Tonight's George Bush Interview

I'll be watching (and DVRing at the same time) George Bush's interview on Dateline NBC at 8 p.m. EST tonight. I'll be drawing some conclusions of my own following the broadcast.

In the meantime, check out the preview of the interview here.

Here's an excerpted clip of tonight's interview:

George W. Bush: War Criminal

George Bush writes in his new presidential memoirs Decision Points (which is due out tomorrow, November 9) that he did authorize the CIA to employ "enhanced interrogations," also known as water-boarding, of detained "enemy combatants," a.k.a. war-on-terror suspects (such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) at the height of his second presidential term. Water-boarding is the practice of torturing a prisoner simply by pouring water over his nostrils and face, forcing him to think that he is drowning when simply he is not. It produces an automatic gag reflex that is accompanied by physical symptoms such as deprivation of oxygen to the brain, pain, dry drowning, catastrophic damage to the lungs, and psychological trauma.

The practice is a crime under American and international law. When will charges of war crimes be brought against him? And what will it take to press those charges? His accomplices such as former Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft should be slapped with the same charges.

It would behoove President Obama not to be viewed as one simply by ordering U.S. Attorney Eric Holder to prosecute that case.

Ron Paul on Scoreboard: Rand and I Will Introduce Legislation to End the Fed

Ron Paul appears on Fox Business' Scoreboard, telling host David Asner that he and Rand will introduce a new bill to call for eliminating the Federal Reserve.



While this is encouraging across the board, I'm unconvinced as to whether they can achieve and attain a great amount of success in their bold effort to pull the plug on the Fed. I'll reserve judgment for the time being.

Until then, color me skeptical.

Bush Defends His Decision to Invade Iraq

Former President George W. Bush, in an upcoming interview he gave with Today Show host Matt Lauer to tout his new presidential memoirs Decision Points, defended his decision to invade and occupy Iraq, all the while claiming that he was a "dissenting voice" against the war establishment's push for the invasion and occupation of that homeland.

MATT LAUER:
Not everybody thought you should go to war, though. There were dissenters.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
Of course there were.

MATT LAUER:
You know, there were questions at the Pentagon. Colin Powell had questions. Brent Scowcroft, your father's former National Security Advisor, and dear friend, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, I'm paraphrasing here, saying, "It's not a good idea to go to war in Iraq." So there were dissenting voices.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I was a dissenting voice. I didn't want to use force. I mean force is the last option for a President. And I think it's clear in the book that I gave diplomacy every chance to work. And I will also tell you the world's better off without somehow [or someone?] in power. And so are 25 million Iraqis.

Funny enough, he ends up contradicting himself, as evidenced in this following exchange with Lauer:

MATT LAUER:
You know the question. If you knew then what you know now--

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
That's right.

MATT LAUER:
--you would still go to war in Iraq?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I-- first of all, didn't have that luxury. You just don't have the luxury when you're President. That's a very hypothetical question. I will say definitely the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million people who now have a chance to live in freedom.

History judges you on the decisions you make. Sometimes history doesn't judge you on the absence of a decision. And I believe Saddam Hussein in the Middle East today, if he were there in power he would be enriched, he'd be emboldened. He would still have the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction, whether we found the vats of weapons of mass destruction. And I believe it's likely you'd be seeing a nuclear arms race between Iran and Iraq. And the world would be much more unstable. And America would be-- less secure.

MATT LAUER:
Your words. "No one was more sickened or angry than I was when we didn't find weapons of mass destruction." You still have a sickening feeling when you think about it.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I do.

MATT LAUER:
Was there ever any consideration of apologizing to the American people?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
I mean apologizing would basically say the decision was a wrong decision. And I don't believe it was the wrong decision. I thought the best way to handle this was to find out why. And what went wrong. And to remedy it. And that's why we had the Silverman Robb Commission.

So let me get this straight: Bush was a "dissenting voice" in moving the U.S. into a war with Iraq, yet he doesn't "believe it was the wrong decision"?

After what's been leaked out thus far, I'm voting for the latter. According to Iraq Body Count, the number of deaths have now reached between 98,585 and 107,594 civilian casualties from 2003 to 2010, which he and President Obama combined now both have blood on their hands.

This claim that he had tried to employ diplomacy is a baldfaced lie. There is no evidence of any kind that he used this tactic to avoid launching his invasion and occupation. This is evidenced by the fact that Bush, his pro-war cronies, and their American allies claimed that Hussein was producing "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs) that purportedly jeopardized the national-security state of the U.S. Bush and former VP Cheney alleged in 2002 and 2003 that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claimed in an alleged report asserting that Hussein was manufacturing "chemical and biological weapons" -- a document that the IAEA subsequently denied in the first place. In other words, that "report" was an outright fraud upon the American people, and Bush and Co. knew it the entire time. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been on record stating that, while it is true that Hussein and his regime failed to abide by the United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for WMD disarmament, there were no WMDS found in his possession. Even if there had been, the stockpile would have been virtually useless because of years of deterioration and had become harmless.

[*Note: See Jim Bovard's piece "Bush's WMD Flimflam," which is an excellent piece that goes into great detail about the lies of the Bush administration and its flimflam that he and his ilk perpetrated on the American people.]

After all has been said and done, what kind of fools does Bush truly take us for?

29% of Americans Voted in Midterm Elections

It turns out that the voter turn-out at Tuesday's midterms on a national level was not as high as observers and analysts predicted would be.

According to Channel 7 KBZK.com in Bozeman, Montana:

Nationally, voter turnout was higher Tuesday than for the mid-term elections four years ago....The turnout is projected at 42 percent of registered voters. That translates to about 90 million people, 6.2 million more than in 2006. [Emphasis added.]

To analyze it much further, the break-down of the math is like this:

• According to the Midterm Elections 2010 Rates data table at the United States Elections Project website, 90,504,100 registered voters showed up to vote at the polls on Tuesday. That's 90.5 million voters casting their votes for Highest Office (which is the highest vote counted for Governor, U.S. Senator, and combined House of Representatives). The Voting-Eligible Population (VEP), which is the number of eligible registered voters for this year's 2010 midterms, is 218,054,301. Divide the Highest Office by the VEP, and what you end up getting is 42% of the total number of minority eligible registered voters electing the 112th Congress to office via pluralities/majorities.


