Being a law enforcement officer is a difficult and often times thankless job. Police officers are at risk countless times throughout the day while conducting their job duties, a potentially life-threatening situation can arise at any moment with no warning what-so-ever, because of this they have to be prepared for all possible scenarios with every encounter.

They are not highly paid, for a job at any given moment may cause them to pay the ultimate sacrifice while in the line of duty. The men and women who choose to put on the uniform to “serve and protect,” are husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts.

The great Paul Harvey once said, “A policeman must be a minister, social worker, a diplomat, a tough guy and a gentleman. And, of course, he will have to be a genius, for he will have to feed a family on a policeman’s salary.”

However, they are still not infallible and they are most definitely not absolved from criticism, especially when that criticism is warranted. Much like it appears, upon an admittedly quick review, may be the case in two separate police involved shooting deaths this week in Louisiana and Minnesota. In both of those situations, the law enforcement officers were white and the shooting victims were black.

The first of the two incidents that occurred this week was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 37-year-old Alton Sterling, was standing in the parking lot of the Triple S Food Mart, selling CDs, something he had done for years, with permission of the store’s owner.

Alton Sterling

According to a “source with knowledge of the investigation” CNN reports that at some point in the evening on Tuesday, Sterling was approached by a homeless man asking for money.

The man was persistent, and Sterling showed him his gun, the source said.

“I told you to leave me alone,” Sterling told the man, according to the source

The homeless man then used his cell phone to call 911, the source said.

The details about the 911 call shed new light into the Baton Rouge police’s high-profile fatal shooting of Sterling, a 37-year-old black man.

A graphic cell phone video of the shooting was shared widely on social media, quickly sparking local protests and drawing national attention. Federal authorities have taken charge of the investigation. Read More…

In the grainy first video that was released to social media Tuesday evening, Alton Sterling was seen being wrestled to the ground by two officers, someone can be heard shouting, “He’s got a gun! Gun!” One of the officers then holds a gun over Sterling. Soon after, multiple shots are heard.

A second video obtained by The Advocate, emerged Wednesday evening, also captured on a cellphone, but from a different angle.

Before you hit play, be warned, that it is violent and graphic.

After watching both the original video and then the second video posted above, I don’t know if I am ready to say that it was cold-blooded murder, but there is no doubt in my mind that Alton Sterling would be alive if not for the actions of those two police officers.

The second incident this week occurred Wednesday evening in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, where 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed after being pulled over for a busted taillight. Much like the previous shooting in Louisiana, this one two was captured on a cellphone and shared to social media.

Philando Castile

Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, the passenger in the vehicle, live streamed the incident on Facebook, starting from the point after the shooting took place.

What we saw in the video was a remarkably calm & composed woman watching her boyfriend as he bleed out. We saw a police officer, weapon still drawn and pointed at the dying man, shouting and swearing and not keeping his cool.

Stephen Green, aka Vodkapundit, had an interesting breakdown, on his thought of the video, which I tend to agree with.

When you are legally carrying, you refer to your pistol as a “firearm” so as not to alarm the police when you inform them that you are carrying, and to indicate that you have received proper training. The word “firearm” is supposed to help put the officer at ease in a tense situation.

Throughout the video, Reynolds refers to Castile’s pistol as a firearm. That might be a small detail, but it is a compelling one. Reynolds kept her calm and used the proper language in a life and death situation. I’m inclined to believe then that she has had some kind of firearms training. When she says at the start of the video that “He’s licensed to carry, he was trying to get out his ID,” I’m inclined to believe that, too.

What the video doesn’t show is how Castile was pulling out his license. Was he as cool and calm as Reynolds? Was he moving quickly? Had he used the word “gun” or “weapon” when telling the police officer that he was carrying? Was he following instructions? Were those instructions lawful?

We just don’t know, but there are some things we may reasonably conjecture — subject, of course, to whatever new evidence may come out later.

