FCC Nazis

Do you think that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of America’s founders ever imagined for a second that the Congress and the President of the United States they created with our Constitution would someday begin to delegate their important legislative powers to obscure government agencies, boards, commissions and other bureaucratic entities substantially beyond accountability to the American people?

Not for a second did any of them ever imagine such a government nightmare. Yet today by far most of the nation’s laws, rules and regulations are promulgated and decreed by fiat from the whims of legions of faceless unelected bureaucrats who have virtual dictatorial powers over our everyday lives. They constitute a huge parasitical fourth branch of government which was never contemplated by our revolutionary fathers. It’s slowly eating away at our liberty.

This Nazi like forth branch of government has wrapped its sticky tentacles around each one of our precious freedoms so that today they successfully control almost every aspect of our lives. With most of their activities we don’t get to vote; we don’t even get the opportunity to debate the matter before their whims become law.

This week the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted sweeping new regulations sought by President Obama for how Americans use and do business on the Internet. These Nazis are moving swiftly to take over the Internet. And they did it all in secret; no vote; no debate; no input whatsoever from the American public.

They call it their net neutrality plan. As with all of their dictatorial regulatory actions they want us to believe that it is all being done benignly and in the public interest. They want us to think that they’re coming to our rescue, making the Internet, in their words, a fairer and "open, unfettered network."

They aim firstly to bar Internet providers from creating paid "fast lanes" allowing us to pay more for better service. They want to level the playing field. They want a one size fits all approach to the World Wide Web. They’re going to do to the Internet what they did to the telephone system. It will now be treated as a public utility requiring providers to act in the so-called "public interest."

It constitutes a "monumental shift" to "government control of the Internet," said Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. "President Obama told us to do so," he admitted. It will allow rate regulation and service fees. Ultimately, rates will go up and broadband service will slow. "The order explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes."

The European governments have already done the same and it has ruined the Internet experience for their people. Speeds have gone down and there is less entrepreneurial investment. "The Internet is not broken. There is no problem for the government to solve," Pai explained. 

Congress long ago created this Frankenstein monster and therefore only Congress can drive a state through its tyrannical heart. Good luck with that. It will never happen. Instead the situation will only continue to get worse.

We’re stuck with the FCC Nazis

Republican Neanderthals

Mitt Romney would have easily won the last presidential election and we’d have a Republican President of the United States today if only the GOP Neanderthals had put a lid on their extremist political antics and shut their bigoted mouths during the campaign.  

But the GOP Neanderthals will never do that. They’ll always be Neanderthals. They just can’t help it. They’d rather lose the election than give one inch on their medieval religious social agenda for America.  That’s why mainstream American voters don’t like them. The average American is afraid of what a Neanderthal would do if elected to high office. They saw what GWB did to the country and don’t want that to happen again.

Democrat Barack Obama has been a horrible President and Hillary Clinton would no doubt be far worse, however the Republicans will still have a difficult time beating her, or any other Democrat for that matter, in 2016 because of the GOP Neanderthal wing.

A federal judge last year ruled that the State of Oklahoma’s ban on same sex marriage was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to declare all such state laws unconstitutional. The GOP has lost their continuing battle to discriminate against homosexuals. Yet the Republican Neanderthals in Oklahoma are not about to give it up. They’re going to pass a new law to punish any local or state employee who issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The bill is just one of several in the GOP dominated statehouse aimed at imposing restrictions on gay marriage. They plan on defying the federal judiciary. The court said their discrimination is unconstitutional. They aren’t listening. The average American citizen has come around to the position that gay marriage is no threat to society. The Neanderthals aren’t listening.

Their "Preservation of Sovereignty and Marriage Act" prohibits taxpayer funds, including government salaries, to be used for any activity that supports same-sex marriage. It also provides that those who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples can be subject to removal from office.

When the average American voter thinks about the GOP, they might like a particular candidate and his or her ideas, but the scary specter of the Republican Neanderthal will always be lurking in the back of their minds.  That’s because of the antics of knuckle-dragging Republican politicians like the bigots in Oklahoma described above.

