Tag: Rights Dealing with Amendments Lower or Higher Than Two

Health Insurance Company Enrichment Act Ruled Unconstitutional

It seems a federal judge in Florida actually read the Constitution of the United States and thus has ruled the erroneously named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional:

Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the requirement that Americans purchase health insurance or face penalties violates an individual’s rights.

And there was the main problem with the bill. You no longer had the freedom to choose whether or not you wanted to buy health care, instead you were forced to do business with insurance companies. Due to the way the bill was written this ruling goes against the entire thing not just the mandatory insurance purchase section.

Another thing I found telling was this paragraph:

A federal judge in Florida has declared the US healthcare reform bill passed in 2010 unconstitutional, ruling in a suit brought by 26 states.

Over half (yes only be one) of the states are against this bill. I don’t know about you but I can’t remember the last time over half of the states agreed on anything. Apparently putting a gun to the heads of their citizens and telling them they will buy something didn’t go over as well as our “representatives” thought it would.

This is a good start but you know the decision will be appealed right up to the Supreme Court where we really won’t be able to guess what the ruling will be.

Shocker of the Day, FBI Intelligence Violations

Prepared to be shocked because the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has uncovered proof that the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) is violating laws in their pursuit of made-up bogeymen:

EFF has uncovered widespread violations stemming from FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 – 2008. In a report released today, EFF documents alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices, suggesting that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed.

It’s OK though since they’re violating your rights to fight the terrorists. Also nobody is going to hear nor care about this so the FBI will likely not even get a slap on the wrist. Hell they’ll probably get a pat on the back for a job well done. Your government at work ladies and gentlemen.

Internet Kill Switch

I’m sure you’ve heard that Egypt has basically killed Internet access in a pointless attempt to censor those rightly angry with their dictator government. Many people are decrying this and rightfully so but many of these people are also making statements proclaiming how glad they are that such a situation couldn’t happen here. These people are stating that only fascists and dictators would do such things.

So, which on is our government? Personally I’d say closer to fascists since we don’t really have a single dictator in power at the moment. Either way our government has been pushing for legislation to create some form of “Internet kill switch” for some time now. They want to have the legal authority to shutdown the Internet in “times of emergency.”

This can happen here and our overlords representatives are trying to make it a possibility. If you don’t want to see the Egypt style kill switch here you need to complain to your so-called representatives now before they decide to pass it in some lame duck session.

I Am TJIC

I’m sure everybody reading this already knows who TJIC is. If not he’s a blogger who has the unfortunate combination of living in Massachusetts and being against the government. Because of this unfortunate combination he lost is second amendment right because he exercised his first amendment right:

A blog threatening members of Congress in the wake of the Tucson, Arizona shooting has prompted Arlington police to temporarily suspend the firearms license of an Arlington man.

It was the headline “1 down and 534 to go” that caught the attention. “One” refers to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in the rampage, while 534 refers to the other members of the U.S. House and Senate.

Was the post distasteful? Yes. Was the post inflammatory? Yes. Was the post overall in poor taste? Yes again. Was the post protected speech under the first amendment? Yes. That last yes makes every other yes irrelevant.

Likewise TJIC didn’t threaten anybody. No specific names are mentioned just a general clause that states he doesn’t like politicians. This would be akin to tossing the writers of Mars Attacks! in prison because their movie depicted both congress and the President being killed by the martians. Now I badmouth politicians all the time and have made many remarks about horrible things we should do to them but it’s talk, speech, and satire (mostly).

But this event demonstrates the fact that we are not free people in this country. Sure some of us are more free than others depending on where you live but ultimately we’re all peasants at the mercy of our rulers in government. They seem willing to leave us mostly alone so long as we don’t criticize them while they make our lives even more restricted each day and steal more and more of our money. The second we cross them though, the second we criticize an illegal war, the second we speak against them we’re given labels such as terrorist, communist, and of course unpatriotic. Our rulers in government has passed laws that allow them to use their monopoly on the use of force to arrest, torture, and even murder people with these arbitrary labels.

So yes I will join this meme going around the gun blogs and say I to am TJIC. I am a man who disagrees with the government and has openly stated as such. If our government would respect the very laws put into place to keep them in line this entire post would be unnecessary. But this post is necessary because we are not free people and our government doesn’t respect the restrictions that were put into place during the founding of this country.

You Can’t Have it Both Ways

The anti-gunners are clamoring for more stringent laws preventing the mentally messed up from obtaining firearms. Of course these same advocate never explain exactly how we’re supposed to detect crazy with 100% accuracy (as far as I’m concerned without 100% accuracy you can’t even talk about revoking somebody’s rights).

Besides blaming guns and gun laws many people are also blaming “right-wing rhetoric.” Of course this is also bullocks as the Arizona shooter wasn’t what you could call right-wing (he was basically just crazy if you read anything he posted).

