Freedomshift

For those students who may not keep themselves informed about Senate primary races in other states, please excuse the brevity of the following summary: Dr. Rand Paul, son of Congressman Ron Paul, recently mopped the floor with his primary opponent, neoconservative and Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. Having personally volunteered on behalf of Dr. Paul’s campaign, I couldn’t help but be concerned when I noticed that weasel-turned-CNN commentator Paul Begala could hardly contain his excitement over Paul’s primary win. I knew they had something, and, as it turns out, Begala is now using Dr. Paul’s name to help him fundraise. The very next day, it just so happened that a video interview was leaked, which showed Rand Paul criticizing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That same night, in what can only be considered a public relations gaffe, Dr. Paul appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to defend himself. What happened is what everyone in his campaign should have expected—she spent t...

If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you just might be tempted to believe that the United States has emerged from the recession and is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic recovery. In fact, according to Obama administration officials, the great American economic machine has roared back to life, stronger and more vibrant than ever before. But is that really the case? Of course not. You would have to be delusional to believe that. What did happen was that all of the stimulus packages and government spending and new debt that Obama and the U.S. Congress pumped into the economy bought us a little bit of time. But they have also made our long-term economic problems far worse. The reality is that the U.S. cannot keep supporting an economy on an ocean of red ink forever. At some point the charade is going to come crashing down. And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation. For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP i...

6:00 am May 24, 2010, by Bob Barr “Nanny State” laws are popping up with increasing frequency as big-government advocates continue to be elected to offices from the city council to the White House. What many Americans may not realize is the extent to which such invasive and pervasive government actions are spreading around the world, creating a “Nanny World.” As usual, California, with its many ultra-liberal communities, is leading the way here in America. Santa Clara County recently voted to outlaw the sale of McDonald’s “Happy Meal” toys and a host of other novelties (including coupons from which a patron might download a song) provided by restaurants as a bonus for customers who purchase certain drinks or food items. As bizarre as is this most recent ban, if some of that county’s residents have their way, it will be followed by many more. One resident of Sacramento, for example, reportedly voiced support for the recently-passed measure because even McDonald’s “190-calorie s...

By Eric Peters on 5.12.10 @ 6:07AM I don't support drunk driving -- just to get that out of the way. But the idea that you're "drunk" at the current .08 BAC threshold is a bit much. Push them a bit and proponents will say you're impaired at .08 in terms of a medically observable decline in reaction times -- and that's true, as far as it goes. But this slight reduction in reaction times has not been shown to correlate with a higher accident rate. Proponents merely assert that it does, with no facts (such as a greater number of car wrecks) to back it up. On the other hand, we know that a .10 BAC, which used to be the legal threshold defining drunk driving in most states, does correlate with a higher accident rate. There is actual evidence (more car crashes) to support this. Therefore, it seems reasonable to target people with BAC levels at .10 or higher because they pose an objective, real threat to other motorists (and pedestrians). That's what ...

In February, I wrote the following about a drug raid in Missouri: SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family's pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a "small amount" of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment. So smoking pot = "child endangerment." Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone's safety. Just so we're clear. Now there's video, which you can watch below. It's horrifying, but I'd urge you to watch it, and to send it to the drug warriors in your life. This is the blunt-end result of all the war imagery and militaristic rhetoric politicians have been spewing for the last 30 years—cops dressed like soldiers, barreling through the front door middle of the night, slaughtering the family pets, filling the house with bullets in the presenc...

Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors. He recorded precinct roll calls. He recorded his precinct commander and other supervisors. He recorded street encounters. He recorded small talk and stationhouse banter. In all, he surreptitiously collected hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs. Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes—made between June 1, 2008, and October 31, 2009, in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant and obtained exclusively by the Voice—provide an unprecedented portrait of what it's like to work as a cop in this city. They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don't make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statis...

A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation’s immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday. Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure. The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases. “The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier sto...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators on Friday shut down three banks in Puerto Rico, two in Missouri, and one each in Michigan and Washington, bringing the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 64. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over the banks: Westernbank Puerto Rico, based in Mayaguez, with about $11.9 billion in assets; R-G Premier Bank of Puerto Rico, based in Hato Rey, with around $5.9 billion in assets; and San Juan-based Eurobank, with $2.5 billion in assets. The FDIC also seized CF Bancorp, based in Port Huron, Mich., with about $1.6 billion in assets; Champion Bank, of Creve Coeur, Mo., with $187.3 million in assets; BC National Banks, of Butler, Mo., with $67.2 million in assets; and Frontier Bank, based in Everett, Wash., with $3.5 billion in assets. Banco Popular de Puerto Rico agreed to acquire Westernbank's deposits and about $9.4 billion of its assets. The FDIC will keep the remainder for eventual sale. Scotiabank de Puerto Rico agreed to buy all the ass...