Chronicling the depravities of the State.
Need an increase in your blood pressure this morning? Well I think I can oblige you with a video of the Delaware Department of Transpiration stealing more private property:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ZZHGO5sXw]
Yes they not only ripped out a basketball hoop that’s been there for 60 years but then they stole it after telling the owner he could keep his property. I hope this man gets some justice but being the justice is doled by the ones stealing property I highly doubt it.
If you haven’t heard of Righthaven I’ll give you a quick summary of the law firm. They’re scum. Seriously. What Righthaven does is buy up newspapers and then sue very site that has ever linked to the online sight of the purchased newspaper. Additionally newspapers can come on board without being purchased and use Righthaven’s “protection” services. Well it seems they just had their ass handed to them:
Last Friday, a judge in the Nevada federal district court patiently explained why fair use disposes of Righthaven’s copyright claim arising from the republication of an entire news article by a nonprofit organization. The hearing was in one of the now-250 Righthaven copyright cases. A written order, which will help set a persuasive precedent for other copyright troll cases, will be issued later.
Burn you sons of bitches.
Oh look yet another instance of a government department not liking the power granted to it and thus have reinterpreted a law to give themselves more power:
The letter says federal officials have reinterpreted the civil-rights laws that require school principals to curb physical bullying, as well as racist and sexist speech, that take place within school boundaries. Under the new interpretation, principals and their schools are legally liable if they fail to curb “harassment” of students, even if it takes place outside the school, on Facebook or in private conversation among a few youths.
Now civil action can be taken against school principals if they fail to stop physical attacks and monitor the actions of every student even when they’re not at school:
Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students.
Freedom of speech has been dead in public schools since… well since I was going to one. Will the Education Department soon require two way viewers in every home to monitor students just in case they’re “bullying” somebody online?
Not only do rulings like this destroy the concept of free speech but they also cause students to depend on outside help for everything. If somebody is bullying a student that student should have the right to fight back. Instead they are told to basically shut up and take it and after they’ve gotten their ass kicked they’re suppose to go talk to somebody in “authority.” Strangely enough the school is a government entity and acts as such because when a student reports a bully nothing is likely to happen. OK maybe the bully will get detention for a couple of days but they certainly aren’t going to learn a lesson.
Now that I’m thinking about it public schools works very much like the rest of our society. We’re told to depend on the state for protection and the state fails to offer protection. If somebody does something wrong they’re isolated for others for a short period of time with no other form of punishment. Should one of us defend ourselves we potentially get into trouble. Fuck, now I see where the victim mentality comes from in our society.
Here’s the thing if you’re a student at a school and somebody wants to beat the shit out of you fight back. Self-defense is a natural right afforded all human beings. If the bully is larger balance out the disparity of force with a good old threat-based weapon (for instance smashing somebody in the fact with a text book does some good damage). Nobody needs to submit to the violence of another regardless of what is taught in schools.
I’ll also say if you are cause true psychological trauma by things posted about you online man the fuck up. Words are words and can only cause the amount of harm you allow them. When somebody says something hurtful to you then it’s time for a witty comeback. I usually challenge a person’s cognitive capabilities myself and try to do so using old English but there are many means of doing this. Either way words can’t hurt you. If somebody is spreading lies or slander about you then it’s time to look into civil action. But asking the school officials for help isn’t going to accomplish anything because they’re in the interesting position of being unable to discipline unruly children while being tasked with disciplining unruly children.
Wow New Hampshire seems to be on a role. The state’s motto is “Life Free or Die” and apparently they are taking that pretty seriously as of late. The New Hampshire house just passed three very interesting bills. The first is a bill that would turn New Hampshire into the fifth state to abolish the requirement of a permit to carry a firearm in the state.
The second bill passed is one that will prevent police from arresting people who are recording their actions. This has become a big problem in some states where it’s illegal to record the actions of law enforcement even if they are in public places where you or I couldn’t expect the same (it’s legal to record anybody whom lacks a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in most states).
The third bill I found interesting is the one that will allow jury’s to be notified and exercise their right to nullify. If put into law it would require the courts to inform juries of their right to nullify which is far different than many places where judges have actually arrested people trying to inform jury members of this right. Arguably this is the most important bill of the three (which is saying a lot as I’m saying this bill is more important than the right to carry one) as it would allow the citizens of New Hampshire to abolish laws they found unjust.
Johnny Northside, like myself, is a blogger. Unlike myself Mr. Northside has been sued because he told the truth:
Though blogger John (Johnny Northside) Hoff told the truth when he linked ex-community leader Jerry Moore to a high-profile mortgage fraud, the scathing blog post that got Moore fired justifies $60,000 in damages, a Hennepin County jury decided Friday.
The jury awarded Moore $35,000 for lost wages and $25,000 for emotional distress. The civil verdict culminated a nearly two-year legal scuffle between John Hoff, whose blog, The Adventures of Johnny Northside, has 300 to 500 readers daily, and Moore, former director of the Jordan Area Community Council.
Moore was fired by the University of Minnesota in June 2009, the day after Hoff’s post.
Mr. Northside’s blog post that ended the job of Mr. Moore wasn’t libel or slander, it was factual. Yet a jury decided that telling the truth is a bad thing and thus found Mr. Northside in error, $60,000 worth of error. Not only that but $25,000 of that fine was for “emotional distress.” How does one calculate the value of emotional distress? Is there some kind of formula I’m unaware of or it the value just set all willy-nilly at the end of the court case?
