You get what you deserve

It's been a brutal week and a half, in more ways than one.

On St. Patrick's Day weekend, the New York Occupiers retook their Liberty Square to commemorate six months of the Occupy movement -- and predictably, the police swarmed in on them with vicious brutality. A video on the Occupy site shows the cops ramming a man's head into a glass door and cracking the glass. Another woman suffered a seizure, and the cops looked on and did nothing after tackling her and dragging her by the head to a holding area. (This is the same woman who, in an Occupy scuffle last year with the police, was called a "bitch cunt" by an officer of the law after he pepper-sprayed her, knocked her down, stepped on her head, and told her, "You get what you deserve.") In the aftermath, five members of the City Council decried the brutality, and activists are calling for the resignation of the police commissioner.

In passing, the Occupy site mentions that the media were not allowed to cover the events. Whose idea was it to nullify the First Amendment right to freedom of the press, and why would the media comply? Of course, it's obvious why the cops don't want any press coverage, given how they're moving in with their riot gear and arsenal of weapons, looking like military squadrons, and cracking down hard on even peaceful Occupy protests. No wonder so many cops around the country are trying to intimidate people into not videotaping them in action, sometimes claiming that recording them somehow violates wiretap laws. When you're a desperate thug, you'll apparently do anything not to get caught on camera. It's OK if the government constantly has cameras turned on you, of course. That's perfectly fine.

And naturally, they have to keep tabs on all of us, because doing so much as breaking out in goosebumps might mean you're a terrorist. That's what the New Jersey Office of Fatherland, er, Homeland Security says in a new release aimed at helping residents spot Bad Guys. Other signs you might be ready to blow up a building? Yawning, sweating, and fidgeting. Both pacing around and standing rigidly still should set off alarm bells, too. So basically, any action you might take, consciously or otherwise, in public can now mark you as a terrorist threat. This news, of course, follows earlier FBI guidelines telling merchants to watch out for people who pay with cash. If you're missing limbs, have more than seven days of food stored up, quote the Constitution, or support Ron Paul, you might be a terrorist, too.

Yeah, you know Ron Paul, right? The guy who has massive grassroots support but whose message is constantly blacked out by the media, and whose voters are disenfranchised in caucuses and primaries around the country by big-government neocons who are terrified of being exposed as the frauds they are. All you hear in the media is how also-ran Ron Paul lost again, if he's mentioned at all. Those of us paying attention hear instead the chilling words of Joseph Stalin: "I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this -- who will count the votes, and how."

The system is so corrupt that it's not even worth voting -- and most Americans are too lazy or stupid to care.



American expat blogger Fred Reed sees the rampant corruption and likens America to a Third World country, where bribery and graft are ubiquitous. But at least in those places, people are aware of it. In America, it takes place in a formalized setting, characterizing the relationship between corporations and government, among other things:

In the United States, corruption occurs at the level of policy and contracts, between corporations, special interests, and Congress. It is done gracefully and usually legally. For example, Big Pharma pays Congress to insert, in some voluminous bill that almost no one will read, a clause saying that the government will pay list price for drugs instead of negotiating for a better price. Over time, this is worth hundreds of millions, paid by you. Yet the clause is legal. Or military industry pays Congress to buy an enormously expensive and unneeded airplane. It's legal. Read the bill. Or agribusiness pays Congress to cough up large subsidies. Also legal.

But it's not limited to corporate/political back-scratching:

Large groups -- blacks, women, Indians, unions -- bribe or intimidate Congress into giving them special privilege: affirmative action, racial and gender set-asides, casinos, loans and preferences from the Small Business Administration according to sex and ethnicity. Corruption, plain and simple. But legal.

And why is it all happening?

In America, the Constitution is largely and increasingly ignored by the government. Constitutionally the three branches of government are co-equal, but in practice the Supreme Court is of little consequence and Congress is the action arm of a corporate oligarchy. Constitutionally Congress must declare war, but now the president sends combat troops wherever he pleases and Congress reads about it in the Washington Post. The president can order citizens murdered, ignore habeas corpus, monitor and store email. The government can search you at will with no pretense of probable cause. Third World.

Yet the one guy in the presidential race who wants to restore America to its limited-government constitutional principles is by turns ignored, denied votes, and labeled unelectable, too extreme, a fringe nutcase.

