US Democratic Party has abandoned democracy

The coverup of Joe Biden's cognitive decline, and the subsequent coronation of Kamala Harris without a vote, should make clear that the Democratic Party has no use for actual democracy. 

Photo by Jorge González. Courtesy Flickr, some rights reserved.

Democrats’ Disdain for Democracy | American Compass | Drew Holden:

August 13, 2024 - "The coverup of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and the resulting coronation, absent a primary vote, of Vice President Kamala Harris should make one thing clear to would-be Democratic voters: the party views you with disdain. 

"For years, Democratic leadership insisted to their voters that ... [Biden] was fit as a fiddle. His memory was fine. Perhaps he was a 'super-ager.' In any case, he was going to be the party’s champion once again.... As the 2024 presidential primary — nominally the apparatus by which a party’s voters select their candidate — approached, party leadership took pains to limit who could be on the ballot. The choice was preordained. Despite questions about Biden’s fitness for another campaign — to say nothing of four more years as the man with the nuclear codes — the party tried to engineer early voting among his delegates to cement his name on the top of the ticket....

"That was until a team of 'super friends' — Democratic royalty, from Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi to Chuck Schumer and Jim Clyburn — was assembled to tell Biden that his time was up. Alongside private entreaties and anonymous quotes, the effort to compel Biden to step aside was accomplished behind closed doors, far from the prying eyes of voters....

"With Biden out of the way, the next logical step would have been a contested primary, where candidates made their case to the American people, and delegates from their states ... would decide on a nominee at the Democratic National Convention. This would have been the democratic choice: giving the party’s voters a say on their nominee.... Instead, party leadership quickly closed ranks around Harris.... No primary votes were cast for her but she was selected by acclamation by Democratic Party power brokers.... The last time Democratic Party voters had the opportunity to choose Harris, they were uniform in the opposite direction. As a candidate in the 2020 primary, Harris couldn’t crack double-digit support in Iowa despite an all-hands-on-deck effort in the state, leading her to suspend her campaign months before the caucus began.

"The move is emblematic of nearly every recent Democratic Party presidential nomination. The last meaningfully open presidential primary was in 2008, before the Obama re-elect, Hillary Clinton’s Harris-like coronation, and 2020’s anti-Bernie putsch. If Harris wins the presidency in 2024, it could be nearly a quarter-century between primaries where everyday Democrats had a say in their presidential nominee....

"What these events make clear is that, for all of its self-reverential talk of 'defending democracy,' the Democratic Party in fact disdains democracy as the method by which leaders are selected. What lies beneath all the flowery prose is a cold condescension, a conviction that party leadership knows better than voters what they want, and, in any case, what voters will have. Perhaps no issue illustrates the point better than immigration....  Americans of all political persuasions want the open borders policies that Biden and Harris embraced thrown out. So ... the Democratic Party ... nominated the member of Biden’s administration most publicly associated with the border crisis, whom the New York Times described in 2021 as 'in charge of the effort to stem migration from Central America': Kamala Harris.... 

"This doubling-down on contentious issues is characteristic of the Biden administration’s approach, but ... such an approach alienates voters, particularly independents, who 'on polarizing policies…are 30 points closer to Republicans [than Democrats]'.... Democrats and the Biden White House have sought to insulate themselves from the criticism by playing it safe, turning inward, and attempting to white-knuckle through the criticism. Biden hid from press engagements. Since being named his successor, Harris has done the same, failing to take live questions from the press for her first two-and-a-half weeks (and counting). While this strategy may work, ... it denies voters any insight into what the candidate stands for or plans to do if elected. Regardless of the electoral outcome, a strategy that relies on denying voters the information they need to form an opinion about a candidate is hardly a resounding embrace of democracy....

"Above all, democracy entails that political parties should aspire to be responsive to the wants and desires of the people. How Democrats and Republicans prioritize those wants and desires is a matter of political discretion. But the Democrats have made clear that they simply aren’t interested in the undertaking at all."

Read more: https://americancompass.org/democrats-disdain-for-democracy/

Obamas' new Netflix series is stupid propaganda

Netflix Teams Up With the Obamas To Produce Big Government Propaganda | Reason - John Stossel:

October 19, 2022 - "The latest Obama documentary series is The G Word. "G" for government. As Netflix documentaries go, this one is remarkably stupid. It's big government propaganda.

"Obama begins by claiming that he does his own income taxes, saying, 'It's actually easy'.... But that's just silly. It's so complex that millions of us pay to get help.

"Obama's series is hosted by silly comedian Adam Conover. Conover, correctly, calls himself 'an idiot.' He uses his time with the former president of the United States to make lame jokes and, at one point, to make sandwiches. He compliments Obama on how well he cuts the bread. It's not funny.

"The series occasionally covers some serious issues — meat inspection, for example. But instead of honest reporting, actors do a skit suggesting that, without government, meat companies would sell us dead poisoned rats. 'Food regulation was unbelievably successful,' concludes Conover. But food is largely safe today mostly because slaughterhouses cleaned themselves up way beyond what government requires.... One company executive showed me how they voluntarily do extra things like treat beef carcasses 'with rinses and a 185-degree steam vacuum.' Also, 'equipment is routinely taken completely apart to be swab-tested.'

"By contrast, for 90 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected meat with a crude process called "poke and sniff." Inspectors stuck spikes into carcasses and smelled them. They kept using the same spikes, so they sometimes spread disease. The government only stopped poke and sniff in the 1990s.

"A few times, Obama's series admits that government agencies mess things up. Conover mocks the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 'not a name you normally hear after the words "did a great job."' No, but he then claims FEMA fails because it's underfunded.... That's ridiculous. FEMA doesn't fail because it lacks resources. U.S. disaster relief funds have increased by billions. FEMA fails because it's a government bureaucracy, and bureaucracies do wasteful things, like bring bottles of water to hurricane victims but then leave them at an airport. 

"The private sector is more efficient. The G Word sneers at what it calls 'this philosophy that the free market should be trusted over the government.' But Walmart donates supplies much more efficiently than FEMA. They employ sophisticated weather tracking that helps them determine what assets are needed where. They get things to people because they lose money if they don't.

"Obama's series smears those of us who are skeptical of government handouts. 'In the wake of the civil rights movement,' claims Conover, 'some Americans began to resent the fact that the government was now providing assistance to black and brown citizens.' What? We didn't resent welfare because we're racists. We objected because it created a new permanent underclass. Handouts, President Ronald Reagan explained correctly, 'discourage work'....

"Obama's documentary depicts Reagan as a vicious surgeon cutting valuable government agencies, throwing them into a bucket labeled 'free market.' But government wasn't cut under Reagan. Federal spending went up during his terms. It always goes up.... It only grows. Today it's bigger than ever.

"That's fine, says Conover, because Washington rescued us during the COVID shutdowns with 'stimulus checks, small business loans, and corporate tax breaks!' They don't mention how much of that money was stolen or that their spending orgy brought 8 percent inflation.

