Quotation Of The Day: Why The Country Needs A Few More True Libertarians Edition

From this Conor Friedersdorf piece in The Atlantic:

I do think that, if libertarians had wielded more power in bygone years, America would not have passed the Patriot Act, started the phone dragnet, or allowed the Department of Defense to send military equipment to police in places like Ferguson, Missouri. 

On issues where libertarians have a somewhat realistic chance of winning over their fellow citizens—reining in the NSA, eliminating the most inane professional licensing laws, insisting on due process in the War on Terrorism, avoiding foolish wars of choice, ending the war on drugs, reducing the prison population and the militarization of the police—a "libertarian moment" would have a salutary effect on American life. . . .

Opposition To NSA Surveillance Should Be A Bipartisan Issue That Unites Steadfast Conservatives And Solid Liberals

A recent Pew Research Center poll reports that both ends of the political spectrum oppose NSA surveillance.

Yet, congressional gridlock prevents Congress from taking action to protect Americans civil liberties. It is a strange albeit welcome sign that the Supreme Court can overcome its ideological divide and provide a unanimous ruling protecting digital privacy. It is not a welcome sign, however, that an unelected court is better able to bridge its ideological divide than those elected to represent all citizens. 

Guns Rights Advocates Willing To Throw Away Every Other Constitutional Right

John Stewart does the honors.

If forced to choose, I'd rank the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment ahead of the Second. I believe that the rights protected by the former are much more fragile. On a snarky level, I believe that the right to proclaim faith in or deny faith in the Holy Trinity is more important than purchasing faith in Colt, Smith, and Wesson. That said, I would never want to eviscerate the Second Amendment the way Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and the others Stewart skewers in clip do.


If Abraham Lincoln had possessed the prophetic ability to foresee that South Carolina would one day elect Lindsey Graham to the United States Senate, I'm willing to bet he would have let the state secede.

The Country May Be Totally Screwed

I seriously hope that this video has been edited to make a right wing point about Obama, If it's an accurate representation of any gathering of citizens, it may well be time to buy a bunker.

Senator Lindsey Graham Thinks He Should Be Able To Read Your Mail

Kevin Woster thought Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was correct to assert that bloggers have less right to expect First Amendment protections than traditional reporters. I wonder if he agrees with Graham about censoring snail mail.

Sen. Lindsey Graham would propose censoring Americans' "snail" mail if he thought it would help protect national security, the South Carolina Republican said Tuesday. But for now, he says he doesn't think it's necessary.

Faced with questions about the disclosure that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone and email records of citizens, Graham pointed to a World War II-era program in which the federal government censored mail. He said it was appropriate at the time and that he would support reinstating the program if it aided security efforts.

"In World War II, the mentality of the public was that our whole way of life was at risk, we're all in. We censored the mail. When you wrote a letter overseas, it got censored. When a letter was written back from the battlefield to home, they looked at what was in the letter to make sure they were not tipping off the enemy," Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill. "If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I don't think it is."

Graham says, "The First Amendment right to speak is sacrosanct, but it has limits," I would guess nearly everything conceived by humans has limits. The only thing that seems limitless is Graham's desire to limit civil liberties.

Quotation Of The Day: Democratic Surveillance State Is An Oxymoron Edition

From this Mike Konzcal post at Wonkblog

Having a “democratic surveillance” state sounds like an oxymoron, like having a cuddly hand grenade. Perhaps it would be better to just dismantle the surveillance state entirely and be done with it. And indeed removing the laws associated with the Global War on Terror would do much to remove the authoritarian elements of this state.

A Minor Rant About NSA Seizing All Of Verizon's Customers' Call Records

I didn't vote for Obama in 2012 because I believed his civil liberties record did not merit my vote. After yesterday's revelation about the NSA getting a FISA warrant for all Verizon phone records, I have to rank that protest vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson as the best vote I have ever cast.

For those of you wondering about why I didn't vote for Mitt Romney, I give you Lindsey Graham:

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he is “glad” that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of telephone records — including his own — from one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies in an attempt to combat terrorism.

Mr. Graham said that he is a Verizon customer and has no problem with the company turning over records to the government if it helps it do its job. The South Carolina Republican said that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to worry about because the NSA is mining the phone records for people with suspected ties to terrorism.