• According to the Census Bureau's U.S. Population Clock, there are exactly 310,636,612 Americans living in the United States. If one takes the total number of eligible registered voters -- that being 90.5 million -- who showed up to vote on Tuesday and divide it by the total U.S. population count (as given by the Clock), only 29% of the entire population, whether they are registered to vote or not, cast their votes, thereby electing the 112th Congress to office via pluralities/majorities.

That leaves 71% of Americans either choosing not to vote or being unable to vote because they were prohibited from doing so (because they were convicted of a felony which legally prevents and prohibits them from voting, they were under the age of 18, or they were fundamentally and legally disenfranchised). Furthermore, that percentage alone is not an indicator of why those who opted out of voting this year chose not to engage in the process. Thus, "apathy" is not the reason for those who embrace non-voting as a means to reject the political process; on the contrary, "non-consent," which is the tacit choice not to be governed by the ruling elite, is the reason for those who have turned their backs on voting.

For the next two years, the congressional and senatorial establishments will "represent" (rule) us, meaning that he or she, regardless of whether either he or she has an R or D next to his or her name, will have the legitimate power to have authority over us.

Quite par for the course.

[H/T goes to Tom Knapp of KN@PPSTER and the creator of the newly-formed Ⓧ2012 Project for bringing this to everyone's attention in the Liberty movement.]

Senator-elect Rand Paul Chooses Campaign Aide as Chief of Staff

Senator-elect Rand Paul, who won his senatorial race in Kentucky against Democratic opponent Jack Conway, has chosen campaign aide Doug Stafford, a long-time GOP political consultant, to be his Chief of Staff who will be responsible for assembling a Senate staff.

WLKY.com reports:

Stafford serves as vice president of National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and as a consultant to the Campaign for Liberty, an organization chaired by Paul’s father, Ron Paul, a Texas congressman and former GOP presidential candidate.

I will admit that, while Conway was worse than Paul on a number of key issues, Rand has made me feel uncomfortable throughout the election season with his comments on a handful of issues that obviously paint him as a social conservative on that front. His troubling positions, as best as I can assemble them, include his positions on gay marriage and medical marijuana, Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act* (specifically because of his poorly-argued, poorly-worded semi-libertarian defense of private racist proprietors who refused service to people on the grounds of their skin color), his defense of the War on Terror (specifically his opposition to closing down Guantanamo Bay a.k.a. Gitmo and trying the "enemy combatants" in New York that issue became the center of a much-publicized controversy), his polarizing stances on illegal immigration and birthright citizenship, abortion, transferring some functions like disbursing student loans and Pell Grants of the Department of Education (which he does favor ending, and I concur with him on this) to other departments and agencies in lieu of eliminating them, to name a few. Additionally, his comments on the recent BP oil spill, in which he called Obama's criticism of BP "un-American," rankled me because, although I oppose the federal government's involvement in the clean-up, BP ought to have been held responsible for the spill and be forced to pay for the clean-up costs.

I'm willing to reserve judgment and see how he handles his first six-year term. But don't expect me to hold my breath either.

[*Note: While I agree in principle that racist proprietors have a right to be racist and do have a right to exclude anyone for any reason (even if it has to do with that individual's skin color) because of my support for freedom of association, that does NOT translate into me saying that I condone the behavior. I am a much bigger fan of community organizing (like Obama is), and I do favor boycotts, sit-ins, non-violent and voluntary ostracism, and other forms of non-violent protests aimed at private statist employers who use their bigotry as a moral and rational justification for averting non-violent customers from entering their establishments. Such criticisms of these grotesque practices are valid and widely accepted in the Liberty movement. It is regrettable that Paul had to reverse his position on that provision of the bill due to the ugly fall-out of his comments which were clearly poorly-constructed and ill-thought out.]

The GOP Reneges on Promises of Huge Spending Cuts

Except for the Senate, the Republicans have complete control of the House. While the Tea Partiers are stoked over their newly-backed GOP congressional line-up and its "pledge" to "pare down" federal spending, "balance" the federal budget, and "slashing" the federal deficit, their enthusiasm for the new Congress after last night's election results will be short-lived.

House Republican leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who's poised to become the next House Majority Leader and with congressional Republicans flocking to his side, has gone on record saying that his conservative colleagues and he will be pursuing "across-the-board" cuts in "discretionary spending" and cuts in the state's payroll. He has come out noting that he wants such spending levels pared down to 2008 levels not excluding defense, which is nonsensical because the GOP, especially prior to Election Day, has been vague on specifics on the budget, aside from talks about "saving" taxpayers $100 billion a year (which is meaningless). After all, Cantor has shown no interest in gutting discretionary spending at all, before and after the elections. (The GOP's only achievement so far is the push of a spending cap that would cut the outlay by $20 billion as opposed to what Obama wanted, but talk is cheap in the political scheme of things.)

Discretionary spending is a form of outlay that Congress authorizes by "appropriating" (stealing) taxpayer monies every fiscal year. This is separate from "mandatory spending" - another outlay specifically set (by default) to allocate stolen taxpayer funds to the entitlement programs for retirees and needy who are dependent on and can't live without their Medicare, Social Security, and food stamps.

Most Americans are not aware that discretionary spending (and this is what the two major parties don't want them to know) only accounts for approximately 33 percent of the entire federal budget. This translates into meaning that the GOP is only interested in a that minute amount of spending. They are set only on those cuts, the GOP pledging that military (defense) and "homeland security" spending are off-limits notwithstanding. So much for the "huge spending cuts" that the Republicans promised the Tea Partiers throughout the election year.

In other words, the GOP has just reneged on their promises of huge spending cuts - promises to which they made to the Tea Partiers. Their so-called referendum against Obama has, for all intents and purposes, gone up in smoke.

With all of this in mind, the only message that one can deliver to the Tea Partiers is this: don't you feel better now that the Big Statist Republicans whom you passionately and excitedly elected have your best interests at heart?