With these two arguments in hand I bring up a third advocacy that these people should be making, requiring a mental health evaluation before you are allowed to post any material on the Internet. When I state this people making both of the above claims are quick to state guns kill people while words can’t. Well which way is it? Can rhetoric cause somebody to kill other people or not? Do words incite violence? If the answer to both questions is yes then you most certainly must support mental health evaluations for people wanting to post online. If the answer to both questions is no then you should shut the fuck up and stop being a hypocrite.

If you believe there should be mental health evaluations for things that can kill and you believe speech you don’t agree with can kill then you must support required mental health evaluations for people wanting to post on the Internet. Of course that would be a restriction of free speech which most anti-gunners are against.

The Impossible is Back

The Armed Citizen blog is back online with all those impossible stories of people defensively using firearms. It looks like those fuckers over a Righthaven (who are also suing our local Minnesota gun forum) didn’t end up getting the domain name which is good news for us and bad news for the anti-gunners who claim firearms are seldom ever used for defensive purposes.

The Oxymoron of Socialized Medicine

Big surprise here but I’m not a fan of socialized medicine. My reasoning is different than a lot of peoples’ though. I’m not against it because it creates longer wait times, causes rationing of medicines, and empowers insurance companies. My problem with socialized medicine is the violence required to implement it.

This is actually a problem with all forms of socialism, not simply socialized medicine. Let’s look at how insurance works. People purchase insurance from an insurance company with the agreement that should something horrible happen the insurance company will be there to foot the expense. In order for this to work there needs to be on key thing, more money being paid into the system than removed.

Socialized medicine is sort of a larger scale of insurance except every person in under the force of law pays into the system in the hopes of generating enough money to pay for those who can’t afford medical care. It sound so nice when you explain it that way but there is one major problem with socialized medicine that never gets brought up, it requires the force of a gun.

In a market based health care system each person pays their own way or gets involved with insurance. It’s not a perfect system obvious as not everybody can afford either of the two options but there are still options for those who can’t pay (charity, pro bono work, family members pitching in, etc.). The main advantage though is the fact that it’s voluntary, you’re not being forced to participate. If you don’t with to receive medical care you don’t have to pay into the system.

There is no such option with socialized medicine, much like social security there isn’t an option to opt out. To ensure everybody participates the government uses their monopoly on use of force to make everybody participate. If you refuse to pay into the socialized medical system you’re usually fined or your wages are garnished. If you refuse to pay the fine the police will come to toss you into prison for the crime of not allowing your money to be stolen, and if you resist arrest physical violence will be brought against you.

Does it seem like an oxymoron to use physical force to steal money from one person in order to pay for the medical care of another? Doesn’t it even seem more of an oxymoron when you realize the threat of physical violence is being used to steal from more people than will be needing medical care? When using socialized medicine you’re actually harming more people (theft if harm in my book and if you refuse to participate you will be physically harmed) than you’re helping.

Yet people tout socialized medicine as a good thing that will help people. So long as you ignore the force required to create and operate such a system I guess you can make a claim it helps some people.

So Much for Freedom of Speech

Did you hear about the war 131 protesters who were arrested in front of the White House last Thursday (December 16, 2010)? No? Yeah it doesn’t seem to have been reported too heavily.

Either way it’s sad to see that even though our Bill of Rights codifies the right of freedom against government censorship of speech, the government will arrest you for expressing that speech when it doesn’t approve. It really pisses me off that people are arrested for protesting on land that they in part own (all Federal property was purchased with American tax dollars and therefore we’re all part owners). Likewise they are protesting the actions of their employees (government officials). It seems once again that our employees seem to have the misguided assumption that they are our rulers, nothing too surprising there.

Fortunately for the protesters the charge brought against them was a misdemeanor and was punishable by having only $100.00 of your money forcefully removed from your bank account. Isn’t freedom great?

United Nations Looking to Regulation the Internet

The United Nations motto is, “There isn’t a human right we’ve seen that we like.” They multi-government organization loves to claim they are for human rights and then quickly turn around and regulated those rights away from the citizenry of the world. After the Wikileaks fallout they are now looking at regulating the Internet:

At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would to attempt to create global standards for policing the internet – specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks.

That would be great, an inter-government body in charge of regulating the largest bastion of free speech in the world. What could go wrong? I mean it’s not like this is the same organization that put leaders of the Middle East in charge of womens’ rights or anything… oh wait they did (a representative from Saudi Arabia was seated). This is also the same organization that believes owning guns is a right only for governments and their thugs. I can’t wait to see what ideas they come up with for Internet regulations, I’m sure it’ll be very pro-government and very anti-peasanthuman rights.