Freedom or Employment. Choose

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.23.07]

The Imus affair is a slippery slope. If you don’t like what someone says or something you see, change the channel. Censorship from the left is still just censorship.

The hyprocrisy of getting a man fired over his speech is highlighted in an article by Ted Rall (via smirking chimp):

Talk radio host Don Imus’ April 4 reference to female members of the Rutgers University basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” prompted calls for his ousting by an ad hoc alliance of politically correct liberals and opportunistic conservatives (Imus, a political liberal, had been on the right’s hit list).

As Josh Silver, writing for the center-left Huffington Post, summarized the let-them-rant-in-the-streets argument: “For those who feel that the firing of Imus has been an affront to First Amendment free speech protections, consider this: Imus still is still a free person. He can start a blog.”

“Mel Gibson can still say whatever he wants,” a reader wrote to the New York Times. “So can Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. That personal consequences may follow free speech (like losing your job or learning not to say vicious things) doesn’t violate the Constitution.”

In other words, your boss should be able to fire you if you say something he deems “vicious”–criticizing the president, say.

Behold the Gospel of the Economic Censors! The First Amendment remains in full force for them–at full pay–but scaled back for those they don’t like. Snoop Dogg and his fellow gangsta rappers should be free to peddle their smut on CD-Rs on Harlem sidewalks, they say–but not to have it distributed and sold in stores. You know, where most people buy music.

The Massacre from Afar

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.19.07]

La Journada, Mexico

This is an alarming tendency that must cause the authorities in that country to reflect: what has occurred that things should have come to this?

Filmmaker Michael Moore has no doubt: the school massacres are due to the pathology of violence and fear that prevails in the country, which has the highest rate of gun killings in the world and where there number of firearms exceeds that of voters or television sets.

El Pais, Spain

In the U.S., gun control measures are systematically challenged by an abusive interpretation of The Second Amendment - which was written before there was a National Army or National Guard.

O Povo, Brazil

Without a source of internal strength, without an anchor that can keep them on the ground and in good condition - like beings trapped in a trans-historical dimension and deemed expendable by others - people end up losing any reference to their humanity. Once in a while they explode in destructive and murderous fury, going against everything and everyone, randomly identifying them as the executioners of their misfortune.

This is a phenomenon more and more present in post-industrial society, and it’s an unequivocal sign of the imbalance and severe illness that affects our hedonistic civilization.

JongAng Daily, South Korea

The most effective hands to heal the terrible wounds of this crime will be of Koreans living in the United States. Koreans should show their strong willingness to share the sorrow, take emotional responsibility and heal the wounds together with the Americans. They should offer prayers, plan memorials and scholarship projects, and take measures to prevent this from ever happening again. They should roll up their sleeves to volunteer in the region where they live.

If both governments and Korean-Americans share their thoughts and wisdom, then the 33 fallen flowers will serve as a precious tribute to improved mutual relations.

Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates

In many respects, America is currently in the best of positions. Its people are among the best cared for in the world by virtue of the affluence and systems that support life in that nation. Yet, without doubt, something is ailing that society at its very core, symptoms of which are evident in cases like the Virginia one.

Whether this has something to do with the overall weakening of its value system or America’s pre-occupation with the affairs in the rest of the world leaving it little time to care for its own affairs, is simply a matter of conjecture.

Le Monde, France

The slaughter at Virginia Tech University forces American society to once again confront itself, its violence, the gun fetishism that preoccupies part of the population and the dissoluteness of young people subject to the dual-tyranny of abundance and competition.

SpeigelOnLine, Germany

Across the continent on Tuesday, European media rubber-neck at Monday’s massacre in the United States. Most seem to agree about one thing: The shooting at Virginia Tech is the result of America’s woeful lack of serious gun control laws. In the strongest editorialized image of the day, German cable news broadcaster NTV flashed an image of the former head of the National Rifle Association, the US gun lobby: In other words, blame rifle-wielding Charlton Heston for the 33 dead.

TimesOnLine, London

Perhaps of all the elements of American exceptionalism – those factors, positive or negative, that make the US such a different country, politically, socially, culturally, from the rest of the civilised world – it is the gun culture that foreigners find so hard to understand.