Yesterday's Midterm Elections

My good friend and mentor Sheldon Richman is absolutely spot-on: elections are the American people's opiate. The political process may make you feel so special about yourself, but once you cast your vote for your "preferred candidate," you end up leaving the polls (and, if you're lucky, you may respond to the exit poll surveys they always give you), and go home and return to your daily business (whatever it was what you were doing). Then, as the obedient slave whom you're expected to be, you doze off until the next event comes. The magnificent state will coddle you, protect you, and be there for you while you're asleep.

Wow. What a great, noble system. Not!

Hypocrisy and Absurdity Reign in This Election Season

Today is Election Day, and nothing can be worse than the incessant impetus of the state-worshiping electorate swarming into their local voting precincts, whether they are public "government" schools, firehouses, and other state-approved municipalities, to cast their state-sanctioned, state-endorsed, and state-approved votes for their preferred candidates for public "government" office. This even entails their votes for or against state-approved measures on the ballot.

The Tea Parties' call for constitutional government, tax-and-spending cuts, no cap and trade, fiscal accountability, and a repeal of the recently-passed, Obama-approved health care program, as stated in its recently-circled "Contract from America" document which has been pushed and lobbied by many of its backers, rings hollow in comparison to their steadfast backing of the establishment's Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and controlling and their need to militarize the borders between the U.S. and Mexico. One must include their lack of condemnation of the former Bush administration's profligate spending (although some of them like conservative The Dana Show host Dana Loesche have skewered W.'s domestic agenda). Last but not least, they have not even bothered to deplore the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration checkpoints' thoroughly invasive search and frisking procedures commonly known as "enhanced patdowns" along with its utter disregard and violation of passengers' privacy and civil liberties via its screeners' use of naked body scanners at nearly every airport across the country. (Ironically, the Bush and Obama administrations "informed" us that the scanners wouldn't record our images, but the recently-leaked photos of the scanners prove otherwise. Even the U.S. Marshalls Service admitted it.) Given that the conservatives' "revolutionary" movement has put Congressmen John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and nearly the entire GOP in the House and the Senate "on probation," should we seriously take them at their word?

The "Contract from America" document is a de facto embarrassment and fraud on the American electorate, its semi-libertarian undertones notwithstanding. It's nothing more than a descendant of Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America," although a number of GOP'ers more or less liken the GOP's "Pledge to America" document to it. No where in this newest proposal does it tacitly say anything about repealing nearly every federal agency, regulation, and a host of entitlement programs. There is no call to end the U.S. federal government's disastrous energy and foreign policies (which go hand-in-hand in reality). For example, the manifesto calls for an "Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy," which mandates the following:

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs.

Even worse, there is no call to repeal the federal income tax, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, and repeal all the federal spending (which constitutional scholars on the laissez-faire/minarchist side would deride as "unconstitutional"). Only a mention of a "moratorium on all earmarks" unless a balanced budget appears, but why a moratorium? Why not outright abolition of the earmarks and the spending? In the interim, a gutting of the spending would be much preferable to that option, but obviously this is done specifically to pander to a base of conservatives who really don't want cuts in or repeal of entitlement, pork, and defense spending out of fear that such moves would affect their piece of the welfare-warfare pie. After all, there's nothing better than a conservative politician who is buying votes from blocs of welfare-worshiping, warfare-worshiping Tea Party activists and their voting base who are primarily interested in and defensive of propping up and maintaining their hegemonies of the Middle East.

One would think that the Tea Parties would field GOP candidates who are solid on pro-peace, pro-civil liberties platforms. With the possible exception of Ron Paul, the idea of said candidates is an oxymoron in terms. The vast majority of the Republican establishment is a warmongering outfit, and one can include all the Tea Parties on that column. Republican congressional candidates running on anti-war and national-security state platforms might have been worthy of consideration for the electorate (despite the likelihood of grumblings from the Tea Partiers), given that it might have energized scores of Americans who have been increasingly viewing the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as both fiscal albatrosses and embarrassing quagmires. But don't count on that. The Tea Party is fundamentally opposed to that idea, and their conservative underlings would scream bloody murder at the prospect of an anti-war, anti-state Republican in their midst. Thank you Tea Partiers and Republicans. Your pro-war, anti-civil liberties records have emboldened President Obama to magnify his assaults on the peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, the entire Middle East, and on our own shores as well and bolster international support for global hegemony. Obama's barbaric policies, which were carried over from the Bush administration and made into his own, ought to incite anger from every American.

The "Pledge to America" manifesto is worse than the above-mentioned one. It gives lip service to slashing spending and paring down the deficit, but it barely elaborates on some specifics. The Republicans' conservative base and the Tea Party are heavily putting an enormous amount of stock in the GOP to retake the House (which is very likely after today) and possibly conquer the Senate to carry their agendas, but they are foolish to do such a thing. The GOP is asking the Tea Party and their conservative supporters to have faith in their fiscal restraint, but what do they have to show for it after Bush's rampant spending during his years in the Oval Office? After being wiped out politically in 2008, their credibility and respectability have been virtually obliterated beyond repair. Even their support for the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, and other pervasive government programs have never wavered. What will it take for the Tea Party candidates to wake up and realize that, despite one of their concerns is cuts in entitlement spending (despite the fact that 63 percent of the movement is opposed to that), Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are also government programs? Even the Pentagon and the Military Industrial Complex are programs too.

And what of the Democrats? The Democrats have come off as absurd hypocrites on the home and war fronts without question. President Obama has broken more than a handful of promises to the American people, promises that he made to his constituency and his base who backed him to deliver his promise of "change" to the U.S. His promises, such as making his administration transparent to an already-skeptical, already-cynical American public, ending the Bush-propped, Bush-backed War in Iraq (which he's failed to do twice in a row), digging the economy out of the Bush-imposed recession, and ending Washington's culture of interest interests and lobbyism, were never intended to be delivered. After all, he has already backpedaled on his intentions to end the military's old "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (twice in a row, point of fact), and his appeal to a federal appeals court that overturned that Clinton-era executive order has already enraged his gay progressive Democratic base. Oh, and his expensive stimulus and Cash-for-Clunker programs and bailouts of GM and Chrysler have really bloated the deficit even further, which have become fodder for the right-wing talking heads on Fox News.

