Who told you to believe that Clinton era intrusion? The Democrats voted for invasion of American rights during Clinton before voting against invasion of terrorists rights during Bush. It would be funny if only it were funny.
Have you Democrats forgot that it was Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama who voted in favor of the bill to retroactively immunize illegal wiretapping by Bush officials and telephone-company executives. Even worse, the bill authorizes the federal government to conduct far more warrantless wiretaps whenever the president claims the nation is endangered. The Democratic Party’s record on surveillance was dreadful. The Clinton administration consistently championed the right of government employees to stick their noses almost anywhere — into people’s email, car, house, or personal effects. Clintonites set off one false alarm after another to justify extending government’s right to intrude. The administration consistently sought to exploit technological development in order to maximize government’s control over the citizenry. Public housing and the Constitution In 1993, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) began warrantless sweep searches of residents’ apartments to confiscate firearms. Other cities, such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, also used warrantless mass sweeps of public housing apartments to seize guns and other items. Law professor Tracey Maclin observed, “During these sweeps, officers would rifle cabinets and dresser drawers, look inside refrigerators, overturn mattresses and sofa cushions, and inspect private papers and closed boxes.†In early 1994, the CHA proposed beginning routine no-knock raid sweeps. On April 7, 1994, federal judge Wayne Andersen ruled that the dragnet searches were unconstitutional, warning, “The erosion of the rights of people on the other side of town will ultimately undermine the rights of each of us.†President Clinton was outraged that a judge limited the power of the police, and announced, “I’m so worried that all the progress that’s been made will be undermined by this court decision.†Two months later, he visited the Chicago housing projects, again endorsed the searches, and declared, “The most important freedom we have in this country is the freedom from fear. And if people aren’t free from fear, they are not free.†In Clinton’s view, public-housing residents apparently had no reason to fear the housing police’s storming into their apartments. Yet, court testimony showed that the warrantless searches, none of which occurred within 48 hours of actual shooting incidents, were ineffective at reducing crime. Harvey Grossman of the American Civil Liberties Union observed, Instead of meeting their obligations to provide real safety, Chicago officials perpetrated a hoax by convincing many residents that warrantless sweep searches of all apartments would enhance their safety. CHA officials have complained that they are forbidden by federal regulations from even checking whether applicants for public housing have a criminal record. Pawing is not searching The Clinton administration consistently argued that few, if any, government searches were blocked by the Fourth Amendment. In early 2000, the Supreme Court heard the case of U.S. v. Bond. A Greyhound bus was stopped at an internal Border Patrol checkpoint in Texas. After agents checked all the passengers’ identification, one agent went through and pawed, squeezed, and manipulated each piece of luggage in the overhead bins. He detected a suspicious object in one canvas bag — and Steven Bond was shortly thereafter charged with possession of a brick of meth. Bond’s lawyer argued that groping the luggage was an unconstitutional search. The Clinton administration argued that no constitutional rights were violated because Bond and other passengers had no “legitimate expectation of privacy.†The Clinton administration brief asserted, The fact that tactile inspection of a bag’s exterior may reveal information about its contents no more establishes a search than when officers standing on a public sidewalk or in open fields make observations of the contents of a car or a house. Passengers handling bags in a manner similar to the manner of Agent Cantu may not pay attention to what they sense, or know how to interpret it. But nothing bars government officers from using specialized knowledge to keep themselves alert to, and to help them interpret, that which any other member of the public might have sensed. To take this reasoning to its logical conclusion, since people in rush hour subway trains are occasionally most uncomfortably pressed against each other — so cops should be allowed to press their bodies against that of any passenger. The Supreme Court, in a decision written by archconservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist, scorned this particular minimalist interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. He declared, “Physically invasive inspection is simply more intrusive than purely visual inspection.