Robin Vaughan, the mother of a combat soldier, reports significant military harassment over a private and closed small group website on MSN. The site was established as a support group for “moms” of service members from one unit deployed overseas.

From ICH:

During the first few months of our site, the Army decided to call every single family on the site, informing them, that the site was not to be used by any of the families. The Department of Defense called families in the middle of the night to notify them to not use the web site. Most of the families were near tears, thinking they were getting “THE” call telling them their child or loved one had been killed or injured.

The information received via the phone call was to inform the families that the base did not condone the site, nor [did] the Army, and that it was not to be used; the gist was, families were not allowed to use the site, or they could get into “trouble”. Some members reported their soldier calling from Iraq, telling them to be careful about using the site as the Army was monitoring it.

Vaughan goes on:

As Web Mistress of the site, I needed to respond and qualify this information, as well as to educate this commanding officer as to the rights and liberties of a private web site; which I did. I was told I would have to let a commanding officer on the site to monitor the messages; I did allow this, but I also informed the officer that this was a courtesy, as there is no such law, or right of the military to monitor, shut down or exclude our web site.

I believe we received this order, and treatment for a couple of reasons.

Occasionally we would voice our concerns publicly over what our government was failing to do to help our soldiers, or we would share or argue political opinion as well. The second reason may be: the armed services all have a group of their own family type support (FRG); as we were not local to the base our soldiers deployed from, the site was a means to provide that support, as best as we could.

The support group at our base, tried to force the site to be given over to them, which I refused. At this time I was told, I might want to be careful, as the government was monitoring the site as well. Soldiers in our unit, while in Iraq, were telling their parents to stay off of the site, or to be very careful of what they wrote. This came from a rear detachment officer in charge, and members on the site.

I reminded the Army I am a private citizen, not on base, with a private site making no claims to have any affiliation with any branch of service, but clearly stating we were families and friends of our unit in support of one another. We were treated to power by intimidation. It isn’t hard to make that work, when you have someone’s child in a war zone.

We were a group of 77 families from all over the country, at the time of the call. Every single family was phoned and told not to use the site; and I believe some 150 other families were phoned as well, as it was an official order from a commanding officer.

Even in these days of frequent new reports of domestic spying, it seems this is one group of people the government would have chosen not to harass. Props.

It seems that the Bush war on everything the wingnuts consider immoral may be reversing itself. President Bush just pardoned two men who had previously been convicted of the manufacture and distribution of one of the more dangerous drugs abused by Americans:

President Bush has pardoned two Tennesseans convicted decades ago of moonshine charges.

“It’s a good Christmas present,” said Charles E. McKinley, 75, of Pall Mall.

Also pardoned was Carl E. Cantrell, 57, of Monteagle, who said, “It was the biggest relief I ever had.”

The pardons this week restore full U.S. citizenship to the men, including the rights to vote and buy a gun, their attorneys told The Knoxville News Sentinel. But their records will reflect both the felony convictions and the pardons.

Perhaps this is the beginning of a trend and Bush will likewise pardon the approximately 1.5 million other people currently in state and federal prisons for drug-related non-violent offenses. (I can already anticipate some of the comments on this posting, so I’ll save ya’ll the effort with: What have you been smoking, Steve?”) Props.

From all the editors and myself here at Hammer of Truth, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Kwanza, Festivus and whatever else you’re celebrating today and this time of year. We love your patronizing of our snarky cynical style, but for at least one day we should reflect on the multitude of good things in our lives instead of what we’re trying to fix (government and whatnot). We know we may seem to come off as bitter and jaded the other 364 days of the year, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about the good things happening in the world.

So to you and yours, a joyous season and a prosperous new year.

Peace and Love,
The Hammer of Truth Staff

Unless we withdraw fairly quickly, the amount of U.S. military personnel who have died in Iraq will exceed the amount of people who died on 9/11/2001 at some point in the future. Polling data suggest a general increase in the percentage of Americans who wish to implement an exit strategy which is more immediate than anything suggested by the White House. Also, they are not comfortable with some of the stated reasons for U.S. entry into combat operations with Iraq, such as weapons of mass destruction or elimination of terrorism.

When we cross the line where more people have died while allegedly protecting us from what happened on 9/11 than actually died on 9/11, one might expect a strong shift in how Americans will react to our continued presence in Iraq. The date this actually occurs will likely impact national political races, so I thought I’d draw a chart to see when this is likely to occur with respect to upcoming election dates.

