Grounds For Impeachment, Part 3: The Obama Administration's Fire, Smoke, and Kindling Abuse of the Constitution and the Rule of Law

Over the past two posts we presented the first set of potential impeachment charges against President Obama for alleged crimes and violations of existing laws, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. That first set of allegations can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/01/grounds-for-impeachment-part-1-obama.html

That post followed three other posts where we laid out over 60 reasons and failures that do not rise to the levels worthy of impeachment and removal from office. The first post in that three part series can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/01/part-1-first-twenty-failures-of-obama.html

We reminded readers in those three posts that you cannot remove a President from office:

• For having ineffective and/or stupid policies.
• For being ineffective in executing his duties of office. 
• For being arrogant, narcissistic, and pompous.
• For waging class warfare and dividing the nation into voting blocs.
• For lying about his past or his promises.
• For presiding over an economy where over 20 million Americans are under employed or unemployed and where almost 50 million Americans receive Federal government food assistance are not grounds for impeachment.
• For running up astronomical national debt levels so that the debt burden in the country is over $50,000 per person is not grounds for impeachment.
• For having an effective foreign policy strategy is not grounds for impeachment.
• For failing to rein in wasteful government spending is not grounds for impeachment.
• For lying about how things are or will be in the Presidential administration are not grounds for impeachment.
• For dissing our veterans in so many ways are not grounds for impeachment.
• For blaming ev eryone else but himself for the abject failures of his administration.

However, while those 60 or so failures are not grounds for impeachment and removal from office, there are numerous breeches of laws, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights that have emanated out of this Presidential administration. And it is those actions that we started reviewing yesterday and we will continue to review, discuss, and present today and tomorrow, actions that we believe warrant and require the Congress to institute impeachment proceedings against this President.

Our grounds for impeachment are to be presented in three categories:

• Fire: obvious grounds for impeachment that require very little additional research and analysis before being presented to the Senate as articles of impeachment (listed and discussed over the past two days).
• Smoke: probably grounds for impeachment that require some additional research and analysis before being presented to the Senate as articles of impeachment.
• Kindling: possibly grounds for impeachment that require a lot of additional research and analysis before being presented to the Senate as articles of impeachment but if true, would easily end the current Presidential administration.

Yesterday, we finished up with our "Fire" list of potential impeachable offenses. Today, we will reivew and discuss the remaining grounds for impeachment that fall into our “Smoke” and “Kindling” categories:

The “Smoke” reasons why President Obama should face impeachment proceedings:

1) He refused to fire Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States, after Holder testified before Congress that he was unaware that the Justice Department was harassing journalist James Rosen even though Holder had signed off on the harassing investigation, becoming an accessory after the fact of the crime.

2) His administration directly harassed and pressured insurance companies and insurance company executives not to publish or discuss the very disappointing number of people that had signed up for Obama Care insurance policies, violating their First Amendment rights.

3) His administration asked and/or forced contractors to disclose their political contributions be fore being allowed to bid on Federal contracts and projects, violating those contractors’ First Amendment rights.

4) He refused to fire 15 IRS agents who illegally stole the medical records of 10 million American citizens, becoming an accessory after the fact of the crime.

5) Failed to fire Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius after she allegedly pressured insurance companies to contribute to the promotion and advancement of Obama Care, becoming an accessory after the fact of the crime.

6) Failed to fire Kathleen Sebelius after she violated the Hatch Law when she campaigned/endorsed a Democrat for office in North Carolina, becoming an accessory after the fact after the fact of the crime.

7) He allegedly told the EPA to unilaterally set emissions standards and bypass Congress, violating Article II, Sections 3 and 4 of the Constitution.

8) His destruction of citizens’ privacy via the massive and illegal spying of the National Security Agency and other government entities destroys the underpinnings of the Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling which was based on the principle of privacy. If this concept of privacy is destroyed by NSA and other government spying, i.e. if there is no privacy now in this country given that the government spies on every citizens’ electronic and other forms of communication, there is not right to an abortion in this country.

