"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C. S. Lewis
Defense Secretary was interviewed on 60 Minutes by Scott Pelley. Panetta asserted the claim that the US Government may kill US Citizens without Due Process as long as they are labeled by the US Government as a Terrorist.
Panetta’s answers are suffused with dubious and even factually false claims. It is, for instance, false that the U.S. provides due process to everyone apprehended for Terrorism. To the contrary, the Obama administration has been holding dozens of Terrorism suspects without any charges for years, and President Obama just signed into law a bill codifying the power of indefinite detention for accused Terrorists. But even if it were true that all Terrorism suspects who are detained were entitled to receive due process, that merely underscores how warped it is to assert the power to target them for execution without due process. After all, how can it be that the Government must prove guilt merely to imprison Terrorists but not to execute them?
But this is one of the towering, unanswerable hypocrisies of Democratic Party politics. The very same faction that pretended for years to be so distraught by Bush’s mere eavesdropping on and detention of accused Terrorists without due process is now perfectly content to have their own President kill accused Terrorists without due process, even when those targeted are their fellow citizens: obviously a far more Draconian and permanent abuse than eavesdropping or detention (identically, the very same faction that objected to Bush’s radical whole-world-is-a-Battlefield theory now must embrace exactly that theory to justify how someone riding in a car, or sitting at home, or sleeping in his bed, in a country where no war is declared, is “on a battlefield” at the time the CIA ends his life).
RTs Alyona Minkovski comments on the false arguments used by Panetta:
In light of the Seal Team Six rescue of hostages in Somalia, Lionel reflects on the lies governments have told us over the years and how the news media blindly repeats them. Do you remember Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch?
Lionel comments on the police department in the city of East Orange, New Jersey installing red spotlights to remotely shine on those police believe are about to commit a crime.
Lew Rockwell, appearing on Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano, discusses Newt Gingrich's lie about supporting Barry Goldwater when he really worked for Nelson Rockefeller, Gingrich's declaration that conservatives must support FDR and why Gingrich has got the 'crazy bug'.
Rockwell says a Gingrich administration would be worse than another term for Obama.
Everybody and their brother -- even Stephen Colbert - is freaking out about "super PACs," which are an outgrowth of the Citzens United decision in 2010.
Traditional political action committees (PACs) are subject to federal limits on how much money donors can give in specific election cycles. Super PACS allow groups such as nonprofit corporations and unions to spend unlimited money on political speech as long as they don't coordinate their activity with the official campaign of a given candidate.
But for all the bellyaching, here are three good reasons not to get worked up over super PACS.
1. Billionaires don't need them to influence elections.
In the wake of an anti-Mitt Romney documentary from Winning Our Future, a group tied to billionaire Sheldon Adelson, The New York Times fretted that the film -- which has had little or no effect on Romney's candidacay -- "underscores how [Citizens United] has made it possible for a wealthy individual to influence an election."
Actually, it's always been legal for rich people to spend what they want as long as they make "independent expenditures" that aren't coordinated with official campaigns. Billionares don't need super Pacs to get their message out. But super PACS may just let the rest of us have our say.
2. Super PACS Go Negative -- and That's a Good Thing!
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose campaign finance legislation was rendered moot by Citizens United, complains that super Pacs not only flood elections with money but flood it with negative messages. McCain, who lost a run for presidency, admits that negative campaigning works, but doesn't like the tone.
Yet study after study shows not only that negative advertising works with voters, but that negative ads actually contain more information than gauzy paeans to American and the virtues of the candidates who pay for such spots.
3. Super PACS Take Power Away From the Parties.
There's no question that super PACs seek to benefit some candidates by taking aim at others. Adelson, the moneybags behind the anti-Romney documentary, is known to be a Newt Gingrich fan.
But as long as super PACs don't coordinate with candidates or official party apparatchiks, they take messaging out of the hands of party leaders and spread it around elsewhere in a way that has got to be more representative of more views of more voters.
Super PACs are the latest casus belli in the push for controlling specifically political speech in the name of making elections fairer. There's no doubt that they are a loophole arising from the last round of campaign finance reform and the attempt to limit the amount of money politicians would have to raise to get their message out.
