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Saturday, January 16, 2010

The American Dream: Why the Tyrants Can Never Win

The American Dream: Why the Tyrants Can Never Win
by Lesley Swann
14. Jan, 2010

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” –Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

The American dream has been a part of humanity long before there was ever an America. History is filled with stories of how people, once enslaved and oppressed, sought freedom for themselves and their loved ones. From the Israelites prayers for freedom from their Egyptian oppressors in the Bible, to William Wallace’s fight for Scottish independence in the 13th century, to the Boston Tea Party to protest taxation without representation, to the songs of freedom by African slaves working in fields here in the United States, the human soul cries out for freedom in a deep and primal way. Freedom is in our DNA.

Pilgrims didn’t come to the New World for welfare handouts or government-run health care. Instead, they risked their lives and everything they had for just a shot a freedom – a shot at being left alone by an abusive and meddlesome government. They knew full well that starvation, disease, or any number of cruel fates could befall them, but for freedom they came anyway. More and more people flocked to the New World for the same reason. It is this unwritten right to be left alone by one’s government, sink or swim, that permeates the U.S. Constitution. No human document can be perfect, but this dream the Founders gave us in the form of the Constitution is the closest humanity has come to fully unleashing the power and splendor of true freedom in this world.

Our Founders had a profound understanding of human nature and of the burning desire for freedom that is planted in the very essence of who we are as human beings. This is why the Constitution was written so as to allow that yearning for freedom to flourish and grow. Our Founders knew that each person would have the best opportunity to achieve their potential when not chained by an oppressive government. Barack Obama’s statements that the Constitution is a “deeply flawed” document only serve to reveal his deeply flawed and naive understanding of human nature, and what it means to be a truly free people. Not only that, but he has completely missed the point of the Constitution, and the precious American dream that our Founders bought for us with their sweat and blood.

Assaulting the dream left to us by our Founders, we now have proponents of a nanny state who would have us give up our freedoms because they say it is too hard to be free. It is too hard being free to make a living, so instead we should have the government take from those who do earn and redistribute it to us. It is too hard to be free raise a family on our own as we see fit, so we should abdicate our roles as parents and let the government school systems and day cares raise our children as they see fit. It is too hard to be free to provide for our own health care and retirement in the best manner for us as individuals, so we should just abandon personal responsibility and choice, instead settling for a blanket one-size-fits-none health care plan that tells us what is best for us. Would Americans really rather be lazy than free?

We’ve been told for far too long that it is too hard to be free. Our Founders showed us how to be free in far more difficult times than we are facing today. They were willing to sacrifice their lives if necessary so that we would have precisely these choices that nanny state proponents tell us are too hard for us. The Founders weren’t willing to sacrifice their freedoms just because times were tough and they would be appalled today that some Americans are willing to lay down their hard-won freedoms because of sheer laziness. Welfare, government-run health care, and a cradle-to-grave nanny state is NOT freedom, it is the essence of captivity and tyranny.

We are beginning to see the pendulum swing and Americans are beginning to fight for their liberties and the American dream. The Tenth Amendment movement is one of the latest manifestations of the age old fight for freedom. We can press on knowing that we have the weight of human history behind us as we fight for the American dream. Tyranny may win for a season, but in the end the human “yearning to breathe free” will rise. This encoding of freedom into humanity’s DNA is why tyrants can never truly win.



Lesley Swann is the state coordinator for the Tennessee Tenth Amendment Center and founder of the East Tennessee 10th Amendment Group. She is a native of Anderson County, Tennessee.
Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.


Gill Rapoza
Veritas Vos Liberabit


Friday, January 15, 2010

It Is A Madhouse Out There

It Is A Madhouse Out There
By Chuck Baldwin
January 12, 2010

I think we need to face it: 2010 is more than a new year; it is also part of a new era in which all vestiges of normalcy and common sense have been left behind. In other words, it is a madhouse out there. Let me give you some examples of what I’m talking about.

Example Number One: In the world of anti-gun elitists, only common people are not allowed to defend themselves.

According to the Richmond (North Carolina) Times-Dispatch, “A sheriff says a North Carolina state senator shot one of two intruders at his home and hospital officials say the man is in fair condition.

