U.S. Government Gestapo to Google: “Give Us Passwords”

According to Google and several other Internet industry sources, the Feds have been secretly demanding that Internet providers turn over complete access to stored user account passwords and associated master encryption keys as part of the government’s escalating clandestine bulk surveillance activities against all Americans.  

If the government Gestapo goons can get your Internet passwords they can log into your private accounts, rummage through your personal data and confidential communications, use your account to impersonate you on the Internet, and then use the ill-gotten information to decipher all your other passwords in order to gain access to all your private Internet accounts and all your most personal, intimate and private information.  

The goal of the United States government is to eventually make everyone’s life an open book.

"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back."

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

"This is one of those unanswered legal questions: Is there any circumstance under which they could get password information?" ponders Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, "I don't know."

Well, I do know! That simple question was answered definitively more than 200 years ago with ratification of the Fourth Amendment and the Bill or Rights:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The sad fact is that today the federal government with the eager assistance of Congress thinks that it has the right to pass laws such as the Patriot Act which flatly violate the Fourth Amendment and the rights of privacy which were once enjoyed by all Americans.

The Patriot Act has been used to demand entire database dumps of phone call logs, and critics have suggested its use is broader. "The authority of the government is essentially limitless" under that law, admits Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence committee.

The U.S. Department of Justice has argued in court that it has broad legal authority to obtain passwords. First, “impersonating someone is legal," for police to do opines Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University and a former federal prosecutor. Second, the possibility that passwords could be used to log into users' accounts is not sufficient legal grounds for a Web provider to refuse to divulge them he said.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer says she fears winding up in prison for treason if she refused to comply with US spy demands for data. She admitted that Yahoo scrutinizes and fights US government data requests stamped with the authority of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, but when the company losses battles it must do as directed or risk being branded a traitor.

Data requests authorized by the court come with an order barring anyone at the company receiving the request from disclosing anything about them, even their existence. "If you don't comply, it is treason," said Mayer. "We can't talk about it because it is classified… Releasing classified information is treason, and you are incarcerated. In terms of protecting our users, it makes more sense to work within the system."

So the U.S. government is now claiming the right, via the Patriot Act and other federal statutes, to simply trash the Fourth Amendment in the dubious cause of protecting national security. The goons believe that their authority is limitless. They can take over your account without your consent, impersonate you on the Internet without your knowledge, and throw innocent Internet providers in prison for treason if they don’t divulge your account passwords or comply with all their demands.

And it’s all happening in secret. It’s all classified. I’m sure we don’t know the half of it. It’s exactly the same as burglarizing your home while you’re away, rummaging through your private papers and effects, taking what it wants and knowing that you will never be the wiser. Your government thinks that is legal.

That’s the America we live in today: an American Gestapo threatening, intimidating and demanding everything about everyone including passwords. 

Bearing Arms: The Second Amendment

As a lifelong defender of the United States Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights, there has never been any doubt in my mind that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of individuals to bear arms and that means, among other things, guns.

Furthermore, the right to “bear arms” means the right, not only to own guns, but to carry them on one’s person whether concealed or otherwise for the purpose of self defense.

But, just as with many other provisions of the Constitution, the Second Amendment language, consisting of only one sentence, is confusing, imprecise and open to varying interpretations, some of which out rightly contradict my assessment.

II: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Gun control advocates insist that the founding fathers, using this language, meant to restrict the right of the people to keep and bear arms to members of only well regulated militias. After all, that’s what the sentence seems to say.

If founders didn’t intend that meaning, why didn’t they just leave the part about militias out of it and simply provide that the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed?

That would have obviated any confusion, right?

But wait a minute; it’s still confusing. They’re talking about the right of the “people.” Does that language encompass individuals or a collective, i.e., individual citizens, or a group such as a well regulated militia for example?  

Thankfully, the United States Supreme Court has clarified that matter, but only recently. The Court has finally ruled definitively that individual’s have the right to own guns. "The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense," opined the Court.