The country’s religiosity, so at odds with the rest of the developed world these days; its economic system which seems to tolerate vast disparities of income; even all those strange sports Americans enjoy – all of these can at least be understood by the rest of us, even if not shared.

The Daily Telegraph, Australia

Well, Virginia is not only the land of the free, and the birthplace of Washington and of Lee; it’s the place also of the freely available gun. In Virginia, you can buy a handgun any time you want.

Now, in our country, most of us take a different view. We’re not happy about our record - still intact, courtesy of the Port Arthur massacre - for having the greatest number of shooting deaths in a single incident.

Yesterday’s should remind us of an undeniable truth - there is no “right'’ to carry weapons. Those who make the tired argument that “it’s people not guns'’ who kill others, should wake up.

Toronto Sun, Canada

But as shocking as yesterday’s tragedy is, the list of those that preceded is perhaps more shocking. Incidents occur with such terrifying regularity it’s almost like a war — more than three dozen serious school shooting incidents in the last three decades.

There will be talk in the coming days about gun control, but that hasn’t protected us in Canada. [W]e have seen our share of tragic school shootings.

It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s an upscale community in Colorado, a rural Amish community in Pennsylvania, a downtown neighbourhood of Montreal — nobody is immune.

It’s high time we committed ourselves to finding some [answers].

Text Someone, Kill a Bee Colony

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.18.07]

If crazed university gun men aren’t enough to make your day, how about mass starvation?

The world’s bee colonies are dying mysteriously, and a study from Landau University suggests that mobile phones may be to blame. The colonies are subject to “Colony Collapse Disorder,” and the disorder accounts for the death of anywhere from 50-70 percent of bee colonies. Since bees pollinate most crops, flowers and fruiting trees, the end of bees is seriously bad news for the world’s food supply.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

It’s been long understood that bees respond to electromagnetic radiation. Dr Jochen Kuhn at Germany’s Landau University has shown that bees don’t return to their hives when cellphones are present. The study doesn’t prove that cellphones are responsible for CCD, but it does provide evidence that mobile phones are implicated in the death of hives.

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.

From boing boing.

Born to Shop

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.17.07]

Miss Cellania is re-running her Mars and Venus series from 2005. The map above reminds me of myself and every girlfriend I’ve ever had.

A few excerpts of her Introduction to the series, available here:

*Relationships:*

Women: When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled “All Men Are Idiots”. Then she will get on with her life.

Men: A man has a little more trouble letting go. Six months after the break-up, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say,”I just wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I’ll never forgive you, and I hate you, and you’re a total floozy. But I want you to know that there’s always a chance for us.” This is known as the “I Hate You / I Love You” drunken phone call, that 99% of all men have made at least once. There are community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need.

*Sex:*

Women: They prefer 30-40 minutes of foreplay.

Men: They prefer 30-40 seconds of foreplay. Men consider driving back to her place part of the foreplay.

*Mirrors:*

Men: Men are vain and will check themselves out in a mirror.

Women: They are ridiculous; they will check out their reflections in any shiny surface: mirrors, spoons, store windows, bald guys’ heads.

Hasn’t Left Her Flat in 3 Years

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.17.07]

You have to check this out! They’re not half bad actually and the some of the cuts are funny. From Miss Cellania.

The average age of The Zimmers is 78. Lead singer Alf Carrera is 90 years old. Other band members are 99 and 100 years old! The single will be released on May 14th. Visit The Zimmers’ Myspace page.

The King’s Sycophant

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.11.07]

From Brent Budowsky:

Thomas Paine once wrote that in absolute governments, the King is law, and in free nations, the Law is king.
The fundamental problem is not that Alberto Gonzales lied, prevaricated, misrepresented or played Pinocchio when he falsely stated he was not involved in the decisions to fire the U.S. attorneys.

Gonzales-ism is the problem, not Gonzales.

Gonzales-ism is the notion that the highest legal officer in the land is not the agent of the law, or the Constitution, or the people, but is the sycophant and agent of the Crown.

Gonzales should be removed; Gonzales-ism should be destroyed. It is the hallmark of the corruption of partisan conservatives that they supported policies and practices that every principled conservative should abhor in our democracy, as much as every principled liberal.