9) His administration violated the Federal Information Security Information Act (FISMA) by giving the Obama Care information systems infrastructure “authority to operate” even though it failed the required FISMA’s security control assessment.

10) According to a Federal judge’s ruling, his administration illegally tried to avoid disclosure of a foreign aid directive.

11) His administration illegally intruded into the General Motors bankruptcy proceedings to illegally rob General Motors bond holders of their due while protecting his politically friendly union interests.

12) His administration violated the Solyndra loan agreement and illegally moved an Obama financial political backer ahead of the Federal government and American taxpayer in the Solyndra bankruptcy proceedings, resulting in the American taxpayer getting less out of those proceedings than legally permissible.

The “Kindling” reasons why President Obama should face impeachment proceedings:

1) Did this administration illegally manipulate Bureau of Labor Statistics results to show a lower than real unemployment rate just before the 2012 Presidential election to enhance the President’s chances of being reelected?

2) Did this administration illegally blackmail Supreme Court Justice Roberts on matters relating to his adopted children in order to get Roberts to support the Constitutionality of the Obama Care legislation?

3) Did this administration illegally cut a deal with the Sinola drug cartel, as alleged in Chicago Federal court documents, where the United States would provide the drug cartel with weapons, via fast and Furious, and the promise of no harassment from U.S. law enforcement authorities in exchange for insider information on other drug cartels operations, personnel, etc.?

4) Has his decisions to send American troops into Uganda, the Congo, South Sudan, Somalia, and the Central African Republic violated the war Powers Act and Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution?

5) Has his failure to prosecute Wall Street bankers for their potentially illegal actions leading up to the Great Recession a function of those same bankers and bankers contributing millions of dollars to the President’s political campaigns, making him a recipient of blackmail funds? 

6) Did the President secretly reverse/ignore NSA spying restrictions without the approval of Congress?

7) Was the Benghazi consulate operating under orders from the President or his staff to illegally ship arms to Syrian rebels or was it a political set up to have the U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens kidnapped and swapped for the blind sheik as a political campaign stunt gone horribly wrong?

8) Did the President illegally sell overseas ambassadorships to those political backers who raised the most money for his election campaigns regardless of those backers’ foreign service requirements?

9) Did the President illegally suppress an EPA analysis and report that showed global warming is not as serious a problem as the President claims it is?

10) Did the President illegally deny death benefits to four fatally wounded U.S. Afghanistan soldiers who had the misfortune of dying during the government shutdown?

11) Is the President in violation of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, i.e. is he naturally born citizen, given his application to college which stated he was foreign born, inconsistencies on his alleged birth certificate, the fact that he has a Social Security number from a dead Connecticut citizen who never lived in the President’s home state of Hawaii, and a Federal judge that has ruled an investigation into the matter can go forward?

12) Has the President illegally violated existing immigration law by not stridently enforcing the security of our border with Mexico?

13) Has this administration broken any domestic or international laws by spying on the government and personal phones and communications of world leaders, allies and foes alike?

14) Did this administration and President enable illegal voting tampering since it intentionally went out of its way to gut voter ID laws for no reason, tolerated computer “glitches” that may have switched voters’ votes, encouraged people like the convicted poll worker in Ohio who cast multiple votes for the President, and other suspicious voting irregularities across the country, all of which seem to favor the President’s election chances?

15) Was this administration behind the break in and robbery of the law office of Schulman and Mathias who were representing the legal interests of Aurelia Fedenism, a State Department Inspector who leaked embarrassing government information on State Department criminal invetigations? The robbery is especially suspicious since only computers and files were taken, the robbers leaving behind many other more valuable item including high end video equipment and silver bars.

16) Will the President eventually send U.S. military resources into battle in Syria as he was threatened, a potential violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution?