A High School in the State of Texas, however, is still using a history textbook which teaches students a synopsis of the Second Amendment that reads: “The people have a right to keep and bear arms in a state militia.”

That interpretation directly contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s a clear example of how many education authorities are attempting exploit the confusion in the Second Amendment to rewrite American history in an effort to indoctrinate kids to accept the premise that individual gun ownership is wrong, a problem with society, and should therefore be strictly curtailed if not outright banned.

Even the United States Senate’s official web page referencing the Second Amendment, published after the Supreme Court decisions, states: "Whether this provision protects the individual's right to own firearms or whether it deals only with the collective right of the people to arm and maintain a militia has long been debated."

Again, that flatly contradicts the Supreme Court.

"After five-and-a-half years of litigation, the Supreme Court unequivocally resolved the long-standing debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment," says Bob Levy, one of the lawyers who won the 2008 Supreme Court case. "No one on either side of the gun debate -- with the possible exception of those persons who devised the U.S. Senate's official website explaining the Constitution -- doubts that the Supreme Court has affirmed the individual rights view of the Second Amendment."

"Considering that this year the party in control of the United States Senate tried to ban many semi-automatic firearms and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, it does not surprise me that their website takes that position," Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said. "Congress has shown time and time again that they ignore the two Supreme Court decisions that make it very clear that the Second Amendment is in fact an individual right."

Yes, of course, and I totally agree, but unfortunately there is still considerable confusion about the Second Amendment and its guarantee as to the right of individuals to bear arms.

The Supreme Court hasn’t cleared it all up quite yet. They didn’t, for example determine the validity of concealed carry laws or laws limiting the nature and types of firearms that individuals may own, not to mention bear on their person.

One might think that a strict originalist jurist like Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, would consider the fact that when the Constitution was established as law all firearms of the time were primitive at best, only allowing one shot followed by the time consuming necessity to reload before taking another shot.

With that fact in mind, together with Scalia’s proclivity to interpret the Constitution according to the meaning of the document at the time it was written, it would seem that he would uphold gun control laws restricting individual gun ownership to only the type of weapons available to individuals in the year 1789.

That eventuality, of course, would become the NRA’s ultimate nightmare.

Yet it is quite true that when the Constitution was ratified there was no such thing as machine guns, large magazine automatic pistols, assault rifles, or even simple revolvers which hold six cartridges.

Surely, few reasonable people would argue that there must be necessary limitations to the right of individuals to bear arms. After all, the founding fathers clearly didn’t contemplate that there would ever be a right to of individuals bear arms of mass destruction.

But what are those limitations?

Where does one draw the line?

I think we can look forward to a lot more of these vexing questions and legal problems in the years to come as the judges grapple with the confusion inherent in the Second Amendment and the corresponding right of individuals to bear arms.

Stupid: More Dangerous Than Terror

At least with Al-Qaeda terrorists we have some chance to prevent horrible catastrophe’s but we can’t fix stupid and that’s exactly what we face constantly with our own bloated, incompetent out of control government and it’s gung-ho military aggressors.

Yes, neither the Pentagon nor the Department of Homeland Security can safely protect us from the dangers posed by the government’s own incredibly stupid blunders. Sooner or later that stupidity will result in an American, perhaps global, apocalypse.

Fifty-two years ago it almost did. We all know about the infamous Cuban missile crisis which brought the United States of America to the brink of an all out nuclear war with the Soviet Union, a war which might have wiped us all off the face of the Earth. 

That was the result of stupid.

But did you know that in 1961 the U.S. Air Force nearly detonated by stupid mistake a hydrogen atomic bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that destroyed Hiroshima?

Of course, you probably didn’t know that, and neither did I, until just last Friday when The Guardian, a British news service, published a declassified formerly top secret report obtained from our government by way of the Freedom of Information Act (FOI).

The 1969 document, obtained by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, reveals a Jan. 23, 1961, B-52 crash near Goldsboro, North Carolina, in which two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs broke up in mid-air. One of them behaved exactly as a nuclear weapon is designed to function in wartime, and the only thing that prevented detonation was the failure of a single low-voltage switch.

