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’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.
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?
Today, in a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that “...the right of same-sex couples to marry…is part of the liberty promised by the Fourteenth Amendment.”
In the decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote:
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
As a conservative, I have to agree with Justice Kennedy’s words. For the government to deny the rights of same-sex couples is a fundamental attack on the very principle of liberty.
Social conservatives, such as Mike Huckabee who called today’s ruling ‘judicial tyranny,’ are upset of course. I actually don’t necessarily disagree with all of Huckabee’s sentiments — mostly because I don’t believe that this issue should have even had to have been decided on by the Supreme Court.
If the religious right is upset about the Supreme Court affirming the government sanctioning of same-sex marriage they have absolutely no one to blame but themselves. They have been fighting the wrong battle this whole time.
Advocates of ‘gay marriage’ claim that what they are fighting for is ‘equal rights,’ the right to marry the person they love. But what they are really fighting for is the right to have a previously government-sanctioned ‘privileged status’ extended to them as well.
The truth is, government does not grant marriage licenses to certify a couple’s love. The government issues permits to marry so it can designate those who qualify for the benefits attached to being in a government-sanctioned marriage.
The religious right, in their opposition to ‘gay marriage,’ claim they are fighting for ‘traditional marriage.’ True conservatives however, understand that there are certain aspects of life that should be left to be conducted solely within the confines of your own home, family, churches, synagogue or mosque. This belief if part of the fundamental core of what it means to be a conservative, yet social conservatives have abdicated that position and granted the governmental role in those matters.
The primary role of the federal government is to uphold the Constitution and to defend our rights. The act of granting the government the power to regulate the institution of marriage, takes away it’s duties in serving its primary purpose.
Conservatives should have never been fighting for foolish efforts like the idiotic ‘Defense of Marriage Act.’ Instead of focusing their time, effort and money into trying to pass laws throughout the country that offer a government-defined sanctioning of marriage — the real battle should have been to remove the government’s role from marriage altogether and to put it back where it belongs as a private matter between two individuals with each-other or two individuals with their religious community.
Not anywhere within the Constitution is their any mention about marriage. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments, clearly state that any power that is not explicitly granted to the federal government is reserved solely for the people and the states. If marriage is even to be regulated at all, it should be done so only at the local level.
One of the few true responsibilities of the government in a free society is to enforce private contracts between individuals or groups. If two consenting adults enter into a contract with one another, it is not the business of the government to deny those particular individuals the right to do so.
All conservatives, the religious-right includes should be fundamental opposed to government regulation of private matters. Sadly, it is those so-called conservatives who make up the religious right who actually advocate for more government intrusion into our lives. The religious right is blaming the desires of gay & lesbian couples as an attack on the ‘sanctity of marriage.’ All the while ignoring the real threat… the government.
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