Using the established antiwar.com rates for U.S. deaths in Iraq, I plugged the numbers into a standard Excel spreadsheet and ran two very simple straight-line projections. The first projection was based on the average daily amount of reported deaths since the “war” began on 3/19/03. The second method used was to take the daily average of deaths in the latest phase of US military operations in Iraq, this being the period since 1/31/05. The graphical output provided that both lines were so physically close I had to use very narrow lines so one can see both of them.

Depending upon which projection one chooses, either January 3 or January 15 of 2007 is the date that more people will have died in Iraq than on 9/11. This is likely to be a factor in 2006 electoral politics, as two death counts are likely to be close during the tail end of the the races which will end next November. Should there be some horrific event where a greater than normal amount of Americans are killed prior to this election day, it could move the date these two lines cross even before November.

It will probably be roughly two years from the date the lines cross before presidential ballots are cast. My guess is that we will be totally out of Iraq by then or a dove will win the keys to the White House.

What the hawks need right now is another Reichstag fire 9/11 in the next thirteen months to maintain political power. They’ll need it a bit faster to ensure control of Congress. Doves need to push for withdrawal before the amount of people who died on 9/11 is overshadowed by the amount of American soldiers who die in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the most likely scenario is that these projections will end up being close to accurate, as neither Republicans nor Democrats are likely to begin to place principle ahead of partisan bickering and political positioning.

Remember a couple of days ago in my post about England using Closed Circuit Television to track its citizens where I said “I’ll make the prediction that one day in the near future a similar system will be proposed by our congress…” Well, I was right… and they are doing it through the Department of Transportation! And it’s WAY better than sticking cameras on poles all over the place.

The concept is called “Value Pricing“:

The Congress has mandated this program [Value Pricing Pilot Program]as an experimental program aimed at learning the potential of different value pricing approaches for reducing congestion. Value pricing, also known as congestion pricing or peak-period pricing, entails fees or tolls for road use which vary by level of vehicle demand on the facility.

Via News.com:

The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these “mileage-based road user fees.”

So, the DOT wants to install GPS units in vehicles so they can charge “per use” fees on toll roads, similar to calling plans where they charge more during peak times (In this case the equivalent would be rush hour) and less during off-peak times. And here’s the kicker! It’s a little long so put down the sugar cookie and focus. My emphasis added:

The problem, though, is that no privacy protections exist. No restrictions prevent police from continually monitoring, without a court order, the whereabouts of every vehicle on the road.

No rule prohibits that massive database of GPS trails from being subpoenaed by curious divorce attorneys, or handed to insurance companies that might raise rates for someone who spent too much time at a neighborhood bar. No policy bans police from automatically sending out speeding tickets based on what the GPS data say.

The Fourth Amendment provides no protection. The U.S. Supreme Court said in two cases, U.S. v. Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they’re driving on a public street. (News.com)

I always get a kick out of Supreme Court rulings that rip the Bill of Rights out of our pampered paws…

There you have it, a program (Costing $12M per year) mandated by Congress to implement tracking devices in vehicles to charge “per use” fees with the intent of reducing road congestion because it would be cheaper for consumers to utilize mass transportation systems. (DEEP BREATH). Drive safe! Keep your GPS a’tracking or the cops will come’a packin’!

Worried that the NSA is monitoring your e-mail? Here is a way for you to find out, while avoiding FOIA requests which might return bogus information anyway.

The steps are simple. Set up a free webmail account. Set up another similar account using a foreign provider. Send messages between accounts with wording likely to catch the attention of the Feds. Include URLs about which you can access the site stats or server log. If the link is accessed, you will know you are being spied upon.

There might be some problems with this method, but it is probably more accurate than waiting to be served a warrant.

Props via.

UPDATE: One logical inconsistency corrected here. There are more, and I’m curious to see who catches them.

Merry Christmas from a Strange Land. Here’s a clip:

Through reliable sources, the CIA and the NSA have obtained proof positive that Weapons of Mass Destruction are being manufactured and hidden deep within the North Pole. The tyrannical reign of Santa Clause over the elven races has gone on long enough. To that end, we have given the go ahead for a battalion of fighter jets to enter North Pole airspace and lay down a blanket of shock and awe.