Obviously Mr. Northside is appealing as this is certainly a bum result. Mr. Moore was an employee of the state since he worked at the University of Minnesota. As an employee of the state it is the right of every Minnesotan to have him terminated from our employ if he does something we find undesirable. My tax dollars shouldn’t be going to fund something whom is committing any form of fraud. Hopefully Mr. Northside wins his appeal and Mr. Moore ends up paying Mr. Northside $85,000 (repay the $60,000 and add another $25,000 for emotional distress).
The Supreme Court has rules that the gatherings by members of the Westboro Baptist “Church” are protected by the first amendment. The decision was 8-1 which is about as much of a landslide as you can get in that court.
As much as I despise what the members of Westboro Baptist “Church” do I openly admit that it’s speech and they’re free to do it. Like all rights the freedom of speech is a double-edged sword to some. You can use any individual right for both good and bad. Just because some people use it for bad purposes doesn’t mean we should enact restrictions against it.
The thing most people fail to realize is the members of Westboro are attention whores. All these gatherings, all the shouting, all the signs, everything they do is a vain attempt to garner attention. The only way to deal with these types of people is by completely ignoring them. If we manage to ignore them they will eventually go away and find something else to occupy their time, maybe by starting a shitty band in their garages where they can sing about all the emo feelings they experience. Oh, if these yahoos come to your town remember not to touch them as they fund their operation through lawsuit money.
No surprise here but the House voted to piss all over our rights yet again by extending the “surveillance powers” of the PATRIOT Act:
In a 275-144 vote, the chamber voted to extend until December provisions on wiretaps, access to business records and surveillance of terror suspects.
I’m sure it was only a coincidence that Janet Napolitano claimed that the United States currently faces it’s largest threat from terrorist attack EVAR!!!!OMGTHINKOFTHECHILDREN.
Seriously every so-called representative that voted for this should be instantly recalled by their states and brought up on charges of treason. The legislators in Washington are supposed to uphold the Constitution not use it a toilet paper to wipe their collective asses.
Arizona is working diligently to piss off the federal government. Honestly anybody willing to piss of the federal government is OK in my book and this new bill introduced in Arizona should really do the trick if passed. Several states have passed Firearm Freedom Acts.
Congress uses their power to “regulate interstate commerce” (which means something completely different than “abuse the shit out of your power” but alas) to justify gun control legislation. Justification is made stating guns traveling across state lines are interstate commerce and therefore subject to federal laws. Firearm Freedom Acts state any firearm manufactured, sold, and used exclusively in a state are exempt from federal laws since no interstate commerce took place.
I’ve often asked why these laws are written exclusively for firearms. When I was caucusing last election cycle we had an opportunity to present new platform agendas. The agenda I suggested was basically Arizona’s Intrastate Commerce Act. Obviously it didn’t go anywhere since most people at the caucus are a bunch of authoritarian neo-cons who can’t conceive of a law that would effectively enforce constitutional limits to Congress’s authority. If passed Arizona’s law:
SB 1178 will amend the Arizona Revised Statutes in order to provide that all goods grown, manufactured or made in Arizona and all services performed in Arizona, when such goods or services are sold, maintained, or retained in Arizona, shall not be subject to the authority of the Congress of the United States under its constitutional power to regulate commerce.
So it’s the Firearms Freedom Act applied to all goods and services manufactured, sold, and exclusively used in Arizona. Sounds like a good idea to me. Frankly I’m really enjoying this small surge in states telling the federal government to sod off.
Wyoming’s House of Representatives just passed a law that would bar employers from firing employees for storing their carry piece in their car while it’s parked on their employer’s property. Many states already have similar laws in place.
This may come as a shock to some people but I really don’t like these laws. No I’m not all of the sudden going to spout bullshit that some forms of gun control are necessary, instead I’m going to proclaim my hatred for government telling property owners what they can and can’t do on their own property.
If this law had applied only to government entities I’d be all for it. The problem is it applies to private land owners. When I own a piece of property then I can make the rules, that’s what we call private property rights. The second somebody comes along as begins to tell me what I can and can’t do on my own property (so long as it doesn’t harm another person or damage their property) it is no longer my property.
Although I find the right to keep and bear arms absolute I also find the right of private property absolute. If somebody doesn’t want me to have a firearm on their property that’s their business and right as property owner. I’m sure this isn’t exactly a popular opinion to have with many of my readers but alas most of us who fight for the right to keep and bear arms also advocate for government leaving us alone. Once we allow and condone any government action of regulating private property we open the flood gates for them to do even more regulating.
Although nobody was paying attention anyways I thought I’d let you know that the attempt to fast-track renewals of certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act failed in a House vote last evening. If this were a landslide vote I’d have had a bit more confidence in our “representatives” but it narrowly failed to achieve the 290 votes by a mere 13.
The three clauses that are up for renewal are first the provision that allows the FBI to perform warrantless wiretaps, second the provision that allows the government access to any desired records on your person, and third the provision that allows the FBI to place people under surveillance who have no known ties to terrorist organizations.
This doesn’t mean the PATRIOT Act is dead. In fact the White House would prefer to have the three provisions extended until 2013:
The White House on Tuesday said in a statement that it “does not object” to extending the three Patriot Act provisions until December 2011 although it “would strongly prefer” an extension until December 2013, noting that the longer timeline “provides the necessary certainty and predictability” that law enforcement agencies require while at the same time ensuring congressional oversight by maintaining a sunset.
Hope and change ladies and gentlemen. The House and Senate both have competing bills for renewing these provisions of the PATRIOT Act. In face one of our all time favorite “representatives,” Feinstien, is on the case to rape your rights:
In addition to the House legislation, the Senate is considering three competing timelines, including proposals that would permanently extend the three provisions or extend them through 2013. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), both of whom have introduced competing proposals, said Monday that committee members continue to work toward an agreement but declined to speculate as to the end result.
Surprised? I didn’t think so.