Tag: Politics

Nanny State Moving Against Hookahs

We sure are lucky that the nanny state exists to tell us what is and isn’t good for us. By Thor in Valhalla if we didn’t have the nanny state people may do things that could be harmful! Well don’t worry because nanny is working to remove yet another unhealthy things from the list of unhealthy things, hookahs:

But in fact, hookahs are far from safe. And now, legislators, college administrators and health advocates are taking action against what many of them call the newest front in the ever-shifting war on tobacco. In California, Connecticut and Oregon, state lawmakers have introduced bills that would ban or limit hookah bars, and similar steps have been taken in cities in California and New York. Boston and Maine have already ended exemptions in their indoor-smoking laws that had allowed hookah bars to thrive.

Is smoking safe? No it’s not but neither is a lot of the shit we do. Eating fast food isn’t safe, driving sure as the Hell isn’t safe, drinking alcohol isn’t safe, opening a box with a utility knife isn’t safe, basically nothing is safe. Everything you do in life carries risks and it’s up to you to determine if those risks outweigh the benefits. Well it was up to you until everybody was willing to delegate that power to the state, now the state gets to use their monopoly on the initiation of force to force you to avoid things it deems unhealthy.

So what should you do if you don’t like hookah bars? Don’t frequent them. Legislation doesn’t need to be passed to “protect people from themselves.” If you don’t approve of an activity then you don’t have to participate. If something may be harmful to the participants that is their problem and they can decide whether or not the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits. What we don’t need is the fucking state coming in and telling us what is and isn’t good for us.

Logic and Anti-Gunners Simply Don’t Mix

One of my favorite and most used tags on this site is “Logic an Anti-Gunner’s Worst Nightmare.” This is because injecting logic into almost any argument against liberalizing (using the classical meaning of course) gun laws destroys the argument. The Truth About Guns has a prime example of this via a letter to the editor (one of my favorite sources for stupidity as well):

Dear Editor: The passage of the concealed weapons law shows the administration is getting soft on crime. Now criminals will be able to carry weapons for crimes of opportunity, or planned, without fear of being arrested while going to the place of the act. Citizens and police will be put at risk when a crime of passion, anger or substance abuse rears its ugly head. A robbery will turn into a murder when the criminal knows the victim may be armed and shoots at the first movement.

Will the workers and police at the Capitol feel safer when 100,000 people protest and many or most may be armed? It used to be when a person carried a weapon you knew he or she was a criminal; now you will never know. Wait for the civil wrongful death and criminal charges to fill the already backlogged courts. This is another insane move by an increasingly insane administration.

Ken Kamp

Madison

The root of most (Hell probably all) anti-gun arguments is emotional. Those who are afraid of guns fear them and feel there must be strict controls placed on the ownership of firearms in order to keep their delicate feelings secure. I should point out that when most anti-gunners say strict controls they mean a complete prohibition but alas I’m getting sidetracked.

The claim of Mr. Kamp is that passing right to carry legislation in Wisconsin will allow criminals to carry firearms. Now the flaw in this argument is the fact that shootings happen in Wisconsin which means people are already carrying firearms. Carrying a firearm in a concealed manner is completely illegal right now and openly carrying a firearm will get you attacked by the police in some cities. Needless to say most of the shootings aren’t being caused by lawful citizens openly carrying firearms but by those concealing and therefore violating Wisconsin law. A criminal by definition is a person who violates the law and thus aren’t concerned with the legality of their actions.

If somebody is willing to commit an egregious act such as murder you can bet good money they have no problem violating a law against concealing a firearm as well. The only difference that Wisconsin will notice if they pass right to carry legislation is the average citizen will have a means of defending themselves against criminals. Heck Wisconsin may notice the same thing many other states with liberalized (classic definition) carry laws have, a lower overall violent crime rate. If what Mr. Kamp says is true then at least one state that has liberalized (classical definition) it’s carry laws should have noticed some uptick in their violent crime rate but so far none have. This seems to be the best argument against anti-gunners, violent crime hasn’t increase in states that made it easier for lawful citizens to carry firearms. Some states have seen a decrease in violent crime while others have noticed no change but not one state has seen an increase.

You can scream that the sky is falling for only so long until people stop listening to you. Thankfully it seems more and more people are at that point with the anti-gunners and are now unwilling to listen to the idiotic arguments being made in the hopes of increase gun control legislation.

FBI Loses in Illegal St. Paul Raid Case

Those of you who lived in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention (RNC) are unlikely to forget how half of the city was turned into a police state within a police state. Heavily armed thugs in riot gear were marching around like they owned the place and they were supposedly the good guys. Before the actual convention the FBI and St. Paul police performed a series of raids on the houses of people suspected of planning demonstrations against the RNC (thankfully they left those of us at Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty kickoff alone). The police stormed into several houses and rounded up the people there like cattle because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well it wasn’t a good idea and the case filed against them ended poorly for them:

Three activists and their attorneys won a $50,000 settlement today in a lawsuit that challenged an August 30, 2008 police raid on a St. Paul home in advance of that year’s Republican National Convention (RNC). The plaintiffs in the case — Sarah Coffey, Erin Stalnaker and Kris Hermes — are giving most of the award to the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, the Institute for Anarchist Studies, and the formation of a national legal defense fund for political activists. The St. Paul house raid was one of several police actions taken against protesters days before the RNC began, including the search and seizure of a central political meeting space, which is also the subject of pending litigation.