“Multiple media outlets reported that Columbus County Sheriff Chris Batten said that 74-year-old Sen. R.C. Soles of Tabor City shot Kyle Blackburn late Sunday afternoon.”

According to the report, “Batten says the shooting occurred when two men went to the senator’s house and tried to kick in his front door. No charges have been filed.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. If the fellows were indeed breaking into his home, I’m glad the senator defended himself with a firearm. The miscreant deserved to be shot. Chalk up another one for the right to keep and bear arms. “What’s the problem?” you ask. The problem is, the good senator is one of the most anti-gun politicians in North Carolina. According to gun owners in NC, Soles has made a career out of opposing lawful gun ownership for the general public. In other words, in R.C. Soles’ world, his life is worth defending with a firearm, but your life or family (and mine) can go ahead and rot.

Soles is typical of Big-Government elitists who will allow themselves the luxury of all kinds of personal protection, while denying it for the common man. They hire professional bodyguards (does anyone remember Ted Kennedy’s personal bodyguard who was caught trying to take multiple loaded weapons—and over 100 rounds of ammunition—into the Capitol Hill building a few years back?); build exotic security fences and surveillance systems; and personally obtain firearm permits that are routinely denied the common person. Then they gladly take millions of dollars from gun control zealots to finance their Big-Government, anti-freedom agendas.

My question is, how does an elitist gun grabber like R.C. Soles get elected and reelected in the great State of North Carolina?

Example Number Two: With little notice, President Obama has signed Executive Order (EO) 12425, which grants complete immunity to foreign police agencies, thereby allowing them to potentially arrest American citizens on US soil with no constitutional protections or considerations afforded those arrested. (This EO also effectively allows INTERPOL to successfully hide any and all potential information and evidence it has from the American public—including evidence of Obama’s birthplace.)

This action is so draconian and deplorable it is difficult to put in words.

According to the Washington Examiner, “Obama has given an international law enforcement organization that is accountable to no other national authority the ability to operate as it pleases within our own borders, and he has freed it from the most basic measure of official transparency and accountability, the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act].”

See the story at:

Of course, not only could US citizens be subjected to unconstitutional treatment at the hands of foreign governments operating freely on American soil, how do we know that our own federal government would not use foreign police organizations to do their dirty work for them? The answer is, we don’t.

The fact is, this new executive order makes it even more convenient for already overreaching federal police agencies to bypass and ignore constitutional protections for the American citizenry. Good grief! Under this EO, they would not even be required to submit to the Patriot Act, which, in itself, grants the federal government almost unlimited power to arrest, interrogate, and incarcerate just about anyone they want—with almost no constitutional accountability. But, now, this EO removes virtually every constitutional protection that may yet be intact by authorizing foreign police organizations to arrest and incarcerate American citizens at will—with ZERO accountability or oversight.

Of course, all of this is done in the name of fighting terrorism, which leads to:

Example Number Three: In order to fly commercially, the American people are now being required to remove not just their shoes—but also their clothes.

After the failed Christmas Day terrorism attempt on a Delta flight approaching Detroit, Michigan, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is planning to spend $25 million of “stimulus” funds to install 150 new full-body scan machines in airports around the country. This is in addition to the 40 full-body machines that are already in use.

Make no mistake about it: when you step into a full-body scan machine, you are being undressed in front of the screener. Do you really want TSA agents gawking at the nude body of your wife and daughters? And speaking of daughters, will someone please explain to me why these TSA agents are not guilty of watching child porn? After all, they are spending all day long looking at nude bodies—including the nude bodies of little children! If you did this, you would be arrested, incarcerated, and required to register as a sex-offender for the rest of your life. Yet, TSA agents will now be allowed to look at the nude bodies of little children and get paid for it!

Furthermore, what is to prevent the agents from storing the naked images they look at and sharing them with their friends? After all, the peeper (screener) is housed in a private room, completely removed from the public.

Then there is also the question of the risk of radiation. Any amount of radiation can increase the likelihood of cancer, which is why most medical experts advise pregnant women and children to avoid the use of radiation machines altogether.