We can turn the idiot box off whenever Jerry Spring comes on, but we can’t turn big government off just as easily. Fortunately, Jerry Springer will not be running for governor of Ohio.

Government Federal Reserve Monopoly money printers working overtime?

Dick Morris joins the apologists for the police state (and from the looks of things, is prepositioning to work for a GOP candidate in 2008):

Why didn’t Bush get a warrant? On who? For what? The NSA wasn’t looking for a man who might blow up the bridge. It had no idea what it was looking for. It just intercepted random phone calls from people in the United States to those outside – and so heard the allusions to the bridge that tipped them off.

In criminal investigations, one can target a suspect and get a warrant to investigate him. But this deductive approach is a limited instrument in fighting terror. An inductive approach, in which one gathers a mass of evidence and looks for patterns, is far more useful.

But, if the Democrats are to be heeded, it will no longer be possible.

More Monica scandal, but this one is about the wife of John Conyers.

According to the NY Times, the scope of Bush’s latest misadventure is greater than he admits:

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries, they said.

To be more specific, here is the allegation:

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

In related news, the NY Daily News informs us that the FBI has been monitoring mosques in the U.S. for signs of radioactivity:

Federal counterterrorism agents secretly have tested the air for radiation near hundreds of Muslim sites in New York, Washington and other major cities since 2002, officials confirmed yesterday.

If they are simply walking up and down the street with a Geiger Counter, I’m not too concerned. However, the article implies that there may be more to it:

Some experts question the legality of a program that involves entering private property to take air samples.

Concern about civil liberties violations is minimized by this statement, though:

An FBI official said the agency “is mindful of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Agents are trained to act within the parameters of applicable law in all operations.”

After all, the government is the protector of our civil rights and they would never lie to us. Right?

I was going to write yet another in a long series of rants on the Patriot Act tonight until I connected two bits of recent news together. Obviously, we carry a lot of Patriot Act news at HoT, but there may no longer be a point to any continuance of the effort.

Libertarians, paleoconservatives, progressives and liberals alike are likely to be wasting their time fighting the Patriot Act considering the recent relevations that Bush blatantly acted outside of the Constitution (and even the questionable FISA) with respect to civil liberties issues.

If Bush is above the law, what is the reason for having law in the first place? Is there any point to be made about how the law actually reads if it is disregarded anyway? Following GOP calls for impeachment over a blowjob and a cum-stained blue dress, I’ve been slow to jump on board this bandwagon, but perhaps it is now time for a serious call for impeachment. For a variety of reasons, many have called for impeachment before. Others have hesitated a bit. Perhaps now we can all work together on this unified line-of-attack.

It’s starting to become a trend. Here is the latest libertarian-Democrat blog.

Promote thy Balko. Radley starts off:

Among the uglier responses to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina were those who suggested that the hurricane was some sort of divine retribution for the moral shortcomings of New Orleans and, more broadly, the United States.

His example is here, while I’ll provide one from my home turf.

The bottom line:

Included in the $8 billion aid package recently passed by the House of Representatives was a provision authored by Rep. Frank Wolf that would exempt businesses Wolf considers unwholesome from getting any aid at all. Included among Wolf’s disfavored businesses are liquor stores, casinos, tanning salons, and strip clubs.

In other words, the GOP will subsidize shady car dealers and abortion clinics in NOLA, but not titties and beer. Perhaps some balance is required because they spend so much of their lobbyists’ money subsidizing T&B inside the beltway.

Good read if you write about politics. Excerpt:

“Cry Havoc!, and let slip the dogs of war,” wrote Shakespeare. “The Bush administration cried ‘Havoc!’ and used a number of lies to justify setting the dogs of war loose,” wrote Harry Browne, Libertarian presidential candidate in 2000. Lies and more lies: Al-Qaeda training camps in Iraq, aluminum tubes, Hussein kicking the UN inspectors out of Iraq, drone aircraft that could reach our East Coast, mobile bioweapon laboratories, WMDs, and such overblown statements as: the world is a safer place with Hussein gone, and the Iraqi people are finally free.

“It is very important to realize,” Browne says, “that virtually everything we think we know about a foreign policy issue is only what the government tells us. And the dogs of war are unleashed on anyone who threatens to expose those lies, and seems to have the public forum in which to do so.” We have to remedy that.

