UPDATE: 100-Mile Border Zone as ‘Constitution-Free’
December 24, 2008
Government agents should not have the right to stop and question Americans anywhere without suspicion within 100 miles of the border, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday, pointing attention to the little known power of the federal government to set up immigration checkpoints far from the nation’s border lines.
The government has long been able to search people entering and exiting the country without need to say why, which is known as the border search exception of the Fourth Amendment.
After 9/11, Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security the right to use some of its powers deeper within the country, and now DHS has set up at least 33 internal checkpoints where they stop people, question them and ask them to prove citizenship, according to the ACLU.
“It is a classic example of law enforcement powers expanding far beyond their proper boundaries – in this case, literally,” said Caroline Fredrickson, who heads the ACLU’s Washington, D.C., Legislative Office.
The ACLU says it has scores of complaints from citizens and wants Congress to investigate and roll back the buffer zone. According to a map the rights group released Wednesday, some 190 million citizens live within what the ACLU dubs the “Constitution-free Zone.”
DHS spokesman Jason Ciliberti says the ACLU’s description of the zone as “Constitution-Free” couldn’t be further from the truth and that the check points follow rules set by Supreme Court rulings.
“We don’t have the abilitty to just set up checkpoints willy-nilly,” Ciliberti said. “The Supreme Court has determined that brief investigative encontuers do not constitute a serach or seizure.”
When citizens or visa holders encounter a checkpoint, most are waived on after showing identification, but if an agent suspects the person is not lawfully in the country, the agent can detain the person until the agent’s investigation is satisfied.
The government has long had the power to set up such check points, but has recently expanded the number of permanent and ‘tactical’ check points and deployed them in areas they hadn’t before — such as near the Canadian border.
The courts, however, are not on the ACLU’s side — and have regularly ruled that the Fourth Amendment’s protections don’t extend to the border area, airport screening or even to laptops at the border.
In a video shown to reporters at a national press conference event Wednesday, retired San Diego social worker Vince Peppard complained that he and his wife were stopped at a checkpoint on a road east of San Diego on I-94, many miles after crossing back into the United States with tiles he’d bought in Mexico.
When he refused to let the Customs and Border Protection officer search his car, the officer led him to a bench, called in the contraband dog and then “ransacked” his car.
“I didn’t feel like I was inside the U.S.,” Peppard said, calling the search on the side of the road embarrassing. “I felt like I was in a B-movie with Nazis asking for my papers.”
ACLU attorney Chris Calabrese is certain there are more people who have been negatively affected than have complained.
As an example, he cited Seattle’s domestic ferries, where DHS agents ask passengers for ID to check their citizenship and use license plate readers.
Customs and Border Protection Cilberti’s says he did not specifically look into Peppard’s case, but said that refusing a search does not create probable cause for a search and that if a CBP agent searched his car, it’s because their experience and training made them believe they had probable cause.
Military Presence in California Beginning to be Understood?
December 24, 2008
Even tho I know the military presence and assistance in civil unrest violates Posse Comitatus this trouble in Orange County,Calif. and the trouble in Iceland and Russia along with China may tell us what the government is expecting here in the US also as unemployment rises and the economy keeps going south.
Angry Government Employees Protest Lay Offs
Stuart Pfeifer
Los Angeles Times
December 24, 2008
Faced with a gaping budget deficit, Orange County officials disclosed plans Tuesday to lay off nearly 60 Probation Department employees and to start releasing some juvenile criminal suspects rather than holding them in juvenile hall.
Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times
Word of the cutbacks came the same day that 1,000 angry workers stormed the Orange County Hall of Administration to protest previously announced plans to lay off 210 social services employees.
The social services cuts stem from a steep reduction in state funding that county officials said left them with no option but to eliminate jobs. In addition to the layoffs, the county has disclosed plans to require 4,000 social services employees to take two weeks off without pay next year.