And as Bill Press asks, “What if it doesn’t work? What’s next? We already know. The latest terrorist plan is to plant explosives inside a body cavity and detonate the bomb with a cell phone. Experts admit that, had Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab done so, no full body-scanner would have picked it up.

“So that scary new greeting at airports . . . could get even worse: ‘Welcome to the Friendly Skies. Now take off all your clothes—and bend over.’ A full search of body cavities may be next on TSA’s list of ways to keep us safe. Still want to fly home for Mom’s birthday?”

See Bill’s column at:

Think of it: we’ve spent nearly $100 billion on national security intelligence gathering, and yet, the federal government allowed this Abdulmutallab idiot—a foreigner commonly known to be a security risk—to board an American jetliner. (While at the same time, police agencies are instructed to be on guard against American citizens who may have voted for Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin, or returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.) But that’s just par for the course with the powers that be these days. They routinely allow people to fly into America from countries known to be sympathetic to terrorist organizations. Furthermore, our national borders are open sieves for virtually any and all illegal aliens. And just watch: it won’t be long into this new year before Barack Obama and John McCain join together in another push for amnesty for illegals. But now, you and I are being required to be electronically strip-searched when we want to board a commercial airliner.

Bill Press also makes a good point by comparing the “war on terror” with the war against drunk driving. He says, “Consider drunk driving. The best way to stop it would be to station a cop outside every bar to test every customer leaving the premises. No matter how much we abhor drunk driving, Americans would never tolerate that—even though drunk drivers killed 11,773 people in 2008. Only 876 people died worldwide in plane crashes.

“Same with airline security. We must accept the fact that there will always be risks. The idea that we have to choose between safety and privacy is not only a false choice, it’s a dangerous one. For once we give up even the tiniest slice of our privacy, we’ll never get it back.” Amen.

Or, as Benjamin Franklin said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

If we were really serious about making airline travel safer, we would immediately cease and desist from this incessant infatuation with meddling into the internal affairs of foreign countries, stop invading and occupying foreign countries, and stop our own State Department and CIA from sticking their noses where they don’t belong—which only serves to agitate the world against us. We’d stop giving out travel visas to people from countries sympathetic to terrorists; seal the US border—especially the southern border; and allow pilots, policemen, and any other citizen lawfully qualified to carry a firearm to carry those weapons on board the aircraft. (It was, after all, an American citizen—not an Air Marshal or other federal agent—that stopped and subdued Abdulmutallab.) But instead, we continue to push the envelope toward a police state. One could even get the idea that our federal government may actually want terrorists to enter our country and board our airplanes so that they might use them as an excuse to exact greater and greater acts of oppression upon the US citizenry.

“Oh, yeah! I’m way out of line!” (To quote Jay Leno.)

Like I said, it’s a madhouse out there. And it appears to me that the lunatics are running the asylum.

*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be made by credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link:

© Chuck Baldwin 



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Gill Rapoza
Veritas Vos Liberabit


Thursday, January 14, 2010

Public Schools Embrace Debauchery & Apostasy Over Christmas Music

Hello Everyone,

With the way things are of late, none of the following should be a surprise of any kind to any of us observing the current trends and the news.

Godspeed,

Gill Rapoza
Veritas Vos Liberabit






Public Schools Embrace Debauchery & Apostasy Over Christmas Music 
By: Frederick Meekins
January 1, 2010 issue of Ether Zone.

Most Americans would agree that freedom of conscience ranks among our most cherished liberties. As such, the state should protect this particular right by almost any means necessary and reasonable (especially for citizens).

In California, an initiative has been undertaken to get a ballot before voters to determine the propriety of Christmas music in California public schools. Within the measure is a clause that would require schools to notify parents 21 days before the specified tunes would be played or performed so that students can opt out of being exposed to such material.

Those having embraced a rigorous interpretation regarding the separation of church and state will applaud the measure as a enlightened compromise as these voices will be among the first to point out that, in these swinging days of free thought, not everyone embraces the Christianity espoused by these Yuletide harmonies. One must ask then would the exponents of the unsullied conscience be as outspoken in defense of those wanting to be excused from exposure to more progressivist causes and material.