And Americans are too busy watching American Idol to care. No one cared when NDAA gave Obama the right to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges. No one cared when he signed HR 347 and essentially outlawed peaceful assembly. No one cares that he's allowed spy agencies to retain collected information on American citizens, without oversight, for up to five years, where the same information previously had to be immediately destroyed if no links to terrorism were discovered.

And now no one seems to care that he signed the National Defense Resources Preparedness executive order, which allows him to federalize any resource, including forcing citizens to fulfill needed "labor requirements," for the vague purpose of "national defense." In combination with the NDAA's declaration that the entire world is a battlefield in the never-ending War on Terror, this pretty much means we're under martial law, right now and indefinitely into the future.

What's frightening is that Obama hasn't even taken the gloves off yet. Discussing foreign policy with Russia's prime minister, he was caught on an open mic saying that he'll have "more flexibility" to deal with hot-button issues once he's re-elected and can't run for office again. In other words, once he's no longer accountable to the voters, it's really going to get fun.

Here's a taste of what NDRP has in store for you:



It's been noted that this executive order is an update of previous ones dating back several decades, with the revised version putting Fatherland Security -- which didn't exist during the last iteration -- in charge of carrying out the orders within. But there are two things to note here: (1) An unconstitutional power grab isn't OK just because it's already existed for years, and (2) there is one major difference in the rewrite, in that the implementation of the provisions of the executive order are no longer restricted to wartime or states of emergency -- they can be put into action during for purposes of "national defense," which could be pretty much anything the government wants it to be. Language new and exclusive to this version specifically states that these actions can be taken "under both emergency and non-emergency conditions."

Obama signed the order on a Friday afternoon, which is what legislators do when they don't want anyone paying attention to what they're doing. He similarly signed NDAA into law on New Year's Eve, when everyone was out partying. Seemed to work like a charm in both cases, since the mainstream press dutifully ignored both actions.

And if anyone doubts just how much the media regularly manipulates public opinion and shapes what people care about, look at the endless chatter about this black kid who was shot and killed by Someone Who Wasn't Black. Sadly, people kill people every day. Whites kill whites. Blacks kill blacks. Blacks kill whites. But when a half-white guy kills a black kid, the media blows it up into front-page news with screaming headlines and turns it into a tired lecture on race relations. And the public dutifully plays right into their hands. One online petition calling for the killer's prosecution (he apparently says he was acting in self-defense, and there were no witnesses) has garnered more than 400,000 signatures, and marches are being organized all over the country. Hell, I never even heard of this kid until my Facebook page lit up with it in the aftermath. It's amazing how much power the "off" button on your TV has.

Now, imagine if people got this stirred up about things that really mattered. Imagine if the media beat the drum this hard over a guy who predicted the housing meltdown, a guy who called out the corruption and lack of accountability in the Federal Reserve long before it was printing money to bail out the banks that caused the meltdown (and secretly sent cash overseas), a guy who called "blowback" while everyone else was focused on engaging in more of the activity that led to the blowback in the first place. They could tell you there's a guy running for president who has a plan to rein in out-of-control spending and work on our massive, crippling national debt. They could mention that he embraces the Constitution and the limits it places on the government in defense of personal liberty. The dutiful public's reaction to the current feeding frenzy over the murdered kid proves how easy it is to lead people around by the nose and manipulate public opinion. If they wanted to, the press could make the Ron Paul Revolution the biggest story in this election cycle, and viewers would lap it right up.

But they don't. And they don't because the media and the major political parties are both slaves to the corporations and special interests that own them. And they're not about to draw attention to the guy who threatens to tear down their power structure. As Fred Reed observes:

Many Americans I suspect will insist that the press is free, because they are repeatedly told that it is, because they have nothing to which to compare it, and because the control is most adroitly managed. But it exists.

In America control does not work as it did in the USSR, by savagely punishing the least expression of undesired ideas; this would be obvious and arouse opposition. American control works on the principle of fooling enough of the people, enough of the time.

Strictly speaking, the US does have a free press. You can easily buy the books of David Duke, Karl Marx, Hitler, or Malcolm X. The trick is that few read. Television and newspapers rule, and they are owned by large corporations concerned with furthering the interests of large corporations.

Those interests are maximizing the viewership for advertising, which is where the money comes from; keeping the lid on in a country in which various groups would be at each other's throats if demagogues were allowed to provide the spark; keeping corporations from suffering any sort of control, and furthering the political agendas of the media.