According to Reynolds in the video, Castile had “never been in jail, anything. He’s not a gang member, anything.” Add that to the calm, good sense, and tactical knowledge demonstrated by Reynolds, and my inclination is to believe that Castile’s behavior during the initial phase of the traffic stop was also lawful and proper. Read More…

I agree with those sentiments, we don’t know what happened before the video started rolling, however based solely off Reynolds’ actions and demeanor in the video, I tend to believe that Castile would be alive today if not for the actions of that police officer.

In a press conference today Reynolds shed more light on the incident.

“I’m the woman who recorded the video,” said Reynolds, referring to the footage she streamed last night on Facebook Live, in which Castile could be seen bleeding through his shirt while Reynolds’s young daughter looks on from the back of the car and a police officer stands over Castile with his gun drawn.

“We got pulled over for what allegedly was supposed to be a broken taillight,” Reynolds said. “[The police officer] let us know that we had a broken taillight. He asked us, were we aware of it and we said no. As we said no, he tells us to put our hands in the air.”

According to Reynolds, she and Castile complied with the order, at which point the officer at the driver’s side window asked Castile for his license and registration.

“My boyfriend carries all his information in a thick wallet in his right side back pocket,” Reynolds said. “As he’s reaching for his back pocket wallet he lets the officer know, ‘Officer, I have a firearm on me.’ I begin to yell, ‘But he’s licensed to carry.’ ” According to Reynolds, the officer started firing shortly after.

According to Castile’s uncle, Castile died of his wounds around 9:30 p.m. at the hospital where he was taken after the shooting. According to Reynolds, “nobody checked his pulse” in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

Instead, Reynolds said, she was placed in the back of a police car as other officers “soothed” the officer who fired on Castile. “They pulled him over to the side and they began to calm him down and tell him that it was OK and he would get through this,” Reynolds said. Read More…

Philando Castile, a law-abiding and legally licensed concealed carry permit holder who was exercising his God-given 2nd Amendment rights is dead because of the petty law enforcement of a busted tail light. I apologize if that sounds like hyperbole, but it is the truth. A busted out tail light is the excuse that the officer had to stop Castile and begin an interaction during which some point something happened that made him uncomfortable or nervous. Was it Castile’s skin color? I don’t know, I’m not going to begin to question what is inside the heart of a man, especially with limited evidence.

I’m not going to go the “Trumpservative” route and say that all cops are great and Alton Sterling & Philando Castile have criminal records. I’m also not going to go all “social justice warrior” and say that cops are evil and are systematically targeting black men.

The truth is somewhere in between.

Shame on anyone who calls themselves a liberty-loving Constitutional Conservative and is not absolutely outraged at the total denial of the civil liberties of these two men. It doesn’t matter what their skin color, gender or sexual orientations were. They are both dead because their Civil Rights were violated and anyone who refuses to see that is blinded by hatred, bigotry or stupidity.

A lot of people are angry, and rightfully so. I don’t know what the answers are, I just hope that we are able to find it.

What the fuck has happened that 7 years after the tea party movement started, many of the same people who called themselves liberty loving small government conservatives are now fawning over a progressive democrat authoritarian like sailors on shore leave at a strip club?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
(U.S. Const. amend. IV)

Until the past few years with the rise of NSA spying and TSA pat downs, the Fourth Amendment has not been talked about as much as the Second or First. That does not make it any less important, as a matter of fact eliminating Fourth Amendment Rights, pretty much eliminates First & Second Amendment rights along with them.

Recently, Democrats in both New York and California have introduced bills that would outright ban the sale of mobile devices with encryption technology. The similar bills introduced in California by State Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) and in New York by Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-Staten Island), if passed, would require all smartphones that are sold to be “capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider.”

Via endgadget:

Cooper’s reasoning puts a novel spin on the same, tired “The police can’t do their jobs unless tech companies do it for them” argument. This time, he used human trafficking as the boogeyman that needs defeating and which can only be accomplished if the government has unfettered, disk-level access to its citizens’ cell phones.