If I have done nothing wrong, I suppose I have nothing to worry about if the police bring drug dogs into my house without a warrant. If I have done nothing wrong, I have nothing to worry about if the police stop me without probable cause while I'm walking around the park and take me to the police station to ask me questions about my associations with Al Qaeda or if I've ever been a member of the Communist Party.

In case the preceding paragraph didn't make it clear why I won't support Republicans because of their civil liberties views. let me be a bit more blunt. I didn't support Obama because he talked the talk in 2008 but walked a far different walk during the next four years. I can't support Republicans because for all their talk about respecting constitutional principles and small governement, they babble banalities like those Graham uttered on issues that matter.

Since this post is turning into a rant, let me go a step further to discuss which current issues really matter by using a 1 to 10 scale, with 1 being "it just doesn't matter" and 10 "as urgent as avoiding a speeding bus without operable brakes."

• Scheduling a 40th vote to repeal Obamacare rates a 1.
• Benghazi is a 1.7
• The IRS snooping should be seen as a  6.5
• Stopping sexual abuse in the military is an 8
• Subpoenaing journalists' records is a 5.5
• The NSA getting a FISA warrant  for every call for every Verizon customer is a 12.

Quotation Of The Day: Civil Liberties And Why I'm Angry Edition

From this Joseph Baldacchino book review:

Constitutional liberties, dating back in some instances to Magna Carta, are being jettisoned, ostensibly to protect against terrorism. Through the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress has empowered the president to imprison without charges or trial any American whom he decides, based on secret evidence, is a threat to national security. Barack Obama and his attorney general claim the president has the right to execute summarily anyone in the world—not excluding Americans—without due process of law. The Pentagon has been lending unmanned drones to local and state law enforcement agencies to spy on citizens without search warrants.

The 2008 election was viewed by many as a repudiation of torture and other dangers to civil liberties supported by George W. Bush. Five years later Obama seemingly has doubled down on policies that he had condemned. 

CISPA Weakens Internet Privacy

Updated: YouTube should play now

In the South Dakota blogosphere, Ken Santema, has been doing God's work on CISPA. Go read his stuff. I'll add my voice to his about this assault on Internet privacy. This video by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian provides a humorous look at how Google, Twitter, and Facebook are willing to throw away users' privacy rights.

Defining Freedom Down

Earlier today, I mentioned this Bob Mercer post that points out that groups that grade government transparency aren't necessarily transparent. It turns out that groups that grade freedom have skewed version of freedom.

Constant Conservative points to the Mercatus Center study that finds that the Dakotas are the freest states in the United States and rejoices:

So, congratulations fellow citizens (and the government which you all helped to elect). We may not be doing everything right, but we are doing better than many

As with the transparency study, things are not what they seem. Mercatus sees economic freedom, especially a low tax burden, as the most important freedom. The ability to avail one's self of a prostitute while high and shoot a gun to celebrate seem to be the most important personal freedoms:

Fiscal Policy (35.3%)

The fiscal policy dimension consists of the following categories: Tax Burden (28.6%), Government Employment (2.8%), Government Spending (1.9%), Government Debt (1.2%), and Fiscal Decentralization (0.9%).

Regulatory Policy (32.0%)

The regulatory policy dimension consists of the following categories: Freedom from Tort Abuse (11.5%), Property Right Protection (7.6%), Health Insurance Freedom (5.4%), Labor Market Freedom (3.8%), Occupational Licensing Freedom (1.7%), Miscellaneous Regulatory Freedom (1.3%), and Cable and Telecom Freedom (0.8%).

Personal Freedom (32.7%)

Personal freedom dimension consists of the following categories: Victimless Crime Freedom (9.8%), Gun Control Freedom (6.6%), Tobacco Freedom (4.1%), Alcohol Freedom (2.8%), Marriage Freedom (2.1%), Marijuana and Salvia Freedom (2.1%), Gambling Freedom (2.0%), Education Policy (1.9%), Civil Liberties (0.6%), Travel Freedom (0.5%), Asset Forfeiture Freedom (0.1%), and Campaign Finance Freedom (0.02%).

The economic freedoms certainly dominate the results. Paul Waldman writes that "the factors that matter are things like low taxes, lack of gun control, and "freedom from tort abuse," i.e. laws that make it hard to sue when your surgeon cuts off the wrong leg."