Obama has already embroiled the nation further in the Iraqi and Afghani conflicts than Bush ever had. After all, we are talking about the same current president who has proceeded with Bush's war policies by amplifying his genocidal killings in the Muslim nations and blatantly declared war on our civil liberties and the Constitution. Unlike Obama, Bush did not so much possess a morsel of authority to engage in assassinations of Americans in the name of the War on Terror without a shred of due process. His pledge to pull the plug on Guantanamo Bay -- that is, releasing all Americans imprisoned as "enemy combatants" who would be tried by a an American criminal court in New York (given that they are constitutionally accorded with the right to due process and a right to a speedy trial) in lieu of a U.S. military tribunal without the presence of a jury of their peers and the right to a defense by an attorney on their behalf -- was rescinded due to conservative outcries because expressions of sympathy and empathy for "terrorists" would be tantamount to appeasing and treason. Such a move would give the loopy fringe right wing plenty of ammunition, thereby denouncing Obama as a supporter of terrorism. Obama's backpedaling on reversing Bush's foreign policy would enable the Republicans to brand the President sympathetic to the terrorists' cause. Can you imagine how that would play out for Obama's re-election chances? Those labeled slapped on him and the Democratic Party would make the Democrats' chances for re-election to the House and the Senate more problematic than it is now.

Americans who are convinced that the country is moving towards the wrong direction should realize that the GOP's power grab of the House and possibly the Senate won't do anything to unroot the manifestation, cause, and flow of statism in this country and abroad. The state's tentacles have reached every facet of American and international lives as we know it. Republicans who claim that this election is about a "referendum against Obama" are deluding themselves because it's truly a referendum to exact more control of American lives and wiping away more of our freedoms than ever Republican-style. The Democrats are at least honest about not being in favor of laissez faire and individual liberty; after all, they have never believed in the individual, just only in the collective. But the Republicans' incessant claims of championing those values are not worth the campaign literature on which they are printed. Every statist action from exacting conquest of other nations (including the Muslim world) to engineering government-mandated pensions and medical care for retired and poor people must be scrapped. The much-worse welfare-warefare state that has inundated the United Kingdom and Europe will soon metastasize to our soil. The welfare-warfare statism in our homeland is untenable and unmanageable.

All the odious signs of the Republicans are there. Once they are in power (and after tonight, they will be), they will proceed with the War on Drugs and be more aggressive with their xenophobic, nationalistic, and jingoistic anti-immigration zealotry. All the campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, the Tea Parties and their Republican operatives will conquer and rule the American people like their Democratic counterparts in a statist conservative Republican manner.

Hypocrisy and absurdity surely reign in this election season. Especially on Election Day today.

Why Should We Care About Juan Williams and His Firing from NPR?

National Public Radio's (NPR's) most recent decision to terminate Juan Williams' contract because of his incendiary rhetoric towards Muslims on The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News certainly exemplifies the paranoid paradigm of today's mainstream conservatives and their cronies on the network. It also epitomizes how viscerally prejudicial and bigoted the "feelings" of commentators like Juan Williams and Bill O'Reilly are towards the Muslim community, especially when the 9/11 hijackers were not from Iraq or Iran but from Saudia Arabia, Egypt, and a few other regions of the Middle East. It's convenient for the Right to ignore Williams misrepresenting the views of Times Square bomber Faisal Shazhad, who has gone on record stating the following:

[T]he past nine years the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the U.S., except for it has waken up the Muslims for Islam. We are only Muslims trying to defend our religion, people, honor, and land. But if you call us terrorists for doing that, then we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing until you leave our land and people at peace.

It should be noted that the Associated Press reported Shazhad's statement in quotes at his sentencing May of this year. Sadly, the Washington Post, like other media sources that wanted to spin the issue and take Shazhad's statement out of context, took it and deliberately misquoted it by stating:

We are only Muslims . . . but if you call us terrorists, we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing you

The Washington Times, as another example of the mainstream media lying about and doctoring the quote, took Shazhad's publicly-entered statement and distorted it, saying:

'We are only Muslims … but if you call us terrorists, we are proud terrorists and we will keep on terrorizing you,' he told U.S. District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum.

USA Today has committed the same offense as the other sources:

'We are only Muslims ... but if you call us terrorists, we are proud terrorists and we will keep on terrorizing you,' [Faisal Shazhad] said.

But let's get back to the Williams-NPR mess.

The most salient point about the Juan Williams-NPR matter is: why should we care about this "issue" in the first place? Conservatives like Sarah Palin, Newt Gringrich, and Republican Congressman John Boehner are up in arms over the firing in the first place, considering that "liberal" Williams' views are more in line with the conservatives than the progressives, despite his claim to the contrary.

More to the point, the above-mentioned party wants NPR defunded by an act of congressional legislation, as though they are suggesting the state continues to fund the organizational machine itself. The fact of the matter is that the federal government does NOT fund NPR at all, at least not since the early 1980s. While principal funding did come directly from the state from the 1970s to the beginning of the 1980s, that simply ceased to be the case in 1983 when corporations, charitable foundations, and private individuals account for 40 percent of its budget. Only 16 percent of NPR's revenues - 6 percent coming from local governments and the other 10 percent coming from the federal government as CPB grants - are doled out by the state. That's a meager amount of tax dollars being spent on an organization that may or may not be politically influenced by George Soros and MoveOn.org (although I would agree that such funding from those sources should cease), as Bill O'Reilly and his co-horts allege. (The operative word being "allege" here.) The rest of its funding comes from annual fundraising drives that keep the company in business. Let's not omit the fact that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which does receive federal subsidies, only grants 1.5 percent of its funds to NPR. So the conservatives have no solid legal grounds to stand on with regards to their smear against NPR surrounding its alleged federal funding. (Fox News' claim that its "federal funding" has gone down from its previous fiscal year and that the Obama administration has sent $50,000 in grant funds to NPR to "retain an arts desk reporter" is very dubious, given that there is no viable, proven source to verify that nonsense.)

As for Williams' firing, the jury is in regarding this ruckus. Williams did state the following:

When I get a plane, I gotta tell you. If I see people in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried, I get nervous.

That constitutes a "feeling," which is highly irrational and nonsensical (although it is somewhat less insidious than what O'Reilly would say about the Muslim world). I, for one, live in the Metro Detroit area in the Southeastern Michigan region (in the suburbs of Detroit), and I can emphatically declare that I myself don't "get worried" about and "get nervous" around Middle Easterners in public, even if they are clad "in Muslim garb." Are the conservatives tacitly claiming that the 9/11 hijackers wore such attire? If they are, then they are fundamentally wrong. The terrorists on board those planes were dressed in Western clothing. How would the right-wing talking heads know otherwise? Are they privy to some clandestine information that we know nothing about? Besides, why should Williams care about what Muslims wear? He's been handed a $2 million, 3-year contract by the conservative network; thus, it's not as if he really lost everything and should be worried at all. With that in mind, he had nothing to lose simply by voicing his anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Sad to say, many Americans share Williams and O'Reilly's viewpoints. (Unsurprisingly but still unfortunately, one of the Morning Joeys agreed with Williams' sentiments. It doesn't help that Pat Buchanan came to Williams' defense over his remarks.) It doesn't even help further that Joe Scarborough, the head talker on Morning Joe, states that the country's "prejudice" towards Muslims is "natural." I hate to rain on Scarborough's parade here, but it is not such a thing by any stretch of the imagination. It's an artificial construct, thanks to the hysteria created by the state and its pervasive discriminatory and hateful sentiments and views towards Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East and suppression of the Arab-American and Middle Eastern peoples' reactions to the U.S. federal government's diabolical invasion and occupation of Middle Eastern terroritory (specifically Iraq and Afghanistan). Worse, Iran and Pakistan (the latter of which has been the target of Obama's drones within the last year and a half) have long since been added to the list of targets as part of the Leviathan's list of the Axis of Evil. (Remember that, people?)

Sure, NPR CEO Vivian Schuller apologized for the way she spoke out against Williams, and yes she remains unapologetic about her decision to terminate Williams' employment. (I give it up for conservatives to criticize Schiller for her indecent comments about Williams keeping his comments between him and his psychiatrist, but that's as far as I go with that.) So what? Once again, why should we care about Juan Williams being fired from a network that simply was well within its legal rights to disassociate itself from a commentator who made some inflammatory statements about Muslims, despite the fact that he did argue with O'Reilly's smug, arrogant contention that "Muslims attacked us on 9/11." (By engaging in that discussion, Williams was showing that he wanted his cake and eat it too.)

After all, Schiller did mention that Williams was asked repeatedly by her and the NPR powers-that-be to knock off using NPR's name to identify himself on his Fox News appearances last year. Obviously, he refused to listen. And this business coming from the Rightists that Williams was "censored" is poppycock. This has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Censorship, despite what the Fox News gang and many talking heads across the political spectrum say, isn't the issue. NPR was well within its rights to get rid of Williams, and so it did.

As far as I'm concerned, Williams, O'Reilly, and those who are defending and tolerating anti-Muslim bigotry across the spectrum (like Whoopi Goldberg) are self-righteous jerks who are full of themselves. It is the height of smugness, hubris, and vanity of these pundits to embrace the irrational, racist, and prejudiced logic of Williams and Co.

It's too bad that many writers and other bloggers, with the dazzling, spectacular, and brilliant exception of Salon's Glenn Greenwald and Sheldon Richman, are not speaking out against this.

Listen to the Beatnik, Man

He's groovy...

http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#!/pages/The-Beatnik/101277766603781?ref=ts

If You Thought Hurricane Katrina Was Awful....

...then get a taste of Hurricane Earl, which has been inflicting a significant amount of damage in the areas upon which it's touched down in San Juan, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Islands. According to the weather report at NJ.com, the storm reportedly belted:

[S]mall northeastern Caribbean islands with heavy rain and powerful winds along the way.

Furthermore, the story reads:

The Category 4 storm hovered about 175 miles north-northwest of San Juan, P.R. at 7 a.m. today, carrying maximum sustained winds of 135 miles per hour. It was traveling west-northwest at 13 miles per hour.

The New York Daily News even further reports:

The major Category 4 storm was still growing Monday with sustained winds of 135 mph as it roared through the northern Caribbean, ripping off roofs on the island of Anguilla.

I pray that the people in Puerto Island and on those islands took shelter and were not in harm's way at all.

I hope the global warmists don't use that storm as political fodder to convince Americans and other people that "man-made climate change" is responsible for natural disasters such as the one that's about to occur.

[Update: Notice the inconsistency in the speed of the reported winds. You'd think the MSM would be spot-on on the wind speeds. Not by a long shot.]

The Unfortunate Libertarian Evasion of Same-Sex "Gay" Marriage

The recent ruling made by California's very own U.S. Chief District Judge Vaughn Walker -- in which Proposition 8, which was a voter-approved referendum that banned gay marriage in the state (thanks to the state-approved homophobic Mormon Church that lobbied heavily to get their precious initiative on the state's ballot), has violated the civil rights of ardent gay activists (who want state-approved gay marriage codified into law) -- has undoubtedly ignited both praise by progressives and condemnation by statist conservatives for the judge. (Walker happens to be openly-gay himself, and the statist conservatives have put him in their cross hairs by accusing him, in a malicious fashion, of employing his sexual orientation as a political crutch for his ruling. Even though that kind of paradigm is unconscionable, immoral, and unethical to the Nth Degree, that pales in comparison to the type of mentality that has engulfed some libertarians in the libertarian movement, especially from those who employ semantical word game tactics to evade legitimate arguments as to why the state has no rightful, legitimate, and valid grounds for refusing to recognize same-sex "gay" marriage. The court's decision, as mandated by Walker himself, can be seen here [pdf].)

