Seduction is not Rape

A mother in Montana is outraged that a high school teacher who admitted raping her 14-year-old daughter received only a month in prison, while her daughter took her own life. 

On the surface this sounds like an outrageous case in which a man admittedly raped a 14-year-old girl, who committed suicide as a result, but got away with just a slap on the wrist.

“This 49 year old man raped that little girl,” scream the news headlines and the TV talking puppets, “which caused her to kill herself, but he only gets 30 days in jail.”

But wait a minute. He didn’t rape that girl. Not really. And she didn’t commit suicide as a result of being raped; not at all.

Now, make no mistake about it; what he did was clearly wrong; a crime; a disgusting, unethical despicable act deserving substantial punishment, but it was not rape. 

Those who call it rape are disingenuously engaged in redefining a word in the English language which means something entirely different than what happened to that girl. In doing so, they commit a disservice to women and girls who have actually been raped.

This is a case of seduction and seduction is not rape.

Rape requires the necessary element of force or coercion. It is the crime of forcing another person against their will to submit to sex acts. It involves literally the plundering and pillaging of a person’s body.

That is a far cry from seduction which is the act of persuading, beguiling, enticing, or attracting a person to engage in sex; the leading of another astray if you will. Seduction requires winning over the will of a person to engage in sex without the element of force or coercion.

In most cases seduction is not even considered a crime, but when it involves consensual sex between an adult and someone under the legal age of majority -- a minor -- it somehow magically turns into the crime of rape in the minds of an indignant society.

The law should call it the crime of “seduction of a minor” and provide appropriate punishment, but instead it’s designated “statutory rape” upon the arbitrary legislated premise that a minor, even one of 17 years, 11 months, and 29 days is deemed as not having the requisite mental capacity to give consent to sex. Without consent the element of force is inferred out of thin air, and with force we have rape.

But it just doesn’t seem comfortable in the minds of an angry mother and all those indignant TV talking puppets to describe such an incident as one in which “that man statutorily raped the little girl.” No, they simply leave out the statutory part of it and loudly claim rape. It sounds a lot more outrageous that way.

So we have the bizarre situation today of 18-year-old’s convicted of having sex with their 17-year-old girlfriends branded as “rapists” and required to register with the authorities as sex offenders for the rest of their lives; all because of an arbitrary legal fiction.

The irony here is that had this little 14-year-old girl plotted the premeditated murder of her grandmother after an argument about money the same TV talking puppets would be screaming to have her tried as an adult for the reason that she clearly demonstrated the requisite intent to kill despite her tender age.

She can’t have the necessary intent to consent to sex, you see, but she certainly can have enough of it to commit first degree murder.

Somehow when sex is thrown into the mix people seem to lose all sense of reason and logic. And that’s what this case was about – sex. It all began in 2008 when the troubled young girl was a 14-year-old high school student and the man her 49 year old teacher. One thing led to another and they started a romantic relationship which turned into sex.  

When school officials learned of it the man resigned and was later charged with three counts of sexual intercourse without consent. Much later, as the case progressed through the legal system, the girl committed suicide just before her 17th birthday.

Of course, it’s easy for mother and the TV talking puppets to blame the suicide on the “rape,” however, I would bet money that had the sexual relationship never been discovered; had it simply phased out naturally like so many sexual relationships; had the man never lost his job and been charged with the “crime,” had she not been subjected to the societal infamy of what happened to her, that girl would probably not have taken her own life.

So it was most likely not the seduction which caused this poor girl to kill herself; it was, in all likelihood, the hysterical reaction of the authorities and society to it which she could not cope with.

After the teen's death, the prosecution and defendant entered into a "deferred prosecution agreement" specifying that all charges would be dismissed if he completed a sex offender treatment program and met other requirements; one of which was to have no contact with children.

The defendant technically violated that agreement when he had some contacts with nieces and nephews in a family setting while other adults were present, and failed to tell his counselors about certain relationships with women.

The criminal case was revived and prosecutors asked the judge to invoke a 20 year prison sentence. Defendant’s attorneys argued that he had suffered enough having lost his job, his teaching license, his marriage, and reputation in the community as well as being required to report regularly to the authorities as a sex offender for many years.