It's time to recognize that the only way to stop creating new loopholes is by ending the always ineffective laws designed to lower the cost office-seekers need to spend to buy our votes.
"We take for granted in our lives, choice, in every other area, whether it's Pop Tarts or cereal or cell phones. But really education is the most important thing," said Reason's Director of Education Lisa Snell, "Especially as a parent, you want your kids to have a solid education."
Snell makes the case that school choice is now at a tipping point. In the United States, more charter schools are cropping up, while tax dollars and voucher systems are now allowing the money to follow the child. Snell says that there is evidence supporting that these new educational options are effective, and less costly, in improving the quality of K-12 education.
"Kids in America have more choices today than they've ever had before," said Snell, "Every empirical study shows a positiive effect, and no study has found a negative effect."
National School Choice Week is Jan. 22-28, and has hundreds of events scheduled promoting these ideas.
Verlin Stoll is a 27-year-old entrepreneurial dynamo who owns Crescent Tide funeral home in Saint Paul, Minn. Verlin has built a successful business because he offers low-cost funerals while providing high-quality service. His business is also one of the only funeral homes that benefits low-income families who cannot afford the high prices of the big funeral-home companies.
Verlin wants to expand his business, hire new employees and continue to offer the lowest prices in the Twin Cities, but Minnesota refuses to let Verlin build a second funeral home unless he builds a $30,000 embalming room that he will never use.
Minnesota's law is irrational. Embalming is never required just because someone passes away and the state does not even require funeral homes to do their own embalming. In fact, it is perfectly legal to outsource embalming to a third-party embalmer. Minnesota's largest funeral chain has 17 locations with 17 embalming rooms, but actually uses only one of those rooms.
Why is Minnesota forcing Verlin to waste $30,000 on a useless embalming room as a condition of expanding his thriving business?
So that the big, full-amenity funeral-home businesses can benefit from a law that drives up prices for consumers and operating expenses for competitors such as Verlin. Verlin's basic services fee is only $250, which is about 90 percent lower than the $2,500 that the average Twin Cities' funeral home charges. Verlin's business model is built on minimizing fixed costs, which is why he does not have a hearse or chapel, and this law—to the advantage of his competitors—stands in the way of him expanding his low-cost, high-quality approach.
The government should not force Minnesotans to do useless things. That is why on January 19, 2012, Verlin and the Institute for Justice challenged the law in state court.
The Minnesota Constitution protects every Minnesotan's economic liberty, which means that it protects entrepreneurs from being burdened by legal requirements that are either useless or designed to suppress honest competition.
A victory here will not only free Verlin from an unconstitutional restraint on his economic liberty, but protect entrepreneurs across the state from pointless laws and bureaucracy.
A video on the role of US foreign policy and actions that have led to blowback. The US at various times has been allied with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein was our ally in the 1980's. There is a price to pay for interfering in other nations and we have been paying it for a long time.
Cato legal associate Trevor Burrus discusses rent control in New York City.
From Reason TV:
While most cities in America long ago got rid of rent control, New York remains a bastion of government-mandated limits on what landlords can charge renters. About 50 percent of New York's rental market is affected by rent control or rent stabilization, policies that keep rents artificially low and produce housing shortages, higher overall housing costs, and all sorts of corruption.
The court case Harmon v. Kimmel may finally bring an end to rent control laws that have been on the books in one form or another since the 1940s. James D. Harmon owns a building in Manhattan where the tenants are paying rents that are about 60 percent below the going market rate. After losing various legal battles at lower levels, Harmon has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his argument that rent stabilization is a form of takings that should be prohibited under the Constitution. The Court has not yet announced whether it will hear the case but has asked the state and city of New York to respond to Harmon's argument.
Cato's Burrus wrote a friend of the court brief on the case and explains why rent control and rent stabilization are bad at promoting affordable housing and abridgments of economic freedom.
Public schools today are taking on more and more trappings of a prison with zero tolerance policies, forced drugging, random searches and a constant police presence. The War on Kids is a documentary that examines how the schools have failed the children and robs them of their freedoms.