†Some of the Clinton administration’s anti-drug policies were highly egalitarian, striving to violate everyone’s privacy. During the 1996 presidential campaign, Clinton proposed mandatory drug tests for all teenagers applying for a driver’s license. This followed the Clinton administration’s endorsement of mandatory drug tests for school students in a 1995 Supreme Court case. Clinton administration Solicitor General Drew Days argued that a school district “could not effectively educate its students unless it undertook suspicionless drug testing as part of a broader drug-prevention program,†as Cato Institute lawyer Tim Lynch noted. High-tech hustles A 1998 ACLU report observed that the Clinton administration had engaged in surreptitious surveillance, such as wiretapping, on a far greater scale than ever before.... The Administration is using scare tactics to acquire vast new powers to spy on all Americans. On April 16, 1993, the Clinton administration revealed that the National Security Agency had secretly developed a new microchip known as the Clipper Chip. A White House press release announced “a new initiative that will bring the Federal Government together with industry in a voluntary program to improve the security and privacy of telephone communications while meeting the legitimate needs of law enforcement.†This was practically the last time that the word “voluntary†was used. The Clipper Chip presumed that it should be a crime for anyone to use technology that frustrates curious government agents. The ACLU noted, The Clipper Chip proposal would have required every encryption user (that is, every individual or business using a digital telephone system, fax machine, the Internet, etc.) to hand over their decryption keys to the government, giving it access to both stored data and real-time communications. This is the equivalent of the government requiring all home-builders to embed microphones in the walls of homes and apartments. Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, observed, “You don’t want to buy a set of car keys from a guy who specializes in stealing cars.†When the federal National Institute for Standards and Technology formally published the proposal for the new surveillance chip, fewer than one percent of the comments supported the plan. The administration eventually abandoned its Clipper campaign but stepped up its attacks on purveyors of encryption software. Wiretap mania When the Clinton administration proposed legislation to massively increase the number of wiretaps, they named their offering the “Digital Telephony and Communications Privacy Improvement Act of 1994.†Apparently, the more the government could invade people’s privacy, the safer they would be. In the final cut-and-paste on Capitol Hill, the bill was renamed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. On October 16, 1995, the telecommunications industry was stunned when a Federal Register notice appeared announcing that the FBI demanded that, as a result of the new law, phone companies provide the capability for simultaneous wiretaps of one out of every hundred phone calls in urban areas. As the ACLU noted, the FBI notice represented “a 1,000-fold increase over previous levels of surveillance.†The 1994 law led to five years of clashes between the FBI and the communications industry over the new standards. The Federal Communications Commission was designated as the arbiter of such clashes in the act; in August 1999, the FCC caved and gave the FBI almost everything it wanted. The FCC bowed to FBI demands and required that all new cellular telephones be de facto homing devices. Cell phones must now include components that allow law enforcement to determine the precise location where a person is calling from. Conclusion The Clinton administration’s attitude towards high-tech should have alarmed any Americans who think the government is not entitled to read their email, tap their calls, or know precisely where they are. Clinton’s power grabs should have taught Americans of the perils of allowing politicians to ignore the Fourth Amendment. Any such “lessons learned†were declared “null and void†after 9/11 by the same politicians who quickly put their own boot prints on the Constitution. Unfortunately, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a good record of respecting citizens’ privacy. Perhaps it is naive to expect politicians to obey the Constitution when so many Americans believe that omnipotent government is their only hope for survival. Americans need to relearn why the Founding Fathers distrusted politicians across the board, regardless of nation, party, or creed. James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email. This article originally appeared in the September 2008 edition of Freedom Daily. Subscribe to the print or email version of Freedom Daily. I do not think you Democrats forgot you are simply are brainwashed and see only what Anderson Cooper, John Stewart, that idiot from Canada, or Saturday Night Live tells you.
For political comedians, the joke's not on Obama Meanwhile the search is on for a gay single unwed mother satanist Muslim to be the supreme court judge replacing Sauter. And what is the headline on Yahoo? Oh suprise suprise former secretary of state Rice under fire from a 4th grader we never anticipated by chance we had the cameras rolling. Ask yourself ... news or propaganda?
The worst part about this whole thing is that the crazy person that I'm not talking to anymore thinks I'm a Democrat. And he keeps talking to to me! Or cut and pasting at me rather, and tell Reed Richards to get that damn thing out of my face!!