Parker Jones, a senior engineer in the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., wrote in the report that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

Jones noted from the crash evidence, in which three of eight crew members died, that the bombs "did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," and concluded that the detonation "would have been bad news – in spades." Had the hydrogen bomb detonated as designed fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, according to the report.

"The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy," Schlosser told the newspaper. "We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here's one that very nearly did."

So now we know after more than half a century of incompetent government cover-up that the U.S. military almost stupidly nuked a huge area of our nation which would have decimated our capitol city, Washington, D.C., the White House, Capitol Hill, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City, killing millions of Americans, and making the 9/11 Al Queada terror attack seem like a simple fireworks mishap by comparison.

Why in the name of all reason and logic was an Air Force B-52 bomber loaded with fully armed and ready to detonate hydrogen bombs flying around over North Carolina in U.S air space in the first place?

I’ll tell you why: it was stupid and stupid is more dangerous than terror.

Smokers vs. Kids

Libertarian Chris Tame opines recently that prohibiting smokers from adopting or fostering children is anti-liberty, wrong and would set a dangerous precedent. Just a few years ago, as a libertarian myself, I would have agreed with him, but not today.

Today it is a known, established, documented and widely accepted scientific fact that smoking makes people sick and too often makes them sick to death. 

Never-the-less, as a libertarian, I still do agree that individuals own themselves and therefore have the right to smoke as long as they can do so without subjecting other individuals to the stinking unhealthy consequences of the habit.  

“In both the US and Europe, anti-smoking activists are increasingly describing smoking as a form of child abuse that should be prohibited,” Tame observes. So adoption and fostering organizations are proposing a ban on allowing smokers to adopt of foster kids.

He is appalled at this “threat to civil liberties” posed by “political correctness” imposed by the Nanny State.

Tame claims that the evidence suggesting that environmental tobacco smoke can be harmful to non-smokers is “junk science.” Then he suggests that the pro-health proposals to ban smokers from adopting or fostering kids amount to “anti-working class” measures.

Nonsense!

He admits that: “working-class children are all at risk, and always have been, through their less generally safe environment and through alleged working-class values (such as immediate rather than “deferred gratification).”

“So, if safety is such a big issue,” he posits, “why stop with smokers? Why not forbid adoption and fostering by anybody who is working class? After all, working-class health, working-class education, working-class life expectancy, working-class life in general is, statistically speaking, less good than life for the middle and upper classes. Once you concede that environmentally unsuitable parents may not adopt, where does it stop? Why should “inappropriate” adults even be allowed to have children at all?”

Why indeed! If any parents, whether working class or not, provide a substantially unhealthy and harmful environment for their children they risk the possibility of termination of parental rights. Thus, alcoholics, drug addicts, abusers and the like who subject their children to real risks of harm can rightfully lose their rights to parent them. That’s the law everywhere. Working class has nothing to do with it.

In my own case, I’m ashamed to admit that I began smoking during my early teens largely due to the influence of my middle class parents, grandparents and just about every other adult around me from every social class at the time. 

It seems that almost everyone smoked during the late 1940’s, ‘50’s and 60’s while I was growing up. Humphrey Bogart did it. Edward R. Murrow did it. All the sophisticated people did it. It sure seemed cool. Smoking infused the entire American culture then; you saw it constantly in movies; on television; restaurants; theaters; trains; buses; airplanes; everywhere.

My dad tried hard to discourage me from smoking to no avail. Of course, he and everyone else knew full well even then, well before the scientific evidence confirmed it, that smoking is bad, very bad, especially for kids. Thankfully, the culture of smoking is slowly changing, but in my opinion not fast enough.

I was hooked on smoking for many years even though I witnessed both my grandfathers dying of lung cancer due to heavy smoking. My father died at an early age of heart disease brought on by, among other bad things, heavy smoking. Since then, smokers in America have been dying early deaths like flies.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that even after I had quit smoking altogether for 10 years, I now suffer with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) brought about from the years of smoking. Yet I consider myself one of the lucky ones so far. It could have been cancer.