Absolutarian relativists claim that, in order to ensure the scholastic neutrality of the classroom, not even a whiff of religious material can be permitted to waft across young impressionable minds. That might be what is claimed in theory, but the reality falls far short as an exclusionary objectivity is applied only to Christianity with other worldviews and religions actually imposed upon students.

Any rational person will admit that, in order to have the most comprehensive understanding of the world possible, one must have an understanding of religion as one of history’s most influential motivating forces. However, there is a point at which education becomes advocacy.

For example, it has already been stated that even if authorized, traditional Christmas music will be categorized as quasi-subversive in nature as one has to admit exposure to these lyrics could potentially alter the very spiritual identity of those exposed to them. However, such caution is not exercised in regards to Islam.

According to a WorldNetDaily.com story titled “Islamic studies required in California district” posted 1/2/02, students there are required to learn about this prominent world religion. However, students were not going to be doing this via the traditional social studies methodology of reading a standard text detached in tone about the tenets of this system of belief and its impact upon the world in terms of history, geography, and culture. Rather, the curriculum required students to live out Islam. This was to be achieved by having students memorize Koranic verses, praying in the name of Allah, adopting an Islamic name, and staging a pretend jihad.

Wonder if the name Nadal Malik Hassan mmmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmmm is available with students able to pretend to shoot up an army base. When one takes all this into consideration, the above lesson plan sort of looses its grade school charm, doesn’t it?

Mass death brings up yet another disturbing point. According to Islamic teaching, all one has to do to become a Muslim is to say with conviction that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.

Parents need to seriously investigate if this is one of the Islamic phrases being chanted in the public schools where an accommodationist approach to the study of Islam has been adopted, and if it has, parents need to be quite insistent as to having their children removed from the program even if it means withdrawing from the particular school all together. For you see, to a sizeable percentage of Muslims around the world, one is justified in murdering someone that apostasizes or leaves the faith.

To many, this may seem like theological nitpicking on the scale of debating how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. However, should we, with little resistance, be giving these fanatics another reason with a straight face to kill Americans?

Numerous Muslims will insist that their faith does not condone the slaughter of innocent people. They just don’t tell you that their definition of innocent is much narrower than ours. Never has an insincerely or regretfully sung Christmas Carol resulted in anyone’s death.

The hypertolerant will sneer that this extremism of either Christians wanting everyone to sing Christmas tunes or Islamists demanding students recite the Koran and even miss recess as a simulated form of Ramadan fasting are shortcomings inherent to the traditional religious mindset irrespective of the belief system in question. However, the agnostic reprobate can’t resist to impose their belief on everyone else either.

To both the pagan who sees the natural world as God and the materialist who believes in nothing beyond the natural world, there is nothing as important as the reproductive pleasure cravings we all posses and know as the sex drive. Since it is claimed that there is no absolute truth in these particular worldviews, the “is” automatically becomes the “ought” and however the libidinous impulse manifests itself is acceptable upon the particular social context. Therefore, those wanting a world with the fewest taboos possible have a vested interest in convincing the greatest number possible to this perspective.

And unlike the Christian and even the Muslim for all that matter, this persuasion is not so much for the benefit of the soul of the person whose mind the adherents of these respective outlooks are out to change. Rather those trapped in lives of carnal destitution are so wracked by personal guilt that they cannot bear the thought of others disapproving of their individual predilections. That is why students cannot be permitted to privately make their own decisions about what we are continually reminded are private decisions.

When it comes to matters of traditional religious belief, the secularists believe that children should not be exposed to theology until they reach maturity. However, when it comes to conjugal relations, indoctrination is suppose to commence nearly the first day of kindergarten.

In June 2009, a California school district approved a mandatory homosexual appreciation curriculum. As part of the curriculum, five year olds will study a book titled “And Tango Makes Three” about two “gay” penguins that hatch an egg together. They name the chick “Tango” because “...it takes two to make a Tango.”

This propaganda will cause mental damage that will take years to undue if it can be done so at all. Likely contrary to the mantra of the illustrated tractate, these were not the two that made Tango.

Like it or not, a male and a female penguin had to copulate together in order for little Tango to be brought into existence. All the two penguins in the story can do is raise him.