Study: Most Liberal States Are Least Free Study: Most Liberal States Are Least Free Study: Most Liberal States Are Least Free Wednesday, May 6, 2009 1:03 PM By: Dave Eberhart According to a new study released by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, some of the most liberal U.S. states rank lowest when it comes to personal freedom. The study, which calls itself the “first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres,†made a host of findings: # The freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending -- and middling levels of regulation and paternalism. # New York is the least overall free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland. Unfortunately, say the report authors, these freedom-disadvantaged states “make up a substantial portion of the total American population. Moreover, these bottom five states have considerable ground to make up even to move off this ignoble list, let alone into a creditable position in the rankings.†# When weighing personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear. Sarah Palin’s Alaska does extremely well on personal freedom, conclude study authors. Reasons for its high personal freedom alone score include: fully legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana (accomplished through a court ruling), the best (least restrictive) gun laws in the country, recognition of same-sex domestic partnerships, and possibly the best homeschooling laws in the country. # As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall -- while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom. There are real benefits to scoring high on economic and personal freedoms, conclude the study’s authors. Their analysis demonstrated that states enjoying more economic and personal freedom tend to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration. The Problem with Being Liberal According to the study, previous research has shown that, as of 2006, Alabama and Mississippi were the most conservative states in the country, while New York and New Jersey were the most liberal. In the index put forth by the new study, Alabama and Mississippi fall in the middle, while New York and New Jersey are at the bottom. “The problem is that the cultural values of liberal governments seem on balance to require more regulation of individual behavior than do the cultural values of conservative governments,†say the study’s authors. “While liberal states are freer than conservative states on marijuana and same-sex partnership policies, when it comes to gun owners, home schoolers, motorists, or smokers, liberal states are nanny states, while conservative states are more tolerant.†Some Individual State Profiles # Illinois is one of the worst states to live in from a personal freedom perspective (#49). On economic freedom it is in the middle of the pack (#29). Illinois has the fourth harshest gun control laws in the country, after California, Maryland, and New York, and the state’s victimless crimes arrest rates are almost unfathomable: In 2006, more than 2 percent of the state’s population was arrested for a victimless crime (and that figure does not count under-18s). Nearly one-third of all arrests were for victimless crimes. # Texas (#7 economic, #5 personal, #5 overall) has one of the smallest state governments in the country. As a percentage of corrected GSP, Texas has the second lowest tax burden in the country and the third lowest grants-adjusted government spending. However, government employment is a standard deviation higher than the national average. Gun control is better than average, but the state falls short on open-carry laws, stricter-than-federal minimum age for purchase rules, and dealer licensing. Alcohol is less regulated than in most other states, and taxes are low. Low-level marijuana cultivation is a misdemeanor, but otherwise marijuana laws are very harsh. # Colorado, the #2 state, achieved its ranking through excellent fiscal numbers and above-average numbers on regulation and paternalism. The state is the most fiscally decentralized in the country, with localities raising fully 44.5 percent of all state and local expenditures. By percentage of adjusted GSP, Colorado has the third lowest tax burden in the country, surpassed only by Tennessee and Texas. It has resisted the temptation of “sin taxes,†with low rates on beer, wine, spirits, and cigarettes. On the other hand, Colorado’s smoking bans are among the most extreme in the country, with no exceptions or local option for any locations other than workplaces. Colorado is 1 of 12 states to have decriminalized low-level marijuana possession. # Oregon (#36 economic, #7 personal, #27 overall) is the freest Pacific state. Oddly, government spending is high but taxes are low, resulting in rather high state debt. Public safety and administration look particularly ripe for cutting. Gun control laws are about average. Marijuana possession is decriminalized below a certain level, and there is medical marijuana (cultivation and sale are felonies, though). Oregon is one of the few states to refuse to authorize sobriety checkpoints. Oregon is the only state to permit physician-assisted suicide. Private and home school regulations are quite reasonable. State land use planning is far advanced. The minimum wage is the highest in the country when adjusted for average wages. The study touts that it improves on prior attempts to score economic freedom for American states in three primary ways: (1) it includes measures of social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens’ rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure; (2) it includes far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable; and (3) it uses new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies. “We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual’s ability to do the same,†note the authors. Here is the actual study:
