Archive for March, 2010

Europol Granted Frightening Investigative Power

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

“Her Majesty’s subjects in the United Kingdom are now subject to the prying eyes and ears of a European intelligence agency with powers that rival Hitler’s infamous Gestapo, the Cold War-era KGB, and its progeny the East German Stasi.”

“Europol (a portmanteau of the European Police Office) was formally instituted in 1993 under a provision of the Maastricht Treaty and it became fully functional as of July 1, 1999. The agency is the European Union’s intelligence agency and as such conducts investigations across the 27 member states of the European Union.”

“…As of this year, the Hague has endowed Europol with the plenary powers of a full EU agency, with all the attendant rights and privileges.”

Joe Wolverton II looks at the  European Police Agency @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/3221-europol-granted-frightening-investigative-power

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Healthcare Reform Passes

Friday, March 26th, 2010

“Following months of heated public debate and aggressive closed-door negotiations, Congress finally cast a historic vote on healthcare late Sunday evening. It was truly a sad weekend on the House floor as we witnessed further dismantling of the Constitution, disregard of the will of the people, explosive expansion of the reach of government, unprecedented corporate favoritism, and the impending end of quality healthcare as we know it.”

Rep. Ron Paul looks at the high cost of healthcare reform @ http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/004010.html

Posted in Health Care & Medicine | No Comments »

‘You Cut Spending’

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

“In 1999, a year after winning a second and final term as Republican governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson became the most prominent politician in the United States to call for legalizing marijuana. He also said straightforwardly that he had used pot himself in the past….”

“In 2010 Johnson is hoping to gain notoriety for a different, though related, reason. At a time of deep and convulsive popular discontent with the economy and the politicians attempting to manage it, Johnson has launched a profile-raising 501(c)4 nonprofit organization called the Our America Initiative, pushing limited-government solutions to economic, environmental, social, and international issues.”

Reason Magazine interviews former Governor Gary Johnson @ http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/16/you-cut-spending

Posted in Libertarian Viewpoint | No Comments »

Battling the Bipartisan Consensus for War

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

“The U.S. is rarely at peace. It doesn’t matter which party or which politician is in power: American military forces will be on the move, invading a Third World nation here and threatening an emerging power there.”

“In January 2009 Republican George W. Bush yielded to Democrat Barack Obama, and the U.S. government increased military spending and expanded the war in Afghanistan. If a Republican is elected in 2012, recent history suggests that defense outlays will grow further, as Washington attacks another nation or two.”

“Enthusiasm for war crosses party lines — Robert Kagan recently wrote approvingly of the militaristic alliance between “liberal interventionist Democrats” and “hawkish internationalist Republicans” — both groups which have never met a war they didn’t want to fight. However, support for peace also is transpartisan. Such sentiments are perhaps strongest on the Democratic left, which increasingly feels disenfranchised by President Obama. A smaller contingent of libertarians, traditional conservatives, and paleo-conservatives has resisted the conservative movement’s adoption of war-mongering intervention as a basic tenet.”

Doug Bandow takes on the pro-war bipartisans @ http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=689

Posted in Antiwar | No Comments »

GOP Congressmen: Most Republicans Now Think Iraq War Was a Mistake

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Chris Moody reports @ The Cato-at-Liberty blog:

In a Thursday panel at Cato on conservatism and war, U.S. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and John Duncan (R-Tenn.) revealed that the vast majority of GOP members of Congress now think it was wrong for the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003.

The discussion was moderated by Grover Norquist, who asked the congressmen how many of their colleagues now think the war was a mistake.

Rohrabacher:

“I will say that the decision to go in, in retrospect, almost all of us think that was a horrible mistake. …Now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars, and all of these years, and all of these lives, and all of this blood… all I can say is everyone I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now.”

McClintock:

“I think everyone [in Congress] would agree that Iraq was a mistake.”

Source (includes video):http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/03/18/gop-congressmen-most-republicans-now-think-iraq-war-was-a-mistake/

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Wrong Bill At The Wrong Time

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

“…the real reason why ObamaCare is so unpopular is that it is proposing a giant expansion of the entitlement state precisely when this state everywhere is coming apart: here and abroad; at the federal level and the state; in the public sector and the private. Suggesting a giant government takeover of a sixth of the economy can’t be a popular selling point in a country whose DNA has a programmed hostility to Big Government.”

Shikha Dalma sees Obamacare bringing the Democrats down the way the Iraq War brought the Republicans down @ http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/09/obamacare-health-democrats-congress-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html?boxes=opinionschannelmostpopular

Posted in Health Care & Medicine | No Comments »

Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet

Friday, March 5th, 2010

“The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence.”

“McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.”

“When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they could start making firewalls and building malware into military equipment.”

“And now McConnell is back in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. He’s out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.”

Ryan Singel exposes the real threat to internet freedom @ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/cyber-war-hype/

Posted in Big Government | No Comments »

Communist China Caught Spying On United States, Again

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

“A Federal Bureau of Investigation video was released over the weekend that exposed an American defense official with one of the nation’s top security clearances passing classified secrets to a spy for the communist Chinese regime. And according to U.S. officials, the case is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.”

“The explosive FBI surveillance tape, obtained using hidden cameras, was made public on Sunday for the first time by CBS’ 60 Minutes. It showed Pentagon analyst Gregg Bergersen with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency traveling in a rental car with a spy for the People’s Republic of China, Tai Shen Kuo.”

Alex Newman reports on a new China spy scandal @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/crime/3073-communists-caught-spying-on-us-again

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Six Reasons to Downsize the Federal Government

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

1. Additional federal spending transfers resources from the more productive private sector to the less productive public sector of the economy. The bulk of federal spending goes toward subsidies and benefit payments, which generally do not enhance economic productivity. With lower productivity, average American incomes will fall.

Chris Edwards has 5 more reasons to downsize the federal government @ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/03/03/six-reasons-to-downsize-the-federal-government/

The Cato Institute has dedicated a new  website to Downsizing the Federal Government:  http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/

Posted in Big Government | No Comments »

IMF Seeks New Mandate, Global Currency

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn made a series of headline-grabbing statements late last week, calling for new supervisory authority over world financial markets and even the exploration of a new global reserve currency.

“Our mandate must cover the full range of macroeconomic and financial sector policies that bear on global stability in the modern world,” Strauss-Kahn told the annual gathering of the Bretton Woods Committee on Friday. “And that, in many ways, is the bottom line: to strengthen the fund’s role as the guardian of systemic stability.”

Declaring the need for a new “multilateral surveillance” system, the French managing director said what the IMF wants “is a new focus and capacity to deal with systemic risks.”

If approved, the new surveillance procedures “would allow — indeed require — the fund to assess the broader and systemic effects of country-level policies, and the associated risks, in a fundamentally different way,”

Alex Newman exposes new attempts to empower the IMF to deal with the financial crisis @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/economy/economics-mainmenu-44/3052-imf-seeks-new-mandate-global-currency

Posted in Economic & Financial, International | No Comments »