Video clip of the day

We’ve noted many times over the years, the selective outrage of progressives whereby when civil rights abuses that had their collective heads exploding during the Bush years is met with absolute silence when those same (and more) civil rights abuses are doubled-down upon during this current Presidency.


Our buddy “JD” (follow him on Twitter @PSUDrozz) took the differing reactions as tacit approval of the current President’s actions noting that the “outrage’’ directed at Bush wasn’t genuine and merely represented jealousy.


We have found no better example of this than the President’s contention that he has the right to kill American citizens overseas without any real cause, due process or oversight. The very people who flipped out over the fact we waterboarded 3 people are pretty OK with the fact that this administration has wacked the same number of people including the innocent teenage son of the dead-by-drone Anwar al-Awlaki.


People, perhaps blissfully unaware that they live in a constitutional republic, allayed our fears by telling us these un-constitutional powers wielded by the President were fine because they simply trusted President Obama on the matter.


Never mind what the next person who occupies the Oval Office and who, obviously, will be of less a magnanimous and saintly character than Barack H. Obama and what that person will do with these powers.




Blogger Mark Dice goes to the beach and meets with great success a petition supporting President Obama’s efforts to repeal the Bill of Rights. Statists/Progressives running amok or simply low information voters swayed by Dice’s oratory persuasiveness? Either way, it’s pretty depressing.








We like to think the "sell" was made that much easier by mentioning the name of a person who despite his wretched policies, remains very personally popular.

Video Clip of the Day

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Reason.com's Matt Welch talks IRS and NSA surveillance with Stuart Varney on Fox's Business Network:



(Doggone it. So sorry, no embed. Please go here for 4 minute video)



The flippant who cares? attitude we have heard as a defense of the NSA snooping as in "I'm not doing anything wrong, what's the big deal?" is troublesome. In a vacuum, government represents, by varying degrees, an existential threat to our freedoms and liberties. The Founders realized this and that is precisely why the Bill of Rights is essentially a can't-do list for the federal government, a bugger-off and mind your own business manifesto.


But we're not living in a vacuum now are we? Matt Welch gets into this with respect to the IRS and its bullying of conservative groups seeking tax exempt status. Welch contends that it is actually a far greater problem if there is an entrenched, even intractable political bias within this powerful government agency rather than its employees acting upon orders from Washington DC as has been suggested by at least one Cincinnati office employee. One or two bad eggs can be taken out but institutional bias is forever.


Knowing what we do then about the IRS and the Department of Justice going after Associated Press reporters and naming Fox News reporter James Rosen as a criminal co-conspirator in two separate leak investigations, it would take a suspension of disbelief of the highest order to simply shrug off the deeds of the NSA in this snooping scandal as a who cares?


Again, even in a vacuum, it's always been our contention that the burden of proof with respect to wrong-doing by the government resides with that very government. With the IRS and now the NSA our consented-to government has much to answer for and we can't say we are necessarily re-assured with what we've been hearing so far.


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Completely ineffectual gun laws may have some effect after all

Moralizing and do-gooding state legislatures and governors are finding out their gun control laws are having some unintended consequences.



From Breitbart.com:

Six gun companies have announced plans to stop selling any of their products to any government agency in states that severely limit the rights of private gun ownership.

Disappointed with New York State lawmakers and other jurisdictions around the country who have passed strict gun control legislation, the companies—composed of firearm manufacturers, gunsmiths, and sporting goods retailers—have announced these policies in the past week.

Their various statements emphasize that such laws create a class of government employees with rights and and a class of citizens without rights. Thus, they refuse to aid the enforcement of such inequality.

A sampling of these companies' statements:

Extreme Firepower Inc, LLC:

The Federal Government and several states have enacted gun control laws that restrict the public from owning and possessing certain types of firearms. Law-enforcement agencies are typically exempt from these restrictions. EFI, LLC does not recognize law-enforcement exemptions to local, state, and federal gun control laws. If a product that we manufacture is not legal for a private citizen to own in a jurisdiction, we will not sell that product to a law-enforcement agency in that jurisdiction.

LaRue Tactical:

Effective today, in an effort to see that no legal mistakes are made by LaRue Tactical and/or its employees, we will apply all current State and Local Laws (as applied to civilians) to state and local law enforcement / government agencies. In other words, LaRue Tactical will limit all sales to what law-abiding citizens residing in their districts can purchase or possess.

(italics, ours)

Nice touch with the legal angle no doubt as protection from getting sued as has happened in the past, however, without incurring damages.


State officials are finding out that gun owners and 2nd amendment supporters never believed the 2nd amendment to be about skeet shooting and hunting rather a healthy skepticism of the government and particularly an armed government to the exclusion of a law-abiding public.

Never before in our lifetime has this skepticism been brought into sharper focus than two weeks ago with the revelation of a Department of Justice memo putting forth the justification that "informed" people within the executive branch have the power to kill Americans overseas given the flimsiest of pretexts and with zero due process and oversight.