Today when I am exposed to second hand environmental “passive” smoke, the stinking clouds of the poison make me physically sick. So don’t try to tell me that secondhand smoke isn’t harmful.

Maybe I’m selfish, but I hope the day comes very soon when people aren’t allowed to smoke anywhere in public. Better still, I hope that all the smokers of today come to finally realize as I have that smoking is a health hazard, a killer and it’s time to quit now. It won’t happen in my lifetime but someday no one on Earth in their right mind will smoke tobacco just like no one today knowingly ingests lead.

Smokers deserve and should rightfully be relegated to the social status of pariahs.

There is no right to adopt or foster kids. So if smokers today want to adopt or foster children I don’t think it’s too much to require them to either quit the habit altogether or at the very least never practice it in proximity with kids.

Beyond the Pale

I wonder whether SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, the turncoat jurist who upheld the constitutionality of ObamaCare, was aware of the fact then that the law will require patients to tell their doctors the most intimate private information about their sex lives and other sensitive life history details – details that the doctors will in turn be required to disclose to the government -- even when such information has nothing to do with why they are seeking medical treatment.

Surely he was not aware. Surely none of the nine justices were aware, for if they were I’m confident that they would have all decided in unison that this law and these outrageously statist regulations are profoundly anti-liberty, un-American, and fundamentally unconstitutional.

As we learn more and more each day that we didn’t know before about this fast approaching train wreck, Obama’s so called federal Affordable Care Act, people are finally beginning to understand just how unimaginably intrusive, mind numbingly dictatorial, and Orwellingly tyrannical it really is.

It’s beyond the pale.

These new regulations, of which no doubt not even Congress or the President were aware, require that patients be asked to disclose much more personal information than previously thought to their doctors -- including how often they have sex and how with how many sexual partners. And once they do disclose it, it won't really be personal information any more. It becomes the property of the United States government.

Yes, that’s right; according to a report in the New York Post, the federal government is apparently insisting on knowing whether you do it doggy style, missionary, or cowgirl, how often, and with exactly how many different partners. Your doctor will be asking you to reveal all there is to know about your private and personal sex life, your history of drug use, etc., regardless of whether that information is related in any way with why you came to visit.

"Once you've shared your information with a private third party, the Supreme Court has ruled that is fair game for the government," explains Christina Sandefur, a lawyer for the Goldwater Institute. That’s a clear cut violation of the doctor patient privilege doctrine as well as the fundamental privacy rights of all patients under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.  

Doctors and hospitals that refuse to participate could be cut-off from receiving federal funds, and, more importantly, individuals who decline to share sensitive information may have to pay the fines – “taxes,” according to Justice Roberts and his Supreme Court – as provided in the ObamaCare law.

So now you know that if you don’t tell the government everything it wants to know about the most private and intimate details of your life, the feds are going to come after you for another  pound of flesh, just like they do if you don’t report all your income.

It’s surreal. It’s unbelievable.

It’s beyond the pale.

Parasite Privilege

Most of us accept the rational validity of traffic laws and penalties for violations of them because they tend to enhance highway traffic safety. Bad driving habits greatly increase the likelihood of accidents which can result in serious injuries and deaths.

Reasonable people, therefore, obey speed limits and traffic signals on the highways, not only because they understand the necessity to drive safely, but because the penalties for traffic violations provide an extra incentive to do so. We avoid excessive speeds and stop at red lights, for example, because we don’t want to get a costly traffic ticket and points on our driver’s licenses.

If traffic law violations increase the likelihood of highway accidents, injuries and deaths, it surely stands to reason that this logic applies to everyone who drives a vehicle without exception. Bad driving is potentially dangerous to everyone on the highway no matter who is behind the wheel.