That’s why I keep writing.

Want yet another reason to love the nanny state? Dad asks court to let girlfriend sleep over.

It seems that Ken Blackwell (ref: stealing the presidential vote in Ohio fame) steals more than votes. Latest local press here.

Yesterday was the third birthday for Rational Review News Digest. A bit of history from Thomas Knapp provides:

When we published the first edition of RRND on December 23rd, 2002, we weren’t sure where we’d go with it. We intended to fill a gap left by the sudden shutdown of Free-Market.Net and Freedom News Daily. We didn’t know if that gap would persist for three days or three years, and we didn’t know how long we could keep our fingers in the dike.

Congratulations to my friends Tom and R. Lee and Mary Lou and Steve and Brad for a good job, so far. RRND is still around a grand short on their fundraising goal. What better birthday present could one provide than to slip a few bucks into their pockets?

If one has ever had difficulty understanding Republicans, Ann Coulter’s latest column may help clarify things a bit:

Which brings me to this week’s scandal about No Such Agency spying on “Americans.” I have difficulty ginning up much interest in this story inasmuch as I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.

I can see Coulter (unless she is standing sideways) responding that the statement above was written somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Coulter must be aware that if a large batch of economic liberals were sent to Gitmo, the balance of power would likely shift to the Democrats.

This next line involves a different appendage (her foot, to clarify for some readers) in Coulter’s mouth. It’s hard to take this one as being satire:

In previous wars, the country has done far worse than monitor telephone calls placed to jihad headquarters. FDR rounded up Japanese — many of them loyal American citizens — and threw them in internment camps. Most appallingly, at the same time, he let New York Times editors wander free.

Note the following about the Japanese internment:

The Supreme Court upheld the president’s authority to intern the Japanese during wartime;

That case, Korematsu v. United States, is still good law;

There are no Japanese internment camps today.

I’m guessing that Coulter just alienated pretty much all of the readers she once had who are of Japanese ancestry. To paraphrase Niemoller:

First they came for the Ragheads,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Raghead.
Then they came for the Japanese,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t Japanese.
Then they came for the media,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a member of the media.
Then she came after me,
and by that time that she was through
she had no readers left.

LNC Chair Michael Dixon held an online chat in the new Libertarian Party chat room yesterday. I had a scheduling conflict and arrived there for the last few minutes of the chat and missed most of it, but Austin Cassidy reports that the LP posted the transcript on their website. I thought I’d repost the transcript with some commentary on the important issues discussed. Actually, I agreed with Dixon on quite a few points, rebutted Dixon on some, and added additional commentary on many issues. see more…

One of the political campaigns I recently worked was for the re-election of a member of the Birmingham City Council. Joel Montgomery won with 54.5% of the vote. One of the controversial issues leading into the city council elections was a smoking ban in city restaurants, an issue which Montgomery fought hard to defeat — but eventually lost. One article at the time provided:

The Alabama Restaurant Association, which represents numerous Birmingham restaurateurs, strongly opposes any local smoking bans as our research shows that if smoking customers have a choice of going to a nearby restaurant where they can smoke, they will do so to the detriment of smoking-ban affected restaurants.

While I’m not at all happy with the ARA (they support a statewide smoking ban), their position on local bans is correct. One recent anecdotal example brings us back to Joel Montgomery, who made this case against the ordinance:

You can make a case for it either way . . . It is a health issue, but it is also a freedom of choice issue and a civil liberties issue, and we just have to balance it out, and it’s a tough thing to do.” In closing, Montgomery issued a caution as ominous as the surgeon general’s warning on a pack of cigarettes. “I believe that people who are proponents of this smoking ban want a prohibition on tobacco, period. From there, what’s next? I don’t think you’ve heard the last of this.”

Last night, some of Montgomery’s key supporters held a small Christmas party for him at a local restaurant. Kim Rafferty set up the event, and one of the stipulations was that we would eat at a place that allowed smoking. We ending up paying a moderately hefty tab for the evening (the crab legs were great, and the rib-eye was pretty good), as we had multiple courses and alcoholic beverages at a local steak place. But it wasn’t as local as we would have liked it, as it wasn’t at an establishment in Montgomery’s district. Dining locally is our normal practice, but it was just too darned cold to go outside to smoke. We ended up going to suburban Trussville (on my poop-list for another issue) to eat. Birmingham lost our business and tax revenue, too. While the Birmingham City Council has a long history of sticking it to small businesses, they do seem to love their revenue stream.