The arguments that some right-libertarians have thrown into the ideological and political mix have been dubious. For instance, right-libertarian (and yet anti-IP attorney) Stephan Kinsella, who, in a misguided manner, penned a piece on his Libertarian Standard blog condemning Walker's legal decision and brushing off any notion that the law violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Kinsella notes:

Gay rights advocates filed lawsuits to have the constitutional amendment declared unconstitutional. I predicted they would lose. First, they could not prevail on state constitutional grounds since Prop. 8 actually amended the California Constitution. You can’t argue a provision of the constitution is unconstitutional. So the question is whether this provision of the California Constitution violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (see my The Libertarian Case Against the Fourteenth Amendment). In my view, it clearly does not; any argument that such a law violates equal protection is ludicrous–there is no way the equal protection clause at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) was understood to be so broad as to prohibit state laws that treated same-sex unions differently than traditional, heterosexual ones. As for due process–this was a validly enacted constitutional amendment, following regular legal procedures. So it was not a violation of due process (as for the doctrine of "substantive due process"–well this is a ridiculous, obviously dishonest, invented concept; process is, um, procedural).

(The notion that Kinsella [and others who share his point of view] has unveiled here is simply preposterous, but that will be explored later in this post. For now readers can simply make up their minds as to the "validity" of Kinsella's bogus claims on this issue.)

Even Lew Rockwell, the founder and former president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and creator (and blogger) of LewRockwell.com, formerly objected to Walker's ruling. In his blog post "Gay Marriage and Immigration" (how quaint that he married those two issues together!), dated August 5, 2010 at 10:24 AM, he writes in part:

[T]he Massachusetts. federal judge who ruled that marriage is none of the federal government’s business, and therefore Massachusetts may enact it, despite the defense of marriage act, had a strong case. He is ignored, however, while the crazed California judge is heralded.

And then, in the same post, he also writes:

[W]hile I can’t stand the foreign-government loving, war-mongering fundamentalist right, I do think they have one point. The heterophobes want to outlaw Church discrimination, that is, freedom. For many activists, government gay marriage is only one step towards even more totalitarian anti-discrimination laws.

"Crazed California judge"? "Heterophobes wanting to outlaw Church discrimination"? Who is he kidding? If anything, Rockwell has always been a homophobe against gays, especially on the issue of gay marriage. For him to use this language to condemn the actions of an openly-gay federal magistrate (even if he's not a libertarian) is entirely uncalled for and unfair.

Overall, here are four principle arguments made by some in the liberty camp against the state's attempt to recognize and embrace state-approved same-sex "gay" marriage*:

1. The State has no business in the marriage realm, so any approval of the ruling equates an acceptance of the State's role in it as well as granting and codifying such a marriage. That even includes the State.


2. There are more pressing and more paramount things to be concerned about.


3. Marriage is merely a means for procreation and nothing else.


4. Federal courts (especially the U.S. district ones) have no legal jurisdiction over such matters at the state level.

Here are my swift replies:

1. No one, not even Yours Truly, says that the State must be involved in private affairs such as the institution of marriage. Of course it neither has any legitimate role in marriage nor it should have anything to do with it whatsoever. No one except for statist progressives and conservatives has suggested otherwise. The problem is that it is involved in the institution now; therefore, it's in the State's best interest not to invidiously deny a certain group of people of their freedom to marry while granting other groups special rights and privileges at the discriminated group's expense. Will statist conservatives (including the religious ilk) and vulgar libertarians (mainly the right-libertarian ilk) use the power of the State to say that gays must be barred from eating in the same restaurants, going to the same schools, or driving on the same roads as straights do? Should the State be used to discriminate gays by prohibiting them from entering State-subsidized and State-controlled public buildings such as courtrooms, government schools, hospitals, and municipal buildings? (Let's include legislative chambers such as state legislatures, state capitals, and, not to mention, the U.S. Congress and the Senate.)


2. How can there be "more pressing and more paramount things to be concerned about"? When gays are prevented from having the legal and normal (and not to mention mutual) benefits of marriage (including hospital visitation, custody of children, medical-making decisions involving incapacitated partners, next of kin business, etc.), there are no "more pressing and more paramount things to be concerned about". Human liberty is at stake here. Liberty isn't some abstraction; it's about choosing to live your own life the way you want to live as long as you are not aggressing against your neighbor. Everyone's liberty must be protected at all costs or we become modern-day slaves to the State (although that has vastly and mostly happened today). It's very simple for libertarians to look the other way and pretend that this isn't a big deal. (After all, Jim Crow wasn't a pressing matter to the State-supported and State-backed white bigots in the South in the 1960s.) Besides, the ruling has been made, and we must learn to live with it. How is praising this recent decision a troubling distraction from what is more significant? As human beings we are more capable of multitasking than we realize.


3. This Neanderthalic view that marriage was constructed only for the purpose of procreation and nothing more than that is simply ludicrous. Marriage has never been exclusively institutionalized for that purpose. If that were entirely true, infertile couples, couples who choose to be childless, and even those who are elderly would have been forbidden to join in matrimony. Moreover, couples who are in wedlock choose to enter in such a partnership predicated on other values at the heart of their decisions: economic security, love and emotional fulfillment, and much more. The Freeman's very won Contributing Editor Stephen Horwitz opined on the evolution of the family which provides excellent insight on this subject.
   
   Additionally, a related objection to this ruling is that heterosexual intercourse is the pillar of marital consummation. My argument to this: so what? Big deal! Institutions from time immemorial evolve. That's nothing new in the grand scheme of things. Even if consummation were pertinent in some manner, that simply changes nothing, considering the reasonable principle of mutatis mutandis still exists and will remain available indefinitely. This objection, whether it's levied on religious and secular grounds (even if it's predicated on some alleged moral and ethical standpoint), is flatly absurd in every immeasurable way.


4. This business that federal courts have no business interceding in statist matters propped up by the states and their localities that lead to the curtailing of other individuals' human freedom is nonsensical all the way around. We as individuals are dealing with crucial matters relating to liberty that must be applied to individuals consistently, especially when the State denies that consistency to other peace-loving people from all walks of life. This point even applies to Kinsella's and Rockwell's arguments as well: despite the Founders' good intentions involving the political apparatus of federalism (which is a loose confederation of nation-like states that reserve the powers to those individuals and not the "states" because they are merely abstractions), state rights do not exist. Kinsella, Rockwell, and their Misean right-libertarian ilk get frequently annoyed when the State and its foot soldiers ignore other people's already-owned First Amendemt, Second Amendment, and Fourth Amendment-protected rights. So how can they ignore the existence of the people's Fourteenth Amendment protections, which state in part in the following?:
   
   

   No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [Emphasis added.]