Read the entire article @ latimes.com
| Icelanders Protest Economic Crisis | |
01 December 2008 |
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| Demonstrators crowd into a city square in Reykjavik, Iceland, 01 Dec 2008 |
Thousands of Icelanders marked the 90th anniversary of sovereignty from Denmark Monday by demanding the government resign over the country’s economic crisis.
Hundreds of marchers tried to storm central bank headquarters in Reykjavik. They left after a tense hour-long standoff with riot police.
The global financial crisis has left Iceland’s economy in shambles. Three major banks have collapsed, unemployment has soared, and the value of the krona has plunged.
Russian Riot Police Detain 100 At Economic Crisis Protest
Riot police face off against protesters in Vladivostok.
December 21, 2008
VLADIVOSTOK (Reuters) — Russian riot police have detained at least 100 people protesting against government measures linked to the economic crisis, a crackdown that highlighted official sensitivity to growing hardship.
Riot police broke up an unsanctioned rally organized against import duties on new and used cars, kicked a protester as he was being held, and hurled a cameraman’s gear to the ground.
Police used a bullhorn to order demonstrators to go home as they gathered near the city center, and the OMON riot police started snatching people after an uneasy 30-minute standoff.
Local media said 100 to 200 of the 500 participants were detained, but authorities declined to confirm this figure.
Further protests were due to take place across Russia against car import tariffs, which are being raised to prop up struggling domestic car producers and discourage Russians from buying second-hand vehicles.
In China, anger rises as economy falls
STR, AFP/Getty Images
ERA OF UNCERTAINTY: The names of laid-off employees are posted at a factory in Dongguan, China.
The crisis in global capitalism has spelled trouble for the Chinese Communist Party, confronted by public unrest as factories shed workers and investments collapse.
Reporting from Beijing — The signs of discontent are small but unnerving in an authoritarian country where public demonstrations are not permitted.
Laid-off toy company workers smash windows and computers and overturn police cars in Guangdong province. Employees of a liquor company in Harbin travel to their company’s Beijing headquarters to demand back wages. Taxi drivers, as many as 20,000 of them, scuffle with police in protests that have spread into seven provinces.
Even the police have gotten into the act. Auxiliary officers surrounded a Communist Party office last week in Hunan province to demand higher wages, said the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
As China’s economy hits the skids, such protests have been sporadic and usually involved fewer than 100 people. But in recent weeks, they have cropped up across the country like brush fires.
A Wish for 2009
December 24, 2008
I have been watching the energy market now for over 6 years. Actually longer than that, but with increased intensity since hurricane Katrina. I now have watched it come full circle in a five year span, all the while at 38 dollars a barrel the oil giants were making huge profits, all the way to the tip of 100 dollars a barrel and over, when they made ghastly amounts of money. They did this while telling us it was due to supply and demand, we are running out of oil, the United States were oil gluttons, etc., etc.
OK, I’m a simple man. Where are the investments? Where are the changes to help us from going back to that horrible place we were at over $4.00 a gallon?
We’re back to square one. At the moment I write this, crude oil (West Texas Intermediate) future is at 32.74, and wholesale gas is at 83 cents. We’re back to where we were when big Oil was making comfortable money, and the economy was ok. But yet, who is screaming? OPEC…they’re saying they would be comfortable at $75 a barrel. I’m sure they would…but here’s my comment, want sugar with that?
I’m sick and tired of being told it’s our fault. Who the heck is the government bailing out? Who is using the bail out money to party on, pay out exhorbitant wages with, and generally do the same crap again. Who just gave themselves another raise? Do you hear anyone saying that the American people want a bailout? Most of us said they deserve what they get for being so greedy. How many of us paid on time to still see 20% plus bank rates?
Now the auto makers, with assistance from the governments of the US and Canada have money to fix their screw ups. Will they keep paying high priced executives to come up with an SUV that gets another mile to the gallon? They’ve waited too long to match up to the quality and innovation that is happening in other countries.
