FISA/NSA/PRISM/IRS/Etc. Midday Obama Scandal Roundup for June 7, 2013

June 7th, 2013

The torrent of Obama scandal information is flooding the news is something to behold. In contrast to the tiny drops of Benghazi information the MSM would begrudgingly dole out last year, every day seems to bring a new outrage about how the Obama Administration is trampling on the rights of American citizens. I wish they would put 1/10th the effort of snooping on innocent Americans into tracking and deporting illegal aliens as required by law.

Some links:

  • How PRISM works, using the NSA’s own slides.
  • How the NSA lies with numbers. “We only issued 1,789 requests for warrentless wiretaps last year…that just happened to cover every phone and data provider in America.” Plus that number was just 21 in 2009.

  • NSA’s Verizon request targeted Americans, not foreigners. “This is [an] indiscriminate dragnet. Say what you will about warrantless wiretapping, at least it was targeted at agents of Al Qaeda. This includes every customer of Verizon Business Services.”
  • “And when we swear up and down, cross our hearts and hope to die, that the NSA does no domestic spying on Americans, what we actually mean is that there’s an awful lot of it.”
  • So why does #NSA’s #PRISM use the Dark Side of the Moon logo? “All that you touch, all that you see…”

    The eye-on-the-pyramid scheme came from the Great Seal of the United States – it’s on the back of the dollar bill – and is still beloved of conspiracy theorists all over the world. It’s meant to be the all-seeing eye of God, but it’s also commonly associated with freemasonry, the occult and a shadowy New World order presided over by the Illuminati. To deploy it in a logo for a creepy-sounding spy agency simply justifies the paranoia of people who think the world is run by lizard-shaped aliens. David Icke’s next podcast will write itself.

  • The IRS political timeline.
  • The New York Times softens its editorial on Obama within hours of publishing it. Bet they never did that for an editorial critical of Bush…
  • The NSA scandal has even hit the sports pages: “LeBron James and his friends should be worried right now, and not just because the government is tracking their phone calls.”
  • The ACLU is shocked, SHOCKED that Obama is reading your email.

    • Hat tips: Ace, Insta, others.

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    Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Media Watch, Obama Scandals | No Comments »

    Texas vs. California Update for June 6, 2013

    June 6th, 2013

    Yest another busy week, so here’s a very brief Texas vs. California update:

  • Why Houston is a job-creating juggernaut. And why California cities aren’t.
  • Texas now produces one-third of all U.S. crude oil.
  • Midland now has a higher per-capita income than silicon valley.

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    Posted in Economics, Texas | No Comments »

    Dear Everyone Freaking Out Over the Precision Guided Firearms Tracking Point: Freak Out Over Something Else

    June 5th, 2013

    I know I’m a bit late to this party, since it was on Slashdot months ago, but people are evidently still freaking out over the Precision Guided Firearms Tracking Point rifle. That’s the rifle with the integrated fire control computer that automatically adjusts/delays the shot until it’s dead on target, radically reducing human error.

    A writer friend fretted over someone using this to take a out a kindergarten.

    Don’t. Spree killers simply don’t use $17,000, 20 pound rifles firing .338 Lapua.

    This gun would be the exact opposite of a spree-killing gun, because it slows down the rate at which you fire to make a perfect on-target shot, the opposite of the spree killer’s MO. It’s also a distance weapon that’s too heavy and bulky to easily carry around. It’s a weapon for rich big game hunters and wealthy gadget freaks.

    Spree killers aren’t into cool technogadgets, they’re mentally unstable losers looking to erase the shame of their own failures in a spectacular act of bloody criminal catharsis. (Plus a few completely insane, like the Tucson and Aurora shooters, whose motives are unfathomable.)

    In that hypothetical kindergarten killing spree with the Tracking Point, our nutjob is only going to get 2 or 3 shots before his victims run screaming out of his scope range. He’d rack up a much higher body count by walking in with an AK or Mac-10.