"For three hours, Obama and his sidekick say government should do more. Whatever the problem, their answer is always more government and more money. Maybe someday a president will point out that government has no money of its own and that spending more than you have is a road to ruin."

Read more: https://reason.com/2022/10/19/netflix-teams-up-with-the-obamas-to-produce-big-government-propaganda/

Never Let a Plague Go to Waste

Never Let a Plague Go to Waste | Toronto Sun - Victor Davis Hansen: 

June 3, 2021 - "During America’s first-ever national lockdown, thousands of unelected bureaucrats, as well as federal and state governments, assumed enormous powers not usually accorded to them. They picked and chose which businesses could stay open without much rationale. They sent the infected into nursing homes occupied by the weak and vulnerable. Their rules for prosecuting those who violated social distancing, sheltering in place, mask wearing or violent protesting often hinged on political grounds. Their spending measures ... were excuses to lard up redistributive entitlements.

"Conservatives moaned that left-wing agendas were at work beneath the pretenses of saving us from the pandemic. And the giddy left bragged that it was true.

"After the 2008 financial meltdown, Barack Obama spoke of 'fundamentally transforming' the country. Now he’s back, weighing in on the panic-driven, multitrillion-dollar spending that has pushed America’s debt to nearly $30 trillion. 'There’s a teachable moment about maybe this whole deficit hawk thing of the federal government,' Obama said in a recent interview with Ezra Klein of The New York Times. “Just being nervous about our debt 30 years from now, while millions of people are suffering — maybe that’s not a smart way to think about our economics'....

"Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted about leveraging California’s statewide quarantine. 'There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,' Newsom said. 'So yes, absolutely, we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.'

"Hillary Clinton said something similar early in the pandemic: '… This would be a terrible crisis to waste as the old saying goes'.... The 'old saying' she cited was actually a recycled quote from Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s chief of staff. His exact quote was: 'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste'....  Emanuel clarified that crises allow radical changes that had never been considered or were considered impossible....

"The Davos crowd responsible for the World Economic Forum has talked of using the global crisis to push 'the Great Reset.' These self-appointed guardians wish to create global rules governing the world’s economy, energy, transportation, education, climate, wealth distribution and media. In other words, a few elites will seek to override local laws.

"What do all these efforts have in common? One, they are all top-down agendas. Polls show that average Americans are worried about massive borrowing. They fear the government gaining new powers under the pretext of a pandemic. Two, our elites are anti-democratic. They talk of forcing change down the throats of citizens through edicts, executive orders, court decisions or bureaucratic directives. Obama, Newsom, Clinton and the Great Resetters don’t want to put up their agendas for discussion before the people and their elected representatives. 

"Three, behind fancy slogans about not wasting crises, teachable moments and resets is the panic-porn reality that these initiatives are not popular in normal times.... Four, our rich revolutionaries have no record of policy success. Massive borrowing, increasing government powers, restrictions on personal freedoms, higher taxes and more regulations don’t appeal to most Americans. Brexit and pushbacks against the European Union suggest that the same is true abroad.

"Many members of the left-wing elite became wealthy by monetizing their political careers through lucrative insider networking. A cynic might conclude they didn’t go full reset until they first got filthy rich — allowing them not to live like, think like or listen to the rest of us."

Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/hanson-never-let-a-plague-go-to-waste

TIME's odd choice for "Person of the Year"

TIME's 2020 "Person of the Year"

by George J. Dance

In one respect, TIME magazine's choice of Person of the Year was unsurprising. Back in 1932, when the title was still "Man of the Year," TIME's choice was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first Democrat to be elected POTUS in the magazine's history. Since then the editors have automatically awarded it to every Democratic president – Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama – but one upon his election. (The exception was John Kennedy, who won the cover the following year.) 

In fairness, TIME's motives have not been merely partisan. It gave the honor and the cover to Ronald Reagan on his election as well. It gave every GOP president after Roosevelt the same honor and cover at least once in his term. And since 1999, when the title was changed to "Person of the Year," the magazine has bestowed it on every incoming president, Democrat or Republican alike. This recurring outcome (one cannot even call it a choice) reflected a widespread consensus that, come what may, the U.S. presidential election was the most important story of the year; the one that "affected the news or our lives the most, for better or worse," as the magazine puts it. 

So it was no surprise that TIME's choice for 2020 Person of the Year was Joe Biden. Biden won the presidential election, and Biden was a Democrat; to TIME, what else would matter? Still, to many readers besides myself, this year's choice must have seemed odd.

For one thing, while Biden appeared on the shortlist by himself, he ended up having to split the award with his running mate, Kamala Harris. That unprecedented decision wins points for diversity – balancing off the old white guy with a younger, racially mixed woman – but loses points for grammar. How are Biden and Harris collectively a "person"? Why not call them "People of the Year"? Or, if more specificity is required, "Persons of the Year"? 

It is not as if TIME had never heard of plural pronouns; when the editors gave George H.W. Bush a cover, after all, they dubbed him "Men of the Year ". To me, it looks most like a case of sloppy editing: TIME's editors made a last-minute decision to include Harris, for the sake of the "Movement for Racial Justice" (another candidate on TIME's "Person of the Year" shortlist), but none of them thought to change that word of the headline. 

For another thing, the U.S. presidential election was clearly not the story that affected the news or our lives most in 2020. By any margin, that belonged to the coronavirus pandemic and the worldwide human response to it. Why did the coronavirus not make the cover, or even the shortlist? Sure, a virus is not a person, but TIME has bestowed the cover on non-humans before. In 1982, it was given to "The Computer." In 1988, president-elect Bush was passed over for "The Endangered Earth," which won as "Planet of the Year." 

If "Virus of the Year" would have been too much in bad taste, there were more popular alternatives available. Why not the front-line health-care workers who have been hailed since March as the undisputed heroes of 2020? (TIME did put "Frontline Health Care Workers and Dr. Anthony Fauci" together on its shortlist.) Or the scientists and business executives who brought us vaccines in record time? Or, since we're including "for worse," the people responsible for pushing the world into lockdown: a far more newsworthy event, and one with longer-term ramifications, than the coronavirus pandemic itself?   

Finally, TIME's choice appeared odd (to me, at least) because of the expectation that the "Person of the Year" must have done something notable to deserve the honor. Yet neither half of TIME's person did anything of note in 2020. Harris's primary campaign was a disaster, which led to her withdrawal amid general speculation that her political career was finished. So was Biden's campaign in the early stages, and his eventual victory in the primaries was almost entirely due to Jim Clyburn, not to anything Biden did. 

