Security or civil liberties – what’ll it be?

In an earlier post, I quoted (and agreed with) Ron Paul in his expression of concern about the militarized nature of the response to the Boston bombings. In the comments, I responded to a polite challenge from jamesb who put forward a common question: “If those two young men had walked into a house and held someone hostage with bombs…..”

I replied:

james, there will always be dilemmas confronting us when we try to balance state security with civil liberties. Which, as a society, do we decide is most in need of protection? Hostage crises, for instance, have happened throughout history, whereas the US Bill of Rights stood alone for centuries as an enormous step forward for mankind.

“Jonathan Turley, a Constitutional lawyer, says it best at his blog in a post titled “The Pavlovian Politics of Terror”:

“My greatest concern is that the Boston response will become the accepted or standard procedure . . .

. . . as a thousand papercuts from countless new laws and surveillance systems slowly kill our privacy, we might want to ask whether a fishbowl society will actually make us safer or just make us feel that way.”

Jim  Wheeler agreed:

Legislation enacted out of fear is fraught with peril, e.g., The Patriot Act.

Just wanted to put this out there.

The silly never stops: how to define revenge

See, he talks to me in one of these here ears.

Remember when Pat Robertson warned that a hurricane was bearing down on Orlando because his god was angry about all that “Gay Days’ stuff? And it turned out Orlando was spared; the hurricane hit Robertson’s backyard? Truly the silliness never stops.

Denial has its place too; turn away from bad stuff and it won’t happen. Jonathan Turley reminds us:

Earthquake Hits Cantor’s District After He Led Fight To Slash Funding

The epicenter was Mineral Virginia in the district of Republican Congressman Eric Cantor.  You may recall Cantor’s effort to slash the budget of the United States Geological Service (USGS). . . .

. . . . My greatest concern is that Cantor also defended cuts in the National Weather Service and NOAA — and there is a hurricane approaching Washington.

Bombs are threats and that is all. Also Mooslims. And teh gays.

UPDATE: Cantor got more specific today. Via TPM:  “We aren’t going to speculate on damage before it happens, period,” his spokesperson Laena Fallon emails. “But, as you know, Eric has consistently said that additional funds for federal disaster relief ought to be offset with spending cuts.”.

 

I leadz the way ya know

Jonathan Turley’s blog put up Phil Phillips doing Sea of Love this week just because I did it last week! (But I had video! So there.)

Turley’s is a unique blog with a take on contemporary legal issues as seen by a constitutional lawyer. And other stuff (obviously). Think he’s reading me? Nah.

Who needs the Weather Channel when we’ve got Rush?

The thrice married (or is it four times?), often morbidly obese, onetime drug addict, son of privilege, college dropout Mr. Limbaugh of Palm Springs has the full dirty on those heat wave weather reports. Thanks to some good digging by Elaine Magliara at Jonathan Turley’s res ipsa loquitur,  we now know that the hot weather heat index is fake, fakety, fake, fake. But the cold weather heat index  is truly, completely, entirely on the up and up.

RUSH NOW

They’re playing games with us on this heat wave, again . . . Going to be 116 in Washington. No, it’s not. It’s gonna be like 100, maybe 99. A heat index, manufactured by the government to tell you what it feels like when you add the humidity in there.

116. When’s the last time the heat index was reported as an actual temperature? It hasn’t been, but it looks like they’re trying to get away with doing that now.

RUSH THEN

An hour ago, the wind chill factor in New York City was minus two. In Chicago, an hour ago, the wind chill factor was minus 19. An hour ago, the wind chill factor in Washington was minus one. In Philadelphia, an hour ago, the wind chill factor was minus eight. Make a note, ladies and gentlemen: whenever it’s hot outside, we get news story after news story about global warming. Now that it is freezing, record cold  [Moe’s translation: not manufactured] . . . Now that it’s cold, record cold out there, we will not see any news stories on the major networks questioning global warming. There is one in the LA Times today: “Game Over on Global Warming?” with a question mark after it. It has some interesting statistics in it, but not one story — not one story — will we see about global warming maybe not being real, in the middle of record cold.

Both measurements come from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, a division of the communist and very gay Commerce Department. The discerning Mr. Limbaugh of course, knows which is worthy of belief.

“The criminalization of American society”

On his blog, Jonathan Turley keeps an eye on stories that mostly fly below the media radar. Turley is a law professor at George Washington University and appears periodically on the cables for legal commentary.

