Last week, Retired General Wesley Clark, who was NATO commander during the US bombing of Serbia, proposed that “disloyal Americans” be sent to internment camps for the “duration of the conflict.” Discussing the recent military base shootings in Chattanooga, TN, in which five US service members were killed, Clark recalled the internment of American citizens during World War II who were merely suspected of having Nazi sympathies. He said: “back then we didn’t say ‘that was freedom of speech,’ we put him in a camp.”
He called for the government to identify people most likely to be radicalized so we can “cut this off at the beginning.” That sounds like “pre-crime”!
Gen. Clark ran for president in 2004 and it’s probably a good thing he didn’t win considering what seems to be his disregard for the Constitution. Unfortunately in the current presidential race Donald Trump even one-upped Clark, stating recently that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a traitor and should be treated like one, implying that the government should kill him.
These statements and others like them most likely reflect the frustration felt in Washington over a 15 year war on terror where there has been no victory and where we actually seem worse off than when we started. The real problem is they will argue and bicker over changing tactics but their interventionist strategy remains the same.
Retired Army Gen. Mike Flynn, who was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, told al-Jazeera this week that US drones create more terrorists than they kill. He said: “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just … fuels the conflict.”
It is probably almost inevitable that the warhawks will turn their anger inward, toward Americans who are sick of the endless and costly wars. The US loss of the Vietnam war is still blamed by many on the protesters at home rather than on the foolishness of the war based on a lie in the first place.
Let’s hope these threats from Clark and Trump are not a trial balloon leading to a clampdown on our liberties. There are a few reasons we should be concerned. Last week the US House passed a bill that would allow the Secretary of State to unilaterally cancel an American citizen’s passport if he determines that person has “aided” or “abetted” a terrorist organization. And as of this writing, the Senate is debating a highway funding bill that would allow the Secretary of State to cancel the passport of any American who owes too much money to the IRS.
Canceling a passport means removing the right to travel, which is a kind of virtual internment camp. The person would find his movements restricted, either being prevented from leaving or entering the United States. Neither of these measures involves any due process or possibility of appeal, and the government’s evidence supporting the action can be kept secret.
We should demand an end to these foolish wars that even the experts admit are making matters worse. Of course we need a strong defense, but we should not provoke the hatred of others through drones, bombs, or pushing regime change overseas. And we must protect our civil liberties here at home from government elites who increasingly view us as the enemy.
[Editor's Note: what I have dubbed the "Legislative-Executive-Judicial Cabal" which the American People have caused by ignoring the generational transition from our Constitutional Republic to what now is, in effect, an "elected" dictatorship. Never mind who is elected. Never mind which bogus party is in power. The superficial, theatrically staged, choreographed appearance of debate, disagreement, and stalled legislation always resolves into more government and less FREEDOM. We the People still lose more freedom after every "emergency" or unnoticeably when CON-gress passes another general, open-ended law that enables the Executive (dictator) and its unaccountable agencies to formulate more freedom-restricting regulations (200 pages a day get posted to the Federal Register). The "Dictator's" agencies (police force) continue to pile-up more weapons to squelch uprising(s) when the People finally realize and understand their tyrannical government.
Currently, CONgress is just a group of socialists, progressives, and faux-conservatives (career politicians) that, on a daily basis, ignores the Constitution, many of their own past statutes, and cedes their responsibilities to the president ("elected" dictator). A comparison to the history of Rome becomes more and more credible with the Executive and its "featherbedded" lackeys gaining more power while CONgress sits back all fat-dumb-and-happy.
CONgress has made recent efforts to expose State Dept. failures in Benghazi (inept political leader), Fast-and-Furious gun-running (criminal AG), IRS 1st amendment violations, gov't union Veterans Administration fraud, and whining about Obama(Reid)-killer-Care, but these efforts are mostly politics as usual. Most "citizens" will forget about these infringements from our unaccountable, uncontrollable Executive branch with its tyrannical agencies staffed by socialist unions that extort "juicy" contracts from the "elected" dictatorship.
Most positions in the federal government whether elected, appointed, or hired are nominal, make-work jobs (confidentially) designed merely to grow government, bilk money from private businesses and citizens, and eventually fully transform America into a totalitarian state. When this happens, CONgress will have destroyed the economy and the country by their negligence and counter-liberty policies, and it will be almost impossible to Restore America. The 'Restore America' list is only a beginning too.]