“If you’re a bad guy [we] can get a search record for your bank, for your house, you can get a search warrant for just about anything,” Cooper told ArsTechnica. “For the industry to say it’s privacy, it really doesn’t hold any water. We’re going after human traffickers and people who are doing bad and evil things. Human trafficking trumps privacy, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.” Apparently human trafficking also trumps the 4th Amendment as well. Read more…

Forcing everyone into using un-encrypted mobile devices and opening up not just the government sector thieves but private sector thieves as well to be able to access your private information is much worse. People use their smart phones today for banking, medical information and a whole host of other legal activities that require privacy.

While I agree that human trafficking is a disgusting and vile criminal activity that has to be stopped, it is not more important than the fundamental right to privacy. If a warrant can be obtained for all those other things it can be obtained to search a smart phone as well.

I remember back during Barack Obama’s first term, cringing in disgust when video of grade-school children being taught a song praising the President made the rounds. It was very reminiscent of the Hitler Youth and fit in pretty well amongst the cult of personality that was built up around Obama.

It couldn’t happen on our side I thought.

Enter the USA Freedom Kids, who performed at a campaign rally for Donald Trump this past Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida.

The brainwashed girl group is the brainchild of 53-year-old Florida ‘businessman,’ and one time 80’s Hollywood stuntman, Jeff Popick.

I don’t know what’s worse the three poor girls brainwashed and forced to perform, the Trump talking point lyrics of the song, or the fucking idiots in attendance smiling and clapping at the creepy performance.

I want to try write my next statement to make sure that there is zero chance that my thoughts on this get misinterpreted.

If you support the Donald Trump campaign and further more if you enjoy and support the this vile and disgusting propaganda in support of his campaign, not only are you a complete fucking moron — but that piece inside of you that makes you a decent human being, is probably missing.

Furthermore, to call this act “the USA Freedom Kids,” is a fucking joke. The Donald is just about as far from advancing the cause of Freedom as you can get, except of course maybe Bernie Sanders, but at this point I’m not even sure anymore.

“To me, freedom is everything,” Popick said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. “That’s what this group is about. That’s what I’m about. Freedom for everybody. That’s the inspiration.”

For the past seven years now, the so-called philosophical “right,” have argued that President Barack Obama does not care about the law. Dear Leader, is what I and many others who are opposed to his actions have called him. An authoritarian, a dictator and emperor is what we have called him.

Now, many of those same people are gravitating like flies on shit to Donald Trump who is all of those same things we’ve hated Barack Obama for, albeit wrapped in the American Flag.

My initial thought during the early stages of Donald Trumps latest flirtation with the Oval Office was to laugh and call him a circus clown. However, the more and more his popularity grows, as a lover of liberty, I am downright terrified for what the future may bring with a Donald Trump Presidency.

We should not laugh, we should not joke, because the truth is Donald Trump is a bigger threat to liberty and the American way of life then Barack Obama ever was.

As the great Jeffrey Tucker wrote this past July after witnessing a Trump speech:

It’s not too interesting to say that Donald Trump is a nationalist and aspiring despot who is manipulating bourgeois resentment, nativism, and ignorance to feed his power lust. It’s uninteresting because it is obviously true. It’s so true that stating it sounds more like an observation than a criticism.

I just heard Trump speak live. It was an awesome experience, like an interwar séance of once-powerful dictators who inspired multitudes, drove countries into the ground, and died grim deaths.

His speech at FreedomFest lasted a full hour, and I consider myself fortunate for having heard it. It was a magnificent exposure to an ideology that is very much present in American life, though hardly acknowledged. It lives mostly hidden in dark corners, and we don’t even have a name for it. You bump into it at neighborhood barbecues, at Thanksgiving dinner when Uncle Harry has the floor, at the hardware store when two old friends in line to checkout mutter about the state of the country.

The ideology is a 21st century version of right fascism — one of the most politically successful ideological strains of 20th century politics. Though hardly anyone talks about it today, we really should. It is still real. It exists. It is distinct. It is not going away. Trump has tapped into it, absorbing unto his own political ambitions every conceivable bourgeois resentment: race, class, sex, religion, economic. You would have to be hopelessly ignorant of modern history not to see the outlines and where they end up.