Do four and five year olds really need to be exposed to the intricacies of human relationships and reproduction? Most can barely tie their own shoes.

The lessons learned about the biological impossibility of a child having two parents of the same sex and what ought to be a legal impossibility as well since two unmarried people shackedup should not be permitted to simultaneously adopt the same child will not stop in kindergarten. They will be expanded upon from year to year as the student progresses through the statist school system.

In the first grade, according to WorldNetDaily, the book “Who Is A Family” will dupe students into believing that “in our school and our community there are many different kinds of families that provide love and care to each other. Remind the students that all family structures are equally important.”

Do these “equally valid family structures” include fundamentalist polygamist Mormons? Does this also include radical Islamist families where the fathers murder their daughters in so-called “honor killings” for exhibiting such proclivities towards harlotry such as wanting to pursue higher education and not wanting to wear burlap bags over their faces? After all, even if we find these practices abhorrent, it must be reminded they fall under the rubric of “all” family structures being equally valid.

Technically, a number of the social arrangements being promoted as such aren’t even families. But Western society has become so unhinged morally that only the most daring are publicly willing to enunciate these observations.

A family consists of a married man and woman and any children that might result from their union or any children such adults united together might adopt. If one is feeling especially innovative and cutting edge, one might be able to expand the definition to include the unmarried propagating offspring via fornication.

However, no matter how much we might want it to be so, the non-biologically related unmarried adult residing in the home with the actual parent is not part of the family. They might be the concubine or harlot of the adult residing in a particular domicile, but they can only be a friend or acquaintance of the child not all that different in terms of relationship than the next door neighbor.

Even if the laws are altered to let anyone live anyway they want with all the accompanying tax breaks and even welfare handouts to which they claim they are entitled, it will not be enough. The consciences of those living in manners contrary to both theology and biology are so pricked that they will not be content letting you simply put up with the iniquities they have wrought but also compel you to applaud and embrace these appalling decisions.

Fourth graders will be required to read an essay titled “My School Is Accepting—But Things Could Be Better”. Along with this assignment, elementary students will be required to define “gay”, “lesbian”, and “LGBT”. By the way, to the pure of mind, that acronym is not a reference to a deli sandwich.

About all children need to know about human reproduction at that age is that babies somehow grow inside women’s stomachs. My grandfather didn’t know what the word “pregnant” meant until after he got married in his early 20’s and he came from a family of ten kids that lived on a farm. Things might not need to be that hushed over, but neither does everything need to hang out in the open classroom either.

As part of the curriculum, students will be extended the opportunity to learn of the warped affections of Elton John, Ellen Degeneres, Christina Aguilera, and Lance Bass. Are we going to also learn about the preferred bodily orifices of other historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson’s alleged bout of jungle fever?

In all likelihood, his name won’t even come up in class. Familiarity with the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third president might fortify students against the efforts to deprive them of their liberty.

In their preparation for world conquest and hegemony, do Red Chinese pupils sit around discussing what celebrity likes what hole? Maybe if American students spent less time on these frivolities, educators would find the traditional 180 day school year sufficient and no longer need a reason to threaten an extended academic calendar.

It is claimed such acculturation (more accurately indoctrination) is necessary to prevent bullying. However, wouldn’t a generalized policy of don’t make fun of anyone at school without bogging down young minds with things that would make even grown adults blush and giggle in mixed company be enough?

Familiarity breeds contempt. Though social engineers might try their hardest, human nature is pretty set within established parameters and as such these educators might end up stirring up the very animosities this ideological indoctrination is suppose to prevent.

Whether this contraindicated outcome is what is actually desired or not could be open to debate. The state benefits even more when the results are the opposite of peace and understanding as activists believe they are then justified in calling for additional restrictions on speech and thought.

Isaiah 5:20 warns, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” American society is swiftly approaching the point of no return when those that run our educational institutions would rather the nation’s children be acquainted with the most shameful of deeds and desires rather than the noblest of truths that have inspired the highest of ideals for millennia





Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”
Frederick Meekins is a free lance writer and a regular columnist for Ether Zone.
Frederick Meekins can be reached at: americanworldview@hotmail.com



Gill Rapoza
Veritas Vos Liberabit




Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Can the Government Keep Us Safe?