17) Will the President allow the U.S. government to default on its debt as he once threatened even though there is more than enough tax money flowing into the Federal government to pay off the debt, a potential violation of the Fourteenth Amendment?

18) Will the President make good his threat to use his “pen and phone” to bypass Congress, a severe violation of the Article II, Sections 1, 3 and 4 of the Constitution.

19) Has the adminsitrtation broken the law as it applies to the Posse Comitatus Law by creating a domestic military force via heavily armed Department of Homeland Security and IRS personnel or by the militarization of local police forces by providing them with military grade technology and weaponry, a scary parallel to the Nazi SS forces of Hitler's Germany?

That concludes are assembled list of potential impeachable charges against this President and this administration. The total “arraignment” comes down to 58 separate charges spread across the fire, smoke and kindling categories. This does not include the 61 instances of failure of this administration we discussed earlier this week.

If ever presented for debate, review, and a vote in the House Of Representatives, there is little doubt that this list of 57 charges would be reduced, especially if those charges listed in the “kindling” category turn out to be dead lines after a thorough investigation. 

Nonetheless, it is quite obvious from our discussion this week that this administration is:

1) The most inept, given its failures in so many ways.

2) The most dismissive of citizens’ rights and liberties given the extensive abuses of those rights and liberties from many parts of this administration including the IRS, Department of Homeland Security, and other government entities.

3) That most disrespectful of the Constitution and the tenets of freedom and privacy it has delivered to the country for well over 200 years.

4) The most dangerous to our future, economically, politically, and freedom-wise than any other administration in the history of the country.

Now it is up to those few people remaining in Washington who still have a grain of integrity to do the right thing and who care babout our country because our discussion this week lays out in detailed form what the right thing is: impeachment and removal from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Government Out Of Control, Democracy in Free Fall

Okay, you may have thought that the past six posts were the end of the bad news coming out of the Federal government and the American political class. After all, after four days of reviewing the idiocy and insanity from our politicians and following that up with two posts reviewing the dire economic condition the political class has led us into would seem to cover all of the insanity.

However, that is an erroneous assumption. Today, we will be covering the distressing trend of government getting totally out of control, so large and cumbersome that it is endangering our democracy and freedoms. Rather than a supportive government that protects and serves citizens, we have a government structure that is evolving, rather quickly, into an oppressive, unaccountable, overbearing bureaucracy that makes Jabba the Hutt look efficient and benevolent.

But before we examine this loss of liberty let’s review how a democracy is supposed to work:

• Citizens elect politicians that are supposed to go to Washington to look after our interests and wealth that we pass to them as taxes.
• They develop laws and legislation to implement procedures and programs for the good of the people.
• Staff and organizations in the executive wing of the Federal government then implement the wishes and output of Congress and the President.
• Those staffs, organizations, and their actions should be accountable to sitting politicians who are accountable to the citizens.

This simple concept was illustrated pictorially in the following blog post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-freedom-pyramid-where-it-is-and.html

But this concept of liberty, elections, and most importantly, accountability, has been perverted and undermined in so many ways:

1) A recent Congressional meeting was held by the Subcommittee on Aviation, which is a part of the House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (TIC). Obviously, they have some responsibility for aviation in this country, a responsibility that would logically put them in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

The subcommittee extended an open invitation to the head of the TSA to attend the meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how best to improve the nation’s airport passenger security system through common sense solutions:

The purpose of this hearing is to examine the impact that the regulations and policies of the Transportation Security Administration have on aviation passenger experience and the free flow of aviation commerce. The subcommittee will hear from government, industry, and labor witnesses on their observations and suggestions on TSA’s policies.

Sounds like a good idea, Congress trying to make informed decisions on how to better protect and serve the American traveling public. And it is certainly needed since the history of the TSA serving American citizens has been one of incompetence and violations of Americans’ personal space and bodies.