For now, Trump seems more like comedy than reality. I want to laugh about what he said, like reading a comic-book version of Franco, Mussolini, or Hitler. And truly I did laugh, as when he denounced the existence of tech support in India that serves American companies (“how can it be cheaper to call people there than here?” — as if he still thinks that long-distance charges apply).

Let’s hope this laughter doesn’t turn to tears. Read More…

Associating Donald Trump with “Freedom,” is like associating Miley Cyrus with modesty. True conservatives have worked tirelessly for decades to dispel the lies propagated by liberals that those opposed to their ideals are akin to Nazi’s and fascists — when in fact it is they whose ideals resemble both Hitler & Mussolini’s versions of National Socialism the most.

Now in 2015, a large swath of fucking assholes are ready to throw that all away by supporting the totalitarian ambitions of Donald Trump.

A world where Donald Trump is the only answer to the garbage that comes from the progressive left, is too scary a thought to fathom — it is not a place that I want to live.

While the sex workers at his world famous “Moonlite Bunny Ranch” legal brothel in Carson City, Nevada have banded together behind the campaign of Democratic Party Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton as “Hookers 4 Hillary,” Dennis Hof is running for public office as a Libertarian.

Via The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Hof spokesman Richard Hunter championed the brothel businessman as an advocate for making vice legal, calling prohibition efforts a refusal by the government to create regulations on activities that will occur anyway and only lead to crime without rules in place.

“The only people who appreciate alcohol or prostitution being illegal are politicians and drug dealers,” Hunter said.

Hunter said Hof frequently drives among his brothels in northern and southern Nevada and as a result is aware of how much of Nevada is government-controlled land. Hof wants to return public lands to private citizens, Hunter said.

Another issue for Hof is lowering the drinking age to 18.

“Why is that?” Hunter said. “You can go to war when you’re 18, you can vote when you’re 18, and 18 is the age to get into the Moonlite BunnyRanch.”

Hunter said voters can expect to see the candidate advocate for privacy.

“Dennis has made a business out of protecting people’s right to privacy, frankly,” Hunter said. Read More…

Hof said he chose the Libertarian Party after being introduced to Libertarianism by John Stossel. He was originally considering a bid for the U.S. Senate, but decided against being beholden to special interests for money.

“You just can’t get the $5 million to 10 million without whoring yourself out and I’m not going to do that,” he said. “There’s a lot of people willing to give me money, but there’s a payback. I’m not going to compromise my principles.”

A brothel owner with principles? He’s no where near sleazy enough to be a politician.

Thanks Obama. #GunsNRoses #GnR #Rock #Music #Slash #DuffMcKagen #IzzyStradlin #AxlRose #Guns #2A #2ndAmendment #GunRights #Obama #BarackObama

A photo posted by Joecephus (@joecephus2000) on Jan 9, 2016 at 8:58am PST

I’m not normally one to get all excited when somebody from Hollyweird or a music celebrity espouses a politically oriented view that tends to agree with me, as many other on the non-liberal side of the political spectrum seem to do. I have posted stuff in the past when Jonathan Davis of KoRn said stuff about Barack Obama and didn’t get too excited about it.

But when Kirk Windstein, the motherfucking Lord of the Riff does it? That just makes this metalhead’s heart fill up with joy.

As reported by Blabbermouth.net, in a public post on his personal Facebook page, former Down guitarist and frontman for Crowbar, Kirk Windstein addressed Dear Leader’s unconstitutional and lawless gun-grab announcement by accusing the President of putting on a show for political purposes.

He wrote:

“OBAMA’S FAKE TEARS ARE THE WORST FUCKING ATTEMPT I HAVE EVER SEEN AT CARING…HE HAS DESTROYED THIS COUNTRY, AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO, UNTIL THE DAY HE LEAVES OFFICE. I AM NOT A GUN OWNER, NOR AM I A REPUBLICAN. JUST A DRUG FREE, TAX PAYING CITIZEN.”