As for civil liberties, Timothy Lee points out they aren't really considered:

The right to own a gun is given five times as much weight as the “civil liberties” category, described as a “grab bag of mostly unrelated policies, including raw milk laws, fireworks laws, prostitution laws, physician-assisted suicide laws, religious freedom restoration acts, rules on taking DNA samples from criminal suspects, trans-fat bans, and laws that can be used to prosecute people who audiorecord public officials in the performance of their duties.”

Alex Pareene adds:

“Economic freedom” is of course their most important freedom, and so it is weighted the heaviest, with fiscal and regulatory matters making up a bit more than two-thirds of each state’s score. Which is how their No. 1 freest state is ranked 39th on the “Civil Liberties” list. Though that list is fairly useless, as their definition of “civil liberties” is “unrelated policies, such as fireworks laws, prostitution laws, and trans-fat bans.” On the list taking into account “incarceration rates, non-drug crime arrests, and drug enforcement,” Freest State North Dakota is at 24. (Second-freest state South Dakota is 48.) And Arizona has climbed to No. 11 on the overall list, because at no point are the rights of immigrants or people whom the police may suspect are immigrants taken into account

Pareene concludes, "Almost any Liberty issue that wouldn’t concern a straight, white, male capitalist is wholly ignored."

Lee, Waldman, and Pareene all exhibit a bit of urban arrogance toward the rural lifestyle and they show little appreciation for winter. That being said, short lines at a Hy-Vee checkout along with relief from heat and humidity does not necessarily make one free. Neither does emphasizing wealth  over civil liberties. In fact the latter situation makes Janis Joplin's lyrics more relevant. (I know it's a trite thing to do, but hearing Janis on a Saturday afternoon makes me feel good.)

Quotation Of The Day: Fourth Amendment And The Internet Edition

From California Representative Zoe Lofgren:

Fourth Amendment protections don’t stop at the Internet. [emphasis mine]

A little background information:

A bipartisan group of legislators has introduced a bill to the House of Representatives to change that. . . . would require the police to get warrants before reading users' e-mails in most circumstances and would also repudiate the view, advanced by the Obama administration last year, that the police can obtain information about the historical location of your cell phone without a warrant. The new legislation, proposed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and supported by Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA), would extend privacy protections for both e-mail and location privacy.

Tweets Of The Day: Rand Paul Filibuster Edition [Updated]

Rand Paul is doing the right thing in opposing President Obama's effort to seize the power to kill American citizens without trial or due process. This tweet still rings true.

Conservatives who #standwithrand: are you also rethinking Guantanamo, renditions and indefinite detention, or is this just a fun hobby?
— Josh Greenman (@joshgreenman) March 7, 2013

I watched Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio do their best Eddie Haskell impersonations on the Senate floor, so I must add the following tweet.

I'm ashamed of US progressive movement and Democratic Senators for letting the far-right be the leaders on #drones. #StandWithRand
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) March 7, 2013

Quotation Of The Day: Civil Liberties Are Slip Sliding Away Edition

By the way, no one cares.

From this American Conservative post:

Yet restricting civil liberties is what actually commands bipartisan support in Washington. The same Congress that barely averted the fiscal cliff swiftly passed extensions of warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention, assuring Americans that only the bad guys will be affected but evincing little interest in establishing whether this is really the case.

The same Congress that failed to come up with an agreement to avoid sequestration appears to have bipartisan majorities in favor of profligate drone use at home and abroad. Lawmakers are generally less exercised about the confirmation of likely CIA chief John Brennan than Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

At the very time it appears Washington is so dysfunctional that the two parties cannot get anything done, Democrats and Republicans cooperate regularly—when it it comes to jailing, spying on, and meting out extrajudicial punishments in ways that on their face contradict the Bill of Rights.

Quotation Of The Day: Obama's Kill List Memo Edition

From this James Joyner piece:

Even so, American citizens should nonetheless be wary of granting the president the power to single out citizens for killing based simply on his own judgment. Aside from being plainly unconstitutional, it's simply too much trust to place in a single individual. At the very least, the rules ought to be spelled out in legislation that has passed both Houses of Congress and survived judicial scrutiny for constitutionality rather than made internally.

