Sunday, May 31, 2015
Rand Paul blasts PATRIOT Act Surveillance
"Get a warrant!"
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took to the Senate floor Sunday afternoon as debate wrapped up to reiterate, very, very loudly, his opposition to renewing the mass data collection authorities of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. He had argue with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over Senate procedures first to get permission to speak. McCain, for his part, argued that the increase in terrorism (he said the Middle East is literally burning) is proof that we need Section 215 "more than ever," despite the lack of evidence that the mass collection under Section 215 actually contributed in any successful efforts to halt terrorist attacks . . .
Paul reminded the Senate floor and C-Span viewers, "The head of intelligence agency lied to the American people, and he still works there." And he also reminded the Senate that a federal court has already ruled that Section 215 doesn't actually authorize mass metadata collection about Americans. Paul's position: Want to get records about Americans suspsected of crimes? Get a warrant. Paul is tweeting out some quotes from his speech here . . .
Magna Carta: Eight Centuries of Liberty WSJ
June marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the ‘Great Charter’ that established the rule of law for the English-speaking world. Its revolutionary impact still resounds today, writes Daniel Hannan - Wall Street Journal. An excerpt . . .
Eight hundred years ago next month, on a reedy stretch of riverbank in southern England, the most important bargain in the history of the human race was struck. I realize that’s a big claim, but in this case, only superlatives will do. As Lord Denning, the most celebrated modern British jurist put it, Magna Carta was “the greatest constitutional document of all time, the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.” . . .
It was at Runnymede, on June 15, 1215, that the idea of the law standing above the government first took contractual form. King John accepted that he would no longer get to make the rules up as he went along. From that acceptance flowed, ultimately, all the rights and freedoms that we now take for granted: uncensored newspapers, security of property, equality before the law, habeas corpus, regular elections, sanctity of contract, jury trials.
Magna Carta is Latin for “Great Charter.” It was so named not because the men who drafted it foresaw its epochal power but because it was long. Yet, almost immediately, the document began to take on a political significance that justified the adjective in every sense. . .
Magna Carta conceives rights in negative terms, as guarantees against state coercion. No one can put you in prison or seize your property or mistreat you other than by due process. This essentially negative conception of freedom is worth clinging to in an age that likes to redefine rights as entitlements—the right to affordable health care, the right to be forgotten and so on. . .
It is worth stressing, too, that Magna Carta conceived freedom and property as two expressions of the same principle. The whole document can be read as a lengthy promise that the goods of a free citizen will not be arbitrarily confiscated by someone higher up the social scale. Even the clauses that seem most remote from modern experience generally turn out, in reality, to be about security of ownership. . . .
Sunday, May 24, 2015
President Obama’s Dark Shadows
Sadly, Mr. Obama was able to strong-arm the passing of the failed nearly $1T Keynesian stimulus boondoggle bill (how’s that shovel-ready job working out for you?), the ever so destructive Dodd Frank finance “reform” law (can you spell crony?), and the “how can I count the ways it is destroys value” Obama Care debacle (aka “affordable health care act” without a single Republican vote). The economy has been anemic for seven years under the shadow of Obamanomics and the poor and middle class have suffered the most. The United States has assumed more debt under President Obama than was amassed under all of the previous presidents combined. The national debt is now more than $18 trillion and rising.
Speaking of legacies, how’s that key domestic-policy legacy going? Not so hot. ObamaCare remains unpopular; far more Americans oppose than favor it. People still remember the disaster of the October 2013 rollout, which still casts a shadow over the program today. Those hard feelings were deepened last year by the discovery of a series of talks by key ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber in which he bragged that it had been falsely marketed to the American people to take advantage of their stupidity.” . . .
In the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, 62% say the country is on the wrong track more than seven years after Obama moved into the White House. - New York Post
Sadly, Mr. Obama has been able to impose several uber-destructive big-government agenda ancillaries such as the carbon emissions mandate by using his assumed authority over the regulatory agencies (vis “I’ve got a pen and a phone”). We will suffer for decades from Dodd Frank and the Obama Care mess but hopefully future presidents will undo the damage on the regulatory side. Mr. Obama’s foreign policy and the middle east in particular is a disaster on steroids. Anyway you slice it President Obama’s legacy so far is a sorry one at best.
Now the end of his tenure is in sight and President Obama is trying like crazy to beef up his resume, his “legacy.” His last ditch efforts to “fundamentally change America” (i.e. facilitate a “progressive” movement toward a welfare nanny state) are clouded in dark, socialistic shadows. I gave up on him years ago. Then, and now I find it depressing and really disappointing and sad that Mr. Obama’s interventionist and I believe socialistic approach to “fundamentally transforming America” has been so misguided and so destructive.
Mark Van Schuyver
Emergency Room Visits Increase Under Obamacare
The Daily Signal. An excerpt . . .
A majority of physicians report that they have seen an increase in emergency visits since Obamacare went into effect, according to a new poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians.
In a statement, Dr. Michael Gerardi, the president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said that “hospitals are hurting.”
“America has severe primary care physician shortages, and many physicians will not accept Medicaid patients because Medicaid pays so inadequately,” Gerardi said. “Just because people have health insurance does not mean they have access to timely medical care.” - Kate Scanion
The Libertarian Moment is Everywhere Around Us
Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals want to keep the world tightly sorted into two categories that describe fewer and fewer Americans. Reason.com Excerpt
Republicans and Democrats are going to do their best to maintain their duopoly in a world where even freaking Pop Tarts come in dozens of varieties . . .
This sort of enforced dualism is anathema in today's marketplace of goods, services—and ideas. That's especially true with millennials, the single-largest cohort in the country and folks who have grown up in a very different world than the black/white, right/left, Rep/Dem world many of us did. Based on various measures, they are presumed to be in favor of bigger government. Reason's poll of millennials from last year suggests that when millennials are confronted with the cost of providing more services, their enthusiasm for Leviathan declines greatly. - Nick Gillespie
Labor board overreach
Labor board overreach - Washington Times An excerpt -
Last month, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), stacked with Democratic appointees loyal to Big Labor, enacted new procedures to govern unionization elections.
The new rules provide union organizers with more personal information (including phone numbers, home and email addresses) to press, prod and harass those employees who want nothing to do with them. It’s not a popular move: National polling shows 85 percent of Americans support employees being able to refuse having their personal information revealed to union organizers.
The new rules provide another wrinkle to make it easier for union solicitors to capture dues-paying members. Under the previous rules, it took an average of 38 days from the filing of an organizing petition to the holding of the election. The new rules shorten the campaign to as few as 13 days. The advantage? Union organizers can quietly lay the groundwork while promising the moon. After the union surfaces with a formal request for a vote, employers will be denied sufficient time to highlight the gap between labor’s promises to deliver on their wish list and business realities. . .
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