Thursday, November 18, 2010

GOP lawmaker: Full-body Scanners Violate Fourth Amendment

During a one-minute speech on the House floor, Rep. Ted Poe (Texas) also blasted former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff as a "political hack" and accused him of profiting from the proliferation of the devices.

"There is no evidence these new body scanners make us more secure. But there is evidence that former Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff made money hawking these full body scanners," Poe said.



Former Israeli Airline Security Chief: U.S. Needs To Profile Air Passengers

As criticism mounts over the use of full-body scanners and physical pat-downs at U.S. airports, the former security director for Israel’s national airline told CNSNews.com that airline security in America is an “illusion,” and that the United States should adopt El Al’s passenger profiling approach to ensure safety.

North Carolina's Twilite Broadcasters

HERE.

Via campsie, SWR

Constitution Day Essay

I asked the author if he had second thoughts concerning the conclusion considering what has transpired since 2005 when he penned this. His appropriate answer was "I haven't given it much thought. Perhaps fitting our politicians with explosive collars for the purpose of implementing recall elections would make some difference" :-)
========

"Seems that the Feds have a sense of humor. They want students to write about the very document which they ignore so well. So I decided to write something, just to exercise my brain and my typing fingers a bit.

Amending the Constitution: the issue of eligibility for Presidency.

The perfection of the US Constitution or, at least, its superiority to the alternatives has been debated ever since its drafting in 1787. While the conservative view upholds the document as the best of all available alternatives, the challenges to it come from both the authoritarians who wish for expanded state control and from libertarians who wish for the opposite. It is telling that only six of the original fifty-six signatories to the Declaration of Independence put their names of the ratified Constitution. The anti-Federalists who opposed the Constitution in its ultimate form were concerned, with good reasons, that the document curbed the central federal authority but insufficiently. They had hoped for a union closer to the original Articles of Confederation, something modeled more on the Swiss and the United Provinces (Netherlands), rather than the more centralized British model. The amendment protocol added to the Constitution was a bone thrown to those who opposed it. The first ten amendments were incorporated to safeguard the individual liberties by limiting the authority of the federal government. Similarly, state Constitutions were drafted to protect individuals, with varying success, from the excesses of their local governments. The possibility of amending the Constitution, along with the provision for law nullification by jury, was the fine-tuning mechanism provided to allay the concerns about the likely trend towards centralization of federal power. As the Great Divorce Proceedings of 1861-65 demonstrated, the safeguards failed quite soon, both on the state and the federal levels.

The amendment process has always been viewed with concern because of the possibility and even the likelihood of unintended consequences. For example, the Prohibition on alcohol, enacted by an Amendment in 1919, was a horrid failure. Fortunately, it was repealed by a subsequent Amendment, though the damage from it is still with us in the form of similar prohibitions on other goods and services, enacted under the guise of interstate commerce regulation. On the other hand, an 1865 amendment effectively ended slavery in the country, except as provided by law, such as the Selective Service. With history as our guide, we can approach the process with cautious optimism.

One of the current proposals is to allow a non-natural born citizen to become President if he has been a citizen for 20 years. The original restriction was to ensure that the first loyalty of the candidate is to the United States, not to any foreign government or culture. Ironically, none of the original American Presidents, from George Washington through William Harrison, qualified under this restriction, since all were born before 1776 as British colonial subjects. Their loyalty to their own country over the Crown was not in question.

In further consideration, let us consider whose loyalty would be more conscious and constant, that of a citizen born to that privilege, or that of an immigrant who may have risked life and limb to come to the US from elsewhere, who qualified himself deliberately for the rights and the obligations of citizenship and who is likely to be a stout patriot as a result? The original expectation of the overriding importance of nationalism to an individual can hardly stand in the light of countless counter-examples provided by immigrants throughout our history.

That this issue has risen to the importance of a proposed Constitutional Amendment, illustrated starkly how much power the Presidency has gained since its inception. That noted, the issue here is both fairness and our own self-interest. America imports many of its brightest minds and most dedicated patriots, to mutual advantage. Constraining some of the elected positions to those born in America denies us the benefit of the experience and the willing commitment of many who were not fortunate enough to be born here in body, yet always American in spirit.

Would this Amendment make a great practical difference? That is unlikely. The electorate at large is quite ignorant of both the Constitution and of the reasons behind it. Yet we can hope to place at least a small obstacle in the path of the increasing federal domination by making it possible to elect those who have experience tyranny first-hand in the countries of their birth, and who would endeavor to save their chosen homeland from the like fate.

Please urge your elected representatives to support the Amendment to extend eligibility for Presidency to foreign-born naturalized citizens with twenty years of residency."