But the political parasite class in the State of Washington enjoy a special privilege when it comes to dangerous driving that their commoner constituents do not. They can drive at any speed they like, use the wrong side of the road, go the opposite direction on one way streets, run red lights, fail to stop at stop signs, or violate any other traffic law on the books for no other reason except that they are legislators, i.e., parasites.

The Washington State Patrol (WSP) says that Washington lawmakers are constitutionally protected from receiving noncriminal traffic tickets during a legislative session, as well as 15 days before. State Patrol spokesman Bob Calkins says the privilege not only applies to moving violations near the state Capitol in Olympia, but potentially anywhere in the state.

Detaining lawmakers on the road -- even for the time it takes to issue them a speeding ticket -- may delay them from getting to the Capitol to vote. That’s the flimsy excuse the privileged parasites offer for a state constitutional provision which violates the United States Constitution Fourteenth Amendment provisions that supposedly guarantee everyone, lawmaker and commoner alike, equal protection of the law.

Why should anyone show respect for the traffic rules if some among them are privileged to flaunt them at will? Why should you receive a costly traffic ticket for a moving violation when others can commit the same offense without penalty?

Lawmakers have positioned themselves so that they can endanger the lives of everyone on the highway with absolute legal impunity because any hindrance against them doing so might delay them from casting a legislative vote. Their vote it seems is more important than highway traffic safety and the potential for serious injuries and deaths of innocent motorists.

You see, that is how the minds of the privileged parasite political class operate. They fancy themselves as above the law. Traffic laws simply do not apply to them because their comfort and convenience is more important than the lives of the commoners. Highway safety may be damned and traffic lights mean nothing when it suits them; if, for instance, they oversleep one morning and are running late for a legislative session.

It’s unfair, illogical, unreasonable and unconstitutional.

It’s called parasite privilege.

We’re Exceptional!

America can't be a global cop, but it ought to act like one in certain situations. "That's what makes us exceptional," declared emperor of the planet Earth, Barack Obama. "With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth."

Humility; did he say with humility?

Just exactly when during the last century has the United States government ever acted with humility? After all, we’re exceptional; we’re the leader of the world; we expect all the other nations to emulate our values. With all due humility intended, we’re the best; we’re number one; everyone else is inferior.

Sure, we’re exceptional alright, but not necessarily in a positive way. No nation on Earth fancies itself as policeman of the planet except the United States of America. No nation maintains a bloated military presence in hundreds of different countries all around the world except the United States of America. No nation claims the right to be leader of the world, and the world’s philosophical values except the United States of America.

Those are just a few of the negative things that make the United States of America exceptional. Our government is exceptionally stupid and downright serially incompetent when it comes to international diplomacy. 

Our government goes out of its way to make enemies everywhere while throwing away its own citizens’ lives and hard earned cash in the process.

The United States government is exceptional in its willingness to make war on the world with no rational objective in plan; to waste taxpayer dollars with no expectation of return on investment; and to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers for nothing.

No wonder the America of today is ridiculed, despised and reviled throughout the world.

Is it therefore a surprise to anyone that Russian president, Vladimir Putin would take the opportunity to ridicule the United States with an editorial piece in one of our own American newspapers, the New York Times?

"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation,” Putin jabbed. "We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."  

Putin said he had written the opinion piece in order "to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders." This was especially good theatre coming as it did from a wily old Soviet KGB thug who has never believed in God, much less in human equality.

But he never-the-less, with forked Russian tongue planted firmly in cheek, deftly and successfully exposed the shameless transparent hypocrisy of Barack Obama and the United States government for the entire world to see.

As expected, of course, this raised the hypocrite hackles of the American political parasite class, who constantly remind us of how wonderfully exceptional we are. Democratic Senator Robert Menendez said the piece made him almost want to throw up. "I almost wanted to vomit," carped Menendez

"Hey Putin, next time you wanna write a letter to convince America about something, how about you skip saying we're not exceptional? #rude," tweeted Sarah Rumpf, a political consultant in Florida. She actually expects all world leaders to accept the fact that her beloved American government is the best, that we’re still number one.

We’re exceptional!