Even after clinching the nomination, Biden hardly campaigned, hunkering down in his basement to emerge only with the odd policy pronouncement – from a nationwide lockdown in March to a nationwide facemask mandate in September – that often turned out to be unconstitutional. For the most part, Biden was simply AWOL. In his absence, the Democratic campaign was taken up by the usual media suspects – the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC and MSNBC, et al – who successfully framed the election as a referendum on Donald Trump. The presidential campaign became a series of exchanges between Trump and a rotating host of surrogate opposition figures, from Andrew Cuomo to Anthony Fauci. 

When Biden finally had to surface, in the election debates, Trump clearly had the best of him; but by then not many Americans cared. The only choice that mattered by that point was Trump or not-Trump; Biden himself (that is, Biden as anything but "not-Trump") was irrelevant. 

My conclusion, from this odd choice, is that TIME magazine (and with it a good portion of the American mainstream media) is sadly unaware of what really most affects the news and our lives.

U.S. election results are more of the same

by George J. Dance

NBC News has declared Democratic candidate Joe Biden the President-elect of the United States. Democrats also retained control of the House of Representatives (although they lost seats). They have not as yet taken the Senate; right now they are projected to win 48 seats in the 100-seat upper chamber. However, two seats will be decided in a January run-off election in Georgia, a state Biden won; winning those would give the Democrats control of the Senate (thanks to the tie-breaking vote of the vice-president). That will hand the Democrats a 'hat trick' – control of the presidency and both houses of Congress – a hyuge change from just three years ago, when the Republicans controlled all three.

I am reminded of a French saying – <plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose> – the more things change, the more they stay the same. This hat trick phenomenon is not novel, but has characterized U.S. politics throughout the new century:

• With Bill Clinton's election in 1992, the Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. The Republicans won both houses in 1994, and retained control for the rest of his presidency. So that....
• With George W. Bush's election in 2000, the Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. They briefly lost their Senate majority, after a GOP Senator switched to the Democrats, but won it back in 2002. They retained control of both houses until 2006, when the Democrats retook both. So that....
• With Barack Obama's election in 2008, the Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. They lost the House in 2010, and the Senate in 2014. So that....
• With Donald Trump's election in 2016, the Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.

The players and winners may change, but the pattern stays the same. American voters give one duopoly party complete control of the federal government. They are invariably disappointed by the outcome. They then react to this disappointment by giving the other party the same complete control. They are following a strategy best expressed in this cartoon:

I believe that human ideas are the chief determinants of  human behavior. So what idea(s) can be driving this recurring behavior?

When I was a lad, big "liberal" democratic government was widely seen as the vehicle that would lead us to utopia. That view had begun to fray by 1970, and by the end of the century was nowhere to be found. What happened? Why did utopia never arrive?

There are two different views. The minority, or libertarian, view is that big governments necessarily have structural flaws that prevent them from functioning as promised. The majority or populist view is that big governments work just fine; however, they keep getting captured by bad people who keep perverting them. This populist belief – a faith in governments, combined with a mistrust of the people running them – dominates in U.S. federal politics, and its dominance looks like the best explanation for the cyclical pattern noted above. 

The big difference this time is that the cycle completed in just four years rather than eight. It remains unknown whether that shorter cycle was a mere blip caused by the incumbent president, or whether the cycle has in fact speeded up. My prediction is that the cycle has permanently speeded up, and we will see yet another Republican hat trick in 2024.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

GOP's new non-libertarian conservative ideology

GOLDBERG: Conservative divide pits anti-left against anti-state | Toronto Sun  - Jonah Goldberg:

January 25, 2020 - "For most Americans, conservatism basically means the stuff Republicans are for.... I don’t mean this as a criticism.... One of the great things about America is that politics – never mind political philosophy – isn’t a big part of most people’s lives. Associating a body of ideas with the institutions (political parties) that are directly charged with putting ideas into action is a pragmatic way to cut to the chase. Paying attention to what the eggheads and theorists of the left and right want the parties to do is only worthwhile if you’re especially interested in politics.

"The challenge for conservatives these days is that the Republican Party really doesn’t know what it’s for, beyond defending President Trump and opposing Democrats and socialism. While the fight over impeachment sucks up all of the oxygen in public, there’s a robust battle behind the scenes about what it means to be a conservative.

"Some of it has spilled out into public view, usually centering on nationalism – what it means, what it requires in terms of policy, how it differs from traditional conservatism or whether it differs at all. Sens. Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio, for example, have offered thoughtful versions of 'economic nationalism,' pitting it against libertarianism (both real and imagined) ... a common theme is the idea that government should be more interventionist in the economy: Policymakers should be more willing to overrule the marketplace on everything from big tech to child care to trade....

"Trump has now given more aid to farmers than Obama ever gave Detroit, and if an elected Republican has complained about it, I missed it. In fairness, the farmer bailouts were necessitated by the president’s trade wars. But that just demonstrates Republicans’ willingness to substitute their judgment for the market’s....

"There’s a cultural version of the nationalist project as well. Some conservative intellectuals – mostly, but not exclusively, Catholic – believe the state has a role in imposing its judgment in the marketplace of ideas....

"[T]here are those who are anti-left and those who are anti-state. For ... illustration, some people are opposed to public schools because they don’t think education is a proper task for the state. (Milton Friedman called them 'government schools.') Others on the right think public schools are fine; they just object to how progressives operate them....

"Another fault line revolves around the question, 'Which state are we talking about?'.... I’m very libertarian at the national level, mostly libertarian at the state level and pretty communitarian at the local level. Letting people live the way they want to live where they actually live, so long as basic civil rights are respected, has always struck me as the best way to maximize happiness and democratic accountability.

"This raises a final question: Can the state actually do what you want it to do? At the core of the conservative critique of the left has always been a basic skepticism that top-down planning from Washington can work. It used to be that the champions of such planning were mostly on the left. That’s not true any longer. And it remains to be seen whether top-down planning from the right works any better than it does from the left."

Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldberg-conservative-divide-pits-anti-left-against-anti-state
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U.S. libertarians could be kingmakers in 2020

Primary Primers: How Libertarians could be the kingmakers of the 2020 presidential election | USAPP: - Olivier Lewis & Jeffrey Michels, London School of Economics US Centre:

November 15, 2019 - "Estimated to make up at least 10 percent of the population, libertarian-minded Americans have long posed an immense potential as swing voters.... Their political views – which are centred around the idea of personal autonomy – though now rather mainstream, have never fit cleanly in the programs of the two main parties.... But ... it is nearly impossible to speak of them as a bloc, most having been captured by a mainstream party and lacking their own through which to assert their public identity. But could this now be changing?

"Historically, the Republican Party (GOP) has monopolised the libertarian vote, mainly with its promise of fiscal conservatism. Amid growing aversion to post-war welfare programs championed by the Democratic Party, the GOP cobbled together an unlikely consensus uniting small-government libertarians with religious conservatives and foreign policy ‘hawks.’ This alliance seemed to offer libertarians more than going it alone with the Libertarian Party....,

"The libertarian alliance with conservatives weakened in the 2000s, with the Republican Party back in the White House.... In the 2006 midterms a significant number of libertarian voters allegedly voted for Democratic candidates....  But the rise of Barack Obama ... brought this dalliance with the Democratic Party to an end....