    Might this type of rifle be used for other types of crimes? Maybe high-end, long-distance hits and assassinations: One shot, one kill from a mile away. But the downside is that this is way too bulky and conspicuous to carry around for that purpose, and all the Tracking point guns seem to be chambered in exotic big game calibers, so legal owners of such a monster will probably come up on a list of possible perps pretty quickly.

    About the last thing people need to worry about is potential spree killers with $17,000 burning a hole in their pocket. You’re more likely to be killed by a cow.

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    Posted in Guns | 2 Comments »

    Ted Cruz Sides with the Dissent in Maryland vs. King

    June 4th, 2013

    Ted Cruz sides with the dissent in the recently decided Maryland vs. King DNA gathering case:

    All of us should be alarmed by this significant step towards government as Big Brother. The excessive concentration of power in government is always inimical to liberty, and a national database of our DNA cannot be reconciled with the Fourth Amendment.

    Accumulating DNA from arrestees—without warrant or probable cause to seize the DNA—is not designed to solve the crime for which the person has (rightly or wrongly) been arrested. Rather, it’s to test the DNA against a national database to potentially implicate them in other unsolved crimes. But the Constitution requires particularized suspicion of a specific crime; indeed, the Fourth Amendment was adopted to prohibit the British practice of “general warrants” targeting individuals absent specific evidence of wrongdoing.

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    Posted in Crime, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »

    The Actual Text of the Maryland vs. King Decision

    June 4th, 2013

    Actual text of the Supreme Court’s Maryland vs. King “police can take DNA samples” decision can be found here in PDF form. Still haven’t read it yet.

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    Posted in Crime, Supreme Court | No Comments »

    Supreme Court: All Your DNA Are Belong To Us

    June 3rd, 2013

    In a 5-4 decision on Maryland vs. King, the Supreme Court ruled that the government can indeed take your DNA sample upon arrest. It was also a decision that split across the court’s usual ideological lines: “Kennedy wrote the decision, and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Scalia was joined in his dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.” Any time Thomas and Scalia split on a decision it’s worth taking a look at the underlying issues involved, and I hope to take a closer (albeit of the IANAL variety) look at the actually decision when it’s online and I have time. I suspect the decision may hinge on the definition of “reasonable” search and seizure.

    Setting aside (for now) the niceties of constitutional interpretation, I think this is a bad decision for both privacy and limited government, with some truly Orwellian (not to mention Huxleyion) implications. As a science fiction writer, I can think of three or four dozen ways this might be abused, and a National ID card is just the tip of the iceberg. In light of the IRS scandals, having your DNA stored in a federal database is tantamount to handing it over not only to Wikileaks and Anonymous, but any left-wing interest group with a grudge and a sympathetic bureaucrat on the inside (which is essentially all of them). And I can think of a lot darker possibilities…

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    Posted in Supreme Court | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwam for May 31, 2013

    May 31st, 2013

    The season has switched from not Summer to Summer here in Texas, so here’s a hot, humid LinkSwarm:

  • In Europe, youth unemployment is climbing to scary, stratospheric heights. So scary I’m going to swipe their chart:

    Notice how countries that have kept their deficit spending relatively low (Germany and even the UK, where deficits has at least decreased under Cameron) are doing much better than the PIIGS. Again, Austerity hasn’t failed in Europe, it’s been declared difficult and left untried.

  • Harry Reid calls his close personal friend and business associate Harvey Whittemore (and his wife) “wonderful people.” Oh, and Whittemore is now also a convicted felon.
  • Eric Holder: Obama’s sin eater. “The attorney general has done little in his tenure to protect civil liberties or the free press. Rather, Holder has supervised a comprehensive erosion of privacy rights, press freedom and due process. This ignoble legacy was made possible by Democrats who would look at their shoes whenever the Obama administration was accused of constitutional abuses.”
  • Pentagon Papers lawyer James Goodale talks about just how bad Obaama is for freedom of the press.
  • ObamaCare rates next year in California: “Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.”
  • Britain remains in denial over Islamic terror.
  • The Gang of 8 proposal implements amnesty and gives conservatives nothing in return.
  • Ted Cruz actually tries to fix the bill. Gang of 8 tells him to get stuffed.
  • The Chicago Sun-Times lays off their entire staff of photographers. Including a Pulitzer Prize winner.

