Monday, June 27, 2011

Soccer and illegal immigration

Over the weekend the US men's soccer team played Mexico in an international Gold Cup final in Los Angeles and lost, 4-2.

To add insult to injury, the crowd was pro-Mexican The awards ceremony was in Spanish. And, the US team and anthem were booed all around.

Is there anyone in Washington DC who understands and cares about the gravity and urgency of our nation's illegal immigration problem?

Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution says, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion...." How are we doing on that?

Our borders and immigration laws must immediately be vigorously enforced! Mine the borders if necessary!

Absolutely no citizenship, legal-resident status, amnesty, or guest-worker status for anyone who has ever crossed our borders illegally!

Terminate the nation's "anchor baby" scam now!

Ban taxpayer-funded education, health-care, benefits, and entitlements for illegal immigrants!

English must be established as the nation's official language of the nation and all government functions, publications and websites (except tourism and very few State Department functions) must be only in English!

Establish federal felony criminal penalties for any person -- including federal, state, and local government officials -- or organization which offers sanctuary to illegal immigrants.

The federal government must cooperate with -- not sue -- state and local governments to identify and deport all who have invaded our borders!

Again: Is there anyone in Washington DC who understands and cares about the gravity and urgency of our nation's illegal immigration problem?





Most cops are good, but....

A few days ago, Emily Good was witnessing a traffic stop in Rochester, New York. She videotaped the work of three police officers in that incident. She was arrested for that egregious act! Her video is below.

It appears to me that the camerawoman did absolutely nothing wrong. The Rochester, NY officer, on the other hand, was way out of line. If he's not doing anything wrong, he should have no fear of being recorded or photographed while doing his job. To claim that he felt unsafe with her standing behind him is nothing more than a pretense to impose undue control over a bystander.

In order to to be able preserve their own lives in a hostile occupation, police candidates are typically selected and trained to have a certain level of assertiveness and to make snap life-and-death decisions. Unfortunately, in far too many individuals, this assertiveness grows to the point where they believe they are the law rather than law enforcers. In this case, the arresting officer believes his unreasonable "police order" is the law and that the camerawoman therefore needs to be jailed.

But, it gets better: The second video below is from a Rochester, New York, neighborhood meeting in support of Emily Good, the woman arrested for videotaping a traffic stop from her front yard. Rochester police sent four squad cars to ticket the cars of meeting attendees who parked more than 12 inches from the curb! Yes, they even brought a ruler. Coincidence? I doubt it. This clearly is police harassment and intimidation of the subjects of the Duke of Rochester (mayor)!

Emily Good should, and probably will, receive a nice settlement from the city at the expense of the cities' taxpayers. The taxpayers and other citizens of Rochester must express their outrage by holding their elected officials accountable for this incident at the next city council meeting and at the next election.

All officers involved in this ongoing incident (like most police officers; law-enforcement supervisors; local, state and federal elected officials; and judges) need thorough remedial training in the rights of the people as guaranteed by the federal and state constitutions (which they have sworn to honor). They each need to carefully consider the objectives of Oath Keepers and understand why the organizers of Oath Keepers feel their organization is necessary in the "land of the free and the home of the brave".

In addition to training in the Constitution, the officer who arrested Emily Good, those officers present who did not protest the arrest, and those officers who ticketed cars for being 1/2 inch too far from the curb must all be given a few weeks off without pay so they can have time to consider their attitude toward the rights of the people and the proper purpose of law. They each owe the camerawoman a very sincere personal apology and flowers.

If police are to ever earn the respect and cooperation of the people they are supposed to serve, they must do a lot better than this.

Stalin must be proud.







Thursday, June 23, 2011

Democrat plan to lower energy prices



Environmentalists are people who don't know science, don't care about economics, and won't do the math.



Wednesday, June 15, 2011

SWAT teams from the Department of Education?

SWAT teams from the Department of Education (DOE)? (This story is a must-read! You won't hear or see it in the mainstream news.) The Department of Education conducting armed no-knock raids?

We have over 57 federal law-enforcement agencies, and now, of all people, the Department of Education has guns and SWAT teams?

Is this really the police state we want?

SWAT teams should be used only in cases that are sufficiently critical to public safety that each officer involved is willing to give his own life to protect public safety. Instead, we're using SWAT teams tens of thousands of times per year in this country for relatively minor things such as to grab a few ounces of pot as evidence -- and people are dying for those few ounces of pot!

In fact, just last month, the home of Jose Guerena, an honorably discharged Marine and war veteran, was the object of a typical SWAT raid. Guerena correctly responded to the chaos of his door being kicked in by grabbing his gun for self-defense and the defense of his family. He never took a shot, probably because he recognized the intruders as police officers. There is no report that he even pointed his rifle at the intruders! Nevertheless, he was gunned down by 71 shots from Pima County Arizona SWAT officers. Why the raid on his home? Undisclosed persons suspected he might be involved in drug trafficking. No evidence of criminal activity was found during the raid. If it isn't worth dying over, it isn't worth shooting over.