Oleg Volk, September 2005

Turning The Trick To Save The Territorial Union

Obsessed with the destruction of the more perfect American Union to the South, and after McClellan’s (105,000 men) crushing defeat by Lee (80,000 men), Lincoln withheld news of military disasters while snookering governors into raising more troops for his army of conquest. To satisfy Lincoln’s endless demands for troops, Seward scoured Europe for mercenaries, Northern governors counted captured slaves from the South against their quotas, and bounties from cities, counties and States put many men in blue who would not otherwise fight.

Regarding McClellan’s defeat at Gaines’s Mill, the Comte de Paris related that “Far from letting the people know what was taking place around Richmond, the Secretary of War…gave out that the Army of the Potomac had undertaken a strategic movement which would result in the capture of Richmond.”

Bernhard Thuersam, Director

Cape Fear Historical Institute

========

Turning the Trick to Save the Territorial Union:

“The defeat of General [George] McClellan’s right wing at Gaines’s Mill [June 1862] was a shock to President Lincoln and his cabinet, who were daily anticipating the capture of the Confederate capital. It was hard for them to realize that the expensively equipped Grand Army, on which their hopes and expectations of swiftly ending the war were fixed, had turned its back on Richmond.

President Lincoln, on further weighing McClellan’s despondent telegram, felt assured that the Peninsula campaign was about to end in failure and that a new levy of troops would be necessary. Yet, while he wanted volunteers badly, he was, as he says in a carefully prepared letter to Secretary [William] Seward, fearful that “a general panic and stampede would follow” if he “publicly appealed to the country for this new force”; for the desperate strait of the Federal army on the Peninsula was being withheld from the people. How otherwise than by direct call, queries Bancroft [Life of Seward], “could a hundred thousand new soldiers be obtained? Seward was a master of political strategy, and Lincoln was no novice. Here is the device: it was principally Seward’s.”

Seward, taking with him Lincoln’s letter just mentioned and an equally adroit letter to the governors of Northern States, hurried to New York and other cities for personal and telegraphic conferences with such governors and other men of influence as could meet them. During these conferences Seward so shaped matters that the responsibility for a new levy was seemingly shifted from the President and assumed by the governors of the several States. To give the appearance of reality to the transaction he formulated a petition for the loyal governors to sign.

The petition recites: “The undersigned, governors of the states of the union, impressed with the belief that the citizens of the states which they respectfully represent are of one accord in the hearty desire that the recent successes of the Federal arms may be followed up…that you at once call on the several states for such equal numbers of me …as may in your judgment be necessary to garrison and hold all the numerous cities and military positions that have been captured by our armies and to speedily crush the rebellion.”

To this uniquely contrived petition, the President graciously replied: “Fully concurring in the wisdom of the views expressed to me in so patriotic a manner by you…I have decided to call into the service an additional force of three hundred thousand men.” When the correspondence, “purporting to be the voluntary request of eighteen governors to the President,” was published on July 2, the people were still ignorant of McClellan’s discomfiture.

When they learned that the army had been driven to Harrison’s Landing, the trick had been turned. “The alarm and anger of the North,” adds Bancroft, “were great, but the prospects of having large reinforcements saved the administration from serious embarrassments.” Under this call 421,465 men were secured. To stimulate volunteering Secretary Stanton agreed, at Seward’s request, to go beyond his lawful authority and advance $25 out of the $100 bounty promised to each recruit.”

(The History of North Carolina in the War Between the States, Volume II, Bethel to Sharpsburg, Daniel Harvey Hill, Edwards & Broughton, 1926, pp. 128-130)

Help Ron Paul Fight Back Against Airport Scanners And Gropers


Fight Back Against Airport Scanners and Gropers!

Enough is enough! Support Ron Paul's "American Traveller Dignity Act of 2010" (H.R. 6416) to begin turning the tables on the TSA's highhanded and unconstitutional bodily inspection procedures.

Click here for 5-minute video of Ron Paul's "Enough is enough!" speech in the House on November 17, during which he explains his bill and the need for the TSA to stop treating Americans like cattle.

Read "Ron Paul on TSA Abuse: 'Enough Is Enough'" at TheNewAmerican.com for further information.

Here's the full-text of Ron Paul's H.R. 6416:

To ensure that certain Federal employees cannot hide behind immunity.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `American Traveller Dignity Act of 2010'.

SEC. 2. NO IMMUNITY FOR CERTAIN AIRPORT SCREENING METHODS.