Thus you never, ever, allow serious criticism of Israel, and you never, ever, allow an articulate Palestinian to offer his views. You do not allow any coverage of crime by blacks, which might lead to social upheaval. You do not allow distressing reportage of the wars -- a little girl looking in puzzlement at her bowels hanging out thanks to shrapnel. You do not do any serious investigative reporting of corporate corruption. And so on. Keep it bland. Keep it reassuring.

Don't let, say, a cop talk about what really goes on, or a GI to talk about what soldiers really do in Afghanistan, and don't let political debates touch on substance. Don't allow, for example, unrehearsed questions: "Mr. Santorum, can you name in order the countries that border on Iran?" Oh no. One mustn't reveal to the voters that neither they nor the candidates know what they are talking about. Better to maintain the illusion of Informed Citizens Engaging in Democracy.

We will pay a price for refusing to take off our blinders and see what's going on all around us in plain sight. As H.L. Mencken once said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." And "good and hard" is exactly how it'll feel when an overbearing cop has his boot on your head, telling you that you're getting what you deserve.

By that time, even if you finally do wake up and realize that this isn't what America is supposed to be, it may well be too late to do anything about it.

Keeping you safe from 3-year-olds in wheelchairs

Well, the TSA goons strike again. This time, the terrorist threat was a 3-year-old boy in a wheelchair, on his way to a Disney vacation with his family. There could be explosives hidden in that leg cast, you know.



The frightened boy's parents were prohibited from approaching him while he was touched all over his body by the Government Stranger. He even had to lift his shirt, so he could be swabbed to check for incendiaries.

If this doesn't make you sick enough, some of the accompanying comments at Huffington Post should:

If someone in a private booth can see the outline of my junk, whatever. ... How can we have reasonable security with zealots that scream "privacy" for EVERYTHING?

Yeah, because why should I mind if a complete stranger can see me naked? That privacy stuff is so overrated.

What is the matter with people, how do you please them? Do we want security or comfort, privacy and the whole nine yards?

Oh, we want security, at the expense of all else. By the way, the government will be over to your house tomorrow to install security cameras in every room, just so they can keep tabs on you and make sure you aren't building bombs in your free time. You're fine with that, right?

Just part of the post 9/11 world we live in get used to it its not changing anytime soon.

That's right. Just roll over and submit. Exactly what they want.

I didn't see anything wrong with the way the TSA did their job. In these times these are the rules to flying now and for all of you that are bitching about how the TSA is doing their job stop. Do you want to be safe or dead your choice?

Somewhat hilariously, the above commenter wrapped up by stating, "I'm tired of Americans being scared of their own shadow !!!" Apparently, he is oblivious to the cognitive dissonance.

My own grandchild had leg surgery at Shriners when she was three. If she was flying at the time and TSA thought it was necessary to pat her down, I would be fine with it. I am more concerned with everyone arriving safely than I am with political correctness. TSA is part of the flying experience - they are not the enemy. Deal with it.

What a lucky grandchild, learning such important lessons about being secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. Best to teach them when they're young to submit to the government wherever and whenever.

We should be glad someone is checking! ... Prepare your children for the "pat down" possibility before traveling. If they are very young and you do not want to scare them, tell them the "airport guys" may play a game with them while checking in and you are part of the game. They won't be surprised and will feel lucky they were selected to "play."

Remember when we told you that you should never let strangers touch you in your private areas, little Timmy? Well, it's OK when the stranger at the airport does it.

Better safe than sorry. No one can be trusted, unfortunately.

Least of all the government.

Look, everyone with half a brain knows this is just theater. The TSA doesn't keep anyone safe by groping children, asking a 95-year-old woman to remove her adult diaper, or telling amputees to remove their artificial limbs -- all of which they've done. They do what they do to give frightened Americans the illusion of safety when they get on a plane. Just remember: The TSA didn't catch the Shoe Bomber or the Underwear Bomber. It was other passengers who stopped them.

To all those who are so willing to let the government run wild, no matter what the cost to our liberties, I have few quotes of my own to share:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin

If ye love ... the tranquility of servitude [better] than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. -- Samuel Adams

Where have all the patriots gone?

The shining city on a hill, shrouded in darkness

I think I first realized that I was repulsed by my nation's foreign policy when we invaded Iraq the first time, back in early 1991. I did an oral report on antiwar movements that year in one of my political science classes, and when I criticized our involvement in Iraq, I remember one angry, burly kid shooting up out of his chair, pointing a finger at me, and saying in a loud, authoritative voice, "If you don't like this country, leave."