Criticize Bush, Forget about Flying

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.11.07]

Ever wonder just who is really on those “terror watch lists” you hear about? Like when the former pop-singer Cat Stevens (above) was turned back from landing in America a year or so ago. Here’s some news about what it takes to get on that list — nothing having to be with being a terrorist, that’s sure. (from boing boing)

Professor Walter F. Murphy, a Korean war hero and McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) at Princeton, was delayed while flying because he’s on a “terrorist watch list.” The check-in clerk told him that he was probably added because he gave a speech that was critical of the president (who dodged his military service).

“I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: “Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution.

“That’ll do it,” the man said. “

Just Saying No

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.10.07]

From the Boston Globe:

In an emerging revolt against abstinence-only sex education, states are turning down millions of dollars in federal grants, unwilling to accept White House dictates that the money be used for classes focused almost exclusively on teaching chastity.

In Ohio, Governor Ted Strickland said that regardless of the state’s sluggish economic picture, he simply did not see the point in taking part in the controversial State Abstinence Education Grant program anymore.

Five other states — Connecticut, Rhode Island, Montana, New Jersey, and Wisconsin — have dropped out of the program or plan to do by the end of the year. The program is managed by a unit of the US Department of Heath and Human Service.

Strickland, like most of the other governors who are pulling the plug on the funding, said in pulling out of the program last month that it has too many restrictions and rules to be practical.

Job Fairs in Germany

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.9.07]

Maybe they’re a little bit more candid, a little less pc about the realities of corporate employment over there in the Duetscheland. Or maybe more able to laugh at it all. The below is the entrance to a recent job fair in Hamburg.

From boing boing via Ads of the World.

Man and Wife

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.6.07]

The number one podcast show in the Health category is Man and Wife. It is the greatest! Sex advice every episode (there are about 20 now) in a video podcast by a stocky black couple. Their interplay could not possibly be scripted. They take calls, give out advice, fight a bit, all the while doing everything from shoveling snow in front of the house to soaking in the bath.

The advice is dead-on and the visuals of them doing the show together tell you all you need to know about how couples get along. They introduce every show with their 3 rules:

Check it out!

Savage Love

Dan Savage reviewed Joan Sewell’s I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido and Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion last month:

I’m saddened to report that, according to Sewell … there’s no such thing as a woman who wants sex constantly. They don’t exist—never did.

All that yammering about women with voracious sexual appetites during Sex And The City’s long reign of terror? A cruel hoax. Women have naturally lower sex drives, Sewell writes. It’s a hormonal thing.

So if straight women don’t want sex—or as much sex—what do they want? Chocolate, says Sewell, or a good book.

For a while, women with high libidos were normal, and women with low libidos were freakish. Now women with low libidos can hand their husbands Sewell’s book and rip open a bag of Doritos.

But there’s a silver lining. Back when women with low libidos were regarded as abnormal—way back at the beginning of the month—it was fashionable to blame the man in a woman’s life for her lack of desire. For years, whenever I printed a letter from a guy who wasn’t getting any, or wasn’t getting much, mail would pour in from women insisting that he had to be doing something wrong.

I called them the “if only” letters: If only she didn’t have to do all the housework, she would want to have sex. If only he would talk with her about her day, she would want to have sex. If only she weren’t so exhausted from taking care of the kids, she would want to have sex. If only he didn’t ask for sex, she would want to have sex.

Well now, thanks to Sewell, straight guys everywhere know that it doesn’t matter how much housework you do, or how sincerely interested you are in her day, or how much of the child care you take on: She still won’t want to fuck you. So leave the dishes in the sink, grab a beer, and go play a video game, guys. Your “if only” nightmares are over.

One thing that hasn’t changed in the wake of Sewell’s book is my advice to women with low libidos: You can have strict monogamy or you can have a low libido, ladies, but you can’t have both.

And finally, a word about a book I have read: In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins tears the intelligent-design idjits into a million little pieces. I feel bad about piling on—almost. Hey, intelligent-design idjits? If God really wants us to have heterosexual sex only, and then only within the bounds of holy matrimony, and if adultery offends Him so much—it’s a stoning offense, right up there with gay sex—how come He designed men and women to be sexually incompatible?

Well, I should say that He designed straight men and straight women to be sexually incompatible. Lesbian couples, with their bags of Doritos, and gay couples, with our mutually insatiable sexual appetites, seem pretty intelligently designed. Thank you, Jesus!