The judge agreed with the defendant. He was given a suspended sentence of 15 years in prison except for 31 days to be served in jail. Mind you, he would not have received any sentence at all, and the case would have been dismissed, had he not technically violated the deferred prosecution agreement.

Mother and the TV talking puppets are furious. The judge however defended his ruling, saying that the man is "treatable" and a "low risk to re-offend… Basically what we had was a troubled young girl… I simply did not have the evidence to conclude that her taking her life was because of her sexual offense by [the defendant]."

The Montana Organization of Women has started a petition calling on the judge to resign. "It's outlandish in a way that I cannot describe," an HLN spokesperson told CNN. "It' is the most outlandish thing that I've ever heard of."

Now, if that man had actually raped that 14-year-old girl, I’d be the first person to agree. But he didn’t rape her. She wasn’t raped. She was seduced. 

That was a crime for which he was rightly punished. He lost his job, his teaching license, his marriage and his reputation. He received a 15 year suspended sentence and 30 days in jail because he technically violated a prosecution deferral agreement which would have dismissed the charges entirely.

He’s a criminal. His conduct was inexcusable, unethical, and disgusting, but …

Seduction is not rape. 

American Military Treason

Statist oriented training officials at the Pentagon make Private Bradley, (or is it Chelsea?), Manning look like a Sunday afternoon jaywalker when it comes to traitorous conduct in the United States military.

Manning is more like an American hero who courageously exposed government wrongdoing, while these Pentagon brass types demonstrate the definition of treason. What’s more, their military mission is teaching American soldiers to be traitors.

The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute training guide, which originates from the Pentagon, was recently was obtained from the Air Force by Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act Request.

“This document deserves a careful examination by military leadership,” says Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “Congress needs to conduct better oversight and figure out what the heck is going on in our military.”

The document equates the founding fathers of the United States; you know, the men who conceived the Declaration of Independence, fought the American Revolutionary War, and wrote our Constitution, as political extremists. Conservative organizations of today are described as “hate groups.”

Under a section titled “Extremist Ideologies,” it states: “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.”

“Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publicly espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights and how to make the world a better place.”

Soldiers are warned to be aware that any participation in such groups, (which would include Libertarians), that are regarded as extremist organizations is “incompatible with military service and is, therefore prohibited.”

So the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, and Benjamin Franklin, who founded the United States of America; together with all those who cherish the concept of individual liberty, are labeled extremists by the United States military today. They’re called terrorists by these statist military traitors.

Now I know that soldiers have always been expected, perhaps rightfully so, to sacrifice their own individual identities to that of the group in order to maintain proper discipline and a cohesive fighting force that will follow orders without question, however, they certainly should never be expected to surrender their individual conscience, constitutional rights, nor forget that the purpose of their military service is to protect, preserve and uphold the liberty of all Americans.

This military training manual is a perfect example how the American parasite political class regards its soldiers. They are nothing more than dispensable, disposable cannon fodder to be wasted at the whim of their statist rulers.  

They regard the Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution as seditious works. They have turned the intentions of the founding fathers upside down.

The American parasite political class of today is the architect of American military treason. Their purpose is to use the military to subvert the very nature of the republic. They are traitors to the Constitution, traitors to the people of the United States, and traitors to the American way.

We’re Indispensable!

As President Obama contemplates what affirmative action the United States government should take regarding the civil war in Syria and bloody violence in Egypt, he haughtily proclaimed to CNN New Day anchor, Chris Cuomo, that the U.S. remains "one indispensable nation" in the volatile Middle East and elsewhere.

How about that! The Middle East especially, and the rest of the world simply can’t do without us, says Emperor of the planet, Barack Obama: 

We’re indispensable!

"We have to think through strategically what's going to be in our long term national interests," he added.

Yes, but just exactly how does the long term national interests of the United States make us an indispensable nation to the world? The President is actually claiming that it is our own strategic national interests which render the United States the one nation the rest of the world cannot do without.