This does not appear to be a confrontational Congressional hearing. There does not appear like it was a political witch hunt. It was for information gathering purposes. But the head of the TSA that received the invitation told the Congressional subcommittee to take a hike. This is a Congressional transportation committee asking for the help of a major government transportation entity to help Americans and the head of that entity said no way:

By U.S. House of Representatives rules which state that the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has no jurisdiction over the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), no representative from TSA will be present at the Subcommittee on Aviation hearing scheduled for Nov. 29.

When a government bureaucrat can tell an elected representative, who is only looking for that bureaucrat’s help and insights to serve America, then we see our first example of government out of control and running wild.

2) One of the most frightening aspects of Obama Care is the implementation of a new Federal government panel of unelected fifteen people that will decide the who, what, and when of medical care in this country. The Independent Payment Advisory Board of Obama Care, or IPAB, has the task of achieving specified savings in Medicare without, theoretically, affecting coverage or quality.

Under current laws, changes to Medicare payment rates and program rules are recommended by MedPac, a current advisory board, but require an act of Congress to take effect. The new system grants IPAB the authority to make changes to the Medicare program with Congress being given the power to overrule the agency's decisions through supermajority vote.

If at any time the head actuary of Medicare estimates that a preset Medicare budget target will be missed, this IPAB board of fifteen then puts together a plan so that the financial targets are actually met by lower Medicare spending processes. If the actuary decides that this plan does not meet the financial targets, the Health and Human Services department of the Federal government then steps in and makes the necessary Medicare expense, and service cuts. Congress, our elected representatives get involved only if they can put together a supermajority of votes to override the IPAB or Health and Human Services.

Given that the U.S. Senate is so incompetent that it has not even figured out how to pass a simple budget over the past three years, it is highly, highly unlikely that Congress would ever get its act together to accurately manage Medicare costs. Which leaves the decisions on who, when, and where Americans do or do not get Medicare funding for their aliments to 15 faceless bureaucrats or the faceless hulking bureaucracy known as Health and Human Services.

When the precursor to Obama Care was implemented in Massachusetts, very quickly it became apparent that financial budgets and targets were not going to be hit. At that point, the people responsible for the program’s financials in Massachusetts starting cutting services and coverages, e.g. taking dental care out of the program.

You can safely bet the same thing will happen with Obama Care since this inadequate piece of legislation never addressed the underlying root causes of high health care costs. Congress will never get its act together and at some point, fifteen people you will never likely meet or possibly never know their names will decide whether you will get funding for your health problems, hardly a way to run a democracy.

3) Many times in this blog we have already covered the fact that Obama’s financial industry reform legislation, the Dodd-Frank Act, has already proven to be a failure and will continue to be a failure going forward. The legislation failed to identify the collapse of the financial firm, MF Global, like it was supposed to do, and does nothing relative to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two main culprits in the Great Recession.

And according to a recent article by George Will in the Washington Post, that was summarized in the November 30, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, the third component of failure and overreaching government power is about to crash down on us. According to Mr. Will, the Dodd-Frank law created a monster bureaucracy called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): “ (the CFPB) is a dangerous new bureaucracy answerable to no one” and “makes a mockery of Congress’s Constitutional powers by being unfettered from all three branches of government, unlike anything created since 1789.”

This bureau will be embedded inside the Federal Reserve Board’s organization, which will provide the funding for its existence. Thus, much like its larger home organization, the budget and workings of this new bureaucracy will be clouded in secrecy and darkness, two aspects that should never be allowed to happen in a democracy. Will makes the following cogent, and chilling, points in his article:

• The 2012 official budget for the organization contained a request for $130 million for unspecified “other services,” a huge chunk of money that could easily be abused and wasted or used as a slush fund.
• The new bureau can arbitrarily impose new rules and regulations on the banking and financial industry without public hearings, debate, and Congressional action or legal recourse by the firms and citizens affected.
• The original law creating the bureau enables unspecified, unnamed, and “unaccountable experts” to develop these new protection laws and regulations but the law provides minimal guidance and restrictions on what these experts can arbitrarily pronounce and implement.
• According to Will: “By creating a CFPB that floats above the Constitution’s tripartite design of government, Congress did not merely degrade itself, it injured all Americans.”