And if you are OK with this because of what you will assume to be the righteous application of this extra-legal power because of the ultimate wisdom and benevolence of the current Commander-in-Chief, then what of his successor?

But back to guns and the 2nd amendment and it's position there within the Bill of Rights: it's almost as if the Founders were saying, "We know the rights contained within the 1st amendment may, in the future, not be so terribly popular with the ruling class... what do we think we ought to do next?"

We do not, for a second, believe that 1-2 punch to be a coincidence. Rights granted by God or inherency but protected by the individual should the government decide to renege on its obligations.


Now, time for some puppy pictures and Cheezburger: what the interwebs were actually created for.

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What we've been tweeting

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Tweet: After about 4 years, finally see that A-A constitutional scholar we've all been hearing about.



This in response to rapper/actor Ice-T's response to New York Mayor Nanny Bloomberg's completely insane public assertion that the NYPD go on strike until stricter gun control laws are passed.



From the New York Sun:

In the wake of the tragedy at Aurora, however, Ice-T fetched up on a television broadcast at Britain and, according to an account at Eonline.com, declared, “I’ll give up my gun when everybody else does” and explained that owning guns is legal in America. “It’s part of our Constitution,” Ice-T said. “The right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny.

Nothing more to add, here.


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Video clip of the day

Via Dueling Bar Stools:


Rand Paul (R-KY) on the confiscatory nature of alleged "rights".

"It's not an abstraction."

"If I'm a physician in your neighborhood and you say you have a right to health care, do you have a right to beat down my door and with the police escort me away and force me to take care of you?"

If you live in Indiana, the answer is an emphatic "yes!" Paul is right - these aren't abstractions. The confluence of declaring health care a right and the authorities' unfettered ability to enter your home, no matter how unlawful the reason, makes what he is describing above a real-life scenario.

Indiana State Supreme Court: your house no longer your castle (UPDATED)

(please scroll to bottom of post for update)

"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's the text of the 4th amendment. Pretty important stuff, huh?

Not so in Indiana, apparently...

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.

"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."

David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.

(italics, ours)

Well, that's good to know. But wouldn't that be a tad after the fact?

Aside from the obvious, what makes this truly stunning is that Stevens acknowledges the unlawful nature of entries and determines that resisting unlawfulness is unlawful in and of itself... for public policy.

Of course this public policy is a sop to safety or something.

Stevens even invokes the 4th amendment to essentially declare the 4th amendment null and void. Unreal.

Read about the case at the link provided as the majority doesn't even bother to narrowly apply their decision to preventing impending domestic violence but rather chucks long-standing common law by saying the police can bust into your crib for any damn reason they please.

As far as not wanting to "escalate the level of violence", it might interest Stevens to know that we fought a war, in part, to keep soldiers, police... anybody... out of our homes without warrant.


Is this what people go to law school to learn?



(UPDATE #1): Uh-oh. Turns out, Stevens was a Mitch Daniels appointee. (H/T: Leslie from the comment section)

Along with his support of ethanol subsidies, count this as another strike against Daniels in the Republican primaries. In trying to rationalize on behalf of Daniels, can you be held accountable for one of your judges going completely rogue?

The decision rendered by Stevens is no longer really a liberal vs. conservative issue in our humble opinion as it strikes at the core of restrictions on what powers can be exercised over you, your house and your possessions by the government and completely wipes them away. We would hope that good liberals everywhere are as similarly outraged as we are over this decision. At the end of the day, however, Daniels, who may one day be the Commander-in-Chief will be asked to make and be held accountable for many a decision that will effect all of us and his appointment of Stevens certainly does not lend itself to building a strong track record in that department.

Just what is it with Chicago, the Constitution and Constitutional scholars?

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) on the floor of the House putting forth his plan for economic revival, health care and educational reform.





Jackson appears wholy unaware of what caused the housing crash in this country as it was precisely because the housing-industrial complex sold to America home ownership as a "right", creating a market whereby people who had no business otherwise were enticed to enter the market.

And we will see what happens to the supply of doctors as the health care model moves more and more towards confiscation of goods and services as hoped for by Jackson.

And iPods and laptops...?


Congrats, Illinois' 2nd District for continuing to send a man back to Washington since 1995 who has managed to pack as much cluelessness into 90 seconds as humanly possible. The dream has finally been realized.


For more on this discussion of imposition of burden vs. "rights", head on over to Shane Atwell's blog, here.

At our service?

There's been a bit of buzz in some circles over President Obama's proposed civilian corps or "volunteer corps".

The vote yesterday came on H.R. 1388, which reauthorizes through 2014 the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, acts that originally, among other programs, funded the AmeriCorps and the National Senior Service Corps.

