Arizona’s State Legislature has recently passed SB 1062, a bill that has been deemed “controversial” by most in the media. The bill, passed by a 33-27 vote in the state House of Representatives, allows private business owners, as long as they assert their religious beliefs, to deny service to gay and lesbian customers.

My personal beliefs, as a former small business owner, is that discrimination is stupid and downright wrong. Not only is choosing not to deal with a certain segment of customers whose lifestyle you may disagree with wrong, but its bad business. You are taking cash out of your bottom line.

That being said, my belief as a proponent of liberty, is that in a free society, much like private citizens should be allowed to live their lives as they choose, business owners should have the right to run their businesses as they see fit.

If choosing to discriminate (choose not to sell products to or provide services to) gays and lesbians is made to be illegal, then should it not also be unlawful to give senior citizen discounts or free meals to children? After all that is age discrimination. Or how about discounts to law enforcement or members of the military? Is that not discriminating against civilians?

In a truly free society, it is not just business owners that should have the right to refuse service, but customers have the right to not spend their money with those discriminatory businesses. Furthermore, in a free society people have the right to boycott any business establishment whose actions they disagree with.

Discrimination is a two way street. In the free market it should be an option for both parties involved, the business and the consumer.

As Meredith Ancret wrote on her blog in a post last year:

Look, if you have a private business, whether that is a restaurant, bakery, or an apartment complex or rental home or any other business that you privately own (meaning you have no government subsidies and no shareholders to keep happy) you can, or should, be allowed to discriminate at will.

Now if you decide to discriminate against people (you won’t serve Jews, rent to gays, or hire black people) you may take a blow to your business. This is because of the free market, the same reason why I believe in your right to discriminate. The free market means that you are undoubtedly not the only restaurant, bakery, apartment complex, or landlord within a reasonable distance and if you turn away customers, who then go talk to their friends and family and tell them not the shop there for whatever reason (even if they aren’t Jewish, gay, or black. I’m white and still wouldn’t to a KKK restaurant) that is not good publicity and chances are your local news will catch wind of it and you will end up with loss of business.

I support your right to discriminate. I don’t have to like you for discriminating.

A good businessman usually cares more about their bottom line than they do about the sexuality, race, or religion of their customer. Despite the fact that, if I owned a business, I might be tempted to charge every moron wearing a Che Guevara shirt or driving around with an Obama sticker on their car a 10% increase on services just for dealing with their stupidity, but I highly doubt I would actually do that because it would be really bad for my company’s business.

But I should be able to do that if I want too.

I personally believe that it is a downright heinous act for a business owner to discriminate against a whole segment of the population because they simply disagree with their lifestyle choices. However, it is not mine nor the governments place to impose that judgment of mine on a private business owner.

As the late great Barry Goldwater wrote:

Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be effected by the engines of national power. Let us, through persuasion and education, seek to improve institutions we deem defective. But let us, in doing so, respect the orderly processes of the law. Any other course enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom.

Jonathan Davis of Korn

I’m not an Alex Jones fan, for the most part I think he’s a tinfoil hat wearing 9/11 truther nut-job, who when he does make valid points, they are overridden by his nuttiness — he does far more harm then good to the cause of liberty.

However, as a liberty-loving conservative who happens to also be a metalhead and someone who believes that culture is the key in fighting the socialist plague that has infected our country, I had to share this story.

A while back I wrote about Korn’s new video for their new song “Spike in My Veins,” which blasted Barack Obama more then anyone famous in the music world has done before. Now Korn frontman Jonathan Davis recently appeared on “The Alex Jones Show” and stated that Obama is becoming “more of a dictator” and claims that the US turning into a “police state.”

Via Blabbermouth.net:

Asked about the inspiration for KORN’s “Spike in My Veins” video — which overlaps important news reports of government lookout and major political figures with modern pop acts such as Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Kanye West — Davis said: “For a long time, I’ve been into what’s going on with our country.

“I don’t necessarily consider myself a political person, but over the years, I’ve seen what’s been going on, and it’s time to do something about what’s going on with our country and the system and everything that’s going on.

“It seems really sad that everybody’s so asleep and oblivious to the fact that the country uses the media to capture people’s attention or take away from the fact that what’s going on with our country.

“It really freaked me out when the whole Miley Cyrus thing was going on, and when that went down, [President] Barack [Obama] passed that new law that he can imprison anyone he wants and he doesn’t have to charge them and he can keep them as long as he wants.

“Basically, all our liberties are being taken away one by one, and finally, I feel like it’s time… I’ve gotta do something and try and get as many people as we can to wake up and see what’s really going on.”