   
   
   Whether Kinsella, Rockwell, their ilk, and statist conservatives like it or not, that amendment exists. What are they going to do about it? Call for a repeal of that amendment? And, if so, would that entail a mass movement of right-libertarians and statist conservatives coalescing to push the states to ratify a new constitutional amendment that would nullify that amendment in its entirety? I see no valid argument against the federal court's jurisdiction in this matter as far as I'm concerned.

Besides, would Rockwell, Kinsella, and their allies who have objections to the ruling make the same argument against interracial marriage? There was a time when interracial marriage was illegal in the South (at the height of the Jim Crow era) and in many other states as well. The Supreme Court refused to intervene in such affairs until 1967 when it ruled on a 9-0 vote in its landmark federal case Loving v. Virginia that such discrimination was illegal and in stark opposition to the Due Process and Equal Protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment as well. Kinsella objects to the Substantive Due Process claims that the amendment covers, which is ludicrous.

Critics may have been opposed to the ideas underlying that principle, but there have been critics of all sorts opposing this idea for years. Just because they criticized substantive due process doesn't mean that their arguments are in the right or just; in fact, they are substantially subjective without any legal basis whatsoever. The points made by Rockwell, Kinsella, and others who have raised similar arguments are nonsensical and excrement. They are simply naive and foolish to believe in and favor that discriminatory crud.

Moreover, it does not help that Rockwell's homophobia as the basis for his arguments against equal protection under the law (considering the law mandates that the State must be evenhanded in its application of such decisions) has become the face of the libertarian movement. Do some of those libertarians really want to alienate people more than they already have by taking that shameful position? Where's the fairness in that type of paradigm altogether?

As long as the State has its dirty hands in the institution of marriage, the system, like or not, needs to be even-handed. While the goal of eliminating the State's hand in marriage must be pursued, in the interim the State has no business discriminating considering all governments are created by their own laws that are the heart and soul of their own constitutions.

[*Note: I've taken the four points from Sheldon Richman's arguments in his blog post which is actually similar to my views on the matter and reworded his statements according to how I see them. A well-deserved hat tip to him for this.]

[Cross-posted on The Freeman Chronicles and the Free Dissent blog.]

Prince Declares That the Internet Is "Over"

[*Note: I realize this news bit is a month old, but I'm posting it here anyway.]

The legendary pop rocker, musician, and recording artist Prince, formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, has declared that "the Internet is completely over." It wouldn't surprise me if his managers are going bananas over this PR mess.

According to the Detroit News:

'The Internet is completely over,' Prince told the Mirror. 'I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it.'

He added: 'The Internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated.'

Prince is not a fan of digital devices, either. 'All these computers and digital gadgets are no good," he said. 'They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you.'

Not "a fan of digital devices, either"? Computers and "digital gadgets are no good" because "[t]hey just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you"? Has he forgotten that the Internet is the best invention since popcorn and chocolate?

While he's at it, can he define what's "not good" about digital technology, including those "gadgets" and computers he's been talking about? Getting back to the Internet allegedly being entirely over, what planet has he been on? The Internet has paved the way for some of the most creative music of this generation and has made online shopping and purchasing easier than ever.

He has already shut down his website (which is now defunct) and he refuses to license his new music to download stores and subscription services. How is he going to sell his new CD without having them available online? Is he going to allow physical retailers like Wal-Mart (even its UK division), Target, Meijer, K-Mart, and perhaps even FYE to carry in stock and sell his albums?

Don't get me wrong. I loved him back in the '80s and even '90s. His 1984 album (not to mention his first film of the same name) Purple Rain, which was highly praised and lauded by critics for its innovative and experimental sound, made him an international star. As a soundtrack to the movie, it was just quite a sensational experience because of the originality and freshness of his melodies and lyrics. To this day it's regarded not only as a classic but also as one of the greatest rock albums of all time in the history of the music business.

Notwithstanding his odd behavior and uncanny and unconventional methods of performing on stage and composing and writing his music catalog, I have always viewed him as a legendary prodigy of his generation. But that does not excuse his own gross stupidity over his statement in which he directly compares the Internet to MTV. Comparing the Internet to MTV is like comparing the typewriter to a personal computer. Given his idiotic statement, this clod will find out that he's shot himself in the foot financially, professionally, and musically.

Because of his sheer illogic and lunacy, I find myself not inclined to purchase another CD of his again. By making that statement to the public (which should be viewed as an embarrassment to his publicist and his manager), he has certainly killed any chance of a possible comeback, let alone his pop music career. To make matters worse, he's made it his priority to legally sue the pants off after eBay, the Pirate Bay, and YouTuber users for buying and downloading his copyrighted catalog off the Internet.

The problem with Prince is that he's become irrelevant as a musician. He's not as young and hip as he used to be, and he's lost his knack for writing good material these days. (Ever listened to samples of his most recent CDs that came out within the last few years? They are abysmal as well. A lot of the crap that he's written lately is fueled in part of his loopy Jehovah Witness religion and ideology, but that goes without saying to be honest.)

O most Purple One: I hate to burst your bubble, but it's you who's over. You've been over for well over a decade. Your last couple of albums (I've sampled some of them off of iTunes) suck, and your new music sounds god awful, which is a stark contrast to the old legendary classics you put out years ago.

In a nutshell, Prince, you're a has-been. You've been yesterday's news for years, and acts like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber are storming the charts. Get used to it.