Fit to be Fried

I don’t agree with the death penalty for many reasons, but mostly because the way it is administered in America is just far too haphazard, arbitrary, unwieldy and costly to qualify the practice as worthwhile.

In the state of Texas, for example, more executions are carried out than just about anywhere else in the United States, but strange as it may seem, the law requires that such prisoners have to be fit to be fried.

Fit, as in mentally fit, that is. A Texas appeals court ruled this week that a schizophrenic death row inmate cannot be forced to take medication which could make him mentally fit to be executed.

The convict, who has spent 22 years on death row, was sentenced to die in for his role in a 1989 armed robbery that left a restaurant manager dead. He had originally been scheduled for execution in 2006, but won a reprieve when he was found to be mentally incompetent.

Then prosecutors sought permission to have him “involuntarily medicated” which would render him fit. After a lengthy and hugely expensive legal battle the convict was force fed drugs which brought the worst of his symptoms under control. So he was found by a lower court to be mentally competent to be executed in 2012.

But an appellate court overruled that decision, holding that the lower court lacked the authority to order forced medication. “We hold that the evidence conclusively shows that appellant’s competency to be executed was achieved solely through the involuntary medication, which the trial court had no authority to order,” said the court. “The evidence conclusively shows that (the) appellant is incompetent to be executed.”

The US Supreme Court has ruled that mentally incompetent inmates cannot be executed but has not yet considered whether forcible medication is permissible in order to render an inmate mentally fit.

So the law is apparently settled that mental incompetency is grounds for a reprieve from the death penalty. One must be mentally competent before one can be officially rendered eternally mentally incompetent via execution.

This lucky prisoner was ruled mentally incompetent to be rendered mentally incompetent.

Because only in America must a death row inmate be fit to be fried.

Statist School District Fat Police

Compulsory public school education is unconstitutional and profoundly anti-liberty. The United States Constitution provides zero authority for the government to mandate attendance at schools in order to force its educational agenda upon the populace.  

Education is a private personal matter.

Forcing parents and children by law to participate in compulsory education programs clearly violates the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of association. It compels human beings to accept government propaganda and to associate with government agents whether they like it or not. Part of the fundamental concept of freedom of speech is the freedom to listen or not listen to the speech of others or to associate or not with them.

Likewise, forcing parents and children by law to attend school several hours per day, five days per week over the course of thirteen of the child’s most formative years, clearly violates the Fifth Amendment prohibitions against deprivation of liberty and property without due process of law. It compels human beings to sacrifice their time and freedom to government purposes whether they like it or not.

Today the Statist government education authorities want to violate their captives Fourth Amendment constitutional rights as well. The fundamental right to be secure in your “person” against unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause and a warrant based upon oath or affirmation is being routinely violated by the statists.

In short, the government education statists are treating their child captives just like domesticated animals while they are caged up by force at school. The kids’ entire lives are like an open book under the scrutiny of the authorities. They enjoy no rights. They are forced to attend, forced to listen, forced to associate, and forced to sacrifice their precious liberty to the whims of the government.

Now they are even being forced to surrender their personal dignity and self esteem too. The government goons are weighing them in annual weigh-ins like hogs before the slaughter to determine their body mass index (BMI) for the purpose of deciding whether they are too fat for their own good and the good of society at large.

An individual’s BMI is calculated by dividing their weight by the square of their height.  This figure is then compared to growth charts accounting for the person’s age and gender, in order to understand how they compare to the rest of their peers.  BMI is the primary measurement used to determine if a person is considered overweight and obese.

Those children who flunk the government enforced BMI test have to contend with ‘Fat letters’ sent home to their parents admonishing them to take notice that the government statists have deemed them as overweight. Its part of a whole new scholastic measurement concept: body mass index (BMI) grade report cards. The kids call them “fat letters.”

So it’s no longer about education. It’s about government control of the lives of its subjects. The government thinks it’s their business to determine whether a child’s weight is healthy or unhealthy. Just exactly where they acquired that authority is beyond me; it doesn’t exist; it’s unlawful and unconstitutional.