Fuck yeah Kirk! I feel the exact same way.

Also, despite my fierce belief in the 2nd Amendment, I too am not actually a gun owner. But that has absolutely no bearing in believing that the fundamental right of American citizens to keep and bear arms is sacred.

I’m not a prolific blogger by any means, the closest I got to blog stardom was with my old and long-since shut down Right Wing Rebel site, when I got quoted by the official website for the Presidential campaign of the late, great Fred Thompson.

I’m fine with that, I never stared blogging in an attempt to become one of the next great voices in Conservative new media. I started blogging because I like playing around with web design and sometimes feel like I have something interesting to say that I want to get out.

I haven’t really done much of either lately.

Lately there has been something gnawing at me and festering deep inside that I just had to let out.

I am no longer a Conservative.

I have Donald Trump and more importantly, his supporters to thank for my new-found revelation.

Now, truth be told its been something that has brewed for a while now, years actually. I’ve alluded to this in the past without actually coming out and saying it before. I’ve written blog posts about “The death of Conservatism,” many times before after being inspired by the likes of John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. I’ve just could never make that last step, that final push until now.

It just took the reality TV star Presidential Campaign of the Donald and the love and devotion of his adoring supporters to be that final nudge that would push me over the cliff.

Thank you Donald Trump. For now I have seen the light.

If Conservatives, many of whom I once thought I respected could actively support Donald Trump in his quest to win the Presidency, then it has finally happened. Conservatism is truly dead and buried.

Just about the only thing that Donald Trump has going for him is that he is an asshole. Apparently there are those who have claimed or do claim to be “true conservatives” who have such a deep seeded desire to see an unfiltered, loud-mouth, tell it like it is type in the White House — that they have completely bought in to the idiocy that is The Donald.

We have actually already had a few assholes occupy the Oval Office, the current Asshole-in-Chief and his two predecessors come to mind. The thing with the Donald however, he’s the first candidate in quite a long time to come close to sniffing that Oval Office air that actually talks like an asshole.

The thing is that no matter what measuring stick you use, there is no way in hell that The Donald is a Conservative, not by a long shot. He’s not even a Republican.

John McCain has fantasized about and even flirted with the idea of changing political affiliation for a long time. The Donald has actually done it. As a matter of fact he has switched political allegiances more times than rapper Sean Combs has changed names.

He’s done it about five times since the 80’s, he’s switched parties three times since 2001.

Hell in 2008 The Donald actually supported the Barack Obama campaign.

“I was his biggest cheerleader,” the reality TV star told Sean Hannity on FOX News in 2011. “If you go back three years, I’m saying, ‘Do a great job.’ I wanted him to do a great job. I still want him to do a great job.”

We are to believe that somebody who just a few short years ago supported Barack Obama is a true, dyed-in-the-wool conservative?

How about the way that the Donald has made some of his billions. An integral part is by using the strong-arm of the government to level whole neighborhoods, destroying homes and small businesses so he can build another huge building.

Yeah, the authoritarian use of eminent domain, that’s very conservative all right.

In 2000 he supported gun control, abortion, higher taxes and socialized medicine, now some of the same so-called “conservatives” who called Mitt Romney a “flip flopper” are saying that the Donald “evolved.”

In 2012 he said that Mitt Romney of all people was too harsh on illegal immigration,

Yet today, his brain-dead sheeple think he’s going to deport all the illegals and build a giant wall.

You are bigger idiots then Obama’s supporters if you believe that.

The only reason that anyone supports the Donald is because he is a walking, talking big fuck you to the establishment media and to the elites in both parties. That desire to stick it to the establishment, is so strong that his supporters are blind to the fact that Trump is not one of us. He doesn’t believe in liberty, he doesn’t believe in the Constitution or anything for that matter other than in his own damn self.

He is completely devoid of any Conservative principles and bases all of his decision-making on whichever direction the winds of populism are blowing.

