Governing Ourselves
"Forget about me [specifically]. Look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee," Holder told the crowd. "What attorney general has ever had to deal withl that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"
Patrick Air Force Base in Florida… officials confirmed… that the entire [POW/MIA] Missing Man Table display had been removed from a dining hall because of the Bible. A press statement said the inclusion of the Bible ignited “controversy and division.” … After consultation with several relevant organizations… [Note that in modern MilSpeak, "inclusion" means "exclusion."]
Back to Capitalism 101, to wit, that you will get a good deal from privatizing something only if the thing that you're privatizing allows for vigorous and open free-market competition. Absent that competition, privatization just leads to sloth and poor outcomes.
Dan McCall, of Sauk Rapids, sued the NSA and Department of Homeland Security last fall after they issued cease-and-desist orders over the merchandise, which includes T-shirts bearing the NSA's official seal and the slogan, "The only part of the government that actually listens."
"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog." -GK Chesterson
the Massachusetts-based company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing "trillions of entities" from cyberspace. [video]
The real threat is that Google, or perhaps just a few people within the leadership of Google, may be quietly operating as a private intelligence agency for the left.
And every time you use Google or Gmail you could be contributing just a little bit more of your behavioral data to the left.
In spite of my efforts, the government has grown exponentially, taxes remain excessive, and the prolific increase of incomprehensible regulations continues. Wars are constant and pursued without congressional declaration, deficits rise to the sky, poverty is rampant and dependency on the federal government is now worse than any time in our history.
All this with minimal concerns for the deficits and unfunded liabilities that common sense tells us cannot go on much longer. …
[I]n the early part of the 20th century, our politicians promoted the notion that the tax and monetary systems had to change if we were to involve ourselves in excessive domestic and military spending. That is why Congress gave us the Federal Reserve and the income tax.
The majority of Americans and many government officials agreed that sacrificing some liberty was necessary to carry out what some claimed to be 'progressive' ideas.
"If it's not accepted that big government, fiat money, ignoring liberty, central economic planning, welfarism, and warfarism caused our crisis we can expect a continuous and dangerous march toward corporatism and even fascism with even more loss of our liberties. Prosperity for a large middle class though will become an abstract dream. …
"The Internet will provide the alternative to the government/media complex that controls the news and most political propaganda. This is why it's essential that the Internet remains free of government regulation. -Ron Paul
On today’s college and university campuses, students are repeatedly being punished for expressing the “wrong” opinion on just about any controversial topic. At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), we’ve won battle after battle against schools that restrict student speech, yet campus censorship continues to flourish
How e-voting machines compare to Vegas slot machines
Oklahoma's two newest Republican congressmen say they're optimistic they will be able to work with a Democratic president and Senate to break the partisan gridlock in Washington. [Work with them for what?]
Police are allowed in some circumstances to install hidden surveillance cameras on private property without obtaining a search warrant, a federal judge said yesterday. … U.S. District Judge William Griesbach ruled that it was reasonable for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to enter rural property without permission -- and without a warrant -- to install multiple "covert digital surveillance cameras" in hopes of uncovering evidence that 30 to 40 marijuana plants were being grown. [Sure, that old Constitutionally-mandated warrant stuff, it's so old dead Euro male.]
Over the weekend, Facebook took down a message by the Special Operations Speaks PAC (SOS) which highlighted the fact that Obama denied backup to the forces being overrun in Benghazi. … Facebook pulled the re-posted meme down within 7 or 8 hours and suspended the SOS account for 24 hours. In other words, Facebook put the Navy SEALS in timeout in order to shield Obama.
A northeast Kansas newspaper has been ordered to identify a person who posted a comment on its website about a story on a murder trial for which that commenter was serving as a juror.
“One of the young men cut the lights to the house, then a few of the other guys snuck back inside, wanting their friends to believe there was an intruder,” May said. The teens were in the process of using flashlights to find the switch box, when Rainey jumped out of a closet. His rattled friend immediately dropped a video game and fired a shot into Rainey’s head with a .38 caliber hand gun.