First John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute discusses the documentary and then Part I of the documentary.
Blame for problems with schooling in America is often assigned to insufficient funding or the inherent failings of today’s kids. In rare cases, parents, teachers, and administrators are also implicated. However, all efforts to improve the quality of education are doomed to fail if the system itself is not examined and understood to be the most significant impediment. After over six years in the making, THE WAR ON KIDS reveals that the problems with public education ultimately stem from the institution itself. Astonishingly all efforts at reform consistently avoid even considering this to be a possibility and the future for children and American democracy are at stake.
In 95 minutes, THE WAR ON KIDS exposes the many ways the public school system has failed children and our future by robbing students of all freedoms due largely to irrational fears. Children are subjected to endure prison-like security, arbitrary punishments, and pharmacological abuse through the forced prescription of dangerous drugs. Even with these measures, schools not only fail to educate students, but the drive to teach has become secondary to the need to control children.
THE WAR ON KIDS begins with the history of “Zero Tolerance” policy. In the 1990s, almost all schools began instituting guidelines that were originally designed to keep weapons and drugs off campus. Very quickly, school officials began to arbitrarily decide what should be considered a weapon and what should be considered a drug. Hundreds of situations followed where children were (and continue to be) suspended or expelled for possessing food knives, nail clippers, key chains, chicken strips, aspirin, and candy. Kindergarteners were even suspended for playing cops and robbers and using their fingers as guns. Under the guise of Zero Tolerance, administrators have been able to wield tremendous power without the burden of responsibility and this authority continues to be increasingly abused. Students invariably feel despondent and fearful in the Kafka-esque state that has been created.
The film reveals that students’ civil rights have been virtually obliterated. They can be searched, drug-tested, denied the right to express themselves verbally and in print, as well as be physically punished without due process. They are routinely deprived of protection from self-incrimination and in some circumstances can even be strip searched without the consultation of parents. Courts typically uphold the rights of schools to behave in whatever manner they deem appropriate where children’s rights are involved.
Ultimately schools now look astonishingly like prisons in their structure and operation and the film shows that it is hard to tell them apart. A side by side comparison in the form of a tour displays the apparent inferiority of the average public school with regards to prison in terms of its resources and upkeep. Most disturbing of all, the school environment is clearly much more oppressive and dreary.
Schools have become obsessed with security and THE WAR ON KIDS shows how none of the profoundly invasive measures are effective. Security cameras were present at Columbine High School, for example, and did nothing to mitigate the massacre. From the students interviewed in the film, it is clear that cameras are unwelcome and breed paranoia and fear and may actually contribute to creating a hostile environment. Locker searches and metal detectors have been shown to be ineffective and contribute to creating an oppressive environment.
Police footage is shown from a 2003 SWAT team raid on Stratford High School high school students in Goose Creek, SC when the principal suspected illegal drug activity. In spite of the aggressive search involving guns and dogs, no drugs were found. The raid highlights the persistent scrutiny that students are under and the complete lack of boundaries that exist when children are involved.
Beyond physical intimidation, psychiatric abuse in schools is also rampant. Experts are interviewed about the epidemic of ADD and similar diagnoses. The preponderance of evidence is stunning and implicates drug companies in blatantly nefarious activities. Ritalin and other pharmaceuticals that are being heavily prescribed to children are not only physically harmful with lifelong consequences but can and do lead to murder and suicide. What is presented as treatment is more dangerous and debilitating than the condition it is supposed to cure. In addition, the condition itself is clearly dubious, and the kids getting treated are often the ones who question teachers and authority. Invariably, these kids are drugged into submission.
THE WAR ON KIDS shows how schools are authoritarian institutions that by their nature cannot be reformed. Children are subjected to the most invasive forms of control and are deprived of the most basic and fundamental human rights that are afforded even to prisoners of war. The net effect is chilling not just for the kids who are subjected to these extreme forms of control, but also for American society’s future as a generation grows up with no first hand experience or understanding of civil rights in a democracy.