Can the Government Keep Us Safe?
January 11, 2010

What a week we have all just endured! While the Democrats were re-writing the federal takeover of healthcare behind closed doors, the public face of the federal government was fixated on denying and then explaining all the gaps in its intelligence gathering. The Obama administration has been finger-pointing over who in the government let a murderous thug on a plane in Amsterdam that he tried to explode over Detroit. First, the government said that the system worked. Then the President said it didn’t. Then he announced that the intelligence communities and security people would start to talk to each other so the bad guys could be kept out. Weren’t they supposed to be doing this all along?

At Newark Liberty Airport last Sunday, a TSA agent left his post, and a young man walked past it to kiss his girlfriend good-bye. Then the young man turned and left the secured area and left the airport. So far no harm, no foul. But because the government’s surveillance cameras in the airport didn’t work, the feds panicked and ordered over 10,000 passengers to leave the terminal, go out into the 15-degree Newark, NJ cold at night, and then re-enter the airport. Flights were delayed and missed, kids did not get to school on Monday morning, and soldiers were listed as AWOL. All because the government overreacted to a kiss. This humiliated the feds: New Jersey’s 86-year-old senior Senator Frank Lautenberg demanded that the guy who kissed his gal be hunted down and prosecuted because of the chaos he caused. He caused? Let’s see; the government has cameras that watch us every time we scratch our noses, and when those cameras don’t work, the government blames the person whose picture it was supposed to be taking? Come on.

All this, of course, brings out the false argument of liberty versus security. And we hear it from the Progressives that the government must take our freedoms in order to keep us safe. That’s hogwash. Freedom is our birthright. It doesn’t come from the government; it is part of our humanity. America is the only country in the history of the world dedicated to the truism that we are endowed by our Creator, as Jefferson wrote, with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government has forgotten basic civics: “Endowed by our Creator” means that our rights come from God and not from the feds. “Inalienable” means that we and our freedoms cannot be separated, unless and until we are convicted by a jury of violating someone else’s rights. What is the value of being safe if we are not free? Did our forefathers flee the kings and despots of Europe and come here to be safe? Did Patrick Henry say “Give me safety or give me death?” Here is the mistake that the Big Government crowd wants to thrust upon us: They want to balance liberty and safety. There is no such thing as balance when it comes to freedom. We will not trade freedom for anything, or balance it against anything, and we certainly won’t give it up to the TSA.

Can the government keep us safe? I don’t think so. Airline travel is safer today because pilots have guns, cockpit doors are like bank vaults, and the passengers have become courageous. All this was done by individuals in the private sector, not by the government. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if the feds had not stripped us of our natural rights to keep ourselves safe – by keeping and bearing arms – 9/11 would never have happened. How about letting the airlines decide who gets on the planes, rather than a TSA worker who leaves his post? When industry competes for your business, you fly where you want to go, you get there in comfort and safety, and you do all this at a competitive cost. When the government runs the show, you stand in the cold night air for six hours because of a kiss. The government can’t deliver the mail, it can’t operate surveillance cameras at an airport; it can’t pay back its debts; it can’t tell the truth. That would be the same government that wants to manage your healthcare.

America, do you see what happens when we rely on the government too much? It gets authoritarian and we get weak. Our children grow to expect from the government what we once did for ourselves. Government is a fearful master. It is not faithful to us; it is not truthful to us; it can’t produce for us. It doesn’t obey its own laws; it doesn’t keep us safe; and it won’t leave us alone. It is mortgaging our futures, raising our taxes, and treating us all like children.

What to do? Challenge it at every turn. Expose it to friend and foe. Educate all you know about what you see and hear every day on this show. And return no one to the government who has stolen your freedom.

And one other thing: The God who gave us life also gave us liberty. He loves us. Praise Him from the roof tops, and ask Him to save us from a government that is out of control.