Obviously I don’t see this as an amazing victory because the government basically said “Yeah we screwed up so here’s some of your tax money back.” This is always the bittersweet side of winning cases against the government, they’re not really the ones footing the bill, you and I are. Either way as a man who loves irony I really do love the fact that some of the money won by the plaintiffs is being donated to an anarchist organization. Seriously that moves just drips with delicious irony.

The big question is what will this victory symbolize? Not a damned thing. Having to pay three people $50,000 isn’t going to even make a blip on the radar of finances for the government so no lesson is likely to be learned from this. The only possible outcome could be new legislation that legalizes raids like the one performed by the FBI and St. Paul Police Department so the state doesn’t have to worry about getting sued again in the future. At least I’m happy to say the Democratic National Convention (DNC) didn’t end up here this year because we would have had all of this shit happen all over again.

The Senate Votes to Renew PATRIOT Act Provision for Four More Years

Although I never doubted this would happen the Senate has officially voted to extend the expiring PATRIOT Act provisions for another four years:

The four-year extension was approved in the Senate just hours before the deadline at midnight (0400 GMT).

The bill was then sent to the House of Representatives, where it passed by a 250-153 vote.

That’s 250 “representatives” that are perfectly OK with shitting all over your rights.

So Much for Texas

Texas always tries to make themselves sound like total bad asses. Thus when the federal government threatened to turn Texas into a no-fly zone over their bill that would allow people to charge members of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for their rampant sexual assaults I figured a big middle finger would be sent from the state to Washington D.C. Instead Texas folded like a piece of paper:

The legislation, which would have made it illegal for Transportation Security Administration agents to perform hand searches at airport security checkpoints unless there was probable cause, was approved by the Texas House.

But the U.S. attorney general’s office threatened to cancel flights to Texas if the bill passed, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported this week, and that was enough to give Texas senators cold feet.

So much for Texas being a shining example of a state willing to fight the federal government.

A Secret PATRIOT Act

We all know and loathe the PATRIOT Act (unless you’re a statist in which case feel free to sodomize yourself with a retractable baton) but it seems things may be even worse than we realized. Senator Wyden or Oregon is claiming that a secret PATRIOT Act exists:

Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. But Wyden says that what Congress will renew is a mere fig leaf for a far broader legal interpretation of the Patriot Act that the government keeps to itself — entirely in secret. Worse, there are hints that the government uses this secret interpretation to gather what one Patriot-watcher calls a “dragnet” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden tells Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

I think this news should put to bed any concept of the United States being a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It appears as though our “representatives” are just fine making up secret laws now.

The Federal Government Threatens to Turn Texas Into a No-Fly Zone

Texas has been getting sick of the legal sexual assault performed by agents of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) which lead to legislation being put forth that banned such acts by those federal thugs. As the federal government has a long history of threatening any state that dares disobey their demands it’s no surprise to learn threats are being made against Texas:

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice upped the ante in a high-stakes political game of chicken. Lobbying against pending legislation in the Texas legislature which would criminalize any searches conducted without probable cause, U.S. Attorney John E. Murphy sent a letter to a few high-ranking members of Texas’ government warning against promoting the bill and threatening a complete closure of all flights to and from the state.

The following is the threat made against Texas by the federal government:

“If HR [sic] 1937 were enacted, the federal government would likely seek an emergency stay of the statute,” Murphy wrote. “Unless or until such a stay were granted, TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew.”

Basically the federal government would enact a form of sanctions that would bar all air travel into and out of Texas. This is what happens when a state abides by the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution, threats of violence are brought against the legally acting state. The government of Texas has seen fit to prevent federal authorities from sexually assaulting its citizens which is a good thing and should be applauded. Other states should follow the example being put forth by Texas and if need be they should band together and resist the tyranny of the federal government.

Rand Paul Proposed an Amendment to The PATRIOT Act Exempting Firearm Records

Even though our “representatives” are trying to ram the PATRIOT Act renewal through so they don’t actually have to have a debate on aggression against the American people I would like to point out that not everybody on Capitol Hill is on board. Senator Rand Paul proposed eight amendments to the PATRIOT Act which would have at least added some semblance of improvement to the horrible law (granted anything beyond complete abolition of the PATRIOT Act is unacceptable in my book). One of the amendments I found interesting was an exception of government access to firearm records:

Firearm Records Amendment: Clarifies that the authority to obtain info under the USA PATRIOT Act does not include authority to obtain certain firearm records. Supported by Gun Owners of America.

The law is still a horrible piece of shit but at least a few “representatives” aren’t willing to just ram the damned renewal through.

Mixed Messages

I think part of the reason politicians anger me so greatly is the simple fact that they’re not consistent (well maybe one or two are consistent). Take for example Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Leahy has introduced, S. 1011, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2011 which in part would require the government to obtain a search warrant before going to online data service to acquire information on customers. Oh wait I understand why somebody who voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act renewal would introduce this bill, it also expands government power:

The bill isn’t absolutely free of problems: although it clearly would require a warrant for ongoing tracking of your cell phone, it would also and unfortunately preserve the current statutory rule allowing the government to get historical records of your location without probable cause. It also expands the government’s authority to use National Security Letters to obtain rich transactional data about who you communicate with online and when, without probable cause or court oversight. You can count on EFF to press for these problems to be fixed, and for all of the DDP principles to be addressed, as the bill proceeds through Congress.

I was wrong as there are no mixed messages only one consistent message about authoritarianism.