I’d say don’t be fooled, but it’s too late. I can’t believe that there are many Conservatives, whom I respected that have bought into his garbage.

Barry Goldwater is rolling in his grave. Which brings me to the predicament in which I and many like-minded people find ourselves in. Where do I fit in the current state of the Conservative movement.

The answer is, I don’t.

Dale Watson, one of my favorite country music singers, hates country music. I know that may not seem to make any sense on the surface, but when you dwell deeper into it — it makes perfect sense. Dale Watson used to fight for the tradition of Country music, but in recent years has decided that war is a losing effort. Country music has changed.

Bro Country Fan? Donald Trump Supporter? Not much different, both are devoid of any intellectual integrity.

Watson is old school country music in the Merle Haggard, George Jones mold. The stuff that get’s played on country music radio today is a far, far cry from that. Sadly, when the general population today thinks of “country music,” they think of Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean and other such pop garbage.

Watson knows he doesn’t fit in with that.

Via The Lincoln Journal Star:

Dale Watson didn’t want to come up with a new tag for the music he champions and plays. He didn’t have a choice.

A hardcore Texas honky tonker, Watson watched as real country music was pushed to the margins in Nashville as the Music City labels pumped out contemporary country that’s influenced as much by hip-hop and ‘70s mainstream rock as it is by Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Faron Young.

“We were cast out,” Watson said in an interview from Austin. “It was occupied country music. They took over the name, they took over the house. We were left out in the field. We were too country for country and not rock enough for rock ‘n’ roll. We didn’t have a home.”

So Watson created a place for honky tonk, western swing, rockabilly and outlaw country.

“If anybody wants to know where what used to be called country music is, it’s in a home called Ameripolitan, right on the corner of original street and roots boulevard,” he said. Read More…

The current state of Conservatism has been infected, much like “Country Music” has been ruined by flat-billed ball-cap wearing, “bro-country” douche-bags. Conservatism has been infected by its own set of douche-bags. Donald Trump supporter’s are like drunken Bud Light fueled Luke Bryan fans destroying the venue after a show.

True Conservatives have been cast out from the movement. I find myself being too conservative for conservatism and not libertarian enough for libertarianism.

I don’t know what to call myself moving forward, “liberty republican” or “republitarian,” or something else altogether. I just know I’m no longer a Conservative… and I’m all right with that.

Sad but true.

Stole this from Wirecutter.

Stole this from Wirecutter.

Also, Obama’s and the lunatic liberals latest pet cause is not the squeeky clean choir-boy that progressive nuts make him out to be.

Via Bizpac Review:

While a student at Sam Houston Middle School, Mohamed “racked up weeks of suspensions,” while clashing with school officials and claiming he was the victim of anti-Muslim bullying by the staff and students, the Dallas Morning News reported.

“He was a weird little kid,” Ron Kubiak, his former seventh-grade history teacher told the Morning News. “I saw a lot of him in me. That thirst for knowledge … he’s one of those kids that could either be CEO of a company or head of a gang.”

Among his shenanigans, the report claims, Mohamed once created a remote control to interfere with a projector a teacher was using in class and bragged to others that he recited his First Amendment rights while in the principal’s office. Read More…

The latest hero that the religious right is touting as a staunch defender of “traditional marriage” is a thrice-divorced registered Democrat who has given birth out-of-wedlock in-between her four marriages.

Combine that, with the fact the Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and eccentric billionaire reality television star Donald Trump are currently leading most polls in the race for President, and it makes one think that we must be living in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Kim Davis is a Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk who defied a U.S. Federal Court order requiring that she issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples following the Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.

Rowan County, Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis continued to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses on Tuesday, despite a Supreme Court ruling against her the previous day, was jailed for contempt of court.

Davis filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court seeking to put the lower court’s order on hold while she seeks an appeal, however the Supreme Court denied the application. Stating that she was acting “under God’s authority,” Davis ignored the court order and continued to deny the licenses. Last Thursday she was jailed for contempt of court and has been labeled as martyr by many on the religious right.