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
James Madison, Federalist Paper 47, Friday, February 1, 1788
Anyone who believes this country is free is an idiot!
"Extortion and thuggery are good things when they're called law!"
Larken Rose
[Editor's Note: a Constitutional Convention is required to reverse the damage to freedom and liberty since 1900. This Article V was ratified by the participants at America's founding Constitutional Convention as an alternate path for repairing damage to freedom and liberty, a path for the People to restore damage caused by our failed representatives in the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of a government designed to represent the wishes of We the People.
The States must "demand" a Convention and explicitly specify an agenda of:
laws to be repealed or modified,
Amendments to existing constitutional clauses that define the co-equal branches to further specify and define, and
new Amendments or statutes to be eventually ratified by States.
These Amendments should further specify and clarify the powers of the Legislature and Executive Branches. A good example is the definition of a "Bill".
A Bill should contain ONLY verbiage in regards to the topic of the future law. NO earmarks and NO unrelated sections or attacments.
Many past Bills sent to a president for signature contained unrelated but essential funding sections that rendered the Bill veto-proof when it warranted a veto.
CON-gress can override a veto if the Bill is deemed absolutely necessary by CON-gress.
If the Bill requires SPECIFICALLY related amendments, the CON-gress can "debate" (with its usual theater) and vote any new amendments.
The original text of the Constitution contains some very GENERAL clauses enabling both CON-gress and Executive branches to write laws and
regulations with their particular nuances expanding powers beyond intent. "Intent" may be gleaned from a complete understanding of
Federalist Papers.
An example of further specification and clarity for CON-gress should be a clear, very specific definition of the boundaries for the interstate Commerce Clause.
To restore freedom, liberty, and individuality - minimally these must be repealed:
Currently, even with computer-searching systems, the list of antiquated and/or obsolete statutes (and related regulations) is unwieldy.
These statutes must be invalidated unless there remains an applicable reason for retaining the law(s).
Aside from invalidating statutes, there are many regulations that are biased in favor of large enterprises (who buy support from bureaucrats)
at the expense of the competition, effectively repressing the Free Market. Any regulations not related to public safety that gives a financial advantage
to some companies over their smaller rivals must be rescinded to enable all companies with good consumer products to excel without burdensome regulations.
Additionally, the Convention should adopt for ratification at least these new Amendments or statute modifications:
clearly define and limit the role of government in regards to the term "general welfare",
Term Limits for CON-gress (12 years) including a 6 month limit on time residing in DC,
strict Prohibition of Lobbying (with a comprehensive definition of "lobbying"), and
a Balanced Budget Amendment to stop wreckless spending. During a CON-gressionally declared "war" (only after USA is attacked or attack is proven "imminent"),
deficit spending is permissible.
Restore America to its roots, i.e. Defense, State, Treasury, and Justice. Some Agencies are required like CIA and NSA, both respectively focused on defense against real foreign aggressors and not fictitious paranoid delusions of war mongers. Other agencies help where certain interstate communications are necessary. Most agencies like Agriculture, Education, DEA, IRS (eliminated with 16th Amendment) and many other listed here should be eliminated.
Restore the world Gold Standard with five contentious steps, and
Replace the IMF, World Bank, and Export-Import Bank with facilities that reflect the new Gold Standard, and
After decentralizing and economizing, if tax revenue is needed to fund all or part of the federal government, then implement the Fair Tax.
Regarding a Constitutional Convention itself, some of the available literature warns the reader about a possible "unstructured" and "mismanaged"
Convention that might propose and adopt amendments that could damage the Republic.
Possible, however, it is difficult to envisage how much more damage could done over what the L-E-J Cabal has already done.
If the Convention's agenda and rules of order strictly prohibit violation of the rules and enable a vote on unlisted Amendments AFTER all others are adopted,
then the Convention will be properly structured and managed. ]
See the following links for more related articles:
Those who seek out positions of power tend to be paranoid, hypocritical wimps. Consider the issue of firearms. Politicians have many thousands of mercenaries (soldiers and "law enforcers") wielding all sort of deadly weapons--guns, tanks, missiles, drones, etc. Yet those same politicians pee themselves at the thought of the rabble owning semi-automatic rifles. From their twisted, elitist perspective, it's perfectly fine for them to swipe many billions of dollars from their subjects to spend on all manner of armaments, but if YOU want to possess a rifle, they think you should have to ask their permission, and register it, and make sure they always know what you own.