But good luck when you tell that to the statist school district fat police.

Government Tattoo Statists of America

I don’t sport any tattoos; never have; never will; don’t like them, and have always thought they look ridiculous, especially on the body of a pretty woman.

Tattoos, however, are a classic means of personal artistic self expression, and although I would never choose to have one as a way to express myself, I know that every human being in the United States of America enjoys a First Amendment Constitutional right to cover their bodies with them if that is their desire whether I like it or not.

Imagine a government entity that passed and enforced statist oriented laws requiring that all artists be licensed by the state and that all buyers of art be required to wait 24 hours before completing the purchase.

That kind of thing shouldn’t happen in America.

But the government tattoo statists of America, always on the lookout for opportunities to violate individual constitutional rights, want to interfere with that longstanding classic right of personal self expression – tattoos -- a practice which has been unregulated since the dawn of mankind.

They now demand the power to second guess your personal decision to get a tattoo.

The Department of Health for the city of Washington D.C., is proposing a new regulation requiring a 24-hour waiting period and other onerous requirements for the provision of tattoo services. Sixty-five pages of rules and regulations designed to stifle tattoo parlors would require that a tattoo artist cannot apply a tattoo or body piercing until at least 24 hours after a customer requests it.

It has nothing to do with health. "That's a classic case of a cosmetologist saying, 'Shouldn't those people think about their decision?'" said tattoo artist Paul Roe, calling the proposal "ridiculous" because it would hurt his business. “Over-regulation is the killer of any profession,” he explained.

The regulations would also prohibit the tattooing of anyone under the age of 18, anyone under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and require that the operators and artists be licensed, as well as outlining exactly what equipment can be used, and how to maintain it.

So the city government in D.C. believes that minors don’t have First Amendment Rights, and therefore can’t be tattooed even if their parents give consent. Tattooing a kid would be a crime in Washington D.C. The city government wants tattoo artists to administer alcohol breathalyzer and drug tests to their customers. Tattooing drinkers and pot heads would be a crime.

The government statists think they have the power to interfere with your right of self expression and the manner in which you choose to show it. Why not? Today they are interfering with just about every other constitutionally guaranteed right in the Bill of Rights.

Tomorrow they’ll be coming after your right to eat ice cream.

This time though it’s the government tattoo statists of America.

Government: It’s Your Family

Government “is like a nation’s family” because it sets rules and takes care of needs such as health care and education.

That’s what education authorities in the State of Illinois are teaching little fourth-grade elementary school children nowadays complete with a worksheet for social studies homework depicting Uncle Sam cradling a baby American that represents the citizens.

“What is Government?” the worksheet is titled. “Government is like a nation’s family. Families take care of children and make sure they are safe, healthy and educated, and free to enjoy life. Families encourage children to be independent hardworking and responsible,” it explains. “Families make and enforce rules and give appropriate punishments when rules are broken. Government does these things for its citizens, too.”

That’s the purpose of government. Uncle Sam is part of our family. He takes care of us. Even after we become adults he continues to take care of us and make sure that we are safe. He makes the rules for us to live by. He decides our values, our culture, and how we should live. He knows what is best for us. Just like mom and dad, he loves us. He selflessly sacrifices for us. So we should love and obey him.

You see, this is exactly what the parasite political class in America wants its subjects to think about them. “We’re the government; we’re here to help you; we’re your family.” These people view their subjects as children who must  be told what to think and how to act.

They use the public schools to accomplish their goal. Their goal is to use propaganda to teach successive generations of citizens how to compliantly feed them and otherwise do their bidding. Each new generation is considered a “resource.” If I’ve heard that term once I’ve heard it a thousand times from government parasites referring to the people they govern. To them we are nothing more than a resource.

This “is not an attempt to include and/or promote a political message,” insists Teri Madl, the superintendent for East Prairie School District 73 in Illinois. “… it is meant to offer a simple analogy that helps children understand that part of a government’s role is to set rules, enforce those rules, and provide safety, security and freedom for its citizens.”