Is that the pinnacle of arrogance, or what? This is precisely the same arrogant imperialist attitude which got our country recklessly mired into the unwinnable failures of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The foolish idea of American exceptionalism has cost our nation dearly – $trillions of dollars in cash and thousands of priceless human lives have been wasted -- flushed down the international toilet by the political parasite class in the cause of America the indispensable. 

Next Syria and then on to Egypt; it never ends.

They need us. We’re indispensable!

It’s Why They Hate Us

The reasons why People of the Arab Muslim Middle East nations hate the United States of America and the allied Western powers – the reasons for Muslim sponsored terrorism against us -- are as clear to me as glass, and it’s certainly not because we are free or benevolent.

When President Ronald Regan during the cold war in the 1980’s likened the Soviet Union to an “evil empire” he might as well have been talking about the United States of America since his own imperialist government has been equally evil in its relationships with many other nations over the course of at least the last century.

The reality is that when the United States government doesn’t get what it wants in the international arena by the ordinary lawfully prescribed means of diplomacy and polite quid pro quo persuasion, they get it by stealth, political meddling, back stabbing, and violence.

If the United States government wants to keep cheap oil flowing westward from the Middle East, for example, it has absolutely no qualms about initiating and manipulating the violent overthrow of a democratically constituted Middle Eastern nation in order to have its way.

So is it any wonder to anyone then why they hate us so bitterly?

Is it any wonder why some of them are willing to die in efforts to terrorize Americans?

How do you think most Americans would feel about a foreign government trying to overthrow our constitutional republic for the purpose of acquiring a political, financial or strategic advantage on the world stage? Surely Americans would justifiably want to pay them back with bullets, bombs, and terror.

But the United States of America operates upon a double standard when it comes to balancing its own interests with the interests of other nations. I have witnessed this phenomenon time and time again within my own life time.

And now, for instance, our own spooks at the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are finally admitting what has been known all along, that, along with the British MI6, it orchestrated the infamous coup d’état in 1953 which overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran led by prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq.

"The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," explains a declassified document in the US national security archive at George Washington University of the codenamed project, TPAJAX by the CIA, and Operation Boot by Britain's MI6.

The reason: Britain and Sir Anthony Eden, its foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a serious threat to British strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalized the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now known as BP. Britain needed US support and the Eisenhower administration in Washington was easily persuaded.

The documents describe a joint U.S. and British British "Campaign to install a pro-western government in Iran." One document describes Mosaddeq as one of the "most mercurial, maddening, adroit and provocative leaders with whom they [the US and Britain] had ever dealt".  Mosaddeq "found the British evil, not incomprehensible" and "he and millions of Iranians believed that for centuries Britain had manipulated their country for British ends".

The CIA thought that Iran was threatening Western security by not cooperating with the West -- by refusing to bargain with the British-run Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. -- thereby threatening the supply of cheap oil to Britain and risking a British invasion that could in turn trigger a counter Soviet invasion of Iranian oilfields.

Mosaddeq was replaced by the brutally oppressive dictatorial regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi, who ruled Iran like a divine emperor with an iron fist for 26 years until he was finally overthrown by followers of the Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Iranian revolution of 1979.

The Iranian revolutionaries promptly stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran as payback taking dozens of Americans Hostage for several months, which, among other things, cost then U.S. President Jimmy Carter the loss of a second term in the White House.

American imperialism: It’s why they hate us. 

Our Municipal Father in Heaven

"Grant these servants of yours the help they need to guide our community wisely," implored a Catholic priest from the Holy Name of Jesus parish.

"We celebrate your son, Jesus," proclaimed a pastor from Lakeshore Community Church.

"We ask all this through Christ, our Lord," another erstwhile Bible thumping preacher declared in a closing prayer. "Amen."

Are these the perfectly proper activities of groups of pious American people exercising their First Amendment Freedom of Religion rights in churches, private homes and other private religious settings?

No; of course not. These folks are not content to limit the practice their religion privately. They insist on a right to proselytize their creed with the sponsorship, support, initiation and backing of their local municipal governments. They want the government to help them spread their religious messages.