I finished my report by playing Country Joe McDonald's Woodstock performance of the "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag," which includes these salient lines:

And it's 1-2-3, what are we fightin' for?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,

The next stop is Vietnam.

 What are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn. That pretty much summed up the American attitude at the time of the Gulf War. "Support Our Troops" became a national mantra. Everywhere you looked, the slogan popped up on bumper stickers, billboards, ball caps, and T-shirts. Yellow ribbons popped up everywhere. Saddam Hussein, naturally, was cast as the convenient villain, even though our own government had been directly supporting him for years.

Donald Rumsfeld, then a special envoy to Ronald Reagan, shaking hands with U.S. ally Saddam Hussein, 1983.

And now Saddam had to be stopped because … why? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn.

Oh, that's right, because Iraq invaded Kuwait. And this was of significance to us because … why? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn.

Well, obviously, it was because being in Kuwait put Iraq too close to the Saudi oil fields. It's always about money -- and if it's the Middle East, it's always about oil. Yet if you so much as suggested that we shouldn't shed blood for oil, you were reviled as an America-hater. You didn't dare question your nation's motives. Here, watch the flag-waving spectacle at the Super Bowl and start chanting "USA! USA!" -- as if invading a nation and killing people is akin to some kind of sporting event. Now be a good, obedient citizen and stop asking questions.

A few years later, before he left office, Bush the Elder took on an anti-Gulf War protestor by shouting at him -- and I'm paraphrasing because I can't find a clip of it anywhere -- "If we wouldn't have invaded, you'd be paying 20 bucks a gallon for gas!" It was a quick clip on one of the nightly news programs, and I don't remember anyone making a big deal about it at the time, but to me it was mind-blowing. After being told over and over that the war was about protecting Kuwait's sovereignty and stopping big, bad Saddam Hussein, here was an off-handed admission that it was indeed about oil after all -- just as the critics had said all along.

Things like that make you wonder just how honorable our intentions have been in most of the wars we've been involved in. Let's face it: Most of them have had nothing to do with national self-defense or aiding our allies. And a lot of them were built on lies, from the non-attack in the Gulf of Tonkin that led to Vietnam, to the fake concern for Kuwaitis in the Gulf War, to the complete fabrications about WMDs in Iraq that led to the post-9/11 invasion.

But even worse, how do we act, how do we comport ourselves as representatives of America -- that beacon of democracy and freedom, Reagan's "shining city on a hill" -- once we've invaded and hostilities have begun?

Well, we could go back as far as the many atrocities visited upon the American Indians, but let's start with the recent past, because that gives us plenty to talk about all by itself. In Vietnam, more than 300 civilians were massacred at My Lai, with at least one girl raped before she was murdered. Marines killed two dozen unarmed men, women, and children in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005. And who can forget the repugnant images from Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were tortured, beaten, and sexually humiliated by our fine men and women in uniform?

The subject is fresh in my mind following this past week's news that an American soldier went nuts and killed 16 people in Afghanistan. The soldier was whisked out of the country before he could face local justice for his part in the murder spree -- which, according to one witness, may have involved more than just one soldier and resulted in the death of a 2-month-old baby, among other innocent children. The same witness said the people killed in one home had their bodies piled together and set on fire.

This, of course, follows the January video showing American soldiers relieving themselves on dead Afghan bodies, and the February news of Koran burnings at a U.S. base in Afghanistan.

Stay classy, U.S. military.

Much more happens like this in places where cameras aren't rolling to document it. The CIA runs a number of off-the-grid detention centers around the world, and a series of U.N. investigations revealed that torture is common in these places:

American interrogators force their captives to take off their clothes and remain naked for indefinite periods. They also gag detainees and shut their eyes while hanging them from the cell ceiling for long hours.

And if anyone thought Peace Prize winner Obama -- drone-bomber extraordinare, assassin of U.S. citizens, and destroyer of American citizens' right to trial -- was any better than his predecessor when it comes to human rights, the same report, from 2011, notes that the number of detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan has "tripled since the end of the Bush administration" and that they're held "without any charge or due legal process."

Among the horrors reported by those held at Bagram:

Former inmates report incidents of sleep deprivation, beatings and various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex.