Former CIA intelligence officer Michael Scheuer endorses Ron Paul for President. Scheuer was Chief of the bin Laden Issue Station from 1996 to 1999, and then worked again as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004. In endorsing Ron Paul, Scheuer stated:
Dr. Paul’s precise use of history and commonsense exposes the exorbitantly costly effort to build democracies in the Islamic world for what it is; namely, Washington throwing money down the drain for a cause that is impossibly lost from the start and one that will involve us in wars where we have no interests.
Here is Scheuer discussing his endorsement of Ron Paul with Judge Andrew Napolitano:
Tasers originally were intended to be used in place of lethal force in dangerous situations. However, as more police departments acquired tasers, they have come to be used in routine things such as traffic stops, often with deadly consequences. A tasers is not a non lethal weapon, it is a less lethal weapon. It's misuse or use on people with certain health conditions can result in death.
From Reason TV:
On May 10, 2011, 43-year old Allen Kephart died after having a Taser applied to him multiple times by three San Bernardino, California, sheriff's deputies during a routine traffic stop in Lake Arrowhead.
"I feel that my son was murdered, I feel that something has to be done about law enforcement," says Alfred Kephart, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit in San Bernardino Superior Court, August 30, 2011.
High profile police related deaths like Allen Kepharts' are pushing activists, families and courts to question whether Tasers or officers are to blame, but the answer to that question is a tricky one.
Numerous studies and reviews from the National Institute of Justice, Amnesty International and the Police Executive Research Forum have come to different conclusions on Tasers and how officers use them. A study in the American Heart Journal even revealed that studies funded by Taser International were "substantially more likely to conclude Tasers are safe."
Former federal prosecutor Laurie Levenson says that when it comes to Tasers, safety depends on the circumstances in the case.
"We can remember back to the Rodney King case and in fact they did try to use a Taser there and it didn't work, where we had police using so much force, it was almost lethal," says Levenson. She points out that often questions of force from officers using Tasers come up after minor traffic violations.
According to Peter Bebring , staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, that is because when police are led to believe Tasers can't cause harm, they "are more likely to use them in circumstances where they would never consider using more serious force, like a gun."
Those types of circumstances led the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2011, to look at more incidents involving Tasers and policing, one being the Tasing of a woman eight months into her pregnancy. The court found that when police use a stun gun it may be a violation of Constitutional law.
In the year 2000, around 5,000 law enforcement, correctional and military agencies were using Tasers, by 2011, that number climbed to 16,000.
A simple example of how ridiculous the talk of debt reduction by our fearless leaders is in reality. They are doing absolutely nothing to deal with the problem.
The Marijuana Policy Project has compiled a collection of videos from the Republican presidential candidates' views on marijuana, and graded them accordingly. See which candidates pass the test, and which ones clearly have some work to do.
Sarah McKinley, an 18 year old Oklahoma mother shot and killed an intruder to protect her 3-month-old baby on New Year's Eve. McKinley's husband had recently died of cancer. In the last video Lionel points out a fact that is never mentioned by those (the gun control lobby) seeking to strip Americans of their right to defend themselves with a gun. The fact is that in the United States a gun is used for self defense on average every 13 seconds.
First, two news stories on McKinley and then Lionel's commentary.
Reason.tv spent the night at a caucus in Ankeny, IA and at the Ron Paul headquarters at the Ankeny Holiday Inn. While there, we encountered hopeful Ron Paul supporters, many expecting a first-place finish. When those hopes were dashed, many expressed disappointment while also maintaining hope for success in future primaries and acknowledging improvements made since the 2008 campaign.
Paul himself called Iowa a success, saying that his top three finish guaranteed him one of "three tickets" out of Iowa.
"I think there's nothing to be ashamed of, everything to be satisfied [with], and be ready and rearing to go on to the next stop, which is New Hampshire," said Paul.
Shepard Smith needs Rand Paul to explain a very simple concept over and over again. Either Shepard Smith doesn't have a good grasp of English or he is trying to generate controversy.
Meredith Graves, a fourth-year medical student from Tennessee was visiting the memorial at the World Trade Center site on Dec. 22 and noticed a sign that said "No guns allowed." Graves, who has a legal permit to carry a weapon in Tennessee, asked police where she could check her loaded pistol. That is when she was arrested.
