve oneself in the distasteful, and sometimes less than sanitary job of maintaining America’s freedom.

Ignorance of America’s colorful political history, and that of the world, is much to blame for the Obama Regime’s continued acceptance by vast numbers of Americans. But, I am happy to report that number is growing ever smaller as each day passes.

Ignorance of history, as well as of current events, among the populace of any country, can lead to consequences that are truly awful. Take the election of America’s first socialist government, for instance. The election of 2006 turned our national legislature into a socialist machine bent on creating an even stronger central government with all the power it could grasp. Then, in 2008, the capstone of socialist victory in American politics was the election of Barack Hussein Obama. He promised fundamental change in America. The politically savvy in America understood he meant to lead America into out and out socialism. And he did.

Even today, the average democrat voter will deny the existence of a socialist government in America today. They simply do not recognize it. I am convinced that ignorance stems from the fact that they were not taught the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the genius of America’s founders, and the love of a free constitutional republic that led their ancestors to lay down their lives to protect and preserve the freedom granted by that constitution. That is ignorance.

Back in the day, before teacher’s unions, American students were taught the fundamental concepts of American democracy and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. We learned, as students, that life in America is a priviledge. We learned that freedom is not free, it is preserved by Americans who know its value, even if it means laying down their lives in its defense..

Students also leaned the immeasurable value of The Founding Documents, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the all important Bill of Rights. They learned that The Founders said what they meant and meant what they said when writing the constiturtion. Students also learned that the US Constitution is a document for the ages. It is not a living breathing document subject to change at the whim of those citizens who live under its protection.

No longer. Today we graduate students wo cannot read their diplomas, who cannot find Canada and Medxico on a map, and have no idea what the Constitution or the Bill of Rights are! They have no clue that the Bill of Rights limits the role of government in the daily lives of Americans. If they did, there would be riots in the streets all over America today.

These are the Americans who placed the so-called democrats in charge of America’s government. I say “so-called” because those of us who have dabbled in politics, all our adult lives, understand that those in charge of the US government today are not democrats as they would have you believe. They are socialists, Marxists, communists, and progressives.

So – how WERE they elected? They were elected by people who genuinely thought they were voting for democrats, and by people who don’t care what kind of government we have so long as their place on the government dole is protected and their “hand outs” continue to arrive every month, and by those who were interested only in the power that would accrue to them if socialists controled the US government. The latter could not have accomplished this feat without the ignorance of the former, whose votes they knew they could count on.

Ignorance is a dangerous, dangerous, thing. WE here in America, are only just re-learning this lesson.

This is truly the Golden Era of Ignorance in America. If we survive the damage it has done, we must begin all over again teaching our children what it means to be an American under the protection of the original US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

If we cannot repair the current public education system in America then we must trash it and build a new one in which the federal government and federal dollars have no part – and -- unionizing teachers is illegal.

We Americans must purge our Congress and the White House of socialist, Marxists, communists, and progressives at the ballot box and reclaim our country. If we do not -- America will have earned its place on the dust heap of history.

J. D. Longstreet