Councilwoman (and now council president) Carole Smitherman once said this in reference to loss of business in Birmingham:

“They always threaten us with that,” she said. “If we do have an adverse economic impact, we can amend the ordinance. Of course, I’m about choice … but I don’t think it’s a vital option right now.”

Study after study indicates that such smoking bans kill local business. Additionally, I thought I’d provide my most recent anecdotal case of adverse economic impact.

Carole, now is the time to put your money where your mouth is.

In a bid to shred the Bush administration’s rationale for secret eavedropping due to prior media leaks, the Washington Post puts out a timeline of reports to debunk the long-held assertion that the media tipped off Osama Bin Laden that his satellite phone was being tracked and recorded (thanks Jake!):

Bergen noted that as early as 1997, bin Laden’s men were very concerned about electronic surveillance. “They scanned us electronically,” he said, because they were worried that anyone meeting with bin Laden “might have some tracking device from some intelligence agency.” In 1996, the Chechen insurgent leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed by a Russian missile that locked in to his satellite phone signal.

That same day, CBS reported that bin Laden used a satellite phone to give a television interview. USA Today ran a profile of bin Laden on the same day as the Washington Times’s article, quoting a former U.S. official about his “fondness for his cell phone.”

It was not until Sept. 7, 1998 — after bin Laden apparently stopped using his phone — that a newspaper reported that the United States had intercepted his phone calls and obtained his voiceprint. U.S. authorities “used their communications intercept capacity to pick up calls placed by bin Laden on his Inmarsat satellite phone, despite his apparent use of electronic ‘scramblers,’ ” the Los Angeles Times reported.

It seems like there’s not much way to verify exactly why OBL actually stopped using his phone, but the argument is compelling that he probably put two and two together after cruise missiles nearly killed him a day before in August 1998. I suppose the argument could be made that secret eavesdropping would have maybe nabbed him, but considering the wariness demonstrated by Al Qaida, this sounds more like a case of mixed signals in placing blame by the government.

Not many people may know the name Wafah Dufour, but she’s the niece of Osama bin Laden — the terror mastermind leader of al Qaeda. Dufour, an American by birth, says she wants nothing to do with the name bin Laden. From an interview in GQ on newstands in December:

Ms. Dufour, who’s vague about her age but almost certainly younger than 30, sits down at a good corner table and thanks me for helping her tell her story. “It’s really important for me,” she says with a French accent. “I was born in the States, and I want people to know I’m American, and I want people here to understand that I’m like anyone in New York. For me, it’s home.

“It’s really tough that I have to always explain myself, she continues in a soft, husky voice. “It’s like every time I meet someone, I have to move a huge mountain that’s in front of me, and sometimes I get tired.

The face is alluring (big dark eyes, long lashes, plump lips, caramel skin), but she looks wounded. And there’s something else. At first I can’t quite figure it out, but then it hits me: She looks a little like her uncle, albeit a waify ninety-eight-pound tiny-footed version. Sexy Osama! I hold that thought while I listen to her explain that she’s his half niece and one of hundreds of bin Ladens, most of whom are in Saudi Arabia, where she hasn’t been since she was 10. She has no contact with most of her relatives, including her father, doesn’t speak Arabic, has an American passport — The list goes on. “At the end of the day, I believe that the American people understand things and they have compassion and they see what’s fair,” she says. “They are very fair, and that’s why I love America.”

While we really can’t fault her for being Osama’s niece (and a pleasant sight to behold, even under her old name), it’s naturally something that is just so bizarre that there’s no two ways around it. I’m sure it sucks that she’s annoyed and embarassed and blah blah blah. But I have a suggestion for Dufour: what better way to poke your nutty uncle in the eye than to pose for Playboy?

[Tell me you wouldn't crash your 747 between her twin towers]

Update: An older story paints Wafah as being really bitchy and spoiled:

“And the way she treats people! Now she is trying to make money by giving French lessons. But if people don’t want her French lessons, she’ll hang up and scream, ‘Bitch!’ ”

Wafah has also been known to scream at “friends” whose connections did not pan out for her: “You are of no use to me!”

