Go Texas! Legislators there have proposed making it a felony for TSA agents to perform full-body patdowns without cause. They have also introduced legislation that would make the body scan equipment illegal.
Freedom of speech alert: Democrat state lawmakers in Illinois want to ban photography at accident sites.
House Republicans attempt to impose a national ID card.
Read the entire article. For more reasons than one can count (with the most important of all being that the public doesn’t want it), this is a bad idea at a bad time.
FOIA documents show that the TSA has plans to expand its jurisdiction to searching random people on city streets. More here.
Faced with pressure from Congress and the courts, Interior Secretary Salazar finally stopped stalling and issued late Monday the first Gulf of Mexico drilling permit since the BP oil spill.
The civility of a mainstream Democrat lawmaker: “You Are F***king Dead!”
Freedom of speech alert! A man who would stand on the steps of a courthouse and hand out pamphlets advocating jury nullification has been indicted for doing so. Key quote:
Since 2009, Mr. Heicklen has stood there and at courthouse entrances elsewhere and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience. That concept, called jury nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance violates the law against jury tampering. He was arraigned on Friday in a somewhat contentious hearing before Judge Kimba M. Wood, who entered a not guilty plea on his behalf when he refused to say how he would plead. During the proceeding, he railed at the judge and the government, and called the indictment “a tissue of lies.”
Mr. Heicklen insists that he never tries to influence specific jurors or cases, and instead gives his brochures to passers-by, hoping that jurors are among them.
More civility on the left: Five-foot, one-inch female assaulted by union protester because she was videotaping him. Video at the link. Key quote:
“It’s one thing to be called a violent teabagger. It’s another to be called a violent teabagger while you’re being assaulted.”
O joy. The EPA today issued revised, scaled back regulations for commercial-grade boilers and incinerators.
The right response to violent rhetoric: The Indiana attorney general has fired his deputy for suggesting that the police use “live ammunition” on the Wisconsin union protesters.
A Clinton-appointed DC judge, in ruling that Obamacare is constitutional, also declared that the commerce clause allows the federal government to regulate “mental activity”.
The Christians whom Dearborn officials and police had falsely arrested for preaching to Muslims have now sued. You can see the video of the arrests here.
Madness: Police arrest an 11-year-old over an “inappropriate” stick figure drawing.
And the TSA exists for what reason again? In a test, a TSA agent with a handgun slipped past TSA security at Dallas-Fort Worth airport, despite being scanned by the enhanced-image body scanner.
The civil tone of the left: A wheelchair-bound, wounded veteran was jeered, heckled, and laughed at by Columbia University students. Key quote:
“Racist!” some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.
Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military. “It doesn’t matter how you feel about the war. It doesn’t matter how you feel about fighting,” said Maschek. “There are bad men out there plotting to kill you.”
The memoir of a substitute teacher during a teachers strike. Key quote:
After the first week the phone calls in the evening began. After the first call, I had to not allow my children to answer the phone, as when the first call came, my seven year old answered and she heard an earful of cursing and threats that put her into tears. From that point on, we did not answer the phone in the evening unless I designated my husband to the task.
Hotair has this nice summary of today’s madness in Wisconsin. Key quote:
Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald said he decided to adjourn the Assembly this evening because Gov. Scott Walker called minutes before lawmakers took the floor to tell him to get his caucus members and staff out of the building because their safety could no longer be assured.
This is freedom of speech and religion according to ACLU: You can be Christian as long as you don’t follow your beliefs.
The law is for everyone: A federal judge has lowered the boom on the Obama administration over its refusal to issue permits for drilling oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Key quote:
In issuing the directive to the government, Feldman, who sits on the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisian, noted that “it is undisputed that before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, permits were processed, on average, in two weeks’ time. In stark contrast, the five permits at issue have been pending from four to some nine months.”
To be a Republican lawmaker in Wisconsin means facing threats of violence. Key quote:
[Republican state senator Randy] Hopper has received threatening phone calls and e-mails. These are threats of a physical nature. “We are working with law enforcement in my district. They are watching my home and my business.” Other Republicans have had their homes and businesses threatened, too. The unionists have demonstrated outside those homes and businesses.
A menacing old phrase comes to mind (and has been used by others, in talking about events in Wisconsin): We know where you live. [emphasis in original]
Homeland security strikes again! Two TSA agents were busted today at JFK for stealing $160,000 from checked bags.
Freedom of speech alert: The federal government shut down 83,990 innocent websites this past weekend, mistakenly labeling them as child porn traffickers.
It was a mistake, I know, but think about how this power can so easily be misused.
The left once again shows how it avoids harsh rhetoric: Two Republican Utah state lawmakers get a letter threatening violence for their support of an Arizona-style immigration law.
Repeal the damn bill! The IRS announced today that it will require over a thousand new agents and $359 million more money to implement Obamacare in 2012. Key quote:
The detailed IRS budget documents spell out exactly what most of the new workforce will be doing. For example, some 81 will be tasked just to handle the tax reporting of 25,000 tanning salons. They face a new 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services. Another 76 will be assigned to make sure businesses engaged in making and imported drugs pay their new fee which is expected to deliver $2.8 billion to the Treasury in 2012 and 2013. The new healthcare corps will also require new facilities and computers.
A bipartisan abuse of freedom! Senate Democrats rejected an amendment today that would have prevented TSA workers from unionizing. Meanwhile, the Republicans in the House have extended the provisions of the Patriot Act that allow for the surveillance of ordinary citizens, without explanation.
Bad news for freedom: An Austrian court today convicted Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff for speaking out against Islam. Key quote:
It seems the case turned on the judge’s reasoning that her statement that Islam’s prophet Mohammed was a “pedophile” was defamatory since his child bride Aisha (age six at the time of marriage and nine at the time it was consummated) remained his wife when she turned 18.
More details at Gates of Vienna.
Debt now equals total U.S. economy. And that’s according to the Obama administration!