Recently by Andrew P. Napolitano: What Is a Right?
Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His next book is Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History, (Nelson, 2010).
Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Gill Rapoza
Veritas Vos Liberabit


Forget “Two Strikes” It Was Three Strikes Along Time Ago Obama

Forget “Two Strikes” It Was Three Strikes Along Time Ago Obama
By Laurie Roth
January 7, 2010

An Obama defense aid recently stated to the press “That’s two strikes.”  He was of course referring to the near miss regarding the flight to Detroit and the Ft. Hood attack by Hasan.  It is most fascinating to me that this President thinks he has only had two strikes against him.  Dream on oh deluded one!  As I have shared before, this President has not only shredded our national security but mocked our international reputation.

It is most evident his love and adoration for communist dictators by his on the record love and support of Hugo Chavez, support of the ousted Honduran tyrant and support of Ahmadinejad going nuclear.  There are three strikes there alone before we move onward.

Then there is the submitting and bowing to the Saudi King, nearly a billion given to Hamas and fool hardiness of closing GITMO.  I think we are at 6 strikes now.

I wish there were only two strikes against national security with this President.  Now, the latest that just came out was that our authorities, TSA, CIA and other people in control new about the dangers of Abdulmatallab and their response wasn’t to keep him from getting on the plane but to talk to him as soon as he had landed.  Did they think body parts and wreckage could talk?  Apparently they did, because but for the grace of God that plane with all the bodies on board would have been fertilizer to many fields on the way to Detroit.  At this rate I would feel safer with an Alzheimer’s ward running our national security.

I fear with all the hoopla and Obama’s concern about these “two” strikes playing against his political power and legacy that stupid decisions regarding airline security are being made which will (as usual) betray and violate the freedoms of the American people.

I have said it before…I will say it again, it is time to profile Muslims.

I didn’t say persecute.  I didn’t say terrorize but we must look specifically at connections, behavior, language spoken, known danger signs that track to fundamentalists who promote and/or are violent.  We must have additional questions and screening for anyone coming from a Muslim country of any nationality.  If we are actually going to have watch lists, then we must hire people up and down the ladder who actually have a brain and training to connect the dots, not just try and make a pretty picture with the dots as they eat donuts.

Just yesterday on my radio show I had a Muslim caller from Dallas who was angry with me saying that I was preaching hate against Islam.  She passionately talked about Islam not being the only religion that produces killers.  “Christians murder and Jews murder….look at the US and Christians killing in Iraq and Afghanistan.”  She actually believed that Jews and Christians were organized killing machines, not Islam.

This is precisely the brazen, arrogant, lying and delusional attitude that reflects much of our Government right now.  How else would Islamic radicals be walking on planes with bombs strapped to them?  How else would we get another stupid speech from our President “don’t rush to judgment” when Islamic radical, Nidal Malik Hasan also a known radical, tracked by the FBI murdered 14 victims at Ft. Hood.

It is this delusional view of blame against Americans, Christians and Jews that inspired endless apologies to the world for America and apologies to Muslim nations for our behavior.  Is that the behavior where we try and hide from the Muslim bombers and Jihadists?

Now they are talking, with all the media heat on and with Obama worrying about his dying legacy, about the pervert scanners that will take X-rays of our naked bodies.  They are also saying we will have a bunch more sky marshals sitting on planes. 

With all the sensitivity and caution we seem to demonstrate, will the new sky marshals have squirt guns and a free wake of treatment at Mayo’s clinic to offer the terrorists currently hyper focusing on us and our planes?  Lord help us all.



This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


Gill Rapoza
Veritas Vos Liberabit

Monday, January 11, 2010

Security Theater Now Playing at Your Airport

Security Theater Now Playing at Your Airport
by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
January 6, 2010

As hands are wrung in the aftermath of the near-tragedy on a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit, a conversation from London’s Heathrow airport in 1986 comes to mind.

It consisted of an El Al security agent quizzing one Ann-Marie Doreen Murphy, a 32-year-old recent arrival in London from Sallynoggin, Ireland. While working as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane Murphy met Nizar al-Hindawi, a far-leftist Palestinian who impregnated her. After instructing her to “get rid of the thing,” he abruptly changed his tune and insisted on immediate marriage in “the Holy Land.” He also insisted on their traveling separately.