It not only reauthorizes the programs, but also includes "new programs and studies" and is expected to be funded with an allocation of $6 billion over the next five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Many, however, are raising concerns that the program, which is intended to include 250,000 "volunteers," is the beginning of what President Obama called his "National Civilian Security Force" in a a speech last year in which he urged creating an organization as big and well-funded as the U.S. military. He has declined since then to elaborate.

Here's the President on the subject matter:




Now, were we advising the President, we would dissuade him from any resembling course of action as a wonderful confluence of this country's abundant natural resources and the 2nd amendment has rendered this supposed "civilian national security force" moot.

The state of Wisconsin has gone an entire deer hunting season without someone getting killed. That’s great. There were over 600,000 hunters. Allow me to restate that number. Over the last two months, the eighth largest army in the world — more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined — deployed to the woods of a single American state to help keep the deer menace at bay. But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan ‘s 700,000 hunters have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it is literally the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world. America will forever be safe from foreign invasion of troops with that kind of home-grown firepower.

And as a practical political matter here's former Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every police operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? If during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever was at hand? The organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt.

Go on over to Secular Apostate's place here where he fleshes out in fine fashion the importance of our rights in defending our nation against its enemies both here and abroad.

Link of the Day

It's Constitution/Bill of Rights Day.



Go on over to B-Daddy's place to chime in on what specific cases regarding the freedoms and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution have suffered the greatest.

Taking (and securing) some liberties

"Please allow us to introduce yourselves to a document containing a wealth of restraint."


Next time you hear any whining about a particular political party being obstructionist or being the Party of "No", remember that our Constitution and specifically, the Bill of Rights is the Document of "No".

It’s a delightful cornucopia of Nos, No persons, No soldiers and shall nots. No, No, No and hell No.

So, it is against this backdrop and understanding the tone and intent of the Bill of Rights, one has to ask oneself, can the government force me to buy health insurance?

Something to keep in mind over the summer

The right to grant is also the right to deny.

When thinking of healthcare as a “right” recall our Constitution and, in particular, the Bill of Rights. The first ten amendments are negative in fashion, in that they are explicit in what the government cannot do rather than what the government can do ("There shall be no law…").

The going-in position of the Founders was “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. That’s license for a rock’n’roll lifestyle by anyone’s definition. Any constraints on the “pursuit”, however, would be self-imposed and would certainly not be within the purview of the federal government.

Despite its hallowed status, health care is really no different than automotive care, home-owner’s insurance, food, water, shelter or any other goods and services that we shop for and purchase out-of-pocket. To view it as a right granted by the government is to invite abuse of that same supposed right by that same government.

Theodore Dalrymple ties together the concepts of liberty and health care as a right in fine fashion, here.

A Homecoming of sorts

“We may be white, but we ain’t tight”… so sounded the opening of the service’s praise music session by Pastor Stan Peterson of the Guatay Christian Fellowship who returned on Sunday to the building that houses their congregation after a nine-week absence and in defiance of a County order for them to cease-and-desist worship services there as the building was zoned for selling liquor but not for worship.

We attended services at GCF on Sunday to show our support for the congregation among flip-flops, sundresses, cowboy boots, board shorts and bolo ties and to find out the latest developments regarding the situation which we covered last week, here.

We hesitated in asking too many questions as it was apparent that the congregation was just happy to return to their “home”, though, Pastor Stan made reference to the situation several times throughout the rambling, free-form, interactive 1-1/2 hr. church service. Stan is a gregarious human being who, much to the eye-rolling and out-right laughing delight of his flock, is also the master of the malaprop and matter-of-fact speech.

“Don’t be mad at the county”, he urged, “they ain’t stupid, they just do stupid stuff, sometimes…”.

The grace, good-humor and charitable spirit exhibited by the whole of the GCF towards their situation is more than we imagine we could muster were we in the same situation.

From some of the conversations we did have and from Pastor Stan’s sermon, we gathered that free legal help was being offered from literally, around the country and as a result of this and the bad press they have received, the County appeared to be in full backpedal mode. Congressman Duncan Hunter was originally going to attend services but decided not to as he believed the press he would attract would be a distraction.

Though the order remains in effect, there is a site inspection scheduled for Tuesday to take a look at standard structural items, such as, fire detection, entrances/exits, signage, parking, etc. Perhaps, the County is looking to gracefully ease their way out of this mess they have created for themselves. Then again, who knows:

Tom Bunton, senior deputy county counsel, said it is still illegal for the church to use the building, but county officials yesterday had not decided what action they would take.

We swear it - this really shouldn't be that difficult, fellas.

We want to thank the GFC and Pastor Stan for their hospitality and friendliness. We had a great time.

Their musical selections reminded us of a quote from Robbie Robertson of the Band who said, “The South, was the only region we would play where the audience would clap on the back-beat”. With that we leave you with one of our favorite songs from one of our favorite bands… Here’s Creedance Clearwater Revival’s studio version of their country-gospel number, “Don’t Look Now”