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    Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Economics, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare | No Comments »

    Texas vs. California: The Fate of Cities

    May 30th, 2013

    There’s a lot to digest in this comparison of migration in California urban areas vs. migration in Texas urban areas. Quick take: Despite anti-sprawl laws, the cores of California cities would be emptying due to migration to the suburbs, were it not for net immigration from abroad. Texas cities, by contrast, are see growth in both the core and suburbs.

    California’s political economy is based on high tax rates; rent control and growth controls; inflated housing values, but relatively low property tax rates because of Proposition 13; mandatory inclusionary housing and more jobs for teachers, tax assessors, subsidized solar power technicians, urban planners and environmentalists. Its immigration policies are mostly the symbolic “Dream Act,” anti-deportation laws and “sanctuary cities.”

    Texas’ economy is based on low or no business and income taxes, no rent control, few growth controls, higher property tax rates based on lower housing values, inclusionary old inner cities by markets, and tax incentives for private sector jobs. Only El Paso and Houston have sanctuary city policies. An anti-sanctuary city bill died in the Texas legislature in 2011.

    California has passed anti-sprawl legislation to try to halt the out-migration from its older big cities. The results would have been miserable if international in-migration had not stemmed the outflow of population.

    Texas has accomplished balanced in-migration into its older city centers where California has failed. The Texas incentive model is performing better than the California disincentive model as far as sustaining the center of its older big cities while Texas suburbs are booming at the same time. Texas is accomplishing what 75 years of public housing and lending policies could not in California: an older city core that is attracting a “return to the city” by domestic and international migration and concurrent suburban growth.

    Read the whole thing.

    And while we’re on the subject, this piece on the dynamism of Houston is worth reading as well.

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    Posted in Economics, Texas | No Comments »

    Susan Combs Stepping Down as Texas State Comptroller

    May 29th, 2013

    Texas Comptroller Susan Combs won’t run for reelection in 2014. And that despite having a $7.3 million warchest.

    Naturally lots of Republicans are lining up to run for the spot, though many are probably waiting to see what Rick Perry and Greg Abbott are going to do before jumping in.

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

    Newsweek Owner Seeks New Buyer To Nail It Back To The Perch

    May 29th, 2013

    Evidently Newsweek (or the online-only digital carcass of same) is for sale again. Gee, people don’t want to pay for an online version of a stale newsweekly turned into another carrier-medium for liberal opinion? Who knew?

    Previously:

    Back in 2009, you may remember Newsweek‘s decision to remake itself as a liberal opinion weekly, an odd financial choice in a country where conservatives outnumber liberals nearly 2-to-1. Since then Newsweek has managed the amazing feat of hemorrhaging readers faster than other print publications. Then the Washington Post company decided to sell the venerable newsweekly to Sidney Harman for $1, screwing its shareholders but keeping the magazine’s money-losing liberal slant under Tina Brown’s editorship. Hired to steer the ship around the iceberg, Brown instead decided to teach the iceberg who’s boss by ramming it a few more times.

    Vast swathes of legacy print media are in trouble in the Internet-era, but Newsweek‘s demise is more like an assisted suicide than a graceful decline. It’s like a Type II diabetic who had already lost three toes deciding to immediately go on a diet consisting entirely of ice cream.

    Newsweek had a choice between being profitable and being liberal, and they chose liberal.

    And remember that Newsweek‘s steep circulation decline, which happened right around the same time they decided to tack hard-left, was considerably more severe than declines at other newsweeklies.

    So if Newsweek was worth $1 before Tina Brown managed to destroy all its remaining value, how much is it worth now?

    Can they find someone willing to shake the cage a little longer?

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    Posted in Media Watch | No Comments »

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