But if that’s the case, it’s surely a wickedly false and calculating analogy deliberately crafted to indoctrinate, brainwash and deceive gullible young children into believing that a wholly abstract construction – government – loves them like family and will take care of them just like family.

It doesn’t explain the part about government parasites using them like slaves, extorting their money, and curtailing their liberty. It’s a statist political message; political socialist propaganda, pure and simple.  

This is clearly not the kind of stinking garbage the founding fathers anticipated, after fighting a bitter Revolutionary War against the British monarchy, would be taught to little school children about the purpose of government. They saw government as a necessary evil which must be strictly limited in order to preserve the liberty of the people.

They certainly did not view the government as family.

That’s because they considered a citizen’s family and family matters as private and personal, which is to say: none of the goddamned government’s business. The founders lived at a time much different from today when the government was not involved in every single aspect of people’s lives.

Now the parasite political class which controls the government believes that there is no longer any such value as privacy. Your private personal and family business is the government’s business as far as they are concerned. They want to determine your values, your culture, what and how you think.

Incredibly, some of these government parasites even want to teach you and your children what to think about your own private sex life. I’m not making this up. Some public school authorities in Wisconsin today are actually teaching the kids what to think and do about masturbation.

Why not? Nothing is private from Uncle Sam any longer.

Government: It’s your family.

Who would’ve thought?

Attorney General Eric Holder and his United States Department of Justice have recently come up with the bright idea to leave the states alone to determine whether recreational drugs like marijuana should be legalized; whether federal drug law offenders should face mandatory minimum prison sentences; and whether it’s still such a good idea to keep filling up federal prisons to the brim with non-violent drug offenders.

Who would’ve thought?

Is it possible that the gargantuan powers that be – the Authority! – is finally starting to listen to us libertarians?

After all these years of mindless, wasteful and ineffective conflict is it possible that the authoritarian War on Drugs pendulum has swung too far and is finally poised to change direction on a course toward moderation and reason?

Well, probably not. People like Eric Holder are not going to listen to libertarians. The War on Drugs is going to continue on the path of stupid but maybe, just maybe, not quite as stupid as in the several decades past.

Holder told an audience of the American Bar Association in San Francisco that he is altering his policy on charging some drug offenders. Those defendants with no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels and no history of violence won't be charged with offenses that impose mandatory minimums.

Offenders will instead be charged with offenses for which accompanying sentences "are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins."

So the Attorney General of the United States is tacitly admitting that, for all this time, petty recreational drug offenders in America have been given mandatory, draconian and excessive prison sentences for totally non-violent conduct. It’s like: “Oops, we made a big mistake; our bad; so sad.”

Mandatory minimum sentences "breed disrespect for the system. When applied indiscriminately, they do not serve public safety. They have had a disabling effect on communities. And they are ultimately counterproductive." Holder only now acknowledges.

Who would’ve thought?

The War on Drugs is the reason why federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent above capacity because half of the prisoners are there for drug related “crimes,” most of them by far nonviolent, and 9 million to 10 million prisoners are stuffed into local jails each year.

"We cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation," Holder said. "Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. However, many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate this problem, rather than alleviate it… We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate -- not merely to convict, warehouse and forget."

"By targeting the most serious offenses, prosecuting the most dangerous criminals, directing assistance to crime `hot spots,' and pursuing new ways to promote public safety, deterrence, efficiency and fairness -- we can become both smarter and tougher on crime," Holder said, but he’s not saying he’s sorry for all the innocent lives ruined in the War on Drugs.

Holder also said the department is expanding a policy for considering compassionate release for inmates facing extraordinary or compelling circumstances, and who pose no threat to the public. He said the expansion will include elderly inmates who did not commit violent crimes and who have served significant portions of their sentences.

Maybe the time has come to scuttle the entire War on Drugs and bring back the concept of personal liberty in the United States of America.

Gee, who would’ve thought?