"[W]ithin the Republican Party ... Trump’s presidency is laying bare the Republican Party’s tenuous claim to represent libertarian values.... But with Democrats on the cusp of selecting a big-government candidate, libertarian voters are likely to keep their distance.....

"One option, of course, would be to vote for the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate. Indeed, the Libertarian Party has already been building momentum. In 2012, the party received more than 1 million votes for the first time. Four years later, with two former state governors on its ticket, the Libertarian Party obtained over 3 percent of the votes, the best result for a third-party contender in that election.

"For 2020, the Libertarian party is on its way to, once again, having its candidates on presidential ballots in every state, and holding a record number of presidential primaries.... Of course, the Libertarian Party candidate is unlikely to win... Some libertarians, however, sense a victory of a different type. Given how tight the last presidential race was, and that US voters increasingly identify as political independents (42 percent in 2017), the Libertarian Party could grow to become a swing party, acting as a gate-keeper to power....

"After decades of support, it will not be easy for even self-conscious libertarians to dislodge themselves from traditional party loyalties. This will be more difficult given the American media’s unwavering representation of party politics as having only two sides; though the Libertarian Party’s stance is far simpler than that of its larger competitors, it is hardly articulated in public discourse.... But for the elections to come, a change of tactic will likely be necessary – and it could prove consequential, if libertarians move as one."

Read more: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2019/11/15/how-libertarians-could-be-the-kingmakers-of-the-2020-presidential-election/
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Beware the lies of war

Reminder: American Officials Lie About War – Reason.com- Matt Welch:

January 3, 2020 - "'Don't trust liars—especially about matters of war and peace,' writes Vox's Matthew Yglesias. 'Today's a day," The Atlantic's David Frum posits, 'when the most untruthful administration in US history will wish its statements could be believed.' It is appropriate, necessary, yet insufficient to remember that government lying is bad, that government lying about war is particularly bad, and that Donald Trump is one of the most bizarrely promiscuous liars ever seen in American political life....

"The truth, which literally hurts, is that every administration lies about war.... It was literally only last month that The Washington Post's "Afghanistan Papers" project detailed how ... 'Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible'....

"Frum wrote President George W. Bush's infamous 'Axis of Evil' State of the Union Address in January 2002, linking Iran, North Korea, and especially Iraq .... 'I was to provide a justification for war,' Frum recalled in his memoir. The justification was ... damaging in a way that relates directly to this week's escalation with Iran.... Reformers inside the government, who had advocated a rapprochement with the United States, were put on the defensive....

"'We knew,' Barack Obama said on March 28, 2011, 'that … if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world..... I refused to let that happen'.... 'This policy,' concluded a detailed and damning post-facto report by the British House of Commons, "was not informed by accurate intelligence'.... Western intelligence agencies, the report found, 'could not verify the actual threat to civilians posed by the Gaddafi regime [and] selectively took elements of Muammar Gaddafi's rhetoric at face value....[S]trategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.'

"American administrations going to war routinely exaggerate threats, Hitlerize enemies, euphemize foreign casualties, and bend tales of U.S. heroism beyond all human recognition.... The world has never seen an arsenal as powerful as ours, and Lord Acton had a point about that power stuff....
[T]he fog of war, the temptations of power, the quickening heartbeat of fight-or-flight patriotism ... should be, advertisements for human fallibility.... And it should make us more reluctant to give the commanders more authority. Instead, too many people turn off their brains once the battle bugle calls....

"So no, don't trust Donald Trump. Or Mike Pompeo. Or Mitch McConnell. And for God's sake please don't trust David Frum or Matthew Yglesias or Matt Welch either. America will continue being a bull in a china shop for as long as the body politic has more heft than humility. Those audacious enough to wield that awesome power, or to influence the wielding of it, will only begin to earn respect when they acknowledge the mountain of their own lies."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/01/03/reminder-american-officials-lie-about-war/
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Afghanistan Papers show years of official lying

The ‘Afghanistan Papers’ Confirm Critics’ Worst Fears About America’s Longest War – Reason.com - Steven Greenjut, Orange County Register:

December 20, 2019 - "It's been 18 years since the United States invaded Afghanistan in what officials promised to be a decisive mission to uproot a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. You're totally not shocked to learn that things didn't quite work out as promised, and that the government repeatedly misled the public about its level of success, about the fundamental purpose of the endeavor and just about everything....

"That's how government behaves — not that many readers believed anti-war libertarians as we warned about such things at the time. I'm surprised it took so long for anyone to notice, and that the latest evidence — a meticulously reported project by The Washington Post — has been met with yawns. It's hard to compete for attention with the ongoing impeachment proceedings, but the 'Afghan Papers' should cause heads to roll (or explode)....

"On the Orange County Register editorial board, we issued our warnings about overseas commitments — the costs in lives and treasure and the impossibility of turning impoverished backwaters into modern democracies. We were accused of basically being bad Americans. Yet the Afghan and Iraq conflicts turned out pretty much as we and other critics predicted, as the Post report reveals in maddening detail.

"Most people have long realized that Iraq was a debacle ... that had little to do with the 9/11 attacks, but Afghanistan seemed more defensible given that the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalists clearly had set up shop there. But the Post report suggests that even that reality didn't make the war's focus clear....  The newspaper found 'that as the war dragged on, the goals and mission kept changing and a lack of faith in the U.S. strategy took root' at the highest levels. Officials couldn't even agree on the purpose of the war....

"The arrogance of American officials always amazed me. Our country's large-scale efforts to transform parts of this country — the War on Poverty, the Great Society — failed spectacularly. Yet our leaders thought they could invade a country that most Americans couldn't pinpoint on a map, and which had a history of repelling invaders (think of Russia), and fundamentally transform its society. And they kept spinning Americans and distorting 'statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case'....

"Some of the Post's stories were eye-opening: how military officials were ordered to spend millions of dollars a day in small regions, even though no one had any idea what to do with it. That's government. It literally dumps money on problems and hopes it will create progress, when all it does is encourage corruption. Even more amazing, our military couldn't distinguish between friends and enemies....

"These days, we're all sure our fellow partisans are brilliant and the other side is evil, but this ought to give everyone pause: President Barack Obama's policy in Afghanistan wasn't appreciably different from George W. Bush's — and neither of them had any particular success. Both made grandiose promises about 'winning' and eradicating terrorists, but neither delivered."

Read more: https://reason.com/2019/12/20/the-afghanistan-papers-confirm-critics-worst-fears-about-americas-longest-war/
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Carlson & Graham: libertarians run Washington

The bizarre fiction of libertarians' control of Washington - Bonnie Kristian, The Week:

October 9, 2019 - "It is with great pleasure that I announce to my fellow libertarians: We have won.