Mike Huckabee and other instigators in the religious right claim that jailing Davis for refusing to do her job because of her religious convictions is the “criminalization of Christianity.” The problem is, unless her Apostolic Christian beliefs require her to keep her job in the public sector (which I seriously doubt they do), she’s not in jail for violating her religious beliefs.

Working for the state is not a “right.” Kim Davis, whatever you may feel about her religious convictions, was wrong to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in her office. If you are not willing to enforce the law, you should not be an officer of the state. Her job as a county clerk is not to determine the constitutionality of laws, it is to perform the issuing and registering of various licenses, recording and keeping of various legal records, registering and purging voter rolls, and conducting various election duties and tax duties. There are many other occupations that she can pursue if her current job no longer suits her religious beliefs.

Signing off on state documents is not the same as being forced into participating in a same-sex wedding ceremonies as private business owners such as bakers, photographers and ordained ministers have. If she was an ordained minister and refused to marry same-sex couples in her private establishment I would vehemently support her right to do so. If you want to participate in civil disobedience, don’t work for the state.

The hypocrisy amongst the so-called conservatives of the religious right who have infested the conservative movement is down right sickening. If Kim Davis was a soldier who abandoned her post after the country goes into war, because her religion tells her that “thou shalt not kill,” would Mike Huckabee and other social cons be as quick to defend her? If she was working for the INS and refused to deport a criminal invader because her religious convictions were against it, would the religious right be holding rallies in her honor?

As I’ve stated before the religious right have nobody to blame but themselves for what has happened to the institution of marriage, if they were true small-government conservatives and not bigots masquerading under the false banner of “religious liberty,” the fight all along would have been to get the government out of the business of issuing licenses to marry all-together.

This is not a story from The Onion.

Jackson, with its population of over 170,000 people, is both the capital of as well as the largest city in the state of Mississippi. It also has an idiot for a mayor.

Via WJTV:

JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber is addressing the city’s infrastructure problem on Twitter.

He tweeted “Yes….I believe we can pray potholes away. Moses prayed and a sea opened up. #iseeya #itrustHim #prayerworks”. Read More…

Now I’m no atheist, I’m not even one of those people who think that we should take “God” off of our money or out of our Pledge of Allegiance. That being said, this guy is a fucking idiot.

Politicians, on both sides of the aisle, like this guy and the morons who agree with and elect them are everything that is wrong with our Nation today.

If this story doesn’t describe perfectly the stupidity that is big-government, I don’t know what does.

Recently, New York City tried to fire 65-year-old Geoffrey Tolliver from his $38K-a-year job as a Medicaid eligibility specialist for missing about 18 months of work.

The cities Human Resources Administration accused the government employee of abandoning his job as of November 2013. Last month an administrative law judge recommended Toliver be fired, noting that he didn’t appear for a July 1 hearing.

Of course Tolliver couldn’t appear to the hearing, he had died of cancer last December.

Via The New York Post:

HRA officials said they sought to remove Toliver from his $38,000-a-year job after they couldn’t reach him for well over a year.

They marked the start of his absence as Nov. 12, 2013, and said calls and certified letters mailed to his home were never answered.

“We did everything we could to contact him and his family,” said HRA spokesman David Neustadt. “This employee was not paid when he wasn’t working, but we left his job open in case he recovered.”

He said that now that the agency knows of his “unfortunate death,” it would take no further action.

Family members were surprised to hear city officials claim they hadn’t been in touch with Toliver.

“It is my understanding that . . . his employer was fully aware that he was not able to come back to work,” Toliver’s brother Anthony told The Post.

“It is my understanding that my brother’s family spoke directly to his supervisor during his long hospitalization and informed them of his death.”

An online obit said Toliver was born in Harlem as the second of eight children.

“He was very well liked by his colleagues,” it said. Read More…

If you can’t trust the government to know that one of it’s employees had passed away, seriously what can you trust it to do?