Since 1997, local officials in the southern shore Lake Ontario municipality of Greece, N.Y, population of 96,095, have been opening the town's monthly council meetings with a prayer, usually delivered by a Christian clergyman invited there by the said government officials for that expressed purpose.

This is surely a law school textbook case demonstrating clear violations of the United States Constitution First Amendment Establishment clause, isn’t it? After all, legal precedent has been settled First Amendment law for decades that the doctrine of separation between church and state requires all levels of government, federal, state and local to refrain from conducting religious activities of any nature, sectarian or non-sectarian, while in the course of performing government functions.  

But wait a minute; maybe the law is not so settled on this point, at least so far as the United States Supreme Court is concerned.

Two of the town’s residents, a Jew and an atheist, took issue with the municipal religious practices in February of 2008, and sued in a federal court to put a stop to it on the grounds that it plainly violates the Establishment Clause.

A federal district court rejected the plaintiffs' claims but an appellate court overturned the lower court's ruling. So now the SCOTUS is getting into the act and I fear that once again, just as in the cases of the national motto and the pledge of allegiance, the First Amendment Establishment Clause is about to be thrown under the bus.

Remember that, in the tortured logic of SCOTUS, the phrase “In God We Trust” was found to be not a religious reference, and in the pledge case, the court simply dodged the issue altogether holding that the petitioner lacked standing to bring the case.

This time I’ll be mighty surprised if the five justice Catholic religious majority doesn’t find another dubious legalese excuse to worm their way around what was once settled law. Perhaps they’ll find that Jesus Christ is not a religious figure or that prayers offered to a municipal God in heaven are merely ceremonial non-religious activities.

I have to wonder why the SCOTUS would take up such a no brainer type case like this unless the Scalia led religious majority was looking for a vehicle to inject their precious government God firmly back into all levels of government.

I sure hope I’m wrong on this one, but the municipal God argument is shaping up to have a lot of high level government support. In what will be the most important church-state litigation to reach the U.S. Supreme Court in three decades, the normally secular minded Obama administration is actually endorsing the concept of Christian prayers in such government settings.

Lawyers for the Obama Justice Department, representing the federal government, have recently filed amicus curiae briefs arguing that the prayers pose no violation of the Constitution. "Neither federal courts nor legislative bodies are well suited to police the content of such prayers, and this Court has consistently disapproved of government interference in dictating the substance of prayers," posits Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr.

But that is merely dodging the issue. It’s not about the government determining the content of prayers; it’s about the government supporting, sponsoring, endorsing and actually conducting the prayers.

If the Supreme Court gives this practice the OK, next on the agenda will be prayers once again in the public schools. The religious extremists in America are salivating over that prospect. They want to start out on the path to total evisceration of the First Amendment Establishment Clause with our municipal father in heaven. 

Politicians Fiddle While Detroit Burns

The once bustling economically powerful city of Detroit Michigan during the mid nineteenth up to the mid twentieth century was well on its way down the road to municipal destruction and ultimate financial ruin in the fall of 1968 when I moved to and lived there while attending law school.

That was 45 years ago when the downtown neighborhoods were crumbling, race riots were raging, and the place arguably deserved the infamous title of crime and corruption capital of America.

Sadly, the proud motor city as it was once aptly known in its heyday continued to spiral down into a financial and cultural abyss to the bottom where it lies today. I’m actually quite surprised it has taken this long for the city to finally declare bankruptcy.

More than a third of its buildings are abandoned and 40 percent of its residents live in poverty. The city has long-term debts of at least $18 billion and the bankruptcy process could take up to a year.

Of course the cause of that freefall was precisely the same disease which plagues the entire nation today: statism, hubris and utter political incompetence. Politicians in the United States today have simply not learned the bitter lesson of Detroit.  

And in Detroit, the politicians are still fiddling while the city burns. The city has one of the America’s few full-time municipal legislative bodies, a City Council consisting of nine parasite members elected to four-year terms.

Now, with their city in the throes of bankruptcy, one would think that these legislators might be acting responsibly with the goal to improve the financial mess and make Detroit a better place, but it should come as no surprise that such is the last thing on their minds.