Asked about the meaning behind the title of KORN’s 11th studio album, last year’s “The Paradigm Shift”, Davis said: “I think it’s time for us as normal people to come up and fight against the powers that be.

“I think this country was founded and based in the beginning and set up for us to have revolutions when we don’t like our government and what our government has done and taken over and taken away all our privacy and all the things going on with the drones…. I mean, everything. It’s a scary time, and I think that someone’s gotta do it in our position, someone’s gotta speak out to the younger audience and let them know what’s going on and how to wake up and take back their privacy.”

He continued: “Big Brother is alive and well. I mean, you’re looking at me on my camera phone. It wasn’t about putting up cameras. I think we’ve already got cameras everywhere. You can’t tell me that there’s no backdoors for everybody to see, so that the powers that be can see what we’re doing and watch what we’re doing at all times. And I’m not comfortable with that. And I think it needs to go. And they’re building that huge-ass building, NSA is, for all the spying, and it’s just gonna get worse and worse. I mean, it’s scary times, brother.

“Nobody cares what’s going on behind the closed doors when Obama makes all these crazy laws that take away more and more of our privacy. It’ll make you more of a dictator.

“Something’s gotta happen, man. It’s gotta stop.”

Davis also elaborated on why he thinks Obama is becoming more of a “dictator” as time goes on.

“I mean, I’ve said it before. I think he’s an illuminati puppet,” the singer said. “It just doesn’t make sense, the whole thing. The guy comes from out of nowhere, he gets made president, all this stuff starts happening. I don’t know… It just didn’t make sense to me. And to top top it off, I’m not really a political person, I don’t know much about it, I’m just worried about my privacy and my children’s privacy. This being America, we’re supposed to be the ‘land of the free,’ and it’s becoming a police state.”

He added: “I just want us to become the country we used to be.

“I remember, when I was a kid, how amazing our country was, and as I’ve grown up and watched things happen, I just want it to be like it used to be.    Read More…

Hopefully more voices in the music world and throughout the rest of Hollyweird can come out of the cold and wake up.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul recently told Glenn Beck that Republican’s will not win another Presidential election in his lifetime, “…unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party.” During the interview on Beck’s The Blaze, Sen. Paul added, “And it has to be a transformation, not a little tweaking at the edges.”

Rand Paul is 100% right. I was not a fan of his father’s Presidential bids, and it is far too early to get behind a candidate for 2016, but more and more it appears to me that Rand Paul is the clear choice for the future of the GOP and the country.

From The Blaze:

“You have to take your message to people in a way they can understand it,” Paul asserted.

The senator said, for example, that if he is speaking with 1,000 young people, he doesn’t focus on taxes and regulation, but about the government looking at your cellphone.

He added that Republicans have failed to speak with African American and Hispanic communities about how the war on drugs and our legal system has disproportionately affected them.

The primary goal, Paul said, is to present the “ideas of liberty” to everyone.

“There are many people who are open among all these disaffected groups, who really aren’t steadfast supporters of Obama or an ideology,” Paul asserted. “I think they’re open to listening, but we have to have a better message and a better presentation of it.” Read More…

Korn is a band that I haven’t listened to in quite a few years now, but is a band that I really dug when they first came out. Their self-titled debut was the soundtrack to many good times cruising around town in my pick-up truck during my senior year in high school. I stopped paying attention to them around their sixth album, which was released over a decade ago.

They just released a new video for the song “Spike in My Veins,” off of last years eleventh studio album The Paradigm Shift. In the video the band performs in front of a large wall of televisions as recent ‘celebrities’ in the ‘news’ like Toronto mayor Rob Ford, Miley Cyrus, and Justin Bieber flash across the screens.

But within each clip, there appears to be a glitch, as shots of President Obama on celebrity talk shows are intermingled with his political comments on NSA spying.

Korn singer Jonathan Davis recently told Rolling Stone, “We are all so caught up in watching crazy media on the internet and TV that we are manipulated into ignoring that our privacy has all but disappeared.”

Maybe, just maybe the pop culture tide is starting to shift, if ever so slightly to the side of the liberty minded.

While most of the nation is caught up in the post Super Bowl period and the various controversies about the different advertisements that were shown during the game, the Federal Government today announced plans to go forward with a plan that would require all vehicles to be equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems.

This past August the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) completed a year-long study in Ann Arbor that cost taxpayers 25 million dollars to see if connected cars would make driving safer. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) plans to release the findings “shortly.”

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx claims that this technology could potentially save “…thousands of lives and even prevent accidents in the first place.” He hopes to submit the regulation by the time Obama leaves office in January 2017.