"We thought ourselves the acolytes of a largely ignored vision for American governance. We saw a $22 trillion national debt ... while both major parties bailed out big business, using tax dollars to paper over the consequences of bad policy calls. We watched the rise of the post-9/11 security state — mass digital surveillance, the terror watchlist, the TSA.... We wondered if these numerous and apparently permanent wars, with their deplorable carelessness about civilian casualties, war crimes, and due process, would ever end. We objected to the brutality and militarization of American law enforcement.... We talked about abolishing the Federal Reserve, ending the drug war, eliminating entire federal departments, and more, all with relatively little reason to believe our goals would ever be realized on any mass scale....

"But we were wrong! We didn't realize it, but we controlled Washington this whole time. This is big news for us, and I think we owe Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a huge thanks for letting us know.

"Carlson was the first to give us an inkling of our true power. 'The leadership class is resolutely libertarian,' he revealed in early June, bemoaning Washington's plentiful 'libertarian zealot[s] controlled by the banks, yammering on about entrepreneurship and how we need to cut entitlements.' Later that month, he indicated this dynamic exists because the Koch brothers are 'libertarian ideologues, passionate and inflexible' who 'run the Republican Party,' dictating the GOP platform on key issues including immigration, drug and prison policy, and free speech.

"You may find this surprising — I know I did! — as it seems to bear little resemblance to the actual state of Republican policymaking in 2019. On immigration, for example, the bulk of the GOP has followed Trump into calls for strict border security and limited refugee and immigrant admissions ... but the Koch brothers' perspective Carlson decries includes support for DACA and liberalized immigration policy more generally.... Carlson correctly noted Koch support for the First Step Act, but libertarians like yours truly deemed it a limited achievement. Is backing it anyway what it means to be ideologically 'inflexible'?.... And as for free speech, we do tend to be passionate about the First Amendment.... Rising GOP stars like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), by contrast, back proposals that would, as National Review's David French put it, 'invite an enormous amount of bureaucratic meddling online'....

"Even more surprising for me was Graham's disclosure this week that we libertarians also control America's foreign policy. 'The Obama-libertarian foreign policy does not make America safe,' the hawkish senator tweeted Monday in response to Trump's reshuffling of U.S. troops in Syria. 'If ignoring radical Islam made America safe, there would NOT have been a 9/11.'

"I never would have guessed libertarians dictated U.S. foreign affairs not only from 2008 to 2016 but also in the run-up to 9/11. I thought we were very angry about American foreign policy in those years, always complaining about the blowback, the drone strikes, the unconstitutional executive war-making, the attacks on innocent civilians, the costly and incompetent nation-building efforts, and so on. I thought we were always raising objections to former President Barack Obama's foreign policy on pretty much every possible basis.... Little did we know we were Obama's puppet masters all along!...

"I jest, obviously, but only because it is enormously bizarre to find oneself attacked in wildly inaccurate effigy. The most plausible explanation I can muster for this fiction of libertarian power is that libertarianism is in broad strokes the opposite of the Trumpian GOP's ... current mood of state-enforced social conservatism and what Carlson has dubbed 'economic patriotism,' which we would call protectionism, corporatism, and rank profligacy....

"Libertarians may sometimes punch above our weight in national debate, but when it comes to effectively wielding power in Washington, we're weaklings. I wish Carlson and Graham were right about us running the country. The reality is they're wrong."

Read more: https://theweek.com/articles/870276/bizarre-fiction-libertarians-control-washington
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Congress must limit POTUS's emergency powers, says Rand Paul

Sen. Rand Paul says it's time for Congress to rein in the President's power | News | WDRB.com:

June 14, 2019 - "Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said President Trump is acting too much like a king, and it is time for Congress to do its job of checking presidential power. Paul, a Republican who generally supports the president, pointed to Trump’s declaring a national emergency to fund a border wall.

“'You may remember me sometimes saying President Obama was abusing the separation of powers and acting too much like a king. Well, now there's a Republican doing some of the similar things,' Paul told WDRB News ... in Louisville. 'I'm for spending for some border security. I think we do have to have secure borders, but I think Congress has to appropriate the money. I don't think the president should be allowed to.'

"Paul said the separation of powers also applies to tariffs. 'I'm not a big fan of tariffs,' he said. 'I think they're hurting Kentucky. But I really am not a big fan of one person being able to decide there are tariffs.'

"Paul has co-sponsored a bill with Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon to limit the president's emergency powers. Paul said he is 'absolutely' concerned that a president’s power should be checked regardless of which party controls the White House....

"Paul was in Louisville to talk to a meeting of the Kentucky Bar Association about criminal justice reform. He was a big supporter of the First Step Act, which reduced mandatory life sentences for some non-violent drug offenses to 25 years and funded programs to help ex-felons return to society. He believes the federal and state governments should do even more. 'In Kentucky, believe it or not, you can kill somebody and be eligible for parole in 12 years,' he said. 'But you can sell drugs, and be in jail for life. I think we have to reassess.'

"But Paul said he does not want to be misunderstood as supporting drug use. 'I think drugs are a bad thing,' he said. 'I don’t want our kids on drugs. I don’t want our adults on drugs. But the thing is I also don’t want to put people in jail for it either.'

"Justice reform is an issue he pushed during his 2016 presidential campaign, and Paul is not exactly ruling out a second run in 2024. 'It’s just hard to imagine in the future, but I did it once, and it was an exciting time,' he said. 'Unless something would dramatically change, I don't see it happening again. But we'll see.'”

Read more: https://www.wdrb.com/news/sen-rand-paul-says-it-s-time-for-congress-to/article_70cb2d20-8ecf-11e9-86d6-8382b2c25328.html

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Bill Weld declares for POTUS

Weld says he is seeking GOP nomination for president in 2020 | Times Colonist - Bob Salsberg, Associated Press:

April 15, 2019 - "William Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts who two years ago ran for vice-president on the Libertarian Party ticket, on Monday became the first Republican to challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 primaries. Weld, 73, said in announcing his candidacy that 'it is time to return to the principles of Lincoln — equality, dignity and opportunity for all.' He said, 'There is no greater cause on earth than to preserve what truly makes America great. I am ready to lead that fight'....

"The move by Weld makes Trump the first incumbent president since George H.W. Bush in 1992 to face a notable primary challenge.

"Fiscally conservative but socially liberal, Weld is known for an unconventional, at times quirky, political style and a long history of friction with the party he now seeks to lead. Weld endorsed Democrat Barack Obama over Republican nominee John McCain in 2008 , later saying it was a mistake to do so, and has enjoyed a decadeslong friendship with the Clintons.... Weld's nomination by President Bill Clinton to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico touched off a bitter public spat with then-Sen. Jesse Helms, a conservative Republican from South Carolina.... Years earlier, Weld was among a handful of top Justice Department officials to resign in protest over alleged ethical violations by then-Attorney General Ed Meese, long a favourite of conservatives.