No law of the United States shall be construed to confer any immunity for a Federal employee or agency or any individual or entity that receives Federal funds, who subjects an individual to any physical contact (including contact with any clothing the individual is wearing), x-rays, or millimeter waves, or aids in the creation of or views a representation of any part of a individual's body covered by clothing as a condition for such individual to be in an airport or to fly in an aircraft. The preceding sentence shall apply even if the individual or the individual's parent, guardian, or any other individual gives consent.



Enough is enough! Let's stop allowing ourselves to be treated like cattle!

If you support H.R. 6416, let your representative and senators know immediately!

Thanks.

Your friends at The John Birch Society

Trace Adkins: The Last Shot’s Not Been Fired In States’ Rights Fight

“I’ve had a lot of people over the years ask me, ‘Why’s your hair so long?,’” said Adkins. “The answer to that question is, towards the end of the war when the outcome was obvious to everybody, there were a group of incredibly dedicated Confederate soldiers who said, ‘For me this issue is not settled, and until the issue is settled, I’m not going to cut my hair.’ Neither will I.”

Via T

Harvard's Hideous History: Famous Portraits Are Too White

"Here's one of the most insane stories of political correctness run wild that I have come across in quite some time: Harvard University is deeply embarrassed by its history as a historically White college."

Via Conservative Heritage Times

What Is States’ Rights? Part III

“ … The distribution of powers between the federal and state governments is usually accomplished by means of a written constitution, for a federation does not exist if authority can be allocated by ordinary legislation. …”

"Today it would be laughable to state that the federal government does not create “new” authority from not only legislation but also judicial edict and historically has also used armed aggression. One does not have to look very far to find examples of federal government laws that are obviously beyond the scope that any of the Founding Fathers or Framers of the Constitution of 1787 could have conceive."

Cut Expenditures And Taxes Not Expressly Authorized By Constitution

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
--James Madison
========
"Start by identifying expenditures and taxes which are not expressly authorized by our Constitution, and schedule them for termination."

Preparing For The "Civil War" Propaganda Blitz

Patriot Post
"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy. ... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened."
--Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations

========
"Translation: We need a federally funded committee to make sure the propagandized rewriting of our history continues through this period so that everyone finally becomes convinced that this war was fought only so the South could keep her slaves and for no other reason."

Via taurusndixie, SWR

I Wish I Was Elsewhere........ Perhaps In Sherwood Forest

"I wish I was elsewhere
I wish I was else-when
Than after the Patriot Act
In a lonely final stand

The night was like any other
My wife and son were in bed
When I awoke from slumber
And walked barefoot to the den

I didn't turn on any lights
Because the house was mine
I knew every turn and crevice
Could move like a cat in the dark

I wish I was elsewhere
I wish I was else-when
Than remembering the moments
After the door was rammed

I hear glass break upstairs
And then concussion grenades
Lit up the bedrooms above me
With roar fit to wake the dead

My wife and I had assumed
That intruders were just a gang
For we'd never done anything
To merit this pre-dawn raid

My wife and son tried to fight
The ninjas behind bright lights
But they were alone and stunned
I heard rattle of MP-fives

I wish I was elsewhere
I wish I was else-when
And not in my ruined home
With my family freshly dead

I thought to my self: "I am dreaming"
This gang just couldn't be Feds
But they acted just as one would expect
Shooting women and children dead

They hadn't found me yet
As I wasn't asleep in bed
My deer rifle was close by
What I wanted to say, it said

I retreated and so did they
Watching me from the outside
From the basement I still could tell
That they set my house on fire

In the choking smoke, I could just wait
Barefoot on cement basement floor
I wanted to take just one more of them
On my journey to the Beyond

I wish I was elsewhere
I wish I was else-when
Instead of this cold basement
At bay like a cornered rat

One more coal-scuttle helmet
Came up above barricade
And though my hands were shaky
I connected the one shot I made

The heat got beyond enduring
But the smoke, it got me first
And the house became a pyre
For me and two other corpses

The newspapers ran the story
That a three-person terrorist cell
Were taken down in pre-dawn hours
And that two brave policemen fell

I wish I was elsewhere
I wish I was else-when
Perhaps in the Sherwood Forest
With like-minded armed men."

Oleg Volk

Chechnya - A Decade of War And The Lost Boys Portraits Of Russian Conscripts

Here and HERE.



A Public High School Fifty Years Ago

SHOOTING GOES TO SCHOOL

Why Nazism Was Socialism And Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

"My purpose today is to make just two main points: (1) To show why Nazi Germany was a socialist state, not a capitalist one. And (2) to show why socialism, understood as an economic system based on government ownership of the means of production, positively requires a totalitarian dictatorship."