They also expect to be allowed to do things in secret, while claiming the right to spy on you and everyone else. As far as they are concerned, it's none of your business what they do, or what weapons they have, but it is their business to know everything that you do and everything that you have. Of course, they will pretend that their goal is to protect you from the "criminal element," but you'd have to be pretty dense to actually believe that. Why do you suppose they mostly whine about civilians having weapons that:
are used in only a tiny percentage of actual crime, and;
are the most effective types of weapon for resisting "government"
aggression?
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. People who gravitate towards political office think they have the right to rule you. That's the job they applied for. And, of course, extorting you and bossing you around could be rather more difficult if you are better armed than their enforcers. So they hand out machine guns to their mindless thugs, but have tantrums about you having a 30-round magazine.
A new Congress has been seated, and it brings the prospect of perhaps, maybe, potentially, in a possible way doing something about the runaway federal deficits. And in other news, several New York area bridges are for sale, which you can acquire at a bargain price.
Excessive Spending Destroys!
Feds Have a Spending Problem — DO NOT RAISE THE CEILING!
Feds Have a Sewage Problem!
Becky Gerritson: "...government is out of control!" and "...our representative government has failed us."
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the IRS to detail under oath how some of former agency official Lois Lerner’s emails went missing, as well as any potential methods for recovering them.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington gave the Internal Revenue Service exactly a month — until Aug. 10 — to file a report, which he demanded as part of a lawsuit from a conservative watchdog, Judicial Watch, against the agency.
Judicial Watch is seeking a wide range of documents from the IRS, including Lerner’s emails, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. It has complained that the IRS didn’t tell it that the agency couldn’t recover all of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.
Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter. Judicial Watch had asked the court to potentially compel IRS officials to testify about the lost emails, through a process called limited discovery.
The FairTax is a consumption tax unilaterally applied to all Americans at the same rate. For businesses, payroll taxes would no longer exist. Our exports would include a heavy tax for overseas buyers purchasing our products, while our imports would be cheaper for us to purchase. I'm not sure how this would affect GDP, as more information is necessary.
According to the FairTax website, "Under the FairTax, every person living in the United States pays a sales tax on purchases of new goods and services, excluding necessities due to the prebate." The prebate gives every legal resident household an "advance refund" at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free.
So a family of four making something like $50,000/year should not have to pay taxes, thus preventing an unfair burden on low-income families. Since the FairTax eliminates both federal and payroll taxes, you get to keep your gross pay amount of each paycheck earned.
John Adams said, “Without [term limits] every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey”. That being said, here are some of the reasons we believe our country needs Term Limits.
Term Limits can help break the cycle of corruption in Congress. Case studies show that the longer an individual stays in office, the more likely they are to stop serving the public and begin serving their own interests.
Term Limits will encourage regular citizens to run for office. Presently, there is a 94% re-election rate in the House and 83% in the Senate. Because of name recognition, and usually the advantage of money, it can be easy to stay in office. Without legitimate competition, what is the incentive for a member of Congress to serve the public? Furthermore, it is almost a lost cause for the average citizen to try to campaign against current members of Congress.
Term Limits will break the power special interest groups have in Congress.
Term Limits will force politicians to think about the impact of their legislation because they will be returning to their communities shortly to live under the laws they enacted.
Term Limits will bring diversity of people and fresh ideas to Congress.
[Editor's Note: If you want to get rich, i.e. advance from a low paying government bureaucrat job on the local or state level, THEN GET ELECTED TO THE US CONGRESS (House or Senate). Once you're elected, it's easy to steal from your campaign contributions or the Congressional budget allocated to your seat and staff. You can go on a government-funded junket with 'lavishly' paid expenses. The list of ways to steal from the government while in office is inexhaustible. There are only a few Congressmen who left Congress just wealthy instead of a multi-millionaire. Of course, there are several who arrived in Congress as multi-millionaires and don't need to steal from the government.]