From The Detroit News:

The technology — which involves vehicles repeatedly sending wireless signals to each other — can help alert cars if a oncoming car is about to drive through a stop sign. It can detect threats from hundreds of yards away and tell drivers if they can pass safely or make a left turn.

“DOT believes that the signal this announcement sends to the market will significantly enhance development of this technology and pave the way for market penetration of (vehicle-to-vehicle) applications,” the department said.

Acting NHTSA chief David Friedman said the technology is a “game changer” and “nothing short of revolutionary.”

“Decades from now, it’s likely we’ll look back at this time period as one in which the historical arc of transportation safety considerably changed for the better,” Friedman said.

Foxx said the technology will not compromise driver privacy and won’t record the location of drivers. Some privacy advocates and conservative websites have raised concerns.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the trade group representing Detroit’s Big Three automakers, said much work needs to be done. Spokeswoman Gloria Bergquist said devices to connect vehicles “may play a larger role in future road safety, but many pieces of a large puzzle still need to fit together. We need to address security and privacy, along with consumer acceptance, affordability, achieving the critical mass to enable the ‘network effect’ and establishment of the necessary legal and regulatory framework.” Read More…

Just exactly what we need, more government in our lives… said no founding father, ever.

The State’s never-ending battle to invade our privacy never ends. The latest attempt to violate the right to privacy comes from the California (where else?). Next week a City Council Committee in San Jose is going to discuss a proposal introduced last Thursday by Councilman Sam Liccardo, that would ask for homeowners to give access to their home security access to the Police for, you know, “the greater good.”

From The San Jose Mercury News:

Privacy groups say the latest proposal is part of a broader trend toward a world where authorities have more surveillance access to places that once were considered private.

“To me the really interesting and troublesome part of it is the way we are starting to privatize government surveillance — to enlist private citizens in a way that is kind of unprecedented and could be potentially really dangerous,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. “Once you give the police unfettered access 24/7, you’re relying on them to exercise their restraint.”

Retired judge LaDoris Cordell, the city’s independent police auditor, said the proposal is the next logical extension of technological advances that have helped provide cops with more video of crimes. It’s common now for onlookers to take cellphone videos of officers, and the San Jose Police Department is working on a new program to equip officers with body-worn cameras.

“You tend to behave when the cameras are on you,” Cordell said. She doesn’t see the idea so much as an “intrusion on privacy” but as a way for residents to “know what’s going on in their neighborhood.” Read More…

I’m reminded of this great Benjamin Franklin quote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.“

Here comes some news that will surely make stalkers, serial killers, child predators and all of the other creepers of the world rejoice. A Las Vegas tech start-up has a new app for Google Glass or smart phones that will allow the aspiring next BTK Killer or next Ted Bundy much easier access to being able to seek out and stalk victims.

Riding the bus and see someone whose face you want to cut off and wear as a mask? But you just don’t know if they are the type of person you want to torture and kill. Well now, the folks at NameTag are making it much easier for you. Just snap their pic using your smart phone or Google Glass device and the app will send the picture NameTag’s server, where it will compare the photo to millions of online records and return with a name, social media profiles, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and access to a whole lot more pictures and information. Being a sick twisted fuck has never been easier.

Kevin Tussy, NameTag’s creator claims that the goal of his app are much more wholesome in nature then what it will surely be used for. NameTag is working on technology that will allow scanning of profile piuctures on various on-line dating sites.

“I believe that this will make online dating and offline social interactions much safer and give us a far better understanding of the people around us,” Tussy said in a statement last month. “It’s much easier to meet interesting new people when we can simply look at someone, see their Facebook, review their LinkedIn page or maybe even see their dating site profile.”

While the idea of being able to screen registered sex offenders does have certain merits to it, the overall destruction of privacy that this app will create is huge. While Google has already banned facial recognition apps from Google Glass due to “privacy concerns.” It’s still a relatively easy jailbreak.

The same type of technology that the NSA is using is now soon to be in the hands of just about anyone. I don’t think even Orwell could have envisioned what this could mean.

As reported by CNET:

A new slide culled from the trove of documents leaked by Edward Snowden shows where the NSA placed malware on more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide, according to Dutch media outlet NRC.

The NSA management presentation slide from 2012 shows a world map spiderwebbed with “Computer Network Exploitation” access points.

Like all the NSA slides we’ve seen so far, this one is unlikely to win a Powerpoint beauty pageant anytime soon.

Not that this should distract anyone from the profoundly disturbing implications of this US government malware map that’s being reported by a Dutch news agency — an outlet to which the US government gave a “no comment.”