Dan now has podcasts and they are just about as good as his columns. His is the top podcast in the Sexuality sub-category under Health at iTunes. Check it out!

Stalemate

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.5.07]

Matt Taibbi comments on the political situation in Washington vis a vis continually re-funding the War in Iraq, instead of ending it:

In my visits to Washington in the past few months I’ve heard different stories from Democratic congressional aides about what the party’s intentions are. Some say they think the leadership is just going to stall and pass a bunch of non-binding, symbolic, Kumbayah horseshit to help propel whoever the Democratic candidate is into the White House two years from now.

Others claim with a straight face that all of these non-binding resolutions are only a start, that the strategy is to really end the war via a death-by-a-thousand-cuts type of legislative grind, with the leadership sending to the floor bill after bill after bill designed to eat away at either war policy or war funding. They claim that all of these votes are exercises in coalition-building, necessary steps to gathering the support needed to pass real biting measures later on.

But I’ll believe that when I see it. Right now, it all looks too convenient. With Bush a thrashing, drowning lame-duck whose endorsement in ‘08 will almost certainly be political poison to whomever has the misfortune to earn it, Republicans like Hagel and Oregon Senator Gordon Smith are conspicuously free to break ranks and save themselves.

Moreover, the Democratic measure is crafted in such a way that the Hagels and Smiths and Ben Nelsons of the world can safely get on a soapbox about the war without having to face accusations of depriving the troops of equipment and “what they need” to fight, which just so happens to be the leitmotif/preoccupation of the Rush/Hannity talk shows of late.

You’ll know that something real is going on in Washington when either a) the Democrats force the “antiwar conservatives” to actually cast a vote on whether or not to cut off spending for the war, or b) a dozen or so more Republicans cross the picket line to set up a possible override of a Bush veto.

Until and unless one of those unlikely moments arrives, it sure looks like what we’ve got is one of those rare “good for both teams” baseball trades, an arranged standoff in which everybody gets to suck a little of that hot nourishing blood in the ballooning antiwar poll numbers.

Food for a Hungry World

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.4.07]

In Shandong Province, China, a woman has setup a breeding farm for flies. These insects may seem disgusting for most of us, but to Ai Baorong, these are beautiful little “angels”.

Ai Baorong, a Jinan University graduate, was seeking employment in every way after her graduation, but was unsuccessful in finding her ideal job. She tried selling mats and even opened a small shop, and in the end a report which mentioned raising bugs to become rich initiated her enormous interest.

Baorong has since started to breed houseflies. Each maggot contains 60% protein, 15% fat, but also has some vitamins, and its protein nutritional value is several times higher compared to animal protein.

After the cleansing, deodorization and dehydration processes, the concentrated protein can be used for the production of soy sauce and MSG - which makes it a product with great market value.

From Spluch via neatorama.

Touch Faith

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.3.07]

A prominent member of Bush’s inner sanctum, chief campaign strategist for the 2004 presidential election Matthew Dowd, has broken with Bush, saying in a New York Times interview that his faith in Dubya was misplaced.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

This is the guy who created the flip-flopper slogan against Kerry. He’d been with Bush since ‘99. “I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things. I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”

The article goes on to describe Dowd as melancholy and subdued, as if disillusioned.

He said his decision to step forward had not come easily. But, he said, his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s presidency is so great that he feels a sense of duty to go public given his role in helping Mr. Bush gain and keep power.

Full article here.

Another Legacy from Rummie

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.4.07]

For awhile there in 2006, I thought it was prudent to drink diet soda. Sure it tastes funny, kind of metallic, but diet soda had less carbs than sugared sodas. Aspartame is the sweetener in most diet sodas. Surprisingly, it’s also in over 5,000 foods, drugs and medicine.

My diet soda jag wasn’t going well. Why was I having headaches and other minor ills? It could’ve been many things, caffeiene, alcohol, novacaine. Anyway, I decided to check trusty old google for aspartame references. And whoa! Who came up, but Donald Rumsfeld!?

During a time he was between appointments in Washington Searle made him CEO. Why would a drug company make a Washington insider with no real business experience one of their top executives? The operative word here is “insider.”

A little history:

Asparteme interacts with other drugs, has a synergistic and additive effect with MSG, and is a chemical hyper-sensitization agent.