Murphy, later described by the prosecutor as a “simple, unsophisticated Irish lass and a Catholic,” accepted unquestioningly Hindawi’s arrangements for her to fly to Israel on El Al on April 17. She also accepted a wheeled suitcase with, unbeknown to her, a false bottom containing nearly 2 kilograms of Semtex, a powerful plastic explosive, and she agreed to be coached by him to answer questions posed by airport security.

Murphy successfully passed through the standard Heathrow security inspection and reached the gate with her bag, where an El Al agent questioned her. As reconstructed by Neil C. Livingstone and David Halevy in Washingtonian magazine, he started by asking whether she had packed her bags herself. She replied in the negative. Then:

“What is the purpose of your trip to Israel?” Recalling Hindawi’s instructions, Murphy answered, “For a vacation.”

“Are you married, Miss Murphy?” “No.”

“Traveling alone?” “Yes.”

“Is this your first trip abroad?” “Yes.”

“Do you have relatives in Israel?” “No.”

“Are you going to meet someone in Israel?” “No.

“Has your vacation been planned for a long time?” “No.”

“Where will you stay while you’re in Israel?” “The Tel Aviv Hilton.”

“How much money do you have with you?” “Fifty pounds.” The Hilton at that time costing at least £70 a night, he asked:

“Do you have a credit card?” “Oh, yes,” she replied, showing him an ID for cashing checks.

That did it, and the agent sent her bag for additional inspection, where the bombing apparatus was discovered.

Had El Al followed the usual Western security procedures, 375 lives would surely have been lost somewhere over Austria. The bombing plot came to light, in other words, through a non-technical intervention, relying on conversation, perception, common sense, and (yes) profiling. The agent focused on the passenger, not the weaponry. Israeli counterterrorism takes passengers’ identities into account; accordingly, Arabs endure an especially tough inspection. “In Israel, security comes first,” David Harris of the American Jewish Committee explains.

Obvious as this sounds, overconfidence, political correctness, and legal liability render such an approach impossible anywhere else in the West. In the United States, for example, one month after 9/11, the Department of Transportation issued guidelines forbidding its personnel from generalizing “about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious, or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity.” (Wear a hijab, I semi-jokingly advise women wanting to avoid secondary screening at airport security.)

Worse yet, consider the panicky Mickey-Mouse, and embarrassing steps the U.S. Transportation Security Administration implemented hours after the Detroit bombing attempt: no crew announcements “concerning flight path or position over cities or landmarks,” and disabling all passenger communications services. During a flight’s final hour, passengers may not stand up, access carry-on baggage, nor “have any blankets, pillows, or personal belongings on the lap.”

Some crews went yet further, keeping cabin lights on throughout the night while turning off the in-flight entertainment, prohibiting all electronic devices, and, during the final hour, requiring passengers to keep hands visible and neither eat nor drink. Things got so bad, the Associated Press reports, “A demand by one attendant that no one could read anything … elicited gasps of disbelief and howls of laughter.”

Widely criticized for these Clouseau-like measures, TSA eventually decided to add “enhanced screening” for travelers passing through or originating from fourteen “countries of interest” – as though one’s choice of departure airport indicates a propensity for suicide bombing.

The TSA engages in “security theater” – bumbling pretend-steps that treat all passengers equally rather than risk offending anyone by focusing, say, on religion. The alternative approach is Israelification, defined by Toronto’s Star newspaper as “a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.”

Which do we want – theatrics or safety?

Mr. Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and Taube fellow at the Hoover Institution, has super-elite status at two airlines.

Jan. 6, 2010 update: I lacked space in the column to play out this ultimate scenario: What if a very large group of hijackers gets on a plane, enough of them so that with muscle alone – no knives, guns, or bombs – they overpower the passengers and crew? What if they threaten the pilots to strangle one person after another until the plane comes under their control? No amount of technology can prevent such a scenario; only scrutiny of who is getting aboard can do so.

And while there has been no such large group, “Those Fourteen Syrians on Northwest Airlines Flight #327” represented a possible step in that direction. 


Related Topics: Counter-terrorism

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Gill Rapoza
Veritas Vos Liberabit