Translated from Dutch:

The American intelligence service — NSA — infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malicious software designed to steal sensitive information.

Documents provided by former NSA employee Edward Snowden and seen by this newspaper, prove this.

(…) The NSA declined to comment and referred to the US Government. A government spokesperson states that any disclosure of classified material is harmful to our national security.

Not even in sin city are you free from the watchful eye of big brother.

From The Daily Mail:

Las Vegas is currently installing Intellistreet lights to their well-lit city. But Intellistreets are not just any street-lighting system.

The wireless, LED lighting, computer-operated lights are not only capable of illuminating streets, they can also play music, interact with pedestrians and are equipped with video screens, which can display police alerts, weather alerts and traffic information. The high tech lights can also stream live video of activity in the surrounding area.

But there’s one major concern.These new street lights, being rolled out with the aid of government funding, are also capable of recording video and audio.

…

Civil rights activist, Daphne Lee told NBC News 3 that she is worried about her freedom as an American citizen.

“This technology, you know is taking us to a place where, you know, you’ll essentially be monitored from the moment you leave your home till the moment you get home,” said Lee.

On Intellistreets website, inventor Ron Harwood explains that cameras for surveillance and recording devices can be installed in the light fixtures. But Las Vegas public works director, Jorge Servantes told News 3 that recording pedestrians is not in the cards in the immediate future.

Not going to use it to snoop on people? That’s a bet I would not be willing to take.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Authoritarian Communist-CA & Vice-Chair Sen. Saxby Chambliss, RiNO-GA

Just in time for Halloween, like a cheesy horror movie monster that refuses to die, CISPA is back. If you don’t pay attention CISPA or The Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act, is being sold as an attempt to protect us from cyber threats. What it really is though is trampling all over the Constitution, particularly the 4th Amendment.

It basically lets the government snoop on your every electronic move without a warrant. Makes it so you can’t find out about it, shields big business from being sued when they do shady things with your data, pretty much makes every current privacy policy on sites across the internet, that’s everything from Facebook, to commenting on this blog here — irrelevant. It is basically a complete violation of the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure.

From Salon:

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has twice died in Congress, following objections from privacy advocates. Like a resilient zombie, it has risen once again and a new version of the bill — which passed the House in the summer — is getting support from some Senators, bolstered by NSA officials.

The bill, ostensibly aimed at protecting U.S. commerce from cyberattacks, enables companies and government agencies giving to share more cyber information, including the content and personal information attached to emails.

As Mother Jones reported Monday, “NSA director Keith Alexander is publicly asking for the legislation to be re-introduced, and two senators confirmed that they are drafting a new Senate version.”

Senate Intelligence Committee chair and NSA mass surveillance apologist Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is pairing with Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., to put forward a senate version of CISPA, much to the continued concern of privacy advocates.

Remy hits one out of the park again.

The following is just further proof that our Nation’s so called “educational institutions” are nothing more then brain-washing centers to push liberal/progressive ideological thought.

Via WOKV:

One Duval County parent tells WOKV his son doesn’t even know what his constitutional rights are, so he’s shocked a teacher told the ten-year-old to write a letter on his willingness to give them up.

“That sentence talking about giving away freedoms for safety and security- that bothers me,” says Aaron Harvey.

He tells me his 4th grade son was told to write a note reading “I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure” following a lesson led by a guest speaker at Cedar Hills Elementary School.  The lesson itself was taught at the end of last year, but Harvey didn’t find the note until about 1 1/2 weeks ago.

…

Harvey tells me if his son actually held that opinion, it is something he would accept.  The problem is, his son doesn’t have an understanding of what he actually wrote, and Harvey thinks it’s a dangerous lesson.  He says it better reflects the teacher’s opinion than a factual lesson, and that’s not what school is about.

“Being able to understand so they can form their own thoughts and have their own opinions when they get older,” he says.

Nebula Award winning author of The Speed of Dark and other science Fiction novels, Elizabeth Moon was recently on a BBC radio program where she discussed the merits of “barcoding” infants at birth.

“If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached – a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals.

It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is.

Having such a unique barcode would have many advantages. In war soldiers could easily differentiate legitimate targets in a population from non combatants.

This could prevent mistakes in identity, mistakes that result in the deaths of innocent bystanders. Weapons systems would record the code of the use, identifying how fired which shot and leading to more accountability in the field.

Anonymity would be impossible as would mistaken identity making it easier to place responsibility accurately, not only in war but also in non-combat situations far from the war.”

I shudder at the thought of the Eric Holder or Janet Napolitano having this sort of technology at their hands… or any government entity, regardless of party association, having that power.

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”