Further, in addition to checks and balances, there has to be more transparency. The notion that the government can compile a list of citizens for killing, not tell anyone who's on it or how they got there, is simply un–American. Surely, a modern version of a WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE notice could be publicly circulated, with a listing of the particulars. Maybe the named individual would turn himself in rather than wait for the drones to find him. Or maybe he'd hire an attorney to present evidence he's not actually an imminent threat to American citizens.

For centuries, civilized societies have understood that even wars must be fought according to rules, which have developed over time in response to changing realities. Rules are even more important in endless, murky wars such as the fight against Islamist terror groups. Currently, we're letting whomever is in the Oval Office pick and choose from among the existing rules, applying and redefining them based on hisown judgment and that of his advisors. We can do better. [emphais mine]

The bolded portions sum up my positions better than I could have written them.

Quotations Of The Day: Literary Allusion And Assault On Civil Liberties Edition

First Judge Colleen McMahon uses the two literary classics to describe her ruling that the Constitution doesn't allow the President to assassinate American citizens but that the Administration does not have to release internal memoranda that justify ordering assassinations:

“I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret,” she wrote.

“The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me,” Judge McMahon wrote, adding that she was operating in a legal environment that amounted to “a veritable Catch-22.”

Conor Friedersdorf begins his analysis of McMahon's ruling with two more literary references:

Permitted to run CNN for a day, I'd amuse myself by arranging for a Crossfire-style debate between English professors who disagree intensely about how best to characterize President Obama's national security policies. "They're Orwellian," one would insist. "They're actually better described as Kafkaesque," the other would counter. They'd go back and forth, citing his transgressions against basic norms of justice and comparing them to plot points from dystopian novels. Poor Wolf Blitzer. He'd be horrified by a segment that afforded so little deference to a sitting president.

Mitt Romney And Values: The Only One That Matters To Him Is Cash

In an election that some claim is about values, these paragraphs from the AP stand out:

Mitt Romney's success in raising hundreds of millions of dollars in the costliest presidential race ever can be traced in part to a secretive data-mining project that sifts through Americans' personal information - including their purchasing history and church attendance - to identify new and likely, wealthy donors, The Associated Press has learned.

For the data-mining project, the Republican candidate has quietly employed since at least June a little-known but successful analytics firm that previously performed marketing work for a colleague tied to Bain & Co., the management-consulting firm that Romney once led.

In short, Mitt Romney sees humnan beings as nothing more than a means to make money. They are not ends unto themselves; they have not right to privacy; they are merely cash cows.

I'll be interested to see in any freedom loving Republicans raise an alarm about Romney's use of data mining. I would love to hear one of them explain how any American is supposed to believe that he will not undermine civil liberties when given the reins of power if he sees personal data as noting more than a source of income.

Another Reminder That Civil Liberties Are Always Under Assault

In the comments to a previous post Carter reminds all of us that President Obama is not necessarily a friend to civil liberties.

On Andrew Sullivan's blog, Spencer Ackerman develops the point further when asked about his biggest beef with Obama.

I Continue To Be Convinced That Voting For President Will Be A Waste Of Time

Conor Friedersdorf reminds us that President Obama's record on civil liberties is spotty at best; in fact, it can probably be described as deplorable.

As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein put it:

What will the 2012 Democratic Party platform say about civil liberties? What will it say about the U.S. government's lethal attacks on citizens overseas? About Gitmo and military tribunals? About drone wars? And, perhaps a more important question: Will Democratic activists push the party to keep and perhaps strengthen its platform -- and if so, will the Obama campaign push back?

It's an uncomfortable choice: either betray your principles and accept the Bush-Cheney-Obama approach to the War on Terror, or else highlight in a minor way how your standard-bearer has betrayed the principles on which he ran and adopted so many of the policies he once criticized. . . .

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney continues to get checks from Bain Capital, a company that profits from helping the Chinese government do a better job of destroying any civil liberties its citizens might try to keep.

The New York Times reported today that Bain Capital, the private equity firm started by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, owns a Chinese company, Uniview, that supplies highly advanced surveillance equipment to the Chinese government. China’s authoritarian rulers are using the equipment to create an “omniscient monitoring system” throughout the country, according to a Human Rights Watch researcher quoted by the Times. “When it comes to surveillance, China is pretty upfront about its totalitarian ambitions,” said Nicholas Bequelin.