More secrecy, more bureaucracy, and more unaccountability as faceless government workers decree what they want done without discussion, debate, and representation of Americans’ interests at the negotiation table. That is not democracy, that is dictatorship.

4) In these first three examples of government gone wild we can relatively easy see that our elected representatives, namely Congress, are directly being cut out of government actions and decisions, which means we are being cut out of government actions and decisions.

In this next example, we see a massive government bureaucracy at work but in extreme secrecy, even more secret than the previous examples above. In a recent interview by William Binney, a whistleblower of the National Security Agency (NSA), EVERY citizen in the country probably is having their digital life being tracked in detail by the Federal government:

• Mr. Binney asserts in the interview, (http://www.westernjournalism.com/nsa-whistleblower-everyone-in-u-s-under-virtual-surveillance/), that the FBI and NSA are already recording and storing the emails of nearly all U.S. citizens, without warrants or permission.
• This information is being stored in massive, multibillion dollar data centers and can be retrieved at any time regarding any specified citizen.
• While much of this NSA and government data collection and privacy invasion was started during the Bush administration, it is Mr. Binney’s opinion that it has gotten worst and more secretive under the Obama administration.
• From a credibility perspective, the video mentions that Mr. Binney has received the Callaway Award for Civic Courage for his whistleblowing of this privacy invasion by the NSA.

Mr. Binney is not alone at pointing out how mysterious government secrecy organizations are trampling on our privacy, often without us even knowing that the Feds are watching us, and reading our digital communications. Reason magazine reported on some of the same encroachments of freedom in January, 2013 issue:

• U.S law enforcement agencies made 1.5 million requests of citizens’ cell phones records in 2011, or about 4100 requests every day of the year.
• For the most part, under current law, the citizens who had their cell phone records turned over to the government will never know their records were passed along.
• Without warrants, law enforcement and government agencies can now pinpoint your location within several feet using your own cell phone, any time, any day, for any reason.
• Law enforcement is very secretive about these invasions of privacy; the Irvine, California police department guide on these activities state: “never disclose to the media these techniques (tracking people) - especially cell tower tracking.”
• The Iowa fusion center, one of 72 nationwide government intelligence gathering centers, states in its manual: “Do not mention to the public or media the use of cellphone technology or equipment to locate targeted subject.”
• The ACLU interprets these warnings as the following: “We would hate for the public to know how easy it is for us to obtain their personal information. It would be inconvenient if they asked for privacy protections.”

The article goes on with other chilling statistics and trends relative to unfettered government operatives having unfettered access to our digital, and real lives. The article is completely compatible with the accusations made by Mr. Binney.

Very scary stuff. Faceless government employees who can violate our privacy virtually any time they want. Government employees determining what they can do rather than citizens determining what we want to allow government employees to do and to access.

So what did we learn today:

1. At least one government agency, the TSA, can tell our elected representatives in Congress to pound sand and not help them do their jobs.
2. 15 bureaucrats will have final say in your retirement whether or not they will pay for a specific ailment you have, depending on whether the government is hitting a budget number.
3. A new government bureau can decide in secret what fees, rules, and regulations it wants to implement, without oversight from citizens or Congress, on your bank, your credit card provider, etc.
4. And probably worst of all, the government can, and does, snoop and intrude on your privacy, essentially assuming you are guilty until proven innocent, usually without your knowledge and permission.

Yes, we are truly living through a reality where government is out of control, financially, Constitutionally, medically, and secretly, and democracy is in free fall.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

George Orwell, 1984, iPhones, And Freedom

Most of us are familiar with George Orwell's classic novel, "1984." This novel created a dysfunctional future where freedom, liberties and democracy have been replaced with an ever present, ever paranoid, and ever vindictive ruling class. Individuality is crushed and society is totally controlled in support of the state and Big Brother.