"With little in the way of organization or outside money, and at odds with a majority of GOP voters who solidly support Trump, Weld's longshot campaign will target disaffected Republicans and independents who share his disdain for the president and embrace libertarian values of small government, free trade and free markets, and personal freedom.

"Alternately a politician, federal prosecutor, investment banker, lobbyist and even novelist ... the Harvard-educated scion of a prominent Boston family was a lifelong Republican before bolting the GOP to run on the Libertarian Party ticket with former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in 2016. Johnson and Weld received about 4.5 million votes, a little more than 3 per cent of the national popular vote.

"Despite a pledge to libertarians that he would remain loyal to the party going forward, Weld on Jan. 17 walked into the clerk's office of the Massachusetts town where he lives and re-registered with the GOP....

"Weld has not won a political race since being re-elected governor by a landslide in his heavily Democratic state in 1994. He was first elected to the office in 1990 ... and quickly became one of Massachusetts' most popular governors in recent history. While holding the line on spending and taxes, Weld as governor embraced liberal positions at odds with national Republicans on abortion and gay rights."

Read more: https://www.timescolonist.com/weld-says-he-is-seeking-gop-nomination-for-president-in-2020-1.23792340
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Lessons from the government shutdown

John Stossel: Government shutdown lessons -- We could take a chainsaw to so much of government | Fox News:

January 17, 2019 - "This government shutdown is now longer than any in history. The media keep using the word 'crisis.' But ... I see people going about their business -- families eating in restaurants, employees going to work, children playing in playgrounds, etc. I have to ask: Where’s the crisis?...

"We need some government, limited government. But most of life, the best of life, goes on without government, many of the best parts in spite of government....

"Columnist Paul Krugman calls this shutdown, 'Trump’s big libertarian experiment.' But it’s not libertarian. Government’s excessive rules are still in effect, and eventually government workers will be paid for not working. That makes this a most un-libertarian experiment. But there are lessons to be learned.

"During a shutdown when Barack Obama was president, government officials were so eager to make a point by inconveniencing people that they even stopped visitors from entering public parks. Trump’s administration isn’t doing that, so PBS found a new crisis: 'Trash cans spilling … (P)ark services can’t clean up the mess until Congress and the president reach a spending deal,' reported NewsHour. But volunteers appeared to pick up some of the trash. Given a chance, private citizens often step in to do things government says only government can do.

"The Washington Post ran a front-page headline about farmers 'reeling … because they aren’t receiving government support checks.' But why do farmers even get 'support checks'?... Most fruit and vegetable farmers get no subsidies, yet there are no shortages of peaches, plums, green beans, etc. Subsidies are a scam created by politicians who get money from wheat, cotton, corn and soybean agribusinesses. Those farmers should suck it up and live without subsidies, too.

"During shutdowns, government tells 'nonessential workers' not to come to work. But if they’re nonessential, then why do we pay 400,000 of them?...  We could take a chainsaw to so much of government.

The New York Times shrieks, 'Shutdown Curtails FDA Food Inspections!' Only if you read on do you learn that meat and poultry inspection is done by the Department of Agriculture. They’re still working.... More important, meat is usually safe not because of government -- but because of competition. Food sellers worry about their reputations ... so they take many more safety measures than government requires. One meat producer told me that they employ 2,000 more safety inspectors than the law demands....

"Even security work is done better by the private sector. At San Francisco’s airport, security lines move faster. Passengers told me, 'The screeners are nicer!' The TSA even acknowledged that those screeners are better at finding contraband. That’s because San Francisco (Kansas City, Seattle and a dozen smaller airports) privatized the screening process....

"Private contractors are better because they must compete. Perform badly, and they get fired. But government never fires itself."

Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/john-stossel-government-shutdown-lessons-we-could-take-a-chainsaw-to-so-much-of-government

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The myth of the "crumbling infrastructure"

Our Infrastructure Is Not 'Crumbling.' Repeat: Our Infrastructure Is Not 'Crumbling' - Reason.com - David Harsanyi:

February 9, 2018 - "One of the great myths of American politics, no matter who is president and no matter who runs Congress, is that our infrastructure is 'crumbling.' Former President Barack Obama repeatedly warned us about our 'crumbling infrastructure.' President Donald Trump now tells us that our infrastructure is 'crumbling.' The next president is going to hatch a giant plan to fix our crumbling infrastructure as well, because most voters want to believe infrastructure is crumbling....

"Ask someone about infrastructure and his thoughts will probably wander to the worst pothole-infested road he traverses rather than the hundreds of roads he drives on that are perfectly safe and smooth ... 'crumbling infrastructure' peddlers play on this concern by habitually agonizing over things ... like the 2007 disaster with the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis even though, according to federal investigators, the collapse was due to a design flaw rather than decaying infrastructure....

"In reality, the number of structurally deficient bridges, never high to begin with, has been dropping ... from over 22 percent in 1992 to under 10 percent in 2016. According to a Reuters analysis of those bridges, only 4 percent of those that carry significant traffic need repairs. Of the nation's 1,200 busiest bridges, the number of those structurally deficient falls to under 2 percent — or fewer than 20 bridges in the entire country. And none of those bridges need repair....

"That has never stopped politicians from fearmongering, however. 'Our roads and bridges are falling apart; our airports are in Third World condition,' Trump claimed during his 2016 campaign. Yet as the Heritage Foundation's Michael Sargent points out, the percentage of airport runways deemed as poor has fallen from 4 percent in 2004 to 2 percent in 2016. And for the past 30 years, the number of 'acceptable' or above roads has remained relatively consistent at approximately 85 percent....

"Despite years of hearing otherwise, there is still no evidence that infrastructure bills create self-sustaining jobs — or any jobs, for that matter. According to a 2010 Associated Press analysis, the first 10 months of Obama's economic stimulus plan showed virtually no effect on local unemployment rates, which rose and fell regardless of money spent on infrastructure projects....

"Now, ... the White House's plan apparently features some attempt to reduce the regulatory burden that the private sector must wade through before gaining approval for building permits. This is a positive step considering the vast majority of infrastructure is still built by the private sector. This should be a goal of the administration with or without the massive infrastructure bill.

"How we fund the infrastructure, and who builds these projects, is certainly a debate worth having. But it's a debate worth having without ever using the word 'crumbling'."

Read more: https://reason.com/archives/2018/02/09/our-infrastructure-is-not-crumbling-repe
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'Libertarian paternalist' wins economics Nobel

Nobel Board Awards Micromanaging Fake ‘Libertarian’ Its Economics Prize - Joseph Bast, Federalist Society:

October 12, 2017 - "On Monday, the ... Nobel Prize in economics [was awarded to] the University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler. It was a poor choice. Thaler might be very smart and even clever, but his contribution to economics was largely, as he put it himself, to 'make a career stealing ideas from psychologists.'