Instead of doing their duty as elected officials, focusing on vital financial matters and an out of control crime rate, the members of the Detroit City Council are spending their time writing, voting and passing unanimous resolutions, for example, supporting a federal investigation into George Zimmerman and the Trayvon Martin-Zimmerman case that took place in Florida, six states and hundreds of miles away.

There have been 176 homicides in Detroit during the first seven months of 2013 and 5,853 aggravated assaults. This follows a total of 411 homicides in 2012, up from 377 in 2011, the second deadliest year per capita in Detroit’s history behind 1987. 

But the Council passed a resolution calling for a federal investigation to see whether civil rights charges are warranted against George Zimmerman.

The politicians fiddle while Detroit burns.

Power corrupts

Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, the nineteenth century English historian, writer and politician, better known as Lord Acton, got it perfectly right when he famously quipped: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

His simple observation of human nature has been proven true time and time again, so much so that it is a recognized fact which should properly be taken for granted in almost every case. We see it everywhere we look. The acquisition of power whether a lot or a little by one person over the lives of others usually leads to corruption.

In no case is this recurring fact more patently obvious than with the recent matter of Tennessee Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew who took it upon herself by fiat to unilaterally change the name of an infant in a case before her court because it offended her personal religious sentiments.

During my 42 years as a member of the bar I have witnessed this phenomenon happening with judges more often than not. Once a judge has been elected or appointed to the bench, something ominous seems to inevitably inspire the consciousness of otherwise ordinary responsible fair minded attorneys to believe that they now somehow enjoy powers at their disposal which far exceed what the law provides.

The 7-month-old infant’s parents were in this magistrate’s court only because they couldn’t agree upon their son’s last name, but when Judge Ballew heard that the boy’s given name was Messiah, a name which both parents had decided for him, she changed it to Martin against both of their wishes and without permission. She simply substituted her own judgment for theirs.

Ballew thinks the name Messiah could cause problems if the child grows up in Cocke County, which has a large Christian population. “It could put him at odds with a lot of people and at this point he has had no choice in what his name is,” said Ballew.

Then the judge explained her reasoning: “The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ,” she proclaimed from her high perch. So from now on, according to the dictate of this religious magistrate, the child is to be legally known as Martin DeShawn McCullough, which includes both parents’ last name.

Jaleesa Martin, of Newport, Tennessee, said she will appeal the judge’s order. She thought Messiah is unique and liked how it sounded alongside the boy’s two siblings — Micah and Mason. “Everybody believes what they want so I think I should be able to name my child what I want to name him, not someone else,” she declared.

As it happens Messiah was No. 4 among the fastest-rising baby names in 2012, according to the Social Security Administration’s annual list of popular baby names. Plenty of parents name their kids Moses, Mohammad, Jesus or Christ.

Never-mind that, however; it’s none of a damn judge’s business if a kid’s parents choose to name it Good God Almighty; they have a First Amendment right to do so under the United States Constitution.

This woman occupying the bench in a court of law had to know that but she apparently felt infused with the power of her situation to such an extent that she could order otherwise in accord with her own personal religious beliefs simply because she is a judge. She abused her authority knowingly and therefore deserves to be removed from the bench and disbarred as a practicing attorney.

A judge in a court of law is not supposed to differ much in terms of authority from a referee on a football field or an umpire behind the plate in a baseball park. Their job is to determine the admissibility of evidence and to apply the law just as if they were calling balls and strikes. A judge has no more authority to go outside the law than an umpire to go outside the rules of the game.

But unfortunately we all know for certain that power corrupts. 

American Judicial Secrecy Cesspool

The United States government in recent decades has become a filthy cesspool of corruption, constitutional violations, criminality, incompetence and serial wrongdoing, much of which is conducted entirely in secret under laws promulgated by Congress expressly for that purpose.

Thankfully, we have Edward Snowden and a few other courageous individual whistleblowers to thank for bringing this disgusting situation to light.

One aspect which is particularly frightening is the revelation that there are actually activities of the American judiciary which are conducted in secret by secret courts under secret laws and secret proceedings intended to be unknown and unchallengeable by the people.