If any group can bring down the GOP in a presidential election, it’s the Republican Neanderthals.

First Amendment: The Foundation of Liberty

I’m no fan of religion – any religion -- because, in my opinion, it causes far more bad consequences to human civilization, well being and liberty than good. The time will eventually come (unfortunately not in my lifetime) when all religions will be reasoned out of existence in conscious minds -- that is only if the irrationality of it all doesn’t result first in the complete destruction and extinction of the human species.

That said, I’m a huge fan of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and especially the First Amendment. It is the foundation for liberty in America. Without freedom of conscience there is no liberty.

The First Amendment recognizes my right to disbelieve in all religions, and express my non-belief as I am doing here, just as it recognizes the rights of others to freely exercise and express their religious beliefs. That is the essence of religious liberty for believers and non-believers alike. These rights “shall not be abridged.”  

This is why I am troubled by the news that the city of Atlanta Georgia has terminated the employment of its fire chief solely because of his religious beliefs.  

Atlanta fire chief, Kelvin Cochran was suspended for 30 days last November and subsequently fired by the city solely because of a Christian devotional book he authored  that included a section on his beliefs regarding biblical sexual morality. Cochran expressed his religious beliefs against same-sex marriage and homosexual conduct.

“I respect each individual’s rights to have their own thoughts, beliefs, and opinions, but when you’re a city employee and those thoughts, beliefs and opinions are different from the city’s, you have to check them at the door,” declared city Councilman Alex Wan.

The Councilman contradicted himself in the same sentence. Obviously he does not respect Cochran’s First Amendment rights if he thinks he can get away with firing him for merely exercising those rights by authoring opinions which differ from his own.

“Every American should be concerned about a government that thinks it can fire you because of what you believe,” explained Cochran’s Alliance Defending Freedom attorney, who filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination in federal court.

Now, while I certainly don’t agree with any of Cochran’s religious beliefs, his First Amendment rights were plainly violated by the city of Atlanta, and therefore I have no doubt that he should and will prevail in his meritorious legal action.  

The city cannot terminate the employment of someone for merely writing a book containing an expression of controversial religious beliefs. Had Cochran exercised those same beliefs to discriminate against a gay employee of his department that would be a different situation all together, but all he did here was to write a book expressing his beliefs.

His termination was unconstitutional in violation of the First Amendment... the foundation of liberty.

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Moores the Pity

Do you remember Roy Moore, the Teflon judge from the State of Alabama? You know -- the judge who likes to substitute his Christian religion for the law of the land; who harbors no respect whatsoever for the United States Constitution; who disobeys the federal judiciary, and answers only to God. It’s a pity.

Well, he’s at it again. He just won’t go away quietly.  As Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court back in 2003 he stubbornly refused to remove a massive granite Ten Commandments monument centerpiece from the Alabama Judicial Building after a federal judge ordered him to do it.

After all, he had commissioned the monument himself and he was not about to take orders from a federal judge who considers the First Amendment Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution and "obedience of a court order superior to all other concerns, even the suppression of belief in the sovereignty of God,” contended Moore.

That bit of judicial malfeasance got him booted off the Alabama Supreme Court by none other than his own state’s Court of the Judiciary. They unanimously removed him from his post as Chief Justice.  

Undeterred, Moore sought the Republican nomination for Alabama governor in 2006 but lost in the primary to the incumbent by a 2 to 1 margin. He ran for governor again in 2009 and lost in the primary a second time having received only 19% of the vote.  In 2011 he got the idea to run for President of the United States as a Republican.

Religious extremists are drawn to the GOP like moths to a flame. Fortunately for the rest of us his candidacy quickly went down in flames. Then by some miracle of miracles he won an election to reclaim his former job as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. The people of Alabama seem to love their religious extremists. They want their justices to follow the word of God.