To realize those totalitarian ambitions, China’s authorities, with Bain Capital’s help, are expanding the country’s already vast network of surveillance cameras. The city of Chongqing is spending $4.2 billion for a network of 500,000 cameras, Guangdong Province is installing a million cameras, and Beijing is planning to put cameras in all entertainment venues, the Times reported.

The authorities use these cameras, along with Internet monitoring and cellphone surveillance, to monitor as much of the entire population as possible. But they are particularly interested in keeping a permanent eye on democracy advocates, intellectuals, religious figures and other people they deem dangerous. For example, police used a surveillance camera to record a human rights lawyer named Li Tiantian entering a hotel with men other than her boyfriend, then taunted her about her sex life and threatened to show the tape to her boyfriend. “The scale of intrusion into people’s private lives is unprecedented,” Li told the Times. “Now when I walk on the street, I feel so vulnerable, like the police are watching me all the time.”

I suppose a difference exists between the two men; the former considers civil liberties the source of an easily broken political promise whereas the other sees them as a marketing ploy.  Both positions demean the Presidency.

The Ron Paul Conundrum

I have trouble getting my head around Ron Paul.  The big boy bloggers seem to have the same problem.

Andrew Sullivan endorses Paul for the Republican nomination because Paul is relatively strong on civil liberties and doesn't seem to be a politician for hire.

And I see in Paul none of the resentment that burns in Gingrich or the fakeness that defines Romney or the fascistic strains in Perry's buffoonery. He has yet to show the Obama-derangement of his peers, even though he differs with him. He has now gone through two primary elections without compromising an inch of his character or his philosophy. This kind of rigidity has its flaws, but, in the context of the Newt Romney blur, it is refreshing. He would never take $1.8 million from Freddie Mac. He would never disown Reagan, as Romney once did. He would never speak of lynching Bernanke, as Perry threatened. When he answers a question, you can see that he is genuinely listening to it and responding - rather than searching, Bachmann-like, for the one-liner to rouse the base. He is, in other words, a decent fellow, and that's an adjective I don't use lightly. We need more decency among Republicans.

On the other hand, Jon Chait asserts,

Ron Paul is not a kindly old libertarian who just wants everybody to be free. He’s a really creepy bigot.

Around four years ago, James Kirchick reported a lengthy story delving into Paul’s worldview. As Kirchick writes, Paul comes out of an intellectual tradition called “paleolibertarianism,” which is a version of libertarianism heavily tinged with far-right cultural views. The gist is that Paul is tied in deep and extensive ways to neo-Confederates, and somewhat less tightly to the right-wing militia movement. His newsletter, which he wrote and edited for years, was a constant organ of vile racism and homophobia. This is not just picking out a phrase here and there. Fear and hatred of blacks and gays, along with a somewhat less pronounced paranoia about Jewish dual loyalty, are fundamental elements of his thinking. The most comparable figure to Paul is Pat Buchanan, the main differences being that Paul emphasizes economic issues more, and has more dogmatically pro-market views.

Tod Kelly damns with faint praise.

And for all the talk of him being a crackpot, in my mind he in not nearly as bats**t crazy as Gingrich or Bachmann.

In short, the big boy blog community seems to indicate that a man who has published or, at the very least, has lent his name to racist, homophobic publications and who wishes to return the country to the gold standard has more character, is better on civil liberties, and has a range of policy ideas that are sounder than those of every other Republican candidate in the race.  It is indeed a curse to live in interesting times.

Gingrich, The Tea Party, And Civil Liberties

I'm beginning to hate Conor Friedersdorf; not only is he far younger than I am, he writes better than I do.  This analysis is spot on:

Ron Paul supporting Tea Partiers would be the first to bail from a coalition that reshaped itself around Gingrich. In Reason magazine, Jacob Sullum runs through some of Gingrich's appalling positions on civil liberties: that the War on Terrorism somehow makes null certain rights to free speech and due process; that the government should stop the construction of a mosque until the day when Saudi Arabia permits churches and synagogues to be built; the proposal to escalate the War on Drugs by executing drug smugglers; support for warrantless wiretaps; and extreme hostility toward the co-equal judicial branch. It's true that only a small subset of Tea Party voters actually care about civil liberties with any kind of consistency, but Gingrich will alienate them.