Let’s get this straight at the outset. Secret laws, secret courts and secret judicial proceedings are unconstitutional. The United States Constitution makes no provision for and therefore does not allow Congress to pass secret laws, nor for the Judiciary to conduct secret courts and secret proceedings.

This is what the Constitution allows:

Article I, Section. 8., The Congress shall have Power To ... To constitute Tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

Article III, Section. 1., The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish...

Section 2., The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;-- between a State and Citizens of another State,--between Citizens of different States,--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

Neither Congress nor the courts have the power to make secret laws enforceable by secret courts. Thus, all three branches of the federal government today are routinely violating the constitution and the constitutional rights of the American people. They do it in secret so that we won’t complain.

One of the more recent victims of this government secret cesspool activity is Ladar Levinson, the founder of America based Lavabit email services, the security-conscious email provider that was the preferred email service of NSA leaker Edward Snowden. It has just closed its doors, citing US government interference.

"I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit," explains Levinson on his company's homepage. "After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations."

Lavabit provided that all email stored on its servers be encrypted using asymmetric elliptical curve cryptography, in such a way that it was impossible to discern the contents of any email without knowing the user's password.

“Our goal was to make invading a user's privacy difficult, by protecting messages at their most vulnerable point. That doesn't mean a dedicated attacker, like the United States government, couldn't intercept the message in transit or once it reaches your computer. Our hope is the difficulty associated with those strategies means they will only be used by governments on terrorists and scammers, not on honest citizens,” declared Lavabit in a whitepaper posted to the its website

"I feel you deserve to know what's going on – the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this," Levinson says. "Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests."

The government is demanding from Lavabit what it has already received from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other email providers – access to all its customers’ private accounts so it can violate their constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment.

And Levinson is prohibited from revealing that fact because of laws passed by Congress providing that requests for information by US intelligence agencies may include a gag order that forbids the party receiving the request, in this case Lavabit, from disclosing what information was requested, or even that a request was made at all.

Edward Snowden revealed that both Google and Microsoft have already turned over private user data to government spies under the secretive PRISM program, but the FISC won't allow them to reveal to the public what they may or may not have actually disclosed. Had Snowden not blown the whistle, we the American people would still be in the dark about it.

"This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States," Levinson warns.

Sadly, however, it was unconstitutional congressional lawmaking and judicial precedent in the first place which has added more filth to the American judicial secrecy cesspool.

Performance Enhancement Drugs Why Should We Care?

The plain truth about all sports, including professional sports especially, is that in the final analysis, while often entertaining, the outcomes of all the events put together amount to about as much importance to our lives as the trash left behind in the stadium stands.

In short, sports and sporting events are overly hyped occurrences, and the fans – fanatics – become emotionally involved over essentially nothing.  It’s all about winning just for the sake of winning.

It’s entertainment. The multi-millionaire athletes are merely playing games. Contact sports are a scripted outlet for controlled human aggression. There is really nothing at all serious about it. It’s merely an interval of fun and excitement, nothing more.

So as a libertarian I ask: why should anyone give a damn if an athlete chooses to use performance enhancing substances? It’s his life. It’s his body. It’s his personal liberty. He can choose his diet. He can choose his exercise and body building regimen. He can choose his own personal lifestyle. Why shouldn’t that include performance enhancement drugs?

There’s nothing unfair about it. Anyone should be allowed to do it.

Yet the sporting authorities today, and even most of the fans, are brainwashed to believe that the nation’s War on Drugs should make wrongdoers out of athletes who merely seek to enhance their performances on the playing field.

Alex Rodriguez told a news conference this week that the past seven months for him has been a “nightmare, probably the worst time of my life,” because of the severe punishment hanging like a sword over his head by Major League Baseball for using performance-enhancing drugs. He was suspended for the remainder of the current season and all of next year.

"There's nothing about it that's been easy," Rodriguez said. "All of it has been challenging. I'm sure there's been mistakes made along the way. We're here now. I'm a human being. I've had two hip surgeries. I've had two knee surgeries. I'm fighting for my life."