In the case linked at the top of this blog entry, a DOE SWAT team invaded a home to seek (unsuccessfully) evidence of student-loan fraud on the part of the home owner's ex-wife! Somebody could have died in that senseless raid! If it isn't worth dying over, it isn't worth shooting over.

Is this really the police state we want?

We gotta get some smarter voters -- voters who vote on character, principles, and knowledge rather than party labels, skin color, and "entitlements". There is no other blood-free way to regain control of the federal government.



Orrin Hatch and his flag amendment

Utah's senior senator, Orrin Hatch, has again brought up his desire for a constitutional amendment to protect the flag.

That seems fine on the surface. But, the flag is simply a piece of cloth. A precious symbol, yes, but a piece of cloth nevertheless.

A constitutional amendment to protect the flag is simply another amendment to a document that nobody in Washington pays any attention to. It is the Constitution that needs protecting -- not the flag!

If Hatch wants show he is serious about keeping his job, he needs to do a better job of protecting the Constitution from presidents and presidential appointees.

He needs to do a better job of reversing the growth of government.

He needs to stop and repeal all legislation that violates the Constitution - and he has voted for plenty of unconstitutional legislation and anti-Constitution presidential appointees in 35+ years.

He needs to stop denigrating Republican voters who vote for constitutionalist candidates over Republican-party-machine candidates. (Shouldn't all political candidates be consitutionalists?)

After Senator Hatch get that important stuff done, he can start fussing over symbolic things.

Hatch has had 6 terms in the Senate to do all these things. It's interesting that he has only begun to even pay lip service to the Constitution since the ouster of Senator Bob Bennett -- because he is afraid of his constituents. Hatch seems to care about the principles that are important to constitutionalist voters only when he afraid of losing power.

His bringing up the flag amendment again only shows how badly we need Orrin Hatch to retire.



Friday, June 3, 2011

Overturn Kentucky v King and restore our Fourth Amendment rights!

The recent US Supreme Court ruling in Kentucky v. King in essence revokes Americans' Fourth Amendment rights by allowing law enforcement to enter citizens' private property without a warrant.

Regarding this outrageous ruling, Judge Andrew Napolitano said:
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to be left alone. It requires that the government can only come on to private property without the consent of the occupant if it has a search warrant. And search warrants may only be issued by judges, and judges may only issue search warrants after they have found probable cause of a crime on the property.
This new ruling compromises Americans' Constitutional rights by removing certain restrictions on government agents entering a residence without first obtaining a warrant. This constitutes one of the greatest threats to the American rights and liberties since King George III. We fought a war (beating the most powerful nation on Earth) over this sort of government behavior!

The Supreme Court has only compounded the current and egregious anti-Fourth-Amendment practices of asset forfeiture and extremely dangerous no-knock warrants (no-knock police raids have grown in use from 2,000 to 3,000 raids a year in the mid-1980s, to 70,000 to 80,000 annually, says Peter Kraska, a professor of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University who tracks the issue).

We are law-abiding citizens. We do not want criminal activity to run rampant in our communities. But, more importantly, we also do not want government authorities to wield police-state power over responsible citizens. That is why we cherish the protections the nation's founders wisely built into the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment protects our privacy rights and our private property from unwarranted searches and seizures. Congress and the President must enact immediate legislation that will supersede the Supreme Court ruling in Kentucky v. King and to protect all responsible Americans from asset forfeiture and no-knock police raids.



Chastity: What are the limits?



"Courtship is a wonderful period. It should be a sacred one. That is the time in which you choose your mate. Young men, your success in life depends upon that choice. Choose prayerfully the one who inspires you to your best and always remember that no man injures the thing he loves. . The seeds of a happy marriage are sown in youth. Happiness does not begin at the altar; it begins during the period of youth and courtship." — David O. McKay (Ensign, Jan 1974, p 36)

Every study of the subject has shown that living together before marriage is not good. In each case, they found:
• higher divorce rate - up to 46% higher
• lower quality of life - rates of depression and abuse are at least three times higher for unmarried couples than married ones
• cohabitation does not lead to marriage - only 21% were still together after only five years, even if they got married during that time
• commitment sidetracked - men said they were less likely to get married when they can simply live with a woman and enjoy the same benefits, then walk away with no liabilities.
— "The National Marriage Project" by Rutgers University

"No pressure, no diamonds." — Thomas Carlyle

Entitlement

"The language Congress uses to describe their spending is corrupt beyond redemption. Think about the term entitlement. If one American is entitled to something he didn't earn, where in the world does Congress get the money? It's not Santa or the Tooth Fairy. The only way Congress can give one American a dollar is to first take it from another American. Therefore, an entitlement is a congressionally given right for one American to live at the expense of another. In other words, Congress forcibly uses one American to serve the purposes of another American. As such, it differs in degree, but not kind, from that uglier part of our history where black people were forcibly used to serve the purposes of their slave masters." — Walter E Williams, Economist, 1 Jun 2011

Nobody can say it any better than that.