Tancredo wants a civics test for voters

Eli at Firedog lake has proposed 20 questions for Tancredo's civics literacy test required before people can vote.

However, I believe Tancredo would prefer only a couple questions:

White people: Do you live in the United States? (hint: answer is not "no")

All other people: How many people signed the United States Bill of Rights? Name all of them.

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Note: Headline links to source.

Texas mayors sue Homeland Security over border fence

OK, this may not concern those of you in Maine, Idaho, Missouri, Florida but it should.

I'm amazed how DHS has morphed into SS.

Am I being extreme? Perhaps, but not by much.

A coalition of community leaders from Texas on Friday sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over construction of a controversial fence on the Southwest border, saying the DHS trampled the rights of property owners in acquiring land for the project. The class-action suit, filed in a federal district court in Washington, accuses Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and DHS officials of violating numerous laws and regulations and effectively coercing Texas property owners to turn over land for the fence without consultation.

Note: Headline links to source.

Border Agents Can Search Laptops W/Out Cause

Ya better be careful what you store on your laptop because TSA agents may just see it.

Took digital pictures of your wife nude in your hotel room? Show them to the TSA if you want to.

Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers' laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government's power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.

The unanimous three-judge decision reverses a lower court finding that digital devices were "an extension of our own memory" and thus too personal to allow the government to search them without cause. Instead, the earlier ruling said, Customs agents would need some reasonable and articulable suspicion a crime had occurred in order to search a traveler's laptop.

On appeal, the government argued that was too high a standard, infringing upon its right to keep the country safe and enforce laws. Civil rights groups, joined by business traveler groups, weighed in, defending the lower court ruling.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.

My personal take on this is it fucking stinks. I have no problem with agents searching my luggage for bombs or other dangerous items. That makes sense for the safety of the other passengers, but how will a digital picture bring down an airplane?

This is just out of control. "Sorry, can't let you on the plane and you're under arrest. Those things in that picture [breasts] look like bombs."

Via BlackListedNews.

Must read IMHO

Trust me. I'm never wrong. A snippet.

The presiding judge in the José Padilla case has held that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy trial does not protect American citizens from being indefinitely incarcerated by the Pentagon.

Padilla had filed a motion to dismiss the case on the ground that the federal government had denied him his right to a speedy trial. Padilla has been in custody since May 2002 and his trial, which is scheduled to begin in April, is not being held until some five years later.

From May 2002 until January 2006, Padilla was held in U.S. military custody as an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terror.” In January 2006, the Pentagon chose to transfer custody of Padilla to the U.S. Justice Department, which had indicted Padilla on terrorism charges in U.S. District Court. (Ever since 9/11, U.S. officials have had the option of treating people suspected of terrorism either as “enemy combatants” or as federal-court defendants.)

Last Friday, the presiding judge in the case, Marcia Cooke, denied Padilla’s motion to dismiss. The judge held that when a person, including an American citizen, is held in custody by the Pentagon as an “enemy combatant,” the time doesn’t start running with respect to his right to a speedy trial. It begins running, she held, only when he becomes part of the federal criminal-justice system.

Gee, I wonder if the judge’s reasoning applies to the rest of the Bill of Rights as well. Maybe the First Amendment doesn’t apply if it’s the Pentagon that is suppressing speech and assembly as part of its perpetual “war on terror.” Or maybe the Second Amendment prohibits only the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), not the Pentagon, from seizing guns from the American people, as it is doing as part of the “war on terror” in Iraq.

Our 18th-century American ancestors would have found Judge Cooke’s ruling to be ludicrous. If a military department of government is exempt from the restrictions of the Bill of Rights, then the entire executive branch is exempt for the obvious reason: Whenever the government wants to exempt itself from the Bill of Rights, all it has to do is employ the military to do the dirty deed. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to protect the American people from the federal government, not a particular department of the federal government.

So, how comfortable are you under your new dictatorship? Cuba? How quaint. But their dictatorship is different from yours, right?

(read more)

My perspective

I'm sad.

George W Bush has taken the presidency twice illegally. He's attacked two countries illegally. He's destroyed the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. He's ruined many good government programs and agencies by appointing incompetent gits. He's destroyed any good will among the countries of the world. He well may take the US into WWIII. He's rubbed the Americans' noses in shit.

Americans are treated like enemies by the Bush cabal. They are spied upon, disappeared and tortured. Absolutely no one is safe from the US government. I've said it before, unless you have no secrets whatsoever such as infidelity, you don't want the government knowing everything about you. Your medical records, emails, IMs, bank records, phone calls are all open to these assholes.

And all the while, the American public is complacent. They're comfortable with the McMansions, fast food and SUVs and they just don't give a damn.

Sooner or later Americans will wake up and realize the country they thought they lived in is gone. They'll realize they have been fucked and will soon crash and burn. Its a matter of time and I hope its soon because they must get a clue or it may be too late to save the republic.

America can't survive 2 more years of Bush and the neo-cons. Its that simple.

Aren't there certain requirments to be POTUS?

OK, Bush has no respect for the Constitution nor Bill of Rights, the SCOTUS or Congress and he certainly has demonstrated he has no respect for the law. Case in point.

President Bush recently phoned in encouragement to an anti-abortion rally on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court, saying the cause "cannot fail."

Last I checked, we had a separation of powers in this nation. Roe vs. Wade is a 34-yr-old Supreme Court decision upholding the establishment clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the right to privacy. [link in original]

(via rangeragainstwar)