Of course it’s not easy. Anyone who takes steroids or other performance enhancing drugs on a frequent basis is a goddamned fool. That stuff will turn your testicles into the size of garden peas; wreak havoc with your entire body; shorten your life span and generally turn you into a freak.

But how many professional athletes live out normal life spans anyway? How many of them make big money in their prime only to die young regardless of whether they use drugs? They are fools in my opinion for playing contact sports anyway. Why don’t the authorities ban that?  

"I am disappointed with the penalty and intend to appeal and fight this through the process," Rodriguez continued. "I am eager to get back on the field and be with my teammates in Chicago tonight. I want to thank my family, friends and fans who have stood by my side through all this."

In addition to Rodriguez, baseball handed out 50-game suspensions to a dozen other players for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy.

His suspension, which will cost him tens of millions, “is based on his use and possession of numerous forms of prohibited performance-enhancing substances, including Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone, over the course of multiple years," and for "engaging in a course of conduct intended to obstruct and frustrate the Office of the Commissioner's investigation," according to Major League Baseball authorities.

"Faced with this situation, I made an error in judgment that I deeply regret, and I accept full responsibility for that error,” explained Texas Rangers outfielder Nelson Cruz.

Tigers shortstop Jhonny Peralta, also said that he made a “lapse in judgment.”“I apologize to everyone that I have hurt as a result of my mistake, including my teammates, the Tigers' organization, the great fans in Detroit, Major League Baseball, and my family,” he said.

But who has he hurt, and why should he have to apologize for making a foolish personal choice which could only do damage to him?

Sporting enhancement drugs: why should we care?

The Train Wreck Approaches

About a year ago I explained in detail why the rapidly approaching federal health insurance mandate under the so-called “Affordable Health Care act,” a.k.a. Obama Care, will not be affordable. (Part 1) (Part 2)

One Democrat lawmaker has described it as an approaching train wreck. He’s right. The president flat out lied to the American people when he told us that the costs of health care and health care insurance will go down dramatically once the law fully takes effect.

Unfortunately, the opposite will be proven true. The costs of health care and health care insurance are going to go up – way up -- instead of down. The nation’s healthy people, who did not need health insurance coverage in the past, will not only be required to start buying it for themselves, but will also be forced to pay the skyrocketing costs of health care and health care insurance for the nation’s sick people.

Those who could afford to buy basic health care insurance in the past will now be essentially paying for the health care of those who could not afford to buy insurance. Since insurance companies will not be allowed to deny coverage or increase individual premiums for preexisting conditions, policy holders with no preexisting conditions will be paying the increased costs to treat those with preexisting conditions. 

These requirements that insurance companies pay benefits for pre-existing conditions and cover children on their parent’s policies until age 26 will drastically raise the cost of premiums for all policy holders.

Since every item and cost of health care will now be covered by insurance, and everyone will be covered by insurance, the demand for health care products and services will skyrocket and the insurance companies will therefore be forced to charge much higher premiums.

Employers and other group entities will be forced to discontinue paying for employee and member health care insurance plans because such insurance plans will no longer be an affordable cost of doing business. That means that individuals who once enjoyed employer or other group paid benefits will be forced to pay the higher costs of individual coverage.

The government will subsidize the insurance premiums for low income people which will require higher income people to pay higher taxes to cover the costs. Thus, Obama Care will become a huge transfer of wealth from the most affluent of the population to the less affluent. The Supreme Court held that the law amounts to a tax, and as we all know it is only the people who enjoy substantial incomes that pay taxes.

The newly created insurance exchanges overseen by the government will administer $681 billion in subsidies over the next 10 years. Armies of new federal employees and agents will be added to the government payroll to fill positions in the HHS and IRS departments. The federal government is about to assume massive new powers, including designing insurance plans, telling people where they can go for coverage and how much insurers are allowed to charge.

The new law amounts to the biggest government takeover and power grab since Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. It makes Social Security look like small potatoes by comparison. Obama Care is socialized medicine for all and the final costs will be astronomical. It makes a mess of the entire health care system in the United States. The costs to the government, i.e., taxpayers, just for implementing and running Obama Care at the federal, state and local levels will be staggering.