The FDA’s own toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross told Congress that without a shadow of a doubt, aspartame can cause brain tumors and brain cancer and violated the Delaney Amendment which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause Cancer. Detailed information on this can be found in the Bressler Report (FDA report on Searle).

Since its discovery in 1965, controversy has raged over the health risks associated with the sugar substitute. From laboratory testing of the chemical on rats, researchers have discovered that the drug induces brain tumors. On Sept 30, 1980 the Board of Inquiry of the FDA concurred and denied the petition for approval.

But then Ronald Reagan was elected 5 weeks later. Rumsfeld was on President Reagan’s transition team and a day after taking office Ronnie appointed Arthur Hull Hayes to be FDA Commissioner.

As recorded in the Congressional Record of 1985, then CEO of Searle Laboratories Donald Rumsfeld had said that he would “call in his markers” to get aspartame approved.

And though, for good reason, no FDA Commissioner in the previous sixteen years had allowed aspartame on the market, in 1981, the newly appointed Hayes ignored the negative ruling and approved aspartame. Later Hayes went to work for the PR Agency of the manufacturer, Burson-Marstellar, and has refused to talk to the press ever since.

[Sources for this story from Sepp Hasselberger, Mission Possible and News with Views, and there are thousands of references to this under-reported story and to the dangers of aspartame on Google.]

Good News from India

[Originally posted on goofyblog 4.3.07]

From Daily Reckoning Australia:

Last week, we met with our new partners from India. One thing that surprised us was the Indian labour market:

“Yes…there are more than a billion people in India…” said our partner, “but just go and try to find someone. The labor market is very tight. People who have been to business school - if they’ve been to a good one - can get a job anywhere. Not just in India, but almost anywhere in the world. So their salaries are up at world levels. If you want someone to sweep your driveway…yes, that will be very cheap. But if you want someone to do the kind of work we do…well, you will pay almost as much as you would in America. Salaries are rising fast.”

This from Associated Press:

“An annual survey by Hewitt Associates revealed that Indian salaries are likely to rise an average 14.5 percent in 2007, with banks and financial services companies offering the biggest hikes.

April Fool

[Initially posted on goofyblog 4.2.07]

This clip from Catherine Crier’s show on Court TV, the Crier Wire, is absolutely the best recap of the Bush presidency, including the recent MC Rove stupidity. If George Were King. Check it out!

81 Every Day

This may put the school shootings into perspective.

The New York produced the graphics below on daily American gun deaths. The last available data is from 2004. I find it interesting there are not enough black suicides to rate even one bullet in any of the age groups, while whites, white men in particular, rate at the least four except in the very youngest category.

Keep in mind while looking at this: over twice this figure (176) were injured by gun fire -- daily.

In the next 2 groups, suicide by gun becomes more prominent.

This last one gets me: lots of old white men. What's up with that? Does Charlton Heston know that part of the equation? Have a gun around the house, and the older you get, the more likely you'll use it -- on yourself.

Link (Via neatorama)

The Worst Company(s) in the World

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.30.07]

The Consumerist (Consumers Bite Back) had a poll asking their readers who is the worst company in the world. Halliburton came in second, but the RIAA tops the list.

This organization has been suing 7-year olds and parapalegics in a futile effort to preserve Big Music’s business model, a model no longer having any relevance. Recently, the RIAA demanded that universities keep records on their students, a move the universities say would cost them money they don’t have in their budgets.
Cd prices have always been too high and even though the technology took strong root by the early ’90s, making it possible to offer the consumer lower prices — via economies of scale; instead the prices have gone higher, yet the artists gets just about the same cut as they always did.

Treating music consumers like feudal serfs is typical of these bullies. But as David Byrne said at this year’s South by Southwest (NY Times):

That year will be the “tipping point,'’ much like the mid-to-late ’80s when CDs overtook cassette sales. Once download sales became the norm, Byrne said, it will allow manufacturing and distribution costs to approach zero. “That is a fact,'’ he said.

He said at that point, record labels will be faced with a sort of choice — to ramp up marketing services to use music as a loss leader for tours and merchandise revenue, or aim only for international stars of the ilk of Britney Spears.

The RIAA is just a front group for a few mega-large music companies, so the Consumerist identified them here.