"Thaler and other 'behavioral economists' observe that many people do not seem to act purely rationally all the time. Sometimes we exaggerate risk, procrastinate, give in to temptation, and fail to save for the future. Sometimes we need to be 'nudged' — Thaler’s most influential book, coauthored with Obama official Cass Sunstein, was titled Nudge.... Of course, some of this is true. Yet the core problems with behavioral economics are two-fold.

"First, Thaler and others stole their ideas from the wrong psychologists. Like many other academic disciplines, psychology was invaded by liberals and socialists in the 1960s.... Thaler and Sunstein relied on these liberal activists pretending to be psychologists for much of their 'evidence' showing how people are 'predictably irrational.' In fact, other scholars did not replicate the findings of these activists, and their conclusions were explicitly debunked by some researchers who tried, such as Judy Cameron and David Pierce....

"Good economists are quick to admit they are unlikely to be better judges of what people really want than the actors themselves.... A great example is fuel economy. The Obama administration, following the lead of previous Republican and Democrat administrations, believed people are too stupid or short-sighted to choose cars and trucks that get better gas mileage, so mandated that car and truck makers produce fleets with higher average miles per gallon than people want....

"But people choose cars and trucks with lower gas mileage because they value having bigger vehicles (for hauling kids and stuff), heavier vehicles (which are safer), and vehicles with more horsepower ... more than saving a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars on gasoline.... How can government bureaucrats possibly know the value of these features to each consumer? Obviously, they cannot....

"[T]housands of people die every year in car accidents that would not have been fatal but for the light-weighting of vehicles to meet the government’s fuel economy rules (called CAFE standards). In this case, Thaler’s 'nudge' philosophy is actually killing people every day....

"In Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein called for something they labeled 'libertarian paternalism.' Yes, that’s an oxymoron, and it’s almost incredible that two academics who take themselves seriously could have written it and not realized just how stupid their 'contribution' to the national debate is..... You can’t choose objectives for people ... while considering yourself a 'libertarian.' Goal-setting is part of freedom, maybe the biggest part....

"So congratulations, Mr. Thaler, on receiving the Nobel Prize. Too bad you didn’t earn it."

Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2017/10/12/nobel-board-foolishly-awards-micromanaging-fake-libertarian-economics-prize/
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Rand Paul bill would repeal indefinite detention

Rand Paul Bill Would Repeal Indefinite Detention Provision of NDAA - Joe Wolverton II, The New American:

June 13, 2017 - "Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced his plan to reintroduce S. 1300, the Sixth Amendment Preservation Act, a bill aimed at reasserting the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial in all prosecutions.

"Dr. Paul’s legislation would prevent any future authorization of military force from being used to justify indefinitely detaining any person in America without trial. 'Giving the accused their day in court isn’t a suggestion,' said Dr. Paul. 'It’s enshrined in our Constitution as a cornerstone of our judicial system. My bill reminds our government that the Founders did not put an expiration date on the Sixth Amendment.'

"The specific target of Paul’s measure is a key section of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012....

"On December 31, 2011, with the signature of then-President Barack Obama, the writ of habeas corpus — a civil right so fundamental to Anglo-American common law history that it predates the Magna Carta — became voidable upon the command of the president of the United States. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel also became revocable at the will of the occupant of the White House....

"Americans would not need to worry about being held without charge if the president was not authorized in the same act to deploy the armed forces to round up 'suspects' and detain them indefinitely....One of the most noxious elements of the NDAA is that it places the American military at the disposal of the president for the apprehension, arrest, and detention of those suspected of posing a danger to the homeland....

"Under the provisions of Section 1021, the president is afforded the absolute power to arrest and detain citizens of the United States without their being informed of any criminal charges, without a trial on the merits of those charges, and without a scintilla of the due process safeguards protected by the Constitution of the United States....

"Senator Paul’s Sixth Amendment Preservation Act restores our nation’s constitutional commitment to individual liberty by repealing Section 1021."

Read more: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/26244-rand-paul-bill-would-repeal-indefinite-detention-provision-of-ndaa
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Trump did the world a favor by killing TPP

Lawrence Solomon: Donald Trump did Canada (and millions of others) a huge favour by killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership | Financial Post:

February 26, 2017 - "Trump did the U.S. as well as the rest of the free world a favour in dumping the Trans-Pacific Partnership.... Obama wanted TPP as a legacy issue partly to fetter the free market and partly to establish his 'Asian pivot,' a dubious project involving the abandonment of allies elsewhere in order to bring China to heel....

"Obama ... was merely echoing his 2015 National Security Strategy that affirmed that trade deals are often motivated more by foreign policy considerations than economic benefits.... America’s free trade agreements ... have typically been motivated more by geopolitical than economic considerations, whether to bolster an ally’s economy, as was the case with Israel, or to secure co-operation in the fight against terror, as with the Bahrain, Morocco and Oman FTAs. They serve a foreign policy goal of locking countries into the U.S. sphere of interest.

"They also serve economic goals, allowing them to be sold to the public on their economic merits, and justifiably so. The deregulation, lower tariffs and expanded markets that trade deals usher in generally create more winners than losers. Obama’s TPP version of free trade, though, was different. While it would have delivered the goods by lowering tariffs and vastly expanding markets — TPP would have encompassed countries representing 40 per cent of the globe’s GDP and 33 per cent of world trade — it also would have bound the parties to policies and philosophies anathema to true free-trade regimes.

"'TPP puts American workers first by ... requiring all countries to meet core, enforceable labor standards as stated in the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work,' the Obama White House announced upon reaching agreement on the TPP’s terms.... Under TPP, the trade advantages developing countries now offer in the form of lower wages and informal work environments would have been undercut by their need to conform to ILO requirements on minimum wages, hours of work and unionization....

"The economies of developed countries such as Canada, too, would have been undercut by TPP through 'the highest environmental standards of any trade agreement in history,' as the White House announced.... This, along with TPP’s high-sounding provisions to 'promote sustainable development and inclusive economic growth' creates openings to arbitrarily attack resource projects, as Canada has learned to its sorrow through economically senseless restrictions on oilsands and pipeline developments.

"In cancelling TPP, Trump cancelled the TPP’s ability to undermine the free market and the sovereignty of countries representing 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. That’s a blow against the regulatory state and for economic freedom, one no free marketer should lament."

Read more: http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/lawrence-solomon-trump-did-canada-and-millions-of-others-a-huge-favour-by-killing-the-tpp
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Trump protests leave this libertarian speechless

Speechless in 2017 (On the Banks) - Bretigne Shaffer:

January 19, 2017 - "I’m a libertarian. I’ve been surrounded by people who don’t agree with me for as long as I can remember and it has never occurred to me to isolate myself from everyone because of our political differences.... To me, you’re all a bunch of fascists. But I’ve somehow learned to live with you.

"For me, watching people unravel over this election has been instructive.... I understand that a lot of people are worried, upset, even frightened over the prospect of a Trump presidency. Good. They should be. But they should have been worried eight years ago, or at the very least, four years ago.