The “Affordable Care Act,” all 2,700 pages of it, is not the half of it. There are currently more than 13,000 pages of government rules and regulations for administering the law with many more to follow. The Health and Human Services Department has been given $billions of dollars so far and the law has not even been implemented yet. New health insurance market places will have to be created in every state which will require more government employees and vast sums of taxpayer dollars.

According to a recent Investor’s Business Daily analysis of a GAO report, the average price for the lowest-cost Omamacare "bronze" plan in eight states is 122% higher than the cheapest plan currently available in those states. Similar cost increases for insurance coverage will prevail in all 50 states. In some states the costs for the cheapest plan will be almost three times higher than the cheapest plans available today.

No matter how one looks at this mess, Obama Care – the “Affordable Healthcare Act,” will simply not be affordable.

And the train wreck approaches.

Innocent Taxpayers Pay $4.1 Million; Government Wrongdoers Go Unpunished

Did you hear the one about the college kid who hit the big money jackpot with taxpayers after being negligently and wrongfully locked up in a tiny windowless cell, abandoned without food and water for 4 ½ days by your friendly government goons?

This is just one more of the many instances in which your government horribly abuses the most basic human and constitutional rights of innocent human beings; forces the innocent taxpayers to pay outrageously big money to cover the damage; and then allows the guilty individual wrongdoers to go completely unpunished.

Daniel Chong, a 23-year old college student at the time, has reached a $4.1 million settlement with the federal government after he was abandoned in a windowless Drug Enforcement Administration cell for more than four days without food or water. He was forced to drink his own urine in order to stay alive, hallucinated that agents were trying to poison him with gases through the vents, and tried to carve a farewell message to his mother in his arm.

It’s another example of the War on Drugs gone mad. The victim is an innocent human being. The criminal wrongdoers are government Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) thugs. The kid was taken into custody during a drug raid and placed in the cell by a San Diego police officer authorized to perform DEA work on a task force. The officer told Chong he would not be charged and said, "Hang tight, we'll come get you in a minute."

Was it a horrible, indefensible, unforgivable and outrageous ordeal? Absolutely!

Chong was hospitalized for five days for dehydration, kidney failure, cramps and a perforated esophagus. He lost 15 pounds. That innocent kid suffered unimaginably and deserves justice.

Is it something for which innocent taxpayers should have to shell out $4.1 dollars? Absolutely not!

But what the hell; your government has taxpayer money to burn. It can afford to pay that kind of a jackpot as often as it deems necessary to clean up its dirty messes as long as it involves other people’s money.

Here is the key to this whole sordid episode: It happened over a year ago in April of 2012. No one has been disciplined! No one has been punished! The goons who did this to an innocent human being will suffer no consequences; will pay no damages; will just walk away from the mess they created scot free while the taxpayers are stuck with the damage.

As badly as this victim was treated; as much as he suffered; as outrageous as the facts may be; and as much as he surely deserves a fair amount of money damages, the taxpayers should not have to shell out $4.1 million; that’s too much in my opinion.

The wrongdoers, the government thugs who did this to him, regardless of the fact that it might have been negligent and not deliberate, should be paying a high price for their conduct. They should pay money out of their pockets until they are destitute or for the rest of their lives, whichever occurs first, and that obligation should not be dischargeable in bankruptcy. They should never be allowed to hold a position of trust again in any occupation.

Most importantly, if the object is to prevent these kinds of things from happening again, the government culprits should be forced to endure at least half the physical and psychological suffering their innocent victim suffered. That means they should get solitary confinement, be locked up in 5x7 windowless cells for a minimum of two days, and deprived of any food or water the entire time.

Yes, in my opinion there should be a special kind of just punishment for government agents who violate the basic human and constitutional rights of American citizens. They should be made to suffer for it in such a way as to send a message to other government goons to think twice before they do the same.

It is only fair that innocent taxpayers be spared millions of dollars in over the top damages while the real wrongdoers go unpunished.