One pal said, “She called up my [connection] and screamed at them: ‘You will meet with me! Now!’ They were like, ‘No way!’ She’s a spoiled rich girl, and it’s wearing thin.”

Heh. Looks like it may not be her family ties that’s holding up her career after all.

This is to remind everyone that we have an open call for editors here at Hammer of Truth. See yesterday’s post for full details and discussion. I will be contacting everyone who applies early next week and everyone know my picks.

If I didn’t make it clear before, the purpose of HoT is to provide the best libertarian commentary (and of course, advocacy) on the Internet using pop-culture and current events as our wedge into the blogosphere discussion.

Comments are closed on this post. Go here.

The Senate passed a six month five week (see update) extension to the Patriot Act. From the article:

With time running short on Capitol Hill, the Senate breathed new life late Wednesday night into the moribund USA Patriot Act, agreeing to extend it by six months. President Bush said he appreciated the move, but it was unclear if the House would approve it.

“No one should be allowed to block the Patriot Act,” Mr. Bush said in a statement, referring to a bipartisan coalition of senators who last week derailed a measure to update the act, the nation’s main antiterrorism law.

Apparantly Bush doesn’t believe in the constitutional process of passing or changing laws. We told you so, again and again.

The House has just passed a similar version, but not close enough to make it law. Let’s hope the House and Senate keep so busy squabbling over the terms of the bill that they won’t be able to stab us in the back with it once again.

The confusing news from the Patriot Act front comes from Bob Barr, who has been actively fighting the unconstitutional provides in the rape America Patriot Act.

Atlanta, GA — Former Congressman Bob Barr commended the House and Senate over their late night agreement to extend the USA Patriot Act for six months.

“I urge the Senate and House to use the next six month’s productively, to carefully consider changes to the Patriot Act necessary to bring it into balance with the Bill of Rights” Barr noted.

Barr also expressed concerns over the recent revelations that the President has ordered the NSA to engage in electronic surveillance of American citizens without court order and outside the laws governing such actions, which clearly highlights the need for these reforms and for aggressive oversight.

Barr welcomes this opportunity to spend the next six months working on common sense fixes to the more controversial sections of the Patriot Act and extends his gratitude to the Senators who stood for the Constitution in assuring these sections were able to receive the scrutiny they deserve.

Either he needs to clarify his statement, or I’m going to have to take back some of the nice things I’ve said about him lately.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: The PATRIOT Act extension was shortened to five weeks. That should be plenty of time to strip out the unconstitutional bits while appeasing the hawks in the interim.

We get an update from Michael Badnarik over at the Free Market News Network:

However the experience was much like “boot camp” preparing me for “the real thing”. My congressional campaign has already raised $70K nearly a year before the election. I return to Austin on Jan 2nd, and starting Jan 12th we will have “boots on the ground” engaging the constituents in our first “patrol” through the district. Like any military movement, we have a “secret strategy”, and I insist on calling the meeting room our “war room”. I have even requested a map of the district with little model planes and tanks that we can push around to represent volunteer groups. “I love the smell of political debate in the morning!”

$70K is not enough to win, but it is a sizeable amount for a third party candidate in a congressional race. I’ll continue to keep my eyes on this campaign — especially with the redestricting case going to the US Supreme Court.

Radley Balko has the court transcripts from the Cory Maye case on his website. I’m printing and reading them now and y’all can expect my commentary once I’m done.

Politically incorrect holiday humor. Props.

Tim West has started an LP television commerical. The video is almost completed, and it can be viewed here.

Churches are libertarian institutions.

As I predicted yesterday, the strike is over today (ok, I had said early tomorrow):

Striking subway and bus workers in New York City ended a three-day walkout today.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 leaders agreed to call off the strike while negotiations on a contract resume, said Richard Curreri, a state mediator. The union’s board voted 36-5 with two abstentions this afternoon to accept the return-to- work plan, board member Eladio Diaz said.

Between 10 and 18 hours will be needed to get the city’s subways and buses running normally again, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said on its Web site. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said some buses will be back on the streets tonight and “hopefully most subways” will be open by the morning.

Read the full article on the ceasefire.