Tea Party

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Amendment One, United States Constitution
There has been a lot of talk recently about coinintelpro and agent provocateur infiltration of the Tea Party Movement and their events. Below is an account of my personal experience with my local Tea Party, as well as first hand reports from two other attendees.
I arrived early and set up on a city sidewalk at an intersection. Being a seasoned protester, I brought all the tools required for a lawful, peaceful public demonstration of my grievances with my government – Signs, literature, a camera and video device, a Pocket Constitution, and a megaphone.
Keep in mind that I was in my hometown. The city and county stole my money through force to build the sidewalk I was standing on. I was having so much fun chanting, “Taxation is theft and theft is violence” through my megaphone when one of the organizers walked up to me and told me I was not allowed to use a megaphone. I asked him by whose authority he was acting upon. The man reported that he was acting up on the City of Branson’s authority. I was as respectful as possible and told him that the City of Branson cannot restrict my right to peacefully assemble or my right to free speech.
The man left and I continued to use my megaphone. About thirty-minutes later he came back and reported that I needed permit to use the megaphone. I asked him again on whose authority he was acting. He reported that since he (as a business owner) was required to obtain a permit that I was, too. At this point, I took out my Pocket Constitution and told the man that the First Amendment was my permit. I told him that I would not stop using my megaphone.
So, the man left and I continued to use my megaphone again. The City of Branson Police Department drove by a few times while I was using my megaphone. Their presence gave me courage to shout louder, as my belief in free speech was affirmed. The Tea Party organizer walked up to me a third time and asked me to stop. I asked him why he was so adamant to silence me. He reported that the City of Branson had told him that if there was any electronic amplification used at this assembly he would not be issued another event permit.
I reported to the man that this was a serious issue that he needed to take up with the City of Branson. I told him that he should stop asking permission from his government to operate a business or act in the best interest of his business. I told him that the event he had helped organize was based on this type of freedom. He walked away with me shouting into my megaphone that freedom from tyranny comes from the individual actions that we take every day.
Renea McMasters – Branson, Missouri
Renea got a couple dozen copies of the Constitution from the YAL (Young Americans for Liberty) KU Chapter to hand out at the Branson Tea Party on Saturday April 17th. There were two parts of the rally, the street action along the Branson Strip with everyone holding up signs, and an outdoor, main-stage event with speakers and entertainment. There were also many booths setup on the parameter of the crowd. During the street action I went up and down the line of protesters handing out Campaign for Liberty tri-folds and S604 Audit the FED push cards.

One of the Tea Party Staff asked me not to hold up a sign that contained profanity. The sign says "O Shit" with the O being the Obama logo. He said that it wasn't consistent with the other signs at the protest and that I could go across the street by the We Are Change protesters because they "aren’t with us." I opted to trade it out for a large Gadsden flag and continued to go down the line of protesters handing out literature. I did not mention to the man that I was on a public sidewalk where my First Amendment right to hold any sign was protected by the United States Constitution
.
After the street action everyone headed to a private venue for the main stage event. We opted not to take the megaphone to the main stage event for fear that it would interfere with the free speech of the speakers on stage.

I went around to some of the booths picking up an Allen Icet for State Auditor t-shirt and Purgason for US Senate sticker. Then I asked Renea if I could hand out the Constitutions that she brought. She said I could so I started carrying them around in my hand. Since the constitutions had the Young American for Liberty website YALiberty.org on them I was looking for young people to hand them out to. There weren’t a lot of young people in the crowd other than a few small children. While I was walking around a lady came up to me and asked if she could have one, and I said sure and gave it to her. Then, an older couple came up and asked if I was handing out Constitutions and asked if they could have one so I gave them each one. I continued around the outside of the crowd looking for young people, high school or college aged, but didn't see any.

Then a lady with a Tea Party Staff t-shirt came up to me and asked me what I was handing out. I told her it was the constitution. She saw my sticker and asked if I was with the Purgason for US Senate booth. She said that only people who had a booth were allowed to hand out things because the Tea Party wanted to review what information was being disseminated. I told her that I did not have a booth. She said there was a formal process with paperwork for having a booth and handing out information at the tea party. She said there was already a booth handing out constitutions, and anyone who wanted one could go to that booth. I told her if she wanted to kick me out she could do that and that it would make for a great story in the newspaper tomorrow "Man kicked out of Tea Party for handing out the Constitution." I told her I think this is going to be a great story for the newspaper and that she should kick me out because I'm not going to stop handing out constitutions.

Then I went over to Renea and told her what was going on. The lady came over to where Renea was and Renea asked her if we weren’t allowed to hand out constitutions and she told Renea that we couldn't hand out anything. Renea asked if she could give her a DVD of Freedom to Fascism and insisted that she take it. When she told us again that we couldn't hand out anything I yelled, "This lady doesn't want us to hand out the constitution!" I yelled loud enough to interrupt the speaker that was on stage and part of the crowed turned to see what was going on including the We Are Change cameraman. Here is the footage the We Are Change Branson cameraman obtained:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI1BHUCYKZ0



After a couple seconds, several people rushed over to me to get a constitution. One guy yelled "I'll take a constitution, just shut up." All the constitutions I had were gone in less than half a minute with some going to young kids whose parents had sent them over get one.

A couple minutes later the cops came over and talked to us. The Branson Police were very polite. They said they just wanted to make sure that we weren't there to disrupt the tea party and they were sympathetic to the tea party organizers harassing us. I told them that we want to make sure that the speakers on stage had a chance to be heard so that they could exercise their free speech. Renea told them that we were here to be respectful and to celebrate liberty. They also asked us if we were the ones using the megaphone earlier, during the street action, and said that they were glad that we were able to use the megaphone and exercise our free speech.
Michael Mikkelsen – Kansas City, Missouri

While attending the Branson Tea Party on April 17, I was thinking how great it was to see so many people joined in the spirit of liberty. Unfortunately, this spirit was countered by what seemed to me to be a curious concern for control. The first tip off was the fact that the two guys who were taking a survey for purely academic purposes told us, my friends and me, that they were not allowed into the event. Then there was the fact that, although the organizers of the Branson Tea Party were handing out pocket size copies of the U. S. constitution, my friends were not allowed to give out the pocket constitutions that they had brought with them to hand out. Why would this be? I found this exclusionary attitude to be in conflict with the spirit of liberty and I am now suspect of the motives behind this behavior.

Dan McMasters – Branson, Missouri
I have seen other accounts of the First Amendment becoming an issue at Tea Parties.
I am not saying that this is an agenda being pushed by the Tea Party Movement. I am saying, however, that there are people in the movement who have an agenda of their own. Perhaps it is an agenda that promotes liberty at the expense of denying others their God given rights.