And that’s exactly what Judge Moore is doing once again. This time he’s refusing to abide by a federal court judge who ordered Alabama county probate judges to issue marriage licenses to gays. Moore has ordered the probate judges to ignore the federal court decision and continue to deny marriage licenses to gays.

Apparently Judge Moore thinks that the Alabama state constitution and his Holy Bible trumps the United States Constitution and federal law. If I remember correctly, that’s what Alabama governor George Wallace was thinking back in the 1960’s when he blocked the door of a school house to entry by a black student in defiance of the federal courts that declared racial discrimination unconstitutional.

Moore is going to lose his religious extremist battle again.

Moores the pity.  

Liberty Requires Permission in NJ

Did you know that it is against the law in the town of Bound Brook, New Jersey, United States of America to engage in the time honored business of going door to door to offer your neighbors goods or services in return for cash?

That’s right. Nowadays, where once upon a time liberty prevailed, one is required to get permission from the government to do that sort of thing. You must have a permit. If you do it without a government permit you are guilty of a crime. You’re a criminal; an outlaw; a miscreant. You can be ticketed, arrested, fined, jailed, booked or otherwise mugged by the town statists.

So when a big blizzard buried the town recently, two enterprising teenagers found out the hard way they were criminals – guilty of the the “crime” of going door to door offering to shovel the snow off their neighbors’ driveways for a small fee.

I used to do that with my friends when I was a kid. I shoveled snow, mowed lawns, and helped little old ladies with chores and such like in return for small sums of cash. Little did we know back then that our innocent adolescent activity might someday be considered a “crime.”

“We weren’t looking to break the law,” explained the two 18-year-old criminal high schoolers. “We just didn’t know the law.” The cops had to tell them they weren’t allowed to solicit business door to door without a permit from the local government mafia.

They might have been arrested as well said the Police Chief, but for the fact that the town was in a state of emergency in advance of the coming winter storm. So the boys got off with a warning  this time and the neighbors had to shovel their own driveways. 

The town’s little 4^th grade girls might not be so lucky this summer when they get busted for going door to door selling Girl Scout cookies without a permit.

How many more examples like this do we need to prove that America has slowly evolved from the land of the free into a statist nightmare nation?

Where once we enjoyed liberty; now liberty requires permission.

Climate Change: The New Religion

“No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” solemnly intoned President Barack Obama recently.

The President of the United States is not alone in this fervent new irrational belief that routine economic activities of human beings are causing global temperatures to rise; consequently changing Planet Earth’s climate drastically with the inevitable result of polar ice caps completely melting, sea levels rising hundreds of feet inundating coastlines, vast areas of land turning into deserts, life becoming extinct, and the Earth as we know it ceasing to exist – unless we human beings start making sacrifices to stop the global warming.

Thus, the concept of climate change -- global warming – has become a new religion. The idea is that human beings are committing sin against the planet by over indulging in selfish economic activity. We must believe, confess, repent, seek redemption and salvation for these sins by making sacrifices, i.e. cutting our economic activities to appease the mother planet and save humanity from catastrophe.

Those who don’t believe are ridiculed and vilified by the believers. Those who are unwilling to make human sacrifices are blamed for causing the impending disaster. The unbelievers, infidels if you will, must be forced into submission in order to save the planet from impending doom. Armageddon is approaching and the sinners are responsible.

The global warming alarmists are becoming more hysterical in their arguments, explained Dr Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical,” he said. “You've led an unpleasant life, you haven't led a very virtuous life, but now you're told, you get absolution if you watch your carbon footprint. It's salvation.”

This new religion has been plaguing us – dragging upon the progress of civilization and humanity -- for at least the last two decades. Every time we turn on the T.V., pick up a newspaper, or surf the Internet we’re bombarded by dire predictions about climate change – predictions which never seem to materialize.

In the meantime the same global warming alarmists, President Obama included, are carrying on their own economic activities as usual. They’re driving their cars, flying their airplanes, burning fossil fuels, consuming energy and spewing out greenhouse gasses as much as ever. They’re not making any sacrifices but they expect sacrifices from you and me.

