Price of Liberty
Here, we look at the true price of our liberty.
I don't pretend to be an authority on anything and my academic qualifications are far from thorough. Still, take with a grain of salt the fact that I tend to post regarding those topics about which I have some degree of learned familiarity. Nevertheless, I continue to seek knowledge wherever it may be found and appreciate any insight offered by anyone.
Glenn Greenwald’s exposure of the NSA’s massive domestic spy program has revealed the entire caste of current Democratic leaders as a gang of civil liberty opportunists, whose true passion, it seems, was in trolling George W. Bush for eight years on matters of national security.“Everyone should just calm down,” Senator Harry Reid said yesterday, inhaling slowly.
That’s right: don’t panic.
The very topic of Democratic two-facedness on civil liberties is one of the most important issues that Greenwald has covered. Many of those Dems — including the sitting President Barack Obama, Senator Carl Levin, and Sec. State John Kerry — have now become the stewards and enhancers of programs that appear to dwarf any of the spying scandals that broke during the Bush years, the very same scandals they used as wedge issues to win elections in the Congressional elections 2006 and the presidential primary of 2007-2008.
Recall what Senator Levin told CNN in 2005, demanding to “urgently hold an inquiry” into what was supposedly President Bush’s domestic wiretap program.
Levin continued, at length: “It means that there’s some growing concern on Capitol Hill about a program which seems to be so totally unauthorized and unexplained…The president wraps himself in the law, saying that it is totally legal, but he doesn’t give what the legal basis is for this. He avoided using the law, which we provided to the president, where even when there is an emergency and there’s a need for urgent action can first tap the wire and then go to a court.”
There are two notable exception to this rule are Senator Ron Wyden, from Oregon, and Sen. Mark Udall from Colorado, who had seemed to be fighting a largely lonely, frustrating battle against Obama’s national security state.
As Mark Udall told the Denver Post yesterday: “[I] did everything short of leaking classified information” to stop it.
that the u.s. government is above assassinating murdering silencing people?
Have you seen? Over 215,000 people have signed onto the stopwatching.us campaign we launched one week ago. And we’ve made huge waves in the media with a coalition of companies and organization that the Atlantic called “perhaps the most diverse collection of groups in the modern history of American politics.”
But we’re not done yet. Today, we’re launching a campaign to call members of Congress. Can you help out?
We need you to make a quick call to ask your elected officials to investigate surveillance practices of the NSA and stop the illegal spying. A call will take you from 2 to 4 minutes—and it can send a huge message to Congress.
We’re teaming up with our friends from Fight for the Future to make it easy for you to demand reform. Here are two ways you can speak out (note, if you are outside of the United States you should go here to take our international alert).
Or…
Phone calls can make a huge difference in Washington: we saw scores of lawmakers change positions in response to the call-in campaigns we organized during the SOPA fight. Let’s repeat that victory by driving tons of phone calls to Congress today to stop NSA spying.
Thanks for helping us fight back against NSA spying. If you’d like to support our efforts to beat back invasive government surveillance, please become a member of EFF. We wouldn’t exist without members like you.
Defending your rights in the digital world,
Rainey Reitman
Activism Team
Electronic Frontier FoundationImportant notes about your privacy: we’ve required that the automated tools above promise to protect your privacy by insisting that your phone number be used for this campaign and nothing else unless you request additional contact. If you don’t want your information processed by the automatic calling tools, use the EFF page to get a phone number and call directly. Learn more by visiting the privacy policies of Fight for the Future and Twilio.
(via stopprism)
If the police had that mentality there would be no show called ‘The First 48’, jackasses.I have no idea what that is, though.
Anonymous Asks:
priceofliberty Said:
Did I really just get contacted by someone in the Hastings family?
PITTSBURGH — A former southwestern Pennsylvania police chief was sentenced Friday to more than 11 years in prison for extorting about $8,000 from undercover FBI agents he thought were drug dealers, in exchange for protecting two staged drug deals and agreeing to buy them police-issue stun guns.
…
The case was built largely on videos of those staged deals and audio conversations recorded by a hired informant, who introduced Solomon to the faux drug dealers and to whom Solomon bragged, “I’m the best cop money can buy.”
![[sshhhhhhh]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/4a96360f43ab641c2ee92056e208e39b/tumblr_moma8746qv1r7dd67o1_500.png)
[sshhhhhhh]
Yeah, so I’m house sitting this lady’s cabin this week, and so far I’ve spotted one of these fuckers in the guest room (it then disappeared never to be found), a dead one on the living room floor, and now THIS asshole in the damn shower! I’ve been keeping my shoes ON and prolly doing number on her electric bill because I want the floors to be visible at all times. But yeah, I’m still a sucker and found the courage to catch him and put his ass outside.
OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT
That Free Iran shirt. Revolutionary radical aesthetics brought to you by American Apparel. So hardcore and cool.
it’s disgusting that they’re marketing support for Iran as hip and trendy. And yet the biggest issue Americans care about right now is the fact that Lil Wayne maybe (probably) intentionally trampled an American flag.
Common Sense, the Anti-Federalist Papers and the Federalist Papers were all written anonymously. Ben Franklin trolled people with a number of pseudonyms, most famously Silence Dogood. The men in the Boston Tea Party dressed like Indians to stay anonymous.
One of my favorite examples is Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widow who wrote 14 letters to the New England Courant in the 1720s with general observations on Colonial life and commentary on politics. Later it was discovered that Ms. Dogood was in fact the 16-year-old Benjamin Franklin, who was unable to get his letters published under his own name (much to the disappointment of the men who wrote in to the paper offering to marry the verbose widow).
If you have nothing to hide, then hide nothing
Reblog if you support the overthrow and complete dismantlement of the United States government.
(via minarchist)
Brazil cleans up after widespread protests overnight
(Photo: Victor R. Caivano / AP)
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Tuesday sought to defuse a massive protest movement sweeping the country, acknowledging the need for better public services and more responsive governance at all levels.
All this over a 10 cent bus fare increase?
Oh my poor, misinformed friend. Just like the protests in Turkey were over some park, right? huehuehuehuehue
I am not a fan of Kesha’s music. It’s not my thing but after seeing that post about autotune I have to laugh.
Voice distortion in music is nothing new. Industrial bands have been doing it for awhile.
Old rap and hip-hop songs use voice distortion as well as metal and rock.
Autotune is just a variation of what has been around for quite sometime.
Yeah, I am not an autotune hater.
I love Ke$ha. Other than that, I agree with this post
In metal and in rap it has usually been to add emphasis, not falsify emotion. Can no one ever say enough is enough?
You should listen to my buddy Paul Engemann.
(via dudeistlibertarian)
Your dash needs more free expression - have some Russian soldiers burning a U.S. flag and making empty diplomatic threats.