One of the more distressing aspects of Orwell's vision was the ability of the state, the political/ruling class, and government to be ever aware of where a person was, what they were doing, and what they were saying:

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

When this was written, it was no more than a scary, science fiction aspect of the future. However, according to recent news reports, as summarized in the May 6, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, this concept is still scary but is no longer fiction or in the future:

• Nathan Goulding, writing in the National Review, reported that two data scientists uncovered the fact that Apple's iPhones, iPads, and iTouches can store a user's GPS locations, store their movements for up to a year, and send this information back to Apple for storage and analysis.
• The Goulding reporting claims that this is being done now, without getting the consent of the user or without the user being told what information is being collected on their habits and movements.
• According to Jordan Robertson of the Associated Press, there are no laws on the books that make this behavior illegal or would prevent Apple (and other smartphone manufacturers) from sharing this data with other parties without an individual's permission.
• John  Naughton writing in the London Observer recalled a ten year old quote from Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems: "You have zero privacy. Get over it." Mr. Naughton concludes that McNealy is probably right.

Scary, scary stuff, in my opinion. You cannot live in a free country if you have no privacy. You cannot live in a free country when every sound you make could be overheard and every move you make could be scrutinized. The possibility of abuse without proper judicial and legal protection is staggering. If you do not think this is the case, consider two examples of how it could be abused:

• First, in the March 18, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, a short article reviewed how the Chinese government is planning to install a massive tracking system that will monitor and track the location of every Chinese citizen that has a cell phone.
• The government claims this massive process would help them to ease traffic congestion, a very weak argument.
• Critics of the program, however, believe that the system would allow the authoritarian Chinese government to track and follow dissidents and journalists.
• This would allow the government to learn of protest sites, clandestine meetings, etc.

The Chinese system sounds a lot like what could be done quite easily if the U.S. government ever decided that it also needed this individual citizen information to "ease traffic congestion." You have to be suspicious when something that exists in America is very close in scope and capability to what the repressive Chinese government is also doing.

Second, who is to say our political class would not abuse this system for their own good? We know that President Obama has already tried to silence or minimize the reach and influence of Fox News. We know that Nancy Pelosi recently said that elections should not be as important as they are currently treated. We know that a Colorado congressman wants to allow elected officials to serve 25 years at a time. We know that those opposed to some aspects of President Obama's health care reform bill were branded as racists, Neanderthals, Ku Klux Klan members, gerbils, un-American,etc. by members of the ruling political class, simply for expressing an honest difference of opinion.

There are constantly assaults on our freedom in this country, almost always from the politicians that are running the government of this country. No, it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that this tracking system would be abused by those that currently rule the country. It happened in George Orwell's world and it is happening in China, the possibility of it happening here is no longer science fiction.

To fight back this onslaught on freedom, several steps need to be implemented as soon as possible:

• A smartphone user needs to be granted the option of not having his or her movements or conversations tracked. Traditionally in this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. The premise should still hold and you should be able to opt out of any tracking.
• The government, via a politician or law enforcement official, should not be able to access your smartphone information without a signed, court order from a judge, after the government agency has proven its case for probable cause of a crime. This is the process for getting a search warrant for a home, it should be the same for searching a person's smartphone history.
• If a court order is granted and the result of an investigation turns up no illegal activity on an American citizen, then that citizen needs to be told what information of theirs was obtained and why. This would ensure that law enforcement or other government agencies to not go on fishing expeditions without cause if they are forced to come clean after an investigation is over and the smartphone user is found innocent of all suspicions.

These three steps are very similar to the three steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," as it applies to the Patriot Act. (Steps 20 - 22). In fact, this whole situation needs to be framed as a subset within a national discussion on the whole idea of the Patriot Act and what needs to be done to better balance national security against national freedom.