I made a statement on my radio show years ago that I noticed Obama using recently in one of his speeches. How come we could put a man on the moon in the decade of the 60’s, and can’t fix a greedy runaway economic system? Think about that. We WANTED to put that man on the moon, but we’re too PC, too complacent, too crooked and too lazy to fix the economic system. Remember, the illegals were here because it’s the jobs Americans won’t do. Guess what, even the illegals are leaving now that the money is drying up. Maybe John McCain will sponsor a bail out, he has nothing else better to do now.
We’ll never fix this problem until we fix the problem. We have too many people in government who forget the rule of law. They ignore the Constitution, even challenge it’s authority, for the good of their agenda. Our current president even called it a “f***ing uselss peice of paper”
Guess we can’t win with people like that in power, look at what folks thought of him. Wait until after a year of Obama. Guess we lose our country bit by bit every day while we watch. Well, that’s exactly what is going happen if we don’t wake up and join movements to uphold that precious document that our founders put together with the help of a Heavenly Father. Without both, we’re doomed to fail. For this coming year, I pray for His guidance everyday that folks will have the scales removed from their hearts and eyes very soon.
Steve
The Mentality of the Obama Voter
December 24, 2008
Bill Foster sends me this article that was published in News With Views. Now, not all people who voted for Obama fit this description, but I did hear some of the same during the campaign. Change is what you got, and WILL get!
Steve
By Lynn Stuter
December 23, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
The probability that Barack Hussein Obama is not eligible to the office of president as he is not a natural-born citizen as required by Article II, Section 1, United States Constitution, grows with each passing day that he refuses to produce his vault copy Hawaii birth certificate. For a man who promised open government and transparency during his campaign, Obama has spent an inordinate amount of money and time trying to keep from having to produce his vault copy Hawaii birth certificate.
I received an e-mail the other day, from an individual who did not identify himself/herself. The e-mail simply arrived from Alex33053@….; no subject identified. For the purposes here, we shall identify this e-mailer as “Alex” of the male gender. Alex’s e-mail message:
Don’t you know that God is about to destroy America because of her sins?
He is only using Obama to do what HE wants.
“Batman and Robin” could have been elected, it would not have mattered. You need to get over it a(nd) realize that God is in control. He is directing this ship, and just like the Titanic, who many said “God himself could not sink”, America and everyone here, is going into a time of trouble that has never been seen before (Matt. 24)
Even if McCain had won, it would not matter. I wonder would you and others would be this upset about him? I wonder if it really is a race issue with you. Do you know what it is like to be black? No! So what Obama knows different people? What’s wrong with the Black Panthers? You have no problem with the KKK! Give me a break!
White people have had control for over 200 years in this county and now it’s time to pay the piper. It is only fitting that the hand God will use to “flush the toilet” is the hand of someone who’s people have been held down for so long. IT’S ABOUT TIME JUSTICE BE SERVED.
Sadly, this is the mentality of too many of the black people who voted for Barack Hussein Obama. This individual truly believes that Barack Hussein Obama is going to punish white people in the name of black people; it is very apparent this is why he voted for Obama.
This individual grew up in the United States. And his ignorance is testament to the failure of government schools to properly educate children. That situation has been on a steady downhill slide since education transformation came into being, full force, in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s. Education is no longer about producing an intelligent, well-educated child; education is about producing an illiterate worker, and the government schools are churning them out year after year. As one small business owner put it, “They don’t know anything; don’t know they don’t know anything; but they sure can tell you how they feel about everything!” Truer words were never spoken.
This is why the Founding Fathers gave the federal government no authority in the area of education; knowing full well that if authority were given, the federal government would use that authority to promote an agenda that was in its own best interests but not in the best interests of the people. The U.S. Department of Education, established under Jimmy Carter, is an unconstitutional entity.
At what point do you supposed Alex will realize that Barack Hussein Obama led him down the rosy path of his own enslavement?
Will it be four years from now when Alex suddenly realizes that conditions have gotten worse instead of better for black people under the aegis of Barack Hussein Obama; the “man with the plan”; the man who was going to “change” America; the man who is going to “spread the wealth around a little”; the man who spouts nebulous “hope” at every turn?
Or will it be when Alex loses his job because Barack Hussein Obama’s plan of change is Marxist in construct, therefore anti-free market which is the only system under which our economy can be or will be resuscitated?
Does Alex really and truly believe that Barack Hussein Obama is going to punish white people in the name of black people? One has to wonder how Alex can look at the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and not realize these men are leaches whose livelihood depends on keeping their own people believing they do not have equal opportunity.
Linda Bentley of Sonoran News had this to say about Alex’s e-mail:
Apparently social and economic justice only means the shoe being on the other foot, not being considered equal or treating people as equals, as they expect and demand of whitey. There’s a fear of losing one’s status as a victim. Reverend Wright and Jesse Jackson would be standing in the unemployment line if blacks were to admit they already have equality of opportunity and simply need to exercise it.
Obama rising to the presidency isn’t enough, they want him to hate and punish white folks for them too.
Sandra has this message for Alex:
So GOD will be flushing the toilet?
I assume that means the hated rotten whites will be flushed.
If that is true, who else will be flushed with them? Did you ever think about that?
And what about those blacks in Africa who captured their fellow blacks to sell them into slavery. Do you even know about that?
I had a friend from N Jersey, a little over 20 years ago. We worked together on a software project. My friend Hamon (Ham) did resent that blacks had been denied many opportunities. And for his vacation he had planned a month’s vacation in Africa. (I don’t remember now which country.)
When Ham came back early from that trip he had a totally different outlook. He told me many of the things that had happened to him and the group of seven he went with. The stories were horrific. They lost two of their group to tribal warfare they got caught in. All seven were black American males who were all into information technology and very, very sharp.
After all was over, Ham told me something he said he had NEVER thought he would even think, much less say aloud. Ham said when the remaining five who were still alive finally found a way to get out of there, he thought: “anything that got us out of that hell-hole of a continent, even slavery, was a God-given opportunity.”
After two of his buddies were killed quite savagely by machete-wielding tribesman, he decided that the USA was great and that if he and blacks had to work a little harder or a bit longer that it was far, far preferable to wanton massacre by any tribe or war lord.
So tell me, where do you think you would have a better life? Will any other nation give you as fair a deal as you have here in USA?
Maybe you say some whites are still prejudiced. Yes I am sure that is true. Aren’t some blacks also just as prejudiced? You just proved it when you quoted the Bible but then said that whites would pay. So you are the racist to want one group to pay based only on their skin color. Go look in a mirror and honestly see what you are.
The desires of ML King have come to fruition. A black or any other person can rise in the US via education and hard work. That is more true than in any other nation on this planet.
So if that toilet flushes, and after you have a victory dance, then tell me what is left? I know enough blacks to know they do NOT trust their own in many fields. Will it be elections via personality as blacks have traditionally done—vs—elect the best, least corrupt, most qualified on the solid basis of their past?
Obama was just elected based on color and personality. He promised CHANGE. Do you know what change? He never spelled that out. Do you know what our country will be like when he is done? He never spelled that out.
Well take a good long look at Chicago politics and socialist leaders. That is where he learned and those kind of changes will damage everyone in this country, not just whites.
When that toilet flushes, it will flush ALL citizens of this nation.
Alex assumes I have no problem with the KKK. His logic is flawed and goes something like this: A: you are white; B: Klansmen are white; therefore C: you have no problem with the KKK. I’ve got news for Alex: I have the same disdain for the KKK that I do for the Black Panthers, for the Aryan Brotherhood, and for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Morris Dees. From where I stand, they all have the same agenda: destroying freedom; destroying America; destroying the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The list of organizations that join the brotherhood of being anti-American and anti-Constitution is a long one; these are just representative of the diversity of that group. Obama’s pet organization, ACORN, is on that list, too.
And I’ve some really bad news for Alex: Obama is not nearly as black as he would like Alex to think. While Obama calls himself “black”, he is, courtesy his mother, 50% white; the other 50%, courtesy his father, is not exclusively “black”. Some claim that Obama is, at most, 6.25% black Kenyan; that the remainder is Arabic; that Obama is descended of African slave traders.