From today:

Michigan woman criminally charged for vegetable garden in her own front yard

Julie Bass is facing a misdemeanor charge in Oak Park, Michigan. Her crime? Planting vegetables in her own front yard. It is the latest example of the criminalization of American society . . .

How about this one?

Arkansas man arrested after videotaping police from his own front yard

 . . . a video has been released of a Jonesboro, Arkansas man who arrested after filming police conduct a search of a neighbor’s vehicle and body. The video was taken last year . . .

Police officers then confront the man for . . .  threaten him with a variety of possible charges from disturbing the peace to disorderly conduct to obstruction. Since when is it a crime to swear at officers?

The man is rude and clearly hostile to police. . . [but] Police are trained to deal with obnoxious and hostile people which is an unfortunate reality of the job. The response is not to demand identification when insulted and threaten arrest.

This one?

Good citizen, bad arrest: New York woman arrested after videotaping police – from her own front yard.

. . . new report of police arresting a citizen because she videotaped them — this time from her own front yard. According to his report, a woman named Emily Good was arrested after videotaping an arrest of a man at a traffic stop in Rochester, New York.

Deeply disturbing:

California family hit with SWAT raid . . . ordered by the Department of Education

In Stockton, California, Kenneth Wright was at home with his three young children ages 3, 7, and 11 when a SWAT team burst into his home at 6 a.m., dragged him out on the lawn, threw him to the ground, and put the family (including the kids) in squad cars. His alleged crime: default on student loans.

Add to ‘criminalization of American society, the ‘militarization of American police’. The first three arrests/threats of arrest are wrong, very wrong; but they could be attributed to a misunderstanding of the law by the officers involved. Or just regular abusive behavior by the police.

The SWAT story, however, should terrify you. It’s an extra-legal escalation.

Just like Upton Sinclair*

First, an aside: Here, now, and right up there next to the essential new noun ‘truthiness‘, comes an essential new verb, ‘acorned’.   I found it this morning and apologize to the original author for already forgotting where it came from. It’s a very good new word, so I expect we will  see it everywhere soon.

Now, on to the post: NPR has a posted a detailed examination of the latest James O’Keefe sting. He’s the guy who considers himself a muckraking journalist. He’s not. He’s a muckraking fabulist. Some months back O’Keefe took down Acorn with a fraudulent report. He tried to do the same with Sen. Mary Landreau but he got caught, breaking into her office and files. That’s a crime and he pled guilty. Most recently, he took down a bit of  NPR’s credibility the same way, using wildly edited surepticious audio and video. Guy has a terrific record. His success is only possible in our current cable news and internet climate where any video must be shown long before it’s truthiness is ascertained.

I can’t summarize what NPR has at the link (a bit late guys!) but here’s a bit from Jonathan Turley’s post:

Mom must be proud

 

For example, the tape released to the public shows Schiller laughing with the men as they described how their “organization sought to spread the acceptance of sharia across the world.” NPR notes that “[i]n reality, as the longer tape shows, that laughter follows an innocuous exchange as Schiller and Liley greet the two supposed donors at their table.” Other more disturbing claims of misleading edits are contained in the NPR analysis.

Also, it seems that Mr. Glenn Beck may be correct about the looming apocolypse. How else to explain that Beck’s own website The Blaze and its editor worked together with NPR on deconstructing the O’Keefe hack job.

(*Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle exposed the practices of the American meat processing industry leading to wide reforms – and no doubt saving thousands of lives.)

Huh? A Jewish fatwa.

Almost. Sometimes I think the whole damn world is running backward (like in that first Superman movie when the big guy reversed the earth’s rotation to get back to a time when he could save Lois Lane. Cuz she’d had a little accident and bitten the dust – and he had a bit of a crush on her).

There’s a nasty bit of 16th Century thinking in attitudes toward women among fundamentalist groups of all religions. We have become very familiar with its face in some Islamists.  It’s rampant right in our own country – and downright dogma with certain Christian groups (see ‘The Family’ or C-Street). And now I see this remarkable headline at Jonathan Turley‘s blog:

Leading Israeli Rabbi bans women from driving

The chief rabbi in the city of Holon, Avraham Yosef, has issued a religious decree banning women from driving — again bringing extremists in both Islam and Judaism to a mutually agreeable position with regard to women’s rights.