Privacy is essential for a democracy to flourish and allowing someone to know where you are and who you are talking to without your permission is not privacy, even if it would help out the local traffic jam.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect
freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

George Orwell and A Pennsylvania High School

Most people are familiar with the George Orwell classic, "1984." Written in England in 1948, it hypothesizes about a future where freedom and liberty have disappeared and are replaced by an all powerful and all knowing police state form of a government. In his future, Orwell sees government snooping devices everywhere, even out in the middle of the woods.

Orwell's view of the future seemed appropriate for America after I read a disturbing article from the Associated Press (AP) today. Apparently, a highly rated Philadelphia suburban high school issues laptops to all students but the school administration has the appropriate hardware and software installed on those laptops so that school personnel can activate the web cameras on the computers and access them remotely. In other words, if a student left their laptop on in their bedroom, which, according to the article is where they tend to be used the most, school personnel could view the contents and activities within the bedroom that fell within the view of the laptop's web camera.

How did families find out that the government run schools had unauthorized video viewing access to their home? Two ways. First, an assistant principal actually told a student that school officials believed he had engaged in improper activity in his own home and to prove their point, provided a photograph of that activity from the student's laptop computer. Second, the school district acknowledged that they had indeed deactivated the feature which they deemed as a security feature to track lost and stolen laptops.

A whole list of issues and questions come to mind with this atrocity:

• If the feature was to only track lost and stolen laptops, why was the feature activated and being viewed of a student whose laptop had not been reported lost or stolen?
• You would expect an assistant principal to be an educated, relatively smart person. Why in the world would the principal tell the student they were spying on him and create the hardcopy photograph to prove it?
• How many other student's were spied upon outside of school grounds and what records were made of those spying events?
• Who had access to this feature and can its usage be tracked to see who was viewing who and when it was done?
• You would think someone in the school hierarchy would have either been smart enough or knew enough about the Constitution and privacy laws to stop the program and feature. What does that say about the people in charge of educating the nation's kids?
• However, the biggest question is if a high school was able to do this, can you imagine what the NSA, CIA, FBI, telephone companies, cable companies, and other government entities might be doing to us now?

Think about it from Orwell's perspective in light of just this high school capability. With GPS enabled cell phones and laptops, somebody, somewhere could probably track your movements pretty easily. Since almost the beginning of time, phone companies could tap your phones and now cable companies could be tracking what you watch and when you watch it. Email has to go through a computer that could easily make a copy without you knowing it. Right now as I type on my laptop, somebody could be looking in at me typing away through my own web cam. Who is to say that a future cable box will not contain a tiny camera that could broadcast out my living room activity or worse yet, be hooked up to my bedroom TV. Many cell phones today can record video, who is to say that now or sometime in the future someone could remotely turn on that video function and have what it sees broadcast back? As we get more and more wired, the potential for Orwell's world to come true becomes more and more possible in ways we never imagined.

Think about it: before this high school scandal, did you ever think that the web cam lens looking you in the eye could be used for eyeballing you? Remember the old saying, "just because I'm paranoid does not mean they are not looking at me."

The bigger question, of course, is not a high school administration spying on us but the government spying on us. Thus, three steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" become very important from a liberty perspective:

• Step 20 - Determine the effectiveness of each part of the Patriot Act. An independent panel will conduct a comprehensive review , then propose whatever changes to the act that it deems necessary to balance security with freedom. A national referendum will vote on the proposed changes.
• Step 21 - Make it illegal to tap the phones, intercept the mail, monitor Internet activity or examine the phone or library records of any American without a warrant that shows probable cause.
• Step 22 - Require that the government at the end of any phone tapping activities, mail interception, etc. tell a vindicated American citizen what information the government collected and why.

Government and the political class have gotten way too big, petty, and powerful to assume that they are there to protect and serve us unless the above three steps are strictly enforced. In the meantime, I suggest that all high school administrators take a refresher cause in privacy laws and the U.S. Constitution. Certainly they do not want to find out the hard way like this Philadelphia area school which is being sued for the intrusion into students' homes



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