"I was worried four years ago. And I was worried eight years ago. I tried in vain to get my Obama-supporting friends to see what I saw, but with very few exceptions (which I appreciated, thank you) I was met with silence, accused of mean-spiritedness or just told that I should 'give him a chance'....

So in case you (like some of my friends) somehow missed out on what’s been happening over the past eight years, let me catch you up:

1. We no longer have a Fourth Amendment, nor the right of habeas corpus (you remember: it was kind of the foundation of our justice system). Yes, the demise of these fundamental protections has been a long time coming, but President Obama delivered the death blow when he gave himself (and all future presidents) the right to imprison indefinitely or even assassinate any human being on the planet with no due process whatsoever.

"Number One should be enough.... But, because I know it won’t be enough, I’ll continue…

2. Obama has bombed more countries than George W. Bush did, and his drone strikes have killed more than six times as many people as those under Bush, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (killing unintended victims 90% of the time.)
3. He has given himself (and all future presidents) the power to wage war without Congressional approval.
4. He has greatly expanded the mass surveillance of American citizens.
5. He put in place a statist health insurance mandate that has sent insurance premiums skyrocketing.
6. He has continued the same brand of crony capitalism and debt expansion of the previous administration....

"So as I watch my friends and thousands of other Americans gather together to protest the inauguration, I find myself a little speechless. It cannot be that all of these people only see evil when it wears the other team’s uniform. It cannot be that they are more upset by offensive speech than by a man claiming the right to kill any human being on earth at his whim. These things simply cannot be. And yet it sure looks like they are.

 "I love my friends. I share many of their concerns (or rather, it seems they have recently come to share some of mine) and I don’t think less of them because of our political differences. But after eight years of deafening silence about these concerns, their newly discovered outrage has no credibility with me."

Read more: http://bretigne.typepad.com/on_the_banks/2017/01/speechless-in-2017.html
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Obama guts 4th Amendment on way out

President Obama's Parting Shot at Personal Freedom - Reason.com - Andrew Napolitano:

January 19, 2017 - "On Jan. 3, outgoing Attorney General Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order directing the National Security Agency — America's 60,000-person-strong domestic spying apparatus — to make available raw spying data to all other federal intelligence agencies, which then can pass it on to their counterparts in foreign countries and in the 50 states.... Yet in doing this, she violated basic constitutional principles that were erected centuries ago to prevent just what she did.

"Here is the back story.

"In the aftermath of former President Richard Nixon's abusive utilization of the FBI and CIA to spy on his domestic political opponents in the 1960s and '70s ... Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which created a secret court that was charged with being the sole authority in America that can authorize domestic spying.... The standard for a FISA court authorization was that the subject of the spying needed to be a foreign person in the United States who was an agent of a foreign power....

"The Patriot Act permitted FBI agents to write their own search warrants for business records (including medical, legal, postal and banking records), and amendments to FISA itself changed the wording from probable cause 'of foreign agency' to probable cause of being 'a foreign person' to all Americans who may 'communicate with a foreign person.'

"The recent USA Freedom Act permits the NSA to ask the FISA court for a search warrant for any person — named or unnamed — based on the standard of 'governmental need.' One FISA court-issued warrant I saw authorized the surveillance of all 115 million domestic customers of Verizon.... The NSA can use data from your cellphone to learn where you are, and it can utilize your cellphone as a listening device to hear your in-person conversations, even if you have turned it off....

"Notwithstanding all of the above gross violations of personal liberty and constitutional norms, the NSA traditionally kept its data ... to itself. So if an agency such as the FBI or the DEA or the New Jersey State Police, for example, wanted any of the data acquired by the NSA for law enforcement purposes, it needed to get a search warrant from a federal judge based on the constitutional standard of 'probable cause of crime.'

"Until now. Now, because of the Lynch secret order, revealed by The New York Times late last week, the NSA may share any of its data with any other intelligence agency or law enforcement agency that has an intelligence arm based on ... the non-standard of governmental need.....

"Obama, in the death throes of his time in the White House, has delivered perhaps his harshest blow to constitutional freedom by permitting his attorney general to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, thereby enabling people in law enforcement to get whatever they want about whomever they wish without a showing of probable cause of crime as the Fourth Amendment requires. That amendment expressly forbids the use of general warrants — search where you wish and seize what you find — and they had never been a lawful tool of [American] law enforcement until Lynch's order."

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2017/01/19/a-parting-shot-at-personal-freedom
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Some conservatives learn to love Wikileaks

How Julian Assange evolved from pariah to paragon - The Washington Post - David Weigel & Joby Warrick:

January 4, 2017 - "President-elect Donald Trump tweeted some praise on Tuesday for ... Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.... It wasn’t the first time Trump had praised WikiLeaks. During his campaign for president, Trump had gleefully highlighted emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. By October, just the mention of WikiLeaks could start a roar of applause at Trump’s rallies.

"Since then, Trump has continued praising the radical transparency group, harshly criticized by President Barack Obama and other officials for what they describe as damaging national security leaks. He has defended its founder, who has lived in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since August 2012 to avoid extradition on a rape allegation in Sweden. And Trump has been in sync with conservative media, once critical of WikiLeaks, which increasingly embraces Assange as a hero....

"Assange’s interview with Fox News was conducted by Sean Hannity, who had evolved from a critic to a frequent booster.... Hannity presented WikiLeaks in its favored terms – as a source of true, incorruptible journalism.... Hannity, who told Assange last month that he had 'done us a favor,' said Tuesday that he believes 'every word' Assange says....

"The Fox interview won other fans: Sarah Palin, who had once compared Assange to the editor of an al-Qaida magazine, apologized on Facebook and credited him with releasing 'important information that finally opened people’s eyes to democrat (sic) candidates and operatives'....

"This treatment of Assange is a stark departure from what was, until recently, a near-universal condemnation of the Australian by conservative pundits and politicians.... The releases that started in 2010 prompted calls in conservative media for Assange’s prosecution, or worse.... Jeffrey Kuhner ... suggested that the U.S. government should have him assassinated.... A column in the conservative publication National Review Online questioned why Assange wasn’t dead already – perhaps 'garroted in his hotel.' Trump himself, in one of his then-frequent calls to Fox, called WikiLeaks 'disgraceful' and added that 'there should be like death penalty or something' for its releases.

"Assange’s most fervent praise in the United States ... came from libertarians. Then-Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who ran for president in 1988, 2008 and 2012, asked in a floor speech 'which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?'”

"Assange ... appeared to notice where his defenders were coming from. In a 2013 discussion, ... Assange said: 'The libertarian aspect of the Republican Party is presently the only useful political voice in the U.S. Congress'."

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-julian-assange-evolved-from-pariah-to-paragon/2017/01/04/2a3ea6e6-d2b8-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?utm_term=.5086f5d4f173
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