I’m sure our National Security Agency (NSA) is drooling over the Brits’ new nation-wide surveillance system set to begin in 2006:

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years. (The Independent)

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) has been a part of the English life for decades so I guess their citizenry either could care less about the intrusion of privacy or have become numb to the concept of being watched by their government 24/7.

I would hope that Americans wouldn’t allow the implementation of such an intrusive system, then again I thought there was no way the populace would re-elect Bush the war-monger.

The ACLU lists four problems with Public Video Surveillance:

1. Video surveillance has not been proven effective
2. CCTV is susceptible to abuse
3. The lack of limits or controls on cameras use
4. Video surveillance will have a chilling effect on public life

Still, I’ll make the prediction that one day in the near future a similar system will be proposed by our congress, probably after another terrorist event, and the people will allow it to happen as they did in England under the assumption that they will be more secure.

Hey, you should only be worried if you are doing something wrong… right?

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.
-Benjamin Franklin

Update by Stephen VanDyke: In related news, New York judge Gabriel Gorenstein has sided with the US government in its quest to be able to track a cellphone’s physical location via tower data, without first seeking a warrant to do so:

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the decision is based on “flawed legal analysis,” and contradicts rulings by three other judges. Gorenstein based his opinion, in part, on the idea that using tower data to triangulate a caller’s location doesn’t violate the US Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches, due to the fact that the tracking method doesn’t “install a … tracking device” and only “identifies a nearby cell tower” rather than pinpointing a caller’s location. The EFF vows to continue following what it calls a “dangerous new opinion,” particularly in light of recent revelations about warrantless wiretaps by the Bush administration.

I utterly fail to comprehend how the judge didn’t laugh this woman out of court (via Boing Boing):

A state judge granted a temporary restraining order to Colleen Nestler, who alleged in a request filed last Thursday that David Letterman has forced her to go bankrupt and caused her “mental cruelty” and “sleep deprivation” since May 1994.

She wrote that she began sending Letterman “thoughts of love” after his “Late Show” began in 1993, and that he responded in code words and gestures, asking her to come East.

The code words and hand gestures? All on TV:

Nestler’s application for a restraining order was accompanied by a six-page typed letter in which she said Letterman used code words, gestures and “eye expressions” to convey his desires for her.

She said he asked her to be his wife during a televised “teaser” for his show by saying, “Marry me, Oprah.” Her letter said Oprah was the first of many code names for her and that the coded vocabulary increased and changed with time.

Oh ok… this all makes perfect sense, we can slap frivolous restraining orders on people based on our own delusions. That’s it, first I’m filing a restraining order against Bill O’Reilly — I swear every time he raises his eyebrows, he’s sending me the coded signal “I want to rub a falafel on you.” Then I’m going after Al Franken — I’m pretty sure he sent me a coded message the other day asking to lick my nuts. Oh wait, that one was true.

By now, rational people are probably starting to wonder if the NYC chapter of the Transportation Worker’s Union isn’t looking out for their union members after all, just their own bottom line. Local 100 President Roger Toussaint explained in an interview with New York-based all-news channel NY1 how the MTA could end the strike, entering it’s third day on Thursday. “All it needs to do is take its pension proposal off the table.”

Under the current pension plan, union members retire at age 55 after paying 2% of their wages. The new proposal would raise the retirement age and percentage to 62 and 3% respectively, but only for new-hires. In context, the average Social Security retirement age of men and women was 64 after 6.2% pay-in by employers (retirement SSA data, tax SSA data). Toussant’s claim? This is selling out the “unborn.” Personally I’d take being born with the slightly tarnished MTA silver spoon over the SSA’s rusty spork.

Also in contention is the MTA’s $1 billion surplus, due primarily to increased tax revenue from the real estate boom. The MTA has earmarked most of the money for other programs, including a holiday fare discount, and… oh yeah, employee pensions. But Toussaint wants a bigger piece of that pie as well, since by gosh if he’s not a proponent of redistribution of wealth. I say screw both the MTA and TWU on this one, give the surplus back to the customers in the form of lower fares.

So as it’s becoming readily apparent to the common onlooker, while the MTA is by no means perfect and deserves to be thrashed, Toussaint and his band of merry mutineers are on the wrong side of public opinion. It’s far too easy to see that this is a strike based not on hunger, but of gluttony.

Previously:
NYC TWU Strike: Day Two
Big Apple Strike: NYC Trains/Buses Grind to Halt