Omar Khadr, a Canadian inmate who was 15 at the time, says military personal used him as a living mop. "Military police poured pine oil on the floor and on me. And then, with me lying on my stomach with my hands and feet cuffed together behind me, the military police dragged me back and forth through the mixture of urine and pine oil on the floor."

Back in 2009, Obama sought to suppress further photos from Abu Ghraib that showed, among other things:

… an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Around the same time, reports said that abuses at the Guantanamo prison -- the same prison Obama pledged to close but never did -- were at an all-time high under Obama:

Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.

WikiLeaks later reported that abuses continued at Abu Ghraib after the scandal there broke, with hundreds of allegations against U.S. soldiers, including electrocutions and rape.

Perhaps most damning of all is a lengthy and very detailed report from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which chronicles the systemic abuse at Guantanamo. Here's just a small sample of the stories the center collected:

"Once they stomped my back," Al-Laithi wrote [in an affidavit filed recently with the district court]. "An MP threw me on the floor, and they lifted me up and slammed me back down. A doctor said I have two broken vertebrae and I risk being paralyzed if the spinal cord is injured more."

Al-Laithi said his neck is also permanently damaged because IRF teams repeatedly forced him to bend over toward his knees. While many prisoners have had their anuses probed during strip searches, Mr. Al-Laithi also alleges that the military forced a large object into his anus on the pretext of doing a medical exam.

"I am in constant pain," he continued. "I would prefer to be buried alive than continue to receive the treatment I receive. At least I would suffer less and die."

***

[A]n MP named Smith burst into the cage and jumped on Mr. Al Dossari’s back wearing full riot gear. According to other detainees who viewed this incident, Smith weighed approximately 240 pounds. At least two other men held Mr. Al Dossari by the legs. MP Smith began to choke him with his hands, while another repeatedly hit his head on the floor. While being beaten, Mr. Al Dossari lost consciousness.

… When the cage was hosed down later, the water ran red with blood. Mr. Al Dossari later asked Smith why Smith had beaten him. Smith replied, "because I'm Christian."

***

The ICE personnel [redacted] removed her overblouse behind the individual and proceeded stroking his hair and neck while uttering sexual overtones and making comments about his religious affiliation. The session progressed to where she was seated on his lap making sexual affiliated movements with her chest and pelvis while again speaking sexual [sic] oriented sentences. This then progressed to the individual being placed on the floor with her straddling him, etc. Needless to say many inappropriate comments were made during this time concerning the session and the area had the atmosphere of a party.

***

Mr. Ait Idir was in intense pain. He feared he would be crippled and lay down in a fetal position. The IRF enforcers jumped on him. The first team member landed on his back while he was face down; the second did the same. … While the two enforcers pinned him down -- after he had stopped resisting and his hands were tied, and after he was fully in their control, one of the guards slowly bent his fingers back until one of them broke. The pain was excruciating, but he was afraid that if he screamed the IRF would react by injuring him further. He was not given medical treatment for his fingers despite many requests and the clear deformity of his hand.

… Mr. Ait Idir's resistance during the episode of religious-physical abuse described above led to a further, unprovoked attack, which ultimately resulted in partial facial paralysis and a life-long disability. … He sat on the floor as instructed. Despite his full cooperation, he was sprayed in the face with chemical irritant, and put into restraints. Guards then slammed him head first into the cell floor, lowered him, face-first into the toilet and flushed the toilet -- submerging his head.

He was then carried outside and thrown onto the crushed stones that surround the cells. While he was down on the ground, his assailants stuffed a hose in his mouth and forced water down his throat. Then a soldier jumped on the left side of his head with full weight, forcing stones to cut into Mr. Ait Idir’s face near his eye. The guards twisted his middle finger and thumb on his right hand back almost to the point of breaking them. The knuckles were dislocated. As a result of this incident, the left side of Mr. Ait Idir's face became paralyzed for several months.

***

U.S. government officials immobilized the hunger strikers' heads by strapping them in the restraint chair, restrained their hands, inserted feeding tubes in their noses, and force fed them large bags of liquid nutrients. The account further describe hunger strikers bleeding and vomiting from these actions, and urinating and defecating on themselves because Respondents had denied them access to a bathroom.