ClashDaily.com sent one of our foot soldier’s to Miami’s Florida International University to glean from these young voters their views of Obama, Romney and the pressing political issues. What we found was good, bad and ugly. Enjoy. [Video]
The vice president’s office contends that the loan not being approved until after the 2010 elections is proof that politics wasn’t involved.
“The fact remains that the Department of Energy made the loan guarantee based on its assessment of the project’s merits at the time, not on input from the White House or the office of the vice president,” Mr. Biden’s office told The Times.
The administration made similar arguments about the more than $500 million it awarded to the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra LLC.
BrightSource — whose investors include Google Inc., BP Global, Chevron Corp. and Morgan Stanley — doesn’t dispute the fact that it touted the project to influence-peddlers and the most powerful in Washington. While admitting that it ramped up the pressure in early 2011, BrightSource says politics played no role and that Ivanpah was simply deemed a worthy candidate for federal dollars.
Mornin' all. A little wisdom:
If we can control spending and shave a few points off the inflation rate, we can do more good for the poor, the elderly, and the finances of State and local government than any package of Federal programs ever could.
Ronald Reagan 3/9/1981
Professor of food physics at Leeds University Malcolm Povey said liquid nitrogen should not be consumed while still liquid, as it turns into a gas inside the body and causes the stomach to swell and burst.
"The liquid nitrogen would rapidly change into gas and blow the stomach up like a balloon...the idea that people put this stuff in drinks is just unbelievable," Povey told Reuters.
The bar which served the drink has stopped selling all liquid nitrogen drinks, said police, who are investigating the incident.
Researchers from the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center have developed malicious software that can remotely seize control of the camera on an infected smartphone and employ it to spy on the phone’s user. [Hunh! I always presumed this was developed long ago.]
Based on thousands of pages of documents, many obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the lawsuit alleges that EPA intentionally exposed at least dozens of unhealthy human study subjects to concentrated and elevated levels of air pollutants that EPA has determined are lethal, highly toxic and/or carcinogenic, including fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and diesel exhaust.
Many of the study subjects were health-impaired – that is, suffering from asthma or metabolic syndrome. Many were elderly, possibly as old as 75 years. “The purpose of the experiments,” noted Milloy, “was often simply to see what would happen when health-impaired people inhaled highly toxic substances.”
The experiments, which have been conducted with the assistance of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, are ongoing.
Instead of solving the problem at its root by doing away with the Renewable Fuel Standards and letting market forces dictate what fuel is available, the merry band of bureaucrats at the EPA issued a mandate that any consumer buying gas at an E15 vendor, regardless of their individual need, must purchase four gallons or more. The idea here is that those purchases to the tune of four gallons and upwards renders the residual fuel amount too small to do damage.
July 25, 2012 at 9:33 am
The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to “please do not feed the animals” because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
Tea Party activists didn’t appreciate Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ) telling them, “if all you do is stand for the Constitution you will lose.”
Watch the fireworks: YouTube
The Mexican electoral system is perhaps the most fraud-proof in the world. America's, by comparison, is a mess. … Mexico's system used to be a corrupt mess. The 1988 presidential election in Mexico was plagued with scandal and widespread corruption. Not wanting to put the country through another ordeal, the major parties agreed to create a non-partisan and non-governmental electoral commission that would conduct the voting process and ensure honest and fair elections. In 1990, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) was created, and the first presidential election was held under the new rules in 2000. … Every eligible Mexican citizen has a tamper-proof photo-ID card with a thumbprint and an embossed hologram.
As we all know, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is totally about innovation. Just ask patent trolls like Patent Group LLC or Select Retrieval … or the company they sued, Build.com. Or American entrepreneurs who are redirecting $30 billion a year from research and development to patent defense.
Nathan Myrvold would probably agree.
That’s why it makes perfect sense that the first satellite office in the USPTO’s entire 220 years of existence is opening in Detroit, Michigan.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., called the recent slew of national-security leaks “probably the most damaging” in this country’s history, warning that people’s lives are in danger and families have already had to be relocated as a result of the public speculation about highly classified operational activities. …first tangible signs of operational fallout from the explosive leaks to the media, which have so far sparked accusations that Obama administration officials released the information for political gain ahead of an election.
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