And whether Barack Hussein Obama is black, brown, white, green, purple, orange, some combination thereof, or whatever is of little matter; what does matter is whether he is eligible to the office of president under Article II, Section 1, United States Constitution. And had McCain, born in the Panama Canal Zone, been elected on November 4, 2008, the question would have been the same. Interesting that two men, both of questionable eligibility, rose to the level of nomination for their respective parties during the same election cycle. Coincidence? There are no coincidences in politics. The only difference between Obama and McCain being that had McCain been (s)elected, he would have become the target of the mainstream media while the mainstream media has carefully avoided the issue with Barack Hussein Obama because he claims to be black and, therefore, is untouchable. How better to destroy the last vestiges of the U.S. Constitution than have an ineligible black president-elect sworn in because no-one in a position to address the issue has the fortitude or integrity to stand up for the Constitution? Just mention the eligibility question to the Congress-Critters in DC and you will see them start scurrying like rats in a sewer after someone flushes! They are quick to claim Obama is eligible but they’ve seen not one shred of evidence that he is, and they certainly have no intention of demanding that he produce it! It becomes obvious that they view their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution as nothing more than an inconvenient formality that isn’t to be taken seriously! Do these Critters truly believe they can continue to spit on the very document that guarantees their freedom and not pay the price?
Beyond the question of Obama’s eligibility is the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is a Marxist, a philosophy antithetical to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of every American no matter their ethnicity or heritage; just as McCain is a fascist, an off-shot of Marxism that is just as antithetical to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It was Fascist Bush who quipped that the Constitution was just a “g-d piece of paper.” It was also Fascist Bush who quipped that “we are fighting Islamo-Fascists.” The pot calling the kettle black.
In his final missive, Alex stated, in part,
You still got to deal with Obama no matter what.
Every red-blooded American, Alex included, had better hope that those of us fighting to save the Constitution win the day. If we don’t, every red-blooded American, Alex included, is going to suffer oppression like they have never before known. As Sandra stated, when that toilet flushes, it will flush ALL citizens of this nation … Alex included! Will this be the point at which Alex comes to the realization he’s been deceived on purpose?
Now, Christmas Lights and Global Warning
December 24, 2008
Here’s yet another example of how far the kooks can go. Best part is, somebody will actually believe this crap, especially if Al Gore jumps on the bandwagon. An article from Couriermail:
By Graham Readfearn
SCIENTISTS have warned that Christmas lights are bad for the planet due to huge electricity waste and urged people to get energy efficient festive bulbs. (Can you screw curly bulbs in those little sockets?)
CSIRO researchers said householders should know that each bulb turned on in the name of Christmas will increase emissions of greenhouse gases. (So will reindeer if they’re fed soybeans.)
Dr Glenn Platt, who leads research on energy demand, said Australia got 80 per cent of its electricity by burning coal which pumps harmful emissions into the atmosphere. (But it keeps them from importing Middle East Oil and they’re not helping to build skiing slopes in the desert.)
He said: “Energy efficient bulbs, such as LEDs, and putting your Christmas lights on a timer are two very easy ways to minimise the amount of electricity you use to power your lights.” (Yeah, except my neighbor will figure it out and burn his longer, we can’t have that.)
He said the nation’s electricity came from “centralised carbon intensive, coal-based power stations” which were responsible for emitting over one third of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. (What about all those cows they have to raise for Outback’s steaks?)
Dr Platt added: “For a zero-emission Christmas light show, you may consider using solar powered lights or sourcing your electricity from verified green power suppliers.” (Or you could call Al Gore and plug in there…he buys carbon credits from the “Let Them Eat Cake” Carbon Fluff Company. He won’t mind an extra light or two!)
(If you haven’t figured it out, the smartypants comments in red are mine.)
Steve
Steve Hilton
babybttrfly
Mike