That’s the nature of religion and all the hypocrisy that goes with it. It’s irrational; it’s imaginary; it’s nonsense. But people believe what they are told to believe by their Authority!

And the Authority is telling us: Climate change is the new religion. 

Mike Huckabee Just Doesn’t Get It

Mike Huckabee is a nice man, an intelligent man, but when it comes to facts of life which appear to contradict his 2,000 year-old religion he just doesn’t get it. He’s one of those nice intelligent guys who stubbornly deny reality preferring to cling instead to Biblical fantasy. That alone, in my opinion disqualifies him to ever become President of the United States.

Mr. Huckabee, for example, accepts the Biblical story of creation as written in the Book of Genesis literally. He would tell us that planet Earth is but 6,000 years old; the entire universe was created in six days by a Supreme Being who looks, talks and acts like a man; and that all life forms came into existence at once. If the Bible says it then it must be so according to Mike. He accepts everything in the Bible as true and rejects all evidence to the contrary.

The Old Testament of the Bible tells Mike Huckabee that homosexuals are an abomination so he accepts that as a fact. Last week he said that being gay is a “lifestyle choice” akin to choosing to drink alcohol or using profanity. In other words this man insists that gays choose to be gay. He stubbornly ignores the biological fact that gays have about as much choice to determine their sexuality as they do the color of their skin.

So Mike uses the Bible as support for his and his fellow Christian’s “right” to discriminate against gays. Forcing people of faith to accept gay marriage as policy is on par with telling Jews that they must serve “bacon wrapped shrimp in their deli,” he explains. "We're so sensitive to make sure we don't offend certain religions, but then we act like Christians can't have the convictions that they have had for over 2,000 years."

Nonsense! Mike Huckabee and his fellow Christian's have a perfect right to be bigots if that is what their religion dictates, but they don’t have the right to employ the law to deny equal rights to other human beings simply because the Bible says so.  They don’t have the right to determine Biblical penalties for biological reality.

Recognizing gay marriage as a matter of law is hardly the equivalent of forcing Jews to serve bacon wrapped shrimp in their delis.

Poor Mike Huckabee; he just doesn’t get it. 

Questions Yes; Religion No

The lawmakers are at it again. They’re Hell bent on finding ways to get their religion taught once again in the public schools. The latest gambit involves legislation in South Dakota that would allow teachers to address the supposed “weaknesses in the scientific theories of evolution and global warming.”

But why is legislation necessary to allow teachers to question scientific theories? In America teachers ought to have the fundamental academic freedom to address the weaknesses of any scientific theory as long as they stick to scientific principles. Teachers have always enjoyed that right.

For sure there are palpable weaknesses in the scientific theory of “global warming caused by human activity.” Scientific reasoning abounds on both sides of that controversy. There is no solid consensus among credible scientists. Certainly there is no law in South Dakota I’m aware of that would prohibit teachers from discussing both sides of the “global warming” debate. So legislation is quite unnecessary.

The same is true regarding Darwin’s theory of evolution even though the clear consensus within the scientific community is that the theory has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Still, if a teacher can address supposed “weaknesses” in the theory by using scientific principles and the scientific method there is no law as far as I know which prohibits it. So again, legislation is quite unnecessary.

But the proposed legislation involved here is based on suggestions by the Discovery Institute, which promotes the “theory” of intelligent design as opposed to evolution to explain the origins of life and the variation among the species. That’s why the lawmakers in South Dakota believe that legislation is necessary.

They want another excuse – a legal excuse -- to teach religion in the public schools. These religionists never give up. They want to teach creationism which is entirely based upon religion and thereby plainly violates the First Amendment Establishment Clause.  There is exactly zero scientific evidence supporting creationism.  

The bottom line is that it’s perfectly OK to question scientific theories with scientific evidence, but it’s not OK to question science with religion in the public schools.

Questions yes; religion no.