UPDATE: An attorney for one of the many being sued by the RIAA has successfully had his client’s suit dismissed after he sent the following to attorneys for Sony Music:

The Evidence Code sections are quite clear: settlement negotiations of all kinds may not be used to prove the validity of any claim or defense. Mr. Merchant has and had no more duty to respond to attempts to “sell” him one of your clients’ boilerplate, non-negotiable $3750 settlements than he has to return cold calls from pushy life insurance salespeople. If your client (and your law firm?) are seeking probable cause shelter in a settlement negotiations house of straw (as suggested by your March 23 letter), all of you should consider the prevailing winds of the Evidence Code before making yourselves too comfortable. Straw will burn.

Your client takes the position that my middle-aged, conservative clients should speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients’ claim used their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta rap tracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, “You’ve got to be kidding.” The extensive press that has been generated over computer security (and the insecurity of Windows XP and its predecessors) underscores the complete absence of facts on which probable cause to sue my clients could be established and your clients’ willingness (even insistence) that others be implicated in Big Music’s speculative, “driftnet” litigation tactics. Sorry: Mr. Merchant cannot and will not expose himself to still more litigation by speculating.

From Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.

Now a Word from our Founders

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.30.07]

Just discovered these quotes from our long-distant past:

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war — the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security, to institutions, which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.

– Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 8

The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse, of all the trusts committed to a Government, because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts & at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging & are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their affairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

– James Madison in a letter to Thomas Jefferson

And from the present:

There can be no denying that the Framers’ efforts to protect the nation from involvement in unnecessary and unjust wars and from an enormous standing army have failed. The two mainstays of their plan — a small defensive military force and a constitutional separation of war powers — are dead letters. The country is routinely engaged in conflicts in every corner of the globe, none of which has anything to do with the military’s only legitimate purpose: to defend the country from invasion. The power to wage war has coalesced under the executive and the government maintains an increasingly imperialistic foreign policy. Free of the constitutional chains that the Framers imposed upon it, the federal government is now on a road of empire, intervention, militarism, aggression, occupation, and torture, not to mention increased taxes, inflation, and despotism at home.

– Bart Frazer, program director at The Future of Freedom Foundation

Conservatives Fight Back!

[Originally posted on goofyblog 3.27.07]

WASHINGTON– An alliance of prominent national conservatives today announced the formation of the American Freedom Agenda (AFA).

The AFA’s mission is to reign in abuses of executive power … that have the greatest likelihood of adversely affecting personal liberties without appropriate checks and balances: the judicial and criminal justice system; national security; and the proper role of congressional oversight.

The launch of the AFA, and its mission to restore executive accountability, Tuesday coincided on the same day that the Justice Department’s Inspector General testified before Congress on his findings regarding DOJ’s misuse of its power to use warrantless searches to secretly go through people’s financial, Internet and other records.

AFA Chairman Bruce Fein said: “As fellow conservatives, we believe we have a greater responsibility than most to stand up to this particular Administration and demand that it respect the checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, regardless of party affiliation, and we can no more remain silent to the abuses occurring under President Bush than we could if a President Clinton were in office.”

The AFA outlined a legislative package that would bind the current and all future occupants of the White House, irrespective of party affiliation, to restore congressional oversight, personal civil liberties, and governmental checks and balances through the following:

• Restore habeas corpus to prevent the illegal imprisonment of American citizens;
• Prohibit torture and extraordinary rendition;
• Prohibit unconstitutional wiretaps, email and mail openings via warrantless searches;
• Protect journalists from prosecution under the Espionage Act for reporting on stories on national significance that do not reveal troop locations;
• Prohibit Presidential Signing Statements that allow the President to sign into law legislation passed by Congress while rejecting line-item aspects of that same law;
• Reform the ability of the federal government to win dismissal of constitutional grievances by private parties by claiming state secrets;
• Reform executive privilege by creating legislative-executive committees to arbitrate disputes.

“We do not favor a crippled Executive,” said Congressman Barr, who will work with his former colleagues to seek passage of the AFA’s legislative package. “Rather, it is our belief that in times of danger, checks and balances will make for a stronger – not weaker – government because the people will more readily accept a muscular Executive if barriers against abuses are strong. We want to ensure that no man is above the law.”