***

[P]risoners were frequently shaved as punishment. Lakhdar Boumedien said that growing a beard is a form of Muslim religious expression but "the U.S. thinks it marks a terrorist." Fahmi Abdullah Ahmed Al Towlaqi has had his head shaved three times by Military Personnel; one time he was shaved so that he was left with a cross-shaped patch of hair. Other prisoners have stated that some guards mock the call to prayer by barking like dogs or donkeys.

And these are the people we're supposed to stand and applaud for their supposed efforts in "keeping us free" and "serving our country." It's fascinating to think back to how reviled our soldiers were when they came home from Vietnam. Yet those soldiers were drafted into the service, while serving in today's military is completely voluntary. So if anything, the atrocities our soldiers commit today should be met with even more revulsion. But they aren't. Instead, we turn these people into heroes -- people we practically worship.

I don't care how hell-bent anyone is on revenge for what happened on 9/11: A nation that claims to set an example for the rest of the world, that purports to follow the rule of law, and that is supposed to abide by international treaties for the treatment of prisoners does not stoop to this level. These are the actions of barbaric animals, not human beings. Furthermore, you can't expect to stop terrorism when you act like this. If anything, our actions will make terrorist recruitment efforts all the easier. Blowback is real.

Not that anyone deserved to die on 9/11, and not that we have no right to defend ourselves, but you can't act like the schoolyard bully and not expect to suffer repercussions for it. The tragedy of 9/11 may never have happened if we hadn't been meddling in other nations' affairs in the first place. Ron Paul illustrated the problem by imagining how we'd react if another country set up military bases on U.S. soil and committed acts of aggression against our own citizens.

 This is why Dr. Paul said we need a Golden Rule when it comes to our foreign policy. Of course, the good Christians who were in the audience when he made that suggestion roundly booed him. Clearly, in the minds of many Americans, "do unto others" now means "do unto others before they do unto you.

The United States has a military presence in 150 countries. We act like the world's cop, insisting that everyone else play by our rules. We have no right to do that, and we would never stand for it if anyone else tried to do it to us. If this nation ever learned to mind its own business and live in peace with the rest of the planet, the world would be a much more pleasant place.

But since it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon, I suppose that big, burly "love or it leave it" bully who verbally accosted me back in 1991 will eventually get his way. I do love this country -- at least the principles it was founded on -- but it increasingly seems as if there's no room in America for those who don't view the rest of the world through the scope of a rifle.

Straight from the elephant's mouth

Not that anyone needed a reminder that meddlesome, big-government neocons hijacked the Republican Party a long time ago, but for one of its candidates to essentially come out and admit it is priceless.

When a voter asked Rick Santorum why he supported Shrubby's No Child Left Behind legislation and his Medicare prescription-drug benefit, not to mention numerous increases to the federal debt ceiling, the question boiled down to this: "What's limited government about, then?"

Santorum's blow-off reply: "Vote for Ron Paul. That's what you should do."



Thanks, Ricky Boy. I'll do that.

You are a terrorist, until proven otherwise

Well, isn't that precious. A clueless TSA goon has apologized for humiliating a passenger who did nothing wrong. The woman was prohibited from boarding her plane with her breast pump because her milk bottles were empty. She dumped the milk before going through security to avoid security hassles -- after all, we're all familiar with the TSA's ridiculous rules on liquids, right? Well, the idiot at security told her she couldn't take her ice pack on the plane without milk in the bottles.

"It really confuses me as to how an empty breast pump and cooler pack are a threat to national security and 20 minutes later, with milk, they no longer pose a threat to national security," the woman said.

With no private place to pump, the woman had to go to a public restroom.

"I'm in a dress, in heels, and I find myself in front of a sink and mirrors with travelers coming in and out of the bathroom," she said. "I'm standing at the sink with my breast hanging out, pumping. I wanted to cry. I was humiliated."

Your federal government: Keeping you safe from breastfeeding moms.

Of course, this isn't the first bit of lunacy from the TSA. Not long ago, Ron Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul, made the news when he refused to consent to a TSA body grope. For defending his right to privacy, the TSA detained him. A United States senator. Detained. For refusing to be molested at an airport.

It all started when the senator walked through the scanner and an alarm errantly went off. He offered to go through again, and that's when the TSA told him that wasn't an option. He'd have to be groped instead, like a criminal under arrest. After two hours, the fools finally backed down and let him go through the scanner again, and naturally, there was no issue the second time.

As Papa Paul put it after the ordeal:

The police state in this country is growing out of control. One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe.

Making lemonade out of lemons, Ron Paul parlayed the debacle into a campaign fundraiser.

At least Rand Paul didn't have to suffer the humiliation of a twentysomething pair from Ireland and the U.K., who were photographed, fingerprinted, and thrown in jail because of a couple of joke Twitter posts. A 26-year-old white guy was handcuffed and kept in a cell with a group of Mexican drug dealers because he'd tweeted about how he wanted to get together with some friends before he took off to "destroy America," as in "go off and have a great time while I'm there." His female companion was interrogated to see whether she planned to be his lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe's grave -- since the guy also quoted Family Guy in a tweet about how he was going to be having a ball on Hollywood Boulevard and "diggin' Marilyn Monroe up."

"It got even more ridiculous because the officials searched our suitcases and said they were looking for spades and shovels," the woman said. "They did a full body search on me, too."

You couldn't make this stuff up.

They were ultimately refused entry into the United States and told they would have to reapply for entry visas back home.

You know what the solution is to all of this nonsense? Freaking common sense. As Rand Paul put it:

We’ve been 10 years and we have no frequent flier program, we have no ability for people to go back through the screener, [and] one-size-fits-all, everybody-is-a-potential-terrorist rules waste a lot of time on people who are not terrorists.
So, resources, I think, could be better devoted to looking at who’s flying and where they've been flying and knowing more about the passenger list rather than spending all this time doing these random screenings of elderly people, young people, and frequent fliers.

[...]

There are a lot of people who are insulted and their dignity is compromised by what the TSA does to them. ... Instead of targeting people who meet a risk profile for terrorism, what they’re doing is they’re just doing these random things. But I think it’s a waste of time, and it's insulting to put people through a body pat down when they have not shown any risk.

In short, as the senator puts it, "The TSA has got a lot of problems."

That's putting it mildly.

The week in tyranny

Do people even care anymore that their privacy and liberty are under constant assault from our lawmakers?

Earlier this week, we had a report that John McCain introduced a bill that would open up "massive troves of e-mails" to government agencies. As the ACLU succinctly put it, "This is a privacy nightmare that will eventually result in the military substantially monitoring the domestic, civilian Internet."

If Congress failed to control and censor the Internet following the backlash against SOPA and PIPA, they'll just find other ways to snoop into your private affairs and decide what you're allowed to say.

McCain's fingerprints were all over the NDAA detention provision as well. The man has absolutely no regard for civil liberties.

Meanwhile, down in the heart of Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled that cops can search your cell phone without a warrant. Never mind that you're supposed to have a Constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures. Since the information on your phone could be wiped clean while the cops went off to get a warrant, the court says cops can just skip over the whole pesky warrant thing and go right ahead and invade your privacy.

But the icing on the cake came Thursday, when Obama signed into law a provision that essentially ends the right to peaceful assembly in the United States. In what's clearly a further act of legal backlash against the Occupy movement, the so-called Trespass Bill makes it a crime to protest in an area under Secret Service protection or in an area hosting an "event designated as a special event of national significance."

Michigan's Justin Amash, one of only three patriots to oppose the bill in the House, had this to say about it on his Facebook page: "The bill expands current law to make it a crime to enter or remain in an area where an official is visiting even if the person does not know it's illegal to be in that area and has no reason to suspect it's illegal."

The "special event of national significance" part is so vague as to leave the bill's scope wide open to interpretation, and that's the problem. Events of "national significance" have included everything from a Super Bowl to the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions. Furthermore, the president can give Secret Service protection to anyone he wants under the law, so you could be protesting in a public park and have no idea that the president just gave the cops on the scene Secret Service protection. And off you go in handcuffs, deemed by Fatherland Security a national threat. And since you can be held indefinitely without charges under the NDAA provision Obama signed, you have no legal recourse whatsoever.

Speaking of the conventions, I was at the Democratic shindig in Boston in 2004, and I was appalled to see authorized protest sites set up yards and yards away from the convention center. These were billed as "free speech zones," but essentially they were cages where people were allowed to protest, as long as they stayed inside the cages.

You know what the only "free speech zone" is in America? It's the whole damn country.

Of course, even if we do speak our minds, the technology now exists to literally prevent people from physically speaking at all. How long before the government thugs use the SpeechJammer to shut down protest altogether?

Let's review the First Amendment, because our elected leaders are apparently too dense to understand.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Our liberties